Still looking good! Its so fast now -- you may have to slow it down. (A slight delay between the 'destroy' and 'fall down' phase will often enhance the game experience. It provides feedback on what happened, and actually acts as a reward.)
Still looking good! Its so fast now -- you may have to slow it down. (A slight delay between the 'destroy' and 'fall down' phase will often enhance the game experience. It provides feedback on what happened, and actually acts as a reward.)
This is and will be easy enough to do in the template.
I've only removed the delay because I have no animations of exploding jewels etc. so making the jewels disappear and having the ones hovering above for a bit would look weird in the videos. I suppose I could make them fade out for the purpose of the template/demonstrations.
It doesn't spawn checking actors like my earlier versions, instead it changes the game.phase to "checking grid" and will check the whole grid before it switches the jewels back if no matches were found. Checking the through the whole grid is almost instant so there was no reason to check jewels that have switched any differently.
I think what I will be working on next before I release it is switching jewels with swipe gestures and at least one or two special type jewels like a bomb, and that jewel in Jewel Mania that clears all of one colour on the screen. That should then be a good enough starting point for you to add in your own special jewels.
If anyone wants a copy of the template before I add in the special jewels let me know and I'll make it available over the next few days. It has notes in it, but I've not written the PDF which explains all of the attributes yet.
I'd love to see a copy as it is. Often its good to have a basic starting project without all the bells and whistles. It just needs to show the minimum to get someone started with this type of game.
Thanks everyone. It's good to know people are actually interested after spending so long on it And thanks to those that have helped in one way or another.
I mention in the README.pdf that I intend to rewrite the code that checks the grid for matches once GameSalad improve the speed of the loops. It's currently 16 loops which is really fast but a sloppy way to do it because the same code to check for matches is inside each of the loops and if you want to change the size of the grid you have to create copies of those loops. There's not much in the code to checking for matches but it would still be better in one place.
Now that it's out of the way I'd like to spend some time playing around with Logic Pro so I probably won't be looking at the special jewels until next week sometime.
Any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. I forgot to mention that it'll only work in the nightly builds, but you can still download it and store it for when version 11 is released if you don't have access to the nightly builds.
@KevinCross you deserve a medal Sir. Great effort!
Thanks, but seeing someone use it one day as a starting base would be rewarding enough
I myself have a game I want to try and build with it but I also want to try and create a template for Pocket Mine, a game I've been playing quite a lot recently. Too many things, so little time >.<
I will also try to design a even faster Bejeweled type game, give me some time and I will return
Good luck!
Change how they fall down the grid (currently using a timer) and you've already made it faster. It's the only thing that makes it seem slow. The checking of the grid is pretty much instant.
Braydon_SFXMember, Sous Chef, Bowlboy SidekickPosts: 9,273
Excellent job, Kevin! Your dedication to this community is awesome.
@KevinCross there are much faster methods of looping. 64 cells in one second is average compared to the speed of some loops. Have you seen these threads?
@tatiang I briefly looked through those posts previously. Taking a second to loop through 64 cells was what I was experiencing in an old version of the template. This one runs in a fraction of a second (practically instant) and I'm more than happy with the speed. I don't doubt that there's better ways to do what I've done and it's out there now if someone wants to try. I myself will wait for GameSalad to change how the loops run before I rewrite it as one simple loop.
Probably a pointless post/bump, but just wanted to say that I'm not going to be able to continue working on the template this week by adding a couple of power ups like I promised. I do still aim to re-write the loops part with one/two loops in a future version of GameSalad, but that's probably it for now.
Feel free to PM if you have any questions with the current template.
this was exactly what we were looking for! your the man Kevin! would it be possible to add a timer? (we will try to learn to do that ourselves, and add animations as well) we downloaded your template =D
You're welcome @Cybertouch! I don't see why a timer couldn't be added, but I will have to leave that with you to add in. Good luck, and I look forward to seeing what you create with it.
As I can't edit any of the old posts above and remove links I thought it'll be easier if I add them to one post:
@blue_elephant you will need a copy of the nightlies builds to open them. That's probably why you can't open them. If not I'll double check them again tomorrow but no one else has mentioned a problem with them
Great to see how far you have come with this, hopefully it has been a great learning curve for you which helps you developer more advance games in future for yourself. Well done and keep on developing!
Ah so I see my loop trick works well. Actually in real code one would break the search into an array and that's kinda what is achieved by breaking the code into seperate actors. Even when they speed up the loops it will still be better to array the loops as it leads to parallel processing. Drag and drop can never match custom code but one can achieve similar results with and understanding of how the code is processes.
Comments
Its so fast now -- you may have to slow it down. (A slight delay between the 'destroy' and 'fall down' phase will often enhance the game experience. It provides feedback on what happened, and actually acts as a reward.)
I've only removed the delay because I have no animations of exploding jewels etc. so making the jewels disappear and having the ones hovering above for a bit would look weird in the videos. I suppose I could make them fade out for the purpose of the template/demonstrations.
It doesn't spawn checking actors like my earlier versions, instead it changes the game.phase to "checking grid" and will check the whole grid before it switches the jewels back if no matches were found. Checking the through the whole grid is almost instant so there was no reason to check jewels that have switched any differently.
I think what I will be working on next before I release it is switching jewels with swipe gestures and at least one or two special type jewels like a bomb, and that jewel in Jewel Mania that clears all of one colour on the screen. That should then be a good enough starting point for you to add in your own special jewels.
If anyone wants a copy of the template before I add in the special jewels let me know and I'll make it available over the next few days. It has notes in it, but I've not written the PDF which explains all of the attributes yet.
I'd love to see a copy as it is. Often its good to have a basic starting project without all the bells and whistles. It just needs to show the minimum to get someone started with this type of game.
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✮ Available for hire! support@gsinvention.com ✮
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Here's a dropbox link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ehlrszofg2n5rv9/GameSalad-Starting-Template-Bejewelled-Clone-v1.0.zip
I mention in the README.pdf that I intend to rewrite the code that checks the grid for matches once GameSalad improve the speed of the loops. It's currently 16 loops which is really fast but a sloppy way to do it because the same code to check for matches is inside each of the loops and if you want to change the size of the grid you have to create copies of those loops. There's not much in the code to checking for matches but it would still be better in one place.
Now that it's out of the way I'd like to spend some time playing around with Logic Pro so I probably won't be looking at the special jewels until next week sometime.
Any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
P.S. I forgot to mention that it'll only work in the nightly builds, but you can still download it and store it for when version 11 is released if you don't have access to the nightly builds.
✮ FREE templates at GSinvention ✮
✮ Available for hire! support@gsinvention.com ✮
Its quite clear that you have put a lot of thought (and effort) into this template. And its really paying off!
Thanks for sharing it with the community.
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I myself have a game I want to try and build with it but I also want to try and create a template for Pocket Mine, a game I've been playing quite a lot recently. Too many things, so little time >.<
Change how they fall down the grid (currently using a timer) and you've already made it faster. It's the only thing that makes it seem slow. The checking of the grid is pretty much instant.
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Keep it up!
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@KevinCross there are much faster methods of looping. 64 cells in one second is average compared to the speed of some loops. Have you seen these threads?
http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/55050/fast-for-loop-a-collection-from-the-community-merged-into-a-single-really-really-fast-loop/p1
http://forums.gamesalad.com/discussion/54922/hyperloops-loop-to-your-hearts-content
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Feel free to PM if you have any questions with the current template.
As I can't edit any of the old posts above and remove links I thought it'll be easier if I add them to one post:
Basic Bejewelled Template
http://www.kevincross.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/GameSalad-Starting-Template-Bejewelled-Clone-v1.0.zip
Basic Block Breaker Template
http://www.kevincross.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GameSalad-Starting-Template-Block-Breaker.zip
Basic Columns Template
http://www.kevincross.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/GameSalad-Template-Jewel-Drops.zip
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Great to see how far you have come with this, hopefully it has been a great learning curve for you which helps you developer more advance games in future for yourself.
Well done and keep on developing!
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