thank you very much. after succumbing to nexic's silent pressuring techniques, I have made the ship go faster by almost 50%. although I was used to the previous speed and after a lot of playtesting, it seems the urgency this gives to the gameplay is positive, so it's in. new demo is up, and the demo's timer is reset, so you get 60 minutes more. thanks, aristides
Excellent! It's much better now, I even managed to make it past the first level! Really this is a brilliant game, and I'm so glad you made that small change. It really makes it soooo much more fun (for me at least). Though when I went to post my score, the online highscores flashed up for about 2 seconds and then I got another error saying someting about a missing sprite. This is why you should use Blitz3D and not DB
I liked the screenshots, but when I downloaded, installed and ran the game, it hung my PC during loading. There was some white text - "LOADING - PLEASE WAIT" in the middle of the screen and some "Initializing..., 64, Thinking" grey text in the top left corner. When nothing happened for about 20-30 seconds, I thought switching apps or calling task manager, but nothing worked, the game took all resources. I waited a bit more and when I was going to press the "reset" buttons (pronouncing not very pollite words in my mind ) the game suddenly exited (thanks to God!) and I didn't risk running it the second time. Maybe will try later when I don't have so many applications loaded. Athlon XP 2500+, 1.5 gig ram, GeForce MX440, a keyboard and a mouse Tell me if I can give you some more info to help you with this issue. I'd like to see the game in action. Will try it on my home pc today as well.
Yeah I have to say I took notice of all these hardware problems. I've been getting the impression blitz is much more stable.
I know. if you remember a demo in the first edition of blitz, aristoids, that was me. I have been waiting for the blitzmax 3d module (as everyone). tested the demo of blitzmax and its brilliant. I have ran into so many problems with db its not even funny. but, yesterday I made the protoype engine for what will probably be my next game in 2 hours and it absolutely rocks. between a rock and a hard place is where I am. I'd love to go with blitzmax, but I need 3d from now on. @rubs: I am sorry this happened for you. the program does take over all resources, but just let it load up. it can take some time on a slower machine. I am guessing it will work fine for you. let me know please. cheers.
Well I use Blitz3D, that can do 3D ^.^ I've used both DB and Blitz3D a lot, and I know for sure that B3D is far better. See my reply to this thread: http://www.shmup-dev.com/index.php?topic=423.msg3535#new
I managed to launch the game Ok at my home PC which is Athlon64 3000+, 1GB RAM, ATI X600PRO. PROS: - I liked detailed and polished graphics. Nice work! - Piano music and separate note sounds are awesome! Liked that a lot! - Overall the game looks solid and well-designed. CONS: - Sound effects' levels in menu seemed unbalanced. There where some loud shot-like sounds which I disliked. They could be much softer. I met loud sounds in few other places, so it makes sense to balance sound levels. - Title screen always showing after the game. Isn't it enough seeing it once when the game is launched? Why should I look at it so many times? - The game is indeed pretty difficult. When I started the game (with easy mode turned on), I first collected 3500 points, then 14700, then 22900, then 13400, then 27400. Then I went through tutorial And at last passed first level with 32500 points. And that's with easy mode turned on!!! I didn't even look wat was the hard level . - A bug: when I went to options/controls and chose controller: joystick (I don't have one, just pressed for curiosity) the game hung. After I killed it (again with difficulty) with task manager, I saw some message box flicker with I gues "- pure virtual call" written in it. My opinion is that the game needs further testing/polishing with major accent on difficulty levels ballancing.
thank you for testing it out. reROS thanks, glad you liked those bits! re:CONS the shot sounds are sfx for the sparks in the menus. I get mixed reviews for the sparks. never occured to me they were too loud, I will take a closer look. hopefully no other effects were unbalanced. dont really consider this to be a problem myself, but if it annoys people no problem taking out out of there..! thanks for this, I will look into it. I think you did pretty well! A player is not meant to go through the first level on the first try. And after a player does reach the end of part 1, they are meant to improve their scores. When we go for highscores, we reach about 55000 for part 1 and most of the times end our games at part 2 or 3. I always enjoyed this 'classic' approach. think ms.pacman. A newbie may well lose all 3 lives on level 1. A good player will need to pass level 1 with 12500 (or something similar - dont remember exactly - a perfect score) to have any chance going for a good score (along the lines of 80000, since we're mortals) I am trying to understand this type of altitude towards difficulty. perhaps people are used to go through 3-4 levels before they lose their first life. I personally dont like that, I get bored. I play an arcade game to get some action and challenge, and this is what I intended to deliver with phoenicas. Maybe its too much 'old-school' and not enough 'casual'. but 'old-school' is my school (thats a good slogan actually). If the game is unfair in any way, I will definitely look into it though. Tough but fair. (another slogan) thanks for your input, I appreciate it.
About difficulty. I think you need to add some control of the difficulty level. If you have this "easy mode" then at least make it easy for the vast majority of players. Making the game too hard may result in loss of interest and thus reduce sales. On the other hand, that's only my opinion .