A spring is in the air

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2006
#1

Unfortunately I have not had nearly as much time to hack 4K games as last year. The fact that I have become father of triplets since last compo and that olympics is clashing with end of competition is really not helping :smiley: I had planned to do some more with this game, but donā€™t think it will happen, so here it isā€¦

The goal is to build as tall buildings as possile using springsā€¦ Not so good idea in real life, but quite fun as a game I think. It appeals to your creative and constructive side as well as your destructive side :smiley:

Keys:
In menu:

  • up/down to select level

  • enter to start level

  • esc to quit

    In game

  • arrowkeys to pan

  • a/z to zoom

  • q/w to turn on/off movement indicator

  • r to release all fixed joints (really only for fun)

  • esc to exit game

  • enter to restart

Move mouse over existing joint to select start for new spring
Move mouse to select existing joint for end of new spring or
select place for new joint as endpoint for spring

The starting joint must be connected by at least two springs or be one of the predefined joints.

You have 5 min to build as high as possible, and height is only registerd when building isnā€™t moving, so it can be clever to sometimes stop and let the building settle to register it if it is close to collapse.

Donā€™t have time to explain it better, hopefully youā€™ll see what I mean when you try it. If not, just ask here and Iā€™ll improve explanation a bit.

The bridge level should really be on time rather than scored by hight. I might change that later.

This is my 10th 4k game, and pssibly the one that I have spent least time on creating, but for sure the one I like most to play. Hope youā€™ll enjoy it.

Let me know what you think.

Oh and by the way, what do I win for entering the 50th game for this year :wink:

Webstart here!

#2

The simulation breaks quite often, but its pretty interesting to toy around with it :slight_smile:

#3

lol I see what u mean, my tower exploded :S

Very interesting idea, not too dissimilar to Chronoc Logicā€™s Bridge Construction Set - was that the inspiration?

#4

Ah, yes. Thatā€™s a great game. :smiley:
Good idea for a 4k game. =)

It didnā€™t really feel intuitive to play, but the physics felt reasonably correct.

#5

Played for 5 minutes and couldnā€™t figure out how to make a single spring. Might be fun, but currently is unplayable with the given instructions lacking the magic key that actually does something. :frowning:

#6

  1. click one of the already existing points, then click a 2nd time a short distance from said point, and a line should appear.

  2. Repeat.

#7

I have similar problems. Events donā€™t seem to get processed in time. It took ages, when I pressed the arrow keys, to get it move around and when it did, it didnā€™t want to stop :frowning:

Arne

#8

Hmmm I realized that if you place several springs between the same joints, you can get your building to ā€œget airbourneā€, especially if the spring is short. You might see that as a bug, but I choose to see it as a punishment for doing something that you arenā€™t supposed to do :wink: If it already is a spring there, donā€™t place anotherone in the same spot! It will just make the building heavier anyway.

It is possible to remove this problem with dampeners, but it is not good for the gameplay and would take a chunk of memory as well.

The inspiration was actually Tower of goo. I had tried Bridge construction set before and decided to have another look at it before I started this game. They are both good games in similar but yet different ways.

Care to explain a bit more? For the person who coded it, it all seems very intuitive :slight_smile: I have added some guide lines when placing springs. Should maybe make it more intuitive, but not sure if that is what you talked aboutā€¦

#9

It seemed unintuitive to me at first too. Once I figured out how to place the springs outside of the fixed anchor points, I have no problem. Highest score so far is 824.

#10

Did you read Anons reply? Thatā€™s really all there is to it! Could it possibly be that you have some really old lowrez monitor and therefore didnā€™t see the startingpoint? (Ground) I have changed the initial screensize to 600x600, so it is really small, but it is now resizeable, so just increase after own screen size.

Hmmm that is quite strange, since it is all just plain vanilla coding. Similar problem as whom by the way? What machine, OS, Java do you have? Have you tried after rebooting?

#11

Yes, managed to get it workingā€¦ at first I started from the anchor points in the air. Itā€™s neat, though I find the ā€œforce vectorsā€ or whatever they are distracting during construction. I would make them a more subdued color or something.

#12

My personal best.

#13

Great you got it to work. About force vectors, you are right, not so good colors, just as the rest of all the colorsā€¦I should change it all. Instructions at top states: ā€œq/w to turn on/off movement indicatorā€, so you should be able to get rid of it. I already changed it to be off from the beginning, so you should make sure you have the latest version as well.

Dang, that beats my record for that levelā€¦Quite good looking building as well 8) Interesting to see that there are almost no rectangles with crossbars (actually one) and that It is quite symmetrical, but not completely. It looks almost too good. The idea with joints was that one should be forced to make some compromises and use creative solutions. I might have to create some more asymmetrical levels.
Good work!

#14

Thanks. I just figured all triangles would work. Any rectangles are purely accidental.

#15

Well, I had to make quite a few attempts, but finally got a high score ::slight_smile: for the tower level. I use triangles ā€œon edgeā€ hoping that they will carry weight vertically better. But as you can see, they arenā€™t as stable horizontally :-\ The columns were vertical to begin with. The tower was 997 tall after last spring was placed. I was just about to place another triangle on top to get 4-digit height when I noticed that it was again starting to move sideways, and I was about to place a triangle on the left side to counter it (as you can see by the green line) but fortunately time ran out exactly then. I think that it would have collapsed if I would have had the time. It took about half a minute for the building to stabilize so that the height was registered.

#16

Over 1200, then it felt a few seconds before timeout ::slight_smile:

#17

Height 2586, score 2765 with ā€œStairwayā€ā€¦ This one is a lot easier than the other ones, isnā€™t it?