mousetrap game suggestions

[ryanlowe0]

continuing with the loop making theme of my circuitron game: http://www.lehigh.edu/~rwl3/circuitron.swf, i'm developing a new game where the object is to trap mice before they eat all the cheese on the other side of the maze. in addition to making interior loops, you can trap a mouse against a wall. you can't, however, make a continuous vertical wall from floor to ceiling to block all mice (thats not a bug).

i'm looking for comments and suggestions, especially on improving game play.

one concern i have is what should happen if you try to move a wall near a mouse. right now, i disallow rotations that would cause the wall to pass through the mouse, but that can be annoying if it prevents you from completing a loop. one alternative is to have the wall smack the mouse if he is too close. this sounds like it could be funny, but if no one thinks its a good idea, i wont waste my time implementing it.

please play mousetrap and tell me what you think: http://www.lehigh.edu/~rwl3/mousetrap.swf

[Trickman]

that seems like i brilliant idea -

maybe another way of doing this would be to enable the user to actually try to guide the mice to a mouse trap

or moust traps pop up every 20 sceonds or so and the user has that 20 secs to get the mouse trapped before the trap is removed and generated somewhere else

is the game tile based?

and are the mice using simple AI (i.e randomally changing direction when the but a barrier?

deffinately stick with this idea!

[ryanlowe0]

thanks for the feedback.

leading the mice to an actual trap would definitely be more in tune with the name of the game, but how would you lose? it would be nice if there was some sort of animation when the mouse was caught...

i guess you could call it tile based. the info is stored in a few 2d arrays. each of the wall orientations is a frame in an mc.

the ai is slightly better than random. its weighted toward moving to the right and against retracing its steps.

[Trickman]

the ai is slightly better than random. its weighted toward moving to the right and against retracing its steps.

could you explain a bit about how the retracing of steps implemented ? it that the reason for a few 2d arrays ?

does it simply store the tiles that the mouse has walked on?

well how about (as it's a top down view) you put in a wall and a few mouse holes, get the mouse to walk through the maze and throught the hole (it escapes) you lose a life

---------------------------
been playing the game offline (not really playing) but trying to see how many mice i could get on the screen

i noticed that sometimes the mice walk backwards (as thay can't turn round) and they back through the barriers

[small]
[Edited by Trickman on 09-02-2002 at 08:19 PM]

[ryanlowe0]

yea, i kind of like the mouse hole idea. i have to think about that...

each mouse keeps an int array of the number of times it has visited each square which it uses as input in deciding where to go next. i have another int array for the wall positions and a boolean array for mouse positions.

i know about the backing through walls...i havent figured out the best way to deal with this. i might have to add a backwards turn to their repitoire for cases where they cant turn forward without going through a wall.

[Edited by ryanlowe0 on 09-02-2002 at 09:56 PM]