Wander around this episode, but still very productive. I was in a good flow after Episode 20 that I kept working on finishing the game play to win on Tower C. This episode I kicked things off by running a full test on every possible move only through winning on Tower C. Everything proved successful!
While finishing out that game play after Episode 20, I had an idea to create a “hint” button that users could click to reveal a graphic of the success path. Creating the graphic was the easy part shown here…
The complexity of accessing the hint graphic revealed a deeper level of strategy.
For comparison, when winning either Tower B or C, users have the ability to check their overall score. This WIN Layer is where a button resides to access the Overall Score slide. After reviewing scores, I had to create a T/F variable to track location so when returning from the Overall Score slide back to the game slide, that WIN layer would show (last known location).
Since returning to one slide from another, a trigger is places on the Base Layer to show the WIN layer if the associated variable is True. Easy.
The difference with a HINT graphic is giving users the ability to access from any point along the game play path – both the WIN Tower B and WIN Tower C paths. There are 15 Layers per success path per Tower plus several valid moves off the success path. Not quite finished building the 4-Ring game play out yet, but my guess is over 40 Layers.
If a user accesses the HINT graphic from any of the 40(?) Layers, I’ll need another location tracking mechanism. This is just for 4-Ring game play. There’s 31 minimum number of moves to win 5-Ring game play. 31 moves per Tower plus alternate valid moves is well over 70 Layers! Not worried about the number of Layers, but I’ll need a T/F variable similar to the Overall Score behavior for each of those layers.
The next question is whether to place the HINT graphic on the game play slide as an additional Layer, or create new a new Slide for the graphic. There will need to be two HINT graphics for each game level for both a Tower B and Tower C win.
And…this idea just came up for 4-Ring game play. I’ll need to assess the level of effort to build in this functionality for two win paths on each game level. Plus, create all the graphics.
Doable? Yes. I got it working as a test with 20 minutes to go with this episode. I turned my attention to building out the Overall Score functionality for winning on Tower C. Went over 15 minutes this episode but wanted to finish that piece.
As for the HINT graphic, I’ll revisit after I finish out all the game levels. I still have the “3 lives” (resets) to build yet, too!
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Episode 21 – Sep 15, 2017 – YOU ARE HERE