[Beta Release] Snakes - Local play 1-8 players

Current Version: 0.2.5

Gameplay from 0.2.2, thanks to pickPickles:


Introducing a local play game supporting 1-8 players!
This is a great party game!



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0.2.4:
  • 1-3 Bot opponents to play against while waiting for friends to join!
  • Autopilot feature!
  • Will go back to Start Screen if you leave game.
0.2.3:
  • Fixed many netcode anomalies
  • Fixed message flooding after host leaves game options menu
0.2.2:
  • Added "Occasional holes" game option by request of Kingdra. This makes holes about 1/80 dots of your snake on average, allowing you or anyone else to pass through them.
0.2.1:
  • Added Screen Score system. This reflects a score based on the combined lengths of all snakes on the screen at the end of the round.
  • Added High Score system. The High Score is based upon the Screen Score at the end of the round. The winner takes the full Screen Score. Messages will be displayed to all players if you obtain a new high score!
  • You can now reset your High Score by holding R and pressing Y at the start screen.
0.2.0:
  • Fixed bug when many long snakes die in "Disappear on death", the game slows down.
  • Official beta release!
0.1.7:
  • Added new game option: Disappear on death. Now you can have a true tron cycle bike game mode by enabling: Tron mode, No apple, Disappear on death.
  • Fixed a slew of bugs, including: ghost readies, being unable to press A for the first second at the end of a round, dropping death packets that force some players to stay in game when round is actually over, players getting stuck in "game starting...", and many more.

CURRENT KNOWN BUGS:
  • Bots do not know what to do during a game with "No apple" mode enabled.
  • If two snakes cross at the same time, they will both live. This is not technically a bug, as when I asked players how they'd like to handle it, they decided it's more fun if they both live when this happens.
  • Sometimes when using Autopilot in local play, the bot appears longer to other players.
  • If you close the lid while hosting, you may be unable to start a game without re-opening Snakes.
  • All of these bugs will be fixed soon! Sorry about that.
To Start A Game:
You do NOT need a wifi connection to play with others that already have this game installed, but you do need WiFi enabled on your 3ds so local play can work.

Read the instructions on the bottom screen.


At the Start Screen, press START to quit.

Press X to display the QRCode to the latest .cia release of Snakes! Use this so friends can easily install the latest version and play with you. For installing this way, you need a wifi connection and a QRCode .cia installer: https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-qr-web-installer-cia-installer.416243/

Press A to host and start a one player game. HOLD A to wait for a 2nd player to connect.

Hold B to scan for a room. If more than one room is found, you will be able to choose them from a list. The selected room will be highlighted in yellow. If you see a list, press A to select that room to join it.


When joining a room that is in-progress, you will join as dead. This is to be fair to other players. When this happens you will have to wait for the end-of-round screen before you can interact. Press START to quit.

Press Y at the start screen to change your username. This will only be displayed IN the game, not when selecting a host to join.

Press SELECT for game options. Press B to go back a screen. Using directional input will allow you to highlight a selection in yellow. Press A to select. In some sub-menus, pressing A will highlight a special selection in red. When this happens, pressing directional input will change the red value. Press B or A to stop selecting the value. You can always press B to go back a screen.

Here are the game modes you can toggle any combination of:



    • Boundaries kill: Classic snake! You can't touch the boundaries, or they will kill you.
    • Tron mode: For a game of tron, enable this and "No apple" to experience a true tron cycle bike game! Snakes will always grow, and never have a true tail.
    • Disable diagonals: For those of you that think the CPad's automatic diagonals is too OP, this is for you.
    • Disable A: Don't like being able to go fast? Disable it here.
    • Disable B: Don't like being able to go slow? Disable it here.
    • Disable Y: Hate it when people teleport the apple? This is for you.
    • Enable R: Be able to go in reverse by pushing the R button.
    • No apple: Forget the apple, just kill everyone!
    • Apples double length: for easier advantage over other players. you get twice as long for every apple you get
    • Disappear on death: What it sounds like. Use this, no apple, and Tron mode for a tron cycle bike game mode.
    • Occasional holes: This makes all snakes occasionally have holes in them at random. On average, it happens 1/80 "dots". To put this in perspective, non-Tron games start with a length of 40 dots. Requested by Kingdra.
You can also select how many bots you want to play against in one-player. Select the top line that displays "Number of bots: 1" and press Right or Left to increase or decrease the bots.

You can also press up/down to select a specific bot to change its difficulty.
The difficulty range is as follows from most difficult to least: Insane > Hard > Medium > Easy.


How to Play:
This version of snake is a little different from the average!

Your snake is always moving, whether you want it to or not!


To change direction, Use the CPad (left thumbstick) for easy curves, or the D-Pad for precise directional changes.

Your snake is a unique color line that grows the more you eat apples. Don't run into yourself or other snakes! If you die, on the bottom screen it will say in parenthesis who you ran into.

Apples are white dots. Run over one and you will gain a point and get much longer than in the average snake game.

Hold A to go twice as fast!
Hold B to go twice as slow!

Press Y to move the apple once! You can only do this once until someone scores a point. You can still do this when you are dead! Annoy the last one standing by moving it around right before they get it!

Once everyone is dead, or the last one alive gets the highest score, the round will end. To continue, press A! You may not be able to press A right after the round ends, it will be ignored for one second. Once everyone presses A, the next round will begin! You can tell if someone is ready by noting a green R under their score.

You can also press L to toggle Autopilot. Whenever this is enabled, you forfeit that round even if you disable it before the round ends. This is to be fair to others.

Some META:
If the apple is stuck in the center of a square/circle of your long tail, you can teleport it by pressing Y, or you can move in layers (back and forth) to use up the least amount of space possible. Eventually the end of your tail will stop wrapping around the apple as it catches up to you.

Having trouble getting the apple? Hold B when getting close to it for fine maneuvers!

In multiplayer, you basically have one of two goals:
  • Get apples until you are big enough to kill everyone else
  • Kill everyone first by moving quickly, then grab the remaining apples needed to get the highest score.
  • The Cage Strategy: If you are longer than the last person alive, you can wrap around them and bite your own tail to prevent their escape. You obviously have gotten more apples than them, so they will be forced to suicide and lose. Suggested by elementalcode
Screen Score:
The Screen Score is the balancing between all game modes to give an accurate "score" for the end of the round. This score is calculated by all devices adding up all client-side snake lengths, and sharing this number. All devices agree to use the largest number shared, and this becomes the "Screen Score". If this screen score is higher than the winner's current High Score, it will display a message on all devices saying they have obtained a new High Score, and it will automatically save to the winner's save file on the root of the their SD card.

Credits:
  • Wolfvak - for graphics help like finding color from frame buffer. thanks a lot!
  • smealum - for ctrulib and other contributions to homebrew dev
  • fincs - graphical rendering! Helped me fix a major bug that slowed the game down.
  • Stary - both Stary and fincs both helped me discover and fix a bug that slowed the game down due to inefficient graphical rendering. Thank you so much!
  • zaksabeast - for helping me with this release
  • pickPickles - testing and recording gameplay with 8 players
 
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Desynched

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Alright guys. I know this is asking a lot, but if you manage to play with 3+ people, please have one of you turn debugging on by pressing L at the start screen before joining/hosting.

If something goes wrong, please take a screenshot (or even better, video) of the bottom console screen when bad stuff happens.

Last night when right before I recorded gameplay, I was seeing anomalies like teleporting snakes and apples. The apple seemed to be teleporting on its own, every frame. I can't seem to replicate this on my own using 4 devices, but it happened numerous times last night when we had 4 active players. My hunch is it has something to do with multiple people using the CPad.

Please and thank you!
 
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Posghetti

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Alright guys. I know this is asking a lot, but if you manage to play with 3+ people, please have one of you turn debugging on by pressing L at the start screen before joining/hosting.

If something goes wrong, please take a screenshot (or even better, video) of the bottom console screen when bad stuff happens.

Last night when right before I recorded gameplay, I was seeing anomalies like teleporting snakes and apples. The apple seemed to be teleporting on its own, every frame. I can't seem to replicate this on my own using 4 devices, but it happened numerous times last night when we had 4 active players. My hunch is it has something to do with multiple people using the CPad.

Please and thank you!

I'll test this later on when I get home.
 

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I'll test this later on when I get home.
Alright! Thank you very much! Also, be sure to update to the latest version (0.1.3). It should say so at the start screen, first line of text.

One tip (please don't abuse this among your friends, or they will hate you):
If you hold R and press X at title screen, you can drag-drop the apple anywhere you want by using the touch screen.
You can use this to create edge cases like I did when I had 3+ snakes side by side, and placed an apple in front of all 3. This caused some race cases which I hopefully fixed.

The CPad should also be tested by all players because we thought it was the culprit for netcode anomalies last night, but I think it may have simply been 4 players all vying for the apple at the same time, resulting in one of the race cases I just described.
 

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There are a lot of netcode bugs right now. I tried making a change to the netcode, and it sometimes drops a packet and doesn't trigger the resend.

Will fix this soon!
 

Posghetti

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boop.

did you get a chance to try it with more players?

Just updated and tried to replicate the issue. None of the snakes nor the apple is randomly teleporting. 5 is my limit, wish I could test more.
I did have all 5 of them use the C-Pad and not D-Pad, but the game is just playing normally. (This is out of 5 actual try to win games)

R+X is a nice thing to have tho :P BWAHAHAHA.
 

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Just updated and tried to replicate the issue. None of the snakes nor the apple is randomly teleporting. 5 is my limit, wish I could test more.
I did have all 5 of them use the C-Pad and not D-Pad, but the game is just playing normally. (This is out of 5 actual try to win games)

R+X is a nice thing to have tho :P BWAHAHAHA.
awesome.
thankfully my apartment has lots of noise and is great for testing. I get teleports often
 
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I am currently working on a new bottom screen console using system font.
after I get that working, I'll start working on settings and better netcode

edit: I'm close to getting the new console working, just trying to align the ready markers on the round ended screen.
 
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I am about to release game modes!
you will be able to toggle any combination of (and more to come):
  • boundaries kill
  • tron mode
  • disable diagonals
  • disable A
  • disable B
  • disable Y
  • no apple
 
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Alright, game modes have been added!

Welcome to version 0.1.5!

Press SELECT at the start screen to set game mode! This will only work if you HOST. You can change these settings at the end of round screen (if you are host).
Here are the game modes you can toggle any combination of:

  • Boundaries kill: Classic snake! You can't touch the boundaries, or they will kill you.
  • Tron mode: For a game of tron, enable this and "No apple" to experience a true tron cycle bike game! Snakes will always grow, and never have a true tail.
  • Disable diagonals: For those of you that think the CPad's automatic diagonals is too OP, this is for you.
  • Disable A: Don't like being able to go fast? Disable it here.
  • Disable B: Don't like being able to go slow? Disable it here.
  • Disable Y: Hate it when people teleport the apple? This is for you.
  • No apple: Forget the apple, just kill everyone!
 
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Added new game mode that must be enabled to take advantage of: "Enable R". This button, when pressed in game, will reverse your direction, making the head of your snake the tail, and the tail the head!

If you're about to get trapped, going in reverse might solve the problem. Be sure to OK it with your friends before you change game modes before a new round starts. That information might be good to know :)

edit: I am getting close to finishing this game's features. If you have anything you'd like added to the game, let me know. Pretty soon I will focus on cleaning up my code and making a beta release.
 
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I have added some easter eggs for the "username suggestions".
Try typing "flip" as a username and check the suggestions box for the software keyboard.

Some more are:
put table back
glasses
shrug
happy
kiss
pig
 
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Desynched

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I have fixed 99% of the holes that appear when using R.
However, using R before you are done growing at the start of a match might kill you.... Going to fix that next.
 

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here's a video demoing one of the new game modes in one player: Enable R



you might want to mute the video, my fans were on. sorry if it's out of focus, i recorded it by laying my phone on a glass table and playing beneath it.
 
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I want to make a save file for high scores, but I'm unsure how I want to do it.

in multiplayer, it's harder to get points, so I might only save high scores for one player... or I might multiply the score by the number of players... or I might keep a high score for every possible number of players... not sure.

let me know what you think on how it should keep track of past scores.

I also want it to default use the last username chosen
 

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As soon as you release a definitive 100% complete version I'll download it. I'm in no rush but I think this is cool and I'm lurking around like a frog in a swamp.
 

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