[Released] Welltris and Wetrix (and Wordtris)

[FartSatchel]

Get it and play it here: https://fartsatchel.itch.io/wordtris

 

 

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Aka they came through the floor. I was indecisive.

 

Meteos but with words.

Make words to ignite them (red temp tiles), sending all letters above the completed word's letters up and out of the board. New letters come through the floor. Let the letters stack too high and you lose.  

 

I want to add special tiles (clears a line if used in a word, etc), power ups (bombs that you only get by using "B", "O", "M", and "B" tiles to form words), and an adaptive soundtrack like in mini metro.

 

I've never done anything mulitplayer but a versus mode could be super fun. That's WAY down on the priority list though.

 

 

 

[Travis]

Curious to see more! One of the best parts of Wetrix is the cool deep voice that comments throughout.

[FartSatchel]

Visual concept done in aseprite because I didn't get photoshop on my new computer yet. Final game will most likely be vector art but who knows the pixel art style kinda grew on me.

[FartSatchel]

Here is how the game currently plays.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Looking good! Are you using a game engine?

[FartSatchel]

8 minutes ago, Godzilla Blitz said:

Looking good! Are you using a game engine?

Using Unity. Never worked with the UI system before so this is my first time! I have no idea how to animate anything in a canvas so the flames are going to be a challenge lol.

[Godzilla Blitz]

1 minute ago, FartSatchel said:

Using Unity. Never worked with the UI system before so this is my first time! I have no idea how to animate anything in a canvas so the flames are going to be a challenge lol.

Very cool.

 

Is there a difference between how you animate something in the UI Canvas and how you animate something in a scene?

[FartSatchel]

2 minutes ago, Godzilla Blitz said:

Very cool.

 

Is there a difference between how you animate something in the UI Canvas and how you animate something in a scene?

For scene animations I've always used a sprite renderer and animation controller. For the UI canvas I'm using Images which only take materials, not sprites. I think there's a way to animate materials but I gota search that up.

 

If there are easier ways someone please let me know.

[pdotjpg]

2 hours ago, FartSatchel said:

For scene animations I've always used a sprite renderer and animation controller. For the UI canvas I'm using Images which only take materials, not sprites. I think there's a way to animate materials but I gota search that up.

 

If there are easier ways someone please let me know.

 

You can really easily animate a material with this script. It's been years since I used it myself though, so I'm not sure 1)if it'll fully fit your needs, and 2)how well it plays with newer versions of Unity. 

[FartSatchel]

Got the block and letter depression effect in. There are still LOTS of bugs with it, but it's in.

[phill]

This is such a great idea! Looks like it's shaping up really well and you're learning some new stuff at the same time, so win win!

[Travis]

Unity's animation system works just fine with UI elements. Biggest issue is how many elements you might have in a hierachy and it can get messy and tedious.

[FartSatchel]

21 hours ago, Travis said:

Unity's animation system works just fine with UI elements. Biggest issue is how many elements you might have in a hierachy and it can get messy and tedious.

So far every single letter is it's own element in the hierarchy so yea...

 

Is there a better way to do it? I know I can parent them under an empty gameobject but is there another way? Like in Firewatch, are all the hundred and thousands of trees all children to one empty gameobject?

[FartSatchel]

The collision detection for selecting the letters feels janky right now. Sometimes what feels like should be selected isn't selected and what feels like shouldn't be selected, is.

 

The biggest issue is with the collider have to allow for diagonal letter selection. 

 

Does anyone have experience with these grid based collider shapes or suggestions for shapes to try? These are the ones I've tested so far.

[Nappi]

Good progress! I like the raised block look a lot.

 

I was trying to imagine how I would select the worlds, and I think I would try to go through the center area of each block I want to select but wouldn't be super careful when moving diagonally. Therefore I think I would prefer a smaller collider at the center. Can you erase the selection by going back to the previous block? Because that would reduce the potential frustration quite a bit.

[FartSatchel]

16 minutes ago, Nappi said:

Good progress! I like the raised block look a lot.

 

I was trying to imagine how I would select the worlds, and I think I would try to go through the center area of each block I want to select but wouldn't be super careful when moving diagonally. Therefore I think I would prefer a smaller collider at the center. Can you erase the selection by going back to the previous block? Because that would reduce the potential frustration quite a bit.

Thanks, the raised block look was a pain to make and still gives a few bugs but i think the results are worth it. Shoutout to puzzlejuice.

 

I let the player erase the selection by one only. I was thinking of letting them go back to any point in the selection but with the jank selection right now it just lead to accidental cancellations all the time. I might add that back in if I fix the selection collision problem.

 

Also thinking of reducing the number of columns from the current 9 to 7 and make all blocks bigger just to help with the selection problem. That's a last resort though.

[Travis]

9 hours ago, FartSatchel said:

So far every single letter is it's own element in the hierarchy so yea...

 

Is there a better way to do it? I know I can parent them under an empty gameobject but is there another way? Like in Firewatch, are all the hundred and thousands of trees all children to one empty gameobject?

 

 

Maybe each letter can have it's own animation controller? I am not sure how you have it set up. I am guessing a game like firewatch has a complex hierarchy of different objects. Hard to even guess what they found that worked with their work flow.

 

So, having the collider all the way to the edges isn't working? I assumed you would be detecting entry and exit to each element as UI images. They can use an interface... which I can't look up ATM. If a fully flushed collider isn't working, though, I'm guessing that won't help. Also, make sure you have raycast target turned off on the text in each box so it isn't blocking any interactions with your collider. Just some possible thoughts without really knowing your situation.

 

Game is looking good! Those interface particulars can be so frustrating. You'll get it!

[FartSatchel]

Changed the burnt letters, and added more effects that hopefully add more umf to completing a word

 

[FartSatchel]

SCREENSHAKEEEEEEE

[pdotjpg]

That looks great! Really crunchy feedback.

 

How are you checking for valid words? Some dictionary API?

[Travis]

I like the effects, a lot!

[FartSatchel]

6 hours ago, pdotjpg said:

That looks great! Really crunchy feedback.

 

How are you checking for valid words? Some dictionary API?

Thank you.

 

Oh god I wish I was that fancy lol. No I'm just getting a .txt file of all English words off the Scrabble website, reading it as a List<string>, converting it into a HashSet<string>, then doing a .contains()

 

Here's the .txt file for anyone's future use

WordDictionary.txt

[pdotjpg]

4 hours ago, FartSatchel said:

Thank you.

 

Oh god I wish I was that fancy lol. No I'm just getting a .txt file of all English words off the Scrabble website, reading it as a List<string>, converting it into a HashSet<string>, then doing a .contains()

 

Here's the .txt file for anyone's future use

WordDictionary.txt

 

Didn't know that's a thing! Very good solution. Thanks for sharing the file.

[FartSatchel]

Added more UI elements that hopefully gets at the goals of the game.

 

I'm not happy with the letters to scores particles, gota think of another way to represent them.

[FartSatchel]

updated UI and fixed a bug that prevented rare letters (Q, B, X, etc) from showing up