Frantic 0.9.8b

[dmikesell]

Looking for feedback on my soon-to-be shareware game, Frantic. You can read about it and download the demo here:

http://frantic.dmsoft.cc

Feedback on anything and everything is welcome.

Thanks,

Dave

[RohoMech]

hey Dink, I'd recommend posting a screenshot or two, since posts without them are suposedly deleted (although I've never seen that happen).

Its a pretty cool game, the music and sounds are spot on. Visually, I think its a bit lacking, especially the star background...it might be nice to have some sorta scrolling starfield.

I liked the controls, the bonuses and the weapons you've put in there, the game plays pretty well.

I noticed you didn't have any nag screens? If you were not thinking of putting them in the game, I'd reconsider.

Anyways, the game is pretty cool, its sorta simple so I don't know how long I'd play it, and graphically it needs a lot of work (the explosions look cool though, I don't think those need to change).

[dmikesell]

Nag screens and many more features coming. Also, there are screen shots at the link provided.

Thanks for the feedback.

[jankoM]

I have seen that happen ... you shoudl read
** Sticky: If you do not post a screenshot with game announcements, the post will be DELETED.
** Sticky Thread Sticky: News, Announcements & Feedback Requests FAQ – READ THIS BEFORE YOU POST

before you post.

[Savant]

Nag screens and many more features coming. Also, there are screen shots at the link provided.

Thanks for the feedback.
Right, but read this:

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=5261

And then this:

http://forums.indiegamer.com/showthread.php?t=138

[dmikesell]

So you guys will check it out if I dot my i's and cross my t's?

http://dmsoft.cc/images/screenshot1.png
http://dmsoft.cc/images/screenshot2.png
http://dmsoft.cc/images/screenshot3.png

Download: http://dmsoft.cc/FranticDemoSetup.exe

Min Sys Reqs: Windows, 128 MB RAM, 1 Ghz processor, 16 MB video memory

Anything and everything is open for feedback

[dmikesell]

Good thing I reposted with the correct information...

:rolleyes:

[illume]

Edit your first post, and put the screen shots in it :)


1. I reckon it's too big download size. Is there a way you can reduce the download size? I did not download it a few times I've seen you post because of the size. But decided to just now because it's a pygame based game and I should support it... yah for pygame!

/me twiddles thumbs whilst the game downloads... 5 minutes remaining. Hrmm, I might go do something else now.

After looking at it quickly... you can take at least 8MB off just by cleaning up some unused files from library.zip, deleting the unused TCL directory etc.

2. make the stars shades of gray... or some other shades. Not multi-random colours. I reckon it'd look better this way, and be less distracting for everything else on screen. You could change the color of the stars as the 'levels' progress. This would make progression seem more obvious too. You could tie this in with #5 idea below...

3. fix up your website quick! If your web design isn't up to scratch get a free template and use that. Add a mailing list that people can join when it is released. The website is just as important as the game, so since you are almost finished the game, you should start improving the website.

4. Add some online high scores. It's simple to do with python. Check out solarwolf for some example code of talking to websites(use urllib with a thread). Along with that add in a 'challenge your friends' link where people can enter in their friends email addresses to challenge them. If you wanted to take it further, you could have friend high score tables, where only your friends are allowed in the table. Then people could have 'palm springs highscores', and invite only people in palm springs to play on that highscore table.

5. Make a solar system map. With planets, or star systems on it. This is for the 30 minute/five hour reason to play. You have 30 seconds, and 5 minutes covered. This will help give your players a 30 minute goal for playing. Then you could go through out the map system adding in different bots, and changing the background as you go through say five levels. Then show the map again as they progress to the next planet/star system. As simple a change as making the stars either grey, grey green, grey blue etc could be used for different backgrounds which relate to the different colored star systems. Describe some of the different types of baddies found in different star systems. Perhaps 'tint'/'colorize' the sprites so they match the star system more(if you do that, do so by blitting, not by including more images).

6. Start a song as the first thing you do in your code. So that there is some music playing whilst the screen comes up, and whilst the graphics load. The black screen is the first impression people get of your game. Instead make it some of that retro music pumping quite loud. Maybe even start playing a few laser sounds in quick succession 'chew! chew! chew!'. Alternate which speaker the laser sounds come out of.

7. put your images into a .zip file(with zero compression) and load them from there. Search the web for code to do this, it's easy. This will speed up your load time a lot.

8. Make some thruster graphics for the space ship. So when you are accelerating there are thrusters. Otherwise there are not thrusters.

9. Implement a 'galaga' type tracktor beam for one of the bad guys. This would stop you from accelerating, only allowing rotation. It would also drag you along with the baddie ship.

10. Make the time more obvious. I couldn't figure out for quite a while why the level was ending.

11. The game stuttered occasionally. I'm not sure why, the machine I was using was really fast. It was at a set interval... I haven't seen that with other pygames on this machine, so I'm not sure what it is. Does it do it on other machines you have played with? If so fix it.

13. Add keyboard control to the main menu.

14. Add game pad support. Come on, it's easy with pygame.

15. Implement a 'bonus round'.



That's a start for the most obvious things I could think of.


You have the beginnings of a fun game. I reckon you need to do a bunch more polishing still though.



Good luck!

[dmikesell]

Awesome feedback, illume. I had some of that planned but a lot of it I had not thought of. Thanks...