but basically it was explorative coding: start with a circle, OK, let's move the circle around, what's next? More circles, OK what happens if the intersect ... And so on.
timeline wise bubbles was first (osmosis is the great-grandfather), but as always: ideas are in the air, forked, replicated, mutated, pivoted, and then taken multiplayer (agar.io is genius, love it)
Great work. Have you considered adding a score (i.e. using time to complete level and amount of ink used (e.g. length of lines, or simply number of lines), or was it a conscious decision to keep the game simple & allow players more creative freedom?
A border around the playfield would help - I keep trying to draw lines that extend slightly outside the browser window, and inadvertently do things like grabbing a bookmark from the bookmarks bar above.
Yeah, that would help a lot. Also might be possible to see where the ball comes back in a little earlier then.
Another little helper would be to draw the level-start-lines not completely up to the border. Because often you can then still route around them all to reach otherwise unsolvable levels.
edit: got to level 10 with this approach before giving up. basically, bound the ball into an area towards the goal as soon as it gets there by enclosing it in a polygon. as long as you keep getting it closer, you eventually get it into a polygon with the target - it works out. It will even pretty much guarantee the ball eventually goes through small gaps it needs to to pass through one polygon to another
Yeah I'm using the same strategy, i'd add that you just need to be careful when drawing small polygons because a glitch can cause the ball to cross the line anyways and then it's hard to get it back to where you want it... except if you use the glitches to your advantage ! :)
Surprisingly addictive for such a simple game. Too bad the acronym didn't spell out "cocaine" or something.
Nice work. If you wanted to spiff it up, you might change the dot to a basketball and the square to a hoop. And add some satisfying sounds. Bouncing on the rim and having the net move in a plausible way would be some work for you. :)
I had to read the source to figure out that I had to use the mouse (or touch if available) instead of the keyboard. From there, I figured it out quickly enough though. The problem is that drawing lines is tricky with a trackpad, and not a natural thing to try out.
Cool little game, even better that it's made without a framework. Maybe you should add a facebook opengraph image so it looks a bit more attractive when shared.
There are occasional impossible scenarios, but that one is far from impossible, and you don't even have to use glitching. It's a real challenge, but you can make use of the fact that the ball bounces off the top of the screen and comes back if it goes straight up enough. In that scenario, I'd immediately draw a vertical line down the right edge of the screen (that's where the ball is about to head, then I'd get ready to draw a horizontal line across the top right as soon as the ball falls in that area. That'll trap it, causing it to eventually go down the lower right drain. While you're waiting for that, draw lines that corral it from there over to the square.
I think this is an excellent game and would probably keep playing a version that had some of the bugs worked out. The glitching through walls can be fairly infuriating if you have the ball completely enclosed and it gets its way out, plus the interactions with the edges of the screen can really screw you up (e.g. when you're drawing a line and you accidentally brush against the edge, so it drops the line immediately). I'd also get rid of the clickable stuff at the top left or reduce the play area so that stuff isn't in the way, since a couple of times I accidentally surrendered while I was trying to draw a line there.
One other improvement I could think of is doing a little forward calculation on your randomly-chosen initial state to prevent it from setting up scenarios that really are impossible or just no fun. Having the ball appear for a 10th of a second and then bounce off the top of the screen never to be seen again (because it went to the side) is no fun. Oh, and maybe stick a red dot or something at the top border of the screen when the ball is up there so you can track where it is horizontally. Oh, I'm full of suggestions.
Edit: how did the double mango pudding turn out? :)
Its very doable, you got to glitch it (strangely, I got pretty good at glitching it through, and then I realized, my morning was gone, and I had to go work)
The OP posted 45 minutes before you with a very polite and open message which describe the problem you have stated and also provided a rationale for the project AND a link to github. Why is it good form to just wade into a comment thread and give unconstructive criticism in this circumstance? Why not just quietly open a github issue?
What the... Chill, I mean, the guy just pointed out a glitch with the most non-threatening neutral declarative sentence possible. Why is "good form" to post a reply like that?
That's fair. It's a Unity game. I need to update that page to reflect that it's been removed from iOS (not willing to keep paying Apple), and it's free everywhere else.
I decided it was more valuable as a portfolio piece than as product with abysmal sales (couldn't afford to market it; not sure if it would have helped anyway), so I made it free.
I only posted it here because it's a game with no text whatsoever, and I found that to be a really interesting design constraint. But maybe I'm the only one.
This game is addictive, would be pretty cool if you went head to head with a random person and you both were trying to get the ball into your own box. great work!
coded this game once upon a time for a viennajs (js meetup vienna) talk. added a little bit more game logic yesterday.
homegrown physics engine (buggy as you will find out) inspired to some degree on what i learned via http://annotated-code.maryrosecook.com/circles-bouncing-off-... (saw this on HN, decided that it should be a game)
issues:
* sometimes dot gets stuck on a line (strangely this happens more on mobile phones then on desktop)
* sometimes dot vanishes (i suspect a NaN error)
* on windows phone lines can not be drawn sticky (not a clue on how to debug this on a mac)
why did i do it:
* for the love of code
* i like simple games (this is another one of my games http://www.fullstackoptimization.com/bubbles/ )
pull requests / forks welcome https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/lsd