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January 2008 December 2007 November 2007

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Solutions for Colliso Puzzles

By kurohako @ 1:26 am
Development, Games

We are putting up solutions for Colliso Puzzles.

Here are the solutions for the first 3 levels:

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Timer Bug in Flash Player version 9.0.115.0?

By kurohako @ 8:21 pm
Development

UPDATE: This issue has already been fixed in version 1.1 of Colliso Puzzles. We see a lot of sites carrying version 1.0 of this game. If you are running one of those sites, please replace with the latest version at
http://games.mochiads.com/c/g/colliso-puzzles/colliso.swf

=====

Adobe has recently released Flash Player version 9.0.115.0

We have just noticed a bug in the latest release, where the Timer apparently stop working after the first play through. As a result, Colliso Puzzles is getting several logs where the “time used” is zero secs, impossible of course. This problem does not exist with previous version of the player.

Therefore, if you are playing Colliso Puzzles using the latest version of the plugin, please bear with the bug while we investigate the problem. Hopefully it is something we can solve on our side.

Thanks!

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Railz! Luck vs Skills

By kurohako @ 1:20 am
Development, Games

The puzzle game Railz! is intended to reward skillful play. Although luck does play a role, we believe it has been kept to a minimum in the game. In this article, we reveal what goes on behind-the-scenes during a game of Railz! and leave you to decide how much luck is involved (or not) in getting high scores.

The game is played on a 7×7 grid, a total of 49 cells. When the game starts, 8 of the 49 cells will be occupied with normal Railway tiles. One of the seven rows will have two cells occupied, and the other rows will have one cell occupied. In this way, you will never have the starting positions clustered together too closely. In any case, with just less than 16% of the board occupied at the start of the game, the starting positions alone shouldn’t determine your end score.

Let’s look at the tiles used in the game - we have the normal Railway tiles, the special Bonus Railway tiles, and the special Broken Railway tiles, shown below respectively:
Railway Tiles
Bonus Railway Tiles
Broken Railway Tiles

That is a total of 18 distinct tiles. At the start of the game, we take these 18 tiles, shuffle them and take the first 8 tiles and place them on the board on positions determined in the way explained above. If the tile is a special tile, we convert it into a normal tile. In other words, you will never start with a special tile on the board. It is also impossible to have more than three-of-the-same-kind on the board at the start of the game.

The starting positions are intended to provide “initial disorientation” when you start a new game and may help to vary how you play your first few moves, but we believe that there will not be any “bad” or “good” starting positions.

After the first tiles are determined, we take another group of the 18 distinct tiles and shuffle them. The “next tile” is taken from this shuffled “deck” in sequence. After 18 tiles are used, we go through another cycle. Therefore, the “next tile” is not completely random. For example, if the very first “next tile” you see at the start of the game is a normal horizontal Railway tile, it will be at least another 18 tiles before you get to see it as the “next tile” again. If a particular tile appears twice consecutively, it is because its position in one cycle was last, and in the next cycle first. Anyway, the important thing to note here is that every player has access to the same tiles in every game. Luck does not determine what you get, but rather when you get it.

So next time you play Railz! and you run into a situation where you desperately need a particular tile to complete a loop and you do not see it coming… you should know now that it’s not “just bad luck”. Take note of the cycles of tiles, and plan your moves carefully.

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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Flash Player 9 detection glitch

By kurohako @ 10:41 pm
Development

It just came to our attention that many visitors were unable to play Railz! despite having Flash Player 9 plugin installed. Many apologies! The Flash Player detection script was looking out for the version 9,0,45,0. After going through Adobe’s release notes for the sub-revisions, we have decided that it is not necessary to target that version. We have changed the script to just check for Flash Player 9,0,0,0, but it will be nice if you have at least 9,0,28,0 (which fixed several bugs in the Flash Player).

If you installed Flash Player 9 a long time ago, it is advisable to upgrade to the latest version. Thanks!

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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Ranking Ties

By kurohako @ 7:27 pm
Development, Games

Typically, it is common for games to award the same rank for ties in scores. So if the leaderboard has scores of 100, 50, 50 and 30, the score of 100 will be ranked 1st, the 50s both 2nd and the 30 4th. In Railz!, we are giving ties different ranks. If you achieve a particular score earlier, you claim a higher rank than the next person who score the same. This is fair as it rewards the person who achieved the same score earlier.

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