[ANN] Challenge your friends in 5 delirious mini-games!

[SonSon]

June 10th, 2005 – (a very small village, France) Oliver Pearl (oliverpearl.com) is very pleased and proud to announce his first game has arrived! MinuteMatch™ is a multiplayer game with 5 different mini-games, each with unique graphics and gameplay. In this party-game everyone is on the same computer and each player needs just one key to play (keyboard, mouse or controller).

In MinuteMatch you will compete to score as fast as possible by catching the good items and avoiding bad ones.
But remember to keep one step ahead of the competition!

Shellfish, sheep, tadpole, bird, spider,
Whoever you are, be the first!

Screenshots - Demo
Get more information on MinuteMatch and its free demo at oliverpearl.com
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If you wish to post your comments and feedback about the game/website you're welcome. Thanks for reading.
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Olivier Behr (SonSon)
Oliver Pearl, SARL
oliverpearl.com
webmaster@oliverpearl.com

[Drake]

It's great! Beautifully polished, and nicely designed, single-button, time-waster gameplay that's truly for all ages.

Some thoughts:

- Your live demos on the menu screen are excellent, but I experienced an annoying loading delay of about 2-3 seconds between each one. It's especially irksome when you're on a submenu (not looking at the demo at all) and the cursor freezes because of the background loading.

- When you switch one player's button to the button used by another player, they should swap buttons by default. Right now, if I set player 2 to use left mouse, player 1's button becomes invalid.

- You must add a CPU player option and/or a single-player mode. Even though it would be boring by comparison, I think most players will want the option to play their time-waster when no-one else is around, especially when first evaluating the demo. To make single-player at least somewhat worthwhile, you can always add a high score list.

[Olivier]

-Unfortunately I can't avoid that annoying loading delay. I'm thinking of adding a small graphic element like a "loading" text somewhere on the screen or maybe simply changing the hand cursor by an hourglass. (hmm.. reminds me of something)

-Here you have a good idea. Switching controls between players. Nice, thanks. I didn't think about that.

-CPU player was initialy planned but finally removed because I can't program AI. But it's true that the game would have a strong sale incentive (?) with CPU opponents. Lonely gamers would then be additional potential buyers. I must do something!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Drake. I really appreciate.

[Drake]

-CPU player was initialy planned but finally removed because I can't program AI.

Are you sure? Since your games are so simple, all your AI needs to think about is whether to "do" or "do not" based on the objects around them, right? Besides, it's a casual game - your AI only needs to be good enough to make a good show of losing to the player.

[McPhisto]

Hi, it's the same McPhisto from the Clickteam forums... :P

Since you're using MMF, I could give you a hand with AI if you want - I've just finished doing the AI for my game (which was NOT fun!).

[soniCron]

...all your AI needs to think about is whether to "do" or "do not" based on the objects around them...

"there is no try."

[baegsi]

One question: do you really have trademarked MinuteMatch?

[SonSon]

@Drake: Yes the AI for MinuteMatch surely doesn't need complicated things like pathfinding. I guess I could give a try.

@McPhisto: Hey nice to see you here too! Can we have a look at the game you're talking about? And thanks for your offer, I'll keep you informed if I need help.

@soniCron: Can you exmplain a bit further? Sorry but english isn't my native language.

@baegsi: Yes MinuteMatch is a trademark of Oliver Pearl, SARL. But Trademark is different from Registered Trademark.

EDIT: Ah sorry, I'm messed up my indiegamer accounts.

[Drake]

@soniCron: Can you exmplain a bit further? Sorry but english isn't my native language.

Actually, I can fill you in on that. SoniCron was quoting Yoda, an inspirational mentor character from a mildly popular film series originating here in the US (recently concluded). English isn't Yoda's native language, either, so don't sweat it.

[Olivier]

Actually, I can fill you in on that. SoniCron was quoting Yoda, an inspirational mentor character from a mildly popular film series originating here in the US (recently concluded). English isn't Yoda's native language, either, so don't sweat it.

Ah understood! Que la force soit avec toi.

[stan]

Wow, impressive quality of graphics/animations and ease of use!

The website is of the same quality... Puts me to shame :-}.

Just one small thing: after installing the game, the game's window opened in the background. I had to click on its button in the taskbar to see it.

[Robert Cummings]

SonSon,

Do yourself a massive favour and learn to program properly using C++. You have the talent to succeed, so why hold yourself back by using mmf?

[Drake]

You have the talent to succeed, so why hold yourself back by using mmf?

Here's a question for you, Robert. Why ditch your tools, if the tools get the job done? When I downloaded MinuteMatch, I saw a simple game that was well conceived and well executed. I think this game could do very well with casual gamers who are looking for something a bit different. I don't think that audience will perceive any technical limitations with it, either.

[Robert Cummings]

Here's a question for you, Robert. Why ditch your tools, if the tools get the job done?

Because he clearly isn't getting the job done. This is clearly stated by his comment about the fact he cannot do AI.

This is because AI in mmf is notoriously difficult. By moving future projects to C++ he will open up worlds. IMHO this will earn him more money in the long run. That is why.

[McPhisto]

Because he clearly isn't getting the job done. This is clearly stated by his comment about the fact he cannot do AI.

This is because AI in mmf is notoriously difficult.

Is it? I'm managing to get by in MMF, and my AI is fairly complicated. I'm not trying to say that it's easier than it would be in C++ or whatever, but it certainly wouldn't be all that much harder for games such as MinuteMatch.

[Drake]

Because he clearly isn't getting the job done. This is clearly stated by his comment about the fact he cannot do AI.

This is because AI in mmf is notoriously difficult. By moving future projects to C++ he will open up worlds. IMHO this will earn him more money in the long run. That is why.

Oh. Well, I took his comment to mean that he lacked the confidence to tackle the AI, not that MMF made it impossible. I haven't personally used MMF, but I have seen at least one nice side scroller made with it, so I can't imagine that his design is out of reach.

You're right, of course, that tools can be outgrown. I'm just not sure that I see the evidence of that happening here.

[Olivier]

I agree that AI amongst many other things are surely easier/faster to achieve with a real programming language (reuse of code ha..). Also MMF has many limitations that make things harder and longer to do, but I was attracted by the ease of use and WYSIWYG. If MMF version 2 doesn't make things easier I might learn C++ but it wont' be easy.

I already struggled so much with MMF that I'll surely achieve the basic AI needed for MinuteMatch.

-We had some feedback that the musics sound strange like "ambient sound from a terror movie". Did someone experienced something similar?
-I'd also like to know if users with QWERTY keyboard had problems setting the controls? Do the keyboard keys you press match the keys displayed in the Control setup screen?
-EDIT: Do people located in the US have the price displayed in USD? Same for Europeans with the price displayed in EUR and of course England with prices in GBP? ROW must have prices in USD. Thanks.

[stan]

Hm, I already uninstalled the game so I can't tell you about the price. Just wanted to say... It looks to me that you already have AI in your game... What about the demos in the main menu? I see sheeps jumping, shells closing, tritons surfing.. That should be enough for the single player game. Even when I played the shell game, the other shell did stuff by itself! Only in the sheep game the other sheep didn't move.
(oh, and C++ is great if you have years to waste learning the language )

[lowemark]

-I'd also like to know if users with QWERTY keyboard had problems setting the controls? Do the keyboard keys you press match the keys displayed in the Control setup screen?

No problems setting the keys for me with a qwerty keyboard. The keys match as they should.

-EDIT: Do people located in the US have the price displayed in USD? Same for Europeans with the price displayed in EUR and of course England with prices in GBP? ROW must have prices in USD. Thanks.

I'm from Europe and the price is displayed in EUR for me.

[Olivier]

@stan: Ha! I was waiting for this one. I'm pleased to tell you that everything you see on the menu auto-demos is pure randomness!
Do you really think that this could be enough for CPU opponents? I think I should do something more especially if I want several difficulty levels for CPU players.
About learning C++ does it really take years to learn and be able to program decent games? Disheartening..
EDIT: I was talking about the price displayed (only) on the website.

@lowemark: Thanks for input lowemark. I hope it works for others too.

I also wanted to *special thank* Robert Cummings for his sentence that went straight to my heart and increased tenfold my motivation to do games.

You have the talent to succeed(...)

[stan]

You know... When I was working on "Smart Lines" several years ago... In AMOS... I had put a random play computer AI. I forgot about the game for some time, then I tried it one day, and I didn't even notice that the computer was playing at random . You might think I'm stupid, but that's also the impression I get from the MinuteMatch demos.

The opponents don't need to be smart, they just need to do something so that people can try the game when they are alone, and be happy to beat the computer . IMHO.

Then you can add real AI to a next release of the game, keeping "total random" mode as the easy or normal difficulty, and adding one or two harder levels.

That will give you a reason to release 2 updates of the game, thus returning to the top in download sites listings, being featured in game sites news...


About C++, well, I'm programming in C. I've had a few C++ classes in school and also read a book on C++, and that language contains so much complicated stuff that I almost swore not to program in C++, ever. I mean, I already think that C is very complicated. It took me years to learn and there are still things I have trouble understanding and using. But C++ is an order of magnitude (whatever that means ) more complicated.

PS: I get the price in euro on the site! Even on the english page. With the language set to en-gb in Firefox.

[Olivier]

I did my best to make appear cpu players non random. But of course sometimes it's visible.
About C++ I'll have to think *Once Twice Thrice* before investing time and money into it.
On the website the currency displayed is not dependent of the language used nor the browser setting. So it seems to work nicely. Thanks!