Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

At a recent family gathering i found numpty physics was a huge hit.

However there was general frustration with most levels. I find them nice and appropriately challenging, but kids have serious problems with it.

So I thought it would be nice to add a kid friendly level set. Some thoughts toward this end.

Start out with 3-4 levels with instructions, illustrating some of the basics:

- Rocks
- Drop height
- Mass (more lines = more mass?)
- Levers
- Erasing recently drawn elements (with esc)

(edit) Also more round 'balls' to start out with. Irregular balls are much harder to get moving.

If any of y'all are into this idea, maybe we could drop some easy / illustrative levels in this thread, then as a community come up with a kid-friendly set.

Just an idea. Run with it if you like it.

(edit2) Numpty is seriously challenging everything else for the most entertaining thing on the tablets. Lets help make it a 'killer game'

Re: Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

Yeah, basics for the kids..

I agree!!

That's just what I ..er .. I mean the kids need..

Yeah.. Won't somebody think of the children!
:-)
desiv

Re: Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

THIRDED! My 4 year old son likes the look of Numpty but gets frustrated with it. So now he's more inclined to just mess around with Tomiphy.

Re: Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

fourthed.

in fact, I'd go a step further on the suggestion above... and ask that, by default, drawn shapes are 'normalized' (circles become circles, squares become squares, triangles become triangles, etc. -- rather than give us the slightly irregular shapes we are.. er, the kids are getting when they draw). The original crayon physics on the PC operated this way, I think.

and, as long as I'm suggesting things... I'd like to see a "double-tap" on a specific item perform a deletion on that item, instead of having to [Esc] several times and delete the items in reverse order of their entry. I might want to "keep" the most current items onscreen, but delete one I made a few minutes ago. :)

oops, again. I kept using "I", above, when I meant to say "the kids". ;)

Re: Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

I agree, I was confused about the game myself so after messing about for a while I could figure what I could do and couldn't.

Re: Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

so will we get the updates or it should be manual process to put the levels there?

Re: Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

i don't think this needs to be just for kids - it's something others could
find useful/fun too. the level set could certainly do with some padding out
with more tutorial levels and then a few more easy levels. i am more than
happy to include new levels in future releases. i am also considering adding
level-pack support so you can download/run a set of levels instead of just
an individual level.

play-wise, i am hesitant to add specific shapes (as this is substantial
work, i'm not convinced about the gain, and once the game starts trying
guess-what-i-mean instead of do-what-i-draw the chances of it getting it
wrong and getting in the way increase).

however there are other ways to make game-play simpler -- that is, make it do
what you mean more often. eg, in v0.2 token friction is reduced so it's
easier to move it when hit from above. there's other parameters that might
be tweaked to change playability:

- reduce friction in general for more motion.

- mass of drawn items (maybe non-linear wrt size?).

- "joint" distance threshold - is it too hard to make joints or do you make
joints where you don't mean to?

- collision logic for joined strokes - currently strokes cannot collide
with strokes they are joined with. this could be extended to cover any
strokes joined to that stroke etc. not sure about this.

Re: Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

I'm up for that.

Here's a check-list of some of the things I'd like to see demoed (first individually, and then chained together for more complicated levels).

* See-saw catapults (I have a layer that shows how to use these)
* Pendulums
* Fly-wheels
* Rolling down slopes, of course
* Hinges

I guess we should just send the levels to NP?

Dave.

Re: Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

-tme - actually if there even a bit more documentation/instructions to explain some of what you can do, and then we... er, I mean, the kids can work to get there.
-dneary - yes please...to all! I think I finally can duplicate a see saw catapult (if that is what it can be called), but it was not intuitive. I am anxious to see if there is a better way.

... Fly-wheel, Hinge...ok this is getting cool

Re: Kid-friendly levelset for Numpty Physics
 

I think the homepage does explain the basic principles:

- more ink equals more mass
- each end of a stroke may form a pivot join to another stroke
- joined strokes don't collide with each other

with these in mind you should be able to build your levers and wheels and
rube-goldberg whatever.