Live data from Hacker News

Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

phoboslab.org

81–90 of 261 posts

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#83
post #18

Sometimes I mistype, think I finished a word, and move on to the next word, effectively freezing me by three seconds. I don't think a typo should penalize me this much because I can generally recover from typos. Would be nice if the unit I'm currently attacking could glow or something. I like the cuteness and simplicity of the game though. Finally something to make me feel good about all those years spent typing.

The current enemy does glow, but it could be more obvious.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#84
So many complaints that it's not hard enough, and my complaint is the opposite, yet, ironically the same:

It's not useful over a wide-enough range of skill levels.

I was hoping it would be a good trainer for my kids, but it starts off too fast. I tried typing at about 5 wpm, and the result is a game that ends after just a few seconds of practice. If they don't start off already good, it won't give them enough practice to get good. They'll get bored with a game that won't continue for more than a few seconds in...maybe a minute.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't critic something if you don't even try it. I've been reading this kind of messages really often at HN and I wish these people can't even enter HN to post, it should be forbidden.

Look, I'm just saying that there is no information about what we're trying to wait for going into a long loading process. Perhaps there are more people who are bouncing, too. I'm just trying to provide a bit of information about my experience that might help the OP enhance their thing to help people understand it better.

What long loading process?

The pages load in less than a second.

Personally, from the title of the post I knew I was going to get a typing game.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#86
It's not that your game is too hard or too easy. You can dive in a little deeper. It's that your difficulty curve is not tuned properly. IMO you can tune it statically (follow most of the advice here, make it harder). Or, you can use some very basic dynamic difficulty shifting (If they complete the first level in >wpm, ramp up the difficulty, or adjust the difficulty curve as needed).

See this great video from Extra Credits on how Bejeweled 2's levelling system works. It's not the same problem, but it's very related. "A designer should always be thinking about how the player experiences the game."

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/puzzle-games

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#89
post #79
post #66

Nice game. I remember playing it some time ago, and quitting because of boredom once getting in the high (30+) levels. I think it was one of the first "little" games using html5 instead of flash. I see that they've introduced a new "expert" mode, which is indeed a lot harder. I've reached level 10 so far, but I'll give it a serious try sometime. The biggest problem for me is the language. I type a lot of English, but…

I still see no challenge in expert mode. Please make a harder mode :)

The nicest thing about it being in HTML5 is that messing with it's variables it's really easy. To make it harder, you can (for example), load the page, open the developer console, type

ZType.WAVES = {EXPERT: { wave: 0, spawn: [], spawnWait: 0.3, healthBoost: 0, types: [{ type: EntityEnemyOppressor, count: 3, incEvery: 4 }, { type: EntityEnemyDestroyer, count: 5, incEvery: 2 }, { type: EntityEnemyMine, count: 10, incEvery: 1 }] } }

And then start a game on expert mode.

You can mess up with the values to make it harder/easier.

Post reply on HN