Perceptiad Windows game

Perceptiad is an experimental open-source puzzle game currently being at the stage of working prototype.

Perceptiad tests your capability of estimation of various physically measurable amounts which can be reproduced by your PC.

Some video I took in 2012 just to show the essentials of the gameplay:

Background

This is my first indie game project to be released. I wondered what if we could estimate time, speed, length and other physical quantities with sufficient precision without using any special tools. This game might test and train your abilities to do this.

Gameplay

How to play

The game field is a rectangular area that can house a number of blocks being dropped down. Your goal is to earn score by placing blocks into groups so their outer hull colors are matching.

Once a group is complete, the blocks comprising it shed their outermost hulls. This also gives you a chance to gain additional bonus by testing some of your perceptual capabilities.

There are 18 hull colors and 18 respective types of exercises in all. You can watch the computer play in demo mode to make out some tactics!

Introduction to blocks

Blocks may possess 1 to 4 differently colored hulls. They are randomly generated and automatically fed to the holding rack, from which they can be dropped into any column with sufficient room.

Only the outer hull can be shed, but the inner hulls move outwards thereafter. Only if there are no more hulls left inside, the block disappears completely.

Once an exercise is done, you proceed to the next round. You score 10 points per hull by default. Combos lead to more score!

Ending the game

The game ends when any of the following conditions is met:

• A block remains above the red line after being dropped what makes later play impossible. This usually happens when there is no more freespace in the field, but might be done by mistake as well;
• The time limit has been reached (if set);
• The maximum number of rounds has been played (if specified);
• The game is abandoned by player.

Meditation round

After the main game, you go through a so-called "meditation" round. It has random English letters instead of colored hulls in the blocks; your goal there is to compose common nouns out of blocks. Those blocks which make up any word present in the game dictionary will blow up. Note that multiple words can be formed simultaneously. Try to be quick: you're given only five seconds per round previously played!

Controls

The game is entirely controlled by the keyboard; no mouse support is implemented so far. These control keys can't be customized.

• [UP] - Revolve the block being held;
• [DOWN]/[SPACE] - Drop the block into the selected column;
• [LEFT]/[RIGHT] - Actuate the rack holding the block;
• [PAUSE] - Pause the game;
• [ENTER] - Pop up the main menu.

Exercise types

There are 18 possible colors of hulls, each associated with a specific exercise. The exercises can be either "analog-to-digital" (ADC) or "digital-to-analog" (DAC), the former requiring to make numerical estimatons for various stimuli and the latter being the same thing performed backwards (you'll figure it out). Don't get confused!

Cheats

This game has a number of cheat codes for testing purposes:

• [CTRL] + [B] - Blow up all blocks in the field;
• [CTRL] + [D] - Make current block into a dummy;
• [CTRL] + [A] - Activate/deactivate AI;
• [CTRL] + [R] - Replace last block into the stack.

Also you can change the settings from menu without restarting the game what is also a form of cheating intentionally left in this prototype.

Technology

The game prototype is powered by Evaldraw application by Ken Silverman. Hovewer, the script is really vast and contains a highly customized graphical core which represents each pixel as a triplet of double-precision floating point numbers (leading to 192 bits per pixel!). The resolution, however, is fixed to mere 320x240. There's a built-in scaler which allows for comfortable play on larger screens.

The later versions will run inside my own framework and my game engine written in C++. There will not be any drastic changes in visuals and gameplay, but the game should become a lot faster and more consistent with additional options, customizable controls, separate highscore tables for each game configuration and other improvements.