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[bigpants]

http://www.bigpants.ca/restrainingorder

"Relationships are Complicated."

It's freakin' great.
It's freakin' free.

[bigpants]

Greetings once again forum dwellers!
Forgive my bump, but I thought I would take a less bombastic approach.

Restraining Order
http://www.bigpants.ca/restrainingorder
"Find your perfect love"

It features 5 extremely intense minutes of
- classic punching and kicking action (think Kung-Fu Master)
- catchy music
- stylish graphics
- the funniest last level in a videogame ever (hopefully)

The foundation of "Restraining Order" was created at the Global Game Jam. I spent the next 2 weeks improving it, and I'm extremely proud of the end result. Most of that time was spent refining the gameplay (tweaking collision detection, adjusting player speed / jump height, ensuring player deaths are only caused by player mistakes, keeping things fair yet surprising, adding enough enemies to keep things interesting but not overwhelming) - something I wish more game makers would do.

[increpare]

I thought the game was pretty cute.  I liked the idea, and the graphics were pretty good (can't recall anything about the sound).

oh wait, there's been more added since? i'll have to give it another check-out, I guess...

[bigpants]

whoops! i have misled.
nothing more has been added since I first posted about the game.
the version that's up there IS the one i spent the extra time on.
in the previous post, i was merely waxing poetic on the game's virtues.

* spoiler *
did you notice the song change, and the psycho start singing "Fancy Love" in the final level (red background)?
that's the BEST part of the game!!!

[Terry]

I really want to check this out, but I'm scared after how Hold me Closer treated my poor laptop... and this looks even more... intensive

[bigpants]

And so it begins...
The return of Terry's Laptop.

While the game shares exactly the same code base, it's MUCH less intensive than "Hold me Closer". For speed reasons (stretchblt and dibs are too slow), "Hold me Closer" allocates a large 32-bit 1600 x 1024 image for the Monster, plus a large 1280 x 1024 offscreen buffer bitmap, plus 600 x 400 images for the mountains. That pushes your the Video RAM available on video cards (especially laptop video cards) and requires large, slow bitblits.

By contrast, "Restraining Order" doesn't use the full screen - everything takes place within a wide, short rectangle. The offscreen buffer is only 1280 x 300, and the rest of the graphics combined take up ~1280 x 600. Not only does it mean less Video RAM, it also means I'm bitblitting smaller images which is much faster. In theory you're fine. In theory.

Dammit... I can't sleep until I know "Restraining Order" passes your trial.
You must play it!