I drink to forget!

OK, nice. I don't think it's necessary to experiment with the spawning, to be honest - you've spent two weeks on making it this way and I've only played for a few hours. I agree that the hectic part at the end of the level is good, but I think my problem is that once it gets to that stage I don't have any recourse to stop the bastard things getting through my defences - as I say, this is probably due to a lack of experience.

Also, when I talk about the last level, I'm talking about the time attack level at the end of the campaign - I actually found the level prior to that quite easy and passed it with flying colours the first time I played it. The time attack level seems to be jolly hard and I have a hard time scoring over 150 points on it, meaning I start the next campaign with perhaps 300 cache. Not a good start...? Anyway, it is fun to try a few different techniques to try to get better scores but in general it seems like I can only alter my score by less than 1k on the normal levels, and only by about 20 points on the time attack level.

The mouse cursor issue is hard because the light effects are really nice and the feeling of being blinded by your own achievements in a strange environment is very evocative. Very much so. But I do want to know where I am pointing. It's a tough call because I would also want to know at what I am pointing, so the mouse curse and also the Points would also have to be visible.

Anyway. I will play more, for sure.

damn so nearly there. lovely gfx. alpha not working so a lot of black squares for me. also control is annoying and crawling is shit. also quite boring, no story as such. looks lovely though :S

edit: I was really drunk when I posted these. Sorry!

nice! nice post/ will try out that chicken platformer

Crit! Everyone loves crit. These are a few problems I had:

• seeing where my fricking mouse pointer was when the action was hot - I can see why you did this but it is still annoying
• quitting - if I click on the X it means I want the window gone mofo! I don't want it to a) not do anything b) go to a pause menu c) go back to the level select screen d) go back to the main menu - I want it gone!
• over the course of a level enemies seem to level up too much, by the end it's nearly impossible to stop them and at least a few get through. After several tries this is surmountable which means your gameplay is good. But I can never seem to beat my first-play scores by more than a few hundred, even when going from a 25% save to a 100% lives left save thing. Feels like the destiny of a level is written rather than under my control.
  
• the last level of the first campaign is a huyooge difficulty spike - if you wanted people to be this good by this point you should have trained them up to be that good. I can't get more than 169 points on this level and that's starting with 16k cache. Maybe I just suck but I have replayed the level at least 6 times now and not achieved much more than 150 points on any occasion. Need hints or something.
  
• The quit menu hit boxes are off  - I have to point below the text to select it.
• The level start (placement) music loops a little oddly, there's a small gap and the rhythm is thrown.
• Towards the end of a level things get too hectic and I don't feel like I have the time to split between killing space ships and and upgrading Points. I want to upgrade my Points but as soon as I take attention away from attacking, ships get through and I lose lives. Seems too hard.

Otherwise, I fucking love this game dude. Seriously. Maybe it's the old school 20s jazz in the level select screen. Maybe it's the short gameplay cycle, maybe it's the old school graphics, maybe it's the story. It's all good. I think ther eare a few niggles but even in its current state I'd buy the fuck out of this game.

lol @ RAPE TIME picture

I had been meaning to play the beta and had a go last night. It's as I expected - the game is awesome. I enjoyed reading the story sections, and thought the music and sound effects were great. The graphics were good too - remind me of Star Control a bit - and I like how things get hazy and confused near the end of a level. I will definitely be playing some more. I will play some more now in fact.

theft  :D

If you hate all MMOs then you haven't played Puzzle Pirates. Seems logical

Looks awesome. Awesome. I guess I'm not tired of the same old RTS gameplay after all. I can't stomach these things in multiplayer though - it's either the rush or the hoard + standoff. Nah, single player for me.

Yes! Verlet. I think that was it.

Yeah, the Rowl stuff is really nice. Needs work to stop the particles from clinging to the edges, but it really works nicely as a particle-based solution.

With the Loco Roco comment I meant it more as a gameplay-friendly solution to the chaotic nature of fluids rather than the underlying mathematics; I can't remember what algorithm I was told it uses. Something beginning with v, perhaps.

I think Loco Roco is a good way to simplify the chaotic nature of fluids down to something controllable and currently-calculable. I think we'll start to see more games that are closer to real fluids soon.

plasma pong is only half the problem - you've got the flow but you need the surface resolution, which is usually done with particles.

Apparently the best and easiest way of doing it in realtime at the moment is called Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics. I couldn't understand a word of it when I looked it up. Good luck!

xananeko and xananeko scene 2 are punishingly difficult 1-room action-RPGs.

Arrow keys move left and right. Walk into things to attack them, but time it right or you'll lose health. Don't get attacked from behind and attack others from behind when you can. The inn costs 50 gold to rest (restore your health) but rises by 50 gold per player level until it maxes out at 500. Up cursor will go up and down stairs and pick up items. Down cursor will drop bombs (after you get them).

You start with a shield and a dagger, although it's hard to see it. When you rest at the inn, the game is saved, but only the statistics for the character are saved - if you die, and continue, any progress in the game will be reset, any items you have will be returned to the game and you will have to get them again. In addition, after a certain point you will not be allowed back into the shop area to save or shop, meaning you will more or less have to complete the game without saving. _{I recommend saving with at least enough gold left over to buy the sword and potion.}

To win the first room, fetch the sword from the chest in the top left and exit the room through the bottom right entrance. To win the second room... beat the dragon

The first room contains a fairly scary double-ended penisworm, and is worth playing just to see that, I think.

There are also a bunch of smaller games on the nekogames site. Requires Shockwave 8 or later.

What the shit is that weapon?? I never saw anything like that when I played 

I was up playing this one-screen rpg last night. It's awesome, if you can figure it out.

I have also been playing one-roomers Automation and Knightsquire. Knightsquire was ok but some of the puzzles are fucking stupid. Automation was ok.

Also started replaying Darker in Dosbox.

That's in between a whole lot of Stalker. Stalker is great for the first half, and the second half is really boring and linear crap. Definitely needed more devtime, horrifyingly enough.

Oh and I play Puzzle Quest on PSP when I make a poo.

Agreed with this totally. All of it. Limits are productive, fun and productive. And fun.

It's nice not to have limits too, though - good for setting out ideas and so forth, but I think that you have to set your limits out so that you don't get swamped by unlimited possibilities. Many of my theoretical designs get way out of hand because I don't put any limits on them and they get really out of hand really quickly.

How about a round windows system, preferabley displayed on a round monitor!

I created such a setup in my game, you can resize windows, read text files and change the background gfx, all within round windows!

http://www.lwjgl.org/_gfx/projects/keith_goes_painting_2.jpg

Oh that's cool. Why use square boxes for text though? And squares for the swatches (I guess circles don't really tile, but still)? Yeah, we could go somewhere with this.

Myself, I want my GUI to be properly scalable. So instead of scrolling windows up and down, you zoom out and then zoom in again. Like Supreme Commander, or Google maps.

It's almost impossible to know who's an American and who's not.

Heh. I think the Native Americans would have something to say about that. "Well, let me see. OK, us, here - we're Americans. You lot are foreigners "