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Topic: Game (Read 3669 times) |
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jrc313
 
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Game
« on: Sep 15th, 2004, 1:05am » |
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I've been tinkering with Processing recently and decided to knock up a quick game.
Quite simple - just click to thrust, avoid the bars, floor and ceiling.
enjoy.
http://www.jrc313.com
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rgovostes
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Re: Game
« Reply #1 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 1:29am » |
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High score: 858
Good job. It's a little hard, though.
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TomC
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Re: Game
« Reply #2 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 1:45am » |
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1444... but how could I prove it? 
Damn it's hard!
Nicely done though.
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cello
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Re: Game
« Reply #3 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 3:31am » |
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5025.
Nice game.
Couple suggestions?
On the gameplay side, it would be nice to see some kind of difficulty increase, this could be done a number of ways. You could have a steady increase in speed as the user goes, making it more difficult (it is extremely easy to avoid the "marching bars," avoiding the top/bottom is the only thing that ever killed me, making them speed up would make them more challenging). Alternatively, add a level system, where after some time, or number of points, the level increases, speeding things up, or even adding multiple bars on each passing thing.
Ok, I just noticed you say that it does speed up... I guess I started to see that around 4500 points, but the speed up is definitely not fast enough.
Do I get more points for getting through a red region than green region? That would make things slightly more interesting. If I do, maybe something like "100 point bonus!" could appear next to where you passed in the red zone, move up slowly and fade out, ala most video games. Another "bonus" you could have is if the user gets extremely close to the top/bottom, but recovers, some kind of "recovery" bonus to make them want to risk going to the edge. Similarly going extremely close above/below a marching bar could give you a "close one!" bonus.
The last thing to two things to increase gameplay value would be a running total high score of your best play yet, so you can try to beat your own score, and check out your best score as you keep playing. An extension of that would be some kind of option for submitting the score to the server so you can see how you rank with other players. (One of the nice benefits of web page based games!)
On the interface side, I think you have it pretty much down pat, the only gripe would be not being able to click when on the gameover screen. Switching between keyboard and mouse in the middle of playing is generally a no-no in computer game design. If you're worried about people clicking to cancel the game over screen immediately, add a small delay before the click works, though if you have a running total high score, that's probably sufficient.
Last of all, on the graphics side, I really like the overall design and simplicity, some nice touches though would be to have the marching bars either fade out, or simply move entirely off the screen before vanishing. The instant vanish doesn't fit with the overall slickness of the game. Same goes for the red/green bars, I would have those slowly fade in as it approachs. Just for extra touch.
Anyway, congrats on a fun game, hope these comments are helpful!
Marcello
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jrc313
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Re: Game
« Reply #4 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 9:42am » |
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Thanks for the feedback Marcello - this is exactly the sort of thing I wanted.
I tried to make the speed increase subtle but, as you've noticed, I think I made it a little too subtle
The red and green regions will eventually become bonus modifiers. I'm thinking along the lines of a multiplier that gets increased when you go through a red region and dropped when you go through a green one. I like the idea of the recovery and close one bonuses - they've got to be in there. Someone at work also suggested a weaving bonus (over, under, over, under type thing) to encourage more reckless behaviour. I've been playing Burnout 3 so I'm right into the idea that risk = reward
High score chart - absolutely. This is one of the last things I want to think about, but it's the first that everyone else asks about. I reckon I'll stick the personal best in for now to placate everyone :-p
So you spotted why I made it keyboard to start rather than mouse ... damn you! :-p
I think I'll make the bars continue off screen, rather than fade - it just seems to fit better. I agree that the bonus bars fading in would be nicer.
The only thing that really concerns me at the moment is performance. I've noticed that anything less than a Gig processor is unable to manage 60fps. Given that it's just 11 boxes that are being drawn on screen - I would'nt have thought it would be so processor intensive. Can anyone suggest any ways of speeding it up or is this just something I'll have to live with?
Cheers,
JC
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cello
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Re: Game
« Reply #5 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 3:28pm » |
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I'm sure you can speed it up, but I get 45fps with and without antialiasing (didn't seem to affect framerate) and that's plenty (p3 1ghz, 256mb ram). You could probably get by with 30fps without it being a problem. The way I see it, if you don't include the fps counter, no one will notice it being slow. 
As for speeding things up, I'd suggest putting the effort into improving other things first before you go in for optimization. There are lots of tricks one can do, but they will almost always make your code more complicated and harder to work with.
One suggestion I forgot to add in my last comment was to have the red/green bars fade between red/green rather than instantly flipping when the box passed the midpoint. Again, just to increase the slickness.
Marcello
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Koenie
 
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Re: Game
« Reply #6 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 3:51pm » |
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Score: 1807 update: 4320
I agree with Tom on the keyboard/mouse issue, maybe you could have rightmouse button pause the game? As for the graphics side, I've got one remark: I think it would be handy to see the floor and the ceiling more obvious than just the shadow of the player. Maybe you could make them light grey, just so you notice them a bit easier.
Besides that: Very nice!
Koenie
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| « Last Edit: Sep 16th, 2004, 6:02pm by Koenie » |
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http://koeniedesign.com
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bsr
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Re: Game
« Reply #7 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 5:05pm » |
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fantastic, gameplaywise i'd like to see it faster... but with an energy bar... hitting the ceiling or floor lowers your energy - i think this would up the adrenalin and would be more forgiving (similar to the main difference between wipeout and wipeout 2097 on the ps1 - in version 1 hitting the side took off all your speed and the game didnt flow, in 2097 you could skim round corners scraping off the sides: it kept the flow of the game up but you were still penalised... actually made it 10 times better).
stylewise, i love the look of the main game (even more so with smooth() turned OFF, but i'm not keen on the hand-drawn font. a nice clear sans-serif would look better imo.
just my 2cents!
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| « Last Edit: Sep 15th, 2004, 5:08pm by bsr » |
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http://hippocamp.net
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jrc313
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Re: Game
« Reply #8 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 10:02pm » |
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on Sep 15th, 2004, 5:05pm, bsr wrote:| fantastic, gameplaywise i'd like to see it faster... but with an energy bar... hitting the ceiling or floor lowers your energy - i think this would up the adrenalin and would be more forgiving (similar to the main difference between wipeout and wipeout 2097 on the ps1 - in version 1 hitting the side took off all your speed and the game didnt flow, in 2097 you could skim round corners scraping off the sides: it kept the flow of the game up but you were still penalised... actually made it 10 times better). |
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I think a better comparison is shooting games - where you have either one shot kill or an energy bar. Personally I prefer the former, but it's a personal taste so I reckon I'm going to have a pretty hard time pleasing everyone.
on Sep 15th, 2004, 5:05pm, bsr wrote:stylewise, i love the look of the main game (even more so with smooth() turned OFF, but i'm not keen on the hand-drawn font. a nice clear sans-serif would look better imo.
just my 2cents! |
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The font is actually my own handwriting, so I'm not surprised that you're not keen on it . I found an online service a while ago where you could download a template, write each character, scan the result and upload the image and it then you get a font file back. I used it because I wasn't entirely sure about licencing issues with any of the regular fonts on my machine.
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jrc313
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Re: Game
« Reply #9 on: Sep 15th, 2004, 10:07pm » |
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Lots of really great feedback here. Thanks a lot guys - I've got plenty to think about. I'll update this post once I've got a new version ready. Changes will go on the website fairly regularly (day job permitting) so you can check progress there and let me know if you think I'm taking completely the wrong direction
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justo
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Re: Game
« Reply #10 on: Sep 16th, 2004, 3:08am » |
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oh, one last thing...i get 120 fps sometimes, making for insane gameplay...one click sends you into the roof. you might want to limit the framerate (about 60 or 70 seems like a good max)or tie the movement to time rather than the updating frame.
as for speeding it up more, keep in mind that you are limited by processing's method of blitting to screen...its not surprising that you arent getting more than 60fps on a <1GHz processor, and theres not much you can do about it short of going fullscreen.
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jrc313
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Re: Game
« Reply #11 on: Sep 16th, 2004, 9:08am » |
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on Sep 16th, 2004, 3:08am, justo wrote:oh, one last thing...i get 120 fps sometimes, making for insane gameplay...one click sends you into the roof. you might want to limit the framerate (about 60 or 70 seems like a good max)or tie the movement to time rather than the updating frame.
as for speeding it up more, keep in mind that you are limited by processing's method of blitting to screen...its not surprising that you arent getting more than 60fps on a <1GHz processor, and theres not much you can do about it short of going fullscreen. |
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The framerate is set to 60, but I have noticed the type of thing you're talking about. Usually occurs when the game first starts, before it gets a chance to settle down.
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jrc313
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Re: Game
« Reply #13 on: Sep 16th, 2004, 9:07pm » |
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on Sep 16th, 2004, 4:52pm, bsr wrote:
Sweet! I really need to get high scores on this, but I want to get the scoring sorted out first. Best hurry up I suppose.
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jrc313
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Re: Game
« Reply #14 on: Sep 24th, 2004, 9:42am » |
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Well, I finally finished it last night 
Changes include:
- Bonuses.
- High score table.
- New viewpoint. Hopefully making those tight gaps easier to obtain.
- Levels. The bars speed up every level.
It's virtually a rewrite, but the first version was just a prototype that got knocked up in a couple of nights, so it was to be expected.
Anyway, give it a try. I want to see my name gone from the highscore table 
http://www.jrc313.com
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