[GAME] Trainyard: An innovative puzzle solving game

cocos2d for iPhone » cocos2d games

[GAME] Trainyard: An innovative puzzle solving game

(69 posts) (36 voices)

Started 1 year ago by Matt Rix
Latest reply from redsky

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Matt Rix
Member

Hey everyone, I finally finished making my Trainyard game using Cocos2D. I've been working on it for a long time, and the help I've received from this forum has been great. It just came out today, and I'm getting a ton of great feedback from lots of people who are playing it.

Features:

+ Innovative and challenging puzzle mechanic
+ Smooth difficulty curve
+ 100 puzzles plus bonus puzzles
+ Hundreds of ways to solve each puzzle
+ Easily share your unique solutions on Trainyard.ca
+ Engineered for low battery usage
+ OS 2.2.1 compatible
+ Over a year in the making

For devs:
Programmers/developer seem to really enjoy this game. It's got a logic circuit kind of feel to it. I'm still using Cocos 0.8 - It's stable enough for all my uses, although I do plan to update to 1.0 in the first or second update. Code wise, I do some interesting stuff to save the user's state, so they always come back exactly where they left off. I'm using SQLite to store their solutions and overall game progress. Also, I wrote a duplicate of the whole engine in Flash, so that users can share their solutions online and actually see them in action.

For gamers:
It's fun, it's challenging... I don't think there's ever been a game(on any platform) with this mechanic. Just try it ;)

Trailer:

Check out http://trainyard.ca for the trailer and more info... You can even browse through uploaded solutions for all the puzzles.

$1.99 - Get it on iTunes

I'd love to know what you guys think, please let me know whatever questions/concerns you have, thanks!

-Matt

Posted 1 year ago #
bradparks
Member

look very polished... super nice trailer too! good luck in the appstore matt, you deserve it!

Posted 1 year ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

very clever puzzle gameplay! "I don't think there's ever been a game(on any platform) with this mechanic." I agree its very original.

Posted 1 year ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

139 stars.

I just realized that not only can you solve puzzles in different ways, but you can save all your different solutions if you want, or all your different starting points, I dont think Ive seen that feature in an iPhone game before. Also, cool text effect for the beta testers list.

I feel the tutorial goes on too long before you get to the *real* puzzles.

Posted 1 year ago #
pfg2009
Member

I caved in and actually bought this one (gasp!). And I love it. Well done! I've been hoping to stumble across something like this for a while and I'm glad I finally did. Effort well spent. I hope it gets noticed.

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member

Thanks for the compliments, guys :)

I feel the tutorial goes on too long before you get to the *real* puzzles.

Hah, you're not the only one, I've heard that quite a few times now... I think I'll see if I can do something to improve the balance of tutorials. I wanted to risk players getting a bit frustrated at the tutorials so that they don't get frustrated later on in the game(which seems to happen to some people).

Posted 1 year ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

After youve solved a level, uploading it to http://www.trainyard.ca/solutions and seeing what other solutions everyone else came up with is a lot of fun. Very cool feature. Maybe you could add online-only awards for the solutions that runs the fastest or uses the least amount of track?

Posted 1 year ago #
pfg2009
Member

Ditto on the tutorials dragging. I installed the game on my iPhone and played for a bit last night. Then I installed it again on my iPad this morning and had to go through the same set of tutorials again. A simple "Skip" button, or just enabling the "Next" button while the tutorial is still playing, might do the trick.

Also, I love the game mechanics and it appeals to me because I'm a geek and I like solving puzzles. Other people, on the other hand, might find the game a bit drab. If you consider "dressing" the game up a bit with cute trains and clouds and what-not (talk to a designer), you might broaden the appeal to the masses.

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member

Maybe you could add online-only awards for the solutions that runs the fastest or uses the least amount of track?

Yep, I'm storing all that data, and all the solutions are sorted by pieces of track used right now. Sometime over the weekend I'm gonna display the track count on each solution too so that people know what they are.

Also, I love the game mechanics and it appeals to me because I'm a geek and I like solving puzzles. Other people, on the other hand, might find the game a bit drab. If you consider "dressing" the game up a bit with cute trains and clouds and what-not (talk to a designer), you might broaden the appeal to the masses.

Yeah that's true, I think giving it a bit more of a story and a theme would go a long way to increase it's appeal. The design is definitely very utilitarian right now :) Part of the problem is that there's a lot of information to convey for each station(ie. the type of station, the colours of each of the trains in it, the in and out sides)... I had a hard time showing all the info without going for a minimal pixely style. I'm planning on changing the style and completely rebranding it for the iPad version(which will also have a puzzle editor).

Posted 1 year ago #
Techy
Member

You should have little checkpoint stops that trains have to go over in order to complete the level... I think that it would be cool...

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member

You should have little checkpoint stops that trains have to go over in order to complete the level... I think that it would be cool...

Hmm, yeah that's an interesting idea. Later in the game there are some configurations of pieces(a splitter next to a goal), that kind of acts almost like a checkpoint that you have to get to. I've got some other cool ideas for pieces for the future...

Posted 1 year ago #
Techy
Member

@Matt Rix yeah true, I played the game for about 4-5 hours and finished it :P It was very addicting

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member

@Matt Rix yeah true, I played the game for about 4-5 hours and finished it :P It was very addicting

Sweet, nice job! Sometime in the next couple weeks I'll be sending out an update with a bunch more levels, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Posted 1 year ago #
Tone
Member

Looks awesome. Great job.

Posted 1 year ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

@Techy, you are too quick, Im at 309 stars, so Im in the home stretch.

@Matt_Rix, something weird happened this morning - every time I tried to send in my solutions it would take two tries - first it would fail, and then go through on the 2nd try. When I look at my user page right now, all of the levels I sent dont have the little thumbnail.

http://www.trainyard.ca/users/39

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member

Eek, yeah I just noticed that, seems to be only happening to you for the most part. It should be something I can fix on the server side. Gonna have a look right now, hopefully it'll be fixed soon.

Posted 1 year ago #
AkumaStreak
Member

This looks very cool and original. Lovely work Matt.

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member
Yeah @Codemattic, good catch, super dumb mistake on my part. I just fixed it, but now I have to go through and regenerate the thumbnails for the blueprints that were messed up while that bug occured. Since this is a developer forum, I'll try to explain what happened...

Basically, I have a PHP function that transforms regular numeric database ids(44,32,119, etc.) into shorter codes for shorter urls(3F,9G,2BT,4GH, etc.). I want a url that someone can look at on their iphone, and type into their browser, without using copy or paste. For that reason, I don't use the number 1, or the letters L or I, because they're too similar looking to each other. I also don't use the number 0, because it could be confused with the letter O.

What this means is that the number 2 is actually my number 0, because I don't have 0 or 1 in the character set. The number 2, because it's actually 0, also represents a "null" or bad answer. This is where the dumb part comes :)

I was doing a check to see if an encoded ID was bad by checking to see if it's the number 2... But for some reason I was doing a string check(good) and a numeric check(dumb). Here's the code:
```
if($encodedID == "2" || $encodedID == 2)
{
print('failed upload')
}
```
The error started occurring when the encoded ids got high enough to switch over from 9Z to 2aa. Because PHP is dynamically typed, it's more than happy to turn a string like "2aa" into the number 2 if you do a numeric comparison... The super easy way to fix it was just to take out the second condition completely, it wasn't necessary in the first place.

Also, you should know that it still uploaded the solution and stored it on the server, but it didn't ever create the images. Now I've gotta go back in and do that manually for all the ones that it screwed up.
Posted 1 year ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

"seems to be only happening to you for the most part" - Well I may have gone a little overboard in sending my solutions in! :) Its a great feature tho.

"transforms regular numeric ... into shorter codes" - again, terrific attention to detail and ui.

Luckily you caught it early. You can totally delete my solutions and Ill re-upload the ones I liked.

Posted 1 year ago #
Archdrone
Member

Incredible Game. Not only did I purchase it for my son and myself. I'm going to try cocos2d for my own project based on the slickness of this game.

Posted 1 year ago #
AggroPanda
Member

I've just bought this game based solely on the promo video, great job :)

I'll post my thoughts once I've had a chance to play it some more.

Posted 1 year ago #
ShempLock
Member

Hey, very nice game!

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member

You can totally delete my solutions and Ill re-upload the ones I liked.

It's all fixed now, I was even able to rescue all of your solutions! http://www.trainyard.ca/users/39

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member

Incredible Game. Not only did I purchase it for my son and myself. I'm going to try cocos2d for my own project based on the slickness of this game.

Thank you!

I've just bought this game based solely on the promo video, great job :)

Handy info, it's always good to know whether the promo videos work or not :D

Posted 1 year ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

This is my favorite solution so far:

http://www.trainyard.ca/2c6

look at how long it runs!

"I was even able to rescue all of your solutions!" Thanks!

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member

Haha, I was just looking at that solution too, pretty awesome. It currently has a "journey time" that's almost twice as long as any other solutions, the next closest is http://www.trainyard.ca/2a3

Oh, I also just remembered one other technical thing some devs might find interesting. All the tables in Trainyard may look and act like UITableViews or UIScrollviews, but they're actually a complete TableView system built in Cocos2D. It works in a similar(but simpler) way to how UITableView works. If you watch closely, you'll notice that the way it bounces at the top and bottom is slightly different than how Apple's stuff bounces. Once I convert the code to Cocos2D 1.0, I'll make it available if there's some interest... I made the same sort of thing in Flash too, like 6 months ago: http://www.indusblue.com/images/uploads/UITableView.swf

Posted 1 year ago #
Codemattic
Moderator

"the next closest is http://www.trainyard.ca/2a3" sigh - Turtle is one of only three puzzles I have yet to solve - hopefully I can come up with something that doesnt run quite that long. Its terrific how *different* people's solutions are - that must be gratifying as a designer.

"Once I convert the code to Cocos2D 1.0, I'll make it available if there's some interest... - that would be great - I would be interested in seeing that.

Posted 1 year ago #
Matt Rix
Member

Its terrific how *different* people's solutions are - that must be gratifying as a designer.

Yeah definitely, for example, I just discovered this solution for Gaius: http://www.trainyard.ca/2a2 - It's a brilliant way to lower the track count.

Also, I just noticed on the home page that someone else has made a tableview class for Cocos, at some point I'll have to check that out and see how it compares to mine: http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/archives/943

Posted 1 year ago #
jtbowden
Member

Hey Matt, I finished all of the levels, and saved a number of them to the web page, but I don't see any of my solutions there. I changed my username halfway through to Warehouse51. I don't know if that messed something up.

Also, did you intend for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to be the exact same puzzle?

-Jeff
Try Warehouse51! :)

Posted 1 year ago #
jtbowden
Member

Scratch that... I found them, maybe I didn't see them listed under the main page for the puzzle. Hmmm.

Posted 1 year ago #

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