GemChase Alpha

[pstudio]

Any ideas? What would make it more challanging?

I like Kosek's idea
But I was also thinking that it could be more challenging if you had limited fuel resources. I'm just popping out some numbers, but let's say that the ship can contain 100l fuel. Then if the landing platform only has 200l fuel in reserves, the player won't be able to just fly around carelessly, but will have to fly strategic to save on the fuel. You could also then place some fuel tanks on hard to reach located areas.
It would probably require some tweaking with the numbers, but it would make it a bit more challeging. Its just to easy to fuel up right now.

It could also be interesting if the amount of fuel affects the ships mass and thereby its stearing capability. When fuelled up the ships will fly slow and hard to steer while it will fly fast and react fast to playes input when there's almost none fuel left.

EDIT: I just died on timeout at the first level because I couldn't get the last purple gem. :? You should make sure that the correct coloured gems at least pops up before the times run out. I collected about 20 other gems while waiting for the purple one, but it never came. I would classify this as a flaw in the game
EDITEDIT: Has anybody actually completed the ninth level? I died once again because of timeout. I was collecting gems all the time but I was still missing 7 green gems and two blue. The game only created 3 green gems on 5 minutes. You should rellay look into this Dirk
I as the player didn't think I made anything wrong, but still I wan't capable of completing the game. It's a sign on bad game design according to a book I read

[Huehnerschaender]

Thank you very much Robert and Peter... I will take care about both of your suggestions.

The gem spawning was already tweeked so that it spawns all needed gems in every case. But now I have spawn points, which are the only places for gems to spawn. Do you have any idea how I can keep the randomness and still be sure that all the needed gems spawn? I mean, what if the player has 90 seconds... flys around for 80 seconds without picking up a gem... How can I make sure, that he still can reach the goal? And do I really want that in such a case? I mean, the levels will be designed for a critical amount of time (the final levels, not the ones in this version). What if the player is idle for 20 seconds without pausing the game...

The spawnpoints are designed in the following way:
for example if I have 3 spawnpoints, then I can specify in the editor that 2 of them can hold a gem simultanously. So that the third is free in every case... this is needed to prevent the player from hanging around on a spawnpoint. The last picked up spawnpoint will never be the spawnpoint who creates the next gem... If there are more than one free spawnpoints then the game picks it randomly... but not the one which was just picked up!

So with this system... what do you think I can do to make it work?

One solution I can think of right now is the following:

While designing the levels I try to find an average amount of seconds the player will need to pick up a gem...

With this time I can now precalculate a chain of gems which will contain all needed gems and does not exceed the leveltime.

So some kind of formula would be:
Amount of gems in chain * average time <= leveltime

[pstudio]

First of all, if the player doesn't collect gems for 20 secodns its his/her own fault.
The chain could possible solve the problem. At least you will have to look at the timelimit for a level.
Perhaps you could say that it takes 6 seconds in average to collect a gem. Then when the game spawns a gem you look at how much time is left and how many gems needs being collected. If there is 80 seconds left and the player is only missing 2 gems there is no problem. You can spawn any colour you like because it is expected that the player can collect the gems and wait for new one to spawns with the right colur before time runs out.
However if there is only 30 seconds left you should make sure the right coloured gems are spawned.
You should also set a minimum seconds left (20 for instance) for the last coloured gem to be spwaned if the player collects gems with 6 seconds between. Not sure it's clear but here is an algorithm when spawning

if 'gems left to collect' * 'average time to collect gems' <= 'time left' - 'minimum time border' then
spawn right coloured gem
else
spawn whatever you feel like.

I think this could solve the problem in a reasonable way.

Btw. it would be nice with some sound indicating when there is 10 seconds left. Perhaps also when there is one, two.. minutes left.

and you may want to prevent the game from spawning bombs when the player is on the spawning point. I got a shock (ok perhaps not a shock) and thought I'd died for a second. It's a bit confusing since it explodes right away.

[czar]

Hi Dirk,

Well you could have set points for the gems, then bring them up randomly and then set final time to final gem pop up time plus a certain number of seconds.

Or you could do away with time restrictions (I hate them - I am too slow) and instead have bonus points that decrease the longer you take to finish the level.

[Huehnerschaender]

Thanks for the replies.

I will think about all this when I finished my new players ship... I did not like the "sprite" I rendered and today I made a low poly version of the ship and now I have a 3D model as players ship which I can rotate etc... feels much better now to steer the ship... but it's not complete yet...

[Huehnerschaender]

Hehehe... I finished the movement of the new ship and it feels completely different, even though the mechanics did not change... strange

The only thing I changed is that I reduced acceleration when flying up. That means, it's a little more like Robert said. You need to press up for a longer time to go up. No more uphopping by tabbing the up key and so you also need more fuel when going up, because you need to press the key longer....

I will upload a new test version now... gimme some minutes...


EDIT:

Here it is...
http://www.dino-it.de/GemChaseBeta.zip

Please let me know how you think about the new ship...

[Robert Kosek]

Okay.

1. The ship jitters when still.
2. The ship can be damaged when a new level starts if the prior level ended with the ship in a "humorous" angle.
3. The ship rotating horizontally (not the turning upside down or anything) gets a little distracting visually from the motion.
4. Thrusting down on pads should be programmatically disallowed -- it damages the ship.

IMO the wobbles and stutters of the ship are too frequent and fast, and the general turning speed is too fast and not quite as smooth as I would expect. Not so bad on the latter part, but the former produces flickers.

The new thrust amount makes it a little tougher, but I got finished by a meteor anyway. They now 1 hit kills?

EDIT:
You might want to try alt-tabbing and clicking the task bar entry once or twice, and then the little minimized window. You get the following screenshot which is messy. DanJetX appears to suffer the same problem as Asphyre 4.

[Huehnerschaender]

1. The ship jitters when still.
2. The ship can be damaged when a new level starts if the prior level ended with the ship in a "humorous" angle.
3. The ship rotating horizontally (not the turning upside down or anything) gets a little distracting visually from the motion.
4. Thrusting down on pads should be programmatically disallowed -- it damages the ship.

2. and 4. fixed...

What do you mean with "jitters when still"? When it stand still on a platform or when it flies?

3... What do you mean? Pressing left or right?

IMO the wobbles and stutters of the ship are too frequent and fast, and the general turning speed is too fast and not quite as smooth as I would expect. Not so bad on the latter part, but the former produces flickers.

Hmmm... I made the movement to look a little comic like... like if the ship is a marionette.
What do you mean with "it produces flickers"? I can't see anything flickering here on my machine...

The new thrust amount makes it a little tougher, but I got finished by a meteor anyway. They now 1 hit kills?

Oh shit... I have an overall damage factor which I changed because the one in the previous version was much too easy... but I did not test it completely. So I must adjust the damage a meteor makes... sorry

EDIT:
You might want to try alt-tabbing and clicking the task bar entry once or twice, and then the little minimized window. You get the following screenshot which is messy. DanJetX appears to suffer the same problem as Asphyre 4.

Oh, I will test it... seems like an "on lost device" problem... there is already a discussion on DanJetX Forums about similar problems....


Thanks for the test Robert... would be nice if you could explain the parts a little more that I did not understand

Greetings

[Robert Kosek]

What do you mean with "jitters when still"? When it stand still on a platform or when it flies?

Both, unfortunately. It is most visible on the platform where no motion should be that there is a tiny jitter that is slightly visible. In the air it is like the saucer is going through turbulence or something.

3... What do you mean? Pressing left or right?

I don't mean pitch or yaw, but the actual top-down turning of the craft. IE, "Rotation"/"spinning" and such. Turning right and left are when it is visible in the legs seemingly rotating like an upside down merry-go-round for a few short seconds. (Mostly in the initial turn.)

Oh, I will test it... seems like an "on lost device" problem... there is already a discussion on DanJetX Forums about similar problems....

I would point out that it isn't technically a lost device. It might be a lost/recreated form handle that didn't get updated in your device. Asphyre4 has full lost device support and suffers the same problem. The only work around, the source of the issue is the VCL implementation of forms, is to directly create windows through the Windows API. That's as much I know on this subject and it is untested so far.

[Robert Kosek]

Okay, the level with 3 mines and only cyan pieces to collect needs a little tweaking. I died because I ran out of time because too few cyan pieces were generated. I made it back to the fuel pad every time, and I got every piece on the screen -- but there weren't enough cyan pieces to win that one.