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HopeDagger
01-10-2005, 04:18 AM
Magma Duel was inspired by a wonderful game released for DOS in 1996, Marshmallow Duel (http://www.marshmallowduel.com). Hours of fun spent with friends on this game lead to the creation you see here today, with all sorts of changes and improvements (largely graphical!).

Magma Duel is a 2-player game (2 *people*, no AI) whereas your objective is to destroy the opposing player, whether by knocking him into the boiling magma below, or by making use of the 9 nifty powerups available randomly floating around the level. Each round the level is generated by the computer based on modifiable (see Options) values of platforms and ropes -- not to mention random colour gradient backgrounds -- offering a new feel every game.

The controls, as well as system requirements and other details/goodies are outlined in the included ReadMe.txt file in the zip archive.

So what are you waiting for? Nab a friend and get crackin'. ;)

Download Magma Duel (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums//mod/gds/download.asp?projectID=348745)

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums//mod/gds/sshot/348745-348-full.png

Feedback is a marvellous tool. It allows developers to receive suggestions, praise, critisizm, and the occassional flame. In most cases it inspires us developers to improve the game, work even harder on proceeding games, or send readers blank cheques in the mail. ;) So please share anything pertaining to the game!

K4Z
01-10-2005, 04:53 AM
Not a bad start.

The controls need a little tweaking. Like climbing up ropes. You should make the detection a little wider. It's kind of anoying when your running along and try to climb up a rope, and he jumps of the edge and dies instead :? . It's a little hard, when your running from the opponent, to stop, try and line up the rope to your skinny body, and then climb.

And although it's not really posible, but every game does it, is to allow air control, when you can change direction in air, while you jump. Makes it a little more user freindly.

Apart from the need of a graphic artist, it's quite fun :P .

WILL
01-10-2005, 09:31 PM
The graphics might be showing their origins, but they do have their charm. :)

I like how you've done some small things like changing the background gradient to spice-up the enviroment along with the configuration of the ropes and platforms and items. Not too many games consider the enviroment when they add features to their games. This is a good thing.

Oh and I don't think I could flame your game... I think magma is as hot as it gets. ;)

HopeDagger
02-10-2005, 03:28 AM
The controls need a little tweaking. Like climbing up ropes. You should make the detection a little wider. It's kind of anoying when your running along and try to climb up a rope, and he jumps of the edge and dies instead :? .

Hehe, I got the same (nearly exact) comment over at GD.NET. My response there was that I agree entirely that the rope detection width needs to be wider, but that grabbing a rope while running/walking won't be added. The reason being is because if you wanted to, say, jump over a mine but a rope is at where you'd jump, you'd climb the rope instead. It can create aggrevation either way. :/


It's a little hard, when your running from the opponent, to stop, try and line up the rope to your skinny body, and then climb.

I personally have no problem releasing the left/right key for a split second to hit the up key, but like I said, I'll work on the rope detection.


And although it's not really posible, but every game does it, is to allow air control, when you can change direction in air, while you jump. Makes it a little more user freindly.

The lack of air-control was intentional. Just paying homage to the original. ;)


Apart from the need of a graphic artist, it's quite fun :P .

Heh. Recommend anyone? I can't find anybody. :-x

I appreciate the feedback, though. I'm going to work on it and see if I can add in a basic AI opponent (or two!), as well as the above fixes.


@WILL: Thanks a bunch for the praise. :D

Traveler
02-10-2005, 09:52 AM
A neat little game! :D
There were some times I got the feeling something odd was going on, like an unsuspected explosion but never to a point where I could trace it as an actual bug.

I dont think I saw all powerups come by and some seem to appear more often than others (like the (annoying) instant death powerup (down?)). But I suppose its easier to evade those more easily if you only have to control your own character, instead of both (I didn't have someone near by to play together).

K42 already mentioned most things, like control handling. (Perhaps joystick control?/ custom control settings?) I also agree with the rope detection, it could be increased a bit. A score counter would make a nice addition.

Other than this its great, I'd say spice up the graphics a bit and you have a great remake!

WILL
02-10-2005, 05:01 PM
If I had to recommend something, I'd definately request these:

:arrow: Network play! ;) LAN or TCP/IP would be easier to get friends to play against.

Plus two people on one keyboard... :P You'll run into issues with the other person holding keys or registering someone elses key instead of yours... I had a game I made that used this type of control and this was a major issue that people mentioned to me.

:arrow: Joystick/pad control, also a solution to the two people, one keyboard issue. Besides joypads are just... cooler! 8) I love my Madcatz XBox style controller, but it never gets enough use. :?

:arrow: When your best friend is kicking your butt he wants to see it! :P A score or frag count should be there to keep the story straight in case of "I'm winning!" "No, I'm winning!" debates. ;)

:arrow: Maybe a tiny indicator for what upgrade is active for what player? Could go under the frag count/score label.

AFTER PLAYING

:arrow: Number of rounds! Allow the option ot set number of rounds and have a "Round One" announcement or something. This will help for keeping score and keeping the gameplay going without having to mess with menus in between and such.

:arrow: End Match Stats! Some players LOVE this. It shows neat little tally of what kind of players they are. It also makes the game seem smart that it can size up it's players too. And people generally like to use these values to compete against others aswell.

:arrow: If you had some AI and the NET/LAN feature I'd recommend a tournoment mode of play. Sort of like elimination.

:arrow: High scores stored. Take say the top 10 scores and have players store their names from games played locally and on a NET/LAN game. Some developers like to seperate these into NET/LAN and LOCAL, but I say just put 'em in together. If you like you can use an icon to indicate the difference. Maybe it's the player/team's sybmol or flag too? Like in Worms.

:arrow: Yeah definately wider rope detection, but also... maybe be able to grab and start climbing ropes while jumping? Would help to be able to jump out of an enemy's weapon aim and onto a nice safe rope. :)

:arrow: Maybe it's just my computer but the running seemed a tad slow. Then again I alteredthe settings by hitting default so this may be my fault. :?

:arrow: A far-out idea, but definately for NET/LAN/AI play, 3+ rumble and co-op team play... On ship my mess mates(a mess on a ship is like a room with bunks and a lounge area for us when we are not on watch(working ;))) have an N64 and all we do sometimes is play Mario Cart 4 player... You'd be supprised how much fun we all have. There is often 3 to 4 playing at once. More friends equals more fun, I say!

Other than that, I love the different moves the guys can do to run jump and roll out of the way of an attack. Nicely done! ;)

HopeDagger
02-10-2005, 09:41 PM
Holy smokes! Nice timing, WILL. I've actually decided to bring back development on Magma Duel as a main project again, so your timing couldn't have been better. :)




:arrow: Network play! ;) LAN or TCP/IP would be easier to get friends to play against.

This is going to happen, for sure. The plan is to get a server up to act as a listing of all current games being played, so players can join in on rounds and such. It'll be a big undertaking, though.


Plus two people on one keyboard... :P You'll run into issues with the other person holding keys or registering someone elses key instead of yours... I had a game I made that used this type of control and this was a major issue that people mentioned to me.

I'll note that one, since it's sounds like the kind of thing that would frusterate me for hours when I never would have thought of it. ;)


:arrow: Joystick/pad control, also a solution to the two people, one keyboard issue. Besides joypads are just... cooler! 8) I love my Madcatz XBox style controller, but it never gets enough use. :?

Nice -- I have the same Madcatz controller! :D I'll look into setting up joypad support.


:arrow: When your best friend is kicking your butt he wants to see it! :P A score or frag count should be there to keep the story straight in case of "I'm winning!" "No, I'm winning!" debates. ;)

Definitely going to be added as well.


:arrow: Maybe a tiny indicator for what upgrade is active for what player? Could go under the frag count/score label.

Easily done and quite effective. Will do.


:arrow: Number of rounds! Allow the option ot set number of rounds and have a "Round One" announcement or something. This will help for keeping score and keeping the gameplay going without having to mess with menus in between and such.

:arrow: End Match Stats! Some players LOVE this. It shows neat little tally of what kind of players they are. It also makes the game seem smart that it can size up it's players too. And people generally like to use these values to compete against others aswell.

Both good ones. I'll add these.


:arrow: If you had some AI and the NET/LAN feature I'd recommend a tournoment mode of play. Sort of like elimination.

We'll see. :)


:arrow: High scores stored. Take say the top 10 scores and have players store their names from games played locally and on a NET/LAN game. Some developers like to seperate these into NET/LAN and LOCAL, but I say just put 'em in together. If you like you can use an icon to indicate the difference. Maybe it's the player/team's sybmol or flag too? Like in Worms.

What worries me about a list of online highscores is that players can just hack their memory and change their scores before it's sent off to the highscore list server. Can this be evaded?


:arrow: Yeah definately wider rope detection, but also... maybe be able to grab and start climbing ropes while jumping? Would help to be able to jump out of an enemy's weapon aim and onto a nice safe rope. :)

I've already fixed the rope detection issue. As for the rope-catching, I'll perhaps add it later and see how it feels ingame to see if it's worth keeping.


:arrow: Maybe it's just my computer but the running seemed a tad slow. Then again I alteredthe settings by hitting default so this may be my fault. :?

The Defaults button should bring it back to the original settings the game was zipped with. I've included code to keep the game speed framerate independant, so it might just be that your video card isn't too great. I'm not sure.


:arrow: A far-out idea, but definately for NET/LAN/AI play, 3+ rumble and co-op team play... On ship my mess mates(a mess on a ship is like a room with bunks and a lounge area for us when we are not on watch(working ;))) have an N64 and all we do sometimes is play Mario Cart 4 player... You'd be supprised how much fun we all have. There is often 3 to 4 playing at once. More friends equals more fun, I say!

I'm not entirely following. You mean 3+ on one computer, or..? How would this work differently than normal net play? Sorry; I'm feeling pretty dense today after a long day of work. :/


Thanks a huge amount for the comprehensive listing of suggestions and ideas, WILL. I'll definitely give credit to you for the effort you've given to try to make Magma Duel better. Thanks again! :)

savage
25-10-2005, 07:16 AM
Just wondering if there have been any updates?

HopeDagger
26-10-2005, 12:08 AM
*pokes savage*

After many harsh weeks, Magma Duel sees a nice juicy update for all to consume. :)


New In Magma Duel 1.2
======================
-> Brand new, spiffier player sprites/animations
-> Round-based play, with scoring of kills, deaths, cause-of-death, and each player's favourite item throughout the game
-> New settable options (powerup spawn speed, per-round delay, # of rounds)
-> Bigger rope detection radius for climbing
-> Binary checkboxes for powerup selection in Options (previously you had to tediously enter a percentage for each powerup)
-> Dramatic 'SPLASH!'ing of magma when players or platforms fall into the gooey magma below
-> Half-way towards online play (most likely in the next release!)

Many more hard hours of work were put into Magma Duel, and your feedback for continuously improving it are most graciously appreciated. So grab a friend and nab Magma Duel -- you might just have some fun. :)

Download Magma Duel (http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums//mod/gds/download.asp?projectID=348745)

http://members.gamedev.net/hopedagger/md_scr9.png

Traveler
26-10-2005, 08:14 PM
An excellent update! I still had nobody to play along, but I enjoyed to test the various new things.

Overall it plays very well! Only one odd thing happend while both the characters where affected by electricity. After they collided, both jumped into oposite directions, which resulted in a dramatic death in the magma (great work on the splashing btw). The screen that followed stated that the cause was due to a character switch, while it was in fact the electricity that killed the poor fellow.

I also tried an online game, but I came no further than the connecting screen, so I gave up after a few minutes.

A more than worthy remake to the origional if you ask me.

HopeDagger
27-10-2005, 02:54 AM
An excellent update! I still had nobody to play along, but I enjoyed to test the various new things.

Doh. Either AI or online play will appear in the next release. I promise. ;)


Overall it plays very well! Only one odd thing happend while both the characters where affected by electricity. After they collided, both jumped into oposite directions, which resulted in a dramatic death in the magma (great work on the splashing btw). The screen that followed stated that the cause was due to a character switch, while it was in fact the electricity that killed the poor fellow.

Ah, I see. When two people with electricity hit, it bounces them apart and cancels out the electricity on both. I'll have to change it to count that as the death cause. Thanks!


I also tried an online game, but I came no further than the connecting screen, so I gave up after a few minutes.

Like I said, online play isn't in yet.


A more than worthy remake to the origional if you ask me.

Thank you very much. Your continuous feedback (along with WILL) is hugely appreciated. Thanks! :D