*DoveZ - the second wave (new release)* (PC)

[Toxeen]

Hi fellows and gamers :cool:


For all retro-fans, veterans and casual gamers:
Lost in troubles with our publisher we finally opened the gates to Intergenies' online shop at www.intergenies.com (http://www.intergenies.com).
DoveZ - the 2nd wave (http://www.dovez.de) (R-Type like Arcade Action Shooter) is ready for sale!

Actually, you may choose between 2 different versions.

a) Full-Edition (ca. 650 MB), including high quality cutscenes. 9.99 Eur /
$11.99
b) Lite-Edition (ca. 240 MB), rendered cutscenes NOT included, recommended
for low-bandwith users. 6.99 Eur / $8.39


Features:
2 different playerships
individual and innovative weapon system for each ship
satellite unit (for D-Phyton playership)
special weapons and upgrades (both playerships)
audiovisual radio messages
rendered cutscenes
many different, exciting sceneries
weather effects (snow, rain, thunder)
3D accelerated graphics
singleplayer and multiplayer
45min original soundtrack (arcade/electro/orchestral) by Toxeen (http://www.toxeen.com)


-------------------------

We'd be glad for your support.

Thanks in advance,


Boris Nonte
& Intergenies Team
www.intergenies.com

[the2bears]

Run Time Error (5)
Invalid Procedure Call

This is on a very new laptop, Windows XP, Intel Centrino, Radion X300

Bill

[Nexic]

This game is pretty nice, but there are a lot of improvements that should be made to make it better. Some of these will make it sell better, others would just make it more fun for me personally.

- You need to add mouse control, though it seems like you have about 4 action buttons so this might not work. This brings me to my next point.

- You have too many action buttons! If everyone had gamepads this would be fine, but a lot of people don't so that many buttons is quite fiddly. There are ways to give 2 buttons four functions, though I would probably just remove a lot of these special things altogether. During the first level it told me to use them at certain points, but when I used them I had no idea what they were actaully doing, aside from all the fancy effects. I think this makes your game way too complicated. R-Type is a great game with lots of variety and tactics available, and that only uses 2 buttons.

- Your graphics don't look so hot, simply because you can see a load of pixelated black edges quite clearly. Really you need to use PNGs or anti alias the edges. Even with that change I wouldn't really be a fan on them, the 3D rendered sprites don't really go together very well as they all use vastly different colours and designs. Though at this point changing them all would probably be more hassle that it's worth.

- I think you the game is just too complicated. As I mentioned before you have a lot of buttons, and to add to that you have powerups that I didn't really understand. Along the way you pickup all sorts of random things. I think you've had a lot of cool ideas, and decided to put them all in, rather than carefully picking the best. The very best scrolling shooters around use very simple, but still original mechanics. Check out DoDonPachi, Raiden, R-Type, Ikaruga, and Gradius. All of those are much more simple, but at the same time much more dynamic.

- I didn't like the health bar. I feel that one shot kills are the best in this style of shooter. When you add a health bar the games becomes easier, so to compensate the developer tends to have more and faster enemy shots. The trouble with this is that the game then feels less decisive and it makes you feel less in control. Again if you look at those top notch shooters I listed, they all work by one shot kills.

- Your enemy bullets travel too fast and are too small to see. Not only does this make you feel less in control as stated above, but it also makes the game really frustrating. Quite often I would die without seeing the shot first, or by the time I saw it I was already dead. A really good shooter never makes it feel like the game cheated you when you die, but this is exactly how I felt.

- You have too many lives. This also descreases the feeling of control in the game. You've paired these what seem to be unlimited lives off, with forcing you to go back to a continue point, with enemies are ahead that are far too hard. In order to complete the first level I died more than 15 times and it felt so annoying. Instead you should make is so you continue from where you are in the level, but at the same time reduce the number of lives you have. Then you should make the enemy attacks less swift and more obvious so you have a chance to dodge them. This will make the game feel and play much better. At the moment it's like randomly flying around hoping for the best, dying and repeating 1000 times until you manage to get lucky enough and beat the level, which completely ruins any sense of reward or loss.

Overall this game isn't bad, and you've got most of the coding in place to make a smashing shooter. You just need to do a lot of tweaking and polishing before it can get there.

[joe]

Hi Toxeen,

I already played the demo version a few months ago and I love your game very much! You have also done great work on the soundtrack!

I think you're selling this game too cheap - you should try 19.95$ / 14.95 € or something like this! I don't think that you'll loose many sales!

[Toxeen]

@the2bears:
Have you tried, playing the new demo (http://www.intergenies.com/file/count.php?id=DoveZ-Demo2) ? (demo1 is out of date)
if you encounter any further errors, please mail your debug.txt to mm@intergenies.com

@Nexic

Guess, you've played the demo version including the jungle stage (which is NOT the first level in the full version) ? Please let me comment on this:


You need to add mouse control, though it seems like you have about 4 action buttons so this might not work.


As you see, we've more buttons in use than just two or three 'cause we tried to implement a lot of features (e.g. beam, primary weapon(s), force mode, particle control). That's why mouse control doesn't make much sense. Actually, you need 2-3 fire buttons. Everything else are bonus/extra/power buttons. The tutorial should give you a clear picture about this. Of course this is an option to deal with more tactical elements, the way you may use and set up your own ship's weapon system (which might draw on the casual gamers but challenges the veterans)


R-Type is a great game with lots of variety and tactics available, and that only uses 2 buttons.


Yeah the very old one. But R-Type III uses 4 buttons.

I didn't like the health bar. I feel that one shot kills are the best in this style of shooter. When you add a health bar the games becomes easier, so to compensate the developer tends to have more and faster enemy shots. The trouble with this is that the game then feels less decisive and it makes you feel less in control. Again if you look at those top notch shooters I listed, they all work by one shot kills.

Yeah, we had some testers and demands, when we consided, whether adding a health bar or not. Finally, this is a feature related to the rookies, less worthy for the hardcore gamers. A sequel to DoveZ would come along with a simple one shot kill system :)

Your enemy bullets travel too fast and are too small to see. Not only does this make you feel less in control as stated above, but it also makes the game really frustrating. Quite often I would die without seeing the shot first, or by the time I saw it I was already dead.

That issue goes in connection with the energy bar. Anyway, the jungle level (demo) actually is a (tougher) bonus level you may reach more or less right to the end of the (full) game. Means: your ship is upgraded and the players should've achieved a feeling for the fast paced action on screen.

Again thanks for your open eyes. It's good to have reviewers around. Much appreciated.


@joe:

Many thanks for your compliments and your suggestions, made.
We've agreed on a price which is overall appreciate. If I were a customer, I wouldn't complain about the 9,99€ right here :)
Good luck with your projects, by the way.

[RohoMech]

erm, I tried the patch, it won't load due to missing image files...

[Nexic]

Yeah, we had some testers and demands, when we consided, whether adding a health bar or not. Finally, this is a feature related to the rookies, less worthy for the hardcore gamers
That issue goes in connection with the energy bar.

What I'm saying is that the game can play better and still be just as easy if you had a one shot kill AND made the bullets bigger and slower. At the moment you are saying you've put in the health bar to make it easier, but then made all the shots too fast to make it harder again.

[Toxeen]

erm, I tried the patch, it won't load due to missing image files...

The patch includes a NO-CD feature for the older retail version. Therefore you've to extract the "nocd" file and the /Data directory from the install directory / CD to the DoveZ directory. That's it !
If you want to play without cutscenes for any reason, delete the "video.d2p" and the video directory.

for any further issues, get in touch with our programmer Markus: mm@intergenies.com

[RohoMech]

Toxeen, I got the game working, first I would like to say, wow, I really like the visual style, the pre-rendered graphics and all, that's awesome stuff.

However, it got a bit much after I died cause bullets were hidden by something in the foreground....also it seems like you guys are using pixel-perfect collisions, cause my ship would get stuck on the pillars after I broke them sometimes, or get caught on the brushes that are on the ground sometimes.

I also agree with Nexic on a lot of things he or she has said, the game does have too many buttons, and some of the concepts (your 'E' weapon turns things black so you can see what parts of the level you collide with) are pretty cool and all, but they add a lot of complexity to the game without really adding to the gameplay. People are gonna be turned off by needing > 3 buttons for a shooter, sure some of the greats had a lot of buttons, but like 90% of the shumps out there have just 1 or 2, and those are much easier to pick-up then your game.

I do not agree with Nexic on the art issue, I think the game looks great, the aliasing is an issue, but it didn't bother me much, the stuff in the foreground did bother me as stated above.

I'm a pretty huge shump fan so I played the demo to the end, after I beat the level I didn't really feel the urge to get a higher score, I think its the polish issues being mentioned here.

But, despite all that, it was fun trying it out, if you do post a new version I'll really look forward to playing it, its got a lot of potential and its really rare that I see a shooter with this much artwork in it.

[the2bears]

Toxeen,

I got the demo running on an older machine, but both demo1 and demo2 fail (in the same manner) on my laptop. I don't see any "debug.txt" file in the install directory though.

I really like the work that went into the graphics, such an immense improvement from Dove. But here's the irony, Dove was more fun. Not that DoveZ needs a ton of work, just some tweaks I think. It's very difficult to quantify why I feel this way, sorry about that.

Bill

[Toxeen]

RohoMech,

Thanks for your comments.
I agree, the demo level is a way more difficult fore some people than we might have expected. Keep in mind: it's NOT the first game or the tutorial of the full version which by the way includes lots of very very different levels, artworks and sceneries.

Bill,

I got the demo running on an older machine, but both demo1 and demo2 fail (in the same manner) on my laptop. I don't see any "debug.txt" file in the install directory though.

The debug.txt is automatically written after starting the game in the /DoveZ directory. If you encounter any problems, please send this file (includes every single start up information so we can tell you what's going wrong) to mm@intergenies.con.


Thanks guys.

[Sharkbait]

Brialliant game with a very polished menu UI and had fun playing the demo!

Some things I didn't like though:

There are way too many foreground objects that obscure the player.. not fair!
Control scheme too complex for a PC game. You could implement a firing button and a weapon cycle button to simplify things. Different keys for different smart bombs are also confusing.
Bug: rear end of one of the wasp-like enemies appeared with a black background rather than transparent.. maybe a texture not loading properly?my 2c

[the2bears]

The debug.txt is automatically written after starting the game in the /DoveZ directory. If you encounter any problems, please send this file (includes every single start up information so we can tell you what's going wrong) to mm@intergenies.con.


Thanks guys.

Not to sound redundant, but in my case that file is not getting written. It's not in the DoveZ directory after the game fails. I get the splash-screen, and after a few seconds an error windows pops up.

Bill

[Toxeen]

the2bears,

which kind of splash screen ?
what does the error window say ?
which windows version do you own ?

make sure you've got the latest gfx drivers installed