cocos2d for iPhone

A fast, easy to use, free, and community supported 2D game engine

1. 

   czgarrett
   Member

   iTunes link: http://bit.ly/5ifgSB

   Note to all Cocos2D developers - I am willing to share code. If there's something on Lexitect that you're curious how I did it, please contact me and I will help you out.

   Lexitect is a fun, challenging game for people who love crossword-like games such as Scrabble.

   The goal of Lexitect is to create building-shaped crosswords. You get points for using as many of your seven tiles as you can each turn. You get a big bonus for using all seven letters!

   Lexitect is untimed, so you can pick it up and play for five seconds or five hours. No pressure!

   This version contains four different building puzzles, from very easy to very difficult. I will create more levels if you request it.

   Lexitect is a networked, multiplayer game. However, a network connection is not required. The game will automatically sync up when it can.

   When location information is available, you can see your ranking for the world, country, city, and state. Rankings are continually updated as you play.

   Lexitect has built-in feedback that you can use to request new levels, suggest features, or tell me what you think. In-game feedback goes directly to my inbox. If you have a question, you may also email me at the address below. I look forward to hearing from you!

   --Chris Garrett, Lexitect creator
   lexitect@zworkbench.com

   Posted 2 years ago #
2. 

   Joe
   Member

   Hello Chris,

   Many thanks for your willingness to share code with us.

   I'm working also on a word puzzle game. Only thing missing is the OpenFeint integration.

   I just tried to download your game, but iTunes told me to try with a WiFi connection - telling me that your binary is > 10MB. This gives a clue that you have a sqlite database where you store all possible words. I follow the same approach. My game is built with two dictionaries English and German. Each dictionary has 400.000 words. Bringing the database to over 30MB! This will prevent user to download the game over a 3G connection - which is bad.

   Have you tried using a Trie data structure? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie

   Posted 2 years ago #
3. 

   czgarrett
   Member

   You're right, the database takes up a huge amount of space. It's not the words themselves, it's the index I had to create to enable fast partial word lookup. The Trie structure looks like it might be what I need. Have you started implementing this yet?

   I'm using the SOWPODS dictionary. Are you using that or TWL? or something else?

   Posted 2 years ago #
4. 

   czgarrett
   Member

   Your post inspired me to go back and see what I could do to reduce my database size. Here's what I did:

   1) Removed all words over 9 letters long. I think in the future I will add these back in, but will download them over a network connection after installation, then add them to the database. A good portion of the index was used in indexing these long words.

   2) Removed indexes from the database. I now insert them after the app installs.

   These two actions dropped my database file size from 60MB (uncompressed) to 16.7 MB. Compressed, the app is now under 10 MB.

   Posted 2 years ago #
5. 

   Joe
   Member

   Yes, you are right a big part of the problem is the index, which needs to be added for fast word look-up. It so obvious, but I really wasn't thinking about adding the index after the app has been installed. Thank you for that :)

   My word lists have up to 35 characters per word. It is a list I compiled myself using various sources. One source for the English dictionary is the Enable list, which is also a Scrabble list, but public domain.

   I already implemented the Trie structure, though it is not complete yet. I need to add support for serialization. At the moment it builds the Trie structure from a given text file. But I want to build the data structure once and use serialization to load / save the data.

   I will be happy to share the word lists and the code for the Trie. If you are interested, just send me a PM with your email address.

   BTW: I'm still looking for a beta tester. And it looks like you would be the perfect candidate :-)

   Cheers

   Posted 2 years ago #
6. 

   slipster216
   Moderator

   If your only looking for a single word at a time, there's no need to index them and waste all that space, simply order them alphabetically and use a binary search; it should be plenty fast. I did a word game a few years back and I think the word dictionary (78,000 words or so) was around 86k. I posted some as3 code for it in the comments here:

   http://flashgamedevblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/word-list-in-flash-word-game.html

   Posted 2 years ago #

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