Evolution of Portals

Overview

  1. The evolution of the design of portals.  See:  Portals Preview.
  2. Adding portals to The River designs. 
  3. Adding portals to other patterns in Connect the Dots:  Shadows. 
  4. Testing new designs (similar to Illusions) with portals. 
  5. Two equal size sectors – not connected by shadows. 
  6. The two sector pattern without any shadows. 
  7. The two sector pattern without any shadows and random portals. 

The Evolution of the design of portals

The Portals Preview shows images from the 3 stages of development from a design perspective:

  1. Adding portals to the desktop application used to generate levels for the game.
  2. The initial test version of portals in the game (with the “X” denoting the color of the portal). 
  3. The version of the portal used for Connect the Dots Portals:  See below. 

 

Development note:  portals were the first new feature I added that I did not design the app version first.  As a result, about 100,000 levels were generated before I played a single one. 

Adding portals to The River designs

The River is one of my favorite packs in Connect the Dots:  Shadows – and my favorite at the time I developed portals.  The pattern also seemed to be a good fit for portals:  while most of the designs in CTDS have 1 or 2 large sectors with enough space for a portal, The River has 3.  

I was shocked by the initial results:  portals completely transformed the levels into something completely new and unexpected.  The levels were also crazy – and by crazy, I mean totally nuts. 

The above screenshot is a great example:

The turquoise line crosses shadows 8 times and portals 5 times.

The light blue line crosses shadows 4 times and portals 4 times.  

The level is from The River: Portals pack in Connect the Dots: Shadows.  Nearly 200 designs were tested and 400,000 levels were generated for the 150 levels in this pack.  The placement of the portals for these was not random and part of the design, which is why so many designs were tested. 

Coming soon:  the rest of this page.  

Testing New Designs (Similar to Illusions) 

This level is similar to Illusions except with 6 sectors instead of 4.  Note that if it were not for the portal, the central 2 sectors would be disconnected from the rest of the board (a fatal design flaw, in my opinion).  

The Two Sector Pattern – with Horizontal shadows

Going even further than the last design – here the two sectors are disconnected and would be separate puzzles if not for the portals.  

I thought these levels were super cool and ultra crazy – I took tons of screenshots of crazy lines like those above.  The levels were near impossible to solve without hints, though – harder than anything else I tested yet.  Which led to: 

Two Sectors:  No Shadows

I wasn’t expecting much from these – but I was shocked.  They weren’t nearly as insane as the version with shadows, but they were crazy enough.  Further, they no longer felt impossible. 

Notice the placement of the portals:  this is the difference between these levels and what ultimately ended up in the game.  Up until this point, the placement of the portals was part of each board design.  For each board size I made multiple designs with the same number of portals – but the placement of the portals varied. 

And Finally: 

Two Sectors: No Shadows, Random Portals 

And this is the game.  From an engineering perspective, the size of the board and the number of portals are part of the board design, but the portals are randomly placed for each level.  

The main disadvantage of random portals is that the levels look kind of, well, random – which makes the screenshots suffer a bit. 

But the advantages far outweigh this: 

  • It greatly simplifies board design creation
  • The levels within the designs are much more varied.

The 2nd point is pretty huge from my perspective – and why I felt that this single pattern is enough for an entire game.  

Since the pattern has no shadows – the portal itself is emphasized and it stands up as a separate (and I believe, quite different) game from CTD: Shadows.  

CTD: Shadows is mostly about exploring the variety and beauty of levels made possible by shadows.  But it is all over the place in terms of difficulty and levels.  

CTD: Portals is much closer to Connect Unlimited – it’s about solving puzzles.  You won’t see as many cool and interesting things while playing the levels, but they never feel redundant.  The difficulty is fairly similar to CTD: Shadows on the whole – but I like that even the hardest levels in Portals seem “fair” to me.