At last, I have released a new pre-release version of Chickens. Come and get it!

Chickens is a game that gives players a chance to solve problems in a new way. It presents bizarre problems that require bizarre solutions. The chickens must negotiate their way through a complicated spaghetti junction of pipes in order to reach the end of the game. Not only do they have to deal with the threat of the evil ducks, but the layout of the pipes also poses a puzzle. The game is divided up into levels, which are subsets of the pipe system. Each level consists of a series of pipes with obstacles, a certain number of chickens at the start, a target (number of chickens that have to reach the exit), and a time limit. The player must solve a problem by sending the target number of chickens to the end of the level within the time limit in order to be allowed access to the next level.

The game comes with a construction-set (level-editor) so you can create your own levels.

A chicken will die if it encounters a duck and attempts to fight it (and so will the duck it's fighting), or come across a bomb or a dead end. However, they can reproduce by laying eggs, and sending the eggs to the incubators to hatch. To make things difficult, the chickens' eggs come in four different colours (green, red, blue and yellow), and must be guided through the same system of pipes to the correct incubator for that colour in order to hatch. The Ducks can lay eggs too, and while there are ducks' eggs in the incubators, any chickens' egg trying to enter will be destroyed.

The junctions consist of ordinary pipes, interchanges, command blocks, and other obstacles. The main control the player has over the game is the ability to switch the paths of some of the pipe interchanges by moving the cursor over the interchange and pressing a button. The player can also release eggs that are being delayed.

Some of the interchanges have a red pipe running underneath them. If an object passes through this red pipe, the state of the junction changes to it's changed state and does not change back until the red pipe is empty again. This makes it possible to construct things like logic-gates out of pipes 'powered' by a stream of ducks' eggs. These can be combined to create computational logic circuits. An example of this is in the secod screenshot where in the top half of the screen, there are three flip-flops. The flip-flops are currently in an unstable state. This can be seen by the regular pulses of ducks' eggs in the pipes leading from the flip-flop-output to the bottom-right (in the game, you can see the flip-flops constantly changing state). To win the level shown in the second screenshot, the player must send a stream of chickens' eggs to the correct input for each flip-flop to stablise it and set it to the right state for it to send a continuous stream of ducks' eggs (or no eggs) to the three AND gates at the bottom-right (actually, the right-most one is really an A&!B gate). Once this has been done, the chickens will be released from the loop and pass through the 'AND gates' and if they are in the correct state, they will reach the exit. In the first screenshot, you can see that some of the chickens have put on a superhero costume (consisting of a leather jacket and sunglasses) and become Superchickens.

Below are two screenshots of the game and one screenshot of the construction-set (level editor).

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Anyway, here is a list of the notable changes since the last major public release.

I would like to thank Dennis Busch for providing me with the graphics and animations, and Amarillion for providing me with some levels.

Enjoy,

AE.

[EDIT:]I have only uploaded the Windows version. The DOS version is still the old version. If anyone wants the DOS version, please give me a shout, and I'll try and find the time to compile one.

[EDIT2:]I've released an updated version. This time, I've produced both Windows and DOS builds. A Linux Binary build is in the pipeline, and possibly even a Mac build too.

[EDIT3:]An experimental MacOS X version is now available. This has not been widely tested, and there's still a few issues to iron out.

[EDIT4:]A Linux 32-bit x86 binary-build is now available.

I forgot to mention that one of the things I did since the previous version was to make the game easier to play. Not only have I introduced some easier levels, but I've slowed down the pace of the game (it is possible to vary the speed of the game mid game and even make it run faster than I did before). The screenshots provided show some of the more complicated levels (although some are even more complex).

AE.

The game looks really cool! Could you maybe mail me the source code or publish it here (so I can try it on Linux)?

The kids are enjoying this game. Really good! I would expect foxes instead of ducks, but that's a matter of taste of course.

Which libraries did you use besides allegro? Would be interesting to look at your source code, if you're willing to share it.

I had the idea to do something similar, but easier, with a labyrinth to find a way through, and a few doors and switched. Target audience would be kids, maybe around 6 years old. Some of that could be done with chickens, of course.

Whatever makes you think anyone would want a DOS version? I can however imagine people wanting to have a Linux version...

Just the front end. So, yeah, that redesign would hopefully address most of the issues I raised.

Something like that, to make it more convenient, would be appreciated.

In general I'll jump right to playing a game, first, then go back and read the instructions if I need to ... so it's easy to miss something like that. Having the interface right there as an element of the GUI would make it much harder to miss.

Hi, I'd like to try it but when I download the windows file I just get an 11KB file that PowerArchiver doesn't like. Any suggestions ?

Argh, curse you and your addictive game. I haven't written a single line of code for my game since I started playing Chickens. Great job!
I'll upload my level pack after I add another level or so and polish the current ones a bit.

I spent a few hours playing chickens, I took the easy level and got through 15 and got stuck on level 16. Tried the next level up and didn't get very far Guess I'm not that good. It's a nice puzzle game, maybe you can see about polishing the graphics and interface and actually selling the concept.

Hi,

I've returned from England and recovered from the flu, so I can get to work on tweaking the game. Before I hand out the sourcecode to anyone who wants to build a linux binary that can run on multiple linux-boxes, I'll try and implement some of the quick-to-implement suggestions that have been made, and integrate Nils's level-pack in the game (if it's OK with him).

I will then try and add a separate level-group choser in a separate screen in order to un-clutter the main screen, a gui to the in-game statusdisplay, and a means of automatically saving the passwords. These will not be in the forthcoming release. I just want to fix a few minor things in this one so I can hand the source to people who want to compile for other platforms.

Most notably absent from this release is audio of any form. I currently have someone composing some music for me, but I would appreciate it if someone could create some suitable sound-effects for me.

An idea that I have for the music is that when the time limit starts to run out (ie, gets to the last 10 seconds), the pitch of the notes of the music will be modified so they gradually become more and more out of tune. So if you hear the music becoming out of tune, that's your cue to the urgency to complete the level ASAP! Also, I plan to change the speed of the playing music as the player changes the level-speed. Both of these things are easy to achieve if I use MIDI for my music.

From the point of view of the graphics, I need something for the background of the levels. Currently, the background is always dark magenta. There are 3 possible things I could do with the bacground.
1. Each level will have a different coloured background. The colour can be selected by the level-authour in the level-editor. Unfortunately, this looks too simple, but the level-authour has a great choice of colours.
2. A simple repeating pattern. Again, the colour(s) can be chosen by the level-authour (the HSV/HLS of the background-pattern can be adjusted), and there will be a choice of patterns to use.
3. A backdrop. This could be in the form of various pictures of farms - English countryside farm, American desert-ranch farm, Underwater farm, Space farm (a farm on another planet). On levels with scrolling, the backgrounds will scroll in paralax (the hills in the distance will scroll slower than the hills in the foregeound). The only thing I'm worried about is that the backgrounds will distract from the action going on in the foreground. The solution would be to draw the backgrounds in low contrast, but they won't look so good that way. However, Dennis has drawn the pipes in such a way that they stand out pretty well, but if I ever do a true-colour version of the game complete with translucent pipes (which will be made of glass), the background may be more distracting. One way to make the background less distracting would be to draw it using a low contrast, but low-contrast backgrounds tend to be dull.

My preferred choice is suggestion #3. However, this will require someone to draw the backdrop. Dennis only promised to do the sprites and the pipes, and now doesn't even have time to do the remainder of those. So I would need someone to volonteer to draw some backdrops for me.

And of course, the graphics of the front end require a complete overhaul...

Now that I think of it, level 16 is too hard for the 'Easy' group. I'll look into making it easier or placing it in a harder group.

Thanks. I appreciate these levels . Would you let me integrate them into the next release of the game?

Anyone else is also welcome to contribute levels.

Something like that is already in the pipeline. One of the ideas on my TODO list is to have a function that 'fills' a set of connected ordinary-pipes (ie. pipes that are not junctions or command-blocks, etc.). That is, if you select a pipe in the level with the 'fill' tool selected, it follows the path of the pipe in both directions (until it reaches a dead-end or a pipe that is not an ordinary pipe) and changes the pipe-colour as it follows the path.

Is this in the level-editor or game? If in the level-editor, do you mean a button that switches the interchange (or flips the obstacle-direction) of the selected square? If in the game, do you mean a small button in the interchange square that switches the interchange if pressed?

One thing I could add is a pipe that's a bit like a separator, but has five entrances instead of three. No matter which entrance incoming objects take, the eggs will exit at the exit that is the same colour as the egg. Ducks' eggs, along with chickens and ducks will leave the fifth pipe. An alternative idea I had for an egg-colour separator is something that works similar to the fowl/eggs separator (in which only objects entering the 'entrance' pipe become separated). This will have six entrances (one 'entrance' pipe and five 'exit' pipes). Only objects entring through the entrance pipe will be separated. Four of the exits will be where the coloured eggs go to (one for each colour), and the fifth exit will be where fowl (Chickens and ducks), and ducks' eggs end up. Anything entering in one of the exits will head straight to the entrance.

Another idea I had is a separator for separating anything related to chickens (chickens and chickens' eggs) from anything related to ducks (ducks and ducks' eggs) that is similar to the fowl/eggs separator square. But for this one, I may have to change the storyline a bit, because the invasion of the ducks is unexpected, and therefore, Farmer Pineapple would not have prepared anything for separating Chickens and ducks. I could say that Pineapple added te species-separators at the last minute, but then to comply with the storyline, the level-authours will have to use this type of separator sparingly.

So after trying out Kikaru's suggestion, did you manage to download it in the end?

AE.

Is that a joke or what? Like the piece of music which contains 2 minutes of silence?

Sorry for my being so impatient - because the tune is really good!

I've now updated Chickens to Chickens 0.2.0.2. Come and get it!. I have added some of the suggestions that I've recieved in this thread (and a few other things), but not all of them. This is only a small update. Things like adding sound, music, a separate level-chooser screen, settings-screen, backdrop etc. are still on my todo-list.

Currently, I've created Windows and DOS builds of the latest version. A Linux-binary-build (and possibly even a Mac build) is in the pipeline.

Anyway, one of the new levels I've added (in the 'Logic Group') contains a simple calculator (that just adds numbers from 0-15 and produces a result from 0-30) that runs off ducks' eggs. Below is a screenshot of said level. See if you can spot the full-adder circuits.

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Here is a list of changes.

[EDIT:]

I thought about adding a new type of pipe where anything going through would double in speed while it was in the pipe, and return to normal speed once outside the new pipe-type. The only problem is that unless I make some modifications to the code, objects moving between the two pipe-types will change speed instantly and not speed up gradually. Or do you mean a tile that accellerates the objects so that they still move faster when moving through ordinary pipes? In this case, it might be hard to implement, and I'm not sure if the collision-engine could handle such fast-moving objects (without a major rewrite).

This is something that's easy to implement, but I might leave it until I make the next major update of the available tiles (I'm trying to minimise the number of updates I make to the level-data-format to minimise the number of different versions of the PMG file-format that I have to support). As well as just counting objects, it could also count things like the # of chickens, # of ducks, # of fowl (chickens and ducks combined), # of green eggs, etc. Also, I could make it switch an otherwise static-interchange somewhere else on the level if the count reaches a certain number.

Again, this is something I'm thinking about.Do you think it is best for a translucent cursor-tile (the ammount of translucency can be set as an option in the INI file), or a flickering cursor-tile?

Enjoy,

AE.