Progress Update: v0.9

If you're not already in Polymino's Discord server, you probably missed the news: the next version of Polymino will be Version 0.9, The Puzzle Mode Update!

As the name suggests, v0.9 will be the long-awaited overhaul of Puzzle Mode, featuring hand-made levels instead of randomly-generated ones, multiple types of objective for solving puzzles, and the introduction of junk modifiers from Junk Attack to bring more variety to the table.

Lately I've been working on a level editor that will allow me to create the mode's puzzles, which is publicly available GitHub! Once it's closer to completion, I'll host it on Polymino's website so anyone can create their own puzzles. I may even add Steam Workshop support to the game!

Until then, anyone who's curious about development can take a peek at my activity on GitHub, and even download and run the project themselves before it's hosted on polymino.net!

Progress Update

Now that we're caught up to the announcements on Discord, let's take a look at the progress I've made in the month since I've announced the level editor and v0.9.

First, here's a full screenshot:

You can see four menus flanking the board in the middle, which have the following functions: creating junk pieces which can be drag-and-dropped into the board; brushes for painting with blocks and single-block junk pieces; editing selected junk pieces; and general level settings.

The slider to the right of the board controls the number of rows in the base layer, which is intended to provide a starting point for new levels, consisting of random blocks. I suspect it will be changed a lot, or even replaced with a different tool as I start making some levels and learning what I really want from the editor.

The base layer also allows picking a color that won't be included in it, as you can see below:

I added this feature because of one of the ideas that's been in the back of my head for making puzzles: if I want to make junk pieces completely indestructible for the sake of a puzzle, I can make the "indestructible" pieces bomb-proof, and make sure the color needed to destroy them with matches isn't anywhere on the board.

Most of the features in the editor are difficult to demonstrate with just screenshots, but if everything continues to go smoothly, you'll be able to try it yourself soon enough by simply visiting polymino.net!

Finally, I'd like to show the (currently very basic) menu for saving and loading levels:

You can save and load multiple levels in your browser (these levels appear in the list in the above screenshots), as well as save and load them to and from your device. You can also export the final level data that will be read by Polymino, which is more compact than normal saved levels because it combines all of the layers into a single board. Of course, all of these file formats are subject to change, but the basic functionality is all there.

That's going to do it for this update. My goal is to put out progress updates every month, so I look forward to having more to demonstrate next time. See you then!