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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

#161

Post by chrismonsanto »

MortenK wrote: post #144
chrismonsanto wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

If you're suggesting I am lying, I assure you there are more substantial things to lie about.

> Typing, Fastest. Mrs. Barbara Blackburn of Salem, Oregon maintained a speed of 150 wpm for 50 min (37,500 key strokes) and attained a speed of 170 wpm using the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard (DSK) system. Her top speed was recorded at 212 wpm.

I (could) absolutely type at 150 wpm. I would not be able to sustain it for 50 minutes. Nor could I type at 170 wpm, let alone 212 wpm.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#162

Post by GhotiFish »

weinzierl wrote: post #135
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…

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 c…

I'm not sure how the word generation works per say, but I've made a bunch of mistakes in sequence because I started with the letter "t" hoping to kill "technology" and I ended up shooting at "tea"

unless there's careful selection of the starting letters of words that are thrown at you, you will end up targeting something unexpected and taking big penalties.

that doesn't seem fair to me.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#163

Post by GhotiFish »

I like the implementation of this game a fair bit, but I never liked the "go until you die" games.

Personally, I really need to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Even if it's a fake light, like an arbitrary point goal to reach, a time to survive to win a stupid little achievement.

"How far can you go" never served as good motivation for me.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#164

Post by throwaway0094 »

Malician wrote: post #157
throwaway0094 wrote: post #42

Wave 35, score of 4098. Needed to get harder faster. Waves ~25+ were difficult. Criticism: Overlapping words make it hard to read. The font makes it hard to distinguish i, t, l, j, which is bad when you need to determine which to type quickly. Accidentally mistyping the first letter of the wrong word locks you on to some rando object; my own failing, but, an unlock button (backspace?) would be nice.

On expert or normal?

Normal.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#165

Post by chrismonsanto »

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!

I agree, it would be great if we could pick the level to start on.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#168

Post by danmaz74 »

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…

For the highscores, don't aim for perfection; simply aim for "fun".

I suggest to add an all-time highscores, and a daily one. It would really add to the fun factor.

EDIT: and the game does NOT suck.

Re: Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It

#170

Post by chaz »

If you enjoyed this, you might enjoy Typing Maniac. There's a stand-alone version (http://www.mindjolt.com/typing-maniac.html) but also a Facebook version (https://apps.facebook.com/typing-maniac/). I haven't played the FB version in a few years, but it was fun to compete against friends' scores.
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