game concept--best approach?

[banester]

Hello all, I'm working on a game concept and was wondering if anyone could offer advice on how to approach it. (The way I've approached this has been to find a way to allow players to select multiple objects and manipulate them as a group, but I haven't found a way to do that.)

The game is very basic at its core, but is somewhat hard to explain, so I'll illustrate it:

first, you start with a pattern such as the illustration below. The shapes within the pattern would be organized randomly, your job is to rotate/flip areas of the pattern that are symmetrical in order to create new designs.

in the illustration above, you may notice the design is close to achieving a uniform pattern; the only hang-up is the group of shapes in the lower left portion of the design, as highlighted below.

in the game, groups of shapes such as the one highlighted would be rotatable/flippable. In this case, the result of rotating or flipping the highlighted group would be:

Now the pattern has achieved uniformity.


In my attempt to make this game in flash, I have tried searching for similar types of interfaces to base mine from, but I haven't had any luck. Specifically, I haven't found any interfaces where you can select multiple objects and manipulate them as a group.


notes about the pattern:
-each of the three shapes have angles based on the number seven; that is, each angle is a multiple of 1/14 of 360 degrees.
-there are 7 of each shape in the overall design. no other combination could create the circular design, unless you multiply it by four (7x4 of each shape, (7x4)x4 of each shape, etc.--see below)
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a301/scupbucket/rhomb7.gif" />

feel free to email me at leebatchelor at gmail dot com

[banester]

Originally Posted by banester

(7x4 of each shape, (7x4)x4 of each shape, etc.--see below)
[IMG]http://www.flepstudio.org/forum/

sorry, that image should be


and my email shouldn't be a link to that image...woops

[Flep]

Hi

Interesting...

Who does choose what MC go with a group ?
I mean, when you generate the pattern, you choose the groups like your second picture or the user can select different MovieClips and rotating them ?

[banester]

the user should be able to manipulate groups of shapes that are not predetermined in any way

the user may decide to flip any other group of shapes as long as they are viable:

Above are all of the different possible groups that could be flipped/rotated in the first stage of the design. In my initial example, the user chose the group highlighted in black, and thus this design was created:


but as you can imagine, the outcome could have been different in many ways depending on the choice of the user. Assuming the image above was the result of the first move, the next move has even more options--as the user manipulates the design, new possibilities emerge.