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[Bennett]

Oh one other question, if I may:

I was thinking it might be cool if you could take the title of 'high scorer' by getting the SAME score as the current top scorer. So, for example, the current record is 86 by superdigg. If I also got 86 I would get to type in my own name and replace him.

That way, you would be incentivised to get higher scores, and defend your title! What do people think?

[MattC]

"The Ultimate Samurai" my foot!



Uh, ok, so some bad things here. When I typed a space in my name, it just restarted the game and I wasn't able to record it. I will have to get the high score again now. Luckily, this will be very easy as the difficulty has been dwarfed because of two factors:

1) The speed is quite slow now, and it ramps up too slowly too.
2) When a ninja lands in the sliding zone with his back to the player, he will still slide and slip off-screen. I haven't seen this until now, though I think other people have mentioned it. This is probably reducing the possible number of stars that could be on-screen and thus lowering the frenetic danger, especially in the later levels.

Though really, it's the speed.

[Also, check the level number. What the heck? Though the rank should prove me true.]

I was thinking it might be cool if you could take the title of 'high scorer' by getting the SAME score as the current top scorer.

That would be pretty awesome.

[Bennett]

Oh, I see the font is still not embedding. What to do, what to do?

Your computer must be just a bit slower than mine (which is about 800mhz.) On mine, there is slowdown if there is any other program running. I can improve performance at the cost of reducing the maximum number of ninjas, or removing the ninja-shuriken collisions, or removing the music. I'm willing to take advice on this.

The level number thing happens if you have a score ending in 8 and get 3 points in a single frame. I'll fix it up.

<edit> I think the level bug and the font bug are fixed now.
<edit> Oh and I fixed the thing where it restarts when you press space in your high score...I think. I can't test it fully without wiping the scoreboard. And I think Derek would be mad, since he just got 95.

[Bennett]

Daaaamn, MattC just got 106. Maybe I should make the difficulty ramp up a bit faster? If I just increase the speed of ninjas and shurikens, it's unfairly easy for people like MattC with slow computers. But if I decrease the number of frames between ninjas, it should be hard enough even on a crusty old computer... 

Meanwhile, I've totally lost it. I can't get more than about 36.

<ANNOUNCEMENT> If I hear no objections, I'll increase the difficulty ramp and delete the high scores tomorrow.

<AMENDMENT> I've just noticed I'm now getting 16,000 hits per day, mostly from StumbleUpon, and I'm suddenly frightened to make any changes. 

[Belgianbonzai]

Hey Benzido, i discovered your game friday, and must say it's an awesome piece of work.
Cheers, you got yourself another addict

Thanks for making the start faster as well, it was kind of boring on friday and early saturday.

I don't know about making it harder though:



this is my second best attempt, which i finished like 2 minutes before submitting it to youtube (best is 103 of which i only have a screenshot) and to be honest, i think that was hard enough :/

I'm on a fast computer though, so I have no idea how it works for MattC but if you up this speed then its still gunna be unfair. Fast computers will never lag, slow computers will. At least now this speed is "doable" on a high end comp.
If you suite your game for low end comps no idea what it will look like on a new machine.
And if you want to make this a "future classic" you'll want people to still be able to play it with the modern hardware, rather then that they'ld have to fall back to old PC's to get a "normal" gaming experience.

Regards, Matt

[Lim-Dul]

Holy f***! 106! That's 28 points better than my personal score...

Well - I think you can't punish everybody just because some people have slow computers... Besides - they'll be better anyway - no matter what you do. You could include some menu with quality settings though (standard Flash settings).

Ah - I also strongly oppose changing the high-scorer when he matches the high-score. That's not how it should work - in ANY game since it takes away any sense of accomplishment for being the first one to break a certain barrier. I think, however, that a proper high-score list with more than just one name would be appropriate.

[Terry]

You should think about doing a full high score table with about 20 names in it. Sure, it would be hard to get it fit in with the current style, but the redesign would be worth it. Right now it's kinda impossible to compete, heh.

[Belgianbonzai]

You should think about doing a full high score table with about 20 names in it. Sure, it would be hard to get it fit in with the current style, but the redesign would be worth it. Right now it's kinda impossible to compete, heh.

All you need is an option to click so it shows more highscores, perhaps a highscore list on the webpage which has 100 or whatever highscores listed.
Can even save score+name+date, use the highest score for a unique name
(ie is MattC scores a 50 106 103 only the 106 is stored, so he doesn't clutter the top 10 )
With those 3 values you can also do a daily/weekly/monthly ranking easy etc

[Pigbuster]

It is possible to make a game time-based rather than frame-based, which removes the ability to cheat by slowing the computer down.

It's explained about midway through this page: http://tonypa.pri.ee/vectors/tut04.html

It would probably be quite a rewrite, and it would make the movement very jerky for slow computers, so you'd have to decide if it's worth it to remove the ability to cheat.

[Bennett]

Thanks for the link, Pigbuster. This is probably a much better solution than the one I was considering: measure the player's computer and ban them if their computer is too slow!

[Bennett]

Hello, everyone. This game is now running on a time basis not a frame basis (well, at least for the ninja movement and shuriken movement functions). This makes it harder for you if your computer is slow, but it prevents cheating.

I reset the high scores to reflect this.

Can someone with a slow computer (i.e. MattC) let me know if this is working properly - dropping frames?

[Belgianbonzai]

i just played a game at work, and it seems to move a tad faster now
like same speed as if you have 10-20 kills more i would say.

I can record another movie tonight on my home PC (the one i'm used to play it on) to compare it to my other film (link in my 1st post) if you want

[edit]
off course work PC is different from home setup, so that could be a reason, which is why i want to record the film on my home PC

work: P4 3.00Ghz, 512MB RAM
home: C2D 6300, 3GB RAM

[Bennett]

If you're used to playing it on a slow computer (like I am), it should seem faster. Especially the shurikens - ouch! I'm now wondering if they go too fast.

[Derek]

My computer is pretty fast (P4 3.5 GHz), but I also noticed that everything's faster for me, too!

I think the shurikens could be slowed down a teensy bit, and the sliding ninjas could be slowed down a teensy bit * 2.

Feels like it becomes a bit of a crap shoot at level 4 and on.

EDIT: Btw, great work with this!  Awesome to see how gung ho you are about updating the game.  It's a hit!

[Belgianbonzai]

If you're used to playing it on a slow computer (like I am), it should seem faster. Especially the shurikens - ouch! I'm now wondering if they go too fast.

well its still fun, but only for hardcore players now. When i played my first game on friday i managed to score a 7 (yay ) other people I show the game on their first 3-5 games always go between 10 and 25 for score. I think with this new update they wont reach above 10 and they'll give up on playing faster.
So i'd slow them down a teensy teensy bit...

Also as shown in previous post (in edit) my comps are fast enough for a flash game and now the shuriken are significantly faster. Which is also why I offered to record a film in same conditions so you can see the speed difference on a relatively new comp.

PS: can you make the max size of the high score name one space bigger ^^ I couldn't fit Belgianbonzai

[edit] it seems to me I can no longer hit some shuriken:
you have ninjas that appear on screen without throwing a star, and that are too far away to slide, they jump over you and throw a star you could catch 90% of the time with down+left or down+right.
Now I've had a couple of games in a row that I could not catch the stars from the ninjas entering on the right side, jumping over me and leaving to the left. The ninjas entering on left still threw their stars near the tip of my "down+right" blade and could be cought that way.

[Lim-Dul]

Yeah - the shurikens and stuff sped up - I think especially the shurikens.

You will never be able to make everybody happy when it comes to the speed - have you considered introducing three difficulty levels with separate hig-score entries? Now THAT would probably make everybody happy since the slow computer issue has been fixed.

IMHO this project of yours turned into a great flash coffee-break game - if I were you I'd start thinking how to make some money out of this. :-D

Yeah well, you have ads on your page - not enough - there should be pop-ups, pop-unders, flash fade-ins, gif-banners, flash-banners, search-engine targeted ads, toolbar installers, tracking cookies, sponsored links... Eeeehm - what am I saying? ^^

P.S. @Belgianbonzai - I don't think you need to use the down+direction stance. =) It's cool that there are all these different stances but actually the only ones you'll need if you want a high-score are left, right and up+direction... About 95% of the shurikens can be deflected using these stances (and 99% of the ninjas) and they can be switched very quickly - that's how I made all my high-scores. There ARE some shurikens that could be deflected only by downward stances but they're such a rare occurrence that I wouldn't bother blocking them - just lose and restart the game. :-D

[Derek]

IMHO this project of yours turned into a great flash coffee-break game - if I were you I'd start thinking how to make some money out of this. :-D

Yeah well, you have ads on your page - not enough - there should be pop-ups, pop-unders, flash fade-ins, gif-banners, flash-banners, search-engine targeted ads, toolbar installers, tracking cookies, sponsored links... Eeeehm - what am I saying? ^^

Yeah, what are you saying?

Honestly, I thought the Google ad was a biiiiit much.  Don't get me wrong, if it's paying your hosting fees or something, then that's awesome.  Otherwise, the extra rep you'd get for leaving them off may be worth however much money you're making currently.  There's nothing wrong with making some side cash if you're in dire need, but if you want to think long term, pulling the kinds of things you (jokingly, I know) suggest would end up hurting your (potential) future business.

It's why I never understood why Russ Carroll would embed affiliate links in all his reviews.  I just can't imagine the short-term cash he made outweighed the negative long-term effect it had on the site's reputation.

[Bennett]

Ok, I tweaked the difficulty ramp a bit. If people get scores over 110, I'm going to make it harder again

Thanks for your compliments Derek - I'll keep on tweaking this as long as it helps me to procrastinate from my actual job (philosophy), and until I get some progress on my second game, which is in a similar style. It's been really motivating to me that people find it addictive... I've never had a creative outlet with an audience before.

Regarding ads: I think there's room for a middle path here. I've earnt a massive $25 on that ad, which is a joke, but it does pay for the MySQL feature which runs the scoreboard, for a year. If I end up earning $125 over that year, it's paid for the entire server costs. And this is a server I use for my personal email, and for my buddy's band website.

And I think google text ads are pretty unobtrusive. I tried a Google image ad and I hated it, so I removed it.

I agree that when a website starts putting things like 'context links' in, they lose a lot of street cred. But I don't agree that it hurts you to have something tasteful. For example, I think Penny-Arcade have succeeded at this by collaborating with advertisers and advertising only good, relevant products. I never wish that they didn't run ads.

Having said that, I would remove my ad if I thought there would ever be another income stream for this game, but I don't want to be a professional game coder... I'm doing it because it's fun in the same way that PLAYING games is fun, and addictive. My revenue dream is to cover my server costs entirely.

I also don't expect I could ever win any prizes or grants with a game like this. It's designed from the ground up with two niche goals in mind:
1) Stimulate nostalgic feelings in people between the ages of 25 and 35
2) Stimulate that addictive lizard-brain - the one that sits playing 'Super Mario' for 24 hours in a row.

This little alpha game has already appeared on some of those unethical 'arcade' sites, stealing the file and posting it without permission or attribution. It would give me the shits if they were making money off it, and I wasn't. Even if my share is $25 And I'm not putting in a loading sequence that advertises my site, partly because there's nothing else there, and partly because I think that sucks.

[Derek]

Well, what can I say?  You're stronger than Jack LaLanne!



Keep up the good work!  I'd totally donate $25 to you.  I've gotten a lot of fun out of this little game and I want to see you continue your fine work.  Throw me a Paypal link and I'll do it.

[Bennett]

Throw me a Paypal link and I'll do it

Hmm.... how much of a whore am I? A lot, I think. I wonder if anyone else would click a paypal link?