I’ve been working on the AI for my game .. I’ve implemented some floodfill and a few different types of hit detection to get the enemies to be smart. I think as of now, the AI is “smart enough”. I’ve got a few different bots for a few different game types as well.

Here’s a screenshot with some of my debug info in an overlay.

Next up, I’m going to try and get a prototype running on the iPod, so I can tweak the UI a bit so it is playable via the touch and accelerometer interfaces. Once I’m happy with that I’ll probably add in more game types. Finally I’ll wrap things up with a lot of sparkle.

I’m not sure, but I’m having fun all the same 🙂

Still in the python phase.  Still working out what the game modes will be.  I’m going to try to build it similar to Galcon – with 5 single player modes.

So it’s about time to make something new here:

Instead of jumping right into the iPhone code on this one, I decided to prototype the game in python+pygame first. I’ve gotten a lot of UI glitches worked out, and I’m going to get at least one complete single player game working nicely in python before I port it over to C.

Galcon was “easy” to port to C because I had a very clear definition of what I was going to create before I created it.  Since this is a new game, I think if I define the game pretty well in python first it will save me loads of time tweaking stuff in C.

“The Galcon Prize is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to improve the Galcon rankings system! Galcon is a winner-takes-all multi-player game for 2-4 players. Entries are to be written in python. The prize is an 8GB iPod Touch. Entries must be uploaded by Oct 5.”

I’ve updated the dataset with way more data … so you’ll want to download that.

Here are the mid-contest results:

 1. rafsoaken        452.44  0:20 [-407,836]
 2. codepenguin      452.42  0:20 [431,1392]
 3. mewo2            452.36  0:19 [167,1601]
 4. azbuky           451.46  0:16 [54,903]
 5. fl0yd13          450.88  0:14 [103,7400]
 6. paulatreides     449.94  0:16 [0,24990]
 7. elo              449.93  0:18 [415,1352]
 8. adamzap          446.13  0:18 [0,7]
 9. simple           445.15  0:13 [-9922,6624]
10. mithrandir       440.20  0:28 [-33,1019]
11. percent          438.49  0:14 [0,100]
12. kester           424.54  0:13 [1,502]
13. rounds           387.33  0:12 [1,10710]
14. noop             317.46  0:11 [0,0]
15. bad              224.82  0:12 [-3803,0]

So .. It looks like the results are REALLY close .. The scoring is basically a percentage of how often the algorithm guesses correctly. So all the top entries are in the 45% correct zone. This is a nice improvement over my current algorithm which is at 43% correct.

Also, be sure to to keep uploading your entries throughout the week, I’ll try and post an update every day or so with the current standings so you can see how you are doing.  I may be testing your entries against NEW data that you will not have access to, in order to test how well your algorithm handles data it hasn’t previously trained against.  So watching for updates on the results will be quite valuable.

Also, rafsoaken sent me a histogram viewer function, which I’ve added to gprize.py. Run it with -histogram to see a visual of how your numbers are spreading. I’ll probably be using that to help me decide if an entry will really “work” for Galcon.

Hey, so I’ve never been feeling overly smart about how my rankings system works.  And quite a few of you have expressed interest in hacking on the stats data or trying to improve the ranks some way.  So here’s your chance!

Introducing The Galcon Prize!

“The Galcon Prize is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to improve the Galcon rankings system! Galcon is a winner-takes-all multi-player game for 2-4 players. Entries are to be written in python. The prize is an 8GB iPod Touch. Entries must be uploaded by Oct 5.”

Check it out, and have some fun!  🙂  If all works well, in a few weeks Galcon rankings will be considerably more-awesomer 🙂

-Phil

Watermelons is the ultimate fruit rescue mission game! The local watermelon tree has gone berserk and is producing fresh watermelons at an amazing rate.

You must move your trampoline at high speed in order to save the melons from splattering horribly on the ground. You get ten slip-ups before you lose your job as the Melon Master.

Includes high scores, realistic watermelon sound effects and authentic watermelon bouncing soundtrack.

Watermelons was first created in several hours using python+pygame.  I then ported it to haxe.  And then last of all, I ported it to the iPhone / iPod touch using C code.  I suppose the dev lesson learned is .. rapid prototyping stuff in python is really quick and easy.  So when I port a game from python to something else, I’ve got the whole game concept down, so it’s fairly straight forward to switch to a static language like C.  If say, the problem was not well defined, I suspect it would be harder to implement the games in C first.  (I think my statement here was particularly true for porting Galcon to the iPhone.)

Anyway, check out the flash version, and if you think it’s worth your 0.99, you can get it on the App Store now 🙂

Hey, one of the Galcon-iPhone users is really doing his best to help me get the word out! He’s put up a digg article linking to an awesome youtube video he made demoing the gameplay on the iphone 🙂 Spread the word – and check out the sweet video!

So I’ve been doing iPhone dev for about 2 months straight now.  Just yesterday I sent my latest Galcon update to Apple.  This update includes multi-player wicked-awesomeness.  It will be available whenever Apple approves it.  I plan on doing a bug-fix update a week or so later to resolve any odds-and-ends that come up.  In the meantime, I’m trying to recover from my 2 months of solid coding.

The iPod has taken its toll on me.  I’m about five pounds heavier and I’ve lost any definition I pretended to have.  Time to get back into shape!  We’ll see how that goes.  I’m trying to reserve a few hours a day for “not sitting in a chair.”

In other news, I’m attending PAX’08 in a couple weeks.  Look for the guy in the Galcon t-shirt.  I’ll also be hanging out with the Garage Games and Brawndo folks a bit.

Hey, I’m trying to get Galcon-iphone to work for the color-blind population 🙂

Here’s the colors I’m thinking about using. If you are color-blind can you tell me if you can discern between the colors? If not, please tell me which numbered colors you are having difficulty with.

Thanks!