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  Moxie’s Coffee Break

February 24, 2006

Badges? BADGES?!?

First off, I have to apologize for the lack of a Coffee Break last week! I had some kind of nasty flu thing, and while it didn’t keep me from coming to work, I doubt I could have written anything you’d want to read.

This week, I plan to make up for it by answering an extra letter or two.

So here’s the first topic du jour, courtesy of ShadowNinja004:

“Dear Moxie: I love the challenge aspect of the badges. It gets me playing and discovering new games, just because I've got this desire to collect as many badges as I can. What I was wondering is how does MSN Games get inspired to set the different challenge requirements and pick the games for each new set of challenges?”

Badges! I’m with you on this one: I have almost every badge we’ve done so far (although I’ll admit I didn’t even come close to nabbing the Jewel Feast badge, and a few others slipped through my fingers because I was too busy to pursue them) and I’m always looking forward to the next one.

I’d love to say that there was some scientific formula or far-reaching plan for creating the badges, but it’s actually very simple. Every couple of months, INeverWin@Zone (the programmer in charge of badges) walks through the office with a big stack of pizza boxes, luring writers and artists in true pied-piper fashion to one of the conference rooms. There, he bars the door for two hours and demands a certain amount of creative thinking in exchange for those tasty, cheesy slices of inspiration.

As you can probably guess, for each successful badge idea, there are a dozen that don’t pan out. Sometimes this is because we think of a great badge name, but can’t think of a fun animation to go with it. Sometimes we imagine a great animation, but the art folks say it’s way too complicated to work in the small badge format. Sometimes, of course, the idea is just plain awful. And occasionally, although everyone gets a good laugh out of the suggestion, we reeeeeeeally can’t use it publicly (so no, you’ll never see a “Family Jewels” badge for Jewel Quest… at least, not with the animation we suggested).

Once we’ve figured out which badges will go with which games for the next few weeks, it’s time to work out the requirements to win each badge. This is an equally unscientific but fairly accurate process: we just play the game a bunch of times and figure out what seems reasonable. Some games require more research than others, of course. And more pizza, if we can scam it.

Anyway, there you go. Hope this helps!

Virtual Restaurant Management For Beginners

There are few things I like better than having a really, really good excuse to play one of my favorite games. (Especially during work hours.) So I was thrilled to receive this message from an MSN player named Kathy:

“Dear Moxie: How do you get past level 10 in Diner Dash? I am about 2,000 short of making the goal every time.”

Kathy, you officially made my week. I love Diner Dash, but haven’t played it in months because I’ve been so busy with other games. So of course I couldn’t answer this properly without playing the first ten levels again… ahhhhh, such a hardship…

Let’s see… level 10 is definitely the first really difficult level of Diner Dash. Not only are you dealing with a veritable flood of customers, but the goal is exceptionally high: 10,000 just to pass and 20,000 for an expert score. Fortunately, with a bit of strategy, you can easily achieve the higher of these and move on in style!

The key to success is chaining your actions. There are eight tables on this level, so work with four groups of customers at a time. Just let them stand in line until there are four of them, and seat them all at the same time (try to put them in chairs of the same color!). This way, you can take two pairs of orders up, then deliver two pairs of plates, then take all four checks at the same time, and then clear off two pairs of tables. Every time you chain actions like this, you get a bonus! You will often have two sets of four groups dining at the same time, so it’s a little difficult to keep track of everything, but this is infinitely preferable to chasing around after eight groups of customers who were all seated at different times.

Oh, and you should view the coffee maker as a double-edged sword. It does help to placate a ticked-off customer, but serving coffee also breaks whatever chain you might be working on. So make sure to use it when you’re not in the middle of taking orders or delivering food; the most effective time is actually just after you seat a group, while they’re still reading the menu.

Finally, after the restaurant has closed and you’ve seated your last set of customers, don’t clear any tables. Wait until after you’ve taken the last check, then clear off all eight tables at once for an extra bonus!

Express Train To Beefier High Scores

Remember a few weeks ago, when I mentioned that my Collapse® score improved in a big way after somebody pointed out that I’d been playing it wrong for… ohhhhh… about two years? Well, it’s happened again, with an even higher whoops factor this time. I am a total Puzzle Express addict (I’ve said that before in other Coffee Breaks), so to discover there was something I didn’t know about the game was a bit of a surprise. To hear it from my 9-year-old niece… well, that’s what made it a “D’OH!” moment.

I was playing Puzzle Express at my sister’s house when the adorable moppet wandered up behind me, peeked over my shoulder, and asked why I was filling both trains at the same time. I said, “well, this is the way the game is played,” and she proceeded to tell me that if I loaded one train first and then the other, my time wouldn’t run out as quickly. A bit of experimentation later, I realized that the timer on each train doesn’t start until you place a piece on it.

Moral of the story: never assume you’ve mastered anything computer- or game-related until you ask the nearest 9-year-old whether you’ve got it right. I now have my Mastery Level 9 badge, and I’m working on 10!

Tech Time

As always, I’ll wrap this up with a common technical question. Today’s is from a player named Kim:

“Dear Moxie: Why is it that when I get a high score on some of the games, it gives it to Guest and not me even though I am signed in? And then if you hit the sign-in button, it never completely downloads."

This is most likely another one of those cookie-related problems, so your best bet is to clear your browser cache and cookies, then try the game again. For details, just take a peek at this support article, and you’ll be back in the high score groove in no time.

See you next week!