Picolumia TGM

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 22:01:10 UTC

Picolumia TGM 1.4

PicolumiaTGM1.4

by Craig@Game

[Click to Play]

A modification of Andrew Edstrom's demake of Mixolumia.

The goal is to achieve the highest grade possible, Grand Master. To begin, you must score as many points as possible before the game ends. If the board fills up you lose.

You clear blocks in 2 ways:

Getting 3 or more blocks of the same colour in a straight line
Putting 4 blocks of the same colour together to make a diamond

Controls

⬅️/➡️

Move current quad left or right
Hold L/R when a piece spawns to have the quad spawn in that direction

⬇️

Hard drop current quad to the bottom of the board

❎ (z/c/n)

rotate counter clockwise

🅾️ (x/v/m)

Rotate clockwise

MOD CHANGES

Decreased global initial/repeat delays
Shift-buffer: Hold L/R when a piece spawns to have the piece spawn in that direction
Changes to score storage to prevent integer overflows (v. slight chance that an overflow can occur, but unlikely)
Blocks break away & prioritise the last direction moved, similar to Mixolumia
Mystery gameplay changes related to grade system
(1.3) Multiple Gamemodes

Grading

You begin the game at Grade 9. To increase your grade, simply score points. The points needed for the next grade is displayed in brackets
Grades go from 9-1, then S1-S9, followed by Master & Grand Master
Achieving grades above S9 require stricter requirements beyond the base game

Medals

As you play, you'll receive medals based on your performance. These have no affect on grades & are just for flare. These are graded from Bronze to Diamond & Ruby

SK: Skill Medal. Achieved by doing many large clears (5+ Blocks)
CL: Clear Medal. Achieved by clearing a large number of blocks at once
CB: Combo Medal. Achieved by performing large combos
HC: High-Combo Medal. Achieved by performing a high-scoring combo

Options

Some players find the falling block shadow confusing. If you would rather turn it off, you can toggle whether it displays with "Hide Shadow" and "Show Shadow" in the pause menu
You can also inverse the rotation buttons with the "Inverse Rotation" option. This is useful for those on mobile devices & those playing on certain controllers
If the screen shake effects are causing motion sickness, you can also disable this using "Disable Skrn Shk"
Finally, you can display the game's block generation count with the "Enable Debug" option

Gameplay/Grade Requirements: Standard Mode

Base Grades (9-S9) are all score based. The score required is displayed in brackets under your current score

To extend the game beyond the standard levels, you must achieve an S-Grade (S1-S9) before reaching level 15. You will then play up until level 25
If you reach level 25 within 7 minutes, the game will continue up until level 30, or when 7 minutes have passed
If you reach level 30 within 7 minutes, the game ends & you'll be awarded +1 on your grade
If you were S9 when you reach level 30, you will achieve the grade Master

To achieve Grand Master in Standard Mode, you must

To achieve Ultra Grand Master in Standard Mode you must

Gameplay/Grade Requirements: Extreme Mode

There are no base grades in Extreme Mode

To extend the game beyond the standard levels you must reach level 15 in under 2:40. You will then achieve the grade MASTER then play until level 30

To achieve Grand Master in Extreme Mode you must

To achieve Ultra Grand Master in Extreme Mode you must

CHANGE LOG

1.4

Screen Shake
- Reduced the field shift effects slightly
- Added option to disable screen shake
- (Known Issue) Disabling screen shake, playing, then re-enabling screen shake causes the playfield to drop sharply before returning to normal
  Feature request that resulted in this update happening in the first place. Screen shake isn't 100% where I'd personally like it but that more than likely is due to the pixel limits of P8
Colour Select
- Option allows players to choose between standard 4 colours or play with the extra 5th colour
- Colour select cannot be changed mid-game
  Another feature request. From playtesting, 5 colours is pretty challenging to manage, even with the renewed RNG system (see below), but it's there if players want it
RNG Reworked
- Blocks selected that have a block count higher than intended now choose the next block down without checking, instead of defaulting to blue-blocks
- RNG values greater than or equal to 4 will now generate the error-block, instead of just equal to 4
- Extreme: RNG past level 15 scales based on time & game performance
  This was long overdue & having the error-blocks playable by anyone also mandated cleaning this up. Anyone who was aware of 1.3's bias for blue-blocks could utilise it fairly effectively. It also meant however that the RNG after lvl 15 in Extreme became severely unwieldy at times. Hopefully these changes will make things somewhat more playable
Extreme Mode Changes
- RNG changes prevent error blocks from spawning depending on game performance
  The error block is now a punishment for declining play. Medal values are taken into account & will scale back the RNG slightly. These values scale as follows:
  -Skill Value X 1.85
  -Largest Clear X 2
  -Highest Combo X 4
  -Highest Combo Score X 3
  Making a clear of any kind also reduces the RNG value, meaning even once error-blocks are playable, making a clear will return it to 4 colours for the next blocks spawned. This change will hopefully make getting GM grade more consistent as it still requires fast & efficient play
- FIX: Adjusted time limits for M & GM grades
  An oversight allowed for times on the timelimit to pass (e.g. 2:40.99). These have been dropped by 1
- Final speed increase occurs at level 45
- Ultra GM score requirement 100K --> 75K
  Yeah, turns out I've been lying about the UGM requirements for years. Given I only achieved Extreme GM a handful of times, I don't think anyone found out though. This has been partially fixed as the longer intended game-length necessitated a higher score requirement, necessitating good level 40+ play to earn it
UI
- Added colour count below gamemode
- Added RNG value to debug stats
- Added End-game stats
- Prevented gamemode selection until gameover/victory music has finished playing
  Technically the game checks if all 4 audio channels are silent before presenting the menu & stats. It's still possible in certain situations for the menus to be active for a frame before being disabled again, so be aware

1.3

Bug Fixes & Optimisations:
- Holding both left & right will now halt block movement & won't cause rapid alternating movements
- Reduced particle generation. High CPU will cause slow-motion instead of frame-skipping
- Grade changes on GM requirement sensitive grades now take into account the current combo value, preventing incorrect grade results
- Last Direction Moved now changes on input as well as block movement, allowing the direction to change even if the block can't physically move in said direction
  This should make the game feel easier to control, especially in critical situations
Visual Changes:
- Altered Menu screen & logo
- Altered text colours for some elements (combo, grade)
- Combo notification appears on combos of 3 or greater
- Added popup text that shows the value of the current clear + the amount of blocks cleared in that instance
  Should make it more apparent that this is a variation of the original on startup now. Popup text is probably more valuable in GIF replays because of how quickly blocks clear here, but it's a nice feature nonetheless
New Features
- Extreme Mode: Starting at Standard modes top-speed, play as fast as you can
- Initial Spawn Location: Holding Left/Right when a block spawns will place it one cell in that direction
- Ultra Grand Master
- Adjusted block generation: Helps provide a more even spread of blocks throughout
  Finally added that so-called Death Mode. Much like TGM's Shirase mode, there's an added twist to those who can reach Lvl 15 within a set timelimit. ISL is a godsend in high-speed situations. Beware that spawning into the stack is possible & will result in a game over
Altered Several Grade Requirements
- 8: 10 --> 25
- 7: 25 --> 50
- 6: 50 --> 100
- 5: 100 --> 250
- 4: 250 --> 500
- 3: 500 --> 750
- 2: 1000 (No change)
- 1: 2000 --> 3000
- S1: 5000 --> 6000
- S2: 7000 --> 8000
  To be honest, balancing the lower grades will always be a nightmare just by the nature of the score calculations. Main change is to S1 which should at least force players to make some consistent combos
Adjusted Game Speed
- Initial game speed 27 --> 28
- Standard max speed 2 --> 3
  Nerfed so that players can more reliably play for score instead of pure survival at the very end & reduce the need for giant combos early on when aiming for GM
Adjusted Medal Grades
- Added Ruby grade beyond Diamond
- Skill Medal: Clears larger than 8 receive bonus points towards medal progression
- Clear Medal: Ruby at 18+ cleared at once
- Combo Medal: Reduced requirements. Ruby is now old Diamond requirement
- High-Combo Medal: Ruby at 15K points in a single combo
  Added flare for the most part. Skill Medal changes were made due to it being impossible to achieve Diamond without sacrificing score. This makes it possible to get all-diamond medals at a minimum while playing for GM grade

1.2

Added Combo Display in place of Grade. Grade now appears in the bottom-left corner of the board
I missed being able to see the combo score during playtesting mainly. Should also help players recognise good gameplay tactics
Added flair text to end screens depending on how the game ended
Mainly so you don't see the same "YOU WIN" screen every time
Altered combo multiplier; now caps at 4
This attempts to reduce some of the dependency on combos (though they're still very valuable) & reinforces the core philosophy of large clears being the more important factor in scoring well
Altered several grade requirements:
- S1: 4000 --> 5000
- S4: 13k --> 15k
- S5: 16k --> 20k
- S6: 20k --> 25k
- S7: 25k --> 30k
- S8: 30k --> 40k
- S9: 40k --> 50k
  S4+ changes are mainly to increase the difficulty of attaining M/GM grades. S1 change occurred during playtesting & finding that I was struggling to score below S1 within the base game, likely due to the score scaling from level 10+. This should mean you have to do some multi-clears to achieve an S-Grade

1.1

Decreased score needed to access added stages; Now requires S grade (4k score, down from 10k)
I kinda forgot that I was the only person to have scored above 10k in base Picolumia. Plus it didn't make sense to achieve an S-grade & still only get a standard game. Requirements for GM remain unchanged
Capped movedown speed to 2 for base game
This is more to setup for adding a Death mode to the game. Plus playing at 1 frame per tick was more luck dependant than I liked. This should make endgame levels more playable & will allow for scoring opportunities even during the last stretch
Capped combo multiplier to 8
Turns out the variable that was made to cap the combo multiplier (like in Mixolumia) was never used. It is now being used, but has been scaled up to hopefully not interfere with the current grade barriers