[WIP] Puzzle-Kaboom

Thought I would share a nearly completed project called Puzzle-Kaboom. It's a head-to-head puzzle battle game with a fireworks theme. It plays more or less identically to the battle mode of Yoshi's Cookie if you're familiar with that one. The artwork is pretty spartan but its amped with procedural/particle effects, in an effort to cover up my general lack of drawing abilities.

Features:
1. Loads of firework effects (every firework type is has a distinct animation).
2. Battle against other players with triggerable powerups.
3. Vacant spots taken by AI players with tunable difficulty and handicap options.
4. Retro arcade sound effects courtesy of SFXR.
5. Detailed how to play demo.

It's nice to finally get this one off my plate - had started it over a year ago and rapidly got it to a playable state, but never skinned it with a theme and proper artwork (such as it is) until this week. I consider it to be more or less a finished project, but here's a list of features that might be added if I ever dig it out again:

1. Enter initials into a persistent high score table.
2. Display high score table within "attract loop".
3. Add more powerup effects. There are 17 of them currently, but a lot of them are just parameterized copies. I'd like suggestions for more unique effects.
4. Improve AI opponents to deliberately set up combo scores (they do it occasionally on accident).
5. More sound effects and graphical fluff for powerups - many are too quiet/subtle when triggered.

Suggestions on which features would contribute most to the game are really appreciated.

Here's the links:

SWF only - right click, save to local machine, launch in your own player.
http://esl.eng.ohio-state.edu/~rac/kart/kaboom.swf

SWF+source zipped together (no stealing please!)
http://esl.eng.ohio-state.edu/~rac/kart/kaboom.zip

Thanks for playing!


EDIT: Oops, forgot to list the controls - arrow keys(joystick) and space bar(yellow button).

cool. Im looking forward to seeing the ai behind that :D thanks for sharing!

he looks cool. opponent ai is a great idea.
i think the control system needs some work tough. it seems a bit cumbersome. if it is intended for an arcade machine then it would be ok but i think it's a little awkward with a keyboard.

The whole "move the cursor, lock the cursor, shift rows/columns in a circle" mechanic is a core aspect of the game (and Yoshi's Cookie too).

However, maybe I could improve my implementation of it? Is it too fast or slow? Should the motion be more "zippy" instead of just linear easing from one position to another? Another idea I toyed with was requiring the user to tap the stick (or arrow key) once for each position moved (instead of just holding down and sliding until they release the button). Do you think that might help?

I find I overshoot the final position more often than I would like so there's certainly room for improvement. Thanks for the feedback guys :)

Very nice, a 2 player version could be great :)

Actually 1-4 (human) players is already supported, they just have unorthodox key mappings. Player 1 gets the top row keys 12345, player 2 gets the second row of keys QWERT, and so forth.

Making a version of the game that supports two players against two computers, behind one keyboard, would be a 30 minute exercise. A good remapping would be to assign player 1 with WASD and player 2 with the arrow keys.

You can remap them inside the "FourPlayerButtonSet" class. :)
EDIT: this class is in /common

Hey I enjoyed this. Would much prefer mouse control: click on tile to move, click tile to move to.

Anyway, good stuff! I think it would make a great multiplayer game. (not local, i mean real multiplayer)