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You're not complete until you make an Inukshuk from jam, Or, How to make levels for Manticore
Mon, 24 Oct 2005

A number of folks in the GP32 community have chipped together to fund my getting an upcoming GP2X device, as sort of thanks for doing so much work on the earlier GP32 device and of course to help with development on the new one. I always figure turnabout is fair play, so in anticipation of the new device (and to while away the time while some unpleasant things wind themselves down) I hacked together Manticore.. a cute little puzzler that pays homage to the Palm OS classic freeware Vexed while still adding some of my usual toys into the mix (bombs!) - all coded from scratch in less than 8 hours over a few days with a total runtime of less than 64k (excepting background images.) Naturally, being me, it builds and runs on a dozen platforms from Palm OS to Pocket PC to Sony PSP to Windows and Linux... and hopefully the GP2X once it arrives.. since that was the point afterall :)


I noticed during development that I was missing something.. that since my primary device for the last year or so has been a Treo 650 (a Palm OS smartphone with a built in keyboard) and not the regular tablet-style PDA, that I've been missing those big bright screens and fiddling with a stylus. With the T|T3 and Zodiac and most of my other sundry Palm OS devices, I grew accustomed to large work areas with virtual grafitti sliding in and out on demand, and as the years rolled by the screens got sharper and brighter. I always enjoyed the tactile feel of writing on the displays, and although my Dell Axim X50v is a fine fine machine.. it somehow lacks that feel. (Perhaps its that nifty swoosh sound and animation on the virtual grafitti entrance/exit..) Anyway, the Treo 650 is a fantastic device that I admire to bits, but since it doesn't need stylus use due to its built in keyboard, and has a small phone (though high resolution) screen.. I've begun to miss those big fat devices. Go figure :) Perhaps this is why the Sony PSP grabbed my attention so much.. being starved for screen real-estate and the PSP with its enormous wide 'size does matter' display. It'll be good to return to the screen in the gp2x though, if its anything like its predecessors.. sharp and big.

Anyway, the point of this meandering post..

Manticore

Manticore is a simple puzzle game built upon the Zot infrastructure; that means nothing to most people, but it means laying out levels is incredibly easy -- so if you've got the urge or an idea to make other people suffer with, just send it on over! All I need to know is..

The level name, the number of moves 'par' for the course, and the actual level layout:

..........
..  12 ...
..  .. ...
..       .
..  21 ...
..........

There, a simply dumb level, looked at from the side-view. A '.' represents a wall-space (that cannot be moved.) A ' ' (blank space) represents 'air', where bricks can move through. Lastly, the numerals '1' through '6' represent movable bricks that the player can select and push left or right, and that will fall if not supported. (When two bricks of the same type contact during 'rest' (not falling), they are removed from play. The player wins once all bricks are removed.)

I will be adding a 'level pack picker' menu and user-definable maps system of course - have the engine load up player maps and background art and sound effects from SD card, but for now everything is built in.. so if you want to submit a level to the game, just fire it over to me via email and I can plop it into the engine. Perhaps I should have it load Vexed packs too..

Yes, I actually did intend to stack of jam packets into an Inukshuk, but they're craftily designed to be impossible to build with except in their flat lieing down orientation.. not as fun.

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