TIGSource Forums

Hello, fellow TIGgers! :gentleman:

Since there is so much generel helpfulness around here, I thought I post my game here too before it is complete - your feedback is much better than me tweaking and polishing it all alone in my cellar.

Anyway!
Catcher is a game about (surprise! :tiger:) catching things! Especially geometric forms. (In SPACE!) With two spaceships, here depicted as circles. These two spaceships are connected by an energy line, which you will use to border your enemies and open a dimension rift by closing it - and thereby defeating anything inside! It features over two dozen unique enemies on more than 30 levels. :)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/screens/2010-05-31-s01.png) (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/screens/2010-05-31-s02.png)

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/screens/2010-05-31-s03.png) (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/screens/2010-05-31-s04.png)


Among the various things yet to be done, the most notably one is the tutorial. I hope you can get it together alone with a description of the keys and the menu entry "Demo":

• X and C makes your spaceships (the blue circles) flying nearer or farther to each other
• The mouse wheel, if you have one, does the same as X and C
• Pointing the mouse makes your spaceships turn
• Clicking the mouse (left or right) makes your spaceships move

The energy line breaks when
a) one of your spaceships touches an enemy or
b) the energy line crosses another part of the energy line (remember: DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS!)
If the line broke, you can restore it by holding X (so that the spaceships touch each other).

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/screens/short-tut.gif)

Enough babbling, more playing:
CLICK HERE TO PLAY IT (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/catcher.jnlp)
(It is Java Web Start, so no installation or unzipping needed :) )

While all and every feedback is appreciated, I especially want to know:

• How do you think could the controls be improved?
• What didn't make sense to you? What wasn't clear? What needs to be definitly in the tutorial?
• And bonus question: Do you have any ideas regarding new enemies? (This is a bonus question because I don't know if I will include any new enemies right now, but this will be good to know for the next version :) )
• Ultra-special bonus question: Anyone has an idea for a better name for the game? I'm not sure I'm content with "Catcher", it seems kind of to general.

TODO:

• Sounds/Music
• Tutorial
• Random Mode and Endless Mode need besser formulas
• General polishing

So, good madams and sirs, thanks for reading!
Hoping you have fun with the game,
Tobias

I thought it was quite an interesting game. I was also excited to see something written in Java :)

First up, the "Demo" mode didn't work for me. When I clicked it the game just locked up.

I reloaded and started playing "Planned" mode but it took me a while to figure out what to do. It wasn't obvious to me at first that you have to shrink your line to nothing and then expand it again when it breaks, but I'm guessing that's explained in the demo.

Played up to level 19 and it was starting to get quite difficult. I liked how new and interesting enemies kept being introduced, the one that hovers near you was particularly clever.

Criticism wise, I didn't think it was always obvious what would break your line or what was immune to it. For example, the blue things that shoot out red spikes - they obviously get bigger when the spikes pop out but it's not immediately obvious that they will automatically break the line. Maybe a consistent colour scheme so that you know red things always break the line? Similarly with the ones that turn white and can't be caught. There are other white enemies that you can catch so it's not obvious that you can't catch them when they're white.

The controls are pretty intuitive after a while. Maybe consider adding some "momentum" to them so they're not just on/off - it'd make your ship feel like it has a bit more substance. On the other hand the current system is also good as you know exactly what will happen. It's hard to tell which would feel better without trying it.

Anyway, I enjoyed it and definitely interested to see it with more polish.

Thanks! And yes, Java is great :)

Yeah, I see why - works now!

Yep - you will see it in the demo right at the beginning. This part (along with the catching) is better explained with visuals than with text, I think.

Nice! I have made 35 levels so far, and nearly ever two to three levels is a new enemy introduced. And yes, the moon can be quite intimidating till you figure it out! :D

Okay, I will take it to heart. At first I actually wanted red to always break the line, but it turned out I had only one enemy which used this kind of line-breaking, so the color scheme was abadoned. Shame on me. And thanks for the head-up regarding the white ones (they're called "Ghostlike") - I never thought about the other white/grey ones.

By the way, I don't pull the names out of nowhere - I actually had a little bestiarium in there. Sadly my laptop was stolen, and I have to rewrite a bit of code, so stay tuned for the next release which will feature it again :)

That's good to hear! Most of my testers struggled with it only at the beginning. Was that okay for you?

I have to think up something else, though - the danger that someone presses "W" at the beginning in an attempt to move the ship and dies immediatly in a Gravity Bomb is kind of high. Maybe X, C, S, D instead... but I really like that I can use A and D all the time, and always have a finger hovering over W and S, so I can use Gravity/Sonic Bomb whenever I need it.

Mhmm... could be a preference setting, since some people maybe want it and other (like me) would turn it off.

Thanks again, will do! :)

New fonts! A bestiary! Highscore working! Changed the keys! Streamlined the gameplay by removing the bomb feature!

...this, and a lot more, only here and now at Catcher. See the first post and try it, if you didn't already do it! :)

And by the way: Anyone has a better name for the game?

this game has really good design, and looks a lot better in motion
it's a shame that there are not more comments and everybody should play it right now

 :coffee:

I tried this a while ago but didn't get it (I didn't read instructions) but now I get it and it's awesome. I game over'd on, I think, the level after the fast homers were introduced, and the only thing that kept me from retrying was...well it's late and I really ought to sleep. But great game. Thank you for it.

This locks up Safari for me. I had to do a forced quit. System details; Mac OS X 10.6.4, Safari 5.0.1

Thank you! I love this coming from you, after hearing your great talk about game mechanics at the BIGJam. Cheers! :coffee:


Wow, thanks! And please play on, there are a lot more exciting enemies ahead - and you can jump to any level you've been to before :)

And it seems like I really need a comprehensive tutorial, though I'm still struggling about the "how". I wonder how many people did the same like you and then went away frustrated.

(edit: Made a short gif description now in the first post. Hope this helps people to get their first catch!)


Hu, that's strange - it is just standard Java. (I hope.)
Is it the same with the unsigned version (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/catcher-u.html)?
And is it the same with other browsers you might have on your system?

The unsigned version hangs for a while. Then Safari tells me the applet has started but nothing happens, just a blank page. Then Safari quits itself, not just the window it's in but all Safari windows. I don't have any other browsers on my Mac so couldn't test it in any others.

I'm having the same problem on Mac OS X 10.6.4 using Chrome 5.0, Safari 5.0.1 and for some reason also Firefox 4.0b2.

This is pretty fun but enemies keep hanging out off-screen! It's not very nice of them!

The enemies near the end seem to avoid the middle like the plague, and are off-screen about half the time. It is possible to grab them even while they're off-screen but it's awkward and mostly luck-based. And, if that doesn't work (for example if they went off-screen while you were not watching or maybe it's a terrifying spiked guy), I've ended up just sitting around waiting on an empty screen for the enemies to decide to show their faces! Grr.

Okay, that's actually good, would've been hard to debug it if it just happened on one computer. I hope I can solve it soon. Thanks, you two!



That is certainly a very rude behavoir, and not acceptable since I told them to ruthlessly attack the player. It's hard finding good henchman these days.

On which levels does it happen, and which enemies do you refer to? While the Swimming Arrows are very prone for being partly off-screen and hard to see, I didn't experience it yet for other enemies - especially not going totally off-screen.

It appears to happen with every enemy apart from the homing ones!

This is in 'Planned' by the way, I will try another mode ...


Happens in 'Random' too. It was one of the most basic this time, a big round guy was completely off-screen for a while, top-right.

In the Bestiary: Do you see both cage-rectangles in full, or is the right one clipped? (The arrow down there is clipped for me too, that's my fault.)

Does it also happen with the JNLP-Download (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/catcher.jnlp)?

And if that doesn't work, does it also happen when you download and open the jar?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/catcher.jar

(Has the executed jnlp/jar a different size than the one in the browser? It should be 1024x700, I suspect it is smaller for some obscure reason.)

And which browser are you using?

I haven't gone further than the first two levels, but I'm letting you know it work great here on archlinux/firefox. Very interesting and nicely executed idea, though it lacks something that will keep you hooked. Maybe you could make bigger, scrolled levels with more visual variation?

Good to know! It is somewhat disconcerting that it doesn't run on some systems...

I actually thought about scrolled levels too, maybe even with boundaries! But I think I won't insert this in that version, maybe later in a sequel. Though - visual variation won't hurt, I guess. I'll try to think about something!


@Oddball,
@Stoney:
Could you please test if the JNLP-Download (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/catcher.jnlp) works (better) for you? (JNLP is really new for me, maybe it doesn't work at all.)

Oh! It seems alright.

I use Google Chrome and I never saw the health pie -- so yeah it was just a screeny clipping problem.

When I try to run the jar or the jnlp file on Mac OS X 10.6.4 the java application icon shows up in my dock but besides that nothing happens.  I get this error, I hope that helps in finding the bug:

It works on my Windows-machine (I tried Webstart) and here are my first impressions:
- It's really fun. Well done
- I have to agree that judging from the screenshots it does not look really visually impressive, but it's much better in motion. How about adding some Geometry Wars - like glow-effect
- I would like it more if you could control the whole game just with the mouse, like resizing the net with the mouse wheel

Yep, while experimenting with it I got that stacktrace on one of my computers, too. So I guess Mac OS X has a low heap space setting as standard. The fonts are taking an awful lot of memory...

Please test the Java Web Start Link (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1977054/catcher/catcher.jnlp) again on Mac OS X - I have included a max heap space parameter.

Thanks!

I'm thinking about it, though as I'm only using native java so far, I don't think I've got hardware acceleration. Not talking about me having no idea how to do glow effects :durr:

Will do! I just added it to my ToDo-list.

That's good to know, and far better than a bug! But strange anyway. I just tried it with Google Chrome 5.0.375.125 on Windows 7, and everything was just fine. Which version/OS are you using?

But well, anyway, I exchanged the "Play" link with the Java Webstart Version - no caching problems, no clipping problems and hopefully no java heap space problems :)

It's working now on Mac OS X. Great!  :)

Same! Weird. The downloadable thing works just fine though :]

 :beer:

Seems like a game about hugging stars, which is nice.  The gameplay itself was interesting enough to keep me playing for a while.  Catching large groups of creatures is HIGHLY rewarding.  The only gripes I have with the game are probably on your list but aren't implemented for this version:

1. It's not entirely clear when I'm taking damage other than when my notice the health pie change color in my peripheral view.  I had to read the instructions to find out that the end points were my collision points.  Some particle effects and sound would go a long way in helping here.
2. Having a light line between the two dots while you're catching creatures would be nice to show their path back to each other.

That worked.

This starts out feeling quite fiddly and complicated. Then you hit a point where it clicks and it suddenly becomes a very clever and interesting game. I'll echo the comments about having a more immediately obvious way of telling when you're getting injured.

Haha, that's the best description of the game I've read as yet! Allow me to steal it until I change the name... :ninja:

Thank you!

A great idea! Sound effects will come in later, particles were just added! Is this what you had in mind? :)

Done!




Great!

Yeah, I know it has a high entry barrier. Any idea how I could ease it? (And how long did it take to "click"?)

See above :)

Update: Catcher has now mouse wheel support! That means you can, if your mouse has a wheel, play the game entirely with your mouse :)

Those changes really help the game a lot; especially the mouse wheel control which help the game flow feel less clumsy (though it could just be me being clumsy).

I love the mouse wheel support. I'm getting way better scores than before.

Took awhile before I got the controls. But as soon as I did, I was starting to enjoy.

Good job in thinking of this control scheme. Is this a submission to Experimental gameplay's theme for this month? The no buttons one?

Great that you like the mouse wheel support! :)




Yep, I gotta make a tutorial.

Thanks! And no, this isn't an EGP submission, though I'm developing a game for this month's theme (http://blog.dragonlab.de/2010/08/egp-n-bigjam/). Catcher doesn't qualify because mouse buttons are buttons too, I guess - and it took me FAR more than 7 days to implement it, heh.

Yes, a tutorial would be great. I literally pushed all the buttons on my keyboard just to spawn a new line to catch stuff. Lol, I never thought up of using mouse wheel to do that.

As for the EGP, yeah, i remember you have to click the mouse to drag the catcher around. Still, good stuff, good stuff.

Holding X till the ships are together and the holding C till it has the size I want it works nice, too. Still my favourite way to do it :)

This game is very interesting! It takes some getting used to, but after that, it's actually quite intuitive.

Some of the enemies are kind of hard to see against the dark background. I think you ought to lighten them up a bit.

Now you just need some snazzier graphics and some nice audio!

Update!

I added now some graphical effects while catching. I'm quite content with them, hope you like it, too! :beer:
Tip: Go to preferences and change the effect level to "5" to make the game look as nice as possible!

Oh, and now the enemies have a "Glow" option in the preferences, if you're into that!





They are now a little thicker, that should do be a good first step. I added brightning up to my to-do list.

Coming, coming! Dunnow so much about the graphics, because I want to keep them vector, but awesome audio is underway :)

Not so sure I like the new graphical effects. I think they could benefit from something more Geometry Wars-esque.

I bet they could! Thing is, I have no hardware acceleration, and that limits my options dramatically.

(I tried to get it running, but I seem to do something wrong, because the framerate actually drops when I switch to OpenGL. Not to mention cross plattform then... Meh. But if I ever do a remake or a next version, I will definitly use something with hardware acceleration, and then you can expect each and every effect I can do :) )

Hi Tobias

I know this comment is a bit late, since I promised to post one for like two months ago, but better late than never right?  :beg:

Though it's nice to see that more people has been trying it out, after all it really is a great game!

I liked that you've enabled use of the mouse wheel for controlling the "force field" ;)
and as it already told you I'm really thrilled about the idea and the gameplay itself (and of course the beautiful code behind it all :P:handthumbsupR:)

But I think the game itself is a bit too easy.. I'm not at all sure but maybe if you made the movement of the player more "smooth", so that one would slide around more (like on ice or in space), and then if the movement of the player was always to be activated, and not only when one of the mouse buttons is pressed, i think you would archive a more challenging and thereby fun gameplay.
But I'm no expert when it comes to making great gameplay, so i don't know at all if that's the way to go :droop:

Also I've found a bug. When I was about to start a new level (I don't recall which one), I somehow, by playing around with the mouse wheel and turning around the player, managed to catch one of the enemies (before the level had actually started), which caused the level not to start at all :/