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Author Topic: Boogie Tennis  (Read 10466 times)
Derek
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« on: November 29, 2012, 02:16:02 AM »





BOOGIE TENNIS
BOOGIE TENNIS

Thought I'd finally enter one of our competitions! Always wanted to make a tennis game, so this seemed like a good opportunity. Here comes Boogie Tennis!

The basic idea was to focus on singles tennis and make it fast-paced, silly, and simple to play... but also kinda deep as far as tennis games go. Specifically, I wanted to give the player a lot of fidelity in terms of setting up different types of shots. Right now you can hit ground strokes, volleys, drop shots, lobs, and smashes. The type of shot is often contexually-determined based on player and ball position, but the direction you're holding when you release the swing also matters.

Eventually the goal is to let the player choose characters with different attributes and special "boogie shots", but currently there's only one player with one boogie shot, the Banana Ball, which drops banana peels onto the court. The crowd will also toss peels at random intervals. Later on I'd also like to add more "court events" like that to spice up the game and make it even more chaotic.

The current build is obviously very incomplete since I've only spent a week and a half on it but I think it's in reasonable shape for a compo submission. You can play a tennis match, at least! In the next couple days I'm just going to concentrate on fixing bugs and maybe adding a real title screen or something. We shall see...

Please do let me know what you think if you try it! Gentleman

Current Build: Pre-Alpha v0.002
« Last Edit: December 01, 2012, 11:41:22 PM by Derek » Logged
Uykered
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« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2012, 07:34:00 PM »

Pretty cool so far! the sounds and effects feel good.

It might need more visual indication of swapping since you don't see them running to the other side.

Looking forward to seeing more crazy courts too (lava pits :D)
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Joshua
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« Reply #2 on: November 29, 2012, 07:57:59 PM »

Plays really solid Derek. The contextual shots are pretty cool once you get the hang of it. I seem to have a really hard time breaking the CPU's serve, but I guess that's sort of expected?
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Derek
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« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2012, 03:48:41 AM »

Thanks, dudes!

@alastair: Yes, I need to make side switching more obvious (it'll help when there are more characters, too, obviously).

@Joshua: CPU is good at serve and volley and right now it's a little too hard to lob without hitting it out of bounds. Once that improves it should be a bit easier. But you're right, it should be a challenge. Smiley
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whilefun
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« Reply #4 on: November 30, 2012, 02:39:45 PM »

"Bananas and bugs, yay!"  Grin

Really fun feeling right away. I love the tennis ball sound. I also enjoy the graphical style.

I would echo @alatair's comment about side swapping. I also find the top side camera a little too tight (meaning my head is just a tad too close to the top of the screen).

I also got my player to dive for the ball. Neat! Smiley
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secv
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« Reply #5 on: November 30, 2012, 08:40:18 PM »

Just gave it a go and I have to say I don't ever see myself winning hahaha I'd say my lack of skill and tennis knowledge aren't helping. What I do like is that the controls are really responsive and the game feels right. No odd glitches or anything popping up and the ball goes where you think it should.

And the butt dance the player does is really funny.
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« Reply #6 on: December 01, 2012, 08:08:25 PM »

I once slipped on a banana peel and managed to fly over the net. It was delightfully hilarious.

You have indeed managed to squeeze a lot of fidelity into those controls! Still, I'm no match for the CPU. I couldn't tell you with confidence how the context dictates the type of shot you make, but more often than not it *feels* right. My reflexes do most of the work, which is exactly what you'd want for a sports game.

My only suggestion would be to expand the screen to fit the entire court -- I tend to wait near the back of the court and so I go off-screen every time I return a shot.

Edit: That splash is sex(y).
« Last Edit: December 02, 2012, 05:30:38 AM by louroboros » Logged

Derek
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« Reply #7 on: December 01, 2012, 11:40:53 PM »

Thanks for the feedback! I'll take it all into consideration, I'm just a bit tired to reply right now.

Did a title screen and tweaked some stuff. Build is now up and submitted (link in OP).
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agj
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« Reply #8 on: December 02, 2012, 12:52:10 PM »

Cool, works with Wine..., although kinda slow. :/ I used to really be into tennis games, like SNES Smash Tennis, so this Boogie Tennis is bringing back some memories.

Good start! Looks smart, and the system seems solid. Liking the banana peels. Kind of surprised that the character doesn't swing from the side the ball is at automatically; I have to point it toward it, which means plenty of silly errors. I like this idea in Wii Sports Resort's ping pong, which maps an actual swing motion to the in-game swing, but here it feels more like an old-school shooter: you have to pull back, but then tap in the opposite direction to aim your gun correctly (racket in this case). It's a valid design choice, I suppose.

By the way, why IJKL rather than arrow keys?
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« Reply #9 on: December 02, 2012, 05:05:31 PM »

Simple, but solid!
It took me a match and a half of hopeless losing to get use to how to actually hit the ball (Mario Tennis has kinda poisoned me against any other means of controlling a tennis game), but once I did I started to see the kind of basic depth the game has going for it.

I can only imagine how crazy this would have become if you had started earlier... Do you plan on continuing to work on this, then?
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Derek
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« Reply #10 on: December 02, 2012, 05:34:33 PM »

I'm glad you guys are feeling the controls, even if they're not what you're used to! I have played Mario Tennis (mostly the GBA one) and it's definitely informing some of the decisions I make with Boogie Tennis.

CONTROLS:

I prefer controlling which side you hit the ball on versus how MT does it, where you always hit the ball so long as you're close enough to it. I feel like you lose too much agency with the MT method and it feels more like you're pulling back a slingshot than swinging a racket. Later on I plan on making this matter more by differentiating the characters' forehand/backhand (so yes, I plan on working on this after the compo! Smiley).

SPECIAL SHOTS:

Love the idea of this but I feel like it's wasted in Mario Tennis, where each player has essentially the same two specials: one offensive shot that's hard to hit and one defensive shot that reaches anywhere the court. In Boogie Tennis I want to make the special shots much more varied and interesting.

END GOAL:

In the end, I think the actual tennis portion of the game will be like the entry level... you'll need to keep the ball going back and forth just to stand a chance. I'd like it to feel like "footsies" in fighting games, where you're trying to move the other player around and force an error. The real meat and potatoes will consist of using combinations of boogie shots at the right moments to win points.

It'd also be cool to get players to think about the match as a whole versus each individual point, too. I mean, of course you'll be thinking about winning the match, but it'd be nice if there were maybe a reason to lose a particular point in order to win the match as a whole.

By the way, why IJKL rather than arrow keys?

I was getting key lock on my laptop with the arrow keys. Smiley


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agj
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« Reply #11 on: December 02, 2012, 06:08:55 PM »

Oh, haha. Weird, I'd have guessed that the arrows are much less likely to do that. Sucks.

Interesting to approach a tennis game from a fighting game perspective.
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« Reply #12 on: December 03, 2012, 03:38:04 AM »

Great gameplay and graphic style!

 Toast Left

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Pierrec
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« Reply #13 on: December 03, 2012, 07:47:41 AM »

The characters are lovely! I really dig their butt-shaking! I love the bananas too!
The gameplay works very well (I had trouble finding the keys though) but this is really hard! I didn't win a single set (but maybe I'm just bad at it)

Something still bothers me : The windows screen seems to small, when I'm on the upper area, I can't even see my player when the opponent serves. This is not a big deal because it only lasts one second or two but...still annoying.

It reminded me Mario Tennis of course, a game I love, and I hope you'll push this forward!
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« Reply #14 on: December 03, 2012, 10:35:11 AM »

Are you planning to add gamepad support, too?  Beg
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Wilson Saunders
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« Reply #15 on: December 03, 2012, 03:42:42 PM »

I am not very good at this game. Hard to tell if I am on the top or bottom. Also the bottom player's idle animation makes me  Shocked  Embarrassed  Roll Eyes .

Over all I enjoy the experience in spite of my sucking at it.
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« Reply #16 on: December 03, 2012, 09:47:37 PM »

I played it on our living room TV and my roommates and I laughed so hard at the booty bounce'n idle animation. I love the art style and personality of the game, and I can only imagine what the other characters might look like and the silly visual jokes they'll have. The super powers are a cool idea.

I'll also admit that since I played a lot of 'Tennis' for Game Boy it took me about 3 games to figure out why I wasn't always swinging my racquet automatically on the side where the ball was. You'd probably be able to teach that easily with a tutorial. I got used to it after 10 minutes or so. The hitting felt right, and pretty forgiving in a good way. I thought the NPC's AI felt really well tuned and challenging, I haven't beaten him yet but I won a couple games.

I kept getting hit by the ball all the time until I finally got used to the timing and distance I needed to swing at. Again, a tutorial some day would probably take care of that.

Maybe you could make the NPC's clothes and gear a different color so you can recognize your character quicker?

Really loved it, and I'm look'n forward to following its progress, new characters and powers  Grin
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Uykered
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« Reply #17 on: December 05, 2012, 09:04:44 PM »

Are you going to do a HD remake?
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« Reply #18 on: December 05, 2012, 10:43:50 PM »

Hmm, I seem to be stuck. I ran the exe, the title animation plays, and nothing else seems to happen. After a few minutes of waiting, an error message pops up:

Quote
__________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Begin Step Event
for object oScreen:

Trying to use non-existing surface.

I'm on Windows 7. I tried running as administrator and restarting the PC.
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Derek
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« Reply #19 on: December 06, 2012, 01:48:37 AM »

Hm, I'm not sure why that's happening, since I'm on Windows 7, also. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable about Game Maker 8.0 knows the cause (I'm using Chevy Ray's screen scaling script)?

Are you going to do a HD remake?

Alastair, you little imp, you. But if you're being at all serious, no, I don't have any plans to do an HD version.

The hitting felt right, and pretty forgiving in a good way. I thought the NPC's AI felt really well tuned and challenging, I haven't beaten him yet but I won a couple games.

...

Maybe you could make the NPC's clothes and gear a different color so you can recognize your character quicker?

Glad you like the game, Ted! I'll probably add another character before I release another build, so you should have no trouble recognizing who's who then. Smiley

Are you planning to add gamepad support, too?  Beg

Definitely!

Something still bothers me : The windows screen seems to small, when I'm on the upper area, I can't even see my player when the opponent serves. This is not a big deal because it only lasts one second or two but...still annoying.

It reminded me Mario Tennis of course, a game I love, and I hope you'll push this forward!

Yeah, it's a bit weird to have the players cut off at the top. I'll see what I can do about that without changing the screen resolution (for some reason I'm a bit hesitant about that).

I'm having a lot of fun working on this game so I'll keep pushing at it. Thanks for you feedback!
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