For reasons I can scarcely explain, I decided recently that it would be a fun weekend project to make a Beeb port of the old Flash game Open House published by Lifetime TV. This is a sort of light puzzle game where you drop bits of sectional sofa onto a grid and score points when you complete a coherent sofa. Because this is a rather easy goal, there are some annoying constraints and complicated scoring rules. Sort of like Pipe Mania for interior designers.
And, well, in the first weekend I did the first 90% of the project: rendering all the graphics almost legibly in MODE 2. And in the second weekend I did the second 90%, the game logic, and then I got sick and didn't do anything for a while, and now I've got around to doing enough of the third 90%, the UI, that it's possible to upload something that other people might be able to play.
Overall instructions: at each stage you are offered a choice of 4 sofa sections and must choose one of them, pay for it and place it on the grid. Every section must be placed next to another or next to a table, and a section must not have its front immediately blocked by another section. When you complete a sofa (a run of two or more adjacent sections correctly aligned, starting and ending with a corner and possibly also having intermediate corners) you score points. More points are scored for long sofas, sofas that adjoin tables, and sofas made of expensive materials. Sofas that are not all of the same material are allowed but score much less. You can score multiple times for the same sofa by extending it around a corner. The game ends when you can't afford any of your 4 options, and the object of the game is simply to have accrued the highest possible score at that time.
(There are quite a few rules in here that I keep thinking about changing — it's possible that one could make the same setting into a game with a significantly different flavour — but at the moment, almost all the rules are implemented to be the same as in the Flash game.)
And, well, in the first weekend I did the first 90% of the project: rendering all the graphics almost legibly in MODE 2. And in the second weekend I did the second 90%, the game logic, and then I got sick and didn't do anything for a while, and now I've got around to doing enough of the third 90%, the UI, that it's possible to upload something that other people might be able to play.
Overall instructions: at each stage you are offered a choice of 4 sofa sections and must choose one of them, pay for it and place it on the grid. Every section must be placed next to another or next to a table, and a section must not have its front immediately blocked by another section. When you complete a sofa (a run of two or more adjacent sections correctly aligned, starting and ending with a corner and possibly also having intermediate corners) you score points. More points are scored for long sofas, sofas that adjoin tables, and sofas made of expensive materials. Sofas that are not all of the same material are allowed but score much less. You can score multiple times for the same sofa by extending it around a corner. The game ends when you can't afford any of your 4 options, and the object of the game is simply to have accrued the highest possible score at that time.
(There are quite a few rules in here that I keep thinking about changing — it's possible that one could make the same setting into a game with a significantly different flavour — but at the moment, almost all the rules are implemented to be the same as in the Flash game.)
Statistics: Posted by joachim — Wed May 01, 2024 4:00 am