Crystal Towers 2 - Badges
Aug. 13th, 2011 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnOh, why am I working on Crystal Towers 2 again. I thought that once I had finished it I would just release it, wait for the reaction and never open it again, like my previous games - but with something this large, it's difficult to just drop it from my life, especially with the facility to watch people's progress in it online.
I haven't been reworking the main game or anything, though - today, I ended up writing a new feature for the site that awards people badges on their account, largely due to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kjorteo warning me not to start thinking about what he said too much because it would end with me writing a new feature for the site that awards people badges on their account. The badges are equivalent to achievements, a concept that I had thought up at the very start of writing the game and that I now find myself copying from everybody else instead - though I'm trying my best to try to keep them to actually notable things instead of the supremely patronizing levels to which they can be overdone.
The awarding of all of these badges is just calculated from data that's already there, but they give people a bit of recognition for doing special things like not dying too much, or getting past some accidentally notorious missions that I put in. The shield with a "B" icon is awarded for every level in which you've completed the whole thing - all items, treasure and everything - and haven't died once, and I've actually been quite impressed by its presence at all when browsing around the existing accounts.
I've actually used a few testers' user icons in some of the achievements, for when the random instrument name generator comes up with "the Wolf", "the Rabbit", "the Coyote" or "the Raven" - if you're any of these, you'll know who you are, so if you don't want to be featured for any reason, tell me and I'll remove those. Andlupineangel, I used your artwork for the final bonus boss icon without asking - thank you!
No doubt I'll add more as I think of them...
I haven't been reworking the main game or anything, though - today, I ended up writing a new feature for the site that awards people badges on their account, largely due to
kjorteo warning me not to start thinking about what he said too much because it would end with me writing a new feature for the site that awards people badges on their account. The badges are equivalent to achievements, a concept that I had thought up at the very start of writing the game and that I now find myself copying from everybody else instead - though I'm trying my best to try to keep them to actually notable things instead of the supremely patronizing levels to which they can be overdone.The awarding of all of these badges is just calculated from data that's already there, but they give people a bit of recognition for doing special things like not dying too much, or getting past some accidentally notorious missions that I put in. The shield with a "B" icon is awarded for every level in which you've completed the whole thing - all items, treasure and everything - and haven't died once, and I've actually been quite impressed by its presence at all when browsing around the existing accounts.
I've actually used a few testers' user icons in some of the achievements, for when the random instrument name generator comes up with "the Wolf", "the Rabbit", "the Coyote" or "the Raven" - if you're any of these, you'll know who you are, so if you don't want to be featured for any reason, tell me and I'll remove those. And
lupineangel, I used your artwork for the final bonus boss icon without asking - thank you!No doubt I'll add more as I think of them...
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no subject
Date: 2011-08-13 11:14 pm (UTC)Just for the fact that there are badges it's possible not to get (not to mention the "of" ones, which are completely out of the player's hands if I understand correctly?), these are a pretty big departure from normal "achievements"..... which, frankly, I think I approve of! They're actual badges that set you apart, actual achievements, as opposed to just the milestones (or 'brute force' challenges) that people are forced to make for console games... they're fun too, but.. they're more like points on a line, whereas this more celebrates how divergent videogame experiences can be....
And, dude, I am honored to be on one of your badges. X3 (I guessed the URL to make sure I wasn't making assumptions. ;p) Thank you. XD
no subject
Date: 2011-08-13 11:38 pm (UTC)Yes, in a game that's sort of... divergent already, with a lot of different paths you can take to go through it, I wanted everyone's collection to be unique in some way. I haven't really done as much as I'd like in that department, as a lot of the badges I've come up with will still inevitably be collected over the course of the game, but I've found some special circumstances and some that are at the mercy of the random generation (such as a rare one for getting more than one instrument of the same "type"). As they only go on the data that's there just now, you can indeed lose a badge for going into a level where you've got everything and dying then... I suppose I could move all these checks to the update script instead and store the existence of the badges in a table, but... aaargh.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-14 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-17 12:01 pm (UTC)I am continually impressed with the amount of output you've created for this game considering that you're just going on raw data :D -- but then again, that's what you normally work with, right? ^^
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Date: 2011-08-17 01:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-13 11:40 pm (UTC)I knew I was really in trouble when in the Sokobots game, I started thinking of levels as "publishable" when they had been verified completable and had had no changes since then, and had a flag called "hasCompileErrors" on the robots... two terms which were central to what I was doing in our big content management system at the time.
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Date: 2011-08-13 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-13 11:42 pm (UTC)Anyway, I very much approve of being the example profile here, especially since I had that self-imposed "I must get through at least one level with no deaths" goal I had in mind anyway, and it's nice to have a reward now that I've pulled it off. ;) And of my icon being used, too--thank you! My only regret is that my instrument selection results are somewhat dull, aside from the ZZT one.
Edit: Oh God, you actually made good on your threat for a Beam Stack in < 10 deaths badge. Aaaagh.
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Date: 2011-08-13 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-14 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-16 07:05 pm (UTC)