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JadeJohnsonIndustries™
JadeJohnsonIndustries™
PPT Master
PPT Master
Posts : 191
Join date : 2022-03-11
Location : I can presently be found at my current interdimensional coordinates.
https://gamejolt.com/@JadeJohnsonIndustries/games

Maze - Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes! Empty Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes!

Tue Aug 30, 2022 2:06 pm
You folks have always wanted me to keep my games simple, so here you go!  After almost fifteen years of making more advanced PowerPoint-titles, I'm here today with one that has a complex animation-trigger rig, but also one that is dead-simple to pick-up and play!

Introducing: "Maze Maker!"

Click anywhere that's blue, except in the bottom-right corner to add a cell.

A green cell marks an exit.

A red cell marks a danger-zone.

Click on a cell to toggle its colour or visibility.

Click on the little amber-coloured square in the lower-right corner to run your maze.  Successfully-navigate-back-to and click on it aGain to edit your level.

When in edit mode (the default mode), click on the tiny pink square in the upper-left corner to initialise your maze.  You'll know you did it right if the screen flashes black and you hear a towel-wiping sound.

Finally, also when in Edit-mode, you can select the turquoise-coloured square in the upper-right corner to exit the game.

Please enjoy, and as always, "Happy Jading!™"

Download Link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/eq3kh6ju20qzorv/Maze%20Maker.ppsx?dl=1

Postscript: There is currently no way to save each level you make.
johnr
johnr
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Location : UK
http://www.powerpointgames.uk

Maze - Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes! Empty Re: Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes!

Wed Aug 31, 2022 6:52 pm
I found this game really intriguing!

Most games (including maze games) are produced in Presentation mode and played in Play mode.

This one is produced and played in Play mode.

Here are some of my thoughts on playing this:
- It's a lot of work. I counted 32 x 18 = 576 squares. It's 1 click for a green square and 3 for a red. Overall it's a lot of clicking to make a maze.
- If I stick it out to the end, I have a maze that I know exactly the winning route of, because I made it.
- Because the size of the squares are quite large, it's not too difficult to avoid the red walls.
- I had the idea of having multiple green squares (say 20) and set the task of having to navigate the maze and click all of them within a time limit to win. I started to do this but realised that as soon as I mouse-overed the first green square I'd go to the 'You Win' slide. (Maybe you could drop this 'win' hyperlink and just have a winning sound effect when hitting a green square as an optional way of playing?)

The other thing I found intriguing was the little amber 'Start' square. I'll need to work out how this works and shifts you from designing in Play mode to playing in Play mode (unless this is a little secret you'd like to share?!)

Kudos to you for aiming for a 'simple' approach. I think this shows that the gameplay can be relatively simple, but with advanced production skills being evidenced. What we have suggested before was about keeping focused on the gameplay and the person playing the game and not to add superfluous features that do not really contribute to playing the game.

This is a good step in the right direction, and this is a game with more potential for development I think.

JadeJohnsonIndustries™ likes this post

JadeJohnsonIndustries™
JadeJohnsonIndustries™
PPT Master
PPT Master
Posts : 191
Join date : 2022-03-11
Location : I can presently be found at my current interdimensional coordinates.
https://gamejolt.com/@JadeJohnsonIndustries/games

Maze - Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes! Empty Re: Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes!

Fri Sep 02, 2022 4:53 pm
johnr wrote:Most games (including maze games) are produced in Presentation mode and played in Play mode.

This one is produced and played in Play mode.

Yes.  Yes 'tis!  It's part of our "Thirteenth-Generation-Slide-Show-Games"-lineup.  These titles are all editable whilst run in Slideshow Mode, with their changes appearing in real or near-real time!

Here are some of my thoughts on playing this:
- It's a lot of work. I counted 32 x 18 = 576 squares. It's 1 click for a green square and 3 for a red. Overall it's a lot of clicking to make a maze.

Yeah, but I wanted the highest inch-based resolution possible, to add at-least a minor amount of difficulty, especially for folks like myself, with very shaky paws. 

Also, the "lot of clicking" was not how I'd intended the game's "code" to work, as somehow, the game's AI (Artificial-Intelligence) got reordered when I duplicated the original programming to finish the designing-grid.  You'll notice the order in which I'd first programmed the cell-behaviour below.

- If I stick it out to the end, I have a maze that I know exactly the winning route of, because I made it.

A-heh-heh?  I love that!  ¡lol!

- Because the size of the squares are quite large, it's not too difficult to avoid the red walls.

Unless you're me, and have 25PPI eyesight.

- I had the idea of having multiple green squares (say 20) and set the task of having to navigate the maze and click all of them within a time limit to win. I started to do this but realised that as soon as I mouse-overed the first green square I'd go to the 'You Win' slide. (Maybe you could drop this 'win' hyperlink and just have a winning sound effect when hitting a green square as an optional way of playing?)

I could potentially do that, but it would definitely take some extra time, as I'd have to change the programming for all five-hundred-and-seventy-five lime-coloured cells.  Certainly easy to do if I just spend two days creating a second gameplay-mode though.

The other thing I found intriguing was the little amber 'Start' square. I'll need to work out how this works and shifts you from designing in Play mode to playing in Play mode (unless this is a little secret you'd like to share?!)

Yes!  Yes!  Yes!  I finally did something in PowerPoint that you couldn't quite figure-out on the first try!

But okay, I'll tell you…

1. The whole editor's grid consists of four stacked layers of cells: the backmost invisible, the back-middle red, the front-middle lime-green, and the frontmost invisible.

2. I created and named one of each of these cells.

3. I applied disappear-animations so that, by default, only the back invisible squares would be present when the game was loaded. 

4. I then applied animation-triggers:

4A. Click the backmost cell, a red one and the cell-toggler appears.

4B. Click what looks like a red cell but is actually the cell-toggler atop it, a green one appears and the red one vanishes.

4C. Click the cell toggler atop a green cell, both the green cell and the cell-toggler vanish, leaving the back invisible red-cell summoner.

4D. Click the "Start"-button once, both the front and back invisible cells disappear, leaving only red and green.

4E. Click the "Start"-button aGain, the front and back invisible cells return, preventing you from accessing red's and green's hyperlinks.

4F. Due to the way PowerPoint naturally works, the "Start"-button will automatically toggle each time it's clicked, because all the animations it controls are set to "With Previous", except for the first one in each toggle-ProCess, which is instead set to "On Click" of the "Start"-button.  So there are only two "On Clicks" in that whole toggle sequence, as expected from a two-way-toggle.

5. I then just duplicated the original cells, and used PowerPoint's Grid-feature to help me visually with aligning them properly.

6. Once the cells were duplicated, I just made sure that all the relevant front and back invisible cell appearances and disappearances that had spawned from the duping of the original four cells were triggered by the "Start"-button, in the manner I mentioned above.

Kudos to you for aiming for a 'simple' approach. I think this shows that the gameplay can be relatively simple, but with advanced production skills being evidenced. What we have suggested before was about keeping focused on the gameplay and the person playing the game and not to add superfluous features that do not really contribute to playing the game.

This is a good step in the right direction, and this is a game with more potential for development I think.

What would be a good idea of "more development"?  Obviously, my yellow "Mini-Game"-cell idea would be considered, superfluous to you, especially since the game's file-size would balloon, even with the Nintendo®-level compression I've already added to it.  So, I'm curious: what would work better for you?
johnr
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Maze - Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes! Empty Re: Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes!

Fri Sep 02, 2022 6:12 pm
What would be a good idea of "more development"?  Obviously, my yellow "Mini-Game"-cell idea would be considered, superfluous to you, especially since the game's file-size would balloon, even with the Nintendo®-level compression I've already added to it.  So, I'm curious: what would work better for you?

I didn't find anything particularly superfluous in this game. I was thinking back to earlier games with things like links to newspapers and pizza deliveries etc. I was pleased to see no such superfluous things like that here. Maybe we just have different perceptions of what 'superfluous' means.  I can't recall the mention of your 'Yellow Mini-Game cell idea'. Did I miss something?

Thanks for the explanation of how the amber button worked. It saved me a lot of time trying to work it out (which I might never have done!) This is one of the things I meant regarding 'more development'. The concept looked so clever that I thought it must be something that could be applied in other games where you can shift from one type of play to another, without disturbing what has already happened. It is a great example of a complex but well-thought-out process producing an effective yet simple outcome. The other development was the one I mentioned about having multiple green squares. Now I know how it works in this game, I can see that it would be quite a slog to make the adaptations for this.

And finally, you have intrigued me once again with talk of 'Artificial Intelligence' used in this game (?!) and 'Nintendo-level compression'. More info??!!

JadeJohnsonIndustries™ likes this post

JadeJohnsonIndustries™
JadeJohnsonIndustries™
PPT Master
PPT Master
Posts : 191
Join date : 2022-03-11
Location : I can presently be found at my current interdimensional coordinates.
https://gamejolt.com/@JadeJohnsonIndustries/games

Maze - Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes! Empty Re: Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes!

Sat Sep 17, 2022 6:07 pm
johnr wrote:Finally, you have intrigued me once again with talk of 'Artificial Intelligence' used in this game (?!) and 'Nintendo-level compression'. More info??!!

Well, by the "A-I", I simply am referring to the compex animation-trigger rig I'd set-up.

But by Nintendo®-level compression... uh — it's a bit of a TLDR, but — here:
https://gamejolt.com/p/so-you-already-know-how-to-optimize-video-for-streaming-in-powerpoi-vc69cw4j
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Maze - Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes! Empty Re: Maze Maker — Create, Play, And Edit Your Very Own Mouse Mazes!

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