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TIGSource ForumsCommunityJams & EventsCompetitionsOld CompetitionsBootleg Demakes[FINISHED] HEALTHY WAVE (New version Sep. 06)
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Author Topic: [FINISHED] HEALTHY WAVE (New version Sep. 06)  (Read 49023 times)
muku
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« Reply #20 on: August 25, 2008, 11:09:56 AM »

There's now a demo available in the first post. There still might be some technical hiccups, so if you have any problems, please run the game from a console window and report the error message you get.

Currently it's Windows only (tested on Win2K and Vista), but if there's someone here who uses D and is on another platform, I'd like to send them the code for compilation. I will release the source publically anyway, but only when it's completely done.

And thanks must go to Multifaros for letting me use his music! He rocks!
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Will Vale
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« Reply #21 on: August 26, 2008, 02:20:31 AM »

Works OK for me on XP. It's quite slow, but only in an authentic retro kind of way (I assume?)

I love how you're only drawing the track a short distance ahead, but you have the vanishing point on the static background for infinite depth - I can remember some other early 3D games that did something similar.

Colours and static blur look good too.

Cheers,

Will
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muku
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« Reply #22 on: August 26, 2008, 02:28:34 AM »

Works OK for me on XP. It's quite slow, but only in an authentic retro kind of way (I assume?)

Thanks for the feedback. The ship starts out quite slow, but should get faster as the music picks up and the track gets more downhill. But since I got the same comment from UltraJMan, maybe I'll speed it up a little, but actually I think it's already pretty hectic once things pick up.

Or is this more a comment about the apparently limited framerate? I intentionally limited animation of the track to discrete steps so it looks more retro. If you're not sure the game performs as well as it should, run it from the console, you'll get an average FPS printout when it quits.
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trabitboy
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« Reply #23 on: August 26, 2008, 02:52:08 AM »

waou really good gameboy vibe, I like the jerkiness
a lot, reminds me of cpc wireframe 3D  Tongue

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captainbinky
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« Reply #24 on: August 26, 2008, 03:03:44 AM »

The Gameboy didn't really have any blur at all, did it?

Gosh, it had loads! You could barely see anything when the screen scrolled!  :D

Heh, looking at it that way, you're right... it's been years since I've had one of those things in my hands Grin That's more like motion blur though and not the static directional blur I'm doing here. In fact, motion blur wouldn't be too difficult to implement either, hmmmm... but first to actually finish the game Wink

Just downloaded the game - neat! Great stuff so far!  Grin

I see what you mean now with the blur - the screenshots weren't showing for me before so I thought you meant screen blur like you'd get if you didn't clear the screen each frame and instead drew a transparent polygon on top of it, and then the new frame on top of that. Sort of screen smear if you get me?

But the bleeding blur type effect you've got looks pretty funky!
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Will Vale
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« Reply #25 on: August 26, 2008, 04:25:44 AM »

Or is this more a comment about the apparently limited framerate?

I like the limited framerate, it definitely adds retroness. I was more concerned about the gameplay speed - the downhill bits feel great, but the uphill bits feel like waiting for more downhill bits.

That said, I'll have to try some other tracks - I only played the first one - to get a better feel for the overall balance.

Incidentally, if you get to implementing the LCD afterimage, can I suggest that you tie that to real time rather than the stepped frame times? The idea being that on the real thing the fade is continuous and smooth even though the updates aren't. I think having one smooth-over-time element on screen will make everything feel more fluid and responsive even though the rest of the display update is artificially slow.

e.g.


  space
t OOOO
i OOOO
m OOOO
e OOOO
  oOOOO
  .OOOO
   OOOO
   OOOO
   oOOOO
   .OOOO
    OOOO
    OOOO


The big Os are a four-pixel sprite moving to the right - these are the pixels you're already plotting, updating every fourth frame for the sake of argument, and the little os and dots are the fading ghost pixels which get updated every single frame.

Does that make any sense? It sounded good in my head, but you never know...
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UltraJMan
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« Reply #26 on: August 26, 2008, 04:30:07 AM »

I think as far as the speed issue goes, maybe a comrpomise could be to speed up the uphill bits just slightly, those seem to drag quite a lot but the rest feels balanced.
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muku
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« Reply #27 on: August 26, 2008, 05:17:50 AM »

Great suggestions! Going off the feedback I got so far, I'll probably decrease the variance in ship speeds a bit so that the fastest bits stay as they are but the uphill sections are faster (as UltraJMan said).

EDIT: I recall now why I did it the way it is now, it's because I wanted to capture that feeling from the original AS where you go over a hill and suddenly everything starts racing by. With lower variance in speed, I'm a bit worried that might get lost. But I'll try to find a compromise.

That LCD blur idea sounds good. You'd still get ghost images which are several pixels apart because of the limited on-screen framerate, but it might look neat. I'll see whether I have time to give it a try.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2008, 05:32:26 AM by muku » Logged
trabitboy
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« Reply #28 on: August 27, 2008, 12:14:08 AM »

this demake really turned well !
I keep coming back to it for a daily fix  Wink
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muku
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« Reply #29 on: August 27, 2008, 07:22:53 AM »

Wow, thanks trabitboy, that's great to hear.


The (hopefully) final version is online. Changes from the demo:

  • Sexy new intro screen.
  • Minimap and speedometer on the HUD.
  • Made the slow sections a bit faster.
  • Increased chain bonus multiplier.
  • Award bonus system implemented. There are various things you can do which will give you a percentage bonus when the game ends.
  • Minor last-minute layout changes.

I feel these changes have given the game quite some more polish, so be sure to re-download if you have the demo already.

Also, if there is interest, I could put up an "expansion pack" with more Multifaros songs. On the other hand, you can use whatever songs you want anyway, so maybe it's not needed.

Enjoy. I'm pretty happy about how it turned out. Thanks again to UltraJMan and Multifaros.
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UltraJMan
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« Reply #30 on: August 27, 2008, 05:46:20 PM »

This is very well done, I'm glad everything came together so smoothly in the end.
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Ciardhubh
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« Reply #31 on: August 28, 2008, 03:54:10 AM »

Very nice indeed. Feels very authentic, both as a demake and as a Gameboy title  Grin

Maybe it's just me but I'd prefer changes in the track to be steeper. The track feels very flat and it's hard to see the music's effect except in the minimap. Speeding it up a bit would be great, too. Maybe show a bit more of the track. Even though it is supposed to be retro, it cannot hurt to be more fun Wink
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muku
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« Reply #32 on: August 28, 2008, 09:17:05 AM »

Thanks Ciardhubh!

Hm. You feel that the fun suffers for the retroness? That is bad. Undecided

I'm a bit wary of speeding it up more. I already sped the slow sections up a bit at people's request, and I don't want to reduce the variance in speed anymore. So that leaves speeding it up overall, but in my opinion the fast bits are already quite fast enough. When you want to get a good score, you really have to plan a bit ahead as to how you want to make your patterns, and often you have to decide pretty quickly when a block comes up whether it will help you or not. When I play it myself, I often feel rushed in my decisions whether to pick one up; in a good way, but if it were any faster I think it might become overwhelming. Maybe I just play it more carefully than everyone else. Wink

As for changes in the track being steeper: yeah, maybe. The analysis algorithm of course isn't very sophisticated, so it can't pick up many things that the human ear can, but at least when there's a noticeably calmer section it usually does a pretty good job of making an uphill section. So I think it's okay as it is without having to put an extra week into the algorithm.

And showing more of the track, well I think that would ruin a lot of the Gameboy feeling while not helping gameplay much at all (or would it?), so I'm rather against that.

I'd definitely love to hear what other people think about these things. Game design as a conscious process is a very new thing to me, and I'm trying to learn. Wink
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Dayv
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« Reply #33 on: August 28, 2008, 09:48:23 AM »

Nice work.  I might be slow because I can't work out what it's based on but I got the hang of it pretty quickly.
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muku
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« Reply #34 on: September 03, 2008, 05:04:13 AM »

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback, and for the compliments.

You're right that the song analysis is only based on volume, I just compute the RMS for each section and use its mean and variance to generate the track. So, for a song which mostly has uniform volume throughout, there won't be much happening.

I should perhaps make the use of Ctrl more clear, but it's in the Instructions and in the readme, and a full-blown tutorial would probably be overkill for such a small game.

Horizontal lines on the track for added speed perception, nice idea, maybe I can still do that. I'll probably release an improved version anyway since the deadline has been extended.

And for the Escape key, yeah I agree, that's just lazy. I'll probably change that, too.

(btw: what i did't like with original 'AudioSurf' (i only played the demo, once), was that the underlaying puzzle game wasn't directly related to the music... you basically just ride down a hypnotic tunnel, all synced to the music, but the actual game isn't directly related to what's happening on the screen, or to the music, at least it wasn't in my experience... but that just as i side note. - i would love that game, if the player could kind of remix several tracks, or interact with them in more interesting ways... (just because i saw once that you are also interested in generative music and the like))

That's an interesting idea. I'll have to think about a music puzzle game where the player's actions actually influence how different tracks are mixed together, or something...

EDIT: Also, about AudioSurf, I also thought that at first, but read my experience with it here: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=2298.msg66280#msg66280

Quote
ouuh, and:  Pretendo!
haa, best fake-label so far Smiley

Hehe, thanks, though I have to admit that I stole the idea Grin
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muku
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« Reply #35 on: September 06, 2008, 09:01:23 AM »

Good news everyone!

Although I'm a bit short on time currently, I managed to put some time into my entry this afternoon. So, there's now an updated version 1.1 of HEALTHY WAVE.

The major change from 1.0 is that there is now a choice of two ships to race with, the normal ship and a turbo ship which is quite a bit faster. I have to admit, you guys were right, it does really feel more fun with a faster ship, so I also sped the original ship up a little.

There's some minor other changes too; mono music files work now, minimap drawing was slightly changed and Escape goes back to the main menu.

Download the game from the link in the first post, or if you already have version 1.0 (not the demo though!) and are sick of downloading huge music files, get the update here and unzip it on top of the old game directory.
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UltraJMan
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« Reply #36 on: September 06, 2008, 08:10:13 PM »

Oh wow, the new speed makes this a whole lot more hectic, it's really enjoyable that way.
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muku
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« Reply #37 on: September 08, 2008, 08:58:32 AM »

Just a quick heads-up: Since the compo is now over and the code is frozen for the moment, I figured this would be a good time to release the source code. You can get it, like the game itself, from http://eriatic.wikidot.com/game:healthywave. It's written in D, a language I highly recommend looking at for game development. It's also similar enough to C++ that people could still look at it and understand what I'm doing even if they've never seen D before.

The source itself isn't quite as structured as I'd have it on a larger project, but I'd say it's pretty good considering that it was done in a couple of days. License is ISC, which is quite permissive (MIT style).

I hope more people will decide to release their code; it can only make the indie scene stronger to have a large base of finished games with source code to draw upon.
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mildmojo
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« Reply #38 on: September 10, 2008, 11:17:03 AM »

Sweet game.  I have yet to try it with my own tunes, but the three included were cool.  I like the combination of arcadey ship maneuvers with the puzzle subgame. 

I have a hard time figuring out when to use the bombs, except when one of my columns is topped out and it doesn't look easy to clear.  So I frequently end up using all of them or sitting at 3 bombs for a long time.

High scores don't save; I think the coin cell in the cartridge must be dead again.  Tongue

Very cohesive.  It's got a completely consistent feel all around, and everything fits together well.  Congrats.

Runs fine in Wine.

I tried to get it to compile in Linux, but it was pretty rough getting a D environment set up.  I did finally get it to compile, but it segfaulted first on the initAudio call, then (if that was removed) again at at the tryConstructFont() call.  Ah well.
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muku
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« Reply #39 on: September 10, 2008, 04:19:54 PM »

I have a hard time figuring out when to use the bombs, except when one of my columns is topped out and it doesn't look easy to clear.
That's basically their typical use case. I didn't want the columns to clear themselves when you overfill them as in AS, so I had to provide something to allow the player to make some space again when everything is full. Though you can use them when you picked up some block by mistake.

Though there's a bonus to be had if you don't use any...


Quote
High scores don't save; I think the coin cell in the cartridge must be dead again.  Tongue
Really? Undecided They do for me. Could you check whether the cache/ subdirectory has any *.hsc files?

Also, a friend of mine recently cracked the 5,000 points boundary on Backup with the standard ship. You people can use that as your benchmark since I don't have online highscores (yet) Tongue

Quote
Very cohesive.  It's got a completely consistent feel all around, and everything fits together well.  Congrats.
Wow, thanks.

Quote
I tried to get it to compile in Linux, but it was pretty rough getting a D environment set up.  I did finally get it to compile, but it segfaulted first on the initAudio call, then (if that was removed) again at at the tryConstructFont() call.  Ah well.
Thanks for putting the effort in, shame it didn't work. I have a Linux box, but I mainly use it as a server, it doesn't even have a monitor, so I only SSH into it and can't test games on it. I've also never used D on Linux, so I can't really give much advice. You did have the relevant DLLs for SDL, SDL_Mixer, SDL_Image etc installed though?
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