Pellmell needs some loving

Taking what i have learn't over the last year or so and applying that knowledge to Pellmell is my current undertaking. I love the basic premise for my game. I love what i did with all the extra effects and transitions etc. But there are a few obvious shortcomings i wish to address.

So players found it annoying that they kept running out of bullets. Well the game was supposed to be a choice between shooting now or later and dodging now or later. By balancing the two ideas, one can achieve harmony with the game. However this is not wanted. Soo the game will change slightly. It will become more shooter oriented.
* Add Auto-fire and double the refresh of the bullets

Players have complained they can simply push their dude to the right and really run Pellmell down the level. Yes they take hits, but they finish the level. Where i bestow upon them a huge health boost. So nullifying the damage they took running there. This is a tough one, as the levels are balanced with the introduction of new enemies as you get through the levels. Bringing in new enemies into something like the 40th level (off the top of my head). So whatever i do, i cannot make those later levels (where you cannot possibly just run down the level and make it) harder than they are. So i need to fixup the first 20 or so levels.
* Research how many levels to fix. Maybe only refresh you life at the end of the level if it below a certain amount, or maybe i start off giving you nothing and then each level up the amount of health i give back.

Price point is too high? Well i haven't really had any complaints about this. But i would hope that if i made the price point only 1 dollar it get a few more downloads (currently about 20 a month).
* Reduce the size of the ccgame file. This is now easier due to better handling of assets etc.

55MB, not sure i have the space mate. Ok, so it was a bit large, but it has a lot of music in the game. Now with the newer Xact i can compress that way down. YAY!
* Already reduced the ccgame to 19MB, a much more appealing size.

I am not sure what else to do to the game at this point. I will examine some reviews and any feedback i missed in the previous playtests and reviews. So after working on it for 2 hours, it is time to say.

G'night

Name for the game is lacking

I love to name my game when i start it. So much character can come from naming a game. Especially if it is a name that i can relate too. So far i have two names, neither of which i really like. Avatar-Man and BombVatar-Man... So i will probably change that as soon as i get more design work done.

On the front of working on the design, i have been pondering an issue my new game faces. If you looked at my post with the design drawings you would have noticed how similar the game looks to Pacman. Now the maze is a bit pacman like for sure, but the issue isn't that. Well not totally that. It is in fact the issue of getting character into my game. Being too far away and rendering my avatar the size of pacman will be a bit of a let down. I have ben wondering how i can make everything bigger, but still retain my granularity of map.

so i decided i knew the answer, i would force everything to a new 45 degree angle and have everything that is in the game be twice as tall as the walls. This will give me double size characters to play with and people to look at. That should enable me to keep characters feeling good and fresh while not killing the gameplay elements i have lined up.

Laters

My Kickstarter Project Woes

I am currently looking at my kickstarter project (Kickstart Project) and i am disappointed. I really hoped that i would have generated a lot more interest by now. I wonder why it is not doing very well. Itis certainly not doing as well as i had hoped. I felt my rewards are very worth it, especially after researching other games that did get funded. Maybe it is because i ma on Xbox and Not PC (though i am on PC of course for the reward versions). I wonder what else i could do to advertise the project. I have posted about it on Twitter on several Indie facebook pages. I have released a press release that i saw all over the place. Howwever i still do not have much interest.

I do have a few people who have contacted me complaining about not being able to find it. If you choose discover on Kickstarter and then go to Gaming. You get a filtered version of the projects that is filtered by Recommended. This is odd as i have no idea how one gets on the recommended listing. So if you are not on that list, you have to change your search settings to new releases and mine is on the second page of that list. I have emailed Kickstarter a few times, but i still do not have a clue what is going on. Why the default list is the recommended one and not new releases is interesting, though of course their decision. My final thought on the odd recommended list is that there are several funded and finished projects in the list. Odd that when some were finished weeks ago.

So it isn't doing well, it does not look like i will get to spend that money on improving my game and getting it on multi formats. Maybe i will have more success with the next one. I can only hope.
Still on the bright side... If it does not get funded the game will be out much sooner on Xblig (or at least in Peer reveiw).

G'night

New Player Ships

This is what i saw when i got up this morning. Ok, not quite as i got up. But soon after my PC was on and i was looking at my emails. This one made me smile in a way that can be quite rare. I expected Terry to knock out some ship graphics for me, ones that cuold even have partially resembled what i had drawn myself. I never quite expected them to lok so georgous and faithfull to my original designs. check them out below.

The main reason for different designed ships is for the colorblind people out there. Yeah it's a bit of trouble, but i am Indie and control what is going into this game. So i control the fact i wanted to do something to differentiate between player ships. How hard would it be to play a shooter like this ith a friend or wife and fine you could never be sure which your ship was ? For none colorblind peolpe like me it is easy, and i just go with what color i am.

I sure hope these ships work, as i reckon they are lovely..

Any opinions, please let me know.

Laters

A Shooter Boss #10 Gameplay Video

So i figured it was time to bring out the fraps. I just wanted to show one of the bosses i am currently wokring on. It is a tough boss that exists at level 10. This is not the final version of the boss for a few reasons. The main one being that he has not been balanced for his position relative to the previous levels.

Balancing bosses nad levels will take more time, but also means each one must be balacned with the ones either side of it. so this Boss is set up to easily alter his difficulty by changing just a single value.

So i am going to try and link in the video, and i hope it's possible on Blogger, as this is my first attempt.

As a bonus, i also recorded the 3 Smart Bombs that created. I hope you all like what ya se.

Laters