Fruit Machine Chat

Hi all,

I'm off work this week with a pretty nasty 'flu-type affair, so thought I'd put my laptop to good use and carry on working 'in bed' on my game, Better Letters.

I'd like your comments on whether the set of letter tiles I've designed are clear and easy to identify. I've often 'over-complicated' the letter design, so I thought I'd use a simple, bold font.

Cheers!
M.

looks ok to me, but beware of picking colours colour blind people may find hard to differentiate. Wont really effect the games itself tho

Ah, good thinking, that didn't cross my mind.

Matt goes off to find out which colours can't be differentiated for people who suffer colour-blindness--->

Theres also a typeface to assist dyslexics where the rotation and orientation of each letter is unique.

Ah, another interesting one - is this present in many modern word games?

Another question for the wordsmiths. How do you think I should go about setting up the random distribution of letters, is the 'scrabble allocation algorithm' the best, or is there another standard that would be best followed? In other words, I don't want a completely unfair set of letters issued, but I don't want it to be 'over-easy' either...

Could you not prescribe a set pot of letters for each game or something similar? Without being too clued up, i can't suggest too much!

I do have one idea though. Try red and green tiles to help the colour blind

Cheers MattB - that pre-defined set of letters might well be the best idea. I didn't think of that!

The idea of the game, is that letters are going to drop in 'tetris-style' to a grid, whereby you have to re-arrange them to make letters, thus removing them from the grid. If the stack of letters reach the top (or you run out of time, you're out. If you reach the set score beforehand though, you progress on to the next level.

Bringing my 'fruity' ideas into it, I was going to have mixed colour tiled words would get you a standard score, all blue tiled words a reasonable score, and all red tiled words a huge score. So, I'd also have to look at numbers of each coloured tile that are available each level.

I'll start it off simple like this, and should have the mechanics of it all working shortly. After that, I'm looking at introducing bonuses such as extra time 'hour glasses' that randomly appear on certain tiles and 'streak' icons that turn all letters blue or red for a limited period of time...

as a half decent wordnerd i'd say that the letters which give the most problems are in order:

Q (unless you get a free U with it)
V. few short words contain a V
C. ditto
K. often needs attendant Cs, Ns or Rs to make easily spotted words
S can also be a problem because the temptation is to hold them back for plurals but you can end up with too many.
also too many Is or Us can be a pain.

good luck with the game, keep up the good work. oh and please don't use sowpods, that has temporarily ruined Word Up with its indiscrimination.

May I suggest using the full Oxford English Dictionary? (all 20 volumes).