[game] "Whoosh!" Something to actually show for myself, heh

www.thebrasse.com/gis.php

Finally stopped goofing around with pet projects and other distractions long enough to finish a game (and picked a graphic style where I didn't need an artist).
Of my pet projects, this is probably the one that interested me the least, but also the easiest to finish.
All in AS2, so performance isn't what it could be.

Any feedback?
Do I need to put the instructions inline with popups or are they understandable enough?

I am torn because I don't like inline instructions, but I also don't usually click instructions first on a flash game and I am worried people will be too lost without some hints. Not sure where the happy medium is.

This is my first attempt to polish a game, and I am learning fast that I am not that good at level design. Known issues are on the page, consider the levels tests.

That's cool, nice work. I like the style. You should try to finish a few more :)

The other one that fizzled needing art assets is www.thebrasse.com/fyre.php. I like the art style on this one though (drawn by my wife in the same style of her comics) and don't know if I want to make it in the preschooler cutout artstyle.

Performance on fyre is DESTROYED by the realtime, nearly fullscreen perlin noise filter and displacement map for the fire effect layer. I could increase performance 10 fold by just running those filters on some fire objects before the game starts and throwing them in a bitmap array. That is what I did with the planets in whoosh, they are flat images displaced to a sphere just after the loading screen (the delay between preloading and the menu popping).

Ah, well. Pretty sure next game is going to be my line rider + carwars mashup. Going to go as3 for that one hoping I can get it on the ipad oneday, that would be great for the planned interface.

love the art style and concept. not sure about the controls though. i think if you can get it happening all around the craft (rather than going over to the side to set speed) it would help a lot

Hrm. Similar to my wife's concern regarding having to move the camera so much to use the controls like thrust setting and the trace button in the upper right. ctrl also works for tracing, and up and down arrows also set thrust, but the thrust keyboard commands are pretty slow right now to allow for fine tuning, I should probably have them set acceleration of the wheel and not speed.

Any suggestion on mouse interface to set speed that is near the ship? Maybe a radial popup or something when you mouse over the ship?

Much thanks to both of you for the feedback!

Cool game. I agree the controls could use some help. But it came together nicely.

Here's how I would set power. http://megaswf.com/view/1f6a1593a9de...6f400613b.html

And maybe make the tracing start automatically when you let go of the mouse. But it you can interrupt it by clicking or pressing space.

Not sure if I like that idea for the power or not due to the trace/adjust/trace gameplay that can emerge. Tracing, and then wanting to aim just a little left would be hard, as it would change power as well, same as liking your facing but wanting just a little more or less power. This happens a lot on levels like level 2 where you can mess around with power and angle enough to get all 8 crystals around the black hole in 1 launch if you are finicky. The fine adjustments making big changes in path is just a factor of how fast gravity falls off with distance. I guess those fine adjustments could be left for keyboard adjustment... The other issue with having thrust set by pointer distance from ship is that it means you will sacrifice directional control at low thrust values. The angle settings are easier to fine tune the further the mouse gets from the ship, just a function of the longer hypotenuse, tying that distance to thrust might not be optimal...

The interrupt-able tracing is definitely going to be implemented. Not sure if I want to automate it. It interrupts controls, and that could be very frustrating if you land on a planet with one of the crawly worm things like level 4.

I love the feedback though, defiantly hearing that there is something wrong with the controls, thrust in particular.

i gotta agree with nialsh that power setting method looks good. maybe you could make it an option and as far as the low power setting is concerned maybe you could make it so that 15-20 pixels away from the ship is zero power so that they have some angle to work with. a mouse wheel option might be good too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nialsh

Cool game. I agree the controls could use some help.

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Yes, I read the instructions twice and spent a few minutes fiddling with all the keys and clicks but still couldn't get the ship off that first asteroid :(

I wish I could further, it looks great. Have you thought about a simple mouse control system, like Phantom Hourglass?

ok, i played it and got killed by a crawley and i had one crystal left to get and i could warp to the next one. so what happened was this. i was playing and just saw that the planets are grouped real small but u think it's the whole universe and it's just a group of planets. so what u do is just keep hitting the ctrl key to see were the ship could go and u could figure out how to get the crystals that way besides!

the ufo thingy was his name warpy or something, i forgot, but he shouldn't be able to go thru the planets like a ghost. it looks too silly that way. sorry.

uhm, you shouldn't put the board up when the level is starting cause it's in the way. just have like a welcome screen screen that lists the different levels and locks the others and you could name the levels that way on the screen all at the same time, so people now how many are left and how good there doing. this is how the other games are so it's a little strange not to do it that way.

maybe it's not good to keep going after the crystals one at a time, cause it gets a little tired. i think u could have it so u plan out a route that gets all the crystals in one launch, but u don't get to see the entire path, just some to give u an idea that ur on the right angel. it was cool to orbit the planets on ur path when ur grab crystals, like those crystals around the galaxy and u just keep circling it and grabbing them without using the booster, so.

in summary, i think this game would be better if is was of a puzzle and challenge type of game rather than a arcade game. since it's kind of slow. it also needs some upgrade items.

oh...you now how u make it so the space bar is the launch key? well, that's not really good. is it ok if u could make a power arrow by keeping the button on the mouse clicked and then dragging it away from the ship? i think u could have more control that way since the gas is a little touchy. when u launch it u just let off the mouse button. it would be a less confuse form tah.

that's it. u could see if armorgames.com is intersted to sponsor you. you'll get a lot of feedback with players who tell u how to improve it, only they can be kind of mean sometims but you'll make better games that way. here's their link: http://armorgames.com/page/sponsorship

Good comments, thanks!

I am definitely going to be changing the controls, and part of that is going to be adding a prominent launch button so people don't sit there not knowing how to launch (silly oversight on my part)

I also agree that the corkboard is way too obtrusive. I liked the idea, and I will probably keep it for some things, but not for everything. I am going to be putting in a tips system that will have little notes appear from the top edge of the screen briefly to remind/inform players of some features.


Interesting comments about the puzzle/arcade aspect.
The game WAS originally designed as a puzzle type game, but the problem there was that it is a really fine line between establishing orbits and breaking away from the gravitational pull of the planets. It just was too tinkery and not super fun. The game still can be played as a puzzle if you use Trace Path a lot and go slow and methodical, or you can just launch out and start boosting. You still need to land for some things since your boost is not as strong as the thrust you get off planets (Planetary launches set velocity instead of adding a force). Another problem with making it puzzle based is that reproducing an exact path more than once is difficult. Very minor changes in angle or power can wildly affect your course. Adding some angle/power snapping would help this, but might make it more frustrating than helpful.

The game rewards the puzzle style play in the way it scores. You can actually get 55 points in 1 level if you can get all the crystals in one launch. Or only 10 points if you get 1 at a time. You get a cumulative bonus of 1 point for each new crystal you capture before you land.

The level with the black hole is much easier with heavy trace usage. You can get the 8 crystals around the hole in 1 or 2 launch, although getting them in 1 launch and living is really hard. That level would probably be better if I put all 10 crystals around the hole instead of having the 2 stragglers.

The blend between puzzle and arcade style really comes down to level design in this case. If the levels were designed so that you could plot a single launch to get all crystals then it would play more that way. I just need to make a decent level editor. Right now I am just using an fla file and dragging symbols representing all the level objects onto the stage and a little code that loops through them all and traces out the xml text. Pretty clunky, and no way for me to test paths easily for putting crystals along a given launch path.
I am working on a level editor now that is a modified version of the game so I can fly around a level as I make it and drop crystals from my ship while flying so I can place them along paths easily.

i thought u'd like to see these for ideas since there similiar. look how the ball is launched in the first one, and it has crystals that u could get in the other holes and it has tips...

http://armorgames.com/play/654/galactic-gravity-golf


http://armorgames.com/play/4838/how-...er-won-the-war

well, good luck!

ps - could u make the crawleys move slower?

That second game is really pretty.

nice game:)

Thanks! Just an FYI, I took into account many of the suggestions here.

The same link goes to the new version which now has:

• Added a control movieclip to drag and set power and angle. Thanks Nialsh for that idea!
• Incorporated locking of thrust or rotation as well by pressing the D or F keys. You can still manually adjust the thrust as well with the thrustwheel or use arrow keys for fine tuning. I am pretty happy with the controls now, there are several fine tuning options as well as a quick and dirty way.
• The traceroute is cancelable now. Clicking anywhere, pressing control, or 'a' will cancel it. Also, added 'a' as a keyboard command to trace so you can access all keyboard commands comfortably with your left hand on the homerow.
• Got rid of the panning around with the mousemove thing. Just one line changed there, and MIGHT put it back in while in flight, but I think I like it better without now.
• Fixed a few sound bugs and cleanup issues when you die the last time.

Still need a tips / messaging system that is less obtrusive (paper will come in from top)
Need to add an onscreen launch button. I keep forgetting to add a placeholder one, and not sure what I want final to look like.
Still the same crappy levels, but my ingame level designer tool is almost done.
Still need to fine tune the enemies that pursue while in the air.

u made it worse. i don't know how else to say that. i guess no one else wanted to say it. maybe cause its better to have a better answer than to talk about a problem. i just don't know what the answer is. maybe no one else does either.