Switchboard

Contests 4K Game Competition - 2008
#1

Simple but strangely compulsive, I give you Switchboard;

http://www.hayles.demon.co.uk/4K/screenshot.jpg

Guide the incoming calls to their correct destinations by dragging cables between sockets…

You can play it here: http://www.java4k.com/game/Switchboard/switchboard.jnlp (Many thanks to Appel for hosting)

I might have made the difficulty curve a bit too steep; The best score I’ve managed is 32…

I still have 600 bytes spare so any suggestions welcome!

#2

Pretty good game. If you want to make it a little easier, don’t allow any duplicate colours until there are 4 coming down at once.

#3

simple but effective! I like it!

#4

I like it too. But, I suck at it :slight_smile:
It gets dramatically harder when two balls appear simultaneously (especially if they are both the same color!)

How about anti-aliasing?

#5

Yup, it would be nice if maybe single balls just came with a bit shorter interval after a while, before jumping to two balls at the same time, or maybe that one can press space to get turbo time (sort of like “down” in tetris). First time I got to two balls they were same color, and I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to do and missed. Second time I got same color in the second pair and even though I was less surprised, I still managed to goof up. Then you sort of have to “sit through” the first single balls just to give it another shot.

Otherwise pretty good gameplay and looks quite nice, but as Brackeen said, AA would make it look even nicer.

#6

Pretty good game, simple but effective.

Feedback:

  1. Gets way too had way too fast. Consider splitting the multiple balls of different colors and multiple balls of the same color into different difficulties.

  2. Mouse input is frequently inaccurate - “wires” are dropped where I didn’t put them, the wrong wire gets disconnected, etc.

  3. The bottom square blinking is somewhat confusing until you learn the game - it made me think that there was some other objective for me to accomplish, such as the incoming call being rerouted to a different endpoint.

  4. Antialiasing could make this look better, but it’s really not that bad as it is. If you’re tight on room, it’s not critical.

Good job!

#7

Also, maybe a way to speed up the game. It is a pain starting from the begining all the time. How about if you hold down the space bar, it speeds up to 3 or 4 times faster.

#8

Thanks for feedback guys!

Few changes (update may not be up on Java4K yet…)

Difficulty curve smoothed;
1 single calls
2 double calls - both different colour
3 treble calls - all different colours
4 double calls - maybe same colours
5 treble calls - maybe same colour
6+ gets faster

End sockets now just light up rather than flash.

Space bar speeds up the game.

I tried AA but it was sooo sloooow!

#9

Haven’t tried the new version yet, but two more items of feedback I forgot to mention:

  1. It’d be nice to be able to remove the existing wires. Maybe through right-clicking?

  2. Color issues - I’m mildly colorblind, and am having enough issues that I imagine people with a more significant degree of colorblindness must be pulling their hair out right now, or just not playing the game. I’m not sure how else you could possibly distinguish the destinations, much less the “packets”… maybe numbers? It’s just really annoying to have the game end when a blue ball ends up at purple, or an orange goes to yellow (or vice versa) just because I saw the colors wrong. This might not be a solvable problem… colors can be a pain in the ass. For my eyes, for example, making the orange more red, and maybe making the red more burgundy, while making the purple more magenta would probably be enough, but I’m sure this would either not solve someone else’s problems - or would make their problems even worse.

Edit: Darken the orange and green, lighten the purple. This would be a good start.

Still, a good entry. I really need to finish writing mine, but I’m having a hell of a time focusing on it. I’m worried that it won’t fit anyway…

Edit: My record is 33, by the way… and would have been 36 if I hadn’t screwed up one of the colors.

Edit 2. Another issue: the game SOMETIMES ends early if you have a vertical “wire” connecting to the last endpoint and the ball that enters the wire is the wrong color. IMO the game shouldn’t end until the ball actually reaches the endpoint. I’m not sure if the game short-circuits like this is the final wire is not vertical.

#10

The new version still isn’t available? 36 is my new top score on the old version…

#11

Thanks for comments!

Um - I sent it to Appel but he doesn’t seem to have updated it yet… :frowning: