All strategies should integrate seamlessly into the gamplay, i.e. don't force the user to click through a dozen menu dialogs or show a ten minute death scene. In the best case, saving is done at just the right moments with as little action on the user's side as possible.

Short time wasters should have an automatic checkpoint/level-based saving system. It's unobtrusive, fast and easily usable. I does however break immersion because it divides the game into small pieces when you later load a savegame. As such, it is good for games focused on action, short gameplay sessions or very small gameplay units. It is also a way to compensate for the lack of content.

Complex games should really have a save-anywhere system. The best system I've seen, is that of Oblivion. It consists of several layers and caters all playing styles:

• First there are the quick-save/load buttons (user-controlled, short-term, one-button saving).
• Then there is the autosave function that saves at certain locations (no user interaction needed).
• And finally the "go to the menu and save to a specified file" system (user-controlled long-term archiving of the gameplay state).

Each system uses it's own files and does not overwrite the other. In a game focused on immersion and planning, this is important because a bad decision can ruin the game. You cannot limit the player in his decision to save in a complex game that offers a lot of freedom.

I do not agree with the notion of calling this cheating. Such a system allows you to actually make the game harder without loosing players. E.g. in Oblivion I installed a mod that makes it A LOT harder. Without being able to save often, it would be unplayable. However if it was easier it would be boring. A game can be much more intense because you can focus on the hard part. There is nothing worse than having to beat the same enemy several dozens of times to get to the hard one. Why bore and frustrate the player with something he obviously can beat and not let him focus on the challenge?

Besides the gameplay factor, you have to consider the technological aspects. A checkpoint system is much easier to implement than a save-anywhere system. It's basically the lazy way out. Allowing players to save anywhere can be hard to implement, in order not to break events, scripts, fights, etc.

I really object the "only one savegame/bookmark" idea because it is not robust enough. There have to be backups. Your games contain bugs. If the savegame is affected by a bug (or a bad decision), you just ruined the game for the player.

No matter how you do it, saving has to be VERY fast. If you have to display a progress screen, you're doing something wrong

Don't you dare making offensive creatures! Or else EA will ban you

http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/spore/news/busted-boobalicious-banned/a-20080618155715463076/g-2006022417441549006

No time to play right now, but is the extra 'O' in the death screenshot deliberate?

Yes of course! 2.9 million Google hits for "You loose!" cannot be wrong! ... *cough* ... Thanks

[Play now]

I've finished a game that I wrote to improve my OpenGL skills and to learn GLSL. Space Folds is a take on the classic asteroid-shooter. It uses several shaders for bloom, normal/specular mapping and distortion effects. I am really interested to know how it runs on various systems.

I've developed it on a computer with an Nvidia graphics card, only to realise later that the shaders didn't work on an ATI card. After some shader-rewriting it now works on both computers. Still, I'd love to know how it runs on other systems (OS and graphics card mainly).

Please give it a try it and tell me whether you ran into any problems or not.

Play now (via Java Web Start)

Screenshots







Menu controls

F: toggle fullscreen
left, right: select level

In-game controls

The ship is controlled by a series of thrusters. You have to control thrusters individually. Firing a thruster will push your ship in the opposite direction.



Thrusters: num-pad keys
Fire missile: Space

Do not forget to enable num-lock or else the keys will not work. The game tries to enable it automatically but this is not supported by all systems.

Easier, alternative control scheme:

Thrusters: Arrow keys
Halt: H
Fire missile: Space

System requirements
- Java 5.0 or greater (Web Start version only)
- Windows, Mac OS X, Linux or Solaris
- An OpenGL 2.0-capable graphics card (requires shader support)

Play via Java Web Start
- no download
- runs from browser
- requires Java 5 or higher to be installed
- works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris

Display Configurator for Web Start Version
- if you want to change display settings after the first start

Download Windows Executable (~27 MB)
- Windows-only but does not require Java to be installed

I enjoyed the very high quality of the effects, both graphics and sounds. Even though it is "just a match 3 game" it is entertaining. The mini-games and various types of matching games offer a good variety.

My two major dislikes are that it is too easy (maybe it gets harder later) and that the ape feels out of place. What does a gorilla/giant chimp have to do with Egypt? The tourist bus in the intro was a bit off-putting, too (as far as the theme is concerned). Seeing it felt cheap in a "I'm not an adventurous explorer but some nosey tourist with a flashy shirt and a camera" sort of way .

The "find the hieroglyphs" mini-game was too dark on my computer. It's an ok diversion but I had trouble seeing the glyphs. I ended up clicking areas where I saw a few highlighted pixels, hoping there was anything.

As for the preference of temples in the survey, I don't really know how valid the responses can be. I played up to the third temple when my time ran out. So I couldn't really make a valid statement which I prefer most.

Do you plan on localising the game? It looks like the kind of game my mother () would like but she hardly understands English.

Well hello,

I've been reading this forum for some time now. Can't really remember how it started but I stayed because of the compos.

I'm from Germany and I've studied Software Engineering. Due to that (the SE part, not my location) I'm not exceptionally bad at coding :D ; mostly Java. I've been playing games since the dawn of time. The first computer I played games on was my fathers Apple IIc. You know, one of those things without any harddrive and a black/green monitor with the resolution of today's cellulars. That probably makes me sound older than I am ... anyway, I've been playing on practically every PC generation since the 286s. Usually my favorites are RPGs and sometimes action or strategy games.

Lately I am more into indie games because most of the mainstream game industry went down the drain in my opinion. There's nothing new. All you get to see are the same old games with different graphics. I blame companies like EA, Sony and consoles in general  .

Graphics are cute and good looking. Controls are smooth and easily usable. I like the animation of the characters. Looks like a fun game. As far as the boxes are concerned, I did not find anything wrong with them.

I guess there are basically two issues that make me hesitate getting it:
- How many single player levels are there? I don't think I'll find somebody to regularly play it with, so I'd prefer an extensive single player campaign .
- Is there a way to increase the display resolution? My computer can handle more so I'd love get rid of those aliasing artifacts.

I had 2 minor cosmetical bugs in the menu:
- The zox running around sometimes run through the elevated platform in the centre.
- If you push the exit-button all the way to the left, it will return on a different way partially "crashing" through the arena.

Oh and in the non-square arena, bonuses would sometimes fall outside the arena. Probably not a bug but it caught my attention while playing.

Woa, these look nice I'd love to see those in motion to see how much of the environment is animated. The large black areas in the treetops look a bit weird, though. As if an evil void is attacking the beauty of the graphics . How about a short WIP video?

I'm not sure if such extensive RPG content is still up to date in a single player game. It is single player isn't it? Then again that may just be my personal offline/online preference.

The new graphics are definitely better. The old ones looked weird and ... old. What was it a fangame of?

An anime-esque girl shooting laser from her ... anyway the new character sprite is pretty good .

The game feels unfinished. Basics are there but there are many rough edges:
- Jumping feels weird, especially double jumping and the slow falling speed.
- Where does the laser come from?
- Music freezes when the window looses focus.
- The order of sprites is sometimes off, e.g. the "key" is drawn behind doors.
- If you click on enemies for a very short time, they die but no laser is visible.
- You can shoot through wallls.
- Many animations (death, double jump, shooting) are missing.
- If "Game over" is shown, you can still jump and shoot and hear the sounds.
- Levels are too block-ish in my opinion.
- Enemies respawn too fast, often right on top of the character, killing her.
- What is the point of the stars?

A smoother gameplay, more diverse levels and graphics in the quality of the new character (with more animations) would make for a nice game I guess.

Are the crashes procedurally generated? :D

Looks really interesting but it runs horribly unstable on my Win XP Pro. Out of maybe 20 times I tried to move to another screen, the game crashed 18 times or so. Sometimes it crashes in the middle of a screen. Sometimes a crash means that it quits, sometimes it just freezes. I also seem to always get the same 1st screen.

I tried the default 12xx resolution and 1024. The latter was more stable, i.e. I was actually able to get to another screen :D.

That could really turn into a great game with things like puzzles, collectible items, etc. Like that pixel rat maze for example. Somehow this reminds me of it. Senseless running around, yet still it's somehow entertaining

It's too hard and frustrating in my opinion. You have to restart the game after every level because if you do not know what to expect, you don't stand a chance. Anything short of a 90% hit rate will cause you to loose. Also, the player char moves and reloads too slowly.

Graphics and sounds are nice but it's just too frustrating

The screenshots look awesome. I'm looking forward to it

It's an interesting puzzle game. I've already played an older version and liked it.

I don't know if it's a good idea to publish the game with so many levels now, if you want to sell it later. It may be helpful to emphasize places portals can put their ads. At least flash games are recently plastered with in-game ads . Then again, placing ads is an art if you don't want to drive players away.

A few cosmetic issues:
- A visual cue whether sfx or music are turned on or off in the menu would be nice, e.g. a red X on top of the speaker symbol. It's hard to tell if effects are off.
- The undo/restart/quit buttons are a bit ... ugly. Maybe a bit more padding would make them more appealing.
- Occasionally the applet area flashes white for a fraction of a second.
- Moving long straight distances sometimes requires too many clicks in my opinion.

Bugs:
- In the level selection: if you click at an empty area (i.e. no button) and move the cursor over a button (help, level, etc.) this button gets activated without pressing it.
- The applet and Webstart links are broken. Too many Ts.

It really turned out great . The variety of weapons and bots is nice; or maybe I've just missed them in the alpha version.

Difficulty after level 40 is steep but it's doable with a bit of strategy; got till 51. Unfortunately I was stuck with a robot that could not kill the last enemy with its weapon (took like 100 shots for 1 pixel and my bot was down to zero health due to decay).

What determines the level you can restart from when you die? I could restart from 11 for some time and now from 21. Is it 30 levels before the highest boss you've defeated?

Also: Yay 1st place ... well ok, in the in-game online highscore list. For some reason it's different from the highscore list on the homepage.

What is a "competit.n" and is it related to tits?

Exactly my first thought when I saw the post: Yay, tits!

I'll see if I can come up with a neat idea (with or without said tits). I have a few concerns though. Is it really worth coming up with something new and original, if in the end some game playing the retro card will win? My money's on a rogue-like or platformer :D. Hm ... we'll see.

By the way: it still says "Currently running: Video Game Name Generator Competition" in the forum overview under the competitions forum.

Well, the game runs at a max of 45 fps on my computer, so I set the game to run how I wanted it to at 45 fps. This is mainly a precaution because during my last big game, I had set the room speed to 60 fps, although my computer could only run it at 40, causing people with faster computers to find the game too fast to play.

You have to decouple game logic and rendering speed.

For example: write a render() function that draws the current state of the game but does not change it. On the other hand write a logic(timeDelta) function that only handles game logic. A parameter timeDelta takes the time elapsed since it has last been called (e.g. milliseconds since the last frame). This way the logic() function can progress the game according to the time passed and not by a set amount of steps.

At least that's how it can work in a real programming language. No idea about Gamemaker, though :D.

I'm no fan of puzzle platformers. All the walking back and forth, collecting crystals isn't my type of game, I guess. Plus it feels like it's aimed at a younger demographic. So it's easier to point out things I didn't like

I played the first and part of the second level. Overall it felt too slow and the atmosphere wasn't captivating enough.

The launcher is confusing. In my opinion it lacks structure and the standard UI elements make it look old-fashioned. Took me some time to start the first level.

Gameplay felt slow and the graphics look a bit dull/colourless. Maybe a few special effects/animations (e.g. animals walking/flying around), dynamic lighting and a background (clouds, a world below, etc) would help. Textures look good but graphics in general lack something; don't know what exactly, it's all too static. No offense, but the death-animation (when you fall down a platform) is a real shock. It looks horrible and doesn't live up to the quality of the rest of the graphics :D. Also music would have been nice. Overall it's a solid base that lacks polish in my opinion.

It's probably nice if you like this kind of game. Compared to most of the "collect gems and push buttons" platformers it's good, but I'm no friend of the genre.

Copy and paste the link text, not the target to get to the game.

It's a fun game to waste some time. I like the random speed changes. Kind of lacks long term playability though; but I guess that's not intended . Is there anything you can do to counter incoming shots? Shoot them, hit them with the rotating things to block them, etc.?

A few cosmetical issues:
- The end of the music track is rather abrupt. The transition from end to beginning isn't smooth enough in my opinion.
- The FPS counter is distracting.
- There are too many different fonts: one for the highscore, on for "press start" and one for the credits/fps.

So is it a mock-up of how some people think that other people are smug bastards because they know what a design is and have been to some school-like institution and complacently brag so much about it that those who think hacking away is indie are pissed and call the former gay and somehow a car that seems to be totally unrelated also plays a part in another internet drama that only few people actually get?

I'm intrigued, the video and screenshots on your homepage look interesting, too. The graphics style is quite unique. What kind of gameplay can we expect? Straight forward, standard fighting-based FPS only? Or will there be other elements ... I don't know ... like RPG/adventure/strategy-elements, puzzles, etc?

Also, does anybody else think, that wearing your testicles on your nose might pose a major evolutionary disadvantage? :D