level 62
By James on Tuesday 28 April 2009, 18:58 - Permalink
By popular request (well, by one request), here's the solution to puzzle 62 - the Corroboree level from Ancient Frog LE.
I think I made a mistake in using the perfect solution as the par value. The game would be less frustrating (and a bit richer) if the par value reflected a really good but not necessarily perfect solution, and if it were then possible to come in under par. Players wouldn't be banging their heads against the wall on the really nasty levels, and there'd be a feeling of having beaten the game if they got a better score.
There's a fair bit of smoothing out of the progression and difficulty in general that I'd like to do now that I've seen it played by a much broader base of people, but I don't like to change a puzzle that someone is in the middle of at the time the update goes out.
Meanwhile, 1.06 is getting ready to release. The trouble with optimising is that there's no absolute end to it, and once I've started I find it hard to stop.
Comments
Thanks for posting the solution. The thing is the par says 14, but going by your solution the optimal answer is 15. It was bothering me that I couldn't come in at par, my best was 15. Now I can move on.
I agree with your point on pars not being the best answer. That precludes any better scores, which takes away one of the small victories a user likes to cherish :).
Finally it was fascinating to read about the process that goes into the creation of the game. Thanks for putting together such a cool game. It is awesome.
There are 15 images, but the first one shows the start position, which doesn't count as a move.
15 is a good score for this level though. It looks like it's worth my putting some thought into calculating a realistic imperfect par for all of the levels.
Damn you are right. Ah well, live and learn. I figured out what I was doing wrong though, I wasn't stretching my frog to the fullest extant possible in step 12. The extra shuffle lost me one move.
So after my misguided 'moral victory' above, I went out and purchased the full version, and have been happily playing w/ frogs these last few days (your correction in no way diminished my playing pleasure, in fact the better solution added to the relish).
But having some additional insight in the game play, I wanted to withdraw my comment on pars to not be the best answers. I find as I play, the challenge of the optimal solution spurs me to play the same level several times, till I meet par. In cases where (by skill or luck) I meet par tight out of the gate, I find I never play that puzzle again and feel cheated that the solution was so easy.
By no means go by this single user experience, but felt it was an interesting counter point to my initial experience w/ the 'free' trial version as compared to the 'paid' version in terms of optimal par positioning. (Interesting psychological question there on free vs. pay and the contrast between instant gratification versus need for value for money
Also, a couple of other comments:
- What do you think of adding a 'help' function, for the folks who are super frustrated, getting direction when stuck might tip the person into continuing instead of quitting the game all together and posting a stupid review like 'too hard'
- While trying to navigate to the 62 puzzle in the daisy field, (I had completed only about 20 puzzles), it took for ever to load the 62 puzzle directly. I had to play a couple of intermediatary puzzles between where I was and the 62 puzzle before I could open the 62 puzzle. Is this intentional or just a loading issue?
Once again thanks for the fantastic game.
A 'hint' button is my most requested feature, and it's what I'm working on right now. It's a tricky (and therefore interesting) problem from a code point of view, and also from a UI standpoint. I expect to be experimenting with for a while before there's something releasable.
The whole front end is also a bit of a problem. The gradual unlocking of the puzzles is, I now think, unnecessary and annoying. The treatment in general is also a bit ugly and inscrutable.
I'd like to fix all that, but I also need to be working on the new game...
You could change the "Par" to the "Perfect Score" and display the best score for each level. So, if I complete a level in 15 moves (let's say that the par is 11), the next time I play that level I can see the Perfect Score (11) plus my best score (15). That would encourage players to replay levels in an effort to beat a previous score and get closer to the Perfect Score.
I know that, when I show friends, there is usually a short competition as to who can complete a level in the least number of moves. So why not add a Leader Board to each level! Perhaps track time to completion along with the number of moves, and allow the player to add his name beside the score in the Leader Board.
As far as hints are concerned ... why not add the option to set the ease of hints.
An easy hinting level would show something on screen as soon as the player has made a wrong move. A moderate hinting level would display something on screen after the player has made three wrong moves in a row. And a no hint setting.
Hint indicators: The obvious way would be to show a warning icon on the screen.
A more subtle way would be to make the frog move more frequently; adjusting his toes, blinking and croaking more often as if he is getting worried that he is going to miss out on a feed.
Regards,
Colin