Awesome episode! Thanks to Kelly Smith and Tracy Parish for lots of great ideas to add and build onto the overall game play experience. We’re a long way from adding those ideas yet. I need to finish up 3-ring game play, and then build two more for 4 and 5 ring game plays. Fun!
Started this episode sketching out a potential solution for tracking Best Score. It’s one of those calculations that seem simple to set up and you know it’s right there on the tip of your noggin, but for some reason it’s fighting me.
Currently I’m counting the number of Moves. If a user achieves the minimum number of moves, feedback displays with a message “You did it!” However, if a user also achieves the goal of correctly moving all the rings but it took more moves than minimum, a different feedback displays with a similar message and showing the number of moves above minimum.
Also, I’m counting number of Games (attempts). Example: For a 3-ring game – If a user correctly stacks the rings from Tower A to Tower C in 9 moves (minimum is 7), feedback displays the number of moves plus the minimum and a chance to Play Again. When the user starts over, the Game counter increases to 2 for the 2nd attempt.
Those two are simple and working just fine.
On the first Game it’s not a problem and I’ve added a Best Score where I push the value of that Game’s number of moves. On the second Game and subsequent games (attempts) I need to keep the Best Score and not reset, evaluate if Game 2 is less than the current Best Score – if so, update Best Score. If not, ignore.
Simple, right? It is literally causing me to have a brain cramp! I’ll figure it out eventually but it’s not a pressing concern at the moment. More of a pesky, “I need to solve that!”
The ideas today came flying in, though! Here’s a list:
- 2-ring game play will be the tutorial demo – free play practice to get familiar with the interface and game play
- 3, 4, and 5 ring game plays are Levels that are locked until the previous Level’s minimum number of moves is achieved
- “My overall scoreboard” that keeps track of each Level – Number of Games, Scores per game, Best Score
- 3 Lives for Undo. Example: If a user makes move and it counts, use a “Life” to Undo the move and get the move count back
- 3 Lives per Level?
- 3 Lives for all Levels?
- Replay – After correctly stacking the rings, offer a Replay button that will show an animated sequence of the most recent game play regardless of number of moves. Oh boy! I can only imagine the logic it’s going to take to build that!
- Multiple Players.
- Community Leader Board – If outside the environment of a single player game, I’m hoping I can add some xAPI statements and build a leader board.
- Timer to show how long it took to achieve a correctly stacked sequence.
- Timer challenge – Can you win in less than a minute?
Important note:
The Tower of Hanoi is more of a puzzle than a game. Unlike a “game” where it’s addictive nature motivates you to keep playing, this game has a finite end to it. Once a user achieves the minimum number of moves per level, what will motivate them to keep playing the same game? I can add more rings for more levels. Kelly even suggested building levels up to 10 rings! That’s 1,023 minimum number of moves to win! Can Storyline support that many layers?! Sick!
Design Sketch
Here’s the final sketch of the potential map for setting up the overall game and its levels. During the broadcast is a really rough outline sketch, so cleaned it up afterward.
AUGUST 24, 2017 FACEBOOK LIVE BROADCAST VIDEO:
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Episode 11 – Aug 24, 2017 – YOU ARE HERE