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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperPlaytestinghell is other people (updated)
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v21
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« on: September 22, 2009, 03:06:01 PM »


Oh goodness! I seem to have been working on this forever. But here it is, naked and quivering before the world. Do your worst!

Anyway: Fight the ghosts of those that have come before by means of moving in two dimensions and firing missiles. The fiercer you fight, the harder it shall be for those that come after. How much of the past can you cope with at once before you are overwhelmed?


(You'll need the Unity web player to run it. It's a nice webplayer, and it installs cleanly and usually without even a browser restart. And there are tons of other games made in it worth playing. Yes, I know I could have done this in Flash, that's not the point. Play the damn game. Oh, and then criticise it for me here? Thank you, indie gaming community. You're the tops!)

EDIT: Updates update updates: now has a website, the database has been reset, the difficulty ramping was tweaked one way then the other, the weapons were (hopefully) balanced, the music has changed... etc etc.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2009, 05:32:54 PM by v21 » Logged
deathtotheweird
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« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2009, 05:20:37 PM »

6 enemies was pretty impossible, because i picked up the stupid power-up that shoots vertically (which over-rode my previous power-up of shooting horizontal) on accident  Mock Anger
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v21
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« Reply #2 on: September 23, 2009, 03:47:52 AM »

Well, I'm not going to put in a "Are you sure? Y/N" dialog in. But I have made it so that the items take half a second to become active. Which means if you're barrelling towards a ship while firing, you shouldn't pick up the power-up before you've seen it. Having to carefully pick round dud power-ups when you've got a good one seems fair, though. There should be some risk...

I've also made the power-ups more useful, but increasing your maximum health to 200. This also has meant the colours have changed. The enemy ships go yellow, now. I am not sure what I think about this.

[EDIT: More changes! the pace of the game is now: slower. This should have the effect of making it take longer to die. Also, it scales back further when you continue. I am pondering doing something to make the power-ups more prevalent.]
« Last Edit: September 23, 2009, 10:00:01 AM by v21 » Logged
PsySal
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« Reply #3 on: September 23, 2009, 02:33:49 PM »

Oh goodness! I seem to have been working on this forever. But here it is, naked and quivering before the world. Do your worst!

I haven't played the game, but this is a fabulous attitude, hehehe... =)
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William Broom
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« Reply #4 on: September 23, 2009, 10:38:12 PM »

It's a really cool game! I got 10 enemies Grin

But - I picked up a lot of powerups and... none of them seemed to do anything. The only one that had any effect was the horizontal shooting one, which I found to be extremely powerful, so I never picked up anything else for a long time.
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« Reply #5 on: September 24, 2009, 01:36:58 AM »

So the guy I'm fighting is actually a recording - a recording of a fight against a recording of a fight, all the way back to the beginning of time?

So how come this guy keeps dodging my attacks?  Shocked
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v21
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« Reply #6 on: September 24, 2009, 09:56:47 AM »

Yet more pacing and balance changes! Also UI tweaking.

William Broom: The powerups also give you health, which is now indicated with a +10 underneath. I hope this clarifies things! I probably should have thought to add some visual indication of new added functionality. But this is what you guys, my willing guinea pigs are for, I guess.

I have gimped the sideways firer: it seemed too powerful. But the problem is, I gimped it by slowing down it's rate of fire. I guess I shall have to scrap the database, just for fairness sakes. And now every time you increase the number of enemies you're battling, you gain a random extra powerup, in order to spread the alt weapons around a bit more (and give you confidence to choose to revert to a boring weapon in exchange for a big pile of health). But: it might just be the way the afternoon is dragging on, a certain greyness in the light, but I'm worried the game kinda plateaus between 5 and 15 enemies. But I feel powerless to judge this on my own: what do you think?

I also took out the music, for now. I want to put Withered Hand's No Cigarettes and Harvey Danger's Little Round Mirrors on as the soundtrack, and maybe a third song I haven't thought of yet. But before I do, I will have to ask the people who made these songs about licensing them. For no money? We shall see how that goes goes. In any case, if you want the final experience, play these songs in the background:

http://songbytoad.com/2009/06/withered-hand-you-are-not-alone/
http://www.harveydanger.com/downloads/


Oh, and looseleaf: yes. All the way back to when I was beta testing and wiggled from side to side firing. From that small start... The guy keeps dodging your attacks because people are bastards. What was the name? Curse it just before you go to bed tonight. It'll make you feel better.
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SteGriff
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« Reply #7 on: September 28, 2009, 10:38:30 AM »

I got 17 of 'em

Pretty neat little game. Reminds me, in concept, of that game where you use other people's deaths to complete a platformer.

Also, of the AI mode in R-Type Final. I'm guessing it remembers not the exact pattern, but the general behaviour you applied to the battle? ie Aggressive/Defensive
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« Reply #8 on: September 28, 2009, 10:40:57 AM »

i think Kenta Cho did a shump with this identical concept, still this one looks nice


edit: tried, it doesn't work, i can't see enemies at all, i destroyed the first then nothing more, restarted the game, same thing from the start... how is it supposed to work?

edit2: also the sound stopped to work, so i suppose it's a giant bug somewhere

edit3: finally something spawns but they just stand still... got like 20 ghosts then i went away bored, are those ships replicas of other people ones?
« Last Edit: September 28, 2009, 10:47:54 AM by Eclipse » Logged

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v21
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« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2009, 11:11:46 AM »

Eclipse: Odd, I haven't seen that so far. And haven't seen it just checking it now. Sorry about that!

(updates) Oh, and odder even still.

The ones standing still can be players who spawned but didn't move at the start: but as far as I've seen there's only one or two of them in the database. Do they all spawn in the same place, with the same names? If so, then that's people making the game easy. If not: then that's code brokenness.

What OS are you using? What browser? What's your connection like? Does http://nottheinternet.com/hell/return_xml.php return 404 or does it forward you to a page of (most likely broken and in any case incomprehensible) XML? Do you get the "LOADING GHOSTS" message at all?

As for Kenta Cho: I like his work, but when I came up with the idea (in a particularly anaemic shower, as it happens) I vowed not to go hunting too hard to see if anyone else had come up with the same concept. Now it's done, it's safe to ask: Don't suppose you can remember the name? I am curious to play it.

SteGriff: Do you mean my game or R-Type Final? Mine just records the exact movements as a (as you can see above) huge XML file. And: thank you.
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« Reply #10 on: September 28, 2009, 03:38:54 PM »

The Kenta Cho one: http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/03/browser_game_pick_defeatme_ken.html

It's a similar concept. While in yours you fight the ghosts of others, the Kenta Cho one has you fight the ghosts of each of your past rounds.

Might be cool to up the player name length and have a meta-game about what ghost is the most effective at killing the player.

Pretty fun, although the difficulty curve is really shallow.
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deathtotheweird
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« Reply #11 on: September 28, 2009, 04:51:09 PM »

Ya know, I had a weird feeling that I played a similar game like that but I wrote it off as Deja Vu.  But this is a more interesting game anyway.

Anyways, I didn't encounter the bugs Eclipse encountered just now. But I did have another one. For some reason the beginning ghost started off shooting up instead of at me, it was really weird. Then I refreshed and he would not move from the bottom of the screen. I loaded up Firefox (was using Chrome) and the problem did not occur. I'll try clearing my cache in Chrome and see if that fixes it. Have no clue if it will but it's worth a shot.
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Eclipse
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« Reply #12 on: September 29, 2009, 01:06:11 AM »

I'm using the latest version of Opera, just retried and the loading ghosts thing is showed but the ghosts stand still without shooting Undecided
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« Reply #13 on: September 29, 2009, 01:28:19 AM »

It'd be useful if people could report the names of any "rogue" ships.
Hey v21, you should build 'mark this ship as busted' functionality into the game, and it could flag that one for removal. Then you can check for yourself if it's actually a bad ship or not.

Sad to see that my annoying-as-hell music was taken out. Sad Good luck with licensing your new music!
« Last Edit: September 29, 2009, 01:33:25 AM by jimmykane » Logged

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deathtotheweird
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« Reply #14 on: September 29, 2009, 01:29:47 AM »

Have you tried reinstalling the Unity Web Player? Try all browsers and see if it's the problem.

anyways, I can't get past 6 ghosts because I always pick up a stupid vertical bullet power up which replaces the superior double-sided horizontal one.. Grrrrrr.
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v21
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« Reply #15 on: September 30, 2009, 03:12:32 AM »

Sorry, jimmykane! I did like the music (it sounds like Puzzle Bobble's theme, and that's pretty much my favourite gaming theme). But it was pretty blinky and too short. It took a middle road in terms of mood. Which is pretty much entirely my fault, because I asked you for music when I had no idea what I wanted. That was bound to fail. Sorry...

Anyway, there is now music again, courtesy of the lovely http://tnathanroane.com/ . I think it really adds to the atmosphere. It is suddenly suffused with regret.

And yeah: I'd like to do that, Noyb. And have different modes for selecting the ghosts. At the moment it's random, but it could start spawning the most successful ghosts-as-ghosts instead. And it should stop you getting duff ships to start. But that requires me to make a proper backend on the website...

allen: Was he firing up with the blue bombs? Otherwise, I do not understand that bug at all.

I have found myself deliberately throwing away good powerups to race about picking up life. You've a 2 in 3 chance of getting something decent the next time you increment the number of enemies on screen. Or, of course, if there's sideways shooters, hit them. It's easier because they're firing in the wrong direction...

And that Kenta Cho game: it was interesting, and similar, but not so similar I cried myself to sleep last night (at least, not for that reason...). It's amazing how structured such a game design can be when so little is imposed upon you.

(Oh, and I fucked with the pacing again. *shrug* I should stop fucking with it.)
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Melly
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« Reply #16 on: October 02, 2009, 09:01:52 PM »

Got 42 ghosts.

Interesting concept.
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The North
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« Reply #17 on: October 03, 2009, 09:09:20 PM »

this game sucks

i got the backwards shot and then held my spacebar down with a brick

i got 200 ghosts:

Quote from: The North
this game sucks

also jeb whoever you are you suck at making good patterns
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v21
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« Reply #18 on: October 04, 2009, 05:09:44 PM »

The North:
Thank you for your feedback! It is probably the most helpful of all the feedback I have received. I have since wiped the database (I know, I know), and rejigged the backwards firer to cover the entire map*. I think it is now safe to say that there is no safe area now, just ones of relative peril. But I would love for you to show my game to be broken again. And then i can fix it. Also, yeah, Jed is my cousin. What do you expect from an 11-year old?

Everyone else:
I made a website! Look at it, all "more than a black page with a "<center>" tag and a few "<br /s>"s" Ain't it pretty. Kinda optimistically, the game is now for sale. I may soon recreate this thread, but in the "Announcements" section. !!!. !!. !!!!!.

[* In the process I discovered that there was a bug that crashed the game/didn't save states since last update. Next project I do, it'll be unit tests all the way. I am persuaded of their usefulness...]
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« Reply #19 on: October 04, 2009, 05:51:24 PM »

np dude anytime

i'm kind of embarrased, though; i don't need all this fanfare.  just doing my small part in bettering this community.

edit: i tried the new version but it still had the old behavior. i cleared my cache and it didn't solve anything, so i think it's a problem on your end.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2009, 05:58:46 PM by The North » Logged
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