Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
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Infinite line
: The line content is generated at random as soon as some of its
parts leave a predefined range (for instance, if a row has moved 15 elements
to the left of the screen frame). So the line is literally infinite: however much
the player may scroll it, it will not end, displaying new combinations of tiles on
and on. This is a very interesting approach, but it is suitable only for Infinite
or Time duel modes because it leads the puzzle to endless gameplay.
The game can be expanded more if, in addition to the horizontal scrolling, a vertical
one is introduced. In this case, the player can also scroll columns of tiles from top to
bottom or vice versa. The main array becomes really huge; for example, it can look
like a matrix including 30 x 40 entries or even more. The following screenshot shows
an improvised jigsaw puzzle based on the Scroll mode:
It is important to note that a match-three puzzle with scrolling rows can easily be con-
verted into a brand new game: an improvised jigsaw puzzle. Each row of the array
can hold parts of a pixel image and some junk pixels to confuse the player. The main
objective is to assemble a full image. If the rows are wide enough, it can be quite a
challenge.
The right way to develop such a puzzle is to use only
one-dimensional scrolling
; in
other words, to utilize either vertical or horizontal sliding, but not both. This is be-
cause if the player gets an opportunity to move pixels up and down and left and right,
he will pretty soon become tangled; all the pixels will mix up and the image will be
impossible to assemble. Thus, for the sake of game reliability, only one dimension
should be used.
