Board Horde Stats Update

Once I've got the a.i. up and running properly, it should give me a chance to better test your idea (as when you're playing against yourself, the moves are always somewhat predictable!). If I can implement the idea before Friday so you can test if it works better or not, I will do so.

I'm not sure how the game will be received at Newgrounds, but hopefully it works for the 'Touch' aspect of their competition. I would've left the addition of A.I and scoreboards until much later, but I think they might help improve the games chances a little. Once the competition is over I plan to take a good few weeks to tidy up and reduce the events, as there's a lot of wasteful code floating around in there. Then I'll start the cumbersome task of adding a third player to the mix, and game changing Special Skills for each particular type of hero (plus a truck load of new maps!)

Many thanks once more!

Dave Hailwood

nice to catch up on your updates

mineet

With luck, I'll have a bigger update at some point tomorrow. The a.i. and HUD graphics overhaul are going reasonably well. I tried to implement Farflamex' idea about not having to roll the dice three times to get a hero out when there's none on the board, and I think it will improve things once I've managed to track down and destroy all the bugs it's thrown up (why is it always the quick fixes that end up taking the longest to solve?)

Dave hailwood Good to see this being polished up.

I'm thinking a spinner rather than a dice ,may be good,as it would give a graphical representation of who's turn it is (you could have a scary picture of the current player on the dial)   <img src="smileys/smiley20.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

It would give the player more a sense of doing something...would work well on a touch device especially!... <img src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Dave Hailwood

look forward to the update tomorrow..

like the sound of pixel pericks idea

Very nice game. I just played through it twice there. I didn't find having to roll a 6 too bad but I guess you could get very unlucky.

I think there should be an 'are you sure you want to quit?' warning when you press the board horde button. It's not obvious that touching that takes you back to the main menu and I imagine if you had two players playing opposite each other on a tablet, it would be very easy to accidentally end your game.

mineet

I also think pixel perfik suggestion is a good 'un, though I'm going to try out the suggestion of harrio first (changing the dice colour to match the colour of the player). I did try implementing novelty style dice, such as a heart which you stab to roll and a skull but they were just too confusing (sometimes a conventional idea is better than trying to be flash).

ramones

The rolling a six thing doesn't always cause a problem, but its really noticeable now I'm trying to put an A.I. Player in there. Sometimes it can take ages for that rascal to get a hero out.

The Board Horde reset button was just put in there for testing purposes (I've pressed it myself by accident a few times, as it is quite large). It's already been replaced in the upcoming update by a much smaller back button, which in turn will eventually be replaced by an 'are you sure you want to quit' style warning menu.

Cheers for trying the game out, and here's hoping I manage to iron out a few bugs in time for tomorrow's update (then again, I have wine, and Life Aquatics on the telly. The luxury of sleep seems unlikely!)

after playing some more, i have a suggestion that may or may not throw off the gameplay balance. so please feel free to ignore it completely...lol.

some times when you have a bunch of characters on the board, you choose which one will move based on whether they might get screwed by the number on the dice. this gets you into the situation sometimes, that when you roll the dice, no matter who you choose, they are going to feel pain. if there was an option for the player to 'pass' or not move at all. they could avoid getting roughed up by traps, potions and enemies. the counter-balance to this in my eyes would be, the opposing player would get an 'extra' turn of mobility.

Righto,

The latest version of Board Horde has been uploaded to the front page. Here's the list of changes;

1. Basic 'Village Idiot' a.i. has been added. At the moment the a.i. can only get one hero out at a time, though after an entire day of swearing at the computer I've almost got it fully functional (so expect a better challenge in next weeks update)

2. The HUD graphics have been updated to reflect the heroes in play.

3. If there are no heroes at all on the board, instead of having to roll a six to get one out, both players are given a hero on their next dice roll (six or not).

4. A temporary Back button has been added so people stop accidentally hitting the board horde logo and having the game reset to menu.

Plus lots of interesting new bugs (and many old ones). The most irritating being occasionally the dice will roll an extra time when its not supposed to, and the game will freeze (just press the back button if that happens, and curse my name). I've probably broken a few other things whilst trying to make the a.i. work as its being a right mind melter and no mistake!

All feedback is appreciated, and many thanks to those who've already given me lots of new ideas to make my life interesting!

harrio

Although the option to pass on a move is a nice idea, I think it might take the challenge out of it. Part of the fun is in being driven to make a choice that might potentially kill your hero; and when your wizard kills an enemy or your warrior fails to trigger a trap there's a nice feeling of 'In Your Face, Fate!!!'

Maybe I'll give it a go at a later date, and see if it works.

Cheers!

Dave hailwood It's really coming together now, I'd never of thought that god fingering the village idiot would be so much fun!

One thing that did cross my mind is how are you going to work a difficulty setting, into a game basically of chance..(with some tactics ,granted) against A.I opponents? will it be unfairly stacked against the player? not a critism, just wondering.

Also, maybe an option of having to get the exact number to escape, could bring on some folicle tearing moments...

pixel perfick

Heh! The first part of your comment amused me (and gave me a title for my autobiography).

The a.i. settings will basically improve how observant the a.i. Is when moving a hero. At village Idiot level it will simply move heroes at random without worrying about what they're going to land on. The more advanced settings will check to see what their hero is going to land on; if it could move a wizard onto a potion, or a warrior onto a trap, then it'll choose the wizard. The highest level a.i. will check to see whether there's more potions on the board than enemies, then select from the HUD the hero most suited to the task and will also do more complex things like moving a hero who is closest to the exit.

Considering the amount of problems I've had just trying to get the a.i. to have more than one hero out at once, its likely I'll only get as far as Village Idiot A.I. before the Newgrounds competition deadline.

Getting the exact number on the dice needed to escape is something I had considered but forgot about, so thanks for reminding me. I may give it a try if I get the time, and see if it works ok. I'm hoping to eventually have lots of options on the menu screen that you can change to alter the feel of the game (such as Rogue mode, where you only get one life per hero, or Massacre mode where wins are based on the amount of enemies killed). Before all that I next hope to get a scoreboard up and running, sort out all the text objects and exterminate all the bugs!

Thanks for giving me some more ideas, and best of luck with your Dungeon Crawler.

Dave Hailwood

hi its works really well,, i enjoyed playing it.. was wining, way in front until player two could 'switch''

Nice work. The game works perfectly to me (Chrome).

The AI is...   well, really simple, but works well.

In one play, the AI won?t got a 6 on almost 6 or 7 turns, and see how roll dices a lot of times was a little boring <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />.

The new graphics and sounds are nice.

A little suggestion: When a character win a effect, "feather" for example, he have this power at he use, but if you don?t move that character in some turns, you can forgot what power he have. Maybe could be a good idea make little icons for powers, and active it under the image of character or near.

Nice work! <img src="smileys/smiley32.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

you are right of course. making the 'who gets screwed' decision, should be a part of the game because it adds tension. all good games do that.

guess i'm going to just have to suck it up and roll...lol.