{"id":36841,"date":"2017-02-07T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36841"},"modified":"2017-02-21T10:06:05","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T15:06:05","slug":"pseudoku-feedback-to-the-feedback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=36841","title":{"rendered":"Pseudoku: Feedback to the Feedback"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday<\/a> I released a preview build of my half-finished puzzle game. At first it was really discouraging. I hadn’t included the right DLL files so the game didn’t run for some people, and then Windows gave inexplicable error messages that pointed me in the opposite direction of the problem. We got it sorted out, though. Probably. <\/p>\n

So let’s try again. <\/p>\n

The new build has been tested on Windows 8 and Windows 10 and appears to work properly on both. You can get it here:<\/p>\n

\nEDIT: Sorry, I have taken down the early builds. It turns out it’s really annoying to get bug reports and feature requests for problems that were fixed months ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Feedback on everything (stability, interface, gameplay, puzzles, presentation) appreciated. I’m seriously<\/em> considering putting this thing on Steam Greenlight. It’s only $100 to do so, and I’m sure<\/strong> I can make that back. I’d only need to sell about 44 copies at $5 eachYou need to sell more than $100 to MAKE $100, because Steam takes 30%, and taxes take 30% of what’s left.<\/span>. It all depends on how much work it needs. I’m willing to spend a few days on it even if it’s not going to make any real money, but if it needs weeks of work then I need to shelve the project. I can’t afford that kind of time investment right now.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Changelist<\/h3>\n

The new all-letters tileset.<\/div>
The new all-letters tileset.<\/div><\/p>\n
    \n
  • A “Next Level” button pops up once you’ve solved a puzzle.\n
  • Made the number tileset use all numbers instead of hex. So tile #10 is now “10” instead of “A”.\n
  • Made a new tileset with only letters. I’m really pushing the alternate tilesets because I’ve observed that some people just won’t look at puzzles with numbers in it. They enjoy abstract logic, but as soon as you throw numerals into the mix they recoil. I’m not sure what causes this, but since one of my goals is to make Sudoku more sexy to people put off by the old numeric grids, it seems like this could help.\n
  • The puzzle grid now has 9 tiers of 9 puzzles. (Some remain empty \/ disabled because I haven’t really made content for them yet.)\n
  • Added “sad” sound effect when an incorrect tile is placed.\n
  • Fixed a bunch of little problems with the way sounds and music behave when game loses focus.\n
  • Loose tiles are now organized when starting a puzzle, instead of them appearing in a big random heap. Player can press TAB at any time to re-organize them.\n
  • You can now resize \/ maximize the window. Known issue: If you make the window too narrow (or play on a square monitor) it won’t look right. Haven’t decided how to address this yet, but at least you can play maximized on a standard monitor.\n
  • User can press a number key to have a tile with that number taken from the pile and placed on the square the mouse is pointing at. This works even if you’re using the non-numeric tileset, although it’s not going to make a lot of sense. (1 is a heart? 3 is a plus sign?) If you’re playing on one of the advanced puzzles that have tiles higher than 12, then you’ll have to drag tiles around manually like some kind of Pleistocene savage.\n
  • Horizontal groups no longer clutter up the right side of the screen with lines.\n
  • Volume levels are a little less crazy. In particular, winning a puzzle shouldn’t make the music twice as loud.\n
  • A couple of new music tracks have been added.\n
  • Fixed bug where right-clicking while holding a tile could produce odd behavior.\n
  • Puzzle state should now be saved if you exit an unfinished puzzle.\n
  • Game now remembers window size and maximized status.\n<\/ul>\n

    ToDo List<\/h3>\n

    I'm curious which background people will prefer: Light or dark.<\/div>
    I'm curious which background people will prefer: Light or dark.<\/div><\/p>\n

    If the game is going to go on Steam, then I’d need to integrate Steamworks. I have no idea how much trouble that is. Arvind handled that last time around.<\/p>\n

    MAYBE an “infinite” puzzle mode that would auto-generate more puzzles. That’s actually a hard problem to solve and test. It sounds like an interesting and fun problem to work on, but it’s not the kind of thing I’m keen to PROMISE.<\/p>\n

    A way to reset your save so you can start over. (For now you can go to User\/AppData\/Roaming\/ and delete the Pseudoku folder.)<\/p>\n

    I need a bunch more puzzles to fill out the grid.<\/p>\n

    I need one more music track for the final puzzle tier.<\/p>\n

    Need to make some sort of coherent fallback behavior for square monitors. I need something that will keep all gameplay elements visible and all the fonts readable. This is one of those things that seems like it should be easy but will probably be a nightmare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Last Tuesday I released a preview build of my half-finished puzzle game. At first it was really discouraging. I hadn’t included the right DLL files so the game didn’t run for some people, and then Windows gave inexplicable error messages that pointed me in the opposite direction of the problem. We got it sorted out, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}