Feedback Request: Alien Eliminator

[TaipanGames]

Hi everyone,

Please have a look at my most recent game:

demo (http://www.taipangames.com/aalsetup.exe)
game home (http://www.taipangames.com/game.php?folder=aal)
Screenshots: 1 (http://www.taipangames.com/aal/screen0.jpg) 2 (http://www.taipangames.com/aal/screen1.jpg) 3 (http://www.taipangames.com/aal/screen2.jpg) 4 (http://www.taipangames.com/aal/screen3.jpg)

System requirements: DirectX 8.1 and ?? (runs smoothly on all my machines)

Known problems:
When I start a browser from within the game it will open in a 800x600 window instead of a fullscreen maximized window.
No good way to take a screenshot yet.


It has been online for a couple of weeks and has a conversion rate of approx. 0.3%. I would like to bring the CR up a bit and need some fresh ideas. So what I am looking for (apart from bugs of all kinds) is whatever pops into your mind that would make you more likely to complete an order :D

Some questions that I keep asking myself:


Is it too easy/hard?
Should I put in some extra diversity (other aliens, weapons..)?
Does my make-it-move-with-the-mouse-hack work on all machines?
Is the frame rate ok on older computers?

Thanks a lot for your time

[Vorax]

Here are my thoughts:

- The explosions are very pixelated and way to large in most cases. An explosion should be satisfying, but in this case it's pretty distracting and actually annoying. They need work.
- The backgrounds (even on high detail) are very pixelated
- More backgrounds are needed (seemed to reuse over and over).
- The menus are bland
- The font should be redone (looks like a system font)
- The hit box for the small ships that look like fighters seems to small (even direct hits sometimes miss).
- Some other hit boxes are to large and the explosion goes off before the bullet has reached the ship.
- Most ships look ok, but more work could be done

I think the game is pretty good, but the things I mention above are hurting it IMHO.

[Ricardo Vladimiro]

What Vorax said, although my biggest priority would go to the detail of explosions and backgrounds.

[Leper]

You could make everything look better if you make them at double the size(say 64x64 if your sprites are 32x32 in game) and then use mip-mapping and alpha blending and scale them to half size, usually the results are very very good.

All my sprites in my game are 64x64 then when scaled down to 32x32 it has a nice effect to them that adds an extra "polish" and takes away the pixelated look completely :)

[Night Elf]

Just setting the magnifying filter in Direct3D would make those pixelated sprites look much better:

pD3DDevice->SetTextureStageState(0, D3DTSS_MAGFILTER, D3DTEXF_LINEAR);
You should also have an alpha channel for better blending effects and smoother edges.

[TaipanGames]

Wow. This is great feedback! Big thanks to all of you!

That one line of code (Night Elf) made the whole game look twice as good and it more or less fixes the explosions. :cool:

The backgrounds are more of a problem. Any ideas where I can find some good ones at a reasonable price?

[cliffski]

you could try www.istockphoto.com, its a great site and very cheap. I used it for all the national images for Democracy.
You need to really ramp up the graphics in games like this, because you are up against some really gorgeous looking games.
Explosions need to be awesome, backgrounds need to look stunning. That might cost some money up front for art, but in the long run, the difference in conversion rate will be very noticeable.

[Emmanuel]

The gameplay is actually fine (to me). I didn't feel overwhelmed and the game still kept me busy.

I'll second what others already said above the pixelated backgrounds. Nice tiles that actually are visually pleasing together with the colors of your ships, etc. would make a world of difference.

Your explosions feel very disconnected from the game. They're not only big and distracting, they're also too seperated from the rest of the graphics. Try to tint them, to make them stand out less (alpha blending of individual particles, if possible, would help). Also, a simple trick to make explosions/particles feel connected to the object being blown up, is to add lighting to the target object, and/or recolor it to match the explosion's added light/color while being blown up. If this is a D3D/GL game, you can use additive alpha blending, or set the color of vertices, to achieve that very easily and at no cost, in realtime.

Best regards,
Emmanuel

[electronicStar]

It's too bad because if it was on a good old scanlined TV set , the same graphics would look much better :)

[Anlino]

First of all, it is a really fun game. Good 'ol Space shoot 'em ups stays fun in between puzzles and sudokus. Some notes though:

The graphics (as mentioned earlier) are way to pixelated - at least the backgrounds and explosions.

I think the armor status bar should be moved. Maybe it should be displayed in the bottom of the screen. As it is now, i really think it is difficult to find time to check the armor status bar out when there is so many things happening on the screen.

Polish it up a bit, and you have a really good title.