[search alogs] Flash Puzzle Bubble

currently developing a clone of my favourite puzzle game:
puzzle bobble - by taito. http://taito.overclocked.org/pbobble.html

I know there are many existing examples of this game available,
I found on the games boards this good example - http://www.2noodles.com/games/bubblepop/bubblepop.html

however instead of ripping the code off i just want to develop it for my
self and try to understand the concepts behind it.

I'm using staggered tile system rather than hex based tiles.
I've got an iterative function that builds a list of connecting
bubbles and bursts them when there are no more connecting bubbles within the search.

The problem im having is how to know what bubbles to drop from the
play feild once the bubbles above it burst. The check is not the top edge because
a bubble can be connected from the bottom and still be 'attached' to other
nodes.

If anyone has experience playing puzzle bubble AND in coding something like this before I'd love to hear some ideas.

Im quite competant programming in flash, but my brain cant get round
the concepts!

thanks
Jef

Hi Jeff,

It sounds like you have implemented a working 'touching' algorithm to detect if 3 or more of the same color are touching.

To check which ones fall is a similar process.

You do a 'touching' check for every tile in the top row, but you do it for any color, not just the same color.

This should generate a list of all the tiles which are touching, then you drop everything else.

Thanks for the reply

I think what your saying is that
starting with the top row recurse downwards

however the problem i had was some bubbles might
not be connected above or below, but still connected
left and right.

Instead of doing a recursive check ive thought of
doing a entire field check in two passes:

1. starting from top to bottom going from left to right
2. staring from bottom to top going right to left

this way i can check for adjacent bubbles, and might be
quicker than recursive checks

Have you any or anybody else have any thoughts on how to approach this, let me know what you think.

Jeff

dont blocks fall if they are only held by the left? I only thought it mattered if they were connected by the top?

Im not sure if I understand the problem correctly, but here would be how I would check it:

You start from the top row and find bubble there. You find all the bubbles connected to the current bubble and add connected bubbles into temp array. You also need to mark checked bubbles somehow so they dont get added again.

Now you go through the top row until you have checked all the top bubbles.

Next you take first bubble from the temp array and check its neighbours.

Continue taking bubbles from temp array until its empty.

In the end, all the bubbles, that have somehow attached to the top, are marked.

Then run check through all the stage and release the bubbles, that havent been marked.

I have a few ideas. Click here to see them.

http://www24.brinkster.com/bixarrio/bobble.htm

I used a lot of images, which is why I used a different page.

Maybe this will help.

Oh, I see TonyPa had similar ideas...