Game Modes 2

Yesterday I finished up with two major aspects of the game: Time trial mode and high score message boxes. The message boxes appear in the middle of the screen when the player has scored a new fastest time in Time Trial or a new high score in Classic or Casual.

In time trial mode, the player has unlimited clicks and the object of the game is to get to 15,000 points or more as fast as possible. A stopwatch style counter starts when the player starts the game and ends when they reach 15,000 or more points. My fastest time so far is 1:26.880. Adding time trial mode to the game was a bit time consuming, but I was expecting that. Getting the timer to pause and resume correctly was *way* easier than I was expecting.

Time trial mode is pretty fun. Since you don't have to conserve clicks, you can just set yourself up for much larger chains, where in casual or classic, setting yourself up for a larger chain might not be worth the extra clicks you spend to do so. Without having to worry about how many clicks you have left you can make large chains all game, as long as you do so quickly.

Getting the high score/fastest time message boxes to pop up at the correct time was actually much more time consuming than I thought because I was actually checking for high scores in multiple places, both when the timer ran out and when the user was out of clicks. Now, it basically checks when the last tiles are respawned after the game end condition has been met.

Earlier today, I also did some quick work to add a "Quit" option on the game screen pause menu. Now, when the player presses either the menu button or the back button on the game screen, the pause menu will pop up. When the player selects the Quit option, they are taken back to the main screen of the game.

I feel like the only main things I need to add now (besides better graphics) is music/sound effects and a Downplay Games splash screen when the game first loads. Then an addition I was thinking about making was some sort of point text that appeared when a chain was made to give feed back to the player as to how many points they've received. In this way, the player would get a feel for how different chains are rewarded more than others and how causing multiple chain reactions is more beneficial. That being said, I also feel that there is a lot of chain reactions and tiles falling in different directions, etc, and putting a bunch of text numbers over the top of it might get really busy and make the board too crowded. I'll have to play around with it later and see how I feel about it.