Squirrel Domino: Dr. Mario clone

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NovaSquirrel
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by NovaSquirrel »

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"Squirrel" theme now has trees, acorns and berries. Do they look okay?

There's also now music by maple, and I made it so that after you land a piece with a soft drop you need to press Down again to start another soft drop, and can't just keep holding it.

Next I want to put in sound effects, a better randomizer based on least-recently-used, maybe some more polish (not a huge priority) and also make more gimmick modes to play with.

The high-contrast theme uses $0C as the background color now; not sure how much I like that. Maybe it should be $0F but I kind of like having one that isn't black or white.
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by NovaSquirrel »

Sound effects! I also added another gimmick named "Doubles" where all of the pieces you get are two of the same color.

Obvious things left to do:
  • Better randomizer
  • Some effect when doing hard drops?
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by NovaSquirrel »

Added another song (by the same composer) that may be final or not, a mode where pills don't fall unless you hold Down, fixed a bug, and moved the randomizer over to use a 16-of-27 LRU instead of just being fully random

edit:
I'm really unsure what background color I want for the Contrast theme. $0C is nice for a change of pace but at the same time I think it looks kind of off? I could be better off with $30 or $0f but then who knows which one... probably just stick to dark colors for less eye strain.
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nocash
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by nocash »

How about getting rid of terms like pills and capsules? Most of the game concept is a generic tic-tac-toe or collect-4-in-a-row variarion, somewhat mixed with action elements from tetris. I don't know why Nintendo came up with the pharma scenario, but with the nuts and trees, your game doesn't really match up with that theme anymore.
Maybe you can get along without a story, or think of a different story, something like squirrels gathering food for winter, perhaps with some plausible reason for needing to feed/fill/clear/erase the preset items (the ones that are viruses in drmario).
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by NovaSquirrel »

nocash wrote:How about getting rid of terms like pills and capsules? Most of the game concept is a generic tic-tac-toe or collect-4-in-a-row variarion, somewhat mixed with action elements from tetris. I don't know why Nintendo came up with the pharma scenario, but with the nuts and trees, your game doesn't really match up with that theme anymore.
Maybe you can get along without a story, or think of a different story, something like squirrels gathering food for winter, perhaps with some plausible reason for needing to feed/fill/clear/erase the preset items (the ones that are viruses in drmario).
I don't think a puzzle game needs a story, definitely not an NROM-128 one. Right now the squirrel theme still isn't the default, but perhaps it should be! I should probably also just give all tilesets the full treatment in being able to choose a white or black background, too.

While the in-game instructions use pictures, the text-only instructions (for a menu or whatever) should probably use the word "domino" to describe the pieces you're placing.
Pokun
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by Pokun »

Isn't domino referring to a certain kind of tile game though? I have never heard of, for example, mahjong tiles being referred to as dominoes.
I think a generic term like "tiles" or "panels" would work.

If it's a mini-game for your squirrel game, a squirrel theme is definitely the best, and you may actually not need any other theme or a story.

If it's a stand-alone game, a story or selectable themes won't hurt IMHO.
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pubby
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by pubby »

You could theme it as a squirrel stashing nuts inside a tree. A bit like wario's woods, I suppose.

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M_Tee
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by M_Tee »

I like that a lot, far better than my gullet suggestion. :)
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by NovaSquirrel »

Pokun wrote:Isn't domino referring to a certain kind of tile game though? I have never heard of, for example, mahjong tiles being referred to as dominoes.
I think a generic term like "tiles" or "panels" would work.

If it's a mini-game for your squirrel game, a squirrel theme is definitely the best, and you may actually not need any other theme or a story.

If it's a stand-alone game, a story or selectable themes won't hurt IMHO.
I was taking the term from the concept of polyominos, the same place "tetromino" came from. It's still primarily supposed to be a minigame though I suppose it wouldn't hurt to put more polish on, especially since I'll enter it in the compo. I really want my main game's cart to be my best work overall.
pubby wrote:You could theme it as a squirrel stashing nuts inside a tree. A bit like wario's woods, I suppose.
I think importantly that would also help to populate the rest of the screen. I think I can do that without impacting the somewhat-tight bank I'm trying to fit the game into in Nova the Squirrel too.
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by Pokun »

So domino is just a two-square tile. Then I guess it IS a generic term already.
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by NovaSquirrel »

ImageImage
Tried drawing a tree with a small amount of tiles and it didn't look too great; I'm not too good at big pixel art either. Singleplayer mode now has a tentative background with pawprints instead. I tried a background using sprites and it was a bit too distracting and I'm hoping this isn't.

Also changed the name of the game to Squirrel Domino.

Image
I added a mode where the pieces are not very firmly connected and any match will cause anything that's not supported by gravity to come falling down. It's helpful when you want to drop some tiles down into a narrow pit.
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bazza
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by bazza »

Very beautiful, would like me that the squirrel move the head that is all what does that we think that mario walks.
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Re: Unnamed Dr.Mario clone

Post by bazza »

pubby wrote:You could theme it as a squirrel stashing nuts inside a tree. A bit like wario's woods, I suppose.

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Celebrating when the things go out well and angry when all this badly.
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: Squirrel Domino: Dr. Mario clone

Post by NovaSquirrel »

I changed the background color for the white theme a little to be two greens instead of green and blue. I also added a smear when doing a hard drop. This is probably the last version before the compo deadline since I can't think of anything else I want to add, and definitely not anything else that I'd have time for. Source is also included under GPL version 3.

Edit: small change to how hard drops look for horizontal pieces
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zzo38
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Re: Squirrel Domino: Dr. Mario clone

Post by zzo38 »

The "Style" option you can only set one mode at once, even though multiples at the same time should not be mutually exclusive generally.
(Free Hero Mesh - FOSS puzzle game engine)
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