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Last post Author Topic: Ludum Dare topic for other games  (Read 33104 times)

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #25 on: May 08, 2014, 09:38 AM »
This looks
It would be great if you would link to the respective LD29 entry page instead of (or in addition to) linking directly to these games so that people who play them can also rate them. :Thmbsup:

This looks important:

"Observation about Rating System
Posted by Photon
May 6th, 2014 7:56 am

I’ve noticed something: it appears that the later you rate games on the site, the less it affects your “default” rating, which affects how likely it is you’ll get precedence for rating games.

This seems kind of counter-intuitive; we don’t want people to game the system (the dreaded “L”, heh) but if you want to get the most exposure it would seem that you have to rate things pretty much as fast as you can. I’m not necessarily the kind of guy who wants to cruise through 50 games in the following 24 hours of the jam, especially if I’m burnt out from making my own game. I’d rather take the time to play through 5 or 10 games a day and actually enjoy them instead of feeling like I need to conduct a ratings blitzkrieg.

I’m just not sure “how fast” you rated games should apply as strongly as it does now, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t necessarily have the time or energy immediately following LD to knuckle down and thoughtfully play through a couple dozen games before we start getting penalized for late judging.

Not trying to raise a stink, but I thought this was worth bringing up and considering."
http://www.ludumdare...about-rating-system/



TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #26 on: May 08, 2014, 11:23 AM »
 looks
It would be great if you would link to the respective LD29 entry page instead of (or in addition to) linking directly to these games so that people who play them can also rate them. :Thmbsup:

This looks important:

"Observation about Rating System
Posted by Photon
May 6th, 2014 7:56 am

I’ve noticed something: it appears that the later you rate games on the site, the less it affects your “default” rating, which affects how likely it is you’ll get precedence for rating games.

This seems kind of counter-intuitive; we don’t want people to game the system (the dreaded “L”, heh) but if you want to get the most exposure it would seem that you have to rate things pretty much as fast as you can. I’m not necessarily the kind of guy who wants to cruise through 50 games in the following 24 hours of the jam, especially if I’m burnt out from making my own game. I’d rather take the time to play through 5 or 10 games a day and actually enjoy them instead of feeling like I need to conduct a ratings blitzkrieg.

I’m just not sure “how fast” you rated games should apply as strongly as it does now, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t necessarily have the time or energy immediately following LD to knuckle down and thoughtfully play through a couple dozen games before we start getting penalized for late judging.

Not trying to raise a stink, but I thought this was worth bringing up and considering."
http://www.ludumdare...about-rating-system/

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #27 on: May 08, 2014, 11:24 AM »
Jungle Noir:
A great little five minute Noir story with the barest of point-click gaming added in. Of course the premise is silly, but it's the overall execution that counts. Plus it's Phoeni Rated Easy! ('Cause you know if a game gets that from me it's really hard to lose!) : )
The voice acting really reminds me of my hero Allison Scagliotti from Warehouse 13!
:)

The LD Page:
http://www.ludumdare...m-dare-29/?uid=19362

« Last Edit: May 08, 2014, 03:13 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #28 on: May 08, 2014, 05:41 PM »
I've been going backwards in the blog posts, and this is one of my early "also ran" favorites:

"Drowning in problems"
- Note: It's all text, so absolutely no graphics.

Suggestion: Stay as "Human" before you hit the demoralizing final couple of stages!

The LD page:
http://www.ludumdare...=preview&uid=398

Direct web link:
http://game.notch.net/drowning/#


Burgerdare

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #29 on: May 09, 2014, 09:55 AM »
More on Undermined:

It looks like it's not sufficiently randomized when you open the program! And the first layout looks like it is close to unwinnable! It keeps giving you too many resources on the one you can't easily use, almost 80% more than either of the other two, and you "can't use them" on two of the other miners!

So if you die and restart the program, you are back at that draw again!

My next guess is to see how "standardized" the sequence is. It may be the first winnable one is X number of iterations in!

-- Well, the "preferences" seem to be the same, but the spread does move around a little, so it's unclear.

Update:

This is my best result so far: I saved a couple of miners:


TaoPheonix, I'm honored that you found my game worthwhile enough to mention it here. I'm even more honored, though, that you found it engaging enough to keep playing until you got a run where two miners survived, given that this is something that I haven't even managed to accomplish yet. I'd actually be really fascinated to hear more about the strategies you have developed/are developing, since my limited time making the game has left me without much time to actually master the strategies myself.

You've also made some very worthwhile critiques, and I really appreciate that you did so. As for the less-than-random generation, this is a bug that I was actually just about to look into, and you've saved me a bit of time by confirming that it exists. Turns out that I needed to set a seed for the number generator to use so that it's outputs would actually be random, which I was not aware of. I'll fix that A.S.A.P. and update the link on my compo page.

The bug with not detecting all actions being spent, I believe, is probably a result of having time leftover to open up to more miners. I had considered letting the player skip using these without getting a warning, but decided that it is still useful to know about the problems of one additional miner, even if you can't do anything about them. That extra info can come in handy the following round.

The question of difficulty, I'm afraid, isn't one I have an answer to just yet. I'm struggling to find a sweet spot where it's actually possible for everybody to survive while still constantly having the threat of complete failure. I'm going to keep at it, though, I assure you that much.

mouser

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #30 on: May 09, 2014, 10:04 AM »
Welcome to the site Burgerdare, it's really a great treat for us when coders stop by to talk about their projects.  :up:

Deozaan

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #31 on: May 09, 2014, 01:31 PM »
Hi Burderdare, and welcome! Thanks for coming here and creating an account to talk about your LD29 entry. It was a clever take on the theme. I liked it. :Thmbsup:

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #32 on: May 09, 2014, 05:02 PM »
TaoPhoenix, I'm honored that you found my game worthwhile enough to mention it here. I'm even more honored, though, that you found it engaging enough to keep playing until you got a run where two miners survived, given that this is something that I haven't even managed to accomplish yet. I'd actually be really fascinated to hear more about the strategies you have developed/are developing, since my limited time making the game has left me without much time to actually master the strategies myself.

You've also made some very worthwhile critiques, and I really appreciate that you did so. As for the less-than-random generation, this is a bug that I was actually just about to look into, and you've saved me a bit of time by confirming that it exists. Turns out that I needed to set a seed for the number generator to use so that it's outputs would actually be random, which I was not aware of. I'll fix that A.S.A.P. and update the link on my compo page.

The bug with not detecting all actions being spent, I believe, is probably a result of having time leftover to open up to more miners. I had considered letting the player skip using these without getting a warning, but decided that it is still useful to know about the problems of one additional miner, even if you can't do anything about them. That extra info can come in handy the following round.

The question of difficulty, I'm afraid, isn't one I have an answer to just yet. I'm struggling to find a sweet spot where it's actually possible for everybody to survive while still constantly having the threat of complete failure. I'm going to keep at it, though, I assure you that much.

Yee ha! The dev is here!
This is one of my favorite sites precisely because devs like you engage from your "expert" point of view with humanities types like me. That's a great post, so let's see what all is going on.

I had a 1-miner run too, but I messed up the screen shot. How often have you had those? I only got that once as well. The rest of the time like the LD commenters, I was just getting skunked (or I ditched the run early when it was a bad draw.)

I'm sure the math types will say I am getting the "math/strategy" slightly off in this next section, but here goes!

Randomness bugs aside, the first thing I do is within the first two rounds (sometimes three if I see a really unusual spread of comfort actions) is to determine which miners like what consolations. I believe that barring flukes the only winning combo is 2 2 1 on the "appreciated" side and also 2 2 1 on "not appreciated".

The first round you can usually nullify all three miner's problems that you picked. But since you are adding "two items of problems" to all five miners, that leaves the other two with their first round untouched. So for round two, they each now have "four items of problems". Where the difficulty starts to kick in, is that for example whichever consolation type is the "singleton" (such as only miner number 5 likes discussions) and you only get one point of action available in that type, and miners 2 and 4 hate discussions ("Not appreciated"), then miner 5 now has four points of problems often of four different kinds, and you have a max of 7 healing points for him less the hated type (miner 5 hates hugs and you got a 3 2 1 spread with 3 hugs 2 listens and 1 discuss). So if you inefficiently burned 4 of those all on miner 5, you can't possibly go all around to the other miners.

Okay, so what does all that mean?

Now we have to look at the "plexing" of the ailments. My numbering was/is slightly different than yours because I laid mine out like a base 3 numbering pattern. So Confused Afraid and Lonely are "Plex 1" and hit only one of the metrics of Sanity, Security and Social. Hallucinating, Angry, and Unprotected are "Plex 2" and hit two of the metrics.

So of all the stuff that miner 5 has, you have to try to take out the Plex 2 ailments and just let the Plex 1 ailments just sit there.

The other two consolation types preferred are "duals" (not the "singleton") and therefore you have more flexibility spreading your so suppose for example on round 2 miner 4 landed Afraid level 2, Confused level 1, and Unprotected level 1. You're gonna get a logjam on the red Security. You use one of your 2-point consolations to cancel the Afraid level 2, a single pointer on the Unprotected because it's Plex 2 and *also* hitting red Security, and then you ignore the Confused level 1 for now.

Whew!

Rounds 3-5 everyone's problems start to pile up. That's where you need to get really smooth spreads of draws for consolation actions. One round you want a 2 2 2, the next you might want a 5 0 1 so you can pull miner 2 that you've ignored all game back from the dead because he really likes hugs and you just got 5 of them. But because of those inefficiencies, you "waste" all your 2-point hugs that miner 2 likes so much because he's got five separate problems all at 1 point each or something. Then next round you get 1 1 4 with 4 discussions but miners 1 and 3 hate them entirely.

I don't quite have the math skills to prove it, but my hunch is from these couple types of inefficiencies, it's not currently possible to save all five miners even with a perfect draw. At the very end you also don't get to talk to all three miners left after two die, and you get fewer points to spread around. So you try to make sure to barely keep all your miners alive as long as possible to have the full spread of possibilities, and only let say 3 of them die at the very last minute.

I think it's quite easy to toggle a couple of factors to create "Easy/Medium/Hard/Brutal" difficulty choices. Read up on my notes about "Phoenix Easy" - I/you want that one to be so easy that it takes a lot of mistakes before miners finally die. Medium is what it sounds like - bad overall strategy and a couple of blunders are enough to sink the current game. Hard could be requiring good strategy and maybe only one mistake, but it should be possible to save all five miners with all but the absolute worst of consolation action spread draws. Then what you have now might be the Brutal level were you can't even save all five, and it's really hard to just save 1 or 2 and very possibly 3 miners.

The easy points to toggle for making it easier to me are the following:
1. Only adding "1 ailment per round per miner" instead of the current 2. (Though I don't like this one as  much, because the other options are modular on a sliding scale.)
2. More consolation actions per round. Easy would be 12, Medium would be 10, Hard is 8, and you're at Brutal with the current 6.
3. Fewer rounds until the rescuers arrive. I haven't tested this one but you're at 12 now so Hard is 11, Medium is 10, Easy is 9.
4. "Dice ReRolls". Easy is 6 per game, Medium is 4, Hard is 2, and you're at none right now.

From what little I know about programming, those could be "only an hour" to put in because instead of a hard coded number, you can just have the user input a level choice then it just looks up the values for that level.

I'm not sure if this is rude now at this point, but how difficult do you think it would be to make me a custom beta to try these out?

Whew! A lot of words! But it's because I was so impressed and I think scaling levels is the final touch.

Best regards,

--Tao



Deozaan

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #33 on: May 10, 2014, 02:07 PM »
Here's another pretty high quality game. And it's nice and relaxing, so I'll go out on a limb and say it's Tao-approved. (c:


Sail the sea, discover underwater treasures, and befriend a squid! Gather all six treasures to see a special ending :D

WSAD: Sail boat
Left Mouse: Drag fishing net
Right Mouse: Use hook
Space: Use spyglass

One thing that confused me at first was that you don't start with the hook or the spyglass, so those controls won't do anything until after you acquire those items. (c:

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #34 on: May 10, 2014, 04:35 PM »
Here's another pretty high quality game. And it's nice and relaxing, so I'll go out on a limb and say it's Tao-approved. (c:

Haha! I am becoming my own code name for stress free gaming!

I'll keep that game in mind to test out and chime in!
:)

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #35 on: May 11, 2014, 01:33 PM »

Misc Note:
I'm not a "purist". While the compo/jam is about the time limit of the 48-72 hours, I recommend people play the "Post Compo" versions where some devs not only fix bad bugs that can really make you miserable, but also sometimes add tons of features they wish they had time for when they weren't racing the clock, and that makes for an overall better gaming experience. After all, it's the compo/jam inspiration that counts that made the creation come into being, rather than one more thing by Zynga. But sure if the post compo version has the extra zingers, by all means I don't go all hardcore and insist on ignoring it to play the original version!


Deozaan

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #36 on: May 12, 2014, 03:33 PM »
Just be sure that you rate the games based on the compo/jam versions and not the "post compo" versions. That would be unfair.

Deozaan

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #37 on: May 12, 2014, 07:07 PM »
Here's one that is very much like my entry, except from the perspective of a human fighting off the worm(s).



Protip for slaying worms: you actually don't need to aim precisely, you can aim just a bit down and hit a worm every time it's descending

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #38 on: May 13, 2014, 02:22 AM »
Just be sure that you rate the games based on the compo/jam versions and not the "post compo" versions. That would be unfair.

You're probably right, but I'm all over the map on that one. Even so, I think I slowed down. I have a rather short attention span so the excitement of it all is fading. But it was fun!


Burgerdare

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #39 on: May 18, 2014, 10:38 PM »
Oh, man. I'm replying real late. Sorry about that, I've been really swamped with finals and the like. Tao, I normally try and stay away from letting others make direct suggestions on mechanical changes that should be made to my games, but you seem to have a much more firm grasp on the game in it's current state than I think most people do, so I'd be glad to send you a tweakable demo and stay in touch to create a more fairly balanced game. Unfortunately, I am still a bit tied up with studying and doing research, so I won't be able to go in and make those changes for another week or so.

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #40 on: May 25, 2014, 07:16 AM »
Oh, man. I'm replying real late. Sorry about that, I've been really swamped with finals and the like. Tao, I normally try and stay away from letting others make direct suggestions on mechanical changes that should be made to my games, but you seem to have a much more firm grasp on the game in it's current state than I think most people do, so I'd be glad to send you a tweakable demo and stay in touch to create a more fairly balanced game. Unfortunately, I am still a bit tied up with studying and doing research, so I won't be able to go in and make those changes for another week or so.

Hiya Burgerdare!

Any news on this front?
Ps. gang he has posted a fix to the random number generator. I haven't looked at this in a while, so I am trying a couple of test runs today. I'm also fiddling with a spreadsheet to try to speed up some of the info organization for the strategy calcs.

Just to save people running around, here is the link again to the LD page:
http://www.ludumdare...review&uid=29805


TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #41 on: May 25, 2014, 09:02 AM »
Heh I got a bit back into this again today, and worked on a little more strategy. The more I play the more I think this could be a valid topic for someone's semester paper in things like game theory and AI!

My first couple of spreadsheets blocked out the basic charts that are a snap to just clear out and re-use. But then I started finding that I was losing up to half an hour on some of the calculations!
:tellme:
Whereas the algorithms aren't that tough, it's just laborious to calculate them by hand. With an interface a comp could do it in a snap.

Today's tips:
Check the Miner Preferences early on and ditch the game if for example "no one likes hugs" because that means that all game long every draw of a hug is sub-optimal and therefore the initial tableau *cannot* be optimum for playing (unless you are purposely doing it for the challenge.)

You should also kill a draw when you get three "hate" prefs and three "like" prefs each bunched on a row rather than a 2 2 1.


« Last Edit: May 25, 2014, 11:11 AM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #42 on: May 25, 2014, 11:24 AM »
Undermined Tips Cont:

I just realized an important trick I had sorta seen but kinda missed.
When you clear out a category such as the Red Security, the next round it goes *up* by a point! So maybe if you rotate which categories you clear out each round, instead of just leaving them all "slowly depleting" you might want to sit on one and then the next time you clear it out with a "double" you gain back a net point. The math on that gets really fierce!


TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #43 on: May 25, 2014, 11:59 AM »
Here is a 3 Miner win!

Undermined 3 miner win see Run4.pngLudum Dare topic for other games

I also have good records on the stats of the progress of the game. I feel I am getting close to the best play on any medium draw of the game. The general strategy was to def rotate categories to gain a couple of extra hit points here and there, really keep the chaos down as much as possible, and then way at the end maneuver for a minimaxed tempo knowing you are gonna sacrificed two miners boosting the other three until you can run out the clock.

You def need some good middlegame draws though, it's frustrating to have a really good opening hand and then in the middle get a terrible run of resources that ruins it!

« Last Edit: May 25, 2014, 12:05 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #44 on: May 25, 2014, 02:40 PM »
Here's a crazy little monster fighting game with hysterical artwork!

Beserker:
http://www.ludumdare...review&uid=24965

You are an angry barbarian who takes power up potions and helicopter swings swords!

I learned about it from the Ludum Dare to Believe game play videos.
http://www.ludumdare...re-to-believe-ep-12/

Here's a truncated clip shot after winning the game (with casualties) -  
Beserker Game Funny Art1.png

I rate the game as Tao Easy-Plus. It's a very short game and I have beaten it a couple of times after a couple of hours of trying. The jump is really generous, without having to be pixel perfect on the distance timing. And there are plenty of potions, so you're not trying too hard to hoard that one crucial resource from way back at the start of the level like some games.

I like the unusual way it handles damage - it is still possible to win missing half hour limbs!
:o  ;D

A couple of hints to make it even easier to win:
- A slightly slower pace than full steam ahead works well because the collision detection on the swords is pretty good and you can get your three slice hits in from a nice far distance. Adding a bit of a back-forth wiggle worked for me to help separate the monsters to divide and conquer.
- The Ludum Dare to Believe "Button Masher Bros" guys also found the trick where you can (with a bit of work) get your swords facing out in front and slowly skewer the zombies as a second rate attack long enough to get your potions back.
- You can do "anti-gravity jump reversals" aka jump but then you can pull back and still save yourself a lot of times from a mistake.

All in all, right down my alley!

« Last Edit: May 25, 2014, 02:51 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #45 on: May 26, 2014, 11:37 AM »
Haha!

Far and away Undermined is my favorite game out of this Ludum Dare! The deep concepts are fantastic!

Admins, how exhausting is it to move all these undermined posts into a new thread? This is my only outlet for my findings, but it threatens to wipe out the more general thread!


Deozaan

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #46 on: May 26, 2014, 12:01 PM »
I was actually intending the other LD29 thread I created to also include posts about other LD29 games, and not just my own participation in the event. But before I had a chance to make a post about some of the other cool games I'd found (since I basically slept for 36 hours after LD29 ended) you had already created this thread. (c:

All that to say that--at least in my opinion--I don't think it hurts to post a lot about Underminer here. Though I suppose it also wouldn't hurt to create a new dedicated thread to your analyses and tips and tricks for it either. :Thmbsup:

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #47 on: May 26, 2014, 12:05 PM »
Oh. Dear. Gawd.

I could practically write a college essay paper on this goddamned instructive game! Seriously, some 80%+ of the LD games didn't interest me because I'm not in the player audience for the top ten categories. But this one, holy cow. "Onion Strategy" but it has bounds, it's only 12 turns long with modestly limited branches.

But talk about emergent stuff, of all things my *Old School* days when I used to play medium hardcore Solitaire are coming back (and I don't just mean Canfield on Windows, I mean David Parlett and the Penguin Book of Patience (Solitaire)). That just hit me subconsciously a few minutes ago. Here we go, minor tangent:

"Solitaire" (Def 2) is the name for the broader *class* (Yay Programmers!) of single player card games. I'm getting old but the one on Windows is either Canfield or Klondike. (And some games have two names!) In the history of cards before it became a lost art, there's *easily* two to three hundred more, and then the counting gets fuzzy because people put in little mini house rules.

That's where the theme of my prior posts came in (see also that Bunker Simulator.) When you set out to design a game, the balance question is *evil* because you have to both guess your audience and decide what impact you want it to have through "how easy to solve". Dev spent tremendous time fixing polish and it shows. Except that Random Number thing we went over earlier, at top most I *might* have found 1-2 more bugs but ha'ell no don't quote me on that. For whatever rules it wants to play, it seems to play them, aka no non-sensical weirdness.

But this is where the topics explode! Just like Erno Rubik, it's "easy" to design a game and "almost" know how it works. (And don't forget this was Ludum Dare, I forget Compo or Jam, doesn't matter.) Dev just nailed this. On pure instinct without even knowing much how to beat it (see prior posts from him here) he *damn near* got the balance right. (And of course no silly mouse glitches etc.)

I'm up to a couple of 3-Miner wins now. Back to David Parlett and Solitaire(Class). When you design a game, the simple mechanics are often really easy to whip up. On the spot and I bet it's ruinously broken but to show why, try this little game that I am making up on the fly.

---

Typical pack of playing cards, pull out the 2's, put them out in front of you, those are called Foundations. (Some games make you look for them, I'm being nice!) Then you deal yourself a hand of 11 cards. If you can place the next card of suit on top of the 2's, have at it because you get to draw a new free card. Otherwise place the next numeral of any suit on it. Then of the remainder, you pick any six cards and put them in Hold/Keep #1. You put two card left from your hand in the "Recycle bin" way to one side. The rest you get to either put on the bottom of the deck (preserving a new draw) or shuffle them in (if you want more flex.)

Then you deal yourself a new 11 cards and a special bonus (Face up) 2 cards in the "save grace" zone. Same thing, build up aces, Six cards in Hold Keep #1 (from your hand), 2 cards (From your hand) into the Recycle Bin.

Repeat a bunch of times. Then when you are out of a deck, you pick *either* the Recycle Bin *or* the Save Grace zone to go first, and keep working on your Aces-base stacks. You unlock the Hold Keep after one of the piles is fixed. Then the other special pile comes (whichever you didn't choose) next. (And your wrecked hand at any time as needed.)

You get one "Super Redeal" of a fresh 11 cards, as many cards as you had in the recycle bin, and the grace zone.

If you can't complete at least two Ace-King sets, you lose.

See how fast that was? I smashed that out adding "Graces" along the way as I went. I have no idea how hard that is. I kinda tried to make it "Tao Medium Hard" but if you ditch bad hands early it should become a shade easier every five hands. For example if you landed a hand of 10's and Queens ditch it, just start over. It's a mind game. But it's a "class type". I am confident that if you slowly tweaked each of those numbers, it becomes a range from "barely beatable" to "beatable in a day" etc.

Whew! Back to Undermined.

I'm now getting into non-linear gradients of damage vs opportunity cost, gambler's fallacy vs (self given) rights to redeals, max benefit per action, and more. I still don't think it's possinle to save all five miners *without a tremendous lucky draw*. And that's the problem. I have assigned myself the right to ditch bad draws forever. But the range of a "awesome draw" vs "any non-crappy draw" is the problem, and part of my old post about difficulty. I've been working/playing on this game off and on for about two weeks now. There should be a little flexibility if players want that "1 perfect win", vs "having a ghost of a chance in a day" to beat it (5 miner win).

And this is way too much text, so I shall stop here and run it a few more times! : )




« Last Edit: May 26, 2014, 12:34 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #48 on: May 26, 2014, 12:07 PM »
I was actually intending the other LD29 thread I created to also include posts about other LD29 games, and not just my own participation in the event. But before I had a chance to make a post about some of the other cool games I'd found (since I basically slept for 36 hours after LD29 ended) you had already created this thread. (c:

All that to say that--at least in my opinion--I don't think it hurts to post a lot about Underminer here. Though I suppose it also wouldn't hurt to create a new dedicated thread to your analyses and tips and tricks for it either. :Thmbsup:

Well that was my thought, and stay around with a coffee because I'm posting a doozy post under yours!

It really feels a case where this one game sorta risks overwhelming the lighter post of "Look I'm a Barbarian with missing limbs" thread. : )

Edit:
Forget just some random forum poster posting about a game here, I think this game might be sniffing at powerful educational theory concepts. And the hard part of a "proof" is making sure you know absolutely all the rules of the studied system. A new one just popped at me after today's nine (yikes!) hours of playing it. A Simulation is only as good as *all the info*!

I have no right to ask this because it's way over that Snack boundary, but this game is just screaming for a comp analysis program!

« Last Edit: May 26, 2014, 12:23 PM by TaoPhoenix »

TaoPhoenix

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Re: Ludum Dare topic for other games
« Reply #49 on: May 26, 2014, 11:31 PM »
...
The bug with not detecting all actions being spent, I believe, is probably a result of having time leftover to open up to more miners. I had considered letting the player skip using these without getting a warning, but decided that it is still useful to know about the problems of one additional miner, even if you can't do anything about them. That extra info can come in handy the following round.

The question of difficulty, I'm afraid, isn't one I have an answer to just yet. I'm struggling to find a sweet spot where it's actually possible for everybody to survive while still constantly having the threat of complete failure. I'm going to keep at it, though, I assure you that much.

In the following days, this "talk to extra miners" is now a key part of my system. Especially, way at the end, there is a case when exactly one miner dies, you still get six actions but can only talk to two miners instead of three. So you need your prev talk history to see who's been brewing trouble the prior couple of rounds.

More briefly on that last point, to summarize my big posts elsewhere, we need a further distinction of "possible to survive" which includes ultra perfect (non) random draws and flawless play, and how much slack we give the player before everyone croaks. I've been making detailed notes of my runs and a couple of times now one mis-play of an action about like turn 8 can mean a miner dies. That's a bit tight. And that's still in the 1-2 miner range. I *think* there's like X/100 cases where you can save four miners, but *only with really favorable draws*, far beyond my initial tips to ditch just the truly awful ones. A couple of times now I've had a really good start, only for a bad spread of about three turns in the middle to sink it.