Blocker 4k

[me]

Hey all,

Edit:

 Java 4K link


Original:
For this years 4k game competition I want to resurrect my tinyblock project
that failed in the mini game project contest. [ link  ]

Basically it will be a block pushing , block eleminating game and I have
a few directions I want to exploit in the 4k limit.

Not much to show in the 4k limit since today is the start of the competition  

Best regards from

M.E.

[me]

Hello All,

In this simple puzzle game you need to match 2 colors
to remove the blocks from the grid.


BLOCKER4k

The focus of this 4k game is on the number of levels.
Unoptimized there are 11 levels at the moment (3674 bytes),
but I aim for around 30 or even more levels.

You can participate in creating levels : LEVEL EDITOR
Login with a name and password and if the account does not exist,
it will ask if you want to create an account.

The 4k game will be static so I would need to copy the levels
from the editor into the game manually, but you can play your own
and other levels in the editor.

In case you beat a high-score I would like to change
the static high-score list to match it. Please leave a
reply or message so that I can manually change it.


Currently tested on:
[size=5pt]

Apple
-----
MacMini
Safari 5.0.3
Java 1.6

iMac
Safari 4.0.3
Java 1.6

ACER Aspire 5740 i5 4GB @ 2.27Ghz
----------------------------------
Windows 7                                  
Internet Explorer                          
Java Plug-in 1.6.0_22-b04            

Google Chrome
Java 1.6.0_22-b04

Virtual Machines
----------------
SUSE Linux Enterprise 10              
FireFox 2.0.0.14      
Java 1.6.0_19

Windows XP HE 2002
Internet Explorer 6.0.2600
Java 1.6.0_10
[/size]


Best regards from

M.E.

[kappa]

oh nice and original, some of the puzzles really get tricky later one.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[krasse]

Very nice.

I agree with kappa, the levels are great (only got to level 7 or something though ).

[Mickelukas]

Only got 118 on the 11th level and 204 on the 12th. I did however manage to beat your score on level 6, (24 instead of your 26).

Two suggestions:
skip levels (I want to try more on level 11 and 12 later but don't want to redo them all) ;-)
undo removes one move instead of adding 5. At the moment it is unusable and it's quite annoying when you move one square to far on a level and need to redo the whole thing...

[me]

Thanks All!
Hopefully I can find even more levels for your enjoyment

@Mickelukas
 - levels .. Use ESC to go to the menu, you can select levels there
 - There was a 5 step penalty for using undo. You are the second
   person who wanted it gone, against one who found it challenging
   with the penalty.
   So you now can use undo without any penalty!
   If I get around it and it doesn't cost too many bytes, I might make
   a Menu Option so you can select expert mode or something like that..

Good job on level 6, but it is beaten by my girl-friend again

Best regards from

M.E.

[bysse]

Very nice game indeed!

[me]

Hello WORLD




Byte count is on 3458

I'm getting confident that I will put 30 levels in the game. The
last levels will probably not be as huge as the world, but maybe I can make
them tricky enough...

Best regards from

M.E.

Ehh.. No, I didn't make it accurate, and your country is probably not
represented .. my apologies for that!

[luisoft]

great game! levels are a challenge. Hope you can put 30.

I was looking at your tips for developing 4k games and you mentioned that you created a small program to generate fillrect from an image - to use as a sprite for example. Can share it?

[me]

Hello Luisoft,

Thanks. I am confident that I can make it to 30.
I'm on 26 now. If I don't make the levels too large
it should work.

Propably you are referring to my 2010 entry Maze4K that used
a spritesheet. I'm honored that you want to take a look.
You have to do a little digging in the directory where
I host the game:
http://mazeland.net/maze4k
If you browse to http://mazeland.net/maze4k/getcolor.java
you will get the source code for the converter tool.
You use it : java getcolor a.gif
My spritesheet:
It will create a file called a.gif.txt with some String code.
You copy-paste this code into your own project where you
decode it.
The a.java file contains the code for the game in which
you will find the technique to create a spritesheet from
this data.

Using strings you can use the compression qualities of
the kzip/7zip tools to make it really small. Riven's tool
is awesome with these strings.

This year I tried to do something clever like: if you see
9 times A write 9A instead of AAAAAAAAA.
It turns out that you can't beat the compression techniques
that are already provided in kZip. At least not without writing
much more decompression code which takes a lot of extra
bytes.

Funny thing is that some characters compress better than
others. You have to do a little experimentation with your
particular spritesheet. In my case I replaced # with a space
to get the best compression.

Good luck.

Best regards from

M.E.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[me]

Hello All,

On the Java 4k site is the final version of the game.
The goal this year was to fit a large amount of
levels without resorting to logic to create a level.
I aimed for 30 levels and that is what I ended up
having in the game.

Hope you enjoy!

Best regards from

M.E.

[Alan_W]

Great puzzle game,  I'm a move or two off the high-score most of the time, so need to try harder