A game about Sphere packing

This is a game about sphere packing (unfinished).

How to play:

click and hold to drop spheres, push them with the mouse pointer.

score counts how many spheres are resting. Game ends when a sphere comes to rest on the red end-game zone above.

Pack them tight!

Thanks:

linkman2004 for Two-stage hue shader

Bubble graphic by Newt (colorized by me)

Deadeye for general help.

Future:

-background

-sound

-maybe a different scoring scheme?

http://www.udec.cl/~jfuente_alba/spg.exe

The gameplay is a bit dull; perhaps if you had to match colors by nudging balls toward each other, it'd be more engaging! Also, mouse nudging seems to be a bit rough.

It does look nice, though!

mmmmm Shiny .

Downloaded it. Played it.

Not bad, not great... to be honest the game IS a bit boring...

Also, not sure if this is meant to happen but... I got about 8-10 spheres on the screen, and I was nuging them around to make a nice pyramid... for ages there were only those spheres and no others... next thing I know, spheres start raining down from above and fill up the entire screen in about 10 seconds, causing a game over and score of 144 :/

Persinally I think this game would be awesome if:

(1) Spheres fell at a constant and steady rate

(2) You made scores by nudging 3 or more of the same colours together

(3) you could nudge on an angle, rather than directly sideway, or up only... it makes it hard to nudge things up and across at the same time.

Other than that, it's got really nice graphics

Game has promise, but needs a little more in the gameplay department to be a real seller.

~Sol

yeh this was a quick hack job, development went kinda like this:

-I wonder if I could have a physics-enabled proxy for the mouse pointer.

-Yep, I can (lags a bit though). Let's toss more spheres at it, see how it holds up.

-This is kind of fun. Needs score and some rules.

-Needs to be shinier.

That's where it's at now. Colors are entirely random and unaccounted for and emphasis was more on packing spheres (you know, getting the most in the minimum space possible).

Engaging

I considered just tossing a set amount and letting you push them around until you were satisfied then click to get a height measure. Would that be more interesting? within a time limit?

I'll think about colors, I had that suggestion while I was making it but it doesn't really fit well with the packing theme.

Bugs

The "ENDLESS BALL SHOWER" happens when you click on window edges. No idea why, as a repeating timer is set on mousedown once and it's destroyed on mouseup.

Nudging is done with physics but I'm not setting the object's velocity, only forcing a new position. Perhaps that's why it's dodgy?

You guys rock

Thanks for the feedback! this is more of a toy than a game right now but maybe it could be a weird game. I love weird games.

Revival: I showed this old game to a friend yesterday.

The man is an engineer like me and has mathematical inclinations. He loved it and thought it was really fun.

_<

I think I'll add sound and some tweaks. I should label it as a game for mathematicians/engineers right on the splash screen.