Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Wizznic 0.9 Released

So, I've released a new version of my game Wizznic, which is most awesome! ;)
This version comes with a load of new levels, and a fair amount of music! :D
This version also builds on the previous success with getting feedback from the players (all 3), so I've included functionality that sends back stats about the difficulty that you're having with each levels (it sends back the time you used, and how many times you restart/die in each level), this info lets me decide which levels are too easy, and which are too hard.. But the functionality can be disabled when the game start if you don't want it. (but please don't, I need the info..)

Get it at: https://sourceforge.net/projects/wizznic/files/

Changelog for 0.9_feedback_edition:
  • Fixed a bug where teleport strings could get too long and sometimes crash the game.
  • Added cheat.
  • Time spent solving level was reset when player used retry.
  • Using cURL(windows) and wget(*nix), wizznic will now upload level-statistics: The game asks you to accept (Ctrl) or disable the function (Alt) on first start, it can also be enabled/disabled from options menu. The info is sent to: http://dusted.dk/wizznic/commit.php and contains the following fields: version, pack, level, score, moves, time, and action (which can be either "check", "restart", "complete", "gameover" or "lost-life") This information will be very helpful to order the levels.
  • Script to move levels around. ( tools/movlev.sh (works on .))
  • It's no longer possible to place a "reserved" brick from the editor (the "reserved" type is used internally)
  • The cursor can now be changed from level-files with cursor=cursorname.png (relative to packname/themes/cursors/)
  • Default cursor should now be PACKNAME/themes/cursors/cursor.png, but the game will still fall back on PACKNAME/cursor.png
  • 75 levels (around 60 new!).
  • Added new Teleport sound.
  • Particle effect on teleport
  • Added direction-switching delay to horizontal mover, solves bug that brick
  • cant be dropped of a mover with a travel distance of only 2 spaces.
  • Adjusted direction-switching delay to 500 ms instead of 300

Friday, July 16, 2010

Halp plz!


If you're the self-loathing type (like me) who play games to find out what's wrong with them, read on! If you prefer the shiney, finished, polished product: nothing to see here, move along people! ;)

Anyway, since I've done most of the levels for Wizznic, I have a hard time figuring out which (if any) of my puzzles are "hard", so I'd love for you to help me out here!

Here's what I'd love for you to do!
Download the feedback pack, extract it and put in your wizznic/packs directory (you'll need to download wizznic if you don't allready have it), then play through the levels..
They're all set to 16 minutes, so if you get stuck, just use the restart level function as many times as you want.
Upon completing each level, and this is the important part:
write down the following stats from the stats screen, so it looks like this in a text-file:
levelnum moves time
If you can't complete a level, write down which one.

You're very welcome to add critique (positive aswell as negative) too :)

When you're as far as you can get, please send the text to me, so I can get an impression of how wrong I've got the level-order.
You can send it to my E-Mail at dusted at dusted dot dk, or, if you prefer, as a comment on this post, or as a ticket on sourceforce.
Please fill the subject as: Level Feedback

You're awesome! :)

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Wizznic 0.8 Final released.


I've been hardly working, on Wizznic, been doing a lot of levels (that you're not getting yet *evil grin*)
There have been a lot of polish, some of which will only benifit me, but well..
Corrected a couple of bugs along the way, and I think I have a version that's pretty solid..

So anyway, this version is mostly to wrap up the coding part, so I can concentrate more on content-creation, 0.9 will include several techno/trance/house tracks, over 60 new levels, and more graphics, so there's something to look forward to there :)

Because most of the changes are to do with the linux port, I've decided that a windows release can wait for 0.9.

Anyway, here's more or less what's changed:
0.8:
Final 0.8. Next will be 0.9.
Fixed a bug in the level-preview-dump function that made a black image if no start/stop image found.
Thumbnailer works again (on levels that refer to themes that are installed)
Added instructions for using the thumbnailer in the install.txt
No longer blink [MORE] in the level-editor list.
Removed an error message that were printed even though there was no error.
Pack-List is now sorted.
Added Puzznic! Stage 09 pack by KML
Script to make releasing for Linux (Source package) and Wiz automated. This will be extented to windows when I learn to cross compile.
Pre3
More linux-friendly (thanks to PVince81 for patch which was used as inspiration)
Linux specific Makefile based on contribution from PVince81.
Renamed Makefile to Makefile.wiz (to avoid confuzion with the linux Makefile which is called Makefile.linux)
Linux version can be compiled so it saves user files (player & editorlevels) to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME or $HOME (like most *nix apps)
Read more about this in doc/install.txt
Level-Editor menu screen is made a bit less cluttered.
Clone level function (create a new level, with the contents from another level, so it is easier to make variations of existing levels)
Pre2
Player was not asked to enter highscore after "completed game" screen was shown.
Added Silver pack.
Teleports added
Greeter/Credits added to welcome screen
Added a "template" pack (essentially just a copy of the wizznic pack, without the levels/music),
can be used by content creators as a starting point for creating a pack.
Tweaked the ingame interface a bit.
Lots of minor changes.
Changed readme a bit, it's still not accurate though.
Fixed a crashbug due to improper memory access.
Fixed all compiler warnings.

So, 0.9 is going to be interesting, since this was not ;)