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[droqen]

Click here for the official thread INTRO Hello! This is the first game I have made which I feel I can call complete. Although I can and likely will certainly add more (there are still things in mind) I'm happy to thrust this out into the world and tell people it's almost ready. ... Well, almost. I need some playtesting and lots of feedback, I guess, which is why I'm here, right? I want to know if you like the game, the text displays, the controls -- and if you don't like something, etc etc etc. Things that would be good to add. Anything that comes to mind. Thank you, chaps. (and non-chaps too) STORY You're THIS GUY. You are 140cm tall (4'7"). Shorty. Armed with a handful of magical throwing stars and your pitiful punching fist, you have fallen into this hole that just kind of goes on forever -- and as you descend, red-eyed creatures of the deep beating you up all the way, your chances of surviving another few seconds only drop lower and lower. GAME The game is a vertical platformer in which you control the only thing that doesn't have scary red eyes. That's you. There is a not very good tutorial. But it will have to do. After all, you don't have much time to prepare when you've just fallen into a pit of doom. Features: Infinite Gameplay 5 Basic Enemies, 4 Boss Enemies 20 Abilities to Earn Local High Score Table (no online, sorry!) Jumping, Shooting, Maneuvering Fun. Note: You have limited stars that can be restocked.

DOWNLOAD

Windows Only (exe) - IF YOU HAVE WINDOWS, TRY THIS FIRST
Download pzero091-win.zip right here. This version will hopefully work! Just unzip the whole thing, and run the .exe and you'll do fine.


Any System (pyc) - requires Python and Pyglet!
First, download Python here.
Second, download Pyglet here.
Finally, download pzero091-pyc.zip (containing the .pyc of the game) here. You may download this first if you think you already have Python + Pyglet.
---> In case the .pyc file doesn't run on its own, remember you have to run it using Python; but I believe installing Python links up filetypes for you.

For those with Snow Leopard...
"Pyglet unfortunately is incompatible with Snow Leopard's system python.
Snow Leopard ships with a 64-bit build of python, and because pyglet depends
on the Carbon API, it cannot run in 64-bit environment.

You can download and install a 32-bit version of python from python.org,
which should allow pyglet to run."

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT PRIORITY

Music and sound! They're coming, I promise!
I think they're immediately the next item on the list.

HIGH SCORE(S)
None as of most recent version
Bring on the screenshots! (or videos?)

one day I will probably get around to making a real onliney high score table but for now I'm just using this to garner interest and to see if there is anyone really good at this game!

[mluongo]

Cool game!

I gave it several good tries and my best was 93 points and 0.159 km down (which, admittedly, doesn't sound that great)

LIKED:

-I liked seeing that leveling up is possible, and some of the choices for new abilities seem like they could really influence your strategy.

-This is a game that you'll certainly do better at the more you play. Once you get good with judging jumps and throwing the stars I'm sure you'll score much higher. In other words, it is a game very much influenced by the player's skill.

-Blocks are randomly generated and enemies are placed at random leading to new layouts each time.

ISSUES:

-Needs more explaining. While it was good to see the controls on the screen when I first jumped in, I didn't quite know what I was doing. It took me time to realize that I could throw stars below me, that I could break the white blocks, and that I would level up. I still don't know what the "Pickup Queue" is, nor do I know where my health display is (!!)

-Because the blocks are placed at random I was sometimes screwed by getting boxed in or by giving no place to jump to avoid falling damage. I see that there's an ability to break blocks, though, so that could help.

-Sound would help quite a bit! I strongly suggest adding a catchy tune and punching, throwing, breaking blocks, and monster shooting sounds.

-Although I see how it got its name, the probability thing isn't very important and is really just for show. Changing the depth measurements is unnecessary, too. I'd rather have a standard measurement for it to go by so that I immediately know how well I did compared to the last run.

-A high scores table would be a good addition.

-Punching has a very short range requiring you to get right up close to enemies. It's actually quite challenging to kill enemies, maybe tougher than it should be.

Hope this helps.

[droqen]

One by one I shall respond. Mluongo, I appreciate
And yeah, it's not a very great score xD it's definitely something one needs to take time to master... but it's good to see you got far enough to get one ability, and gave it some good tries :3

LIKED
liked seeing that leveling up is possible,
certainly do better at the more you play
new layouts each time

Huzzah! This is good. Core aspects that I am fairly proud of having, and it's nice to see the response to them is positive. I'm certainly trying to think of ways to make the game more accessible to the new player as well as add depth for the player who is becoming very good.

I decided going with random would be a little easier on my end, and allow for a lot of replayability at the cost of much story-depth or specific level design. (Also sometimes you run into impossible challenges ._. sorry)

ISSUES
Needs more explaining
screwed by getting boxed in
Sound ... catchy tune ... [various] sounds

Explaining may or may not happen. I want the player to be aware of everything he/she is able to do (hence the control keys right at the beginning), but I kind of like the sense of discovery. There's no introduction to what you can do, or the controls, or how things will react -- it's something you learn over time. Hopefully quickly, though. I will probably add some quick little tutorial.
Pickup Queue: The next item you pick up will be the next item in the queue.
Health Display: What's the most eye-catching thing onscreen that has to do with "life" or "survival"? :]

Getting boxed in: Yeah, that's a bit of a problem. I will try to work on it but I think it also adds value to the smashy-block ability. It seems rather unfair to the player, however -- I'll try to make sure there is a clear-air path through everything? ... Maybe. I will consider it, anyway.
Working on sound ^^ I want to get some music in, definitely, but I don't know exactly how to do it (especially transitions between different music). And sound will certainly find its way in as well. (And I want to make sure the music is nice, too >_<)

ISSUES
probability thing isn't very important
depth measurements
high scores
punching
challenging to kill enemies

The probability thing is in fact a display! I don't know if it's a horrible thing but I enjoy it xD -- It originally stemmed from wanting this wild and crazy number drop and slow down, and hit a solid "0" upon death. It made me feel nice.

Depth measurements always make sure one of them is km once you die. I should make that more clear.
I will probably be able to make it more clear by having the km the sole unit used in high-scores.
Long story short: I will make a high score table, and km is guaranteed to show up. This unit-changing really is for show, but I thought it was kind of cool, maybe it's just annoying ^^

Punching and fighting being difficult: Every punch upgrade (there are two of them) increases not only damage, but hitbox size. Fighting is fairly difficult, I admit. So, again, as above, I will be considering things to make it easier on new people, or make an easy difficulty or something of the sort.

Hope this helps.

It does. I hope I've managed to clear a few things up, and I will proceed to in-game clear a few other things up for the player!

[JMickle]

the game crashes whenever i shoot down and the bullet(?) hits something.
:/

also randomly a bit later on (i am guessing it is when a certain object is spawned)

log - http://www.2shared.com/file/9334525/b4b1b13b/pzeroexe.html

[droqen]

Hmm.
It appears to be an issue with the version of your OpenGL, I don't think there's much I can do about this besides rewriting the drawing code >__> Will look into it but I am no opengl expert.

pyglet.gl.lib.MissingFunctionException: glMultiDrawArrays is not exported by the available OpenGL driver.  VERSION_1_4 is required for this functionality.

[JMickle]

do i need to update then? if thats it then its fine.

*updates*

maybe you could have some kind of check at the start and let the player know if he needs to update?

uh-oh by the looks of it opengl 1.4 is only on vista

[droqen]

After doing some lookin' stuff up,
I am of the belief you may just need to update your video drivers.

OpenGL is waaaaay past version 1.4, so it would be ridiculous to not be available to earlier version of windows than Vista, right?
So if they [your video drivers] aren't updated, look them up! I'll still be looking for an answer to the problem, but definitely give that a try, I guess.

[JMickle]

i looked it up and windows XP uses openGL version 1.1 and vista uses openGL version 1.4

it confuses me too because it was also talking about openGL 3.0 but they can't possibly be talking about the same version types, right?

either way i have my video drivers up to date anyway, so it can't be that.

[droqen]

This...
concerns me ._.

It works without said issue on my Windows XP netbook, which so far as I understand barely has a graphics card. It works on Winxp, for sure.

I can't really find anything concerning this error on the internet, unfortunately, and I am far from well-versed in things OpenGL.

[and yeah, that's weird. I was also reading some 3.0 stuff too, strange that something like that would come up...]


What kind of... system do you have, I guess?
>>> And does anyone know what the problem could be o__o, and has anyone experienced similar issues at all?

[JMickle]

oh ok that is strange. i have a laptop with 1.6 ghz processor and 1.5 gb ram, but the graphics card is pretty bad. It is possible it might just be that, but surely a netbook wouldn't have a much better graphics card?

I'll try installing my drivers again, from a different source maybe, and see if that helps?

[droqen]

I don't know if it'll help (at all), but I could also suggest giving the .pyc version a try.

My issue is that I pretty much can't do anything as far as I can tell because the thing that's calling the "glMultiDrawArrays" is my batch.draw() function which is 100% out of my hands ><

---> Maybe try that, though I don't know if it'll make a difference. hmn. I might try asking on the Technical forum.

( Listen to chrknudsen, it will sound like he knows what he's talking about yay )

[Christian Knudsen]

What kind of video card do you have? Unless it's really old and unsupported, the drivers from the card's manufacturer should support at least OpenGL 2.0. You did download the most recent driver from your card's manufacturer and not Microsoft, right?

[JMickle]

uh i'm confused i just went to Dell to get the newest drivers, but the installation said I already had a newer version?

ugh

edit: ok found what appears to be a newer one.WOOOOOO IT WORKS!

haha this game is pretty fun after all (almost worth the hassle  )
i tihnk it can be a bit difficult to judge the fall damage and whatnot, but it is a neat little arcade game. i can see myself playing this for a while  i'll post more when i've played a bit more

[droqen]

Thanks chrknudsen for the assistance!

Thanks JMickle for feedback (and hassle xD)!
Looking forward to seeing how you like it after giving it a few more tries.


Something important I will add to the first post at some point:

Do not take the platforming aspect lightly. Even though it's just descending... I feel that making every jump count is a crucial part of the game. Sometimes you have to go out of your way to spy a new route (and navigate over to it) instead of resigning to take that fall damage. (Occurs after falling more than 4 block-heights by the way.)

[ I'm making specific note of this because it's kind of easy to focus too much on the killing-stuff part. ]

[droqen]

New version. First post updated.

[ortoslon]

largest complaint: depth, star and point counters obstruct the area where enemies appear

[JMickle]

have you changed how levels are generated? because I seem to get stuck more in this version. but overall I prefer it. The menu is superb and I like the choice to have 4 skill points, good call.

Enjoying this more and more. Playing it too much to spend time making the music xD

[droqen]

ortoslon: Haha, I'll see what I can do to fix that... I know that elements of the HUD sort of do block parts of the screen. I could possibly make those more... vertical, or something, maybe move them around to the top. [And I'm glad you mentioned those blocking the screen more than the ones at the top]

JMickle: xD Awesome, I'm glad you're enjoying it so much . The levels are generated the same way as the last version, I think, so I wonder what the issue is... I may have to start looking into some kind of quick pathfinding to make sure there's always soooome way through.

General note: You have to get past 0.250km to start seeing the four new boss enemies.

---- if you've downloaded before this post, you may wish to download again; bosses are fixed, where in the previous version they lacked balance and their dropped items were bugged (picking them up would kill the game)

[JMickle]

theres always a way through, but if you make the wrong decision you can end up in a pit that you cant jump out of. I always try to avoid fall damage so this happens a lot.

[droqen]

Occasionally there is sometimes a wall that is... impassible, unfortunately.

I uploaded another version with some changes to make things slightly easier (changed something very core to the game, but only a bit).

Falling into a pit that you can't jump out of it your own fault :D not much I can do about that.

Oh, and I switched over to version numbers so now the folders won't ask to overwrite (which has caused an error) amongst other cool new things. (one new ability, 5th tier, ridiculously amusing... replaced Knees++. Also, all abilities in talent are get-able.)