Kind of misleading to use the name "Hextris" for what looks like a very different game. The original Hextris is 2D falling blocks exactly like Tetris, except that the world consists of hexagons, and so the pieces have six rotations. I played this like crazy for a brief time in the mid 1990's.
It gets too fast - if it had a limit to how fast it got then it could go on forever but with it as it currently is there are limits to how high your score can get before it is too fast for you to be able to react and once you reach that score you aren't very motivated to keep playing.
this. After a while it goes so fast I have no clue what I'm doing anymore and it's not that much fun anymore :P Maybe make the overal acceleration a bit slower?
Btw the speed seems to depend on the machine you play it on. On my wife's close to 10 year old laptop it's way slower than on mine. But the rotation is still fast enough, so scores are higher. She's at 20000 now and the speed is roughly similar to what I get at 1000 points. Old hardware FTW.
Maybe depends on the hardware. On a new-ish MacBook pro, it gets too fast to play after 2 minutes or so. A game programming best practice is to hang your game logic and drawing off a timer that runs the same speed regardless of hardware, so it's not too fast on new computers and too slow on old ones.
Chrome on a brand-new MBP here, I got 5233 but by the last 30 seconds or so I was barely reacting, just getting lucky with where they fell. It was about four drops per second at that point, just a steady stream.
Weird. I got to 80k in Firefox, and stopped because it was pretty slow and not getting faster--not really challenging at all.
I tried again in Chrome and its a lot faster, and does get faster throughout the game as well. More fun and challenging, but yeah--it does get too fast too quickly.
Don't focus on placing every tile perfect, just get them evenly placed across the hexagon. The game seems to slow down after a while as well. I got 17800 points after a few trials..
That'd be great! We were thinking of doing that for the homepage, but didn't find the time. I'd happily merge it in if someone were to make an AI for Hextris.
Most of the app bundle on iOS are various assets (.pngs, videos, sounds, etc). This looks like it's drawing everything in code, so the app bundle is really small.
Marco's new app, Overcast also has UI drawn almost entirely with code (all icons are generated with PaintCode [1]), and his app [2] is 4.5mb.
Even that 4.5MB doesn't seem particularly small to me. Podkicker Pro, Android podcast client takes 2.15MB on my phone. App itself take 792KB, and feed metadata takes 1.38MB.
The iOS version is essentially just a static website inside of a webview. Since we only use paths to render the shapes, Hextris doesn't require too much space.
I played a couple times and maxed out around 700pts. Then played a game where I didn't touch a single key -- no rotation whatsoever -- and managed to score 3292pts.
I'm not sure what this indicates, but it feels off.
That's a valid criticism - I don't know how it could be fixed.
Maybe more colors could be added? Game balance has been really tricky with this game, as changes play out very differently on mobile devices and "real computers."
More colors seems like the obvious way to increase the difficulty as the user levels-up. With only four colors, random play is quite likely to get a match--the odds of a randomly selected tile matching a given tile is going to be 1 in 4.
From a cursory look (my math may be a little off) it seems like the odds of a tile matching at least one of its 4 cardinal-direction neighbors is ~57% (20 of 35 order-independent variations), and the odds of a tile matching 2 or more of its randomly selected neighbors is ~28%. In other words, with just random play you're going to get a match out of every `+` shaped collection of 5 tiles nearly 1/3rd of the time. Factoring the three-in-a row possibility the odds of a match will go up from there. (And since a match will eliminate several tiles of given color, the odds of getting a match on the "chain reaction" must also be quite high.)
Hey, excellent game! I'm sure I'll waste a lot of time on this, haha.
One feature that might be cool to have would be to make the gray background hexagon one block larger if you get four or five blocks in a row. That way, you'll be able to keep your ahead above water a little better when things really start to speed up. It would add another level of strategy and planning to the game.
I think a key to drop faster would be a nice addition.
The speed progression could be tweaked a bit. It's a bit boring until it gets faster, and it takes a while.
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[ 1.5 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadhttp://www.hextris.com/
Kind of misleading to use the name "Hextris" for what looks like a very different game. The original Hextris is 2D falling blocks exactly like Tetris, except that the world consists of hexagons, and so the pieces have six rotations. I played this like crazy for a brief time in the mid 1990's.
Remembered it recently and based my own game on hexagons!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puyo_Puyo_(series)#Gameplay
I'm struggling to beat 5863
Btw the speed seems to depend on the machine you play it on. On my wife's close to 10 year old laptop it's way slower than on mine. But the rotation is still fast enough, so scores are higher. She's at 20000 now and the speed is roughly similar to what I get at 1000 points. Old hardware FTW.
I tried again in Chrome and its a lot faster, and does get faster throughout the game as well. More fun and challenging, but yeah--it does get too fast too quickly.
Marco's new app, Overcast also has UI drawn almost entirely with code (all icons are generated with PaintCode [1]), and his app [2] is 4.5mb.
[1]: http://www.paintcodeapp.com [2]: https://itunes.apple.com/pl/app/overcast-podcast-player/id88...
Mine: 3387
One quick criticism:
I played a couple times and maxed out around 700pts. Then played a game where I didn't touch a single key -- no rotation whatsoever -- and managed to score 3292pts.
I'm not sure what this indicates, but it feels off.
Maybe more colors could be added? Game balance has been really tricky with this game, as changes play out very differently on mobile devices and "real computers."
From a cursory look (my math may be a little off) it seems like the odds of a tile matching at least one of its 4 cardinal-direction neighbors is ~57% (20 of 35 order-independent variations), and the odds of a tile matching 2 or more of its randomly selected neighbors is ~28%. In other words, with just random play you're going to get a match out of every `+` shaped collection of 5 tiles nearly 1/3rd of the time. Factoring the three-in-a row possibility the odds of a match will go up from there. (And since a match will eliminate several tiles of given color, the odds of getting a match on the "chain reaction" must also be quite high.)
Maybe a little walk through/instructions displayed for longer. Had to start over to quickly read again (was zoning out first time)
Can't stop playing regardless.
One feature that might be cool to have would be to make the gray background hexagon one block larger if you get four or five blocks in a row. That way, you'll be able to keep your ahead above water a little better when things really start to speed up. It would add another level of strategy and planning to the game.
Keep up the great work!
A few comments:
I think a key to drop faster would be a nice addition. The speed progression could be tweaked a bit. It's a bit boring until it gets faster, and it takes a while.
I believe that game was made for a Ludum Dare originally.