Match-3 Starter Kit – Just released!

Hi Pino,

Any chance to updated version today?

 

Actually QA just came back with a green light. I'll package and upload first thing in the morning, then it'll be live as soon as Unity QA approves it

Cheers,
Pino

 

Hi Pino, any news on new release?

 

IT's with Unity QA, we can only wait for them to approve it. As it goes live I'll post here and I'll update the opening post with the current 2.5 features

 

Excellent, thank you

 

Hey guys!

the 2.5 is live! Here a brief of what's new in this release:

Release Notes - Version 2.5

New Features:

• Side sliding option (Use Side Sliding flag in the inspector)
• Points are on a per piece basis (optional)
• Bomb pieces option (Use Bombs flag in the inspector)
• Full Game Execution flag to tell the script if to use or not the static values to initialise the game

New additions

• Demo project demonstrating
  • how to use delegates
  • how to build a multilevel game with just two scenes
  • how to manage pause
  • how to manage the progress saving
  • how to automate time limit computation based on the level number

Breaking Changes

• The Pause Management delegate has been flagged as Obsolete. It’ll be removed in version 3.0

Structural Changes

• Now all the project’s parts are in the Match3StarterKit folder. Make suse to have your own Resources folder in the root Asset folder or just move the provided folder in the root to be able to edit the provided game sample boards.

 

You mentioned that on an upcoming update you might add a feature that would keep track of scoring different colors. Is that feature included in this update?

 

Fantastic Pino, thanks.

@voncarp, I think "Points are on a per piece basis (optional)" may be what you were looking for, possibly

 

Yep, that's in the 2.5 list as per your description a few posts back, but it's not about keeping track of the scored colours, it's about being able to assign a different score to each prefab (just adding the script as demostrated in the demo project). Did you wanted to keep track as well? I can add this counter in the upcoming release.

BTW, I hope the demo makes clear how to use the delegates

Cheers,
Pino

 

That functionality in the next update would be great. Thanks for the prompt responses. If you have time, some additional tips on delegates and the demo would be appreciated.

 

Hi guys,

I guess that our new starter kit will be of some interest to many of you to create the next hit like Ruzzle or Swiped Fruit

 

Hey guys,

in case you missed the launch posts and you are interested: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/181785-Swipe-And-Match-Starter-Kit-LIVE-ON-ASSET-STORE

Best,
Pino

 

Hi,

Is it possible to create Puzzle Dragons like gameplay using the Match-3 Starter Kit?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE9CP9Q07OU

Thanks.

 

Hey Thomas,

Thanks for asking I'm afraid not: that is a very specialized gameplay, not really a straight Match 3 game. Sure you can adapt my kit to achieve a similar gameplay but it'll be quite hard, actually harder than writing it from scratch.

Best,
Pino

 

I am getting this:
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
Board.StartBoard () (at Assets/Match3StarterKit/Scripts/Board.cs:757)
GameManager.Start () (at Assets/Match3StarterKit/DEMO/Scripts/GameManager.cs:38)

unity4, ngui commercial, using the bomb effect.

 

Hi,

that makes no sense to me, it cannot happen unless you have changed the demo but not properly, missing some steps. It's impossible to give support on a forum thread, so please, as instructed at the end of the manual, send me a support request email (remember to mention your invoice number). To make it faster it'd be better if you make a package of your project and send that along so that I can see first hand what's happening.

Best,
Pino

 

Gotcha. Little sleep + wife out of town leaving me the kids = weird early morning support request email. I'll get the pack together if I still have problems after reading everything carefully....

 

Great

 

Hi,

I'm having troubles answering to people writing me via MSN accounts. I'm posting here my answer to Simon who writes:

Dear Simon,

On some OS configuration Unity cannot create the folders (usually is a permission issue) so all you have to do is to create manually the Resources folder and in that one then create the Data folder.

Cheers,
Pino

 

Hello Pino, I am trying to "morph" a piece into a different piece type (such as from a color to bomb on match 4). I am thinking that using the method of how you change a strong piece into a normal piece my be the ticket... what are your thoughts. I have done this in the original version of the kit but it was very prone to crash.

 

Hi Matt,

It's a bit more complex than that because of the multiple structures used to store the pieces. As I guess you have noticed I keep a few lists of int that I use to check the matches, this because it's way faster than accessing to complex data. To change a normal piece into a bomb you have to reinit the piece itself because some of the operations that define a piece as a bomb are performed only when the piece is created.

That much I can tell from the top of my head... I'll look into it first thing in the morning (now it's 1:30am here) and will post some more info to help you solve this

Cheers,
Pino

 

Hey Matt,

here what you need to do:

Look at the lines 1868 and 1869 (Board.cs) followed by the lines 1889-1892: that is what you want to do to create a Bomb element. Now, as you already identified you have to go to the line 1749 (same file) and adapt that to what you want. The one thing you want to do is to firat destroy the current piece. You can do that just like it's done in the lines 1752-1755, but before that store its position (from PlayingPieces [x, y].Piece.transform) because you'll need it to position the piece.

That's all you have to do from what I see. Drop me an email if you hit any wall

Cheers,
Pino

 

Hi DTF, I just bought your kit and it's awesome! I have one question tho, I want to change the camera to a orthographic view so that the tile pieces are all placed the same and this is working correctly but when I test it on a iPad all touch inputs are mirrored. Do I have to do something else?

Oh, 2D nGui support for the pieces is a +1 for me too

Cheers, Roy

 

I was getting 2 new draw calls for each and every board piece(using normalmap also ). totally up to 200+ draw calls. did I do anything wrong? Help please!

 

That's new The video demos made on iPad and Kindle are all done with the Ortho setup. Are you able to send me a repro project, please?

Cheers!
Pino

 

Hi,

draw calls are very depending on the materials in use within a scene, so for a game that has to be actually released you want to organise all your objects in a way that they share the same material, or anyway make them as minimal as possible.

What I do for Match 3 style games is to have the different pieces modelled in one single FBX with the very same material applied to all the pieces, using the UV editor to differentiate them all: this way I have just 1 draw call

Cheers,
Pino

 

Took me a while to figure this one out. I need to make my piece model's verts as few as possible. Right now I make it less than 300 verts, then the batching thing works. 100 pieces only have 2 draw calls now.

 

That's perfect, 1 draw call for the Diffuse and 1 for the Normal I guess, it's how is supposed to be: Well Done!

[Edit: I'm not sure the Normal is batched in Unity standard shaders, never really checked that detail out ]

 

This is for Richard Matey who left a questioin in the kit review space: you can do that just unchecking the useSideSliding flag in the inspector os set it False from script.

TO ALL: Please do not ask questions in the review space because we don't get notified of them just like you won't get notified of the answer.

 

Hi All,

for all Q&A and support please from now on use our dedicated website clicking here.

Thank you!
Pino

 

Hi guys!

I've just activated UserVoice to manage Feature Requests and Bug Submission. Please do use it instead of posting here

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SERVICE

Cheers,
Pino

 

any ETA on the new release with iTween?

 

We just noticed that a couple of customers have posted ETA, features requests and "bugs" (not really bugs if you ask me, it looks like the guy is misusing the kit!) in the review space on the Asset Store.

Please note that we do not accept nor queue any request via the Asset Store review system.

Actually please note the following: we assign work timeslots on our Asset Store products based on the monthly sales. Adding that type of stuff on the review space hurts the sales, therefore reduces the time we assign to the asset, hence doing so you are basically working against your own interest.

Best,
Pino

 

You tried sending emails via your site
Your site for submiting questions is not working (Captcha question doesn't appear )

So let me ask again
what is the ETA for the new release? as this build keep crashing on me

 

Are you mocking me?

• There is NO CAPTCHA on our contact form: https://www.dftgames.com/contact-us/
• My personal email address is at the end of the PDF doc file that comes with the Kit
• There are TWO bright and visible "Feedback Support" link labels powered by Uservoice on EVERY page of our website
• There is this very thread

So are you telling me that NONE of ANY of the ways that we give to our customers to contact us is working for you? So you had to hurt our sales on the Asset Store writing that? Really? Well, the only result you've got is that we had to reduce by 50% the time scheduled on this kit so that next update has been pushed to late August. I guess the whole community is very grateful to you and the other one that had your same idea about abusing the review space.

BTW, this build does not crashes, actually this kit has never registered any crash report. If you have a crash report then you submit it to us the proper way and we will support you within 24 hours as usual. We have a quite good track record about supporting our customers at our best and no complaints have ever been registered with the sole exception of @hotmail accounts that for some reason often do not receive our emails, so we started to answer those customers using a Gmail account. Beside this nobody had ever any complaint about our responsiveness, so your behaviour is honestly abusive.

-Pino

 

Are you forcing the customers to rate 5 stars or you will not support them? when you change your model to respect the customer i will be back.

 

No, I'm forcing my customers to ask for support via the normal channels instead of abusing the review space. If you want to write a review it's ok. If you want to rate us 1 star because you honestly think so it's ok. If you post support requests or ETA requests in the review space that's NOT OK. It'#s already very difficult to have the assets rated, abusing the review area is wrong.

As any business we invest in what's sell and disinvest from what doesn't sell. This is a normal practice in business so I don't see why I should keep it untold and lie to you inventing the common bul***t as many others do. I'm quite honest and straight... if you do not appreciate honesty please go... I don't want your money.

 

100% agree! this is not a proper support. I did sent via their contact form several times. i also posted here on the forum 2 weeks ago without a response.

The developer's current response of "you give us bad reviews and we will not work on this project" is not good enough for me and i doubt it is good for anyone. And no Sir i am not mocking you as i paid good money for your package AND I GAVE you a GOOD REVIEW with few additional questions as a last resort to get your attention.

So accusing anyone but yourself for damaging your sales AND accusing me of abusive behavior is honestly a shame for you and your so called business.

You just lost a costumer (or at least my 5 star ranking)
Good day

 

Our support is fully managed via USERVOICE and there are ZERO tickets logged (see attached screen shot), so YOU ARE A LIAR because that's a Uservoice log and I cannot mess with it so it's fair to assert that YOU DID NOT SUBMIT ANY TICKET.

You abused the review area ending your message with the phrase "I'm writing here to get your attention".

I'm now reporting you to Unity Asset Store team. You are not the first abusive client and sadly you will not be the last.

 

I just registered to the forum to review this product.

I am sorry but your code is probably the worst thing I purchased on the asset store, a waste of money. It is a complete mess and your programmers certainly have not heard of the terms object oriented programming and C# events.

In the most basic sense, you have UI code in the primary game logic class (not the demo! in board.cs) which is quite hilarious. You have an over 2500 lines long class that could have been half the size if you were to use modular programming principles. Most sub-structs and classes are tucked into a single file making it extremely hard to catch up on.

I was working as a teaching assistant throughout my education and I am pretty sure that I have not seen a greater mess than this code base, not even when evaluating the programming projects of sophomores.

Your attitude towards your customers is another issue, which I find disturbing (proof: your previous posts).

I gave up on using your package and decided to write my own 3-match system (half way done now) which I plan on releasing in the asset store so people can actually get their money's worth.

Have a good day.

 

Great! A fellow faculty Dean judging my work! Corvidean stands for Dean of Corvi? Can't really pinpoint that faculty

Too bad that your writing "style" gives you up for what you actually are: a kid or a quite poorly educated guy, maybe a friend of the other genius a few posts back You can't even make the proper algorithmic assumption describing a class

Your words don't earn you a serious answer, sorry The wonderful thing of the Internet is that a guy like you can try to sell himself as a faculty dean How wonderful this time is, isn't it?

Cheers!
Pino

 

In case you don't know about university jobs, a teaching assistant is a student that helps other students. I am not an academic scholar, nor intend to be. However, I am a graduate with a honors degree (magna cum laude) in computer science and I do know what I am talking about.

I do not know anyone else on this forum at all, but different people of different pasts think that your package is quite flawed, perhaps the problem is not us but you. Your attitude against a person who paid for your product is very disturbing and I do plan on reporting this to both your company and Asset Store officials.

Have a good day Pino.

 

OMG you didn't even get my joke about your nickname... that speaks volumes about how smart you and your friend are If you have any degree is one you paid for, not one you earned by sitting real exams... that much i can tell reading your post. You are hilarious :grin:

Just to make it simple to understand to people that might read your posts and get confused, here's a very short version of the issue at hand:

1. I do support within 24 business hours anyone that submits any support request via http://dftgames.uservoice.com This because there is no bug-free software and I do respect my customers supporting them in full and fast.
2. About new features to be added (not fixes, we talk about new features here): we assign time slots to develop and release new features based on the amount of sales. If a package sells well it gets new features and it gets them fast because it's paying for the time. If a package doesn't sell well we don't add new features. It's as simple as that: we do maintain it but we do not expand it.

Now, if you see this as a strange way to do business it means that you are clueless about running any company.

When you buy this kit you get a product that has been designed for performance (a thing that Corvidaen clearly ignores) and runs smoothly on all Unity platforms. No bugs are filed for the present version (see the support site mentioned before). The money you are paying grants you the licence to use the kit (which is the best seller in its category) and full support if you need any, support within the 24 business hours. You have access to all future versions if any will be published.

That's it. Any other stuff is just a couple of brats venting here because they cannot understand how to use Unity.

 

Please don't use the "report post" button because you don't like the feedback you're getting; it's there to report spam and people breaking the rules, which has not happened here as far as I can see. (Although I'd say your rather abusive responses are getting close to the line; I'd strongly recommend that you remain respectful regardless of your personal feelings on the matter. Insulting your customers and calling them "brats" is not OK.)

--Eric

 

So, let see if I understand:

• The "customer" (I have no proof they actually got the package, they could be anybody) are free to call me liar
• They can invent bugs that are not there
• They can basically write any unsupported thing
• I cannot answer them the way they should be answered

You basically ignore every abusive post and evident lie over a few weeks and when I'm ringing you reporting that last post you come here witrh a bullying message?

Thank you very much Eric, much appreciated. Sorry to have disturbed you. I'm starting to understand why publishers are starting to publish elsewhere.

 

1- I do not know about running a company, nor I am interested. Besides, my feedback is not about your updates and features, but the already published content in this package.

2- Regarding the package performance; piece generation is quite flawed in terms of speed. It takes a while for the board to be populated on an Iphone 4S and even a Lenovo Ideapad Y580 which was released on 2012.

3- I have worked with Unity for years and with C# for almost a decade now and you are persistent in thinking that I am the problem. Your attitude still lacks professionalism with all these petty insults. I'm starting to think that anyone would run a company better than you, at least in terms of contact and support.

Have a good day.

PS: Thank you Eric.

 

I looked over the last page and didn't see any customers posting abusive messages here; I see someone who was apparently unhappy with the package and explained why in some detail. I have no idea if it's accurate or not. While it could indeed be untrue, I do know that your responses are highly inappropriate and uncalled-for. You can answer people "the way they should be answered", which is to say calmly, and with facts. I understand that it's upsetting to get negative feedback, but that is absolutely not an excuse to respond with insults and name-calling.

--Eric

 

I guess you really miss the point here: you can invent whatever thing you want but you are just wasting everybody's time. This package in on the Asset Store since quite a long time and it is selling a steady amount of packages every month.

You and your friend are the sole two people (along with a third one some time ago) having problems with the kit, so statistically you are less than 0.01% and this means to me that the problems is not the kit, it's you, and that's quite final as it's simple math, so simple that you should have no problems understanding it.

 

So I guess you missed altogether the post that claims to have filed a bug and the screenshot showing ZERO bugs filed on Uservoice? That started it all along with the abusive review on the Asset Store. But the guy has been free to continue trolling and now has send a friend of his to continue... great job Eric... really.

 

Eric, please just delete this thread.

From now on I will answer ONLY on my official support website where I can filter trolls properly.