made it to level 33 then failed horribly as the game thought I was typing a different word, since there was like 100 characters on the screen. wonder if I can script every alpha character per second and cheat :P
Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
141–150 of 261 posts
Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
#142The game is neat, but the fact that there is a "current word" state at all makes it frustrating. If I try to type two words at once, too bad. If my "current word" happens to be drawn below a cluster of other words - I am forced to wait, because I can't even type other words while I'm waiting.
Never force the player to wait for anything in a game that has a primary game mechanic focusing on speed. A better solution is as such:
1) If I really have to type exact words (I assume that this is intended to be a learning game where this makes sense) then when I enter a letter find the nearest word with the first occurrence of that letter. Why can't I shoot multiple enemies at once?
2) Initially, I had thought "Maybe I don't need to type words at all" and started just hitting letters that I saw regardless of which word they were in expecting the nearest one to be shot. This might be an interesting mode?
Also, another cool feature would be a bonus in the game like a math equation the causes all of the items in the level to temporarily move more slowly.
For instance, I might see a blue "enemy" that actually has a math equation below it. We'll say it's 17 * 4 / 2. If I type 34, then all enemies slow down for a duration of 3.5 seconds or so.
Then you can also leverage the fact that this is the only place where people can type numbers, so if someone hits the wrong answer - the powerup can become desaturated and becomes disabled. Just an idea!
Thanks for sharing this game :D
Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
#143The game is neat, but the fact that there is a "current word" state at all makes it frustrating. If I try to type two words at once, too bad. If my "current word" happens to be drawn below a cluster of other words - I am forced to wait, because I can't even type other words while I'm waiting. Never force the player to wait for anything in a game that has a primary game mechanic focusing on speed. A better solution is…
[deleted]
Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you try starting it in expert mode? If you did level 17 there, my respects to you :)
Yeah, expert mode. Before my hand injury (too much pinky stress), my sustained maximum was 153wpm on QWERTY. I can still get ~120wpm with the new layout and my Kinesis keyboard though. The only trouble I have is if I have to take a break and they advance a bit. My gun seems to lock on things I don't expect it to (missiles). Otherwise, they can barely make it on to the screen.
Wow, that's faster than Barbara Blackburn who holds the Guinness world record. You should compete :)
Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
#145It'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…
You don't have to rank based on single game scores. One way to do this would be to have levels that are replayable (ie there is a number n that uniquely identifies each set of level parameters) and use chess' Elo ranking system for both players and levels.
This gives players a ranking score that is comparable, and over time your players will rank your game levels for you. It also makes it possible to matchmake players to levels.
Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
#146You should design a native app.
Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
#147This is extremely laggy for me in Safari 7.
To quote myself from Twitter:
Aaaaand here's the reason why Z-Type is extremely slow in Safari 7 http://phoboslab.org/crap/html5audio/pause.html - surprise, it's an bug. sigh
Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
#148Nice 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 :)
Try play it in dvorak, colemak or workman instead.
Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think the dynamic scaling (difficulty multiplier?) could just be the levels advancing faster like somebody else said. If you solve a level too fast you could get a "wormhole" advancement that just gives you points automatically for the levels you skipped over.
I think this is awesome, not just as a typing tutor but as a spelling tutor. I think adding phrases and word combinations would help teach grammar too. You could also do a synonyms level, an antonyms level (I think even adults would like these) then verb levels, adjective levels, etc.
Here's another idea. A convoy of words come at you (as a sentence) with the verb out in front and you have to shoot the verb first.
Or, totally different game, fly/shoot your way through isometric Zaxxon-like "sentence diagram" landscapes.
PS: This is how I learned my times tables back in the 80s, very similar game on the TI99 ;-)