Chain Reaction!


Holy cow that is satisfying! (when it works)


While testing and tweaking tonight I noticed two things.

A.) It is quite difficult to actually setup the chain reaction to test deliberately given the random nature of the Pachinko style of the game

B.) It wasn't working...

(The red balls absolutely should have triggered there)


So what I did was add a boolean flag for whether or not matches were being resolved (aptly named resolving_matches), and while that was active and it was checking all the basins. Rolling that logic under _update() allows me to break the matching & clearing loops outside of the drop_ball() which is doing A LOT of the heavy lifting when it comes to the logic, and also allows me to finish the animations before resolving the next checking/clearing.



See what I mean about satisfying? I suppose its over a bit too fast, but if I slow the ball dropping/gravity that should slow it down



Additionally I fixed the logic for the clone balls, (the ones that look like a bar chart in excel), so that should be the last "special ball" I needed to code. 


Progress :)


To do:

  • Make sense of scoring
  • Double check wildcard ball code/logic. Seems it triggers on any 3 balls, not 2-of-a-kind + wildcard
  • Fix bug where held item will still hold when you start a new game.
  • Clean up the UI (add boundaries to left/right, fix score alignment.
  • Additional Gameplay Functions?
    • Revert/Undo - costs X number of points
    • Wipe Board - costs XX number of point
    • Victory Condition?
      • Set Score to meet/beat?
      • Set number of balls in the hopper to survive?
      • True endless?
  • Rebalance ball numbers. Right now 30+ % special balls, which feels high.
  • Fix Title Screen
    • Logo/Header Image
    • Fix UI on selection
    • BG music?
  • BG music for gameplay as well

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