How to build a tower

Game developers are frivolous people, so I apologize for the careless style of presentation.
Despite our age, we believe that (1) there are beautiful, sexy, loyal girls on the earth and (2) an independent developer can make money on games. All other illusions disappear by the age of seventy.

Under habracut a strange story about a computer toy . And trying to profit at its expense.


')


Life is a game, especially in mathematical hands. Having quickly cooled to the programming of shooters-pukalok, since 1990 I have riveted for my own and friends the pleasure cards, dice, puzzles and riddles on desktops in their free time from secret work.

I almost did not play other games. While in 2006 I did not see Spider, card solitaire on two decks, included in the gorgeous Windows XP.
However, for the month of the game I was bored with the stupid gathering of four suits without the spirit of competition.
And in December 2006, the Lord enlightened me with the idea based on Spider Solitaire and the ancient puzzle of the Tower of Hanoi.

Towers of Hanoi (hereinafter referred to HB) mathematicians have known since kindergarten 18 Remember, in this puzzle it is necessary to shift the Pyramid Tower of wooden disks of different sizes from the left column to the right one, and you can shift the disks according to the rule that you can put a small disk on a large but big on a small one. The central column is used as a stack.

In the classic HB three columns (NS = 3) and ND disks of different sizes. All discs have the same color (NCOLOR = 1). For the case of ND = 64, there is a beautiful legend that when the three wise men put all the discs from left to right, the world will end. Apparently 12/12/12.

Idea of ​​the game

I complicated the HB algorithm - you need to assemble not one tower, but ten (NCOLOR = 10) towers of different colors. At the same time, the number of columns increased accordingly to 12 (NS = NCOLOR +2).

Note that in the case of NCOLOR = 1, the game turns into the classic HB. And in the case of NCOLOR> 1, new games are obtained, the variant of the game from TEN colors (NCOLOR = 10) I named in honor of the city that sheltered me SAROVA TOWERS. The number of disks in each tower is 7 (ND = 7). Seven is a good number.

Thus, in the world there is (ND * NCOLOR = 7 * 10 = 70) 70 factorial layouts (this is an insanely large number), just over a quarter of the layouts can be solved.

Here is one of the insanely large number of layouts.


But what you should get as a result of thoughts.


Puzzle for all times, I'm not kidding. Of the 100 people who have collected the tower at least once, 5 remain slaves of the game.

Like the work of Pablo Picasso, the game has gone through several periods, from pink to blue.

Period C and VS

The first version of the Towers was written in C under VS7 and 5 of my friends immediately sat down on the game.

The main feature of the program was the generation of the same layouts for the initial number. For example, choosing the alignment number 1964, all players see the same starting picture in front of them. And the player's task is to solve the rebus in the minimum number of moves, which means it is better than the others.

If Vova collected solitaire number 5 in 87 moves, and Dima collected solitaire number 5 in 86 moves, Dima lowered Vova for 1 turn and he is the king of the day in our office.

In 2012, we will see who will drop whom, but Putin V.V. will be the president.

Okay, back to our sheep.

The results were synchronized in the first version of the game through (???) soccets in the C program. Please do not laugh. I then did not know what Apache and mysql are. Rather knew, but vaguely.

Javascript period

When I learned about the great bundle of Apache + mysql + php, I immediately rewrote the game in javascript without using a single picture, started the record table mysql_users_top and, with the help of Dmitry Kibkalo, I registered the site bashni.org .
Why not bashni.ru, you ask? And I will answer. They were already busy and sold, to my extreme amazement.

Somehow, players began to register on the site and build, build, build Towers.
The site was not very popular - 10-15 builders tried to lower each other every day.
But I was sincerely glad to each of them. Some even went to visit Novorossiysk and St. Petersburg.

For collecting complex solitaire on 10 Towers requires an extraordinary mind and strong nerves.
While you are a newbie and have not gained experience, experienced foremen like Alex and RoiS put you down in public and with comments.

The African Towers (NCOLOR = 6) and the Asian Towers (NCOLOR = 8) were also launched on the site to expand the audience. I also wanted to start the American Towers (NCOLOR = 4), but I remembered Zadornov and changed my mind. Not so Americans and stupid, especially since I worked for Intel at that time.

Here was made the first attempt to make money. Placement of Google advertising on the site brought $ 2 per month, and these are 4 bottles of OKSKI beer. Once a week, a bottle of beer after the bath is not bad, is it?

Symbian Period

With the advent of free NOKIA N73, I immediately bungled a version of the game for mobile phones. The development of symbian left a deep and incurable wound in my soul.

We played this version of the game together with Alex, dropping each other through SMS. Symbian gives you full control over inbox.

JavaME period

Having learned about the java car on mobile devices, I came to life.
Mastering j2me passed quickly and did not leave changes in the psyche.

SMS gateways and SMS gates allowed players to drop towers from their phones into the Towers, as well as web builders.
The mobile version of the program sent sms with solutions to the sms gateway tied to the website of the tower. Org.

Mobile Towers were placed in the store for free and now have from 100 to 2000 races per week. The reasons for the rise and fall in the number of races are unknown to me.

A script was written, deciphering the country by the phone number of the mobile tower builder.

Builders from 91 countries of the world brought the realization that my life was lived not in vain, but did not bring a single penny.
Surprisingly, the first mobile builders were guys from East Timor and Kenya. I note that the game was exclusively in Russian !!! About East Timor is generally funny, I will tell in the comments.

About the salary, I, however, lied. Once the jar / jad files of this game were placed for pull in the SoftLine store for 50 rubles (I studied parallel with Igor Borovikov) and someone downloaded it 2 times.

Forgive me, these two mysterious someone.

I myself do not play the java version of the Towers, I only use the iPhone and sympathize with Nokia.

Period i-Free and A1

Sms with the solutions that the toy sends to the site, it was decided to monetize through the content provider.

We chose the St. Petersburg i-Free, although we are not cheering for Zenith.

A program with 100 layouts wrapped in it was made up and the Tower Championship was announced!
The Championships website went down in history, but it brought money. Small, 100 thousand. For me big ones, but I was not the only one who worked on the project, but three people, and not in my free time.

The championship lasted a month, the winner took the iPhone in its beak, but i-Free decided not to hold more tournaments. Although he himself, except for the prize and the distribution of the championship did not do anything.

We switched to A1 and held a few more championships, taking over the newsletter and prizes. It did not bring much money, but brought the project with the CEC and FTsI. But that's another story.

IOs period

And now I have a gift iPhone and the Towers moved to the sweet world of the appStore. The paid version of the game brought a maximum of $ 50.

I did not lose heart. Changed the design, left only the African Towers. The result - a couple of downloads in the first weeks. Desperate, I declared the game free on April 1, 2011 and received 1,000 races per day from Taiwan and 1000 races from China per day.

Here I made a fatal mistake - I removed the discount in the hope that by inertia the game will be downloaded by at least ten people a day. Fuck it. Not a single bite.

Grieving, I released another free version of the game with purchasing in app, calling it China Towers and stitching 33 towers and 33 major Chinese-speaking cities into it.

Alas. Unlike Towers of Africa, the game did not make it to the tops of China and Taiwan, and a man of about 200 shakes it a day. At the same time, no podla pressed the button PAYMENT BAX guy for all sorts of goodies.

But I believe in a happy ending.

Moreover, a hundred or other guys from 50 countries of the world build my towers on their iPhones every single day.

Let it be free, since Pushkin didn’t earn money for poetry either.
And the greatest poet of the Russian word.