QUA-RETRO

I have built this cool retro-styled Game “Qua-Retro.” The concept behind the game is that I wanted to build a game that one can play on Quarky-like robots. I would like to make a Nintendo switch like console using Quarky. Qua-Retro is a stepping stone towards that goal. 

I built this game so that it can be played on multiple devices i.e. computer, mobile and Quarky.

Video Description of the Qua-Retro Game

While working on this project I realized that each device comes with its own merits, and demerits. I had to handle the following limitations to make the game suitable for Quarky.

1. Quarky has only left and right buttons, no up and down buttons.
2. The display is small and measures only 7×5 LEDs.
3. It has limited coding blocks for the display control.

To overcome these problems

1. I used the IR sensors to change sideways buttons to up and down buttons.
2. I designed games suitable for a small screen.
3. I made complex code with the limited blocks available.

To make the game playable on the mobile, I added a Green flag at the top left corner as there isn’t one on mobiles to facilitate start/ stop of the game..

To make the game look nice and be user-friendly, I designed menu screens.

For the introduction page, I used the main sprite, which controls games 1,2,3 to save space, and I had its clone be the instructions button; I coded it such that when the clone gets pressed, it changes its costume to the instructions page, and when it gets pressed again it switches back to the instructions button. Whenever the introduction menu gets clicked, it redirects the user to the setting page. On the settings page, there is a sprite, whose clones are used as buttons to select the device. For the home page, I used the same idea for the game selectors. For the score I have one sprite using a modified version of the glow number costumes, creating clones and changing costumes to display the score.

There are 2 different scoring systems in Qua-Retro. Since games 1,3,4 are based on collecting fruits, I set the code to score 1 point per fruit. For game 2, which is about survival, I set the code to score 1 point per 4 seconds.

In the fourth game there was one problem, the snake started too fast, and it was too hard to play for begginers. Hence, I deviced a formula to decide the time gap between the movements of the snake. 

Tg = (34 – score)/30

Where Tg is the time gap. I choose value 34 as it is the maximum score possible. As the score increases, Tg will decrease and hence, the snake will move faster. I choose the value 30 to reduce the drastic change in the speed, helping in smooth transition.