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Please note: I am no longer checking this game to answer new comments. If you want to reach me, please send a PM. Thank you.
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PLEASE NOTE: I am no longer going to be checking on the comments for this game. If you have a comment, please send me a PM instead, else it might be a long time before I can get back to you. Please + this so others can see it too. Thank you.
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Interesting thing. The lag built up on my game too, and got extremely slow and then...stopped. It then resumed after a few seconds and worked at it's original speed. The only thing I can say is that I had a really low creation time (~120). Also, it needs a longer difficulty curve, because at the end I don't think the mother ship even had a chance to get out, and I never got hit.
I'm working on the lag and balancing issues for the Reboot version... I've mostly solved the lag I think, but the balancing issues are giving me a headache.
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Very nice game! If it had more time put into it (or an awesomer sequel?) it be one of my favorite games! Only problem is that it gets boring once you catch to many upgrades. I hope to see more and better from you in the future!
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RE: UI. A HUD at the bottom left or right (or center), showing a red bar and a life indicator, below it whatever else you have going on, such as the ball and laser power as well as whatever else you want. Also if the point is a simple game, the powerups should stay simple as well. Not everything needs a numbered display or you risk overburdening the player with information. I think the best thing you can do is to take inspiration from previous successful games, and see what their strengths were in terms of UI and help.
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I feel like I stepped into a pong tournament from hell. Basically I click start and within a minute or two I have no idea what's going on. Some in-game info on the pick-ups would be helpful, since even if one reads the instructions before playing the game, there's still the matter of trying to memorize all the powerups, many of which don't give any obvious feedback when looted. Maybe before the game is started, have a little powerup reference page? It feels like too much is going on with too little 'weight' to any of it; it seems hard to care if you lose. That info block on the right is a bit hard to reference with all the chaos going on, so for future games you should consider making the UI a bit more integrated. The idea seems like an interesting one though.
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have a game variable (boolean ) which gets set to false when the player dies and make enemies only spawn if it is true.
Aye, I've used similar mechanics in the past, but I always build up my games from scratch, trying out new concepts to see what works... and what doesn't :P
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Thank you everyone for your comments/suggestions. Tomorrow, I will look over them and respond (I'm bushed tonight... tutored 11 hours straight). Please realize though that I cannot make improvements due to the nature of the "GiTD competition":http://www.kongregate.com/forums/4-game-programming/topics/243400-gitd-24-voting which is currently in voting process. As such, please feel free to cast your vote for the best game... even if that vote is not for my game ;)
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I'm sorry I don't understand the rules involved it seems mostly guess work as to what will/won't work and then the rules don't seem consistently applied. While it is an interesting concept it doesn't combine well. 2/5
Ah, the negative health simply means you died... it's your "lives left", so 0 is a possible amount, but -1 isn't. I guess it's confusing quite a few people though.
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an interesting mixture there Abi. It -could- use a bit of a help section if those powerups we're collecting actually -do- something. I can think of some tweaks to add to it.. ^^;
Chaz, the power-ups do a TON :P. There is a help section in the instructions, but I guess a lot of people miss it :(
If you have tweaking ideas, let me know ;).
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Here are a couple of suggestions:
-A small text that pops up to tell you what you just picked up, for example "Speed up!" or "+Speed" or something.
-Score or time-dependant difficulty. As said someone else, once you get the hang of it, you can keep playing forever (heck, I had 260k score before getting bored and suiciding, lol). would be cool to have bosses that start firing at you after a set amount of time, and then turn the screen into a bullet hell after a little longer, that would be cool.
Otherwise, this is an awesome game and despite those little remarks I made, still deserves a 5/5. Polish it a little more and I will have problems because I won't be able to rate it any higher, lol.
There is indeed a time-dependent difficulty curve, but by the comments, it is not nearly steep enough. I do have some ideas of the "Reboot" version for the power-ups to make them clearer. I am still confused as to why the power-ups are confusing; I know that I am the creator, but they all made sense to me...
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So I got pwned pretty fast, and then left the room to go do something. When I got back, the game (in its game-over state) had slowed to a crawl due to lag. Are you properly disposing of things that move off the screen? If you're handling all of the movement in a single enterframe event (which you should be) are you keeping your array(s) of badguys, bullets, etc trimmed down?
I am indeed disposing of actors when they are killed or move off the screen... I'm at a loss as to what is causing the lag, which means it's back to the basics to rebuild the engine from the ground up :(
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@ISWATLLAMA The rating on the game has nothing to do with the GiTD contest. Voting will be held in the forums after the contest is over
Hoping it doesn't become a popularity contest, but the voting seems reasonable so far... I like how several have posted thought-out reasons for their votes.
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I just love how the other GiTD people downrated this game unfairly so that they have a better chance of winning. Thanks, you immature idiots.
While there might be some of that, it seems like the lag is the biggest issue... one issue with building games on a fast computer is that I can't tell how bad the lag will be for others.
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So after all this I'm going straight to rating the game.
Starts with 5/5.
+1 for unique idea
-1 for no limits to player(I.E. there's no limit your paddle and ball power and ball production time, that way player can be very OP and find this game boring).
-1 for lagging and crashing for playing long period of time.
So after all that makes it 4/5.
So you don't like that the player is unlimited? I was thinking of keeping that in the reboot but making it more of a logarithmic growth (i.e. the higher you get, the less it matters). I am definitely looking into the lag issue.
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nice but pretty hard since strong enemies appear too earlier, it's better to start with easier sequence for players to adapt the gameplay. Overall I believe with addition of furthermore polishing will turn it to a great game, anyway it's quite hard to recognize the difference between own balls with enemy's bullets, please fix it. And the last thing, I see the game pretty lag while played for long period of time (and become worse at later), is that of Stencyl matter?
There is indeed a learning curve for learning starting techniques. On the flipside, if you can get off to an early start with getting powerups, it seems like you can last forever... the one aspect of development I still suck at is the balance issue. If you have ideas for making the bullets look different, please let me know; that was another issue I have struggled with. As for the lag, a lot of my coding was centered around making it as lag-less as possible, but unfortunately Stencyl (or at least my knowledge of Stencyl) is limited in that area :(
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Only thing I don't like is the size and form of the powerups, you can't tell which one does what. In old breaker for example you could tell very easily what a powerup does. 5/5 Anyway because it's awesome. :D
If you have suggestions to make them clearer, please let me know. They are each color coded and the graphics are supposed to describe what they do. If you can think of something better, I'm all ears.
Thanks. I'm glad you liked the sidebar. Since your powers can actually go far beyond the color changes (many have infinite growths), I realized I needed to state what the actual stats are :P.
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I love all the individual aspects of it, but there's almost too much (for me) to focus on. Incredibly innovative idea however.
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The game's difficulty curve stops at one point, and the game is by far TOO easy if you know how to do it, white powerups help, while black powerups harm, I used this and got over 5 mil score, then got bored and suicided. Just make difficulty harder the longer player lives
The game is indeed designed to have a difficulty curves, but methinks I scaled the difficulty far too gently... That is one of the key issues I am working on in my development process: the difficulty curve.
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I love the hybrid between the two games. I've always liked them, and I love your spin on the mix. 5/5 and keep up the good work!
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Nice looking game Abi :) I suck at it LOL. However, it's probably very fun for those with hand/eye coordination! Like all the cool ideas in it.
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Here's a hint for anyone just starting off: aim for the red blocks first... getting the ball power upgrade is the most important one (in my opinion anyways).
Really? Were you hugging the left side at the start? If so, there is an enemy that comes out from that side and fires a laser... it's not an instant death, but it can seem that way.