Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
A jewel cart is moving slowly away. Once this cart is out of the screen, your time is
up. Every time the player makes a valid combination of jewels, he/she gains points
and the jewel cart is moved back a few steps. The playing board consists of ten rows
and five columns. There are different jewels on the playing field. The jewels are
different according to three different properties: they can have a different color (red,
blue or yellow), they can be different shapes (diamond-shaped, sphere-shaped and
ellipse-shaped) and they can be different numbers (one, two or three jewels).
The player can shift rows to the left or to the right using the arrow keys, and the
goal is to find matching combinations of three adjacent jewels in the middle column.
A combination of three jewels is valid if each of the properties is either the same
for all objects, or different for all objects. For example, a yellow single diamond
object, a blue single diamond object, and a red single diamond object is a valid
combination of objects, since the color is different for each object, and the shape
and number is the same for all objects. A yellow sphere object, a yellow double
diamond object and a yellow triple ellipse object is also a valid combination, because
all objects have the same color, they all have a different shape, and they all have a
different number. The combination yellow diamond, red double sphere and blue
double ellipse is not a valid combination, because although the color and the shape
is different for each object, the number for the diamond object is different from
the other two. The combination yellow diamond, red double sphere and blue triple
ellipse on the other hand, is valid. Once the player has found a valid combination
by shifting the rows around, he/she presses the space bar and the jewels that form
a valid combination disappear, upon which the remaining jewels fall down to fill
the empty slots, and three new jewels fall down from the top of the screen. When
there are two or three combinations at the same time in the middle column when the
player presses the space bar, extra points are awarded and an overlay is shown on
the screen for some time to indicate that a double or triple combination was made.
In the following chapters, we will be developing this game. If you want to play
the complete version of the game to get a feel for how the game works, open the
solution belonging to Chap.
18
and run the
JewelJam
project.
