GoPuzzles

1. GoPuzzles By: Phillip Sdao Erin Nelson Eric Plulik Shaun Slamka

2. Introduction • This project is an expansion of a board game for the Android • It is designed to be a puzzle game made after the game ‘Go’ • This 10 week project includes • Planning and pre-programming • Puzzle Creator application • Level Selection • Graphic Polish

3. Game History • The game of Go is a thousand year old thought to have originated in China. • It is a game of strategy played by both farmers and peasants; and Lords and the upper-class • The game hit its stride of popularity when it traveled to Japan. • Today it is still very popular in eastern nations, and can be compared to the popularity of chess in the western hemisphere.

4. How it is played • The game is played on a 9x9, 13x13, or 19x19 wooden board. • Beads are placed one by one on any intersection of the board, including corners and sides. • The game is played until both agree that no more points can be gained by ether player.

5. Points • The game is won by whoever has the most amount of points. • Points are gained in 3 ways. • By capturing an enemy piece • By having a bead on the board • By having territory that the opponent has agreed he/she cannot capture.

6. Liberties • Each pieces has “Liberties” that represent each line coming from the spot a bead occupies. • When a line is touching a spot occupied by an opposing bead, that line is no longer considered a Liberty. • When a bead has no more Liberties it is captured and taken off the board. This then becomes a point for the enemy player

7. Groups and Atari • When two or more beads are touching they are considered a group • A group shares its liberties. • This means a group cannot be captured unless the entire group touches no open spots. • When a bead or group has only one liberty it is considered to be in Atari. • When a pro is playing a newcomer it is considered polite to say Atari whenever a group or piece is put into Atari.

8. Seki • Seki is when it is unfavorable for ether player to advance • In this case each player is only awarded points for each piece in that placed and is not awarded points for territory

9. Formations • During the game Formations occur, which are the basis for the Puzzle portion of this Game. • Some formations are famous such as the stairway, and the net shown to the right. • In both formations black cannot escape.

10. Puzzles • Because these formations go from extremely simple to extremely complex, the idea for making puzzles out of completing small formations favorably exist. • In these puzzles a player makes a move, and the computer makes a response, completing all the correct responses gives the player his victory.

11. Overview of Project • Like stated before the project expanded on a crude game that displayed a single puzzle that could be worked through. • A player could place a bead, confirm placement and receive a response. • When the correct inputs were made, A victory alert was made and the player was thrown back to the main Menu.

12. Pre-Planing Stage • The Pre-Planning stage is a stage in the project where we decided on the workflow, and made time estimates, and deadlines for parts of the Game. • These stages include making a level select, an Level creator, and polishing up the design itself.

13. Difficultly Select Method • When developing the difficulty select I used an XML that allows you to select the difficulty you want to play which can be accessed from the main menu. • Once you choose the difficulty you want the button takes you those puzzles that are in that difficulty. • Each puzzle within the corresponding difficulty's is different. • The screen for the different levels uses a background that fits with the game itself and uses images that serves as buttons that allow to you go each puzzle. • This setup is reusable while maintain its appeal to the user.

14. Why we choose this setup • We choose this method of setting up the difficulty select because it’s the most efficient system we’ve seen used. • The most popular game at the moment that uses this set up is angry birds and its very appealing to the users based upon sales and downloads. • It provides a great template which is very diverse and easy to use. Applications that look appealing and have great functionality make a product more appealing. • Another benefit of this setup is it’s expandability and reusability on the programming end.

15. Expandability • Like wepreviously mentioned on the last side the setup we used is very open to improving or adding more content • It provides enough space to add more content which we plan to do in the paid version of the application • With said space there is room for more functions such as showing the full content of the app however they would be greyed out in the free version. • With that being said with additional content it will still be appealing to the user.

16. Screenshots

17. Screenshots

18. Screenshots

19. Level Creator • The Go Puzzle application reads XML in order to form the puzzle. Therefore in order to reduce human error, and increase efficiency a Level creator was made. • The level creator allows the maker to predict the moves a player will make and then provide a response. The response also holds the properties that decide whether or not it is a victory or a dead end for the player.

20. Level Creator Work-Flow • In order to create a puzzle a person first starts the application. • That person then clicks buttons to place pieces in the setup that the board should take at the start of a puzzle. • The person then makes predicted player moves, and the AI responses for them, until all reasonable moves have been predicted. • Finally the person selects save and the puzzle is saved to an XML file.

21. Graphic Polish • At the start of the Project the application had nearly no polish. • A wood design was used for the background and buttons and increased aesthetic feel for the game.

22. Before and After

23. Conclusion • This 10 week project has done many things for this application. • It has expanded its functionality and has easy to use content creation. • With some tweaking for the demo and full versions it will be ready for the android market