"FiveBalls." Another game for Sony PRS500 (505?!?)

[Clemenseken]

Hi!







Here is a ARE two new little games for Sony Readers PRS500 (and maybe also 505).

( Only in mid-december 2008 did I post two versions of a MahJonG game for
PRS-500 and PRS-505 in a new thread each. If you are curious... )


I didn't really expect my game to be placed as a "sticky" here. But I am not angry, either
Here are two links to the first game for Sonys and to another game - a dictionary launching app I made (building on obelix's basic "research")...
SUDOKU game for PRS-500 and PRS-505
Dictionary for Sony PRS500/5 (autorun from SD card)

It's a clone of a game I saw at my brother's cell phone.
There it runs with 5 sorts of differently coloured balls (which I imitated with patterned balls...). To make up for this drawback I added a kind of status line (above) that informs about remaining numbers of balls.

The playing field consists of ten columns with 12 balls each (at the beginning). You must "kill" groups of identical neighbouring balls.
The aim of the game is to "arrange" the largest groups possible before "killing" as points are given roughly by square (actually: 5 balls=> 5*4 => 20p / 20 balls=> 20*19 => 380p. If 20 balls are "killed" in 4 groups of 5 you'll only get 80 points!).
So it makes sense to concentrate on one or two sorts and neglect (= "kill") others.

"Score" is displayed at bottom (total /ball group); highscore is saved and shown below (plus some internal debugging information).
(My brother's highscore is about 1,200 points. There once was a version of FiveBalls that allowed "killing" of single balls: my best there were 1,930 points!)

You navigate from column to column by the number buttons. The joystick moves the cursor "up/down" one position, "left/right" three positions - but also up/down
(if you can't find the cursor, just move it...).
"ENTER" kills your balls / "SIZE" displays a help window / "MARK" starts a new game (you'll probably get a higher score if the status line shows some numbers to be "30" or above) / "MENU" opens a close-down-window.

I spent so much time playing it that navigation is intuitive for me now; it might be less so for you. (Anybody interested can edit "label.png" in "skins"...).

When I first saw the original game I thought "That's a nice and easy game. I want that on my Sony!"
I worked for a few hours on ball patterns, later on found them too complicated / too vague / too similar, tried triangles, stars and "pentagons" but ended up with quite simple patterns - after about 2 days work time all added up. Poooh.
I use 10 arrays for the balls - but get them transformed into a single one for comparison (ball position plus/minus one and: plus/minus ten).
The right-most button "0" actually addresses the left-most array, lower pixel values are situated higher up on the screen... I had to do a vast lot of shifting values and positions therefore.
I would probably organize data in a different way next time. I learned a lot!

So far I'm aware of one minor bug. There may be other undetected ones.
I did the developing for my own fun. If you like it - tell me so!
(I write code very "compact" because of my minute iBook screen. I only attach comments in early source versions, usually. But documentation could be made available.)
Also, if you have a favourite game you'd like to see on Sonys - just mention it here. I might try my luck (but please: no "chess" or "go"...).

Oh - I forgot "Installation":
Unzip the file and put "Sony Reader" into the root directory of your SD card (USB might also work, I assume).

[=X=]

Sweet! Clemenseken =

Thanks

[spooky69]

Thanks again for another app! Haven't tried this one yet, but it's really cool to see the homebrew software library for the reader expanding.

[surquizu]

played well in the prs-505

thanks!!

[wmrawls]

Very nice. I am downloading now. Thanks for sharing your work.

[flamaest]

This is great!!!!


Fabian.

[DickyCheung22]

Thanks for the apps.. it is so nice!

[svakanda]

ooooh thankyou!!!

[edbro]

Is there a way to have both games available? Or, do I need to have a separate SD card for each?

[willanaya]

bump bump

[willanaya]

Can I put sudoku and the 5balls game on the same card?

What is the minimum size card I can use if I can only put one game per card? -nevermind, bought 2 two GB cards, however...

Can I put music on the remaining part of the 2GB or does the card have to be dedicated to the game only?

[Clemenseken]

Originally Posted by willanaya

Can I put sudoku and the 5balls game on the same card?

Yes, you can - BUT only one will start: Sony-PRS will look for <Sony Reader><software><autorun.js> and start whatever is written here. You may put both apps onto the card but will have to rename the one folder you do not want to play to "not-software" or s.th. ...

What is the minimum size card I can use if I can only put one game per card? -nevermind, bought 2 two GB cards, however...

I developed all my games on a 16MB card.

Can I put music on the remaining part of the 2GB or does the card have to be dedicated to the game only?

Yes, you can!
When you "quit" the game all contents that are visible to the PRS will appear in your music/book/... menus. BUT: Playing music or reading books from a card will drain battery power somewhat faster - imho.

[curiouspiper]

Nice work! Now I just have get an ereader -*sigh*-

[stranjer]

nice job Clemenseken, thank you very much

[kartu]

Clemenseken
Your game was integrated into:
http://code.google.com/p/prs-plus/

I'll remove it, of course, in case you have objections.