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[Quetz]

I like this quite a lot. It was hard at first, but once I got the hang of it I was shootan like a pro. I do agree that the ending is a tad anticlimactic though.

[jph wacheski]

Thanks guys,. The 'ending' is just there for the compo. added so the game had some form of closure. It was just as it looks, tacked on, literally at the last min. Time just ran out on this,. and I wanted to have a ver. that was somehow 'done' or at least had and end point, where I would have liked to have the next section.  I may go on with this and do several more 'levels' with different backgrounds, creatures, and various gameplay,. Currently I'm doing some tests to generate more interesting soundscapes,. and generative music, however time is always an issue.

[moi]

Very nice entry, and very good use of PGC.
I didn't see the difference with reseeding but it wasn't really necessary anyway, as the "procedurally generation" part of the contract is already achieved.
A technical achievement here.
And seeing the rest of your games on your page, it seems that this competition was what you had been waiting for a long time :D

[jph wacheski]

0rel - thanks for the feedback and insights! Yup its all just 2 meshes for everything, a thing I call a 'pod' that is just a 21x2 tiangle mesh that forms to two points and a 5x2 sided tree trunk one that is warped so one point is farther from the center,. i.e it is taller,.  I just used iterators, or loops, in the rendering to do transformations of these,. changing colors and warping the meshes as needed,. from a distance it could look like sprites if you wanted,. as for the collitions everything in this game is done with sphears. Even though the dragonflys are not 'round' there is only a ball of collition checking,. with the speed of the shots,. and the simplicity, it looks fine to me,.

find the attached model viewer,. I may add something like this to the game eventually,.

Adding some noise is a great idea,. I will try that for future games,. I was really not going for realism in any way and just imagined the blobby back drop was some misty vortex,. not meant to look like much,. just something so movement registers,. basicly same for the 'trees'.

your gameplay insights are interesting too,. I will consider them,. I think the balance of player to badguys is very important,. and the player does move much faster then most,. only the flys are almost as fast as the player,. but they only take one shot to get rid of.  The speed change when shooting is really more of an increase of inertia so it is more smoothed out,. but over a second or so you should notice a much higher top speed when not shooting!

I also like your sound comments perhaps we can chat some time about posible collaboration as i see many similar interests.  my music and sound design tends to come out 'darker' it seems.

Moi- yes I do have a tenedancy to get the computer to do some level design and I do like the iterations that are much easier for machines to do than me.  Most of the techincal acheivment is down to Ville K. and he really is my partner in this game,. and all the ones I have done with ZGE, as he created that fine tool/engine. 

[Melly]

After playing it some more, I wonder if you could make it so that stars that are expanding and about to disappear are worth more than a normal star, like 2 or 3 stars. It would allow the player to play with the risk of losing stars while trying to grab more at once. The feedback from grabbing a large star is also very large, so it would fit. Let me know if it's already like this, cause it's a bit hard to tell since the game doesn't tell you how many stars you're carrying besides your vessel growing spikier.

Since what seems to define how good you are in the game overall is how fast you can fill your base to 100%, perhaps create a highscore list with the best times?

[jph wacheski]

thanks for playing some more Melly,. and the good suggestions!  I had thought of the power up buisness, however did not add it, as that is the exact same mechanic jon used in everyday shooter.  It still workes as is as a pressure hightening mechanic since when you see them start to peek, you know you only have three seconds till they gone. and if its a group of em it looks like a bigger loss.

as far as a scoring system. that is most likely the the last thing I would ever add to a game, if at all. I am not a big fan of playing for a score,. altohugh I do find it fun in games like ZicZac or KRYSTA,. I am more about geting to the end,. or just winning the game, I will consider this though as it is likely a good idea, just not my focus.  thanks again.

[qoouep]

I think this would be a lot better if the camera followed the cursor or at least had the option to do so.

[jph wacheski]

Thanks qoouep that is was a great suggestion., 
 I roughed it in,. and it seems like it will work much happy. It is a mix of the follow-camera chasing the player, and also the pointer, to differing degrees,. I need to smooth out those limits I had to add to keep the player from going off the screen,. however, having the camera aim with the player's cursor does seem to work better.,
 the attached is a sample, but it is messy, and too rough,. and don't look at my startings on level two, that is even more unfinished!  oh, windowed 1024x768 only!

[Alex May]

I had a real good time with this. Managed to get to 75% before finally giving up. My main problem is that I was spending a lot of time mournfully gazing at my 360 pad and wishing I could use that instead. Mouse + keys is all very well but the amount of readjustment due to player movement makes aiming hard - haven't tried the version with the new camera, which sounds like it will fix things.

Also second the motion on the fading stars - I actually convinced myself they were worth more for a few minutes before realising the truth. Regardless moving over them was very difficult because of the key movement.

The difficulty was just right for me - starts off fairly tame but gets pretty hectic to the point where you're just leaving stars all over the place because they're too risky to get. Using stars as a shield is a great idea, but the visual feedback on how much shield / how many stars left could be made clearer. At the moment one has to strain a little to see the blue ovals.

I also liked the way the bullets could be shot. It makes it possible but risky to just take things head on. Good times, thanks jph!

edit: ah and props for the filesize. pretty incredible art and sound for a small file size!

[Farmergnome]

my fav entry so far, good job man, not as fastpaced as i liked but i started playing, and I look outside and its dark now.

Hard as tho, but in a good way 

[jph wacheski]

thanks haowan, yeah I am fairly stocked about the new camera system, should improve overall playablity,. just gotta find time to work on it,. if you have a 360 controller then you must try my game designed for one;  http://iterationgames.com/gyoza_360contoller.zip its a single level so far but a good one! 
 I would love to have 360 controller support in ZGE!! If anyone has experiance implemeting it, and knows a bit of pascal,. then head on over to zgameeditor.org and contribute to that great open-source freeware game creation tool!

and gnome I think the gameplay speed/action will pick up on a later level,. I am still coming to grips wil implementing what I want in ZGE,. I came from GM and was spoiled by all the given math functions,.  so if i find the time,. I will get it to where I want it to go.  peace.

[Daniel Benmergui]

Very aesthetically pleasing, and very polished controls... I think I can see the love put into this game

The gameplay felt a little dull after a couple of minutes, though. Sometimes I even felt like being able to aim with the mouse was unnecessary (maybe it's me).

Thanks for this game!

[jbrodack2008]

I love the graphic style and the fact that its so small yet I can't help but feel there should be a real random element to the game to keep it fresh and surprising with each play.  Not only cause of the spirit and general reason for the compo but given that the game could benefit from random placement and other random yet of course controlled elements that would make the game more exciting.  Randomly placed trees, random amount of stars given from enemies, randomly placed "base", random enemies and more would really work for this game and I'm puzzled why you don't see that.  Oh well still a cool game and impressive use of PG graphics and sound.

[jph wacheski]

Daniel - thanks,. yeah, it is just a simple game currently,. I had hoped to add a bunch more stuff but time being limited, I had to stop there,. I will add to it though, time permiting.

jbrodack2008 - Procedural Generated Content is NOT equal to Random Element.  I have said that a few times now on these boards talking about my game and the games made by others,. as a few of you seem somehow confused by this,. you CAN use PCG to create randomly tweeked content, however this is not the only way to make stuff using these tecniques.
 As far as the use of randomness in my game, there is loads,. not sure why you don't see it. I did make an attempt to balance Game Design with Random PG elements however,. .  The bitmap parts for the trees and background are uniquely created for each tree, the trees are randomly placed/sized/rotated/animated the bad bugs are randomly placed, and the AIs that contol them are state machines, that randomly move between states creating some complex behaviours and proceduraly generating a vast array of movements and patterns,. many more than I could have hoped to create by hand. The results of blasting a bug is random as well, some times you get nothing, sometimes more bad guys, some times Stars.  Hope that helps. Peace.

[jbrodack2008]

from the comp announcement thread:
"The theme of the game is PROCEDURAL GENERATION, with an emphasis on generating new content every time the player starts the game.

Procedural generation, or procedural content generation, is a term to describe the creation of content algorithmically "on the fly" (i.e. after the software executes, rather than before).  In video games it is generally used to either generate "random" content (like graphics or levels), or to reduce file size.  This competition is focused on the former, but you may choose to apply the theme however you see fit."

so the spirit of the compo seems to be for things to be new each time you play it.  I know PG doesn't have to equal random and even the compo rules recognize that. I'm familiar with PG to reduce file size with kkrieger being a famous example.  But I just think most are expecting PG to be used for random elements given the compo description.

However, thanks for pointing out the random elements of your game.  I'll admit I hadn't played enough to be able to be sure about the more subtle random elements. It probably would have appeased people a bit if you had pointed out the random content in the detail you had just given me earlier or added it to the first post in the thread.

Anyway I really DO like your game and look forward to possible new updates.  I guess after playing some of the other games I expected the PG use to be as obviously random as some of the other games in the compo.  Still it seems some of my "ideas" you had already implemented regarding random content. 

Sorry to make it seem like I was saying there is something wrong with your game for not being random enough.  I was basically posting to all the thread of my favorite compo threads saying what I liked as well as what I'd like to see changed in the games. I'll admit I was wrong in that there are random elements to your game.  anyway you did do a great job on your game and it just seems the PG is used more subtle in your game than others. 

[zradick]

I'm very impressed with what you were able to do as far as the art, sound, etc, with just 64K.  Very cool indeed!   
I toyed around with a similar movement scheme some time ago for a top down shooter that I was going to call "Zombie Popper!"  It takes a little getting used to, but I think it works nicely.
Cheers!
--Zack