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[eddietree]

Salutations TIGers.  

Earlier this week, I was noodling around in Actionscript when I came up with this very basic rhythm-based game. It's called FunkBot3000 and it's my first attempt at a musically-themed game.

FunkBot3000 is about a soul-less robot who is moved by the power of funk. The player must pump fat beats into his heart to penetrate his mechanical, robotic soul.

I would appreciate any feedback on the game. Specifically, did the rhythm mechanics feel intuitive? Did it seem obvious to press the buttons in the specific time intervals? Any suggestions on possible future gameplay would be awesome too. Thank you.  

Status: Complete
Note: If you do something else while playing the game (like browsing the web), the song might desync with the beat. Not sure how to fix that. But if stay in the game from start to finish, the beat should be in sync.

Play here (Flash): http://illogictree.com/funkbot/

 

[TwilightVulpine]

This is awesome, I want to play the full game ASAP.

I just think the Level Up sound doesn't fit the soundtrack.

[Rob Lach]

I can only imagine where you'll be taking this but so far so good imo.

[eddietree]

Thanks all for playing my game and for your kind words.   

I just added two more levels into the game. I also did a code overhaul of the way my engine handles beats. Now, it should make it alot easier to implement new levels.

Anyhow, enjoy. Please let me know if you feel the game is too hard or too easy.

[TwilightVulpine]

I had some difficulty with level 3. Apparently I got somewhat off beat and couldn't get the rhythm again, even trying to follow the sound. Maybe you should bring back the helper buttons when the meter goes down to 0.

[Matt Thorson]

I played the game before this update and had no problems with levels 1 or 2. Now I can't get past level 2 - I feel like I'm pressing the keys right on the beats but it isn't working

[eddietree]

I played the game before this update and had no problems with levels 1 or 2. Now I can't get past level 2 - I feel like I'm pressing the keys right on the beats but it isn't working

I found a bug that was slowing down my game gradually over time. I fixed it, so hopefully the beats won't get off sync again...

...Maybe you should bring back the helper buttons when the meter goes down to 0.

That's a great idea! I set it so that if a player happens to miss an certain amount of beats, the helper buttons will reappear. Hopefully that will fix alot of gameplay issues of people missing beats and unable to recover when the help goes away.

[TwilightVulpine]

I just played it on Flash 9 and the beats are still getting off sync. I started playing then navigated the web a little, when I went back to the game's tab, the helper buttons were completely out of sync with the music. I was in level 4. After refreshing the page I was able to play from start to finish. It seemed to happen again in level 3 when I let it idle, so I think it happens in every level. Is the button cues tied to the music or you are using some sort of timer?

It's just me or the music in level 5 feels somewhat out of place?

[TheLastBanana]

Neat game.  It could just be something relating to the timing problems others have been having, but I found the game was far more forgiving about being late for beats than being early for beats.  For some of the levels, I had to consciously react slower because it only worked if I hit the beat after the sound actually went.  Aside from that, I really like it.

[Tumetsu]

I'm not really into these games and don't have much experience with these so I stuck into level 2 or 3. It might be just my inexperience but for me different buttons and beat/sound representing them wasn't very clear. I don't know but I think it could have been easier to figure for me if those three beats would have had more different sounds. Right now I just tried to watch helper and memorize it. But that may be just my inexperience with this genre

Otherwise graphics were nice and game good though maybe a bit repetitive (probably again a genre feature so don't take this too seriously). Keep up good work!

[eddietree]

Thank you all for your delicious feedback! 

In this current update, I added a few more songs and an ending to the game, thereby concluding this (mini-) game.

I recalculated the BPM for each of the songs so hopefully the beats will be more accurate. However, there is still some desyncing issues if you start doing something else while in the game (like browse the web). Not exactly sure how to fix that. But if you stay in the game from start to finish, it should be in sync. Please let me know if there is still problems with the beat desyncing with the song..

Thanks alot guys! I hope you all enjoy this little game I made. 

[TheLastBanana]

Glad you got it finished.  The buttons were definitely more responsive, but any browser lag seems to knock the song off-beat.  Aside from that, it's a nice little game.

[Colton]

I like this. I found the later levels to be a bit difficult because I can't time for shit and the button display would disappear. I do think there needs to be a way of losing though.

[C418]

This was fun. I am having problems with the timing though. There is a certain latency in flash, I guess about 40 or 30 miliseconds. And that makes perfect timing pretty much impossible... though, you can't do anything about it and I still had fun.

[eddietree]

Wow, I'm so glad yall liked it! 

 It was great fun to program a rhythm game. Still can't figure out the issue where browser lag causes the beat and music to desync. And it's very hard for me to debug because I can't reproduce the error on my machine.

Oh wells

[Lon]

The game is very cool. Nicely stylized, great colors, fun to play. I like it.
I am having a bit of a syncing issue as well.  It was working well up till level 3-4 in Firefox, then it became unplayable.  Then I tried Chromium and Internet explorer and I couldn't get past Level 1, not playable in Firefox for me any more either... XP. The button presses weren't matching the music, aiming for the off beat kinda works.

I enjoy your game, just wish I didn't get this out of sync issue, makes the game unplayable for me.
Ill try seeing if I need the latest flash update or something.

Looks like this type of dis-synchronization is not unique to this game: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=flash%20audio%20lag&aq=f&oq=

[eddietree]

Yea, I believe the problem stems from time it takes for the CPU to decompress the mp3 file. While I would wish to use .wav files for all my songs, the amount of memory it will take is unfeasible. Doing a google search it seems that the problem is still unsolved. Anyhow, thanks to Biglon for the help.

[Geti]

Cool, nice to use my stepmania skills outside of stepmania.
Still, it didn't feel very funky at times, needed much more slap bass Still cool.

[Lon]

I was able to play more of your game on computers at my University.  Music stayed in sync, had to play with the volume turned down though (as to not disturb other students), was a lot of fun!  Very enjoyable game.  Looking forward to playing more of it (when I get access to a PC that keeps flash audio in sync again).  Nice work!

[maxwell]

Music desynced for me, and got progressively worse as time went on. That means your biggest problem isn't fixed latency, but a drifting timer. I'm assuming that each time you draw a frame, you look at some timer to figure out how much time has passed since last frame and put everything in the right position based on that? Do you know how accurate the timer is, or if that might be OS dependent?

Latency might contribute, too. There's latency in each of the many components that work to get your game's graphics onto the screen, from flash to the OS' composition to the display hardware, and it's much greater than the sound latency. Then there's the input latency, too It will vary between systems so there's not a perfect solution, but if you assume that 1) the image is ~50ms behind the sound and 2) the input is another ~15ms behind that, then you'll probably be better off than you are now. You could probably choose better numbers if you do some research.

Anyway, I think the problem is fixable, it might just require a little patience and testing. Besides that the game looked good!