Introduction

Welcome to this quick guide to COLDFusion, my entry for Danival's Winter Festival 2006 Dream Contest. If you just want to get started, then look further below for the rules of the game and how to play it. If you're interested in the dream itself and how things in it work, be sure to read the sections beneath the rules as well.

How to play

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  Each time you make a move that doesn't remove atoms from the game, three new atoms will appear. Faded atoms will denote where the following three atoms will appear. Keep in mind that these positions aren't filled yet, so it is possible to move an atom onto one of the faded atoms.

• 

  An atom can be moved through the following steps: Light up the marble you wish to move by selecting it with F3. Move the cursor to the position where you want to move the atom and press F3 to move it. If this move forms a square, then it will dissappear and your score will be increased.

  There is one catch though. Selected atoms can only be moved through empty spaces so if there is no clear path between the start- and end-position, then the atom cannot be moved there. This is demonstrated in the image to the right. The red path is not possible because both the green and red atoms are in the way. However, the green path is possible because there are no atoms along the route (note that the faded one doesn't count as an atom yet).

• 

  The object of the game is simple. By moving them around, group atoms of the same colour together into small 2 by 2 squares. Once grouped, the atoms will disappear and your score will increase.

  NOTE: If an atom appears in a spot so that it forms a square, then that square will NOT disappear. You have to finish a square yourself for it to be removed.

Tricks and Tips

• When removing atoms, remove them in batches. For each consecutive square your score-multiplier is increased. The score for any following atoms will be multiplied by this value.

• Though removing them in batches is nice, don't wait too long and end up completely stuck.

• It is possible to make a U-shape with your atoms before placing the last atom in the middle. Though it only consists of six atoms, it counts as two squares of four.

The making of...

Over the years I've entered a few contests, both for the wolfhowl and the spring contests, sometimes alone, sometimes with my girlfriend. In all cases though the dream tended to consist of a simple quest and a set of puzzles and games that needed to be played.

This time I decided to do things differently. I wanted to see whether I could make a dream that is so vastly different from Furcadia that it would seem a stand-alone game. ColdFusion was the end-result of this.

ColdFusion utilises a fair number of "dirty tricks" to do what it does. As you may have already noticed, the viewport was expanded to cover most of the furcadia window (something that Felorin advised against when skinning first became possible). All tabs have been removed, the butler was reduced to a 1x1 pixel area. All items, floors, and furres were completely cleared or replaced by custom graphics.

There are a total of 71 game areas for furres to use. When a furre enters he is assigned an empty game area and when he has left it is reclaimed again. All data for each of the game areas is stored locally (beneath the cold-fusion logo to be precise) and is loaded into variables when it is needed.

ColdFusion has its own set of colours. For this reason alone use of the default graphics was not possible since they looked absolutely hideous in the new colours. Unfortunately the dream-editor and the patch-editor DO use the default palette, so my custom graphics look absolutely horrid when seen in either of those programs. Fortunately the final result is worth it though.