Game Ideas And Other Animals

OK, I sprung the trashcan on you out of nowhere and I appreciate that the Blog has been a bit code heavy so far.

This is because there are so many things I need to get out of the way initially that produce little in the way of visual results.  The backbone of the program if you like.

I am trying to limit the ideas do as not to overwhelm the reader with too much at once.

I don't have a finished product to show where we are going, so have to try to get as much of the grind out of the way so we can get to the good stuff.

But as a break from the code, I thought I'd go through a few of the game mechanics which may not be obvious. They are obvious to me but then it's my head they are in.

As I said before, it's based on the Alchemy game, with a few variations.

The main mechanic of the game is dragging objects around and combining them to make other objects - just as you do in the original.  Quite a lot of this is now done in only a few days so there must be more to it right?

One of the first things we did was the extending object panel.  This was not needed right away, but I wanted to present something that could be done quite quickly and had a very visual effect.  This is also why I included the sound effect.

The panel will be like a toolbox from which objects are selected and dragged onto the main work area for manipulation.

This is a one-way thing, you can't drag objects back to the toolbox.  Well unless I decide it would make things better then we may do that later.  This is why the trashcan has been introduced now, it signifies the object will be deleted if the user drops the object there.

Don't worry though, when an object is deleted, it's not gone for good.  As with Alchemy, once you've made something, you can get it back to make other things.  Lots of things.


The Panel we created is initially 3 Rows by 4 columns, which is 12 cells.  I have provided an icon sheet with a capacity for 250 icons - clearly something is not going to fit.


Alchemy currently has 380 objects.  Let's use that as a baseline.

The new icon sheet has room for 250 icons, but has a title at the bottom right "Standard".  This is because this is the Standard Icon set.

One way that this game will be different is that it will support multiple icon sets - each with it's own icon sheet and each with it's own recipes - the combinations that make new items.

I'd like to do a set for chemical elements - possibly to teach chemistry on a very basic level.

I have not decided on the total number of objects.  My main fear is having to come up with icons for them all and recipes needed for the permutations.  There's more work there than writing the program.

The panel was never really going to be just 12 cells, but it's better to start with a limited value and then work a miracle than share all the secrets on day one.

Objects will be divided into groups.

So you might have a group called tools, one of the tools might be a saw.
There might be a group called raw materials, one of the raw materials might be lumber.

Combine lumber and saw and you get wood.  I am looking at a bit more logic than Alchemy.

earth + water = swamp

air + fire = energy

swamp  + energy = life

If only biology was that straight forward.

That's not a criticism, but I'm not looking to clone the game, just use the same idea for the mechanics.

I don't know how it will turn out, I'm making this up as I go.