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Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

phoboslab.org

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Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#131

Post by phoboslab »

badave wrote: post #108
phoboslab wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author of the game here. It's quite interesting how damn near impossible it is to balance a game like that. When I first released it, it had no expert mode. I tried to make the normal mode challenging for most people without making it too frustrating. The feedback I got was mostly "it's way too easy", but I also got a few comments, particularly on Kongregate and other sites that appeal to younger users that "it's way…

How did you pick the font? I find myself having problems figuring out is a single letter is a l or an i or a j sometimes. Seems like there's a lot of fonts out there with better readability.

Well, I picked Tungsten because... well, it was pretty. But you're absolutely right. I changed it to Deja-Vu now. Please refresh!

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#132

Post by 6ren »

grey-area wrote: post #123
phoboslab wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author of the game here. It's quite interesting how damn near impossible it is to balance a game like that. When I first released it, it had no expert mode. I tried to make the normal mode challenging for most people without making it too frustrating. The feedback I got was mostly "it's way too easy", but I also got a few comments, particularly on Kongregate and other sites that appeal to younger users that "it's way…

Perhaps just let people skip levels once they have completed them, then everyone can find their level and restart there? It does get a bit tedious going through the easy stuff after you've played a few times. I do think sentences would make it fun too, perhaps something from Gutenberg? Great effort though, thanks!

Perhaps famous quotes about security (or programming) with common/small words removed.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#133

Post by manilafolder »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #46

Couldn't find the word in expert mode, that i was "accidently" starting to type and lost valuable time :( Final score: 2914, accuracy 92,9 and words per minute: 62,4. Fun game for a moment though ;)

Same problem for me. I couldn't make out the letters in the word I was typing because the word was hidden behind other words.

The word that is being typed should automatically move to top z-index. Maybe that word could also get a little larger than the other words to make it more obvious which one you are targeting.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#134

Post by sitkack »

phoboslab wrote: post #92
baby wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Author of the game here. It's quite interesting how damn near impossible it is to balance a game like that. When I first released it, it had no expert mode. I tried to make the normal mode challenging for most people without making it too frustrating. The feedback I got was mostly "it's way too easy", but I also got a few comments, particularly on Kongregate and other sites that appeal to younger users that "it's way…

The levels should increase at a faster rate if you don't make mistakes or clear the screen early.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#135

Post by weinzierl »

phoboslab wrote: post #92
baby wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Author of the game here. It's quite interesting how damn near impossible it is to balance a game like that. When I first released it, it had no expert mode. I tried to make the normal mode challenging for most people without making it too frustrating. The feedback I got was mostly "it's way too easy", but I also got a few comments, particularly on Kongregate and other sites that appeal to younger users that "it's way…

To make it harder and simultaneously a better learning tool for touch typing you could add a penalty for typing mistakes. The real guru mode would be if a hit is only a hit if the word was typed completely correctly. I mean, first letter selects the target and then you have to press the keys so that the word would correctly appear in your editor, e.g. if you type a wrong letter you'll have to use backspace.

Then we could even have CUA, Emacs and Vim key bindings. The lower levels will be manageable with just backspace and cursor keys. The higher levels will require advanced editing skills.

There could be two high scores too. One for the player and one for the editing method (like drivers' and constructors' standings in Formula One racing).

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#136

Post by wyantb »

phoboslab wrote: post #94
natural219 wrote: post #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…

This is definitely a good idea, but way harder to implement that it looks on the surface. I already spent about 40 hours tuning the game to what it is now and it still sucks. Tuning a dynamic difficulty system would take even more time, mostly testing. And then of course there's the question of what happens with the highscores. If one player is presented with a simpler game than the next, scores are not comparable at…

Some games solve this by having different modes of play. "Highscore Mode", "Campaign Mode (Easy/Medium/Hard/etc)". If you did, for example, have a dynamic scaling system, you could have that in some kind of alternate play mode that lets the user just practice, vs. a separate/more static mode that allows eligibility for highscores.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#137

Post by pjbrunet »

badave wrote: post #108
phoboslab wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author of the game here. It's quite interesting how damn near impossible it is to balance a game like that. When I first released it, it had no expert mode. I tried to make the normal mode challenging for most people without making it too frustrating. The feedback I got was mostly "it's way too easy", but I also got a few comments, particularly on Kongregate and other sites that appeal to younger users that "it's way…

How did you pick the font? I find myself having problems figuring out is a single letter is a l or an i or a j sometimes. Seems like there's a lot of fonts out there with better readability.

Same thing here. Also when two words come at you on top of each other, hard to see what I should be spelling ;-)

Ideas:

> Smaller words protected by a "forcefield" of a bigger word.

> Wrong letter halfway through spelling could make the enemy ship shoot a "backspace" torpedo that can only be destroyed with the backspace key. So three wrong letters would shoot 3 backspace torpedoes at you.

> Two long words reaching out could a tractor beam.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#138

Post by michaelmior »

A suggestion: It gets frustrating when you try to type one word, but the game thinks you're typing another. Maybe only have maximum one word starting with each letter on the screen at any given time. Bullets (single characters) could also be punctuation, numbers, etc. Then speed of individual entities could be used to ramp up the difficulty.

Anyway, a lot of fun. Thanks!

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#139

Post by corresation »

codeoclock wrote: post #99

That's awesome. I got to level 35 with 95.8% accuracy and 45 wpm. I need to practice...

I didn't make it that far, but with 62 words per minute. As the worlds started piling atop each other, the greatest difficulty was trying to figure out which word it believed you were working on to finish it up.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#140

Post by ybaumes »

phoboslab wrote: post #131
badave wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you pick the font? I find myself having problems figuring out is a single letter is a l or an i or a j sometimes. Seems like there's a lot of fonts out there with better readability.

Well, I picked Tungsten because... well, it was pretty. But you're absolutely right. I changed it to Deja-Vu now. Please refresh!

yes it would be great to avoid the words to overlap. And also when I begin to type in a word I cannot switch to another target, I must finish the current one. It is ok! But could you make the current bigger and red instead of orange please? :-)
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