larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

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Sokoban: Bunny Tales

Hey DROD peoples, I’m working on a new game and was hoping you could help me out.

Sokoban: Bunny Tales is a grid-based puzzle game running on Windows.

Please check out the game and give me as much feedback as you can.

If you attach your “sokosave.txt” then I can easily check out your solutions to see if any are unintended.

For now, only play the levels on the main menu screen.
The second screen currently only has copies of these levels!

There is also a room editor. There are currently 100 rooms, but I intend to have an additional 100 rooms. If you design rooms that I can use in the game then just send me your “sokoroom.txt” file so I can check them out. Rooms are simply saved as a 570 character long text string, so you can put a bunch in one text file if you want to send multiple rooms.

Note that all files are saved in your user app directory, then subdirectory “bunnytales”.
(Your app directory is often hidden.)

Thanks, and get hopping!!

I have removed the attachment and link for now since I haven't been getting much feedback. If you are interested in helping on this project just PM me or reply to this thread.

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 10-29-2020 10:40 AM]

Someone Else
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1300
Registered: 06-14-2005
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A few initial comments:

You can't scroll the dialogue box using w/s, but those are the keys for movement (yes, arrow keys work for movement too, but the keys indicated are wasd).

The first 10 puzzles seem like a fine intro, but the next 10 look identical. I'm confused.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
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Good point on the scrolling the text. I will fix that.

Right now I have only created 100 levels for the main menu. I simply copied those 100 levels onto the second menu where I plan to put new levels as we create them. So for now I recommend only playing the original levels on the main menu screen :-)

Someone Else wrote:
A few initial comments:

You can't scroll the dialogue box using w/s, but those are the keys for movement (yes, arrow keys work for movement too, but the keys indicated are wasd).

The first 10 puzzles seem like a fine intro, but the next 10 look identical. I'm confused.

Kalin
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 185
Registered: 01-25-2016
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Sorry I'm late with my feedback, but it took me a while to learn/remember how to play Sokoban (1.4 stumped me for a while). I've now finished the first 60 rooms except 4.10.

I really love how simple and clear the graphics are. I wish more puzzle games looked like this. The controls were nice and responsive, and the undo and reset commands prevented things from feeling tedious, no matter how many times I failed a room.

You could use a proper help screen. Even though the keyboard controls are displayed for the player, I had to try many of them to figure out what they did (I was surprised to find that M toggled fullscreen). It would also be nice to know what to call the different game elements.

Checkered flags usually mean (in the US at least) "victory" or "completion", not "I want to come back here". And once I figured out how they worked, I never touched them. Undo and Reset were far more useful.

You should disable the second set of rooms until you have something to put there.

You do a very good job of showing how to use new elements without having to tell the player what they do. But there are a few things I would do differently.

I would have only checked victory conditions at the end of the turn, not continuously. Many of your rooms are the opposite of DROD rooms where the challenge is in how to get out after.

Your button and gate graphics are a bit confusing. Why do buttons change color when pressed? I first thought it was a graphics bug. And why did you draw the gates as circles instead of something touching its neighbors? And why not use a new color for them, like dark purple?

I've only seen one room with portals, and I already hate them. I'm used to portals where if you push an item into them, that item moves off the destination in the same direction, either immediately or when you follow it. Having to clear the destination before you can use the portal (and clearing it forces you to use it) is really annoying.


This is a very good puzzle game, and I plan to finish all 100 levels eventually. I hope you put the link back sometime, because I think many DROD fans would enjoy it.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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@Kalin

You could use a proper help screen.
> I agree. Help screens now added.

Checkered flags usually mean (in the US at least) "victory" or "completion", not "I want to come back here". And once I figured out how they worked, I never touched them. Undo and Reset were far more useful.
> I will try changing it to a white triangular flag.

You should disable the second set of rooms until you have something to put there.
> Yup. This will be disabled until the levels are ready.

I would have only checked victory conditions at the end of the turn, not continuously. Many of your rooms are the opposite of DROD rooms where the challenge is in how to get out after.
> I want to give the level designer maximum flexibility. If the level designer wants the player to have to leave the objects standing on the sockets then he can simply place a carrot after a trap floor to enforce that.

Your button and gate graphics are a bit confusing. Why do buttons change color when pressed? I first thought it was a graphics bug. And why did you draw the gates as circles instead of something touching its neighbors? And why not use a new color for them, like dark purple?
> I think it makes sense to visually show that a button is pressed. Maybe I’ll just try making the button brighter when it is pressed.
> I went with a marble image for posts because it was the best thing I could come up with that looks recognizable and seemed to clearly indicate that it would block objects.
> As for the color of the button and posts. First of all, I want them to be the same color to make it obvious that they are related elements just like all the trap floor elements have wood to show that they are related. I sort of like using red because read naturally tends to mean stop which is what the posts do. It just so happens that dark purple is going to be used thematically a little later in the game as you will see. I might try dark blue and decide if that looks better than the red.

I've only seen one room with portals, and I already hate them. I'm used to portals where if you push an item into them, that item moves off the destination in the same direction, either immediately or when you follow it. Having to clear the destination before you can use the portal (and clearing it forces you to use it) is really annoying.
> Once again, I want to leave as many options open as possible to the level designer. You will soon see that there are both grass warps and ice warps. The grass warp ends up working more like a tunnel in drod where the player can walk through it but pushing objects into it pretty much clogs it up. The ice warp is far more efficient for pushing items through which is what you seem to be expecting it to do.

This is a very good puzzle game, and I plan to finish all 100 levels eventually. I hope you put the link back sometime, because I think many DROD fans would enjoy it.
> Thanks, more on this to come soon.
> Awesome feedback. Thank you.

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 09-21-2020 04:37 PM]

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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My Steam Store page is now open. Yay.
Bunny Tales

Testers and/or Level designers still needed.
The game is pretty much done, but it really does need more testing and just a few more levels.
All helpers will be included in the credits and will get the final version of the game.
More importantly, you’d be doing me a big favor. I’d really like to solely have DROD folk as testers if possible. I trust you guys and we all know DROD players are the smartest gamers in the Eighth.

Please reply to this thread, chat, or PM me if you can help and I’ll PM you a steam key.

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 09-23-2020 09:31 PM]

Doom
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3226
Registered: 07-05-2004
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Played through all of the levels over the last few weeks. Some notes:

I like the clarity and simplicity of everything. No hidden information and straightforward mechanics (though to be fair most of the elements have been used in classic puzzle games before - probably the biggest "surprise" is that you can win when a sliding block passes over a button).

Level design is decent overall, very few levels feel too easy outside of the tutorials. I didn't write down comments for individual levels, but here's a couple of quick ones that come to mind.


The controls feel somehow...slippery? I made a lot of accidental double-taps throughout the entire game. This might be caused by the ability to queue actions? In fact, I've just decided to test this and found that if I input, for example, "RRU" quickly multiple times, sometimes the game registers it as "RRUU".

I've attached my save, in case you'd like to check solutions.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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Henri,
thanks for checking things over.
when you say R and U, are you talking about restart and undo or do you mean right and up?
So the big question is could you try making a room or two if you get the time? :-) Please :-)
Larry

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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version beta 1.4
note: the version can be seen on the third help page.

repeat Keys fixed I hope –
maybe Henri can set if this is working better now.

Desktop icon changed –
to see the new icon you would probably have to delete the current icon from your desktop and click on some steam settings to reload the new icon.

Windowed/full-screen new solution –
unfortunately game maker does not have a good way to switch between full-screen mode and the proper windowed mode. So what I have done is use a borderless windowed mode the entire time which I just set to use up the entire screen to make it look like full-screen mode. This means that in windowed mode, the window has no borders so it cannot be resized or moved. I have now made it so that toggling windowed mode toggles between three states:
1. Full-screen
2. Window in the upper left
3. Window in the upper right.

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 09-26-2020 04:14 AM]

Doom
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3226
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larrymurk wrote:
repeat Keys fixed I hope

I can confirm that controls feel much better now.

I have now made it so that toggling windowed mode toggles between three states:
1. Full-screen
2. Window in the upper left
3. Window in the upper right.

The window is positioned wrong in the upper-right position and goes partially off-screen. I'm playing on an older monitor with 1680x1050 resolution.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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re: Doom TM
window mispositioning- good point. Will be fixed next update.

Awesome rooms.
Of course I spent my first 15 minutes on each of them saying that they were impossible. Then I spent the next 10 minutes on each saying maybe I could get close to solving this.. Then amazingly another five minutes of work and I managed to solve each of them
I think it is safe to say that both of these rooms will be going on the second (optional) page.

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 09-26-2020 05:20 PM]

Gordius
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 91
Registered: 12-16-2008
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I'm only about 70 in, but I'm definitely enjoying this so far. One minor interface suggestion: since the puzzle selection menu is largely designed for keyboard, it would be helpful if moving right off the end of a row would bring you to the story icon for the next row (assuming you've unlocked it). I'm sure once I've unlocked everything (or gotten stuck), I'd use this less, but right now, when I'm going through them one after another, finishing a row means hitting left a bunch of times to get back to the left side.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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@Gordius
A second page of lvls will be added soon (7-10 days i hope).

When a row is completed, the book at the left of the next row will open as well as an arrow on the right to take you to the next page of levels.

Note that pressing down puts you on the rightmost available spot on the next row.

Maybe you can see how you feel after the additional lvls are added.

Glad to hear you're making great progress.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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ALL TESTERS:

We are getting very close to having 200 levels.

Please-
1. Send me your sokosave.txt file so I can watch your best solutions to each room. You can contact me on caravel chat, by PM, or thru this thread.

2. I'd still love you to submit any rooms you can create (they are saved as sokoroom.txt). I will always substitute in better rooms to replace my worst ones until the full release on steam which is scheduled for oct 29.

By next friday, I hope to add in and reorganize the entire 200 rooms. Once I have all 200 lvls available in-game I'll be asking everyone to delete their save files so they can test the full game fresh.

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 10-02-2020 07:11 PM]

Gordius
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 91
Registered: 12-16-2008
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I have all but five of the first 100 levels solved at this point (many of them not at all optimally, but solved). I enjoyed a lot of this. I think my main comment is that, unless the second 100 have some interesting uses of the wild card rainbow items, I'd remove that entirely. I might be misremembering, but I think there's only one level that uses them at all, and that's largely a "realizing that rainbow means wild card" a-ha, and little else. If someone has created a number of interesting levels that use that, great! Shift some of them into the first 100, so it isn't just a one-off there. If there are only one or two others, that suggests it isn't as interesting a mechanic as some of the others you've implemented.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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@Gordius
good point about the rainbow blocks and balls.
I thought it would be a good idea to have these items available for architects to use. There are a few more levels in the additional 100 levels that do implement them. I suppose I'll have to make a decision on what to do after opening up all 200 levels and seeing what I think then.

I would really love it if you could make a post on this thread and attach your save file so that I can see if there are any unintended solutions to the rooms you have solved. It's fine if you haven't solved all 100. the top post explains where the file should be. Please tell me if you have any problem locating it.

Gordius
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 91
Registered: 12-16-2008
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File: sokosave.txt (14.4 KB)
Downloaded 41 times.
License: Public Domain

As I said, a lot of this isn't optimized, but here's the file.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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@Gordius:

Thanks. This will definitely help a lot. I already ran through your solutions quickly and found several unintended solutions.
Larry

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

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Beta V 1.5 released

I have edited, moved and added levels. We now have 100 lvls on the main page and another 100 harder optional lvls on a second page.

I'd like all testers to delete their sokosave.txt from your app data/ bunnytales directory. Then please play through as much as you can so you can provide feedback and eventually upload your new sokosave files to help me detect unintended solutions.

I hope everyone can try to run through as many levels as possible in the next week or two.

I'm still shooting for an Oct 29 release date on steam.

I am listing contributors using their drod username. Please tell me if you prefer I use a different name or no name.

Thanks,
Larry

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 10-05-2020 09:54 PM]

DanielFishman
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 159
Registered: 06-03-2007
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File: sokosave.txt (20.7 KB)
Downloaded 40 times.
License: Public Domain

Here's my solutions to the original 100 rooms, not at all optimized. (I downloaded it from the original post and have been slowly working my way through the puzzles).

Comments: I enjoyed it, the various mechanics were simple and intuitive to figure out, and the puzzles were interesting and varied (and rarely tedious).

I'm glad the sensitivity of controls has been fixed, I found that a bit annoying too too.

I disagree with Kalin and agree with your decisions about the way portals and checking victory conditions work, particularly the latter made for a lot of interesting puzzles of the "which of these is impossible to leave in its target space" form. Although I did often forget that possibility at first!

The difficulty curve definitely flattened out, and I sped through Chapter 10 far quicker than I expected to given how the previous few chapters had been, but that may well be me getting better rather than actually it being easier.

I'd be interested in trying the second 100 levels if you're still looking for people.

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[Last edited by DanielFishman at 10-06-2020 07:08 PM : close a bracket]

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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@Daniel

Thanks for your comments.
That would be great if you can look over the latest version of the game.
I'll send you a steam key via PM.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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Beta 1.5.1

@Daniel
Fixed bug- pressing left near left of main menu.
C2R1- Changed balls to red.

As for the purple arrow on the right not appearing until you read Ch 2.. I did this intentionally since some people saw the arrow and didn't notice the new chapter. On all other rows the new arrow and chapter appear at the same time.

Doom
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 3226
Registered: 07-05-2004
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Played through first four rows on both screens so far. Some bugs:

1) I'm able to access some levels that haven't been unlocked yet by clicking the invisible buttons with a mouse. This happens only on the right screen and only for a small number of levels. When I had two rows unlocked, I was able to click CH3-11, CH3-12 and the purple arrow left of them.

2) The game crashed. Seemingly at random I got several error messages and a visual glitch where the level border disappeared. The game continued running and after finishing the level (CH4-18), it froze for a long time before eventually crashing. Even CTRL+ALT+DEL wouldn't respond during the freeze. This might be hard to reproduce, since it's only happened once and without an obvious trigger. I replayed the level afterwards without encountering this again.

These were some of the error messages displayed:

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[Last edited by Doom at 10-08-2020 09:42 AM]

Rabscuttle
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2460
Registered: 09-10-2004
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It would be nice if click to move didn't path over trapdoors.

Undoing click-to-moves all at once would be nice too.

Click-to-move as an option isn't mentioned anywhere - probably should. One of the earliest puzzles had a lot of moving through corridors and it was a little tedious with keyboard commands.

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[Last edited by Rabscuttle at 10-09-2020 03:20 AM]

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
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@rabscuttle
1. Path mapping around trapdoors
there are several pros and cons to path mapping over trapdoors versus not. But, I'm glad you mentioned this because it got me to think more about it. And I think I came up with a pretty good solution. I will first try to find a path map avoiding trapdoors. If no route is found I will next try to find a route with a path map that allows traversing trapdoors. I think this should work great. We get the best of both worlds!

2. Multi-move click undo
this sounds like a good idea and should be easy to implement. If the user presses undo immediately after doing a click multi-move, I will have it undo that last multi-move sequence.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
IP: Logged

beta 1.6 now live

@doom
the 4th warp during one move is assumed to be an infinite loop and the game automatically undoes the move.

@rabscuttle
1. pathmap first tries treating trap floors as obstacles then if that was unsuccessful it next tries allowing traversal of trap floors.

2. undo now undoes multi-move clicks

3. help now says mouse click to move

Also, holding "U" down now repeats undo.

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 10-09-2020 05:25 PM]

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
IP: Logged

Version Beta 2.0

1. fixed pushing bomb into 9 deep pit

2. added mouse right click undo

3. fixed several unintended solutions and moved a few rooms

Doom, can you replay-
4.19, 5.18, 6.13, 6.15, 6.16, 6.20, 10.2, 10.5
on your 6.11 I added a trap floor to prevent my solution of pushing the ball there.

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
IP: Logged

quick note:
my change to 10.5 probably made it unsolvable.
Hopefully I'll figure out a fix soon.

Edit- okay I checked and it is still solvable. But I'll probably still try to refine it a bit.

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[Last edited by larrymurk at 10-13-2020 03:13 AM]

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
IP: Logged

version beta 2.1

help screens updated
several unintended solutions fixed

Doom and Dan, tx for your save files.

Other testers please give me your sokosave.txt files when you find time. You can always send me an updated file later if you solve more rooms.

Thx for all your help. Oct. 29 is fast approaching, but I'm confident we can make the release date!
Larry

larrymurk
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1911
Registered: 12-09-2004
IP: Logged

version beta 2.2

several rooms edited, moved and replaced

Please send me your save file if you haven't already.
You don't need to solve all the rooms or get optimal scores.
I just want to find unintended solutions.