Eons

[Wizard]

Hi guys, here's my game called "Eons" written with Delphi 6 & DelphiX. Please test and tell me what you think :-)

It's a SpaceFighterGame and you have to fight alien ships to survive...If you get more than 100 000 points you get a HighScore :-)

I finally managed to get an upload link for the .zip file, here it is:

http://w12.easy-share.com/2814571.html


http://upload2.postimage.org/156663/Shot.jpg (http://upload2.postimage.org/156663/photo_hosting.html)

[Robert Kosek]

Um, screenshots, descriptions? What is it just beyond the name?

[jasonf]

OK,

Not bad, I'm liking the graphics. Nice renders.
I do have a list of things I think you could improve though.. (please don't take my comments too seriously)

1, The countdown when you start.. there doesn't seem to be a reason for it.. once the player is ready, they should be able to skip it.

2, The explosion animations are way too short.. just a flicker, this makes things look very disjointed, there is a lot going on on the screen and it's hard to track badguys and explosions.. I'm not explaining myself very clearly.. it's also a lot more satisfying to see a nice explosion once a bad guy dies, reward your players, give them eye candy explosions :-)

3, There are too many bad guys on screen for the initial level.. as levels progress, you could increase the number of badguys, but it's too busy.. it feels like the player has just left the training academy and ended up at the final push.

4, Not enough bullets. It looks like your ship can only fire one bullet at once, allowing the next one to be fired as soon as the bullet has hit the top of the screen.. It might be better to make the next bullet time based and allow more than one bullet on screen at once, especially considering how busy the level is. Also, slow the bullets down a little, make it a little more skill based.

5, The music needs changing.. it doesn't sound like a shoot-em-up tune at all, more like a RPG in the forest with the pixies kind of tune. get rid of that X-Files file, it's copyrighted. I'd use IT module files if I were you. SXMedia supports them. You can get free IT modules from www.modplug.com

6, Movement.. it's too rigid. If you make it so that there's momentum to your movements, it'll add smoother movement and make it more challenging and fun.

If you can improve these things, then your game will really shine.
Good work.

[czar]

I can't seem to download anything - 2.jpg game.exe etc - why not zip and make it available in one go?

A screenshot would be good.

[WILL]

Your screenshots are a bit tricky to get to. Why not just use the image posting system we have setup here on PGD using PostImage.org? We can see a thumbnail right on the page too. (attracts more eyes/feedback than just text)

[Wizard]

The ScreenShots:
http://upload2.postimage.org/154025/photo_hosting.html
http://upload2.postimage.org/154141/photo_hosting.html
http://upload2.postimage.org/154147/photo_hosting.html
http://upload2.postimage.org/154152/photo_hosting.html

Sorry about the upoad mess, I'm surprised that JasonF could actually download and play the game :-)

Czar, I made a zip file but once it's downloaded the content can't be viewed :-( Any suggestion of where it can be properly uploaded?

Does anyone know where I can upload the zip file for you guys to have a look?

Thanks for the feedback JasonF, it's appreciated. I will look into your suggestions. This is my first game but re-written from scratch in a more OO way, with StateEngines, etc.. Thanks to AthenaOfDelphi who showed me how to do OO :-)

Will, thanks for your help :-) Maybe I can e-mail the zip file to you and you can give a link to upload? Once the upload link is in place and working can you mabe bump it to a news item?

Thanks! :-)

http://upload2.postimage.org/154141/Shot1.jpg (http://upload2.postimage.org/154141/photo_hosting.html)
http://upload2.postimage.org/154147/Shot2.jpg (http://upload2.postimage.org/154147/photo_hosting.html)

[jasonf]

Cool, I don't think the changes I suggested, if you wanted to implement them, would be too tricky. You're using DelphiX so it's quite simple.

The smooth movement left and right could be achieved by storing a force value. Inside your ship class, you've probably got Left and Right methods which are called by the game engine when the user presses the left or right buttons.. these methods instead of incrementing x by a fixed amount would increment a force instead. Then in the tick event, the x is incremented by the force. You cap the amount the force can be incremented to so that you don't build up a massive amount of thrust. This should make things quite smooth. If your movement was by 10 pixels before, then you might want to make your thrust value increment by 3. Then if the player is not thrusting, decrement the force value to 0.

The multiple bullets could be done using an array of bullet sprites. When you fire, you create a bullet object (if one doesn't already exist which is now invisible) and add it to the game and to your array. This bullet would have its position set to the ships position and would travel at a fixed speed towards the top of the screen. Once the bullet hits a bad guy or the top of the screen, make it invisible so that it can be re-used (just look through your bullets array to find an invisible sprite)

Your explosion problem should be easy to track down and fix.
A good program for creating nice eye candy explosions is this : http://exgen.thegamecreators.com/

Good luck with everything.

[Wizard]

Thanks for the links and advice Jason :-)

Keep up the good work :-)


HERE IS THE LINK TO MY GAME:

http://w12.easy-share.com/2814571.html

[Huehnerschaender]

The game seems to run way too fast on my machine... its really hard to steer. When I press left or right it needs only 1/2 second to go from one screen edge to the other. Also the enemys are moving and animating much too fast.

Impossible to play at this speed :)

Anyway, I would suggest exactly the same things Mr. Farmer already mentioned.

Greetings,
Dirk

[Wizard]

Thanks Dirk, I'll have to work on it and try to make everything a bit slower and more manageable and playable :-) Thanks for testing :-)

[Huehnerschaender]

Making it just slower will not solve the problem that it runs slow on one machine and fast on another... you need to make game calculations framerateindependant... or is it just too fast?

[Wizard]

I have made it frame rate independant but my calculations might be a bit too fast. I did test it on a very fast machine and it seemed fine as well as on a slow machine...but then again I might think it's fine as it is and someone else might think it's not.

I wanted it fast i.e. the player's left and right movement so that bombs from above can be dodged...

This is how the player will move:


dxtimer1.Interval:= 1000 div 100;
NewTime := TimeGetTime;
UpdateSpeed := (NewTime - OldTime) * OneMSec;
OldTime := NewTime;

Where OneMSec: Single = 100/1000;

and


if (isLeft in form1.DXInput1.States) and(x>5) then
X := X - (10 * UpdateSpeed);

I can make all objects in my game slower by changing the value of OneMSec to maybe 70/1000 :-)