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Melly
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« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2011, 03:02:52 PM » |
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The good: The game has a charming and well-done aesthetic, besides some textures being fuzzier than I'd have liked (like the pilot's face). I also like the light humor involved. The gameplay itself is pretty interesting, trying to take out enemies through indirect and non-aggressive means. The physics worked well, from what I could play, and I liked the tutorial messages being drawn on the ground, though they could be hard for some people to read or notice. That was a fun configuration utility to go through. No you can't have my computer.  The bad: Mouse sensitivity is very low, making it pretty much not usable. I decided to rely on pure keyboard, which was much better. The game locks up my mouse even when I'm not focused on its window, which makes using it alongside anything else impossible. The game doesn't support my LCD screen's native resolution of 1440x900, so I was forced to play it windowed. Even playing it windowed, the start of the third level ALWAYS locked up my graphics card for some reason, forcing its drivers to reboot automatically, so I didn't progress further. I use an ATI RadeOn HD4850. Overall it actually looks like a really neat game. Shame that it disagreed so much with my card. It may be my drivers, though. If I remember to I'll give it another go after I update them. |
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Paul Jeffries
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« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2011, 03:42:45 PM » |
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Hi Melly, thanks for the feedback!
The game was designed around the keyboard originally (I wanted something I could play on my laptop on a train!) and the mouse controls were added as something of an afterthought - obviously I didn't do a very good job with them! I either need to rewrite it or remove it altogether.
Strange that level 3 locked up your graphics card - it shouldn't be doing anything graphically that it isn't doing in the first two. Did it happen using OpenGL, DirectX or both?
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Melly
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« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2011, 03:44:06 PM » |
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DirectX 9. I didn't try OpenGL.
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RichMakeGame!
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« Reply #4 on: January 10, 2011, 07:07:05 AM » |
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nice idea and I enjoyed it  really didn't like that my gun gets disabled when hit though. The air blast is the primary point of the game, it's really frustrating to have it disabled especially when you get hit by a missile which you could have deflected because of the 'fizzle'. Ask yourself: is running away and hiding for 30 seconds really a good part of the game? or should players be allowed to get out of tight situations by their skill of using the airblast? I think just making them vulnerable to death after being hit is enough of a penalty. |
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Paul Jeffries
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« Reply #5 on: January 10, 2011, 02:46:51 PM » |
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Thanks, RichMakeGame - I think you're probably right. The original idea behind disabling the gun while damaged was to temporarily alter the goals of the player from attack to evasion and force them to adapt their tactics to suit. Of course in the final game a lot of the enemies are stationary turrets and unable to go hunting for you which often reduces this to hiding around the corner and waiting. Plus the normal gameplay has a large evasion component anyway so I suppose it's not really getting you to do anything new.
However, removing it would make the machinegun enemies a total non-threat - the whole point of these is that they don't do much damage but do prevent you from firing when in their field-of-view, requiring you to use sneaky tactics against them. Hmm... I need to give it some thought...
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kidchameleon
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« Reply #6 on: January 10, 2011, 03:13:33 PM » |
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Actually the mouse worked fine for me. I enjoyed playing, seems like allot of hard work went into it, what a nice achievement! One thing I didn't enjoy was the music, it got repetitive very early on. I liked the way the tutorial stuff was on the ground. I wasn't bothered about having to hide when I lost the use of my gun, was kinda fun actually.
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RichMakeGame!
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« Reply #7 on: January 11, 2011, 05:03:27 AM » |
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maybe as a compromise the disable time could be reduced? I just feel moving round a corner and sitting still for a while isn't that enjoyable compared to blasting stuff around
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AuthenticKaizen
Freeware Ninja
Level 10
*Prestige Worldwide*
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« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2011, 05:52:41 AM » |
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nice work. interesting project so far i think the game could be improved by -making it more fastpaced (faster movement, more action... consider to check out suave) -reducing the stun time to 3 sec max. -adding powerups (only played to the 3rd level so i don't know if there are any later on) -adding alternative camera modes (here are some videos for the top down shooter steel storm that showcase a few different camera modes) -making it possible to charge the air cannon for a super blast (charging is fun!) |
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« Last Edit: January 11, 2011, 06:07:00 AM by AuthenticKaizen »
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Paul Jeffries
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« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2011, 01:28:58 PM » |
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Thanks for all the comments, guys! I will definitely reduce the 'fizzing' time to about half of what it is now; also I'll increase the movement speed of both your own hovercraft and the enemies. This should hopefully make it a little more fast-paced and will mean that when there are enemy hovercraft around and you get injured they will be more capable of actually chasing you down. Powerups etc: If I were going to make the game substantially longer then I would definitely add some more powerups, but as it is I want to keep the scope fairly small - something like Portal where you have only a few basic mechanics and then see how far you can take them. Originally I was planning a couple of different puzzle-centric powerups (like a tank of oil that turned your gun into a flamethrower that you could use to set things on fire and a tank of water that turned it into a watergun that could put them out again) but I cut them out to avoid unsustainable feature creep (the death of hobby coding projects!). In a way, since the point of the game is to use the enemies' weapons against them, you could look at each new enemy type as being a different powerup...  Charging: I did have charging in the game originally, but didn't really like it and took it out. The problem was that in order to make charging worthwhile I had to nerf the 'base' strength of it, which made defending yourself against missiles etc. much much harder. Music: I set myself a target maximum download size of 50 Meg, which means I was limited in the number of different tracks I could include (and since I have the musical talent of a doughnut, I have to take what I can find!). @Melly: Would you mind doing me a favour and try running it under OpenGL, just to see if the same problem occurs? I might actually cut out the option for different drivers and enforce OGL since it seems to look a lot better with that anyway. |
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namre
Guest
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« Reply #10 on: January 11, 2011, 11:54:57 PM » |
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I like it. Its visuals even caught the eyes of my siblings. They say it looks cute.
The only problem I have with the game is that the maps are too small for my taste. There are a lot of corridors that are too narrow but I don't mind them that much. What I mind are the stages where you need to fight other tanks. The areas are too small to move around freely but its manageable.
I'd have to play some more before I could give out more critique. But so far, I'm enjoying it.
Cheers!
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Falmil
Level 6
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« Reply #11 on: January 14, 2011, 01:37:16 PM » |
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I think this game has some great potential. My only problems with it were that I didn't seem to turn fast enough when I used the mouse (did not try the keyboard), and that sometimes it was difficult to tell where I was aiming, so a cursor might help. Other than that, I had a few nitpicks that weren't that bad like the long player stun time.
Aside from the issues, I loved what I played of the game. The potential for chaos with all the deadly objects flying and bouncing around was great.
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Paul Jeffries
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« Reply #12 on: January 15, 2011, 07:00:35 PM » |
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Thanks guys! Accidental Rebel: I'm relieved to hear you say that about the graphics, since I was a bit worried about whether people were going to like the style. After a year of staring at it I'd honestly lost all concept of whether it looked like poop or not! Re: mouse control: I've had a look at this and realised that the reason the mouse control sucks is that I neglected to make it independant of framerate. Stupid, stupid, stupid...  Have corrected that now; will just make a couple more small fixes and then I'll upload an updated version... |
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Paul Jeffries
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« Reply #13 on: January 22, 2011, 06:09:47 AM » |
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http://www.vitruality.com/SHB/SHBv0.9.1.zipNew version here - I've: - Decreased 'disabled' time - Increased general movement speed - Sorted out the mouse-aiming (hopefully) - It will now release the mouse when it loses focus - Some general tweaks
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Developer
