Saturday 17 December 2011

Sticky Blocks


Blackshift has a lot of  simple but versatile objects: doors that open, grills that kill you, blocks that you push around, and so on. Sometimes it's fun to try and implement something a bit more complex.

This week it's sticky blocks — they act like normal blocks, but if two of them end up next to each other they stick together and from then on they always move as a unit. The only way to unstick them afterwards is to destroy one with an explosion.

I've implemented these rather naively. Instead of being clever and keeping a list of what connects to what, I just compute the connected set each time you try and push a sticky block. You'd think that would be too inefficient, but I've tried it with large clumps of blocks and it seems fine. Maybe I'll have to optimize it later, but for now I'll keep doing it the simple way.

If you watch the video you'll notice I haven't made any graphics for the blocks yet. I think a good way to work is to implement a bunch of features without any graphics, then have a graphics binge later when I'm feeling graphicsy.

Next time: collectible items, because they're a big part of the game and I haven't done 'em yet.

6 comments:

  1. That sounds interesting, sticky blocks were one of the things I liked most in Netshift.

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  2. I am glad to see that you are working on the new game! Can't wait for it to come out!

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  3. Seems like your online presence just keeps shrinking … :(

    Let's hope for a comeback!

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  4. Are you still there? I hope that you'll finish this game sometime (if any possible sometime soon) because I really loved Netshift. Although I found another game with level editor to create and share puzzles, it doesn't really fill the gap.
    I wouldn't mind the design not being as good as you want it to be if at least the basic game was ready. I still miss it. Please don't give up if it's only because of some graphic issues.

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    1. Hey, don't worry Wunk. I've put this game on hold to do another project but I'm nearly done with that now. I fully intend to see this through to completion!

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    2. I also love the Netshift,hope to play Netshift2 as soon as possible!

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