You must sign in to post. | Elephants Game :: Feb 10, 2007 @ 6:53pm |
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 philhasseyJoined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 639
Location: Zarcon | Got a great new game out this week: Elephants! - Save giraffes while jumping on a rolled up squirrel! Watch out for the angry natives!
Source .tgz | Windows .zippost updated on Feb 11, 2007 @ 1:16am | | Re: Elephants - mac build? :: Feb 12, 2007 @ 2:33pm |
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philhassey Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 639
Location: Zarcon | Are there any folks who would like to play this on their MacOSX system? If so, I could probably get an OSX build put together. post updated on Feb 12, 2007 @ 2:34pm | | Re: Elephants :: Feb 12, 2007 @ 8:32pm |
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thirdparty Joined: Dec 20, 2006
Posts: 279
Location: Eastern U.S.A. | You haven't really given enough information for me to know whether I'd like to play it on my Mac. | | Re: Elephants :: Feb 12, 2007 @ 8:41pm |
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philhassey Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 639
Location: Zarcon | It's sort of a silly mini game. Fast arcade kind of a thing. Really simple. | | Re: Elephants :: Feb 14, 2007 @ 7:30pm |
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kaizen Joined: Jan 24, 2007
Posts: 36
Location: Guildford, England | good fun! | | Re: Elephants :: Feb 14, 2007 @ 11:48pm |
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 tepaJoined: Feb 14, 2007
Posts: 4 | Since some people seem to think my score of 6,5 mil is a fake (under the name "Tepa"), here's a screenshot showing that it is indeed possible to achieve:
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philhassey Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 639
Location: Zarcon | Excellent job, Tepa! Any tips for those of us who can't break the 3M wall?
Phil | | Re: Elephants :: Feb 15, 2007 @ 1:26pm |
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splord Joined: Jan 7, 2007
Posts: 21
Location: Saarbrücken | mac would be nice :-) | | Some tips :: Feb 15, 2007 @ 3:21pm |
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tepa Joined: Feb 14, 2007
Posts: 4 | Phil, here are some of my personal "rules of play":
- At the beginning, it's far more important to catch all the giraffes than catch them high. You should get at least a few over 100k point giraffes (at the top of your jumping height from the squirrel top) before dropping any to play a really good game, in my experience. Or perhaps it wouldn't matter too much to miss some of the first few, but they are still easy to catch.
- Also at the beginning, it doesn't really pay off to pay too much attention to the native spears. Just keep your eyes at the text on the top for giraffes and you'll usually have enough of time to react to the spears when you notice them in the corner of your eye.
- Keep the squirrel at the center of the screen and try to stay on and jump from the top of it when possible to get the giraffes from higher altitude. However, be ready to forget about the squirrel if that is needed to maintain a catching streak.
- When it gets too tough to maintain streaks, it's better to forget about them and just try to catch the giraffes high. If you notice a good chance of starting another streak, though, it often pays off to go for it even if you can only maintain it for 3-4 giraffes - when the giraffe rain is dense, the points you get from them accumulate fast!
- It is often possible to get two or more giraffes with one jump at this point, do so. If the later ones are higher, the lower ones you catch will increase the score you get from them nicely.
- When struggling with the heavy giraffe rain, take a short break if needed and get yourself in a better position - don't just keep jumping wildly around or the natives will certainly get you fast.
- At some point, it gets wiser to focus on avoiding the spears than collecting the giraffes in order to survive longer. After this, just pick any giraffes that get in your way while dodging the spears.
- Oh, and to avoid the spears, keep changing altitude - i.e. jumping. The natives seem to throw towards a spot where you were some time ago so you have a better chance of avoiding them if you aren't there anymore.
Hope these help someone, happy gaming! | | Re: Elephants :: Feb 15, 2007 @ 3:49pm |
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philhassey Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 639
Location: Zarcon | Nice guide, tepa! | | Re: Elephants :: Feb 15, 2007 @ 4:29pm |
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drpetter Joined: Feb 15, 2007
Posts: 1
Location: Sweden | Yeah, sweet guide. Seems spot on.
Maybe I could add that it's a good idea to try and keep track of which side the next spear is coming from (they alternate), and avoid getting too near that screen edge when you feel that it's about to appear (the time interval between spears is also regular, though decreasing).
If you forget and jump towards the edge to catch a giraffe just when the spear gets thrown you won't be able to avoid it. I think it's my number one cause for failure. | | Elephants for MacOSX :: Feb 18, 2007 @ 12:48am |
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philhassey Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 639
Location: Zarcon | Have at:
http://www.imitationpickles.org/elephant/files/Elephants.dmg
Please tell me if you have any trouble with it. | | Re: Elephants :: Feb 18, 2007 @ 7:23pm |
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thirdparty Joined: Dec 20, 2006
Posts: 279
Location: Eastern U.S.A. | Cool game. Thanks for the OSX version!
(ThirdParty fiddles around until he beats Tepa's score.)
My tips, some of which are redundant to the above:
1 - Put the squirrel in the center before jumping off of it; it makes it much more likely that you'll be able to get back on sooner rather than later.
2 - Missing a giraffe is approximately as bad as getting hit by a spear. Don't ever give one up, even if it means taking a chance. (During my best streak ever, giraffes were worth something like 270k each when caught high. If I'd missed a giraffe back when they were worth 200k, then every high giraffe thereafter would have given me 200k fewer points than it did, and my score would have been several million points lower.)
3 - Pay attention to the rhythm and direction of the spears. If a giraffe is near a dangerous edge, your best chance is to synchronize your altitude with it from a safe distance, wait until the spear fires, and then pass under the spear to collect the giraffe.
4 - Pay attention to the rhythm of the rain. To get max points from a giraffe, you actually have to jump before it appears (but not so late that you won't be able to reach it).
5 - Usually when I miss a giraffe, it's because I accidentally jumped over it. You fall slightly faster than giraffes, but not enough so to make it safe to be above them. If you start to pass a giraffe in altitude during a jump, release the "up" key.
6 - Relatedly: it's best not to jump for a giraffe except at or before it appears (unless you're directly below it); that way you're not in danger of jumping over it. If a giraffe appears while you're not standing on your squirrel (i.e. you're either in midair or are standing on the ground), it's best to spend your time getting onto the squirrel and then rolling over to the giraffe instead of jumping for it (that way you'll be ready to jump for the next one). You won't get any points, but you also won't break your streak. (Once giraffes start being worth a max of about 70k--50k if you don't jump until after they appear--they'll be coming quickly enough that it becomes physically impossible to jump for each and every one.)
edit: small corrections made as I gain understanding of the game's mechanicspost updated on Feb 18, 2007 @ 11:31pm | | ThirdParty is a warrior... :: Feb 18, 2007 @ 10:22pm |
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nanno Joined: Nov 30, 2006
Posts: 313
Location: Colorado | ...need I say more? | | Re: Elephants :: Feb 20, 2007 @ 6:50am |
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keiichi Joined: Dec 17, 2006
Posts: 2
Location: Brazil | When i saw the Thirdparty's score, i thougth it was fake.
But it really isn't fake and with my own strategy (very similar to the ones shown) i could get above 9M.
I say this game depends on lucky too.
If the giraffe appear right on the side an arrow is about to appear it's bad luck.
My lucky on the game under the name of Pupu is that i was able to do a streak to win over 300k points per giraffe.
So my tip that is different:
Do a streak whenever you can. When you can't jump so high to do a streak, wait till you get a giraffe on the squirrel and jump as high as you can, so you'll be able to get 2 or 3 giraffes at once (if they don't appear sparse)
Good luck to all! | | 10 mil! :: Mar 1, 2007 @ 5:17pm |
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tepa Joined: Feb 14, 2007
Posts: 4 | Took quite a few tries, but now I have finally reached my personal goal of 10 million points in Elephants :) Here's a screenshot of the natives finally catching me, showing that the going is pretty hectic at this stage...
 | | Re: Elephants :: Mar 1, 2007 @ 5:33pm |
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tepa Joined: Feb 14, 2007
Posts: 4 | Oh, and a big thank you to all you who posted about your own strategies! Refining my playing style based on those (to be greedier with the streaks) was what enabled this achievement.
In the 10 mil game, I think I could maintain a streak until a bit before 4 mil (not the best I've managed by far). After that, I got a couple of more lengthy streaks, but after some point (around 6 or 7 mil perhaps?) I switched to maintaining only "low-risk" short streaks with the main focus in staying alive. This paid off in the end, although the score seemed to go up painfully slowly at times...
I guess the real secret to success is realizing when your personal skills serve you better with a staying-alive strategy rather than a greedy streak-keeping strategy. I might've been able to go on with the greedy strategy for a bit longer and achieve even better results, so I think one of the other great gamers (pupu, Xaar, ThirdParty) will join me at over 10 mil soonish.
It'll be interesting to see who will be the first to reach 15 mil... :) | | Re: Elephants :: Mar 2, 2007 @ 5:48pm |
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xaar Joined: Mar 2, 2007
Posts: 1
Location: France | Hi all,
I think that the most important thing to make a high score is simply to not miss a girafe since the beginning as long as you can, it kinda helps when each of them are reaching 500.000 points. But for that you need to be lucky enough so that the game will not put too soon some girafes too far from each other or ennemies on your way (95% of the time i am unlucky).
15 millions points done, now the next target is 20 millions :) | | Re: Elephants :: Mar 13, 2007 @ 2:07pm |
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pie.matthew Joined: Mar 12, 2007
Posts: 6 | If you like i can test it, or any other games, on my schools Mac OS X. We are a school with almost only macs. Kinda annoying, but still a good school. | | Re: Elephants :: Mar 28, 2007 @ 1:56am |
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alviskoon Joined: Mar 28, 2007
Posts: 1 | The follow error occured running in Linux.
AttributeError: Sprite instance has no attribute '__len__'
Please help and fix. | | Re: Elephants :: Apr 21, 2007 @ 7:00am |
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jackepc Joined: Apr 21, 2007
Posts: 2
Location: torrejon | Elephants linux script for records view in real time.
the script in: http://scriptsintheshell.blogspot.com/2007/04/elephants-script-para-jugones.html
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txgangsta Joined: Mar 12, 2007
Posts: 256
Location: DONT GO HERE!!!! http://eskim0.myminicity.com/ | Squirle bouncing fun. Great game when you have just a little time to give. I hope it doesnt get too fast though. I got to a million, and it was hard. post updated on Apr 24, 2007 @ 5:55pm | | Re: Elephants :: Apr 24, 2007 @ 10:57pm |
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pants Joined: Mar 17, 2007
Posts: 15
Location: Minneapolis | I'd personally like a version without the spears. For whatever reason, my eye-hand coordination causes me to jump right into the path of those things. And then I cry, thinking of all the baby giraffes I'm no longer able to save.
Oh the humanity! er... giraffity?
It'd be more zen-like if you can't die. Score is less meaningful, of course, in that mode. | | Re: Elephants :: May 2, 2007 @ 8:56pm |
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luminousnerd Joined: Apr 28, 2007
Posts: 70
Location: Utah, sadly | There is a strange glitch that causes me to move really fast from one tap of a direction...IE, I'm on the squirrel, I press right, and I'm suddenly all the way at the edge of the screen. It's very frustrating :(
OS X 10.4.9 Mac Pro Dual Core Xeon 2.0ghz 2gb RAM
You have a talent for making FREAKING ADDICTIVE games. Very nice job! | | Re: Elephants :: May 15, 2007 @ 5:06pm |
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thirdparty Joined: Dec 20, 2006
Posts: 279
Location: Eastern U.S.A. | I'm still addicted to this game, and finally broke ten million points just now. I had about nine million when I dropped my first giraffe, and successfully picked up another half million with my Hail Mary jump. I then glanced at the score, saw how close I was, redoubled my efforts, and managed to claw another million out of the endgame.
I've definitely gotten better:
- Often it's best not to try to land on the squirrel if you're having to reach for a giraffe near the edge (especially if you're planning to jump over an arrow on the way to it). Land on the ground, accept that you won't catch the next giraffe at quite max height, and plan to land on the squirrel afterward.
- The edge isn't nearly as dangerous as I used to think, even when there's an arrow due to come from it. The elephant can move almost as fast as an arrow; as long as you're moving away from the edge when the arrow actually shows up, I'll have plenty of time to figure out what to do about it.
- I found a little Mac program called Detour which lets me shut off Elephants' annoying sounds while listening to music on iTunes.
- I'm only playing once or twice a day. That's when I'm at my best; playing any more than that makes me jittery. | | Re: Elephants :: May 19, 2007 @ 12:13am |
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 solomonJoined: Feb 2, 2007
Posts: 49
Location: Los Angeles | ok, because I must compete with ThirdParty, I tried Elephants and I am now working with four therapists to calm my twitching and sudden scream attacks. Phil, you must be stopped!!
Love,
Timesink | | Re: Elephants :: May 22, 2007 @ 2:49am |
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becephalus Joined: Jan 19, 2007
Posts: 130
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota | ok, because I must compete with ThirdParty, I tried Elephants and I am now working with four therapists to calm my twitching and sudden scream attacks. Phil, you must be stopped!!
Love,
Timesink
I am freaking horrible at this game.post updated on May 22, 2007 @ 2:50am | | Re: Elephants :: May 24, 2007 @ 10:50am |
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thirdparty Joined: Dec 20, 2006
Posts: 279
Location: Eastern U.S.A. | And now I've joined the fifteen-million club! My latest score of almost eighteen million was made all in a single streak: I didn't drop a single giraffe the entire game. Giraffes were definitely worth over half a million a pop (at max height--of course, I wasn't catching very many at that height). | | Re: Elephants :: May 24, 2007 @ 2:22pm |
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solomon Joined: Feb 2, 2007
Posts: 49
Location: Los Angeles | Your gloating is well deserved Third. I can't go anywhere near that game without causing serious nerve damage. | | Re: Elephants :: May 26, 2007 @ 8:52pm |
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sky_lark Joined: May 9, 2007
Posts: 140 | I open up the program only to find, seconds later, it quits on me. I've tried this twice, with no success. I use an Apple iBook G4. I downloaded the program with Safari. Thanks! | | Re: Elephants :: Jul 10, 2007 @ 12:34pm |
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thirdparty Joined: Dec 20, 2006
Posts: 279
Location: Eastern U.S.A. | Yes! Yes! Yes! Woohoo! Twenty million!
Here's a screenshot from near the end of the game. (Sadly, it came after I dropped my first giraffe, so I don't know what they were worth at their peak. 600,000 and change.)
And here's my high scores list:
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thirdparty Joined: Dec 20, 2006
Posts: 279
Location: Eastern U.S.A. | New 20M edition of "Elephants" tips:
1 - Catch the first forty-one giraffes at or near max height, always jumping from the squirrel at the center of the map. (Usually you'll land there too. If the spears force you to land elsewhere, run over to the squirrel and tap the "up" key to climb back on.) The forty-first giraffe is the first one worth 70k instead of 50k, and should also be the one that brings your score over 1M points; this is the signal to start using a more complex strategy.
2 - Catch every single giraffe. With perfect play, unless you get an extremely unlucky sequence of giraffes, you can hope to get over 20M points before your first miss. (Even with less-than-perfect play, you can still hope to get up past 5M points before your first miss, and past 10M before your second miss.) If you miss a giraffe, figure out what you did wrong, and don't do that again.
3 - When on the ground, always try to be positioned where the next giraffe is going to land; that makes it pretty easy to catch no matter what your next move is. Also try to be standing on your squirrel (unless you're right at the edge, in which case it may be hard to get back on the squirrel after you jump off it, or unless there's a spear flying at squirrel height that you want to pass under), as this gives you more height, more visibility (your attention should be at the top of the screen, watching yourself only out of the corner of your eye), and more control over the squirrel's position (jumping past it is very bad, as that can cause it to roll unmanned to the side). If you wait to jump until a second giraffe appears (only do this if the first giraffe is already pretty low and so not worth jumping for on its own, or if you're waiting for a spear to pass above you), you can catch the first one on your way up, and grab the second one near the apex of your jump (and, if you're lucky, a third one after that; watch to see where it appears and try swerving toward it--catching three giraffes in one jump while maintaining a streak can make it possible to get a million points from a single jump; and ten jumps would be enough to advance your score from 5M to 15M). While on the ground, try to be standing on the squirrel unless you're right at the edge (where it might be hard to get back on the squirrel after jumping) or are trying to dive under a spear which is flying at squirrel height.
4 - When a giraffe is against (or especially moving toward) a dangerous edge, it's almost always better to take it sooner rather than later. You move faster than spears do; jump for the giraffe, planning to turn away from the edge the moment you grab it--as long as you get there before the spear does, you'll be fine. But be ready: if the spear appears before you reach the giraffe, you'll have to veer away and plan to catch the giraffe near ground level instead (if this happens, be careful not to land on the squirrel; you'll have more time to reach the giraffe if you land on the ground, and anyhow you don't want to put the squirrel next to the edge). Be confident: a giraffe near the edge is not a death sentence.
5 - Try to control the altitude at which each spear fires, by paying attention to their rhythm. Best is for it to fire either at the apex of your jump or right before your jump; it can't easily hit you in these positions. (But resist the temptation to jump only when forced to; catching too many giraffes at ground level hurts your score.) If it fires on your way up, you'll have to dodge it on the way down. If it fires on your way down, you'll have to either jump again immediately (a good idea especially if you failed to land on the squirrel) or will have to catch a giraffe at ground level while it passes. Worst is for it to fire just after you land, as you may have a serious problem getting to where the next giraffe is going to land (flashy maneuver: charge toward the oncoming spear while standing on the squirrel, and take a minimal hop just before colliding; you'll pass over the spear, the squirrel's momentum will carry it under, and you can land on it again on the other side). | | Re: Elephants :: Oct 17, 2007 @ 7:03am |
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sky_lark Joined: May 9, 2007
Posts: 140 | Let me rephrase:
Elephants opens fine, but when I get to the main menu, and I try to press "the down arrow key" it just crashes.
It's happened on the iBook and the MacBook so far. Both I've used Safari, but I could also use FireFox...?
I run Mac OS X. Please help. | | Re: Elephants :: Jun 4, 2008 @ 3:11pm |
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cleatoma Joined: May 31, 2008
Posts: 2
Location: London | Just discovered this ridiculously addictive game.
So far I've utterly failed to get anywhere with big combos, so I'm working instead on surviving for a long time. I've discovered that the game reaches a point where it stops speeding up, but the scores keep increasing, so if I can keep up the rhythm long enough I should be able to get some serious points.
Up to five mil, but look out for me on the top of the charts in the next few days... | | Re: Elephants :: Jun 14, 2008 @ 3:18pm |
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cleatoma Joined: May 31, 2008
Posts: 2
Location: London | Well I made it to the top. But along the way I discovered a bug, the game starts to slow down a lot after a while.
I tracked it down in the code. Arrows are only removed from the list of active objects when they leave one side of the screen. Arrows thrown the other way stay on the list forever, and eventually grind it all to a halt. |
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