Roll the Dice

Roll the Dice

Release type: TBA
Latest build date: 2013
Levels: TBA
Author: Alan Caudel
Website: Dummy Duck
Related games: Dummy Duck 7

THIS GAME IS A WORK IN PROGRESS
ALL INFORMATION IS TENTATIVE

Version 2 of Alan Caudel's Roll the Dice

Roll the dice to choose your play.

In the Version 1 of this game, your character was a spinning die that started in a stationary hand in the middle of the screen. When the player presses Enter, the die moves to the right, and is pulled along a tunnel. The tunnel has several "gates" made up of rapidly changing blocks which either pull the character up or down, depending on what state the block was in when you first touched it. After passing through several "gates", the character ends up on one of the six exits. The number shown on that exit corresponds with the number of the room that you enter in the next level.

The newer version of the game is still unfinished. The gameplay mechanic is still pretty much the same, but it has several cosmetic differences. First of all, the character starts out appearing as a closed hand. When the enter button is pressed, the character does a quick animation of the hand opening, shoots out a monster that looks like the rolling die, then the character turns clear and moves one block to the right, and is pulled along the tunnel, just like in the rough draft version. Underneath where the character used to be, there remains a background block that looks like the opened hand. The numbered exits have been hidden to match with the rest of the background. Each room has an intro animation of a close up of the die landing on the number that corresponds to the room you are entering. The final result simply looks like a hand that is closed until you press enter, then it opens up and a die rolls out, then when the die stops rolling, you see a close-up of the number it landed on, and you enter the room with that number. It's a complicated effect, but I tried to make it look simple.

This gameplay mechanic could be expanded on in many ways, to make games with semi-randomized elements. If I make a newer version of this game, I would like to make the playing piece on the game board move to different locations around the board depending on the gameplay.

One last note, when the game fades in, the hand background block appears closed. As soon as the level has finished fading in, the background block animates and changes to an opened hand, but by then it has been covered by the closed hand character block. So it appears as the same closed hand, even though you are seeing two different things. Then, as soon as the player presses enter, the character turns clear, and the now opened hand background block appears, as described in the paragraph above.

A version of this game also appears in Caudel's Advanced Techniques Demo package.

Links

Version 1 of Alan Caudel's Roll the Dice

Version 1 of Roll the Dice altered to make the gameplay mechanics apparent.

• Alan's Bold Experiments in RSD Game-Maker

Downloads

• Roll the Dice (106 KB)