A game written in VB!

[Zero]

Here's a switch: I'm not asking a question about how to make a game, I'm giving you one that's already finished.

http://www.delanet.com/~drendall/gen.html .

Tell me what ya think!

-Zero the Inestimable

[SteveCRM]

Nice job! Thats really addicting! Kind of like Snood! You should try to make it with BitBlt though, the animation is kind of choppy. But otherwise I love it! The interface is awesome! :D

[Balder]

Good job, I´m a bit disappointed I didn´t break your highscore though :p

It got a bit too fast for me in the end...

[SteveCRM]

I had a huge score, but since I pressed OPEN FROM LOCATION, there was nowhere to save I high score to...oh well, maybe tomorrow I can beat it! (Thanks! now you're going to have me addicted to this for a while)

[Fox]

Really nice game! :) But you should be able to remove more than 2 blocks together I think, looks weird if only 2 combines....

However, it's funny!

[SteveCRM]

Yeah like if you get 3 in a row, you're still stuck with 1 left over. It may be easier to win this way. :)

[Zero]

Yeah, but if you line up three 1's, you'd get a 3, and I'd have to draw another sprite for it... Besides, they're all powers of two, and that's symbolic and stuff. You'll just have to change your stragegy a litte to get rid of the third piece.

One of these days I'll publish an in-depth strategy guide. Once I figure out all the little quirks of my own game...

-Zero the Inestimable

[kedaman]

Hey this game rocks!!1 I thought this type of games were outdated but this actually is something totally new! And it's addicting :)

[Gaming_World]

Great job! e-mail me and see what you think of my first game attempt.

chris@kaynor.net

[tonyenkiducx]

Hows about sticking your mail on the high score page, then I can mail you my unfeasably high score heh ;)

[Fox]

After hours of playing you made a big score right? (note: played with hexeditor ;))

*hehe*

[tonyenkiducx]

hex editor?? hex editor? you sully my reputation you imputant oik. I shall summon forth an army of lawyers and.. erm... do something. Besides, hes been clever enough to bit shift all the high scores ;) Lol ****ing excellent game by the way :) you considered selling it? I work in the game industry, I might be able to "hook you up" as it were.

[/\/\isanThr0p]

great game, very addictive.
my score is about 8600

but i found a bug.
sometimes after entering my name to the hiscore another block comes to the game and can have some reactions. I can't influence the game anymore, but the score is added and i get another entry to the highscore! (higher than I made it!)
byw my 8600 were regular!

[nameJack]

Wish I could create a game like that
Very impressive!

Good luck!

Regards

[kedaman]

hey Zero, i got that highscore about 10000, but you haven't put that on the page yet? Yeah, next i'm going to beat your highscore too, hehe :D

[tonyenkiducx]

there is another bug with the game I just spotted, the exact second the blocks your moving hit the left hand side, you lose the ability to move them up and down, yet all the way up to the left hand wall, you can move them up and down....

[Spie]

This game is... um... addictive to say the least! Great job, Zero!

[Ploy-X]

WOW!!!! nice game. On my first try I got 12000 points I'm the seconds highest on the scoreboard. yaaaaaaa. No really that is a great game.

[/\/\isanThr0p]

Yes even though there seems to be a bug or two, IT IS JUST A GREAT GAME!! when I see a game like this I always think man that sux! I could have done this game, but I haven't had the IDEA!!!!

It is really addictive, it keeps me from programming.

[Spie]

Wohoo!! Kicked you butt, Zero :):):)
Score: 18980
Level: 66
Reactions: 662
Max. Chains: 15

[SteveCRM]

damn, about a week ago I was in second, now im almost last!

[kedaman]

Aaah! I gotta get better! BTW Zero, do you just put up the best scores for each player instead of leaving all scores?

[Zero]

Only the best score goes on the list. Things get crowded otherwise...

-Zero the Inestimable

[Spie]

btw... it was my first time playing :)

[Spie]

How in the hell did DigitalError do that? :)

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

Skills.

By the way, I had to finally give-up that game is so boring after the first 192 levels.

Oh Zero, I was playing it again. Should I send my new score file? Or do I only get one spot on the score-board? Otherwise It'd be all me!

One last thing, you need to take out the timer. I noticed the animation speeds up as the levels go on. Someone mentioned this before, when the 'things' hit the right side you can't move them up/down any more. Can you fix this? K, Good.

[Edited by DiGiTaIErRoR on 10-16-2000 at 03:48 AM]

[Spie]

Lol, The numbers were just a blur at level 60 somethin! I wish I could have seen them at your level! well... ;) I know a way I can get that high...

[Zero]

The game doesn't use timers. The reaction animations are always the same speed (200 ms/frame) no matter what level you're on. So it's all in your imagination.

That's not a bug. It's... um.... A strategic feature! Yeah, that's the ticket...

-Zero the Inestimable

[SteveCRM]

what? you're saying it doesn't speed up? It sure does!

[SteveCRM]

Hey, wait...did you use getTickcount to make it go the same speed on every computer? Maybe DigitalError has a slower computer than zero, so he has more time...

[Spie]

Um... the blocks sped up for me... a lot!

[Zero]

The pieces fall faster at higher levels, of course, but the animation (The little swirly thing when thay react) is always the same speed.

I used the Sleep API call. It runs the same on my nephews 900 Mhz Athlon as it does on my Pentium 166...

Is the Sleep call affected by processor speed, like timers are?

-Zero the Inestimable

[kedaman]

Heyyy! Can anyone beat my max-chain! Hehehee ;)

[kedaman]

What the..?
72400, that's way too much, how fast did it go?

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

I sent him the file, he hasn't updated his page yet.

[Spie]

I think he is using Cheat 'o' Matic

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

Believe me, you do not want the solution.

[kedaman]

He mixed with kernel and replace Sleep api, with a function that sleeps 10 times longer

[Spie]

Solution to what??

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

To get a very high score.

[Spie]

How did he change the code though, Kedaman?

[kedaman]

No idea, i just thought of something.
Or he did a AI player that catched each piece position on the DC, and sended the keys to the game.
Hehe, there are many ways to cheat

[/\/\isanThr0p]

Yes It is easy to cheat to such a program.

BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANT TO SAY

I FOUND A BIG BUG! TWO "1" tiles that don't combine to a two!!

I got the screenshot

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

Tiles on the extreme right side do no combine vertically.

|_____|
|_____|
|1____|
|!8481| <-
|242!1| <-

hey,

i just got the game, and i got a max chain of 22! is that good? i hope so.

[kedaman]

Damn, I thought 21 was unbeatable! ARGH!

[ScorpionJL]

Its a pretty cool game.
What do you think of my score?

Score: 103080
Level: 428
Reactions: 4281
Max Chains: 16

I mailed the gen and a pic of the game over screen.
hopefully, it will be updated soon.

[Spie]

Uh...cheat'o'matic? lol

[tonyenkiducx]

I ran one of those slow down things(moslo), and I got up to level 300 before I got bored shitless. But I dont really see the point in playing games like this if your going to cheat..

[Spie]

I know... I don't think it is right that people who cheat get on the website

[tonyenkiducx]

I cant get that RPG of yours to work Zero.. it just changes my monitor resolution, then collapses..

[ScorpionJL]

I'm sorry if you think I cheated, but I swear I didn't. There were no mem hacks, slowdowns or other things, just the game itself. Hey, everyone can do that if they figure out the pattern and get a little lucky

[tonyenkiducx]

Im not completely accusing anyone of cheating, its just Ive seen that game at levels half of what you claim to have played at, and its so fast its just a blur on my screen, and Ive normally got good reactions I do a lot of shooting for a hobby. Maybe youve just got a **** computer?

[ScorpionJL]

Nope, I have a good computer. Once you get to those levels, reaction has very little to do with it. A lot of luck and some strategy are all you need.

[Zero]

Sorry for the delay, folks. There's been a lot of... stuff happening. Regardless, all the scores that everyone sent me are posted now. Our current champion seems to be ScorpionJL.

In other news, there will be a new DirectX version of Gen coming out at some point. It'll be complete with music, sound, animation, groovy backgrounds, hopefully fewer bugs, &c. Don't bother me about the release date. It'll be out when I finish it. And yes, like everything on DgZ it will be free.

-Zero the Inestimable

[Spie]

I want to congratulate you on your very impressive game! Where did you learn all you know? lol

[Zero]

So you really want to know...

Long ago, back when I was 10, I think, I bought a 486 computer from someone at a yard sale. I had to scrape up $500 for that thing, which was pretty much my life savings. I still remember every single little quirk about that system, down to the weird trick you had to do with a flat blade screwdriver to get the @#$%-ing case open. It was an IBM Destiny, with a 486/66 Cyrix processor and 8 MB of RAM. Back then this was a really good system. As I recall, Pentium 60's were new, and nobody had even heard of the long division Pentuim bug... This was the computing dark ages.

Regardless, this was my first computer, and there were three programs on it that changed my life forever: Electronic Art's Deluxe Paint Animation showed me that I could make beautiful artwork with the computer. Microsoft's Visual Basic 2 showed me that I could make the computer do whatever I wanted it to. Scream Tracker showed me that skill be damned, I still suck at composing music. Oh well. Two outta three ain't bad.

I learned VB my sitting down one day and saying "What happens if I do this?" and messing with code. I used to get really pissed off too, 'cause I only had about half of the help file and no installation disks. I sill have some of my old programs floating around on my hard drive somewhere... I remember a really lame Duck Hunt ripoff and a 2D Battlezone game that I never finished.

I sit here today, using the same programs... I did all the graphics in Gen with Deluxe Paint (You can get that off my page, by the way) and though I've moved up to a pirated copy of VB 5, I still have good old version 2 on my drive for the times I don't feel like phucking with that 1.5 MB runtime DLL.

...

I think that was more that you wanted to know. Oh well.

~Zero the Inestimable

[Spie]

That was an interesting story :)

Hey, it's way too easy to edit highscore.gen - just open it in hex editor and change some values and make a screencapture that proves it...Too easy I say.

I can't play more far than level 30 or something...Either some people must have very fast fingers or they're cheating - alot.

Zero, I suggest you add atleast somekind of crypting and decrypting method.

Btw, it would be nice if it would be possible to move the blocks up and down even when movable blocks are as left as possible.

Okay, I've said enough I think,

[Zero]

Well, I think it says something for the people that are actually willing to spend their time trying to cheat at such a simple game... I suppose the DX version will have authentication and encryption.

~Zero the Inestimable

Sorry, I'm on a bad mood today...First I get 20 angry replies about one thing, get caugth of playing your game in school (it's great btw! Only game this year that got me addicted too much at school...) and haven't slept enough.

Anyway, make the game better in next version ;)

[Spie]

It is a great game isnt it? lol, that computer you bought was a dman good deal, Zero :)

[/\/\isanThr0p]

Hi Everybody!

I'm pretty sure I got the highest score ever archieved without cheating! I have about 18000 points 921 reactions and I am in level 92, and the game is paused!
THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE! ... normally but I'm there. Normally the highest thing I get is 10000, cause it's getting real fast then. But In the Moment I have Napster, Windows Stadard CDPlayer running, that slows down the game that bad! This shows, that v1.4 shouldn't be the final version!!! It slows down very easy, even though I don't know what the processor time is used for in this game! It doesn't even need masking! Ther should be something, that tests if there was to much time used, and so speeds it up more, even though there would be the danger of moving two blocks at once! or does this game just use a TIMER (EVIL!!!!!) that doesn't get the events cause I'm doing some stuff?
THAT REALLY SHOULD BE FIXED
btw. I think I really should stop playing now!

I tested the game in my friends 486/33 with 8 MBs of RAM...It runned quite fine on slower levels, but when it raised high enough, the game didn't read keyboard all the time! It's VB I think which causes this. Just checked it out...

[Zero]

Yeah, yeah. This is a public beta. Or at least it is now...

Anyhoo, I'm working on the DX varsion of the game (like I said) and that ought to fix all the speed bugs, &c. The game uses the Sleep(Msec) API call, so is there a more stable way to get accurate delays? I'm thinking GetTickCount, mayahp? I'll have to look into it.

~Zero the Inestimable

[kedaman]

the dealy between the pieces movement could be modified to work with this formula:

dealy = k / (t0+t)

I'm not sure but in the game it seems like the speed gets so fast it's impossible to control the game, after a certain level. This should fix that problem

k/t0 is the initial dealy
k is the general speed increase rate and
t, the level.

Don't use sleep, gettickcount is good for the dealys, in the beginning of the gameloop Set a target-time by doing:

target = gettickcount + k / (t0 + t)

in the end of the gameloop, youve drawn the scene and checked all combinations, you do

do while gettickcount < target
doevents
loop