Eons SpaceFighter

[Robert Kosek]

Hello Wizard, I tried it.

I found some trouble in your FPS counter. I have a NVidia 8600GS so I run the game no problem, but it seems that the FPS counter's type might be overflowing. It says 7 FPS even though it is smooth and responsive; only the warping text effects are slower (though I don't know why, maybe the age of DirectDraw is showing).

When you start a game the enemies don't scroll down into the screen as I anticipated, I literally started amongst a huge crowd of ships that were all firing. So there was no warm up, and collision was too sensitive. Short story elongated ... the same ship shot me to pieces all three times inside of six seconds. You might want to work the player up to that sort of frenzy, rather than starting off right there.

So far your work is very good! Congratulations on working on it all the way through.

[Wizard]

Hi Robert, thanks for testing See, that's why I need you guys to test, I'm so used to the game that I immediately move around and start firing...suppose I'm used to the feel of it and I haven't thought about someone playing the game for the first time.

I test the game on my work PC and my laptop and I find that the FPS shows 7 or thereabouts on the intro and end screens for some reason and then 75 fps in the playing state. I don't know why but all movement is time based and not fps based. This is my 2nd completed game using unDelphiX but I think I'll look into SDL for future projects.

Thanks for your positive thoughts

[Traveler]

Hello Wizzard

I too have tried your game for a spin. You seem to have a lot of the basics covered already. Now it is time to refine. You say, it's completed. I dare say it's not. Take a closer look and see how complete it really is, as there seem to be quite a few areas that still need tweaking, before you can really say it's completed

Let's start from the beginning.
Your game has no options. Ok, that's understandable for a game of this size. But even so, imagine how you enjoy the (midi?!) background music, I myself find it horrible. It makes me want to seek out the midi options in Windows and turn it off. (well actually I dont, but I'm making a point here).
My point is, not everyone likes your choice of music. Make it so people can turn if off, or they will turn away from your game.

Be sure to test your game in Vista as well. I dont have XP at home anymore so I can't say for sure if it's the case on XP too(I assume its not), but on Vista the mouse disappears if it isn't near the border. Somehow it is visible near the borders, but as soon as I move it to the center, it disappears. It's very weird, I know.

Next one isn't mandatory, although it does help solve the problem Robert mentions. Use some kind of fade in/out when changing screens. It gives the player an idea of what's going on. Right now, I'm going from the main screen/menu to the game in a split second. One moment I'm listening to a familiar tune, the next it's instant action. It sounds good, but it really is not.

Then the game itself. It all looks very hectic. There's a lot going on and a lot of it is going wrong in some way or another.

You've got fighters moving from top to bottom, although they never actually reach the bottom. Moments before fighters get there, they suddenly disappear and apparently restart from the top again.

There are rockets going down the screen as well, but they have some kind of odd flicker during the animation.

Already mentioned by Robert, but collision detection does not appear to be pixel precise. This is especially apparent with the larger enemies. This makes out for a really annoying experience as you often think you're safe while you're actually not.

When I fire two or more bullets in a row and the first one hits an enemy fighter, all of my bullets are destroyed instead of just the one that hit the enemy fighter.

This one is really odd, but on some occasions, when I shoot one of the smaller fighters I immediately see a new fighter reappear. Usually a bit lower than the fighter that got shot.

You should also recheck the position of the planets. Currently they are drawn last, while they should be drawn first.

There's a few more things, but I think you'll get the idea.

Dont get me wrong here, as I do applaud you for getting this far. But the way I see it, you do have a few hurdles to cross before you can call it completed

[Wizard]

Hi Traveler thanks for the reply. Wow, what a long reply :-) Ok if I think about it I would agree with you, my game is far from completed, a few things still needs to be tweaked. So let’s call it version 0.1. At the moment the big mother ship can’t be shot and there are too many enemy ships from the start, I actually started with 30 and reduced it to 15…maybe I should start with 5 and increase at score of 50 000 etc.

The music, well I have to say that I don’t like it very much myself, it was the only track I could find on the net that sort of resembles a space shooter game. In fact I think it’s a Star-wars theme if I remember correctly. I’ll work on an option to turn music on or off.

The cursor in XP does exactly the same, it’s not visible in the centre but becomes visible at the borders even though I have DXdrawGame.Cursor := crNone. Don’t know why. The reason I kill the fighter sprites near the bottom of the screen is for them not to collide with the player, I’ll think about it.

The rocket animation, well I’m still searching the net for gifs that will give proper animation. I have pixel check off in the game, I’ll do some further tests. The smaller fighters “clone” immediately once one is shot and their “re-appearance” is at random positions.

I knew about the bullets being killed once one collides with an enemy. Problem is that I had bullet.dead in my collision procedure after enemy.dead and this caused eAccess Violation errors, the call to bullet.dead is now in the bullet.move procedure i.e. if (enemy.hit) then dead. I’ll do some further testing.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions The game was initially made for my brothers’ little boy of seven and has evolved into something else.

[Huehnerschaender]

Hi Wizard,

today I was able to download your game and I played it for a while.

To make this "review" short I just second the post of Traveler.

There are some things that should be "fixed" before you can call it complete.

Things like the planets hiding shots or enemys are something that players will not tolerate. It does not harm gameplay but it harms game experience. It gives a bad taste of "Who the f&$% tested this game?"

Also the vanishing bullets are very annoying.

Are there stages within the game? I did not see any level announcement or a stage proceed... maybe I was a too bad player maybe there isn't a level/stage mechanism?

All in all its a good start to make a complete game... you already have all the essentials in it. Scene management, gameplay is nearly finished etc. Polish it! Its worth it!

Greetings,
Dirk

[Wizard]

Hi Dirk, thanks for your comments. The planets hiding the bullets and enemies is sorted out, it's now drawn first and not last. Well, at the moment there's no level advances. The object of the game is simply to get a score of 100k or more with a bonus life being awarded at certain intervals. I'll see if I can't build levels into the game.

The vanishing bullets are still a problem that I need to work on.

Once I'm ready and after I've worked on all your suggestions, I'll post again

Enjoy your holliday