# Increase difficulty level based on probabilities

Increase difficulty level based on probabilities.

Hello. I’m creating a bejeweled type of game and I’m trying to implement the difficulty of levels. My game is structured this way. The board is 10 by 10 thus making 100 places for the pieces. There will be 7 types of pieces. Types from 1 to 6 are the ones that will be used to perform the combinations. The 7 piece, is a “rock” piece, that is, the place in the board occupied by that piece will not be available for performing swaps thus, not able to allow combinations. There will be 25 levels. I want as the user advances in the game, that the difficulty increases (I could use a time counter but this game is without time-attack).

For the increase of difficulty I’ve thought of using probabilities given that if there are more pieces of a given type on the board (and less off others) it would be easiest to perform combinations with that piece. If there are more “rocks” on the board, the difficulty of performing combinations would increase. (If I’m not thinking correctly please tell-me).

Let’s begin with piece number 7 (rock type). I’ve thought of just introducing this piece in level 6 and in level 25, the more difficult, the total percentage of this type of piece would be at most 20%. This would be accomplished, in level 6, off all generated pieces, 1% would be the “rock” piece. As the user advances the levels, this percentage would be increased by 1% reaching 20% at level 25. For the other pieces I know that the total generated pieces is, in levels 1 through 5, 100% and beyond this point is 100% minus the % of the rock pieces. For the first levels, the only available pieces would be pieces number 1, 2 and 3. When the user reaches a level that is multiple of 6, another piece is introduced. I get this distribution for the 4 sublevels:

Levels    | Pieces available
1 to 5    |   1,2,3
6 to 11   |   1,2,3,4
12 to 17  |   1,2,3,4,5
18 to 25  |   1,2,3,4,5,6


I’ve thought of starting (level 1) with 70% of type 1 piece and 15% of type 2 and 3 pieces. I believe that this way it would be easy to perform combinations since there are many type 1 pieces. Now I want as the level increases, decrease the type 1 percentage and increase the type 2 and 3 percentages. For the first levels this is easy but when I introduce another piece as the user reaches each sublevel I find It difficult to distribute the probabilities for each type of piece.

So this is what I am asking. How can distribute the probabilities so that the difficulty increases and introduce a new piece at the indicated sublevels?

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