Seed of an idea

As most readers know, the game being thought of here already exists and is on my site, this document is explaining my thought process during the design phase. As you will see, the final version is a bit different than what I originally envisioned, largely due to lack of time and no budget. While the order I thought up the traps is a bit different than the order presented here, I am taking liberty of the fact that I have finished the game and presenting my thoughts in the actual order used in the final game.

The previous section clearly showed that even a text markup language can be used (to a limited extent) for games. The key to designing games is creativity and knowledge of what the limitations of whatever language you are using is. HTML can be used for any type of game where the logic can be handled through linking to different pages.

While playing through the game, I thought of how much nicer animation would be. This could be done with a bit of programming. With HTML the biggest disadvantage is that it really is not a programming language. However, there are HTML scripting languages. ECMA Script, JavaScript and JScript are pretty much the same scripting language, though there are some differences. VBScript is another scripting language, though I am not sure how cross-browser compatible it is. The problem with scripting is that different browsers handle it differently, which is why I prefer using Java or Flash for any type of internet based program.

The advantages of using Java or Flash is that they are far more reliable for cross browser and cross platform programs. Java is a true programming language, which in theory could be used to do anything. Flash is an animation system with a scripting language tagged onto it. Later versions of Flash are much closer to a real programming language, though there are still limitations. For me the biggest limitation is the fact that a slow running function will result in a popup allowing the user to cancel the scripting which can totally destroy a game!

This game is really a simple game, so the only programming that would really be needed is a bit of random sequence generation and animation. This could be done in either Java or Flash, but Flash has a bit of an edge due to it’s built in animation system.

Flash has the Math.random function which allows us to easily create random sequences. This leads to the question of why have a combination, why not disguise the game as something more interesting. I already have a game where the player has to find the correct door (called doors). Why not take a logical variation of that and have the player trying not to choose the wrong door. The wrong choice can be punished with animation.