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The Muddy Sand Game is a particle-based physics sandbox game. It was inspired by the original Falling Sand Game, and has both most of the original particles from it with a few changes, as well as the following new features:
-More Particles!
-Particles have better density values
-Ability to play in fullscreen!
-Games can be saved
-Improved performance, and new gamespeed settings
-You no longer have to squint to see what you're doing, thanks to fullscreen support!
-Interfaces that can be cycled through in two directions
Did I mention that the game can be played in fullscreen?

I created this variant of the Falling Sand Game so that there would be one that can be played in fullscreen without being overloaded with overly complex systems that make all of the cool non-English versions run at a snail's pace.

Latest Blog

Final Release

Well, here it is. I might pick it back up a few months from now and add more particles or something, but for now this is the last stable release.

Updates in this version include:
-Cumulative bug fixes
-Fullscreen mode runs better, should be no slower than windowed mode
-Customizable screen resolutions (a big thing since each particle is one pixel on the screen!)

Old save files are not compatible, load them at your own risk!


To change the resolution of the game, open the settings.ini file in notepad and adjust the values there. Resolutions are saved inside the save files, so you can load a game that is a different resolution without having to edit the settings.
  • Completed
  • GameOverGames Productions
  • Custom
  • Simulation
  • 01/21/2010 04:59 AM
  • 08/25/2022 06:54 PM
  • 01/22/2010
  • 38879
  • 6
  • 563

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Pages: 1
This is pretty good, but there are some pretty glaring errors in the reactions of certain particles. For instance, the plant particle, which in the original Sand game grows whenever water touches it, now operates like Ice- it just takes over whatever water it touches. Seeds also don't fall, which is a bit weird, but can be lived with.

Sand also operates all crazy like, as it flows like water (which, by the way, builds up way too much before equalizing). It makes creating awesome biodomes pretty much impossible!

Still, the new features are definitely appreciated. It would probably make more sense to have a "spawn" toggle instead of various different particle effects for each spawner- whenever the toggle is checked, whatever particle you are drawing is drawn as a spawner instead of just the particle.

All in all, this is pretty great but could stand a lot of tweaking to get to the level of addictiveness that Sand had (it does run WAY better though which is immediately noticable).

Oh, one other thing: I often selected C-4 when I was drawing walls/erasing near the bottom as my cursor moved over it slightly. That was pretty annoying! Perhaps that could also be fixed? :D
Hey, I like the spawn toggle idea. Don't know why I didn't think of that in the first place!

I realize that some particles don't behave exactly like the did in the original sand game. I've been planning on going back at some point and tweaking everything until they do.
It seems like the fire is less ridiculous (which is a good thing, in the original sand if you lit something on fire the wind engine went insane), and the C4/Napalm effects are really awesome.

Here is my wishlist for this game!
Ice (immobile, turns water into ice)
Plant growth
Sand that sits still!
and
A wind generator (I have no idea how hard this would be, but a particle that causes other particles to move away from it would be awesome)!
I didn't mention that the concrete is frigging amazing, I love starting spawners for it and watching it make little islands.
Also, an erase type (again, via toggle) and Clear command would be awesome. Alright, sorry, I'll shut up. Comments don't have an edit function for some reason!
So, I made an ice particle (geared towards icicles!), tweaked plant growth a bit, made water move sideways slightly better (still not happy with it yet), and moved the menu items down a couple of pixels to help with accidentally selecting things while drawing close to the bottom. I uploaded a new build with the changes to RMN.

The wind generator would be tricky to code, mainly to make it not use up to much processing power, but I might work on something like it. It'd require some major changes to the way I'm handling some parts of the particle movement though, so it's not to likely though.

The next time I get some free time I'll sit down and code a particle/particle spawner toggler.
I really like the new ice particle, it makes really convincing ice shapes, complete with little air bubbles! I didn't notice the few pixel shift in the menu items, but you know what else I didn't notice? Selecting C-4 when I was drawing near the bottom. Mission complete on that one, I'd say.

The water still doesn't equalize quickly enough by a long shot (with a few spouts going I had water mountains all over the place) and the plant still isn't how I like it (but that is entirely a matter of opinion; I like the shoot-sprouting version the original boasted), but all in all it's a good step. Whatever you are doing to the water to make it move sideways, do that x100 though, seriously. There were a few times I had nearly vertical towers of water from a spout when the space on either side was wide open.
"Windows cannot find javaw.exe. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again."
and there was this one too"Error calling ShellExecuteEx()". How would one go about fixing this?
So, in the build I just uploaded I finished the new spawner code (left mouse button is regular particles, right mouse is spawn for particles), made the save files names less 'now what the heck is this jumble of numbers mean' and more understandable date, and the save file name is now showed in the lower right-hand corner for a couple of seconds after the game is saved.

Geez, I might as well change the game status from being completed to in production. :P
Damn you and your sucking away at my time! Oh and thanks lots of fun to experiment with :)
I really like the new improvements. It's fun spawning napalm next to concrete spawns and watching the never ending cycle of build up/break down go at it.

One thing I've noticed (this might just be me, though) is that when I have a lot of particles moving and I try to click on different spawners it sometimes (fairly regularly) ignores my commands and I have to click on the particle I want a few times. I also sometimes get the one next to the one I thought I picked. It's not really a big deal, but when I am trying to select sweet sweet napalm and I get the weird green multisploder instead and it ruins my beautiful cave scene it makes me sad. It's probably my fault though!

You should totally change this to "in production". There are so many awesome particles you could add! The best of redesigning a game is being able to keep on upgrading it, whereas the original is sort of set in stone and will never get better.

Did you improve the water particle? It seems to be working a lot more smoothly now. There's still a bit of build-up, but really only right under the spawners if I have a lot going.
I did improve the water particle. Without making a completely separate movement function for the water, there's always going to be some amount of buildup under spawners that are in the same area. It does however even out way faster now, and when in large amounts behaves somewhat like it is under pressure.

As for the issue with the menu having trouble recognizing your clicks when you have a lot of particles, if your computer experiences any small level of frame rate drop it can make badly timed clicks go unnoticed. I had tried to remedy this by giving priority to the processing of the main area when the mouse is over it, and priority to the menu when the mouse is over it. I may have coded this game better than the original falling sand game, but you can only make some odd 288,000 pixels that could be twenty one different things run so fast!

Anyway, the next thing I'm planning on coding is a separate class of objects like a rotating wheel with four spokes that spin depending on how many particles are on which part of it or something such. I'll also add in an erase type check box.
I just realized that I hadn't thought of actually saving the settings for the default spigots at the top of the game area along with the rest of the game data. I also fixed a glitch by making sure the explosive effects array is properly cleared out when loading a saved game, which otherwise could have caused fire from the old game sticking around when a new game is loaded. I haven't had much time to work on the game recently, but I've worked on adding a spinning wheel whatchamacallit with four spokes that rotates based on the number of continuous particles over the spokes.

I haven't uploaded a new build yet but I will when I get a chance.
LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523


This thing is fun.
I played the heck out of the orginal flash game of this glad to see this getting the love it needs.
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