Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Prototyping your puzzle
Puzzle development should be started with the most obvious and easy-to-develop
game mechanics, I'm talking about a simple match-three game with a passive array.
Let's call it
Static
. The artwork will feature the flat look that is currently in fashion; in-
stead of complicated images, simple color squares are used as main tiles. They look
stylish (as you can see in the following screenshot) and they facilitate the debugging
process:
Tiles cover all of the screen with the exception of the very top part, where a status bar
is situated, displaying the
Menu
and
Undo
buttons and the scoring values. The width
of the tile is 40 points, so there are eight items in a row and eleven in a column; the
dimensions of the array are 8 x 11 elements for the iPhone 4 and about 8 x 13 for
the iPhone 5 (for the iPad, the dimensions can be changed). Also worth noting is that
these dimensions should be adjustable and depend on the difficulty level of the game.
Easy mode may utilize smaller arrays, consisting of 4 x 6 elements, for example. The
background is white because this can increase the attractiveness of color tiles and
make them look brighter and pure.
A basic part of the game engine is a roll call function to count all the tiles, which are
connected without gaps. It returns a number of such elements, and then this value is
converted into points. It marks each tile that was included in the sequence, outlining
a special zone in the array.
In Static mode, the function is activated when a player taps the screen. This gives it
the coordinates of a tile in the array to start with. When the outlined zone of tiles is
determined and the score is already calculated, the next phase begins.
The game removes the marked tiles and empty spaces and fills them out with the
tiles found above, giving the impression that they "fall down". If the array's column be-
comes totally empty, its place is taken by the column standing next to it. All through
the game, the content of the array becomes progressively smaller; it shrinks and
moves to the bottom-left corner of the game board.
