1/27/2025 Update:

The Mint


Spent my weekend implementing suggestions to the game on itch. I have two levels now with one bonus extra hard level.
The UI pop ups I hope will better explain how the game is played.

Original Post:
I went on a 3 day caffeine fueled bender to make a prototype of a game idea: a phone friendly physics based puzzle game where you’ll make coins or filter the coin materials with gravity and bouncing as your main tools:
https://stactory.itch.io/dwarven-mint
the mint on itch
I hope you guys can figure it out!!

How do I feel about it

I hate it0%
I love it17%
I don’t get it83%

Also, I have to say in my rapid development I didn’t even really notice I was in Godot 4 as opposed to my day to day (in Godot 3) everything was a breeze to use.

i could not get yellow diamond, not intuitive, also the control needs some work, like you need to click on platform to activate it and then you can move, this is not fun and you loose time. Better to be mouse over and then you click and can drag the platform or mouse off the platform to scroll the whole screen.

Also the platform rotation is not intuitive, you need to click the icon to use it but you dont get any feedback wethere youre in rotate mode or not. Better to have some margin border that is invisible to player yet visible to mouse over so that its more like in gimp, where you can rotate by grabbing the outter edge

    Maybe this is just me, but I don't know how to play it. I figured out I can move one of the blocks with my mouse. But what are the objectives? Any controls besides the mouse? Perhaps some instructions would help 😛

    • xyz

    • Post #5
    • Edited

    What @kuligs2 said about controls. Also entrances into boxes should be visually better emphasized. Otherwise, quite good.

    i cheated... dragging the containers over the coins rapidly... made them change color... created a dam with the unused block... got my needed coins built up... and used the dam block to push the coins down as fast as i could.

    I feel like having some on screen pop ups (how - to's) to explain what is happening would be beneficial to the user.

    It feels very UNIQUE though! definitely a different game than i have played before! Good job!!!

    @Erich_L
    i came back and tried it again (left the tab open)... i too CANNOT for the life of me get a diamond to work... they just get stuck half way in the box*

    I do actually think this is a decent idea, and i that you are on a good path to a very different game.... KEEP IT UP AND KEEP US POSTED!!!!!

    @REVBENT @kuligs2
    I guess it's not right for me to leave this here without showing how it's done! So here's a solution:

    I personally really like this idea so I think I'll be spending this upcoming weekend implementing your suggestions <3!

      @Erich_L

      GOOD LUCK! Keep the coffee flowing and the keys going!

      i think @xyz had a great point about trying to highlight the entrances in some way...

      personally i am all about lights/HDR effects right now in my 2D worlds, so my suggestion would be having some kind of directional light marking the entrances... AND if you wanted to put a "green light" for the IN side, and a "red light" for the OUT side... it would be slightly more intuitive IMO.

      Erich_L i did that, but no ball ever went through the diamond block... they were bunching up and making a clog..

        kuligs2

        I have been working on the suggestions this weekend and the rotating UI component is the only one giving me a hard time. The issue I have is that if the rotate button rotates around AND I allow the player to move the components anywhere they want (to the far right or left sides for example) then there would be many situations where the rotate button gets hidden on the edge of the screen.
        I agree my solution isn't immediately intuitive though.

            @Erich_L

            Since it's a phone friendly then I guess better to have the boundary otherwise the block could go off screen (hard to get it back with your finger)

            Show objectives and instructions at the beginning would help greatly. (In the beginning I didn't know what to do so I was more interested in clogging things up lol)

            i have always dealt with that situation:
            ....by making a separate scene that contain the UI components...
            ....updating UI location relative to the node it is controlling....
            ....you can set the UI layout to change based off what part of the viewport it is in (button on left or right*)...
            ....then using a signal to inform the node of the changes made by the UI.

            I'm sure there are better ways... but this has been the best way i have done it without unwanted consequences.

              why not tuch with 2 fingers and rotate and hold to drag? since its mobile it should be possible

                Update completed and uploaded!
                For @kuligs2 , you can drag the screen around now without deselecting a component.
                For @MikeCL , a UI pop up first level to explain the objective
                For @xyz, a level 2 and a hard level 3. Also made the mouths of most components bend inwards for better emphasis.
                For @REVBENT , pop ups for newly introduced components explaining how they work.
                Also for @REVBENT and Kuligs2 : I made the Engraver bigger so that the coins don't so easily get stuck

                Thanks so much guys for the suggestions. The only thing I didn't tackle that I probably should have is the rotate UI but... we'll see.

                  DJMaesen
                  Yes it's definitely possible. The problem for me is that it takes a ton of time to test because my PC doesn't have finger input. So to do that I would have to guess some code is right then fully export it to the phone... which I think for now is too much work for a game I want to actually finish. (I'm embarrassed to admit it took me like 15 hours just to figure out pinch to zoom in godot 3.5 that way).

                  Also thanks a ton Maeson for suggesting the input output shapes.

                  REVBENT If I understand you correctly then, if a component was on the side of the screen then they would rotate it halfway before the rotate image has to pop over to the other side. The user would then need to find it again and continue dragging. :

                        Erich_L
                        i suppose i was thinking the issue was the "rotation" button being off the screen when UI was to one side of the screen.

                        i am suggesting to flip the UI model when it is on one side of the screen vs the other to keep the button visible.

                        i am not sure off the top of my head if child containers or the parent controls that have a scale property... but setting that negative will flip the layout.

                        i would suspect that someone is not going to be rotating the object while they are also relocating it to "x" position.

                        once they finish placing it where they want. your script can work some magic... and poof... button will be visible.

                          Erich_L like i tried to say before, create invisible margin that only mouse can see, and if user puts mouse over it click and drag it starts to rotate.. no need for a button.. just an area


                            something like that

                            DJMaesen one should not forget the PC players too