Hi all!

I was thinking it might be fun to challenge myself to see what sort of Bejeweled 2 clone I could produce in one month. I think probably that such a game would be well received, but I thought I'd get feedback before starting.

First, if somebody else is well-along on such a thing already and expects to release it in that time frame, that would stop me. So if that's true of you, please let me know! Of course if you don't follow through with that release in short order I'll throw rocks at you

Second, that game is similar to Tilematch (which is itself something of a clone of another game I believe). If it would be redundant for that reason and therefore uninteresting that would be bad. I also don't want to do it if that would be unfair to miq01. I think that game has been out long enough that another somewhat similar game could come out without being unfair, but if that's not true I'd like to hear about it.

Thanks!

I'm a big fan of puzzle games like Bejeweled. The more the merrier, I say!

I say go for it. Tilematch is a clone of Bejeweled. I have no idea if Bejeweled is an original game or not. All Bejeweled 2 added to it was updated grahics and maybe a few new game modes.

What I would really like to see would be a version of Settlers of Cattan for the GP2X. Or maybe a really nice Mahjong game. Something like Mah Jong Quest.

Well, Bejeweled without a touchscreen sucks... :-/ I'd rather see a Pokemon Puzzle League/FruitSwap 100%/whatever the other name was - clone. It's somewhat similar but imo better for dpad gameplay.

I say do whatever makes you happy. If you can put your own spin on it like you always seem to, then I'm sure it will be a worthwhile addition to anyone's SD card.

Already been working on it for about a month : ) It is now somewhat playable but I don't know how long it'll be before it is complete so there is no point asking.

is pokemon puzzle league similar to Tetris Attack? I loved that game!

Dzz - go for it! Maybe see if you can add something completely original to it so that it is still entertaining to those of us who are sick of the original game (due to overplaying it )

Pokemon Puzzle League = Tetris Attack = Panel de Pon, IIRC.

Addictive game(s).

Yes please - TileMatch is a good game, but a better/alternative one would be well received!

There's a good clone called gemini on GBA
http://gbadev.org/index.php?showinfo=1166

and a less good clone also called itself bejeweled, but source is also available.
http://gbadev.org/index.php?showinfo=1227

Bejeweled 2 added 'explodey gems' or something of the sort - match 4 or more in a row, one will turn into a glowy gem. if you use that gem in a match, it'll blow up surrounding gems. i think if you matched 5, it turned into a super-explodey, but i don't remember for sure.

one thing i thought TileMatch was lacking was vibrant feedback when matches are made, and the like. the Bejeweled games handle this quite well.

I personally think Hexic (like the free xbox live arcade game on 360 premiums) would be a better choice. I am sure someone is familiar with it. It plays nicely without a touchscreen.

Shouldn't take too long.. I whipped up Manticore in about 3 days for the core, plus another week to make it feel a bit more complete Manticore could be turned into bejwelled without too much work.

I think a game like that is really quite basic.. the complexity in the code is all in the pollish.. sliding panels, making it pretty, drawing nice artwork, getting nice audio.. all that jazz. the game itself.. well, its been implemented on the C64 after all

jeff

Zuma,zuma,zuma,zuma

I had thought about zuma or luxor but in neither case can I figure out how to make the controls effective. Those games rely on pinpoint aiming done very fast and I can't think of a way to do it with the gp2x. The scheme used in Bubble Train (gbax competitoin winner) is just not accurate enough in my opinion.

If I could figure this out I'd do a zuma or luxor clone instead in a heartbeat. "Luxor: Amun Rising" is one of my favorite games of all time. At least with the Bejeweled type game the method used in Tilematch is adequate. If I go forward with the project I will probably use the L key as a "shift" key that accelerates cursor movement to make moving far distances faster. Maybe the same thing could be done for zuma...

How about a Paintball or Psarakia? Those were my favourite Palm puzzlers and as far as I can tell, they are original. Of course they would also be optimal with a touchscreen but especially Psarakia could work without one since it only uses 5*5 tiles. Of course it'd be difficult to find out how the game works if you don't have a Palm... Check it out here: http://crazysoft.gr/palm_os/puzzle_games/psarakia.asp I love the combos. Maybe you could even do an official port?

Thanks for your input everybody! I have decided what to do (but will keep it to myself for now rather than start talking about vaporware).

Ballistic on the GameBoy Color is very similar (and can be played now)...

... then what was your reason for posting this useless information?

Ok.. no one responded to Hexic so are you guys unfamiliar or you just hate the game?

I love Hexic too, I have played it a lot of hours in my 360



Thank you, I´ll try it

It's not completely vaporware any more since I wrote a little code for it... the game is to be called Jewel Beach. When you're bored you can always clink the link in my signature to get a recent screenshot and brief news.

You know what. You make a good deal of games for the 2x. I like you. Any chance of a Lumines clone in the future? I can make some kicking beats for it if you want.

Both.

Yeah, you're pretty cool, making original homebrew and more than one game too.

I'm making some progress on this... Here's a little screen shot. This is not what a real gameboard will look like, it's just showing artwork so I can test how it looks:

Looks really nice. Is it going to be a 'normal' three tiles - swapping game or are threre going to be some nice extras?

There will be extras. The different "levels" have different board shapes, see for example



You have to obtain an objective within a time limit to move to the next level. The objectives are based on different things... the wood and tile backgrounds have special meanings i this regard, as do the gems inside the hearts. The gems inside the purple dots are bombs that explode when matched.

At least, that's the plan.

I am a huge fan of Bejeweled, and this game looks like a great clone!

That looks cool! Thanks for the update.

Status update:

Exactly half of the one month target has passed, and I'd say Jewel Beach is a little less than half done. I'm still hoping to have it finished August 10 as intended, but since it is software, it's more likely that it will slip a little bit.

At the moment I'm blasting away at "details" - probably 80% of building a game involves taking care of the little things.

Fantastic graphics, the menu posted on your homepage looks great aswell! Also the game seems to fit the theme you've choosen very well. Looks like there'll be a in-game tutorial aswell. That's one of the things that - even if not all of the people use it - actually gives the game a great professional touch.
Is there any reason that you set a release date or is that just that the user has an idea when it will be released? Oh, and just out of curiosity, are you going to enter the community game contest?

Thanks! The original concept was "what can i build in a month?" so that's the reason for the deadline, just a personal timeframe to focus my efforts.

When I first got my gp2x and started writing Vektar in February, there weren't that many releases coming out and the quality of the games was on average pretty low. Since then I have noticed that the quantity and quality of what's being released has gone up quite a bit. Your poker game is a good example -- once some of the gameplay issues are worked through that will be a great release!

So after JB is done, I'll have released two more-or-less original games, one port, and one clone, each in about the "4-6 weeks effort" time frame. After that I think (since there is lots of good stuff coming out now) I will start working on a couple of somewhat longer term projects instead of these small games -- something for the contest in December and an RPG which probably won't be done until next spring. Plus of course I'll keep updating NetHack until I'm comfortable calling it "done enough", and the upcoming Zooov episodes will dribble out slowly over time.

Sketching out what I will need to do to get my RPG done, it's a huge amount of work, but maybe moving on to more ambitious projects will be a good idea.

Nice idea. I use things like that as well.


Something I noticed as well. I already looked into these forums in February, but somehow the homebrew scene wasn't as nice as now, like you said, less quality then. But also, more and more releases seem to look more professional, especially if you browse the spanish forums. I just can say things like 'Olà!' and then my spainish is at the end, but there are awesome looking games.
Thanks for mentioning the poker game, it was my first target to make it a good experience for the player. I built the whole engine first, so that I could play it without any problems via terminal, and the rest of the time I'll be spending on the user interface.


It's hard to find the right moment for long projects. I started multiple of these things years ago, but I never had the patience to finish one of these. The longest time for developping a game was one month, then I stopped on that because it bored me. But I think I'll be able to finish one of these now or in half a year.

Anyway, I'm lookign forward to Jewel Beach and also to your RPG. Homebrew RPG's are most of the times fun to play

Looking forward to this homebrew release. Looking good! It will be interesting to see how it compares against TileMatch!

Bejeweled 2 for Xbox360 works quite well of course one has to get used to the different control scheme but it's actually quite similar to the mouse controlled Bejeweled 2 on the pc.
The gp2x's joystick in a similar control scheme to the windowspc or X360 version is perfect for diagonal movement which you do need a lot for bejeweled actually.

Heh I know what you mean. I actually have things in my "/Games" folder, as opposed to "/Emulators"

Anyway sweet work with the game, Dzz Games is shaping up to be quite an enterprise lol

nice pics! I'm glad to see a Bejewelled game on the 2x, especially one with a few extras! I'm especially happy that it's coming from you, Dzz. I have no doubt this will have the professionalism that your other projects convey.

Thanks for taking the time to update the peons of the community with the progress you make, I absolutely love reading dev WIPs.

thanks again

Thanks for the encouragement everybody.

I like reading WIP posts too!

Any news on Jewel Beach? It looked very promising!

<bump>

dzz unfortunately seems to have disappeared.

What a shame, his early prototype looked very promising.