Link Dump Friday
June 27, 2008
You like physics games? I like physics games. This week we've thrown in two physics playground/puzzle games to teach you valuable lessons about life. Namely, don't stack all your blocks on one side of the seesaw, and elaborate domino setups inevitably fall to the ground.
Poiser - A "hand drawn physics puzzle game" where you pile blocks on a balanced beam in an attempt to reach the dotted line.
Swamp Escape - A remake of the old DOS game Perestroika, your job is to hop across the lilypads and make it to the ground on the other side.
Comblo - Very similar to Tringo, Comblo is a puzzle game that can be described as a blending of Tetris and Bingo. Place blocks on the board and try to fill squares 2x2 or greater.
Domino-P - Created by the author of Poiser, Domino-P is a physics/dominos game where you place tiles in the right spaces then click "go" to watch it all come crumbling down.
Warfare Transporter - A simple arcade game from Submachine guru Mateusz Skutnik. Slide the ship left and right to avoid bombs, then click the mouse to drop mines of your own.
My comp lags when playing Posier. Its pretty funny actually because I just make a huge pile of blocks on the bottom then click repeatedly above the line and wait until the blocks connect. On level 4 I got 87/25, even though the main level was completely gone, I just balanced blocks on the middle node. This game is pretty cool!
I think it's not worth it to do the domino game.
I thought it would be about making your own domino set-up and watching it fall without experincing the
"Darn, I didn't place that one carefully enough!!"
experince. Instead, it's just completing a almost complete domino game, and if you pick up something too aggresivly(SP) it will swing around, and you'll have to wait for it to settle before placing it.
Posier was extremely interesting, but I have to complain about the randomness of placing blocks of different size. It becomes too much of a guessing game if this will fit in nicely, or if you'll get a block of a different size and ruin the nice stable structure you're trying to build.
On the other hand, it is necessary in a way - I was able to get 60 blocks on the first level without trying just by dropping blocks randomly - they stack naturally in a fairly stable way, and that's just no challenge, I guess.
I really enjoy poiser, but I think it would make more sense to try and get to the goal with less blocks, score it like golf. The music is really nice though :D
Poiser would have been really cool if it had a next-block indicator. As it is, I can't build nice structures because I don't know what I'm getting next. I'm even cool with have it be randomized, just tell me what's coming next. So I got to level 4, tipped the platform off, realized I couldn't build high enough from either the floor or the balance point, and didn't bother to reset the level and try again. Oh well.
I feel kind of like the spellcheck police but, the game Mateusz made was Warfare Transporter, not wayfare tansporter
[Edit: It's fixed now, thanks ^_^. ~Kero]
Poiser was silly. I hit the third top score by button mashing. Literally put my pointer about an inch above the platform and just started clicking madly, spamming hundreds of boxes. When it tilted, I moved the mouse to the opposite side to compensate. When I got near the line, I'd move my pointer to the center and top of the screen and begin dropping boxes straight down for a quick finish.
It could be a lot more subtle, but unfortunately the physics engine he's using seems to have a whole LOT of bounce and jitter, making it more or less impossible to be precise even if you want to be. The trick to the game is to completely abandon precision and leverage aggregate force.
Dominoes really showcases this weakness. Even setting up the dominoes is absurdly tricky because the physics are live at that point, and a jerk of your hand can send THE ENTIRE BOARD into motion, requiring you to reset the level before you even get to test your layout.
A possible fix for this problem, at least in dominoes? have a toggle key (like spacebar) that activates the physics engine while it is held. When not held, there's no gravity and all collisions are static- so your piece doesn't spin as you move, and hitting another piece with it simply causes it to stop, rather than cascading into a flurry of unintentional movement. This would allow you to set up the board without losing your mind, but also give you the tactile feedback of testing out a mechanical layout without attempting the entire puzzle- trying a lever or testing a roll, for instance.
I may be wrong, but increasing gravity and reducing elasticity might also help (causing the collisions to be less chaotic and allowing your pieces to stabilize while moving more easily).
As it is, however, dominoes is essentially unplayable.
I still love you Skutnik...
But I just CANT do the last level of your game!
I love link dumps,
I love the new jig,
I love mugwumps,
and all the purple figs!
Boom De Yada!
Boom De Yada!
Boom De Yada!
Boom De Yada!
^
Someone's been reading XKCD today. ^^
The Domino thing is OK, though i found it a bit annoying to have to be so careful with the positioning.
I'd say "Rasgdoll Cannon" of the very same Johnny K - and with the very same design - is a much more enjoyable game.
But this one is not bad at all either.
^
Or maybe been watching the Discovery Channel. Mmmm, I love that commercial.
Anyways, Poiser is hard for me, while Dominoes is very easy. Is this weird?
I love that you have to be careful in Dominoes - just like the real thing! I'm really into this little game, up to screen 19 now. Screen 8 took me a bit of time to figure out.
It's really handy that you can either restore the domino or reset the whole puzzle after flicking the domino. It means you can work out each puzzle in stages.
I can't even figure out how to work with the bottom part of level 8 in Domino-P.
The sticks seemed to be ultra-sensitive, and placing them on top of dominoes made them very hard to move without knocking stuff over. Even picking it up closer to any end will pull the other end down (which makes sense), leading to clumsiness. Maybe designating a button to stop the spinning of any held object would make things easier.
Placing balls was hard, seeing as if you didn't hold them long enough for them to stop rolling, they would move on their own, sometimes bumping into dominoes, and starting a chain reaction.
One thing I didn't like was that hitting "Restore" might have different results if pressed multiple times. For instance, hitting it once might have a domino (that wasn't moved from it's default location) tip over and knock some more down, while hitting it a second time might start the ball rolling, and hitting it a third time would bring it back to normal. The same problem with the physics happened when the "GO!" button was pressed; sometimes a domino would fall on top of another instead of falling and knocking it, but sometimes hitting "RESTORE" would solve this. This may be caused by the same bug, however.
Oh, and if you can't figure out why you get the message "WRONG!" even though you've hit the goal domino, it may be because:
The symbol on each domino must match the symbol on the base of the domino (the thing the dominoes stand on)
I found the domino game extremely easy to play. It was so simply to cheat. All you had to do was
put the dominoes in the correct places (+, -, O) and then tilt the last one. After you let go of it, hit go, it falls and hits the F, you win!
That being said, level 20 was just obnoxious. :P
Poiser has to be my favorite this week. I like the music and the art, and I just a have thing for physics games, two thumbs up.
Am I the only one who cant play Poiser? When I click play nothing happens, I just see boxes falling onto the little beam on the right but I can't do anything.
Domino-P was terrible. It was far too sensitive, and no matter how you argue, losing control and having the domino fling upwards and never return is not something I've experienced while playing with dominoes. Also, wouldn't it make more sense for there to be:
-Magnetism on the bottom of the dominoes
-Grabbing the dominoes from the TOP not the middle
?
Has anyone tried 'Swamp Escape'? On my computer the main/beginning page opens up and two large things that look like heads of lettuce (which I assume are the lily pads?) appear with a line going from one to another. But, that's as far as I can get. I've refreshed twice and am wondering what I'm doing wrong, if anyone would be so kind to advise. Thanks so much!
jude, maybe your computer is just slow in loading the game.
The lettuce you mention is the menu being loaded. Once it's done loading, the lettuce should fall down out of the screen, and the menu options should appear.
Andrew:
You actually can pick up a domino from the top. Just click and hold near the top of the domino. Wherever you click on the domino is where you hold it.
So... Comblo... Anyone else a huge fan of page refreshes to turn your piece 90 degrees? Man, I love that.
If the tiles in Domino-P weren't so squirrelly, this would be a really fun game. As it is now, it is terribly frustrating. It's not *fun* to wait for the domino to stop spinning around due to the effects of some strange gravity scale.
Settle the tiles down and re-release a 1.5 version... that way I can be even more unproductive. :)
Okay, I finished level 20 of domino. Urgh, I agree, that last level was obnoxious. You just had to knock over and replace a whole pile of dominoes. No intelligence required, ultra tedium.
Otherwise, a fun little game.
EMDF: the balls aren't entirely round. If you jiggle them, you'll find they have some flat sides which means you can balance them and then they stay where you put them while you go off and sort out other things.
That explains why the balls only stayed half the time. However, if the edges are flat on only part of the ball, then why aren't they flat all the way around (i.e. something like a 50-sided polygon)? They should at least be marked somehow as to what sides are flat (like how some of the balls have designs on them that are lined up with one of the flat parts of the ball).
Oh well, I'm still stuck as to a real solution to level 8.
ah, the power of posting. Just solved it.
domino -p... pls help me at level 8
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