[casual_games] endless games

[Nicolás Vinacur]

I had the same problem on a game I'm developing... I'll tell you my ideas on the subject.

    Suppose that after 3 days on sketches and crazy algorithms you could get to something that can guarantee that you'll never get stuck.. The answer would be something like 'if you have this colors in the board, on this position, then throw this ones' . 

    In case you could in fact get to something like that, which is veeeery difficult because you should preview a lots of moves ahead, you will be cheating the player. Your game, until now have given the sensation that any color has equal probability on showing up. If you use the above technique it won't be fair with the player, because you'll be throwing 'what you need' in order to mantain the game playing.

    One alternativity on this, which is what I have mostly heard, is to throw some special item like 'shuffle board' to be able to go on playing. Or different items which will unstuck the board once you've reached this state. In one of James Smith's most famous games (which I can't remember its name, insaniquarium I think) there was a net which helped you pick up one fish of a color in case you got to this state. In my own game I'm developing, depending on the game state, you'll get a different item because each board can be 'unstucked' by different items, and this way you'll let the game a little more dynamic (because in fact my game get stucked a lot :P ) .

    I hope this helped.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: erwin nepo 
  To: casual_games at igda.org 
  Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2006 3:28 AM
  Subject: [casual_games] endless games


  Hi everyone,

  I've noticed that games like chuzzle deluxe (popcap) have game modes that never end. how do you make sure that it doesnt? i've computed the posibillity of having a good move for the endless mode for chuzzle and the chance is way over 1 so it definitely wont end. but is there a process that you do to make sure that there's always a good move. thanks!

  erwin nepomuceno
  __________________________________________________
  Do You Yahoo!?
  Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
  http://mail.yahoo.com 



------------------------------------------------------------------------------


  _______________________________________________
  Casual_Games mailing list
  Casual_Games at igda.org
  http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/casual_games
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/casual_games/attachments/20060212/be99a3fb/attachment.html