ANN: Pow Pow's Great Adventure demo feedback request.

[Chris Evans]

Today we're releasing the demo of Pow Pow's Great Adventure. Those who pre-ordered can also download the full version. We'll be shipping the Collector's package in the middle of next week. This will give us time to catch any major bugs and fix them before we ship the CD.

Anyway, I invite you guys to check out the demo.
http://www.outsidetheboxsoftware.com...Demo_Setup.exe

For game information and screen shots:
http://www.outsidetheboxsoftware.com/games.html

The demo isn't posted on the website yet. I'll be updating the site tonight assuming you guys don't find any major bugs.

Feedback and comments are much appreciated! If you encounter a script error, please let me know. Some of them have been pretty tricky to track down.

[Sillysoft]

Is there a macintosh demo available?

Macusers love it when there is some information for them in a news release. Especially when they have some advance notice of your game working on the mac.

[Chris Evans]

Yep, sorry about that. I usually think of people here as PC users. I'm actually working on the Mac demo as we speak. I was going to post it at a Mac forum, but I'll be sure to post it here as well.

[Reactor]

Haven't even gotten to the menu yet, but thought I should comment on a couple of bits while they're fresh on my mind.

-ESC quits the game. Not good, especially without asking the player if they want to quit.
-Mouse pointer on screen, but doesn't work in the menu. If you can't use the mouse, it really shouldn't be there.
-I chose windowed mode, but after exiting, it loaded back up in full screen mode.

I'm sure there will be more later Music is nice, so far...

[Jim Buck]

When I ran it, all I could do was hit ESC. Neither the mouse nor any key (except ESC) I pressed did anything at the menu. I'm anxious to play this game.

[Chris Evans]

Yikes Jim...I haven't heard that one before...do you have any unusual USB peripherals plugged in?

@Reactor

- Good call with the mouse pointer. There is one instance where the mouse pointer is used so I'll just show it then.
- During the game, the ESC works correctly (ie. You get a cofirmation prompt). It just hasn't been implemented on the main menu yet.

[patrox]

Same problem as with the Trivia machine, i get the game in the top left corner with 2 black bands on the right and bottom of the screen.

I get a very poor fps too ( probably around 5 fps with a radeon 9800/ 750mhz processor )

got a script error in the bonus stage ( i ran faster than the carpet and fell )
"handler not defined #model"

Loved the audio tracks ( voice over, scenario etc.., you did a really good job on it )

pat.

[Jim Buck]

My keyboard is a USB device. I'm using a laptop. I did try unplugging the USB keyboard and just using the laptop keyboard, but I get the same results.

[Gilzu]

I stumbled around the same bugs as Reactor, but except that, it works just fine.

I liked the idea of the intro and the dialogue between levels. the overall look of the game gives a great impression - looks like you've invested time not only in finishing the game and making it look good but also in final polish.

You really did a real fine job, Chris.

[Reactor]

A few other things, but first... great game. Really nicely done, and the voice acting on the intro was great (for a change, from most) Also, I loved the mouse control in game. When I found I could look around I was stoked!

Anyway, on with the improvements points...

-Looking around in game would great if you had the ability to toggle it on and off, so you could easily play while looking around. That would make the game truly unique (even more so than Pandamonium).

-Jumping was a bit of a nightmare. PowPow just doesn't control well in the air, and I was amazed that some areas of the first level seemed harder than they maybe should have been. Just missing a ledge because he handled poorly, and couldn't grab a ledge was a little frustrating. Most of the time, I had to jump upwards to make sure I had enough control to jump on a badguy's head, because jumping on the usual forward angle sent PowPow flying off on a fairly unpredictable tangent. I mean, that may have been what you wanted the game to play like, but I personally found it more frustrating than fun. (and I've played the best and worst of platformers over the years)

-The PDA seemed a little clunky to navigate. Again, I really wanted to use the mouse to press buttons, but was stuck with the keyboard.

-If you hold downwards at the beginning of the level (without any items) PowPow looks like he's having some kind of fit. (flicking to the start of an animation, it looks like).

-When you get hit by a badguy, a bit of invulnerability time would be great...

-I hit a script error, while running full screen. It was the first time my PDA rang, and I answered it and clicked >>


If you'd like any more info on the above points, please let me know

[Gilzu]

btw, two things about the installer:
1. why doesnt it create a shortcut on the desktop?
2. why doesnt it ask to launch the game right after installation?

just a couple of things i thought to be missing

[Reactor]

I also was supposed to mention the lack of a shortcut

[Chris Evans]

Thanks for the feedback so far!

I've already made a few changes and fixed some spelling errors.

@Reactor

- What's funny is that originally the mouse look was just for debug purposes. I just wanted to easily be able to look around the level when I was setting things up. But when the beta testers started playing, they loved the mouse look, so I kept it in. I actually even started experimenting with some gameplay aspects using the mouse look. In certain areas in the later levels, it's really advantageous to use the mouse while maneuvering Pow Pow to get to secret spots.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize how cool the mouse look could be until after most of the levels were designed (Initially I thought it would be too complex for the user). So there's only a couple of instances in the later levels that the mouse is incorporated into gameplay. I hope to in future updates of Pow Pow or in a sequel to greatly expand the effectiveness of the mouse.

- Getting the jumping right was a constant battle. There were some testers who thought the controls were too floaty and when we made adjustments then others thought it was too fast. In the end, there are essentially two jumps. A short jump and a long jump. The short jump gives you a lot of air mobility, but low distance. The long jump gives you high distance and speed, but at the sacrifice of air mobility. If you do a lot of long jumps, it's very important to use your Air Attack (press the down arrow) to land on platforms accurately. Most people I talked to who had trouble with the jumps, didn't know to use the air attack. Mai Mei will sometimes tell you this via the PDA, but I probably should list it somewhere else as well.

- I really wanted this game to be played purely with a controller. That's why the PDA wasn't made to handle mouse input. However, if there's enough demand for it, all add mouse support.

- When you get hit by a baddy there is a moment of invincibility. It's just not long enough. I might extend it a little bit.

@Gilzu

Thanks for compliments! Anyway, I'm using Innosetup. Adding a shortcut shouldn't be a problem, but where does it say to launch the game after installation? I scanned the helpfile and I couldn't find anything.

[Reactor]

Heh, you'd never know the mouse was a last minute thing... I found it very helpful seeing what I could jump down onto. Many, many platformers have been bagged over the years for not allowing players to see down to platforms below... so I thought, "Ahhh, smart man putting that in!"

I take back what I said about jumping... I completely forgot about the air attack. I'll give it another go using it.

Just a small edit for one more thing-- the pickup sound for coins (to me) sounds way too high pitched. If I had the sound up a little above normal, and was playing with headphones, it'd really bug me.

[Jack Norton]

I tried it on my 2nd pc, 1Ghz Duron with 512mb RAM and Geforce MX 2, it ran at about 5 FPS... is it normal?

EDIT: in my "main" machine, 1.6Ghz with 512mb and ATI Radeon 9000 pro ran fine, even if I had screen blinking black after I used PDA for first time...

[tolik]

"ESC!!! KILL ESC!!!"

Ok, I'd start with the fact I have P3-800, 256 megs of RAM and Windows 2000.

I would start with a talk about consistency, this is the thing which we get bugged during our development quite a lot... I'm going to bug you about some polishing ; )

You can't navigate menus until fade effects will stop.
When you enter Options, you have fade in, when you leave it, you don't have fade out. However Controls In/Out both have fades. After all, fades start to become annoying. I already hate them : )
Changing the game resolution to the same reinitialises the game. And you can't "ESC" ; )

When you exit any menu, the focused option should STAY -- should be left exactly the same... (options, back, focused option - first. should be - options. same everywhere (hi-scores, back, first is focused, hi-scores should be focused)).

For some reasons you can exit some menus with UP arrow, seems that it's mapped to back? And you can enter some with UP arrow even on main menu! Works time to time, CONFUSING!

Load game keyboard navigation is very confusing.

For some reason Configure Controls menu default focused object (not visually!) is "LEFT". Enter the menu and press ENTER (don't push anything else, focus gets fixed if you push something).

Enter "LOAD GAME", push UP twice.

What's the default resolution of your game?
Different texts and objects doesn't look properly resized (eg without filters) in different resolutions.

I didn't find a way to go back to the menu from the game. Luckily, you can die right after you start - jump off the ledge

No keyboard navigation in "GET THE FULL VERSION" menu.


Going ingame.


When the artifact shattered, you had the sound of shatterring, but no voices of guys flying...

Sometimes sounds doesn't get played. When you collect something and jump a lot, jumping sound doesn't get played.

For some reason, entire gameplay started to flicker, while HUD remained on screen.
After the game over right after the first checkpoint I've got Director player error:
"Access not supported

#overlay

Script Error. Continue?"
YES/NO

This game ate all my virtual memory... Whadda hell?

_
I never thought anybody would be crazy enough to make a game in Macromedia Director... You are a great game designer and the game in overall looks great, but that was a technology mistake
_


Now, some random observations.

Shadows tend to be very glitchy on the platform junctions.
Shadow is shown on the air out of the platform.

Game design:
PDA is bogus
Why can't I go back to the level start? Once the screen will turn and player movse from one dimension to another, there's no way I could go back to the previous "dimension"...
Platforms are small enough to be missed with RUNJUMP.
Gameplay is buggy. Very buggy. You can't release game like that.


I will post more tomorrow, I have to go now.


I was disappointed in this game
Very disappointed, I had big hopes here.

If I would be a customer, I would buy Bug! from Sega, because it doesn't (ironically) have bugs.

And again, the game idea is great, implementation is unfinished.

[Reactor]

I think the bugs are on a per system basis, emuLynx, because found the game stable, apart from the script errors.

"Platforms are small enough to be missed with RUNJUMP."

Try the air attack... it helps a lot.

[Jack Norton]

I never thought anybody would be crazy enough to make a game in Macromedia Director... You are a great game designer and the game in overall looks great, but that was a technology mistake

I agree with that... I can run most games with my "old" 1Ghz pc, surely they don't run very smoothly but for sure more than 5fps

[tolik]

I think the bugs are on a per system basis, emuLynx, because found the game stable, apart from the script errors.

"Platforms are small enough to be missed with RUNJUMP."

Try the air attack... it helps a lot.

I was able to fall out of the screen (going through floor, going into another dimension where no dimension exist) at least in 5 different places on the first level. I haven't started to cover gameplay bugs - when I'll escalate some of them, I'll try to sum them and post here.

[tolik]

I agree with that... I can run most games with my "old" 1Ghz pc, surely they don't run very smoothly but for sure more than 5fps

This is general Macromedia Director flaw. We were porting the game from Director to PSX (PSOne) like 3 years ago and the situation hasn't changed since then.

I managed to complete 3 levels of this game with 5 fps (the further you go, the slower it gets).

Now I can go through most of the objects and change the angle (!) of floatin platforms.

I see that any further investigation will be postponed till Monday. I'll try to run the game on our dev machines (FAST!), my computer, even with GF5, is way too slow for for Director. Memory and video card doesn't matter that much, Mhz does matter. Director scripting core is just too slow.

[Sirrus]

Same fps issue...

1.7ghz P4, 512 DDR Ram, GeForce4 256mb

Ran about 5fps...

[Devman]

Hi Chris,

First off, congratulations on making this game!

I downloaded it just now and played it for about 20 minutes or so. Here are my impressions:

1. The menu screen did not recognize my mouse clicks when I tried to select the menu items, like Start Game. The mouse didn't seem to work at all, so I had to manually arrow key then hit Enter.

2. When the game began, I tried to find out how to attack, but even after hitting every key, couldn't figure it out. So I thought perhaps I don't have the attack ability yet, and that comes later. I found I could jump on top of the little goombas (as I call the purple things because they remind me of Super Mario Bros. little goomba mushrooms), and though I heard of the jump attack from reading this board couldn't figure out how to do that either.

3. I wished that I could get a broader view of the game field so I could see more of where the upcoming platforms were. The camera seemed to move a bit if I hit certain keyboard keys but then snapped back. I think of Super Mario Bros. again and it gives a further back camera so that you can see Mario and enemies approaching, though of course then you lose out on some detail of the character graphics.

4. Since my mouse didn't work, when the PDA started ringing, I had to hit the right keys to bring it up, then navigating the buttons without a mouse was a bit confusing. Also, I was confused because I assumed that the PDA was ringing because Mai was going to tell me something interesting, but instead she was like: "What do you want?" so that confused me because I didn't want anything.

5. When I got items I didn't know how to use them. I got a health kit then tried to get a gray diamond circled by green stuff but it didn't seem to let me get it even after jumping up at it a lot.

6. At some points sporadically, for periods of about 5 seconds, the screen flickered to black, and one time stayed black for about 4 seconds. This happened about 4 times over the course of the 20 minutes I played.

7. I didn't get past the first level because I started getting frustrated not being able to get past these little critters, so I started playing more carelessly. You may want to consider taking out the frogs enemies from the first level and only having a few goombas, and taking out so many jumps to platforms. I would have felt more happy if I could beat the first level more easily. I will try to play again and see if I can beat it. Again, I think of the first Super Mario Bros. level, 1-1. It only has a few goombas and turtles, and gives you some powerups to help you through.

I enjoyed the game but some of these problems and gameplay issues made it frustrating, as I didn't think I was able to get into it enough to find out more of the story.

I have a Dell Latitude laptop, using the built in touchpad mouse, it's pretty new a few months old and very fast.

[Jim Buck]

@Devman:

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop and am unable to even get through the menu since it doesn't recognize any key presses I give it except for ESC. Did you have to do something to get that working? (I also have an external USB keyboard that I use, but that has the same results as the built-in keyboard.)

[Chris Evans]

Thank you guys for the feedback. I really do appreciate it.

Since so many people here are having performance issues, I'll probably have to delay the game.

Thanks again everybody for the feedback.

[z3lda]

Chris,

Congrats on finishing the game! Below are some of my comments..

The character kepted on falling throught the two platforms after the 1-Up in the first level. He can land on them once, but if he jumps up, he will fall right through. The character also slides when he is not moving on the platforms.

I couldn't get past the first level due to this bug.

Also, occasionally when I pressed down on the platforms, the character would just fall right through.

It also seemed when the chracter got hit he would fall too far back. Many times he would get hit and fall to his death.

It was wierd that after picking up the 1-up I had to acutally use it. That should automatically update my life counter.

The cinematics had good VO, but I felt it could of been drawn way better. Good effort though. I really like the 2d drawn character with the 3d background. I think this game will do really well once the bugs has been hammered out, but right now it seems like a really buggy release based on others comments.

[Devman]

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop and am unable to even get through the menu since it doesn't recognize any key presses I give it except for ESC. Did you have to do something to get that working? (I also have an external USB keyboard that I use, but that has the same results as the built-in keyboard.)

Hi Jim,

I didn't have to do anything special to get the keyboard working, so it must have detected it okay. It is strange it didn't recognize your keyboard.

Sorry I can't help out.

[Night Elf]

First, my system: PIII 800MHz, 256 MB RAM, GeForce FX 5200, Win XP Pro (SP1)

I must agree with the other comments, this demo is very buggy and also lacks some polish in both graphics and gameplay.

1) The intro played very, very slow. The dialogue sounded all right, but it was out of synch with the images. The background music got cut several times, so it's difficult to tell, but it didn't seem to go well with what was happening. (Like when the 'artifact' blew up, and the music seemed really quiet...) The intro drawings seemed amateurish.

2) This is a PC game; mouse control inside menu screens is a must. Although the mouse pointer was shown, the menus didn't react to the input. Also, if there's no mouse input, the keyboard input should at least work correctly. I experienced many of the problems emuLynx pointed out in this regard.

3) The game played really slow. It not only appeared to have very low FPS, but the movement was slow too. Either it was frame-based rather than time-based which would be a mistake, or you intended it to be that slow which would be a gameplay design error IMO.

4) Control of the character was not what you would expect. After having played many platform games over the years, you get used to certain handling which you weren't able to reproduce in Pow Pow. It is especially evident when you jump and you try to control the character in mid air, it's almost impossible. And I shouldn't need to do any special moves to land where I want to land, so the jump attack is not a solution to the problem.

5) As has been said, I found it very strange not to be able to go back where I came from after I turn a corner. I jumped very high and landed on the corner, the screen turned. Now I want to go back and get those coins I forgot. Why can't I do it?

6) The PDA is very lacking graphically. It's also hard to control. I had a script error while using it (I don't remember the option I chose, sorry.) And the screen started flickering one of the times I used it.

7) I also noticed the shadow problems where two platforms join (at a corner) and the shadow floating in air.

8) The game could use some better graphics overall (but that is minor compared to all the bugs.) I thought it was all too bright and all the action happening in the background confused me a little. Maybe you should try darkening things a bit as they go further away from the camera.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but I really was expecting more from this game... I think it could be a really great game. I'll definitely give it another try if you manage to correct at least some of the major problems.

[tolik]

2Night Elf:
I totally agree with all of your points.

Chris:
You have the perfect idea for a great game. I think you took a bit wrong approach for the development...
The game is great, but needs to be polished.

In the meantime everyone could play Bug! from Sega:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=4368

When PPGA will finally come out, we'll have a great chance to see modern remake of a classic game.

[Andy]

2Night Elf:
In the meantime everyone could play Bug! from Sega:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=4368

They are pirates?

[Mike Wiering]

It looks really nice, but I get only 1 or 2 fps on a 2.0 GHz P4 with a GForce 4 MX card so it's not really playable