Hello world

[KaiBirli]

Hi there,

I'm the new one here...
I've finished my first game, which you can download at: www.arcade80.de
The website is in german only... sorry, I'll change that soon.
The game (1985) is in english. The website looks a little bit crappy, I know...
The first big mistake... : the download size: 145 MB
I'm not working fulltime as an indie dev. (like many others here?)
But I'm not new in the business, I'm working for a big publisher since 5 years.
What else? Hmmm, I hope someone will download the game...

Regards,
Kai

[MirekCz]

Welcome

Ehh... 145MB download? caught caught... could you repeat that?

Screenshots look nice... but with this download size... i won't try it

[KaiBirli]

Yea, I know...
The game was made for offline distribution not online, but....
The next game will be smaller, something around 15 MB.

Kai

[patrox]

I can't play it.

the screen resolution seems to be 640x480 and the game in 1024x768 i'm missing too much of the picture.

pat.

[KaiBirli]

Hi,

here're the system requirements:

PENTIUM 4 or 100% Compatible
Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP
128 MB RAM
64 MB GRAPHICS CARD
1280 x 1024 DISPLAY ONLY ! / MONITOR RESOLUTION
16 BIT SOUNDCARD
MOUSE, KEYBOARD
DirectX 8.0


kai

[patrox]

ok my screen doesn't go that high so i can't play.

pat.

[samnova]

Lucky me for having broadband and a high res monitor (Can just do the 1280x1024).

Guess you want some comments... After all I like these kind of games..but..

1. The high resolution required seems to be a joke, diffidently limiting the number of people who can play it

2. Start screen. The mouse cursor (the plane) why reset the position to top/left corner all the time ?

3. The screen fades looks nice but makes it all slow.

4. Nice story..well, nice pictures First I was afraid you couldn't skip it.. but ESC did the job.

5. VERY nice background graphics.

6. Now to the bad.. VERY bad game play... Let me list a few issues:
6.1 Collision box of the plane. It seems if a enemy bullet is inside the rectangle of the image then you die. Why not limit the collision box to be more close to the plane.. Like, I'm not really hit because a bullet is between cockpit and the tip of the wing.
6.2 One hit = death. This annoys me SO much, why not have an energy bar.
6.3 Reappearing after dieing. You scale up and can get hit right away. It happened to me that I appear in the middle of enemies and just died again.. and again...

7. Name entry screen. Oh, I'm sitting here with a PC and have to use the keyboard to play, so why not let me enter my name with it also ? The letters are all over the screen.. It was also hard to say if it accepted my name as I had to press ESC to continue !!!

I would have liked to play more if the issues with collision and death wasn't there.. but right now I just got annoyed.

Cheers,
Sam Nova

[Bluecat]

Hi Kai,

just a couple of suggestions on the site.

I should be able to click on the screenshots and get a big version of them. They look very nice, but I'd love to see the details.

When you get to the first page, you get the little graphic that you then have to click on to get to the 'real' home page. I know this is all the rage, especially with flash, but personally I hate it. I pretty much completely ignore what is there and even a couple of minutes later can't remember what the image was. Just take me straight to the action!

With the game I strongly suggest allowing different resolutions, and modes that require lower system requirements. You've already got people on this board that can't play, because they can't adjust these things. Your real customers, unless you are targeting Doom 3 players , will have the same issues.

Cheers


John

[KaiBirli]

Hi,

thanks for the comments.
Sorry patrox...
@sam:
1. Yes, the resolution is to high.
2. It's the default position.
3. thanks
4. Well, it's a stupid story... shoot'em ups don't need a story
5. Thats why the game is so big... 1024 x 7680 bmp 32bit....

hmm, I think I've to change some things... :-)
@John
The website was made in 2 days (evenings)
I'll redesign it completly soon.

Thanks for the replies so far.

Kai

[MirekCz]

uhhh, skip bmp and use high quality jpg. It will take you 15mins to do and that should help heaps on your size problem and quality won't really suffer.. especially when you're in a hot battle.
That should make your game 5-10x smaller which becomes much more acceptable.
And on the collision front, don't use boxes (or eventually use several so they reproduce object shape well)... but really, use pixel-perfect collision detection. Fast and works great.

[ggambett]

I didn't try it yet, because

1) The 145 MB requirement is insane for a downloadable game
2) The 1280x1024 ONLY requirement is insane for any game
3) I can't even see big screenshots of what I'll see if I download these 145 MB and my monitor supports 1280x1024!

[samnova]

Call me crazy.. but when I check the directory where the game gets installed I only see around 34 MB !!! What happened to the last 145 MB ? Is the 145 MB the full version and when I select to install the shareware version it only uses 34 ?
If thats the case I will strongly recommend you to create two downloads !!

Cheers,
Sam

[robleong]

I've always liked shoot-em-ups so I had to download all 145 Mb of this download! I agree with most of what samnova had written. You have combined both shareware and full downloads into one huge download that really should be divided into their individual downloads. I also noticed a 2 Mb .bmp in the file, so I assume the main reason for your huge download is that you must have used .bmp files for all/most of your graphic files - consider using .jpg or .gif or .png files instead. Your graphics are definitely beautiful. Good luck.

[samnova]

Oh, one more issue..

I tried to do a ALT-TAB (had to write a message in ICQ ) I was not able to move the mouse outside a small rectangle in the middle of the screen !!!
So one more issue to the 'annoying things list'..

-Sam

[KaiBirli]

First of all,
thanks for the comments and replies.
Well, the game was made for offline distribution, but hmmm... I think you all know what happen...first game, newbie...
Ok, the game will be on a cover DVD from a german magazine www.pcaction.de (better than nothing) Issue 10/2004

That's the reason why I was a little bit under pressure with my website....

In the next 2 weeks I'll change nearly everthing:

- screen resolution: 640 x 480 (patrox?)
- better collision detection
- the mouse cursor is now in the middle of the screen
- energy bar
- no intro story (takes to much space)
- maybe 2 versions (demo & full)
- no I'll not change the Hall of Fame name entry system... I like it

@sam
You do not need to press ESC to see if your name is now in the Hiscore.
Click on END, then your name will be inserted.
Click on DEL to remove the letters.
You can only insert your name, if you're better than one of the five...

Kai

[samnova]

Hi Kai,

- the mouse cursor is now in the middle of the screen

If this is the issue that I reported then keep in mind, I only saw it when I did a ALT-TAB.. Actually, I think the game continued in the background also !

- no I'll not change the Hall of Fame name entry system... I like it

You got your taste, I got mine. Fair enough.

You do not need to press ESC to see if your name is now in the Hiscore.
Click on END, then your name will be inserted.
Click on DEL to remove the letters.
You can only insert your name, if you're better than one of the five...

Guess I was in the top 5 then.... I did press END and nothing happened. That's why I got confused.

Keep up the good work,

Sam
PS. For the full version it might be possible to have the highres (1280x1024) and also the low res !! Just an idea.