~Word Raider~

My dynamic jigsaw games were fun to create, but they were by no means as complex to program than this. You scratch words over the board just like you would on a magazine or newspaper puzzle, but to make the computer understand the relation between the screen and actual game board is quite a challenge. It comes with a game timer and also my new original music! Note the timer is smart enough to only start ticking after you start making the actual selections on the board. ^___^

The music was created and then reprocessed using my Digital Delay guitar pedal plugged into my computer to produce this relaxing echoing effect. Getting the knobs to the right speed and timing was quite challenging! This is something I have never tried before, so once I saw that it worked, I added more of my guitar pedals to the set, where digital delay, flanger, and chorus are the most evident during playback.

As it comes out, this is a full 600+ lines of AS3 code to create a 12x12 grid where 14 words are scrambled into 8 different directions. There are over 400 words included with the puzzle, where every time you play, 14 will be picked out to form a themed set. Every game will be unique and different, even if the same set of words comes out again.

I included a single "New Game" button that generates a new and unique puzzle every time you press it, and it does it almost instantly. To do so, I created an algorithm that attempts to place each word in up to 8 different directions across the board. And I say "attempt" because it may not be able to, in which case the number of words on a puzzle may not be the same every time, but it "tries" to add 14 words every time. If not, the program is smart enough to adapt and still work correctly all the same.

The remainder spaces are filled up with random letters, but the interesting part is that the program will accept word selections that were accidentally created at random, as long as they match the words from the word table on the right side. The program is smart enough to recognize when you are trying to select the same word twice, and refuse it.

Words can be scratched in any direction, even backwards. This was one problem I had to deal with, among *many* others. It may be easy and intuitive to play, but it was quite complex to create. Everything was created dynamically, so I can change the board size (now 12 by 12) to any size I like by only changing one line of code.

I saw many versions of this game out there, but not many where words could cross each other once or multiple times simultaneously, like it is with the real puzzles on paper. This allows for much more compact game grids with more contents to play with.

As usual, most people will not read any of this, but still I hope you like it and have fun! All of this program was created by me from scratch using 95% ActionScript3 and like 5% Flash.