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Game Development Showcase
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| Dodecahellspawn - Work in Progress |
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| Developer | SiCrane |
| Genre | Puzzle |
| Platform | Windows |
| Downloads | 832 |
About:
Dodecahellspawn is a simulation of a puzzle similar to the famous Rubik's Cube. However, instead of a cube, the game is played with a dodecahedron, with six axes of rotation, which makes gameplay approximately a million times harder than the cube. The "hellspawn" portion of the game is, in fact, a reference to
the difficulty of the game. (And has nothing to do with the pentagrams that appear all over the place.)
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Please offer only constructive criticism. The intent of the GD Showcase is to help the developer create the best game they possibly can. Show them you support their efforts when posting.
 |   __Daedalus__
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Posted - 7/15/2004 6:05:01 PM | I like this SiCrane but the textures on the faces kind of hurt my eyes a bit - especially when I jumbled it up with the M key. There is a lot of clashing of colour. A choice of textures would be good - kind of like how you can choose a deck of cards in Solitaire. Also, a nice theme tune like you would find in Tetris wouldn't go amiss  .
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 | superpig GDNet Technical Lead
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Posted - 7/15/2004 7:26:28 PM | Nice; but your solver is broken. It stopped with one incorrect piece per face, aside from about three faces that were correct and one that was totally screwed...
Once the solver works, I'd suggest that you add the ability to stop it midway - maybe if I'm stuck I could start the solver for 10 seconds or so, then click to stop it and work from there, kinda thing.
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 | SiCrane Staff
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Posted - 7/15/2004 8:44:27 PM | Woo hoo! First bug report!
Anyways, the undo button should also undo moves performed by the munge right now, so you can drill down the difficulty some just by hitting U repeatedly. I might add something like a "Undo last ten moves" command when I get the remappable keys working.
As for the textures, I'm colorblind, so all I can say is that there's a very good reason that all the textures are sitting around as freely editable files. :)
If and when we allow multiple files for GDS entries, I'll upload some additional texture packs, hopefully a few created by someone with normal color vision. Increasing the size of the current zip isn't much of an option since my connection is sufficiently flaky that that I can't reliably upload files much greater than the current zip.
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 | Michael Tanczos Staff
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Posted - 7/15/2004 11:04:57 PM | Quote:Original post by __Daedalus__
I like this SiCrane but the textures on the faces kind of hurt my eyes a bit - especially when I jumbled it up with the M key. There is a lot of clashing of colour. A choice of textures would be good - kind of like how you can choose a deck of cards in Solitaire. Also, a nice theme tune like you would find in Tetris wouldn't go amiss . |
I agree. I really think there should be an alternate solid color scheme perhaps. While this is really pretty it is extremely difficult to distinguish matching sides.
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Michael Tanczos
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| SiCrane Staff
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Posted - 7/15/2004 11:49:08 PM | Well, here's a texture pack that uses solid colors. No guarantees on how usuable it is. Eventually the goal is to put the different texture set in either archives or directories with the executable that would be selectable by the the configuration file. Until I implement that, you can just overwrite the existing images.
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 | TANSTAAFL Moderator - Isometric Land
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Posted - 7/16/2004 12:11:08 AM | Initially, I was at a complete and total loss on how the controls worked. Then I eventually figured it out(sort of, as I'm still not completely sure and sometimes what I think will work does the opposite), and the way this game is controlled definitely gets in the way of playing it. I originally thought that I would be using the mouse to drag, or to push or to pull. From what I gather, however, I click the right mouse button and move left or right or up or down, and the face whose normal is closest to pointing directly at me is the one that turns. I'm thinking at the VERY least, do some sort of highlighting on the face that winds up getting rotated.
This would be a nifty little game to put into a larger adventure game as a puzzle to figure out. More on this in a moment.
Of course, at the same time, I'm not fooled. I make board/puzzle games that are traditionally played on a rectangular grid and make them use hexagons instead(I have never been accused of being original in the slightest), so to me this game is just a rubik's cube with twice as many sides. You can texture map it and light it all day long(all of which look very nice, btw, but ultimately the worth of a game is what is behind all of the glitz-the eye candy just gets people to try it), and it's still just a rubik's cube with twice as many sides. It is an interesting novelty, and those are typically short lived.
Again, it would be perfect for in a Zelda-ish game(i've been playing wind waker, and it has all sorts of these little mini-games) where the player has to solve the dodecahedron in order to unlock a door or something, but that makes it but a small piece of the whole.
Of course, if you use a homemade random number generator, and have specific daily puzzles(based on seed value) where players can submit their times(the only way I can conceive of scoring this game) online, then you might have something.
EDIT: Skin-ability is practically a requirement, as stated by others. Also think "screensaver".
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| SiCrane Staff
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Posted - 7/16/2004 3:18:59 AM | Quote:Original post by TANSTAAFL
I'm thinking at the VERY least, do some sort of highlighting on the face that winds up getting rotated. |
I'm working on a mouse gesture system that should address most of the UI concerns. The premise behind the most basic part of it is that you should be able "grab" a face and rotate it it that way. Unfortunately, I'm running into a nasty bug where the wrong face get's rotated. :( In the meantime, highlighting the near face sounds like a good idea.
Quote:
so to me this game is just a rubik's cube with twice as many sides. |
You are exactly right. The first version back in '99 was written for someone who liked the cube but thought that the cube version was too easy. (More precisely, the original goal behind dodecahellspawn was to create a model, so I could physically build one of these darn things.)
Quote:
Also think "screensaver". |
Funny enough, the current build does have a screensaver mode. (Err. Screenburner mode, to be honest.)
[Edited by - SiCrane on July 16, 2004 6:18:06 AM]
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| Hellsp4wn
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Posted - 7/20/2004 6:12:01 PM | I think it was a nice game, but I have to admit, I don't have the patience to solve a puzzle like this, and if I met this exact puzzle in a game like Zelda or something, I would probably go mad =)
The ui is a bit odd, but I guess I could get used to it.
Quote:| The first version back in '99 was written for someone who liked the cube but thought that the cube version was too easy. |
Ouch, that hurt =P
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| Chris Hare
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Posted - 8/9/2004 8:12:45 PM | The textures are great, IMHO, though the option to toggle the background colour would be a nice addition. Good job!
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 | capn_midnight GDNet+
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Posted - 8/11/2004 3:19:03 PM | I really liked the textures, and thought the movement was very smooth. The sparkling light on the inside was a nice touch.
Perhaps turn up the turning speed a bit, it seems a bit tedious to wait for it to turn so slowly.
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| hellz
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Posted - 8/29/2004 5:03:07 PM | SiCrane,
Although this post won't be of much help, I just wanted to say that I thought the game looked incredibly pretty. In fact, even my girlfriend mentioned how "cool" it is, so very nice job man.
I agree with what others have said about the UI and textures, though. I picked up the UI easily enough, but only after I'd forgotten a few moves that I'd already made.
Definitely needs some kind of highlighting on which face is being manipulated; perhaps even just a tint of one specific colour.
Ran really well on my girlfriend's PC (AMD Athlon XP 2000+, WinXP Pro, 224MB RAM and S3 ProSavage DDR 32MB). I'll try it on my PC in a few days time (Win2k Pro) and let you know how it goes.
Only thing I can add that others haven't said, is perhaps the ability to run in fullscreen. The resolution used here is 800x600, so it's a little awkward to use the game, something I think fullscreen would fix.
Anyway, really great job man. Can't wait for the finished product.
-hellz
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| Anonymous Poster | |
Posted - 9/22/2004 6:57:39 AM | Haven't really PLAYED the game (as puzzles aren't my thing!), but spent ages just playing WITH it... looking at all the pretty colors! How about some lights orbiting around it? :)
Looks great!
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| Anonymous Poster | |
Posted - 11/18/2004 1:13:23 PM | nice game,
easy and intuitiv to control :
Nice Grafics (what about bumbmaps ;))
but i'm to stupid to slove it :)
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 | Ravuya Moderator - GDNet Lounge
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Posted - 2/28/2005 1:10:15 AM | What an awesome name!
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| Anonymous Poster | |
Posted - 3/25/2005 4:58:43 AM | I've never seen such a beautiful simple game. Moreover, I will never be able to win this, I can't even comprehend a rubix cube.
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| Anonymous Poster | |
Posted - 6/12/2005 12:59:13 PM | I thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. I hate the name though -- think simpler. Don't get me wrong either, my game's names suck too.
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 | Vanderry GDNet+
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Posted - 11/21/2010 1:33:51 PM | This is my first time looking through someone's showcase so I'll try my best to provide useful criticism. First off I want to say that I am amazed by this piece, it has an innocent look while it's easy to deduce that there lies a lot of complex logic behind it. It's a fresh vision of an old idea, and it reminds me of the zen game franchise of puzzle: MYST, which is a great thing in my opinion. The textures are very beautiful, although I would probably suggest that the user is able to turn off the transparency, just to make it a little bit easier to see what's going on.
[Edited by - Vanderry on November 21, 2010 4:33:03 PM]
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