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[UltraJMan]

This is very well done, I'm glad everything came together so smoothly in the end.

[Ciardhubh]

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

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

[muku]

Thanks Ciardhubh!

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

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.

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.

[Dayv]

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.

[0rel]

pro:

• i tested it with an other ogg file, with a song which builds up slowly, and it worked great! even better than with the chiptunes. it got faster and faster towards the end... nice. - with another, more prepeditive track, i couldn't see much dependence, though, it's related mainly on the volume/energy, i assume (i have to test some heavy metal with some hard breaks between brutal and calm parts sometime)...
• the background green and the gloomy overlay looks very gameboyish. nice!
• the up popping pixels, the chiptunes and retro3d adaption of the original game fit well together.
• menu / hud are nicely done as well

some minor contras, i noticed while playing:

• i didn't know which buttons on the keyboard relate to 'A'/'B' first, to use the bombs... (EDIT: omg!, i completely forgot about that 2button limitation in my game, hmm..)
• something like horizontal stripes on the track could increase the feel of speed/space maybe.
• it can be dangerous to use the escape key directly to quit the game. only a detail... i would rather choose another song, when i press esc.

(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))

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

[muku]

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

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

Hehe, thanks, though I have to admit that I stole the idea

[muku]

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.

[UltraJMan]

Oh wow, the new speed makes this a whole lot more hectic, it's really enjoyable that way.

[muku]

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.

[shrapnel]

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. 

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.

[muku]

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...

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

Really? 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)

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

Wow, thanks.

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?

[shrapnel]

Really? They do for me. Could you check whether the cache/ subdirectory has any *.hsc files?

I do have those files...  Without going back and testing, I'm wondering if the high scores are per song, and I only played each once?  It could've been my misunderstanding.

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?

Yeah, the rubygame library I usually use depends on SDL, SDL_image, SDL_gfx, SDL_mixer, and SDL_ttf, so I'm sure I've got those installed.  Looks like I've got libvorbis, too.  Strange.  You're probably using the dmd compiler, I was trying gdc.  I did pop dmd in for a bit and had really terrible results trying to compile anything, but that's probably because I had a mixed dmd/gdc system at that point.

It looks like it would probably port, but I'm not the person to do it. 

[muku]

Really? They do for me. Could you check whether the cache/ subdirectory has any *.hsc files?

I do have those files...  Without going back and testing, I'm wondering if the high scores are per song, and I only played each once?  It could've been my misunderstanding.

Yup, that's the thing Since the durations of the songs differ a lot, it wouldn't make much sense to lump them all together.

Yeah, the rubygame library I usually use depends on SDL, SDL_image, SDL_gfx, SDL_mixer, and SDL_ttf, so I'm sure I've got those installed.  Looks like I've got libvorbis, too.  Strange.  You're probably using the dmd compiler, I was trying gdc.  I did pop dmd in for a bit and had really terrible results trying to compile anything, but that's probably because I had a mixed dmd/gdc system at that point.

It looks like it would probably port, but I'm not the person to do it. 

Hm, yeah, I use dmd, and I think on Linux gdc is generally considered more stable. So, well I don't know; in theory they should be compatible. But I guess it's alright if it works in Wine for now.

[increpare]

Erm...I've never played the original, and it never really appealed to me that much, and this game didn't do too much for me either 

However, graphically and interface-wise and musically it was solid.  Graphics were quite convincingly retro.

[muku]

Mh. Crap, I guess.

But well, if you didn't like the original (or at least think that you wouldn't like it), I guess it's not too surprising that this doesn't appeal to you either. This is really a pure highscore game; there is no dying, and there is no challenge in finishing the levels since you can just wait them out, so the only gameplay to be had is in trying to get a good score. Some people like this sort of game, some don't.

Though it seems some people play the original just to chill to their music collection, but I guess this doesn't work as well here.