big thumbs up to svero

[Bmc]

just played BB over at iWin. Nicely Done! Puts Luxor and the rest of them to shame.

[svero]

Well thanks... this is kind of a soft launch so don't you media people start posting news everywhere :-) Shhh.. its a secret.. At least for a few days to let us catch any problems. We'll be releasing a slightly upgraded version next month.

As far as how it is compared to Luxor and them.. I donno really. Im never really sure how customers will react. Luxor is super slick and you can't help but respect that level of presentation. Anyway, I would say I'm cautiously optimistic it will do well, but I don't really know for certain. As always.. players will decide.

[Andy]

Thanks God at least he starts it FINALLY... :-)
Good luck with so long waiting title Steve!!!

[Emmanuel]

Very well executed, the movies and new elements per level are excellent incentives to keep playing. Best of luck!

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[Jim Buck]

Very amazing presentation. *Everything* has some kind of animation! The subtle bonuses are great. The rendering of the bug "hobble" animation is awesome with just the right touch of lighting.

Like I said in the other thread, you will be running to the bank daily with piles of cash. That should last you at your current residence for, oh, 20 lifetimes. :)

[Bmc]

one of my favorite things about it is the catching the sparks part. I definetly think it's for the best that you were blindsided by Luxor and Tumblebugs because it would'nt of drove you to make the game this good.

I think if this doesn't make you bank then there is something seriously wrong :)

[svero]

Some people don't like the sparks and some do. In the end Quest mode has a lot of specific differences that get introduced gradually, and Classic mode is more the standard game but with awards you can win to give it a little extra. I added classic because i was specifically worried that Id changed the game up too much and I wanted to ensure that the thing that customers all loved was still in there to some extent. There are more things as you progress in quest mode that are not in other games, but I will refrain from going into detail so as not to ruin the "surprise".. if there is one.

[digriz]

So, is there anyway the uninformed (me) can get a trial version now to have a look at?

[AlexN]

just played BB over at iWin. Nicely Done! Puts Luxor and the rest of them to shame.

BB? What's the full name of the game?

[svero]

Beetle Bomp...

- S

[sparkyboy]

Yes I gotta agree wholeheartedly! :) One of the best things for me besides the slick presentation and animations was.......REAL BUGS!! ( and prety cute too).

If this is not as big a hit as the rest then, well, there is no justice in the world.
Very very well done Steve! :)

Congrats


Mark.

[Escapee]

whoa haha .. the animation has to be the cutest i have seen after Chuzzle ,
May success be with you !!! :D

[svero]

So, is there anyway the uninformed (me) can get a tril version now to have a look at?

Its on the download page at iwin.com -- ill have it up on my site soon as well.

[Nexic]

I just fired up Beetle Bomp and to be honest my first impression of the game was lower than I expected. I wasn't a huge fan of the cutscene and I thought the feedback when hitting a bug was a little weak. However after a couple of rounds I really started to enjoy it.

The great thing that you've done is add loads of interesting and original gameplay elements. This ISNT a standard clone. I really love it when the bugs start going really fast and that really silly music starts playing! I like the egg and spark catching as well.

Unlike other clones, I can see many people who already have a game like Luxor will still buy this, as its so much more interesting.

Overall my only real critisisms are the sound feedback when the bugs collide feels a bit weak, the zuma style knocking sound feels more rewarding to me. And I think the movies would be much better if it were young cute looking children, or some kind of animal character instead.

This is surely going to do really well.

[stanchat]

It went past the girl sequence but when it got to the Lyle sequence it died with this error.


Error message

=============

Game Version: 1.0.0.0
Build Number: N/A

Video driver: RADEON 9800 PRO
Graphics Engine:

Operating System information:
Major version: 5
Minor version: 1
Build number: 2600
Service Pack 2

Fault Location:
D:\PROGRAM FILES\IWIN.COM GAMES\BEETLE BOMP\RELEASE_GKERNEL.DLL+0x0000CB45

[svero]

There seems to be some radeon problem. I think we have a fix.

- S

(well turns out it has nothing to do with radeon.. but i think we have it fixed)

[Addictive 247]

Even though I'm not really a fan of this type of game the presentation and polish is outstanding - nice work! I don't really like the cut scenes but I'm sure the players will love them.

It's definately going to be a hit!

[stanchat]

After hearing the music my wife started playing and here are her comments:

She actually really liked the first Beetle Bomp Demo you released BTW..


Her comments:

The first couple levels seemed a little dark
She did not get the sparks thing at first.
She thought the levels looked crowded.
Nice Graphics

My comments:

At first I didn't get the aim cursor changing colors to match the ball, but I think it a very good subtle visual aid.

Not feeling the the movie sequences at all. Gives me that Zzed feeling. Great game with too many un-needed cut scenes.

The bonuses/Sparks are sometimes not instinctive. At times they seem to blend into the background too much



All in all this is a really good game and should make you a very rich man!!

Congratulations!!

[svero]

The movies seem to be really touch n go. A lot of players seem to love them and want to play almost entirely to see the next movie, and other players dont like them at all. I'm a little surprised by how many people dont like them. Especially considering how simple they are to skip.

- S

[papillon]

The movie sequences weren't my thing - but the bugs are adorable. Can I get a pet-raising game with the same bugs? :)

[Ricardo C]

First, the criticisms:

I really didn't care for the cutscenes. The art style is completely at odds with the actual game, and the story is just too overdone. Some games just aren't meant to have a storyline explaining why you're performing this or that task. But as long as they're skippable, I'm good.

Some of the levels do feel a little crowded. The original beta demo felt a little more "open".

Now the good:

I love the addition of the sparks! The mayhem that follows when the zapper is fully charged is great.

The soundtrack kicks ass. Not as bombastic as Luxor's, or as somber as Atlantis'. It has a certain Zuma-like quaity, in terms of the beat, and the vaguely ethnic feel (or at least, it sounds ethnic to me).

I can only decribe the graphics as "tasty". The glossy bugs are gorgeous to look at, and the backgrounds are perfect. The best-looking game in the genre, by far.

All in all, a great game. I think taking the extra time was well worth it :)

[princec]

Steve already knows what I think but here's the public record:

1. Sparks are crap. Can't see them, they move too fast, and they look like a particle effect rather than a pickup.

2. Cutscenes I ignore in nearly any game.

The rest is kosher.

Cas :)

[Sirrus]

Great job, definately an improvement from the last time I played!

Good choice removing poison as the ball ;)

Only critic I have is the speed of the balls. They feel very heavy.

Other than that, nice!

[jankoM]

I agree with what others said. I am just going to say where my oppinion differs from others. I like the cutscenes. I am feeling -casual- (read lazy) today and it feels good to take a rest from moving the mouse and partially thinking and just look at something and being entertained.

Yes sparks are not see&know powerups (I could think that I should avoid them just like that-or ignore them) but the tutorial explains nicely what it is and I like poweups that are logical and with-in the context for a change not that fruits/coins/magic metalic things... pop from the bug that was just zapped.

Janko M.

[Phil Steinmeyer]

Very nice - great polish throughout.

Love the music

Love the bug animation

Ambivalent about the cutscenes

Loved all the animation and color throughout

Sparks are ok, not great addition.

Great overall!

[Savant]

Very nice!

The sparks thing confused me at first as well, even though I watched the cut scene. It took me half a round to get that "Oh!" moment where it finally clicked.

I really like how you've varied up the gamplay as well. Things are normal until you get the meter full - then the bugs start sprinting and it's more of an arcade type game. Then the queen drops the eggs. I love that. Keeps things interesting as I'm always switching gears.

As for the story, I think you should have ditched the voice recording. Unless you can get really high quality voice actors it usually detracts from the game.

[Giuli]

Very nice game but it only works when playing with Administrator account :(

[svero]

I thought the voice actors were good. Wasnt just people hanging around my house or anything. But as I said before different people seem to react differently to the movies. I wonder sometimes if its a bit of that "cartoons are for kids" mentality that creeps in with some people. But anyway.. some people like em and some dont. They are skippable. I'd recommend those people who dont care for movies or sparks play in classic mode. Thats what its there for and there's fun to be had collecting medals too.

[Savant]

I agree, they were good. But unless they're great they stand out as something detracting to me. But that's just my opinion ... if I'm in the minority, file this in the appropriate round bin. :)

[Emmanuel]

Personally I really like the movies. They have a LucasArts adventure games feel to it (Maniac Mansion and whatnot), especially the side perspective for the characters. It's my main incentive to play through the levels (otherwise the game may become very repetitive very quickly).

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[lakibuk]

The new version is great.
I am a cut-scene hater but i kind of liked the movies, especially the cute tiny bugs in them.
Also like the spark collecting idea.
btw: Does iWin like the game so much that it's featured twice?

[svero]

Those 2 versions are a little different I think. A poor man's ab test.

[arcadetown]

Overall very nice and tons better than 90% of the Puzz Loop style games being slapped out there. Glad to see you finally getting it released and see why the delay as the cutscenes alone was probably a pretty large effort.

Production quality top notch.

Cutscenes, liked em but were too long and static. Here's an awesome flash game with excellent cutscenes, Dad N Me (http://www.heavygames.com/dadnme/showgame.asp) (from Alien Hominid guys). Wish more guys would do this type of thing.

Auto aiming mechanism threw me off at first.

Sparks, good idea just would like it to be more obvious that is a pickup.

[Martoon]

Nice game! I'll have my wife give it a shot later. She's a serious Tumble Bugs junkie. We'll see what her verdict is.

I'm a little curious about how iWin decideds to categorized their games. Luxor, Atlantis, Zuma, and Beetle Bomp are all under Puzzle (with Beetle Bomp in there twice, even :) ), while Tumble Bugs is under Arcade. Seems to be a definite random factor in there.

[Martoon]

Okay, now that I've had a few minutes to play this, some comments.

First, didn't get much time to play it. Game crashed when I clicked the Options button. While I had my email client up to send the crash report, I went and did something else. After I finally sent the report, and dismissed the error report dialog, I discovered that it included this time in it's gameplay timer (so when I launched the game again, I only had a couple minutes left). I'm guessing this is an issue with the iWon wrapper, though.

So, in the few minutes I had to play it, here's my thoughts:

I didn't find the cutscene visual style as appealing as the ingame style. The ingame style is fantastic (I love the shiny beetles).

On the progess map, it showed a flashing icon where I was going to play next. My impulse was to click that icon to play there, but I had to click the Play button.

Adding points to my score for catching sparks == fun. Subtracting points from my score for not catching sparks == not fun.

Overall, really nice game. I like it.

[Robert Cummings]

Downloading. This should be GREAT!
with Beetle Bomp in there twice, evenShhh! it's a lucky mistake.. ;)

[svero]

Just FYI - the crashing bug for options and movies is fixed now. As well some other things have been fixed. There were a few last minute bugs we caught. Many of them only showed up with the final build for various reasons. For instance iwin used "iwin.com games" in their install path and the "." in the path affected some file loading functions.. nothing too serious but just goes to show how some unexpected little problems can sneak in.

I'm not sure if they rolled out the changes yet though so that version may still be the old one. But that's why we didnt do a big launch on the front page etc.. Exactly for this. I wasn't going to announce it here for at least another week but I got found out.

[Bmc]

sorry I thought I just give you some props on a job well done :) next time I'll use PM ;)

[svero]

Thats ok... It was nice to see the thread pop up anyway. People who read these forums aren't really the primary target audience. Not that that excuses any of you from immediately purchasing though...

[baegsi]

Svero,

how did you produce the cut scenes? Did you contracted that out?

I'd love to read a postmortem, any chance of writing one :-) ?

Great game!

[Martoon]

Okay, my wife gave it a quick go last night, so here's a short perspective from a casual gamer. Just for the record, she's seen many games over the years, and she's never enjoyed any of them, with the exception of Bejewelled 2, Tumble Bugs, and Chuzzle, all three of which she got seriously hooked on. But just those three, so she's difficult to please.

Anyway, she started up Beetle Bomp, and overall, she thought it was cute. I was very carefull to not prompt or make any comments, and just observed. After the first tutorial about catching sparks, when the first "real" level started and she saw she was supposed to match the bugs and catch the sparks, she said "I can't do two things at once." She then proceeded to do these two things at once just fine, but when she did occasionally miss a spark, she felt like she had really messed up. When she filled up the meter and the bugs started moving faster, she said, "Something really bad just happened, didn't it?" And on the second level, when it did the full-meter-high-speed thing, she said, "I'm really doing something wrong." In both cases, I'm pretty sure she was oblivious to the meter itself. She only played the first two levels. If/when she plays more later, I'll observe again.

[svero]

Svero,

how did you produce the cut scenes? Did you contracted that out?

I'd love to read a postmortem, any chance of writing one :-) ?

Great game!

The cut scenes were to combined effort of a number of people. The cartoon artwork was done by a contract artist I met through iwin. The background art was done by twilight's regular artist. The code to play the movies (the script system etc.) was written by me in a day or so.. its pretty simple. And the script was mostly by David Fox at iwin with tweaks from us at iwin. David also did most of the scripting of the movies themselves.

And yes Im considering writing a post mortem. I think there are a number of interesting things about this game.. but we'll see.

As for the speeding up at the end of levels... I was never really too sure about that design. Its somethign IWin pushed for a lot. We tried many many experiments and different end games though. Im not sure we ended with the best one (ie kept the best experiment) but some people seem to like it.

[Martoon]

As for the speeding up at the end of levels... I was never really too sure about that design. Its somethign IWin pushed for a lot. We tried many many experiments and different end games though. Im not sure we ended with the best one (ie kept the best experiment) but some people seem to like it.
I don't think speeding up at the end is bad (personally, I think it adds some fun excitement). But I think it needs to be made really, really obvious that it's happening because the player filled up the meter, and that that's a good thing. Like I said, I'm pretty sure my wife was oblivious to the meter. All she knew is that suddenly things started moving faster, and she didn't know why.

Maybe you could have another one of those popups that pause the game, right when they fill up the meter on the first level. It could say something like "Good job! You've caught enough sparks to fill your whatsadoohicky meter all the way to the top! (with a big red arrow pointing to the meter) Now you can finish off the level!"

[Sirrus]

This was developed with the PopCap Framework correct?

How did you find the ease of use?

[Robert Cummings]

Back!

I enjoyed the game quite a bit. It offers more than the clones, but in some ways has too much complexity.

I don't like the sparks idea. I also thought I could launch balls over because of the roving crosshair. I didn't dig nor understand why I had to have a full electric meter.

What I didn't like:
sparks, electric meter

What I liked:
The beetles - they are amazing, easily the best "balls" of any zuma clone. I dig the queen idea too.

I thought the story was "ok" and definately worth having as opposed to it not being there but I didn't identify with nor like the characters.

Overall, I think I like this more than tumblebugs, but only just. The sparks aren't cute though. There's no reason for me to catch them to my mind...


Moral of the story for any developer is: if you can't do great characters (and you do need to be good at this stuff) then do simple characters... The ones in BB don't appeal or engage me on any level. So that is why the cut scenes don't have an effect on me.

[svero]

This was developed with the PopCap Framework correct?

How did you find the ease of use?

Actually it was developed using our own proprietary engine, but then at some point we decided to roll back the dx support to version 7 (our engine require dx8) -- So we looked into a number of ways to do that.

When the popcap engine was made available I was interested in it and checked it out. I already knew that their engine actually was setup almost identical to ours. So we ended up creating a hybrid of our engine and popcaps. Popcap is used at the lower level where it support directx7 and was a little more robust and well tested and our engine is used at the high level where we had a lot more functionality for sprite control and animation etc.. But to do that didnt actually require that much work because of the similarity in the two engines and how they behave at the lower levels. The game as it was originally written is unchanged from when it was all exclusively twilight code. (except for a few small things) -- As for popcap itself. It was great. I'd recommend using it any day of the week if you're not concerned about cross platform dev. If you want mac support maybe go with ptk instead.

[electronicStar]

What is the URL? I get a 'connection denied' when I try www.iwin.com (http://www.iwin.com)

[Jim Buck]

That's the right URL.

[svero]

In case anyone wants to try the game or had problems with those crashes the newer version is now up at my site (twilightgames.com)

- S

[sparkyboy]

Steve, why is the download link gone for beetle bomp? Loved the earlier version, itching to see what changes you've made! :)

All the best

Mark.

[svero]

Its not on my site because of a server problem. Should be fixed shortly. The link is still up at iwin.

- S