WaveUp description:
Wave Up is a simple casual puzzle game using waves to move objects. The game play involves using the mechanics of waves to advance though the levels. The game is an academic exercise to learn Java and only has and 5 levels. I may add more levels given the motivation.
WaveUp:
www.sansoner.com/waveUp/
This was very fun, my only complaints are that you can’t spam waves (I’m sure there is a good reason for why you can’t) and while the physics felt realistic I’m sure there is more to add, the floating squares never tilted for example, I feel bad mentioning that though because my games achieve no were near real life physics. Nice work :D.
OMG it runs on IE! ;D
Really fun. If there’s any different between speed that affecting the movement?
I had to give your game a try when I spotted the wave graphics–I was working on a wave simulation also and not having much success trying to think up some game ideas for it. I am also curious about modeling waves inside a wind or brass instrument. You managed to take the process of making a game with them considerably further than I did.
I was thrown by the phrase “orange side”. Why not say the right side? Or create some sort of orange wall on the right? (I didn’t see anything to mark the orange side.) I tried moving the float off of both sides because I didn’t know which one you meant.
There is an upper limit of the number of waves that can be in play at one time?
I was trying to use my knowledge of standing waves to set up a pattern with the antinode at the target (level 4). Found that very hard to do, and gave up at that point. Part is that it takes so much longer for a slow wave to get going than a fast wave, it seems. Maybe I just got impatient when I wasn’t able to deliberately time the start of a new slow wave with the event of its reflection. But having different speeds is good, as each will have a different wavelength if one is able to make a standing wave, and those lengths can be used to figure out which frequency will put the antinode at the right spot.
But perhaps I am over thinking it. Other than that, I found it hard to come up with ways to control the waves enough to actually have them do my bidding.
Does the horizontal push of the wave on the float depend upon the bounce depth of the float? For example, does it push more when the float is deep and less when it is higher? I was impatient in trying to test that, as I was having trouble getting the waves to start at a predictable time in order to time them to the float bounce.
I am curious what you do to manipulate the float (as a player, not as a coder), and if there is a way to make the discovery of those strategies more apparent for newbies.
When I made my wave code, I had the wave going both up and down, not up OR down as you do. Separating these as you do does have the potential to give the user more “levers” to control the game play. I was also experimenting with making the right edge either a wall (antinode) or a node, and only had the waves being triggered from the left. When I left off, I was experimenting with changing the area under the wave and using it like as a an enclosed space (so the wave speeds up as the space gets smaller). But I got stumped by some issue or another and veered off to work on other things. The physics for waves gets pretty hairy pretty quickly!
Anyway, it seems like there is some potential here, and I’ll be watching to see if you keep developing the project or not. Congratulations on what you accomplished so far!
philfrei,
Thanks for the thorough review of WaveUp. The game is based on a Gaussian distribution to create more realistic wave effects. I added limits to the number of waves (5) at one time and put a pause between waves to add some challenge to the game. The game is too easy if the player has complete control of the waves. With most games of this type there’s a “trick” to the more difficult levels. If you push the waves when they become available, or when they go from grayed out to not grayed out, and change the speed between waves you can make them sum up or down at the other end of the tank. There’s is still some timing to get the position of the sum, but you remove the periodic issue by using the timing I provide with the button.
Yes, the push of the float depends on the speed of the wave (slow is better) and some timing when the wave is incident to the float. The float has an up/down acceleration and a fast wave tends to cover the float making it go up rather than horizontal. If the side of the float is partially covered it tends to move horizontally.
David
Ah! Thanks. I didn’t think of trying to combine waves of different speeds–can see how that would work. The explanation of horizontal vs vertical effects makes sense to based on what I remember. I bet I can go back and get through all the levels now!
The waves I made involved calculations on the fly between adjacent horizontal locations. Each location polls it’s two neighbors and adjusts its value based upon that. We went about this in two very different ways!