hope this animation will fit final sprites
we are also planing to make almost 20 unique levels in a new game
upd1: just received first sprite pack. and sims animation is ok
https://forum.defold.com:/uploads/default/original/2X/2/221e10e10c49c402da4bcdb6a932a6a090eb71ed.mov
Super shiny! Maybe color code the tile backgrounds too while game pieces are on them so it’s that much clearer what pieces can be matched?
You right.
We are still working on this. Actually the whole board background element is missed there. I’ll show board update when it will ready. All dices must be well recognizable on the board.
Also. i fixed material setup so it won’t be blurry.
guys. do you have a good references in games how i can enhance tutorial steps.
I’m doing right now as on the video below, but just not sure is it ok or not. Can i just change some sprites and timing or maybe there is a better choice.
Maybe don’t show formula but play merge animation on gui layer as well ?
I think you should have a look at how Blossom Blast does their tutorials, personally I think they’re really good. Maybe @FredrikMalmer have something to add on the topic of tutorials?
I’ve seen blossom saga tutorial and it sims very similar what i do. actually candy crash and another king games is my references number 1, because i understand that their tutorial pass many AB tests which i can’t perform. and easiest just to trust some existing solutions.
By the way. Today I finished one gui script which handle tutorial steps and here is a first 3 steps from the first level. I think a bit later i’ll write short video with architecture overview of this “tutorial” solution because it was not so hard, and i’m pretty satisfied with this result
actually i added info about how I made this info in another thread you can find it here Is this possible to make gui_script parameter?
private video… 
Today i faced one issue which was easily solved using custom Queue class.
The problem is following. I need to show next and after_next dices and i do some animation in gui. This animation fired by message. It’s not an issue when you don’t make Full dice. because just one dice spawned on board and movement is ok - hide one, move next, and show new dice.
But in case of Full dice we have 2 dice spawned at once. and therefore we send the same message to gui 2 time at one frame. and more over it possible to receive this message while animation is active.
So what i’ve done is created instance of queue and then just stored message parameters there. and after all animations i check if queue is not empty just call the same method again with arguments which i pop from the queue
Here is you can find the class https://gist.github.com/nicloay/276920005d20b1fa3e4f0f8732a9950d it’s the same version as available here https://www.lua.org/pil/11.4.html just with colon notations.
and this is a result (see how hint dices change each others)
Which awesome feature did i learn today.
and here is level 5 =) new animation and new board bg
humm there is an error when i play the video…
sorry. i don’t know how to fix it. i see this error as well.
try to re-up the video again… perhaps happened anything with youtube features.
i’m not sure but think it something on forum engine because because it show youtube.com/watch?v=undefined link on top of the player. and moreover another video doesn’t work neither.
Guys could please check first 5 levels with pipler tutorial and give some feedback please. Maybe i can enhance experience with some easy fixes?
http://nicloay.com/pipler_beta/index.html
thanks a lot.
I love it. but i guess that a preview to show the combination result to player will be nice.
or a button that show all possible moves with thier results to remember it to player.
with a “all-view-remember” it is possible use a shorter tutotial.
Thanks for feedback. I broke hints. now i’m fixing it. so there is a hint in the game it highlight random possible movement. hope it will help.
@nicloay, really like the puzzles, there’s one thing that really stood out for me, the bar that animates fromt the top to tell you what to do, that only needs to be played once, at the beginning of each level.
Really great game!
The tutorials are clear and pedagogic.
Level 5 is a little too punishing (one move and you’re game over). Maybe explain clearer why this happened. (no more possible moves)
Also from a UX perspective.
Players tend to want to click on the screen as soon as some text pops up. This selects a tile underneath and then when he/she wants to start a swipe it instead selects another tile and makes a switch that was not intended.
Experienced it several times. Better maybe to
@Davej Thanks for feedback. I tried to make it appeared just once per level. but if there any tutorial steps. this bar appeared last. I’m not sure what exactly bother me in this appeared sprites, and probably later we need to redesign this behavior.
@AJirenius thank you for feedback as well. You right, i need to add “no more moves” i’ll try to add this caption before submission. but i still need to make several levels and main scene where you can choose levels. About popups I’ll try to implement what did you say and compare with existing behavior. maybe it’s just a problem in timing right now i don’t know.
Thank you all again. your feedback is really important for us (me and artist) and only with this we can make this game better.
We did it.
Submitted the version to the competition.
you can try it here http://beta.pipler.in
In the last hours we added main map, couple of levels (now it’s 9 and you can see it has new elements) fixed bunch of bugs and even added player save (thanks defold as usual it was just 2 lines of code, and i really like how complex things become simple)
unfortunately didn’t have a time to integrate analytics. so your comments are really appreciated. And sorry that last 3 levels could be complex for new players. i solved it without any issues. just need to check what spawned next, and everything will be alright because spawn rate is following 55 single + 44 horizontal + 44 vertical + 33 square + 33 diamond dices. it’s more casual but still challenging, just try level 6 =) at least.
