Guys, I've just uploaded a new and vastly improved build of FaceIt. Grab it at http://www.mrio-software.com/faceit-beta2.zip (2.0 MB now). Screenshot (from B1 though) here : http://www.mrio-software.com/faceit_beta1.jpeg

What's new:
Improved usability (drag-select, as requested by forum members, and right click deselects all)
Less, much more recognizable and much more expressive mouths
A new bonus level (just before levels 10, 20, ...)
New pieces (blocks, silouhettes, hair dye, hairdresser's scissors, and contact lenses)
"What did I just match??" messages
Indication of the direction of the selected faces (so you know what's the last selected face)
A nice title screen :)
Still missing : audio, high scores and tutorial.

Please try it out and let me know what do you think. Since the tutorial is not there yet, let me clarify : you can make groups with just one feature in common, for example, three redheads. The game is dead simple, don't think it's more difficult than it really is. By the way, don't bother looking for exact matches : except in the bonus level when faces come in pairs, there are 192 million faces (and that's just the males) so it's not very likely to find an exact match.

This is looking pretty good. But you said in your other thread that you wanted to make a "match three" game, primarily as a way of bringing in funding.

Take my advice... allow skin color matching. Nobody's gonna think it's racist (it's no more racist than 'eye shapes!') It's the easiest kind of match to make-- it's the thing standing between a newbie quitting the game as too hard immediately, or continuing to play and eventually grasping the subtlety.

Seriously. Put in face color matching, and that's how a new player will play for a while, because it's quick and easy to grasp. Then, when they get to a situation where there's no face colors to match up, they'll look for something a little more subtle. It makes the game more progressive to a new player.

Other than that, I think it's looking good, and you might have a "flagship product" from this.

Originally posted by Raptisoft
This is looking pretty good. But you said in your other thread that you wanted to make a "match three" game, primarily as a way of bringing in funding.
That's true, but as I truly enjoy programming, this one is being a very rewarding experience, too. Not just "for the money".
Take my advice... allow skin color matching. Nobody's gonna think it's racist
I don't know, I don't know... I don't believe it's racist at all, but there are people who try really hard to be politcally correct that might reject it... take a look at the Rocket Mania thread here, for example. Another example of extreme political-correctness and kid-safety : Real didn't like Betty's Beer Bar because it was played, well, in a bar!
It's the easiest kind of match to make-- it's the thing standing between a newbie quitting the game as too hard immediately, or continuing to play and eventually grasping the subtlety.
That's the point of the hair colors... they should be as easy to match. Aren't they? Why not?

But anyway, what do the other members think? Skin color matching or not?
Other than that, I think it's looking good, and you might have a "flagship product" from this.
Thanks!

Hey,

I thought it looks pretty good. It's definitely much harder than other "match three" games (which isn't a bad thing in my book).

About skin color matching: I was confused that the game didn't allow this. My 2 cents: put it in.

Also, I noticed that the game shows two mouse cursors: the SDL pointer and your custom hand (which trails a little behind). I assume this isn't intentional.

On my system (PIII 1.2GHz) when the screen is filling up with heads, mouse movement slows down a little. This is especially noticable on mouse overs (things highlighting when you move the mouse over them). Probably because you're blitting a lot of stuff at once. Not a big deal, but still slightly annoying.

But overall, nice job!

The game works and looks great! I think once you put the audio in, the game will come alive :) As far as the skin color matching, I was expecting this to be a given. This may sound racist or not, but I think its the first descriptive quality that people notice, then hair color, then eyes, etc. I would put it in... too many people worry about political correctness anymore IMHO.

P.S. How are BBB sales doing? (personal curiosity because I released my game about a month ago and am not doing so good in the sales dept.)

I still like it and the new features are all improvements.

As for the skin colour, I wouldn't go there. Just not worth the risk in todays 'politically-correct' climate. As it is you'll probably insult someone because one the eye shapes is 'oriental' or a nose 'Jewish' and you're 'seperating them into groups' based on those factors.

The people who get upset about these things are in the minority but they are a VERY vocal minority and there is such a thing as bad publicity. All it's going to take is one person.

From memory, Chaster is the person here most aware of the issues involved. If he posts on this topic I would lean towards his viewpoint on this. Or you could PM him and ask.

SC

Originally posted by Matthijs Hollemans
I thought it looks pretty good. It's definitely much harder than other "match three" games (which isn't a bad thing in my book).
It is in mine... Mike Boeh said it perfectly : "each time I made my games easier, sales increased". I think that's particularly true for the ultra-casual market!
Also, I noticed that the game shows two mouse cursors: the SDL pointer and your custom hand (which trails a little behind). I assume this isn't intentional.
Not intentional, and known. It has something to do with starting the game in full screen. Toggle to Windowed (F12) and then to Full Screen again and the cursor will be OK. Start in Windowed and go to Fullscreen and everything is OK. It's in my TODO list, but thanks for pointing it out.
On my system (PIII 1.2GHz) when the screen is filling up with heads, mouse movement slows down a little. [...] Probably because you're blitting a lot of stuff at once. Not a big deal, but still slightly annoying.
It's the price I'm paying for developing a very high level sprite engine (think Flash) in C++. Today it's been 30 days since I started writing code for this, so the productivity is great, but some things aren't that optimized yet... in particular, I'm doing too many rectangle-rectangle intersections to repaint dirty rectangles (I'll have to figure out how to use a quadtree or modified BSP tree there) and too much overdraw (bottom to top, essentially painter's algorithm, but I think I can optimize it by drawing up from the last full-covering (ie non alpha) image... and figuring out what that image is implies lots of rect-rect intersections :) )

Originally posted by BrewKnowC
P.S. How are BBB sales doing?
Not so good :\ Our first month (november) was great. This is when Big Fish pushed the game. December sales have been much lower (1/4). January seems to be even slower.

With Alawar, we did acceptably on november (but was about 1/6 of BFG) and more or less the same on december. January looks slow here, too :(

We also had a lot of sales from Netscape.com, when we were featured in the front page! Unfortunately, it only lasted for 5 days (and make as much money as Alawar in the whole month!)
(personal curiosity because I released my game about a month ago and am not doing so good in the sales dept.)
ToW is your first game, right? Don't worry if it doesn't sell very well, I'm sure it was an extremely valuable experience, as was PegSweeper (http://www.mrio-software.com/info.php?id=ps) for us. We sold 12 copies of PegSweeper in 6 months!

BTW, sales from our own page are very few. I do like to improve that, but I have other priorities. I'm a programmer! I have no problems in going the publisher way. Many others in the forums here disagree, but I don't care as long as I do what makes me happy (programming!) and the money is enough. You'll have to find your own way. The only think you can't do is quitting! Good luck!

If the black/white skin color thing really bothers you... why not go orange, green, etc? I mean, I understand the obvious reason, because it marrs the artistic integrity of the game... but on the other hand, if this one sells well, you can use any unused artistic integrity on the next one. Or you could just have on skin color, and do different 'countries.' Theme it. Now you're in Japan. Now you're in Africa. Now you're in the Yoo-freaking-nited States. But I personally think you should allow the skin color matching. It's a very good "easiest" setting. You could always allow an "all three are different" match. Probably nobody would use it, but it's your answer to the people who scream racism.

I think that matching skin color is the thing that would seperate this game from "indy shareware," know what I mean? Match skin color, and the game just becomes more fun, because you can zoom though it. You have a nice relaxing "click 'em" game, which you can make harder just by what you choose to try to match. You should grade the scoring by how hard it is to match things... and possibly drop in some bonus items if you match, say, multiple things.

As for me... hair color is fairly easy to match, but when playing I often get just distracted by the skin color, and that makes it harder to concentrate on matching more subtle things-- since the skin color is the biggest, brightest, most obvious match.

Just to reiterate.... skin color matching could be considered the "base" game, with everything else just being superscore modifiers. I think you should go that way... the 'casual game' market is the big one online. Think about Bejewelled, Collapse, all the *big big big* sellers. They're more time wasters than games.

Much better!

Still hard but way more playable.
I was thinking that maybe the people who blink could be giving "hints" instead of blinking randomly. ( some sort of discreet help for the player )

pat.