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Show HN: I'm releasing my game for free
- atum47 7y agoIn QUBES your goal is to move the boxes to their happy places making the least amount of moves possible. After the end of each level you get stars based on your efficiency. Hope you have fun playing it.
- 29athrowaway 7y agoLike Sokoban.
- atum47 7y agoyes. two things: on QUBES efficiency matters, you have to complete the levels making the least amount of moves. Since I wrote a solver / level generator for my game, I'm able to tell how many moves you need to make to finish the level as efficient as possible.
- xwdv 7y agoGiven that possible moves for each level are discrete, does your solver work with an algorithm or by trying all possible inputs?
- atum47 7y agoeach movement (left, right, top, bottom) generate a new state, the algorithm goes around searching the whole game for a "win" state
- xwdv 7y agoAnd then ranks them by shortest.
- atum47 7y agoyeah, I needed a way to classify the levels by the difficulty. I should have done a double sort, one for the number of goals (boxes) and then the number of minimum moves necessary to finish the level.
- xwdv 7y agoThis is a pretty standard way of creating solvers for puzzles that have discrete states. When you are searching for a shortest solution you can also hash states to track losing paths and abandon them early.
- occsceo 7y agohi, thanks much. very fun. any chance you could add keyboard shortcuts to the menu items after completing a level? (try again, next, menu) so that a user doesn't need to switch from keyboard to mouse.
- atum47 7y agoWith space bar you can go to the next level. I'll try to add the other ones later, is that ok?
- occsceo 7y agocool. add a comment/indicator that space bar advances?
- atum47 7y agoon the game? because it's on the description of the game, on the itch.io page. The game was supposed to be mobile only, I just had a bad day today and made a quick hack to make it available on desktop. I'll try to refine it more, later.
- bricestacey 7y agoI played one level around 80 and was able to figure out how it works without reading any instructions. You did good.
- atum47 7y agowell, thank you. =)
- sonofgod 7y agoNice little browser-based Sokoban clone.
- atum47 7y agoThank you. This project was born literally from me writing a level generator for sokoban. I added some free open source 2d art, some sound fx, some music, gave the game a story (the boxes are sad away from their happy place, help them) and BAM. Got myself a game.
- xwdv 7y agoWhy not add one new game mechanic?
- atum47 7y agobecause I'm a garbage person, right after I upload this one I was already working on something new. I'll trying my luck as a indie game dev for now, and this is not a game that people would buy or spent a lot of time playing. so, after I thought I had enough for a "game" and released. Tomorrow I'll start working on a new game. This next one I'll put more thought into it.
- ha-ckernews 7y agoReminds me of Paganitzu
- alanbernstein 7y agoIs the source available? I'm curious how you're able to run either as an app, or in the browser.
- atum47 7y agoI wrote the thing with mobile and desktop on mind (touch and keyboard controls, render to several types of screen). Then this line does the magic: const isMobile = /iPhone|iPad|iPod|Android/i.test(navigator.userAgent); if isMobile = true, I show you the touch controls I'm holding the source code on this one for now, cause I'm trying to make a bucket out of it. But I'll release it soon enough. Check out my github for some other fun projects as well
- alanbernstein 7y agoCool, thanks for sharing that.
- atum47 7y agoyou're welcome
- atum47 7y agoby the way, the app version is a hybrid. I'm using java and javascript. I use a javascript interface to talk between the two. Java handles the ads and the data storage, the rest is javascript.
- lsh 7y agogot an initial black screen until I pressed 'r' figured out what to do, then it froze. Pressing space bar did nothing.
- anikan_vader 7y agoThat's brilliant :) The last level was really fun.
- atum47 7y agoThank you so much. Really nice seeing your work being appreciated.
- atum47 7y agothe google play version supports Portuguese, English, Spanish and Chinese, but it got ads.
- coreyp_1 7y agoReminds me of Chip's Challenge. :)
- sfRattan 7y agoThis comment brought back some lovely memories of my grandfather, who got into computers late in his life and had all sorts of games on his Windows 95 (I think it was originally Windows 3.1) machine. One of them was Chip's Challenge, and it was the only game my brother and I could play together (at about 5 and 7 in the late 90s) and take turns without squabbling because half the fun was puzzling out the solution to each level.
- alpb 7y agoFor those who don't know this game is called Sokoban. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban
- atum47 7y agoyes, I added the "sokoban" tag to my game page. As I said on other comment, the difference between QUBES and a classic sokoban game is that on QUBES the amount of moves you make counts. It's not enough to solve the puzzle, you have to solve it the best way possible. Big O notation?
- bitwize 7y agoIt's not the first sokoban game to score based on number of moves. But heck, writing an original clone of an already-extant game is an interesting exercise especially for beginner game devs. So cherish the victory of having finished and released it!
- atum47 7y agothank you. but I swear I had never seen a sokoban game that counts your moves. Well, I haven't search it either, so it doesn't count, but I remember playing sokoban on DOS when I was a kid and it didn't count the moves.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoYou can see moves being counted in this port for the TRS-80 Color Computer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncsglTE2xoY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncsglTE2xoY I had that game as a child. Even though it counted moves, I never paid attention to it. I only cared about finishing the level. Your game puts more emphasis on the number of moves especially with showing the minimum number of moves to solve a level. That gives it more replay value.
- atum47 7y ago
- yepthatsreality 7y agoThe controls are not small enough to fit on iPhone SE and smaller screens.
- atum47 7y agosorry about that, I'll see what I can do
- pfarrell 7y agoFun game. Wanted to pass on issue I had. Safari on iPhone 7, couldn’t use touch controls on level 3 because browser chrome is in the way. https://imgur.com/a/nN9YndX https://imgur.com/a/nN9YndX
- atum47 7y agoI'm talking to a friend about buying his father's old iphone, I need that to develop / test my apps.
- crazytweek 7y agoYou also can simulate the devices with the chrome debugger?
- overcast 7y agoKind of strange a non move counts as one, if I just hold the arrow key over on a block that can't move, it will be 157 moves in no time.
- atum47 7y agoyes, you moved, the wall just pushed you back. bad jokes aside, I designed it that way.
- irjustin 7y agoFor me, that's not how I expected it to work and don't agree. To move a long distance, I spam the direction until I hit the wall without care of 'wasted moves'. I didn't understand why I didn't get the optimum moves the first time. Regardless, thanks for developing the game and releasing it for free. I'm enjoying it while I'm stuck at home!
- atum47 7y agothank you
- jonny_eh 7y ago> bad jokes aside, I designed it that way. Why?
- edoo 7y agoIf you like this type of game check out 'Adventures of Lolo' on an NES emulator, circa 1989.
- kerabatsos 7y agoMy 4 year old is enjoying it. Interesting to watch him work through the process. Kept his attention for 15 minutes or so (which is pretty damn good). Thanks for sharing.
- atum47 7y agoyes, nice one. thanks a lot for the feedback.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bucketmop 7y agoclever and fun
- jedberg 7y agoThis is great! Small, efficient, easy to understand even for a someone who has never seen Sokoban (me!). One small feedback, it would be great if there were an undo. It's really frustrating to make one mistake twenty moves in and have to start over. :)
- 29athrowaway 7y agoI like it. I used to play KSokoban, when I used KDE long time ago. Now, someone took the assets of KSokoban and made an online version. https://ksokoban.online https://ksokoban.online It's in essence the same game.
- atum47 7y agoI remember playing the first time I used Linux also, when I was a teenager. later I got hooked in computer graphics (3D and vfx) and went back to windows.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- psyklic 7y ago@atum47 - Fun game! How were the optimal number of moves determined?
- atum47 7y agoI turn each state of the game into a node and then I search the minimum cost path to a node with the "win" state.
- Ghjklov 7y agoOh no, the kind of game I have to force myself to stop or I'll spend the whole night playing.
- atum47 7y agohey, you're the second one. I have met only one other person who I know was addicted to the game. I know that cause she wrote me an email asking for the 3 stars solution for the 12 level. really funny
- Ghjklov 7y agoI started having trouble around there too, at 10 and 11. I had to settle for 2 star solutions. I knew I could spend all night trying to do all this (3 stars or nothing) so I called it quits.
- sharma_pradeep 7y agoNot able to donate. Accept payment from India?
- atum47 7y agoyes, itch.io handles the donations
- tobr 7y agoSokoban is at the spritual center of a relatively new (or newly invigorated) and pretty hardcore subgenre of puzzle games. Who knew there could be so many interesting ways to push blocks around in a grid? Some good ones are Heroes of Sokoban I, II and III[1][2][3], A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build[4], Stephen's Sausage Roll[5], Ferdy the Cat[6], Kine[7], Snakebird[8] and Baba is You[9]. Each and every one of these games have undo. That's critical for this type of game. Forcing the player to restart because of a single mistake is about the least interesting way to make a puzzle game more difficult. 1: https://sites.math.washington.edu/~ostroff/puzzles/Heroes_of_Sokoban.html https://sites.math.washington.edu/~ostroff/puzzles/Heroes_of... 2: https://sites.math.washington.edu/~ostroff/puzzles/Heroes_of_Sokoban_II_Monsters.html https://sites.math.washington.edu/~ostroff/puzzles/Heroes_of... 3: https://sites.math.washington.edu/~ostroff/puzzles/Heroes_of_Sokoban_III_The_Bard_and_The_Druid.html https://sites.math.washington.edu/~ostroff/puzzles/Heroes_of... 4: https://agoodsnowman.com https://agoodsnowman.com 5: https://www.stephenssausageroll.com https://www.stephenssausageroll.com 6: https://ferdythecat.com https://ferdythecat.com 7: https://www.kinegame.com https://www.kinegame.com 8: https://noumenongames.itch.io/snakebird https://noumenongames.itch.io/snakebird 9: https://www.hempuli.com/baba/ https://www.hempuli.com/baba/
- juped 7y agoStrong recommendation for Baba Is You, probably the best puzzle game I've played in a long while. I won't say more since it's best played blind.
- BiteCode_dev 7y agoSeconded. Half of the pleasure of "baba is you" is to discover it. The game assumes this perfectly, and is actually structured to make that discovery part of the gameplay: it's incremental, pleasant, and it surprises you in good ways. I sometime even laugh at the way the game designer played with me. With one specific block present or missing. With one rule you didn't know about, or didn't think about that way. It's communicating playfulness without a having to say a word. This game is a beautiful thing.
- glaberficken 7y ago
- GrumpyNl 7y agoI cant start the game, getting some errors and connections to doubleclick. index.html:177 Uncaught DOMException: Failed to read the 'localStorage' property from 'Window': Access is denied for this document. at loadGame (https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/2099093/index.html:177:30 https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/2099093/index.html:177:3...) at Image.textures.onload (https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/2099093/index.html:217:4 https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net/html/2099093/index.html:217:4) loadGame @ index.html:177 textures.onload @ index.html:217 load (async) loadAssets @ index.html:216 (anonymous) @ index.html:225 www-embed-player.js:438 GET https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/id https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/id net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT Xe @ www-embed-player.js:438 We @ www-embed-player.js:424 (anonymous) @ www-embed-player.js:726 N @ www-embed-player.js:312 mj @ www-embed-player.js:723 xe @ www-embed-player.js:736 yj @ www-embed-player.js:741 zj @ www-embed-player.js:742 (anonymous) @ www-embed-player.js:759 (anonymous) @ 0lP8Q6u1Shw:12 www-embed-player.js:542 GET https://static.doubleclick.net/instream/ad_status.js https://static.doubleclick.net/instream/ad_status.js net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT
- rl3 7y agoReminds me a little bit of Heartlight PC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEqIO3Zet-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEqIO3Zet-o
- steQ 7y agoA nice open-source library to create similar games is https://www.puzzlescript.net/ https://www.puzzlescript.net/
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jaifraic 7y agoSome little improvements I'd like to see: - an option to mute audio - a counter to see how many moves I did by now
- atum47 7y agoif you click the square button (when playing any level) you'll get a option to mute sound and music
- emmelaich 7y agoFor the best Sokoban implementation on Android, go to "Soko++" by Joris Wit.
- Jemm 7y agoReminds me a little of Pengo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pengo_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pengo_(video_game)
- poopsmithe 7y agoThis is good fun. Needs more music variety! Perhaps a new track every 10 levels or so, otherwise the loop gets stale!
- joshspankit 7y agoPlease add on-screen controls for tablet (and phone) users
- jihadjihad 7y agoDid anyone ever play Microsoft Tinker? [0] This game kind of reminds me of that, I spent a lot of hours playing Tinker on my old computer! [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Tinker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Tinker
- atum47 7y agoHi, I'm Victor Ribeiro, author of the game. Yesterday I was let go of my job due to COVID-19. After I got the news, I sat down on my notebook and made a quick port of QUBES to release on itch.io I understand that the game is a not a 5 stars game and there's room for improvement, some requests I may implement on the next update, but, I'm now working on a new game that I plan to release soon. I think this new game is more fun. I suggest following me on twitter, itch.io, youtube or github to check it out. As I told, I'm not working right now so if you liked QUBES and want to support me and the developing of other games, I suggest you make a donation you itch.io, paypal or consider becoming a patreon. Here I go by atum47, but on all other platforms I'm usually victorqribeiro. On youtube I'm always putting videos of my projects, my english is far from good, but I'm working on my pronunciation. On GitHub I'm always publishing open source projects that might help others or even serve as a starting point for a project. IsoCity is a good example of that. There are people working on some cool new things using IsoCity as a foundation. So, make sure you take a look at my projects at GitHub also. Thank you so much for playing the game and for the inputs/feedback.
- n4r9 7y agoI installed the game but it crashes immediately on opening. I'm on an oldish phone (OnePlus Two) which may explain why.