A Shooter feedback #3

Yup, another nice Playtester has spent some time testing out my game in XBLIG land. I am starting to feel more pressure to do more myself and stop with the annoying global high scores coding. bah!


Here is what they wrote:-

1. Graphics are definitely the thing holding the game back currently, though looks like you've got some changes lined up to improve that? Mainly bullet sprites are ugly, could also use more visual indicator when hitting enemy ships, and ships wings tilting when they move "vertically" would add a lot.
2. The limited range of the player's bullets felt off to me. I felt that I should be able to sit at the back of the screen and hit enemies/bosses at the other side of the screen, however I was forced to move closer to hit them. This may be an intended game design choice though.
3. When the trial time period is over, if you select to buy the game, after purchasing the game it resets to the main menu, losing my progress. Would be nice if I could keep playing from where I was after purchasing, though isn't a necessity since it would only be a one time inconvenience.
4. It may just be me, but I could not figure out what to do with bombs. I expected them to damage all ships in my vicinity, but I saw the bomb graphic come up and nothing seemed to happen to the enemy ships. Is there something special I need to do with bombs?
5. Overall the first few levels felt about right challenge wise for my first few times through. Could use some power-ups for the player's gun in those first few levels to make them more interesting. Solid game at the moment though, no bugs/crashes to report.

Lets see what i wrote in reply. I will also add some commentary in a different color.

1. Yup, Graphics suck. I know. I am so glad they are being worked on now, I feel like the graphics i have in their are so old and tired. They just wanna get renewed. A lot of them will be in the next version. (Although i have written this in one form or another each time i get feedback. The fact it is still being raised means i should be calm and reply to each querry or comment like it is the first. simply because it is the first for this Playtester)
2. The range of the bullets is a direct gameplay element, it make syou have to go into danger to make the enemeies less dangerous (by killing them). This gets more lenient with the firepower upgrades as you progress simply because there is more on the screen and you will need more room to maneouver etc. I hope this makes sense. (Explaining my design choices is aweseom and always gets me excited. This time i chose a fairly short explanation, But i have written a lot on this subject in previous posts, so onwards)
3. Yeah, The game resets currently. I believe that was an oversight by me. In my previous titles I allow you to continue, I see no reason for me not to alter and fix this. Even if it is once. I do not want to start the player who just bought my game off with an , Oh noes! They might feel like it was a bad choice and not recommend it to others. (This is a good find. One i was particular about in previous games. although it happens once. It could make the difference in the persons mind. someone who has bought your game could be it's greatest ambassador, so make em happy!)
4. The bombs are standard smart bombs (smart enough to only effect enemy firepower ??), They only effect enemy bullets and not the enemy ships. Though one type of smart bomb does indeed change the enemy bullets into your own bullets and fires them away from you, possibly hitting enemies along the way. (Not sure what he expected, but it gave me another chance to talk about an aspect of my gameplay, woohoo)
5. Your final comment was interesting. Did you find the powerups for your ship? there is one on each level in 1 and 2 player modes, and 2 in 3 and 4 player modes. It sounds like maybe you did not, as the first upgrade is to Fire faster and with more range. The second levels powerup will add some three way fire to you ship. (When the new graphics go in, I am hopeful that this will be a more obvious powerup delivery system. This note did me take notice that it is at the moment not obvious enough. A Good find, though not a bug, could cost me sales!)

There ya have it. Excellent feedback and gave me lots to say.

Laters

XBLIG and PS3 Home and Pax10

Woah, a Full day at the MRI clinic this afternoon. They had to perform two scans of my elbow as each scan could not quite get the whole of my elbow in it. They are about 40 Minutes long each, adn my arm was in an awkward and painful positon for both scans. I feel surprised I amanged to last through it, it was rather painful. Of course it would have been easy if my arm could straighten, but then I would not have to go if that was the case :S Catch 22 situation.

So I'll just try hard to be brief and summarise where I am on the above title topics....

XBLIG,
I haven't had chance yet to carry on with my Global High Scores code. I reckon I will go ahead and buy the second CC premium membership and at least remove that from problems list. If it saves me an hour then it will be worth it.

PS3Home,
I have uploaded the latest Prizes and scenes today The Boss helped and Now all 210 items are uploaded and in the Sandbox, they have also been pushed to QA for I hope final testing. Live date is now only a week away. sure Hope it all passes. To be honest it has been fun fixing some of the bugs and changing a few features these past few days. Wish me luck!

Pax10,
Now this is new news today. Checkout the minor annoucnement on their page Here. Pretty cool, but what does this have to do with me and Sorcerygames? Well, should I, or shouldn't I ? If i go with it and they don't care for my game, it will not be a bad thing. I will be in the same position I am now, having a hard time marketing my games. If however they select it, my world could change. It could launch me onto so much more. This Pax10 comp is also interesting as they mention their main judging criteria is fun and gameplay. Main info Here. The game A Shooter is all about Gamplay. I can add to the fun factor with a number of mods. some of them are more time consuming, but could be worth it for this competition. Ahh, the mind boggles. I am gonna go dream about it haha!

G'night.

A Shooter Feedback #3

yeah, Another soul has deigned to test my game. Here is what they wrote.

1. Just had a play through and I couldn't find any fail issues.

2. Really great look and feel.
3. One thing I noticed is that my score wasn't updating on the global high scores table, but looking at your comments, you are working on that.
4. Also a suggestion about the high scores - I prefer it if there isn't multiple scores for the same gamer in the table, just the gamers highest ever score.
5. Hope this helps. Drop me a line when you need help testing the glocal scores transfer.

Wonderful eh. Usually I dissect each post and analyse and give my opinion. Tonight is no different.
1. This is always good to hear. It means they tested for Fail reasons like MU pulling and screen safe etc. No fails = No more time wasted on that crap. More time for making the game better.
2. What a nice thing to say. It is alwsy a great thing to get complimients, especially releveant ones. Remember they don't have to say these things. so appreciate them, then add more to the game. this person actually seems to have noticed that I went for a feel to this game. I call it gameplay.
3. Yup, my Global scores are a broken work in progress. Tennis took up my night, so I never got to work on it some more. Again, they show they read my comments. Oh comments, i haven't mentioned them before eh. Each time you put a game into playtest you can add notes that get posted into the forums. This is a VALUABLE thing to do. Tell people what has changed. Tell them what you would really like tested or comments on. Use this to your advantage. A lot of games in playtest are not doing this. And it means their games suffers from less playtesting by Peers and also less focused comments. I have seen the Devs write that they didn't need comments on the saving system or the graphics after a playtester has taken time to write down comments for them. Idiots!
4. This is one i always feel for. But i have a plan. Local scores will record all your scores. The global scores will only record your highest. This should be a great thing for everyone to see their place.
5. Yes, it all helps. I do not care how small the feedback or how large. It all helps make a better product. It is also nice that this developer has offered his services for me to test with. That is a real nice person who seems to understand the difficulties associated with this particular game component.

And that's it for tonight. It has been a hella busy day for me, and tomorrow I will write about the busy day working on the PS3 stuff.

G'night

Global High Score Component issues

After my rant last night, I thought I should bring it back down to what I am doing and not what other people are not doing. See what I did there ?

Anyway, I got the Highscore component into the game real fast. then once it compiled I called it to set it up etc. all went well, and fast! That was last night.

Tonight I am a little baffled. I thought I had to sign up for two Creator accounts to do some network testing. After many issues I found that I was not handling a local profile that had no online permissions. Ok, should be easy enough. so I set about creating another persona for me to test with. Now just so's ya know. I have two PC next to each other, as well as the Xbox. I figured I could just test between the Two PCs. Well NOOOOOOooo you cannot. Unless you have a live account. So i got one. Then i paid the money and made it golden and shiny. Still no love. It appeared I was now required to make the new Gold account a CC or creators premium account.

While I was studying this though I found a couple of posts in the XNA forums (great place for information or to help others out ya know!) These posts said I could use a Local profile on the PC. Woohoo! Cha-ching I am gonna save some money! Yeaaahhhaw!

Then about 40 minutes of playing with code and otions etc later, i am baffled. I cannot get the Xbox and PC to see each other through the systemlink. The Xbox thread seems to give up on looking for people to join shortly after it starts. Now this is not my code, so is still a little hard to work with. But it has been used in a number of games already. Why does it not work for me. And while we are at it, I do not understand how these machines can ever get to see each otehr anyway. The code requires a Host and a finder. Then when matched you can share your scores. However From what I have seen of the code and the print statements, neirther machine ever goes into Host mode. Hmmm, That could be an issue, but could be one of many.

At this point I might just cough up the money to have my two PCs connect to each other. But I don't know. I would rather buy another piece of music for the game tbh.

If anyone has any suggestions or Helpful advice. I would love to hear some. I have of course posted in the forums where otehr people have said that they are having success with this.

So it is with heavy sadness that I now go to Bed.

Sleep well y'all, I am sure I won't with my mind swimming with network connectivity possibilities.

g'night

Why not finish your Game eh?

Any idea what that title means ?

Any idea to whom i am talking ?

Well now. It seems i have failed a few games lately that still went through to the Live list, and they are now available on the Xbox in the XBLIG section. I am a Peer Reviewer, it is one of my jobs to be a reviewer and makes me a better community member. Sometimes I love the job, sometimes I find it frustrating. These last two games are on the frustrating side of things for me. Why am I frustrated with them I hear ya ask. Well, you are in luck as i am gonna tell ya.

Number #1.. I like these games. I would like to buy them one day when they are finished and go live. Hey wait a minute.. did i not already mention they had gone live and were therefore available to buy? why yes I did.

Number #2.. I do not buy unfinished games. I have written so many games over my career I believe i know when one is finished. This detail can be awkward, as some people would point out i am sure that a game is Never truly finished, it just has run it's course, or got to a good stopping point. Though i agree with these sentiments in principal, you really can tell when a game is finished and that means ready for selling.

Let me talk about the latest game that gets me frustrated. It is a nicely put together piece of software. The gameplay is solid. The graphics are good. The menus are even done with a little style. So what is the problem? Well it is one of completness. And this game is just not complete. Below I will list my playtest report to the Devs (ok, i thought the game was in playtest when in fact it was in review).

Ok, so first off, I thought this was a Playtest i was doing, so I wrote some notes up.. I have written them, so figured I might as well put them here in this thread anyhoo.
1. Hmm - The title music is very common music is it not ? And does it really say tennis? sounds like a gameshow. (personal preference obviously)
2. Bad - Sometimes the camera would move upwards and I would see a grey screen, I believe the ball may have been lobbed incredibly high.
3. Bad - sometimes the players ran to the net and stopped there for quite some time. Again i believe the ball was somewhere in the stratosphere
4. Good - nice reactions from the players after winning or losing etc
5. Bad - 40-40 is NOT freakin 40-40, it is DUECE! This will aggravate ALL tennis players no end (oh yeah, i am one!)
6. Bad - The racquet graphic has issues. a, it looks like a Wii tennis controller. b, it has missing polys near it's handle
7. Hmm - Audience Avatars are awesome, but they do not ever do anything. No yay, or clap. Seems very sterile
8. Hmm - When players change court (though it is change ends really), they move to each other and then pause there, I think you should cut before they stop moving.
9. Bad - No options. For the music and SFX volumes specifically.
10. GREAT - I loved the control. Though it was hard to figure out how to pass my opponent, they all seemed to move so well :S

So if you have read the 10 points I listed you will see that none of this points are Big. Not really. Well ok, two players could be real Big, but I never mentioned that above did I? haha. Oh wait back to topic.. So if none of the items missing from this game are so devastating to write. Why not do them. why not clean up that transition timing on the change of Ends ? Why not change the text so it Says 'Change Ends' and not 'Change courts'. C'mon i am not asking for much really. This product must have taken at least 6 months to write, and now you are going to push it out there with a few more days of work left unfinished.  WHY!?? I ASK WHY??

Rant Time!


This then is what ticks me Right Off. So many Devs on the XBLIG platform are putting out their 'Games', their pride and joy unfinished. They want it out, 'Oh c'mon it's close enough' Let's make some money sooner!. Well guess what, I doubt that your game will do so well without those last precious days of coding and touchups. People can tell when something has had that care taken on it. (Not that they always get downloaded). Most of the games that have a good Sell Thru (this is a good metric, not download numbers), have these little things tidied up. Each game has different things, but also most games have the same little things. Like sfx when pressing buttons, or fade transitions when apropriate etc.

So I am going to Appeal to the XBLIG Devs. Please publish your game after you have tidied them up and finished them. It will make the channel much more appealing and will draw a larger crowd. And i NEVER ever wanna hear some one say ever again that 'Oh sales don't matter, i just wanted to get it out, i wasn't meaning to sell it.'. Well this channel is for sale, If ya don't wanna sell it. Then publish on the PC!!

Ok, that is enough Ranting for tonight.

G'night

Global High Scores Required now

I have been in Debate about this subject with one of my good friends. The question comes down to 'Is it worth the effort to put in Global High Scores?'

This is indeed an interesting question. One i have thought about a lot. People have had real trouble with this stuff. To be honest it is a pain in the butt. However... I love knowing just how good I am at an Arcade style game. That is where I come from. I loved having the top score or Scores on the arcade machines at my local arcades. I worked hard for that achievement. It means much more to me today than the achievements we can all get in WOW or on the Xbox etc.

So the work IS worth it in my mind. I of course do not know exactly how much work it is. J.Watte has produced a nice component for the use of XBLIG folks. Very very nice of him i have to say. Though i do not like components. They like to work in a nice rigid way.. This is the issue I face. I was looking over the high score component and deciding to rip out all the network connectivity code and just put the rest of the swapping code in myself. This I am sure I can do. However it looked to be a nasty and large job. what to do eh ?  I was getting frustrated.

Then it HIT me!
I would just write a nice simple transfer function. This function would translate my highscore code to the one that the Global High Score table uses, and back again the other way. I reckon this is brilliant and will allow me to keep my custom tables, but still use the generic one that J.Watte has written. (have i mentioned he Rocks?).

So that is my plan. I will write more when I finally get to attack it this week.

G'night

DrMistry Postmortems Blazin Balls for XBLIG

A good chap, DrMistry is dedicated to creating good games. He has recently released another title onto the Xbox, and no doubt you have downloaded and played it. It is a new direction for him, as his last game was such an epic. And unfortunately an Epic fail according to him. This time he decided to make some different decisions and go in this new direction. He did a postmortem on his site which i link below. I am not sure I really like the format, but he always has something interesting to say. Next time he does a postmortem I hope for the Good, Bad, Ok approach. Till then, enjoy his Postmortem

Blazin Balls Postmortem

Laters