Online Versus Beta

Online versus is here! I am declaring it as "beta" because the rating should be seen as temporary, it has to be switched to a new system and will be reset soon, so don't get too attached to your rank. Matchmaking is currently set to worldwide and it just grabs the first player it can from the queue, no skill based matchmaking. If in the future there arises a need for a real matchmaking system I will add it, but not many people play the game currently so I didn't want to make you wait in the queue if there is someone to match with. Currently this mode is restricted to either queueing or inviting a friend and selecting it from stage select (unranked), you can't play it locally yet. Versus mode runs on a stage that is essentially the speed stage with some new added rules:

• If the floor would have been moved below the bottom of the screen, the other player's floor moves up that amount instead
• Combos greater than or equal to 4 send "damage" (raises the opponent's floor) to the opponent. Damage values see the combo damage values below
• If you have many shapes in your box (15-30+), the amount of damage sent/done is reduced by up to half, and your floor will move upward faster
• To allow for better comboing while still keeping some random challenge, the color (and shape selection) has been moved to a "bag" system in only this mode. Every 10 shapes it is guaranteed that there will be 2 of every color, and for every shape type (like circle, triangle, square etc) in the current shape mode, there are 2 of every shape per 2*(number of types)
• A combo is counted if shapes merge within 1 second of each other. Previously this was set to .3 seconds, where the velocity of the shape was considered instead after .3s for deciding what shape a shape becomes after merging
• Combos can be extended by quickly dropping and matching additional shapes
• The player that gets a higher score wins,but if the score is tied, the player who survived longer wins. Nobody wins if the survival time and score is equal (though it might say win for both if this happens currently).

Combo damage

• 1x combo: 0
• 2x combo: 0
• 3x combo: 0
• 4x combo: 2
• 5x combo: 1.5
• 6x combo: 1.5
• 7x combo: 1.5
• 8x combo: 1.25
• 9x combo: 1.25
• 10x combo: 1.25

Hitting a 7x combo would do 1.5 + 1.5 + 1.5 + 2 damage, or 6.5 damage. 1 damage is how much the floor moves down after you match a shape. The decreasing value for combos is because I didn't want a big combo to just instakill someone, but I still want it to be rewarded, and it should be worth than a couple small combos (a max combo is about as good as two medium combos right now)

Messiness Factor

As an anti-spam mechanism, there is a messiness factor that essentially makes the floor rise faster by a small amount (the amount is equal to the speed increase after 2 minutes in speed mode). The penalty begins at about 15 shapes, and hits the max at 30 shapes. In addition to this, the same penalty applies to how much damage you send to the opponent, where up to 15 shapes you send full damage, and at 30+shapes you send only 50% of the damage If you get a chance to play this mode, definitely give me feedback on what you want adjusted. In particular, this sort of feedback is important: In general, should combos be weaker/stronger? Should your base matching speed matter more? Should the messiness factor matter more (is spamming too strong?) - and if so, should it matter more for base floor speed or combo damage reduction?

Mode selection

There is a bug with this right now I am working on a patch for, but you have 30 seconds to select a mode from the main shape modes. You can also select random, for a random mode to be selected, or pass to let the other player choose. If both players pass or don't select something, a random mode is picked. There is an icon to display what the other player has selected, which you can use to communicate about which mode you want to play before pressing ready

Bananas

The latest shape to hit the game -> Bananas! Over time my ability to make more complex shapes without them getting stuck has improved, so now I've added a banana-like shape. Similar to right triangles, rotation matters a lot with this shape, but something weird about it is that you can probably still clear it will a lot of wasted space

Leaderboard shoutouts

Thanks to everyone who submitted scores to the most recent shape added, trapezoids:
And thanks to everyone who played the most recent iteration of all random:
dragonwolf717 and TheDeadKalemon really stole the show here, congrats! Thanks to everyone checking out the weekly mode spotlight as well! If you want to try the new mode but have noone to play with, try asking on the discord:

[ 2024-04-21 02:39:48 CET ] [ Original post ]