Numbers! They’re the worst, right? All finite and supercilious. Math was never my bag; I mean, I admire its beauty in the abstract, but actually doing it falls under “occasionally necessary evil” for me. Take graph theory, for instance, which I don’t think I’ve thought about since 2001 or so. As with so much else in life, you don’t realize you don’t know it until you realize that you need to know it. To wit: Upon a successfully completed round of Lazer Maze, you find yourself with a satisfyingly perfect grid (right) of lazers. Pretty! Sadly, it’s also the work of villainy. i don’t know what the algorithm is to randomly arrange 20-40 reflectors in a way that produces that perfect outcome, but I’m pretty sure it’s not in my old textbook. Barring a trip down the rabbit hole of decompiling Apple II binary files and reverse engineering it, another plan is needed. Curse you, RMG! ?

Alright. What, then? Well, one major axiom I’ve noticed about the mobile gaming market is that people really, really like watching numbers go up. Even if it’s a game where you do literally nothing, as long as the numbers (whatever they may be) keep going up — preferably forever — there will be a bunch of people who love it, so long as the trappings are charming enough. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t right there with them at times. The unalloyed pointlessness of life demands that we validate our existence somehow, and I don’t really know where I’m going with this. Regardless, how can I nudge Lazer Maze into that brainlessly, primordially satisfying mold?

My current thinking is that I’m going to head in a quasi-endless-runner-type direction; something you can pick up while you’re waiting for the money to come out of the ATM, but that remains engrossing while you’re banished to a hell dimension for all eternity. Or whatever. Give the player a certain amount of time, set up a certain amount of reflectors, have the player kill one (or two, or three…) enemies in one go, and repeat. There could then be escalating challenges as the player progresses through levels (say, moving reflectors that throw your laser off course if you hit them). As long as the player keeps finishing levels, they keep going. Scores would rack up both during a game and cumulatively, to satiate the number monster. That could work, I think?

I’m not sure why I’m going on about this, though, when I haven’t even finished the demo of lazers bouncing around yet; as ever, focus is elusive. This week, I’m going to worry about the algorithms, data structures, the structure of the whole thing, and getting a formal project proposal together; the specifics of the gameplay will come together after that. And they’ll probably be more fun than solving a triple integral.

ADDENDUM: My teammate Will very sensibly pointed out the distinct possibility that the placement of the reflectors might not be random, but predetermined. If that’s the case, I could just steal the original reflector layouts. But in the end, I’m not sure it matters that much, since I don’t think the perfect grid thing is really needed.
8 HOURS LATER: Nopers! After investigation, I’m convinced they’re random (which makes sense, since RMG would have needed an algorithm to make the predetermined boards anyway). Ah, well.