ASCII soup

This is a game idea, in raw brainstorm form. I've only edited it a little since the initial typing into IRC as I thought.

graphics: ascii text terminal. possibly with colors

top down

one char for each player/piece

you can shove pieces around by bumping into them

if you can shove them around so there are 4 in a row of the same kind, then you get a point, and you can do something to the whole board (like change all of a certain type of piece, or fill all empty spaces with a piece)

different kind of pieces do different things when lined up

maybe we use: - / \ | + X < > V _

if you connect ---- they fuse, and you can push that around as one piece.

maybe you can construct shapes if you connect the ends of the chars properly

  X
 / \
/   \

--+
  |
  +----

choose a bunch of characters that reach the edges/corners of the character cell

the physics engine would know where each character reaches the edge, and would fuse anything that connects properly

it could display anything fused in bold and/or yellow

maybe they would have a certain strength, and break if you tried to push too much with them

possible goals:

1) get as many pieces on your side of the board

2) make the biggest structures

3) make a pile/structure that will stand the tallest when gravity comes along

4) build the longest straight line

5) make enclosed polygons

6) make structures that hold the most loose pieces from touching bottom when gravity comes

or maybe there's always gravity and it slowly rains pieces, and you try to build up your structure and catch pieces

7) make a structure that spans two opposite edges of the board

8) enclose an opponent in a structure, or in a section of no more than 30% of the board

9) shove as many pieces off your side of the board (make scooping structures to help)

10) clear a big area

maybe we could make rules so that certain types of structures spit out pieces

this could be used for an offensive (shoot at each other) sort of thing, or as a means for giving you building materials

or maybe certain structures would move on their own once completed:

 /
<
 \

could cruise left either destroying stuff, or shoving it up and down

Implementation

I'm thinking about implementing something like this in herkforth. I would not implement networking (at least not until I get herkforth booting.) While running under GNU/Linux you could do a multi-user screen session to do the networking. -- Jason Woofenden

Comments

Hi I happened to visit your site and I like this idea. Are you implementing it? BTW, why am I able to edit your page? :P

I started to implement it. but haven't touched the little bit of code I wrote in many months. I think I got as far as filling the grid with random characters from the set, and making it so you could move your ship around. I made it so you just swap places with things you hit for now. I don't remember if how reliably that code worked. I'm sure I'll get back to this and make a fun game out of it at some point, but right now it's low on my list. -- Jason Woofenden

P.S. You can edit this page because... I like it that way :) People contribute, people fix little things like my spelling, typos, broken links etc.. People have contributed quite a bit of knowledge and links (about forth mostly.) Plus I just like the feel of it. It's not just my ego/collection on display, but a community of people sharing knowledge. There's another good answer to this question in the wiki FAQ. -- Jason Woofenden

ASCII soup

Implementation

See Also

Comments