Addled update: latest version of the game

Games
1

Hi all,

got a new version (nearly finished) of the game. Hopefully all the performance problems have been fixed.

Latest additions:

Loading animations and 'cards'.

Also now has 'Save Slots' 4 different players can play and save their own progress:-

AddledSaveSlots

Thanks to all of you who tried the previous version of the game. Hopefully I've addressed all your suggestions in this version !

Addled.pdx.zip (1.9 MB)

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2

Performance seems much better !

Thoughts and observations:

  • After A-1 was complete, the transition from the level selection screen to the Undo tutorial screen was frozen for me for about 3 seconds, then it continued on. It didn't do this other times though
  • Sometimes when the audio loops (i was on A-2), the whole game freezes up for 4 or 5 seconds
  • Some of the audio (the start menu and the ship selection mostly) may need some compression or balancing that's specific to the tiny Playdate speaker, it felt like some unintended distortion/blow out, especially in the mids range

Great work otherwise! Love the charm and humor of the tutorial screens :slight_smile:

3

Definitely vastly improved!

I still get occasional (every 2-5 minutes) freezes during gameplay. The freezes last 5 seconds or so. Even after it “recovers”, performance isn’t as good as it was before the freeze - usually the controls lag, tiles fall less smoothly, and the music plays back at an uneven rate.

The transition from the level select screen to the level (with the spaceship animating down to the planet) still freezes partway through, but not consistently. Sometimes it won’t freeze until the spaceship is almost at the planet, but sometimes it freezes just as the animation starts. It seems like it isn’t always waiting until the animation finishes before loading the level.

When I first launched this version, it offered me a “continue” option which instantly crashed the game. I thought this might be due to me already having incompatible save data from the previous version, but it still crashed after I deleted game data in the settings app (until I created a new game, now it works fine).

A small gameplay suggestion: in addition to the current control scheme where you tap A to pick up a tile and tap A again to drop it, also allow the player to hold A to pick up the tile and release A to drop it. For some reason that feels more natural to me on the Playdate hardware (possibly because I’ve been playing the season game Pick Pack Pup which uses that control scheme) and it felt like a glitch when I would instinctively hold A and nothing would happen.

Update: I pressed B on the player selection screen (i.e. after selecting “switch player”) and the game crashed with screens/zoneScreen.lua:471: attempt to index a nil value (global ‘bBtn’) (I expected this to go back to the previous menu without changing the selected player)

4

Thanks Foster, will try and track down the cause of the freezes.

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5

Thanks Dale, think I've fixed the crashes but still cannot replicate the random freezes in the simulator.

6

Ok - first off, I LOVE this game! It often seems impossible - but then suddenly…

…I figure it out, and it’s not! :slight_smile:

BUT I think I found something that seems to not make sense - a solution for C-3. I replayed it a few times to make sure i wasn’t miss understanding what I was doing.

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making that one move clears the board - is that right?

Anyway - thanks for a fun game!

7

Hi Ron,

glad you're enjoying it!

When I try C-3 I can replicate this problem maybe one time out of twenty! No obvious cause :frowning:

I'll keep looking though, there has to be a reason.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention,

Stephen

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