Find a Way: Progress report 3

What's changed:

• there's more placeholder art, e.g. the green border
• dropped the green/red tinting of tiles when the board is valid/invalid
• level constraints are checked on every map modification and the arrow becomes highlighted when the corresponding constraint is met
• the layout of the game better adjusts to different screen ratios

What's next:

• more levels
• saving the current level
• navigating to the previous/next level

You can play the game here:
https://gamebucket.io/game/3f729e41-8642-4f91-8dfe-1a4b9f3197f9
The link will work for 30 days.

Find a Way: Progress report 2

It's going to be a quick one. I added drag&drop to swap tiles and single click to rotate them. I like this method of modifying the map much better. I also implemented map validation, so it becomes greenish when all tiles match their neighbors. The game has become somewhat fun and playable this way, because you can try to construct a correct map.

Check out the new changes here:
https://gamebucket.io/game/50efd954-5e10-4ca7-b6d3-6f6806e8be60
The game will be available for 30 days.

Next, I'll be working on adding items on the side of the map, and constraints, e.g. that the cat has to be able to reach the white mouse. In fact, I've already started writing some code and the results are pretty promising.

Stay tuned and visit the blog in about another week for new updates.

Find a Way: Progress report 1

Find a Way prototype on Gamebucket.io

I decided to give the new game a working title of Find a Way. I think it's better than the original Cat and Mouse, because it suggests what your task is.

You can play the first prototype here:
https://gamebucket.io/game/083ffe99-5640-471b-b641-7a17b241bde1
It will be available for 30 days.

Right now, every time you launch the game, you get a random map created using a specified set of tiles. You can swap and rotate the tiles by selecting them and clicking another one or by clicking the arrow buttons that appear. To deselect a tile just click below the arrow buttons.

I'd like to implement drag-and-drop for tile swapping and a single tap for rotation, but it's more difficult than the current version, so I decided to leave it for later.

Let me know if you have any suggestions.

A new project

I more or less finished updating my metro apps and now the time has come to start thinking about something new to work on. I decided that I'd like to make a puzzle game, because it's fairly easy and it shouldn't take too much time. The game I'd like to clone is Cat & Mouse. Its rules are simple: you just have to create a 3x3 map using a set of 9 tiles and following a set of rules for each level. There are 48 levels in total but it shouldn't be too hard to come up with new ones, should I decide to do so. I already coded up a solver a couple of years ago when I had too much free time and nothing better to do. It can even make images of solutions and save them as jpg files. I'll keep you posted on the progress. Mind that it won't be blazingly fast.

Other than that, I'd like to refresh my Facebook Photo Gallery app on CodeCanyon, because the images in the description don't work anymore and the app itself got somewhat outdated. I'd like it to use Kotlin, WorkManger instead of SyncAdapters, Room and perhaps also Coroutines. I'll be upgrading all the items one by one when I won't be working on the game.

I also noticed that the Unity Ads API has changed and my Unity Ads Stats app won't be able to get the old access token that it needs, so I had to take it down from Google Play. Hopefully, I'll be able to fix it in the near future too.

As you can see, I'm not bored at all. In fact, I have a pretty busy time in front of me. Keep your fingers crossed so that I complete all of my projects. I'll be letting you know when I reach a milestone in any of them. Until the next time.