simple puzzle game WIP

[BdR]

I like the graphics, except for one thing; the face is always looking to the right. When it's moving left or up, I think it would be nicer if it's also facing left or up then. Either that or I would have it face in a neutral "forward" direction, like towards the camera.

And like others suggested, the teleport animation could be slower, it is a bit disorientating when the blueface jumps around the screen at the speed of light.

[spicypixel]

I got my mac mini yesterday and have been fooling around with it. After som trial and error I got the game unto my iphone only to discover that the game is tremendously slow. I fixed it somewhat by changing my drawroutine to draw with rotozoomsprite instead of polyvector.

Not wanting to hijack this thread but I thought polyvector were faster than the sprite commands anyway. Reading this it seems not. I know if you use tint other than RGB(255,255,255) but I recall Crivens writing recently that his latest code when compiled in XCode 4.5 IIRC was quicker too with sprite commands rather than polyvector. What's going on?

[Ian Price]

I think it all depends on the machine, the gfx card, and how hard the program is working and what it's doing. It's always been horses for courses. You have to pick the right tool for the job; sometimes sprites are better, sometimes polyvector. Generally there isn't really that much difference, but it can vary significantly. But remember that polyvectors can be much more versatile than sprites and lend themselves to distortion and colour changes easily.

[Emil]

I've had to abandon (for the time being) the lines behind my character (that fade away). I'm thinking of maybe doing some particles spawning behind it instead...

This is how my game looks like right now.., except I got problems with alphamode -0.5 and 0.1 on the iphone (the shading you see on the picture) everything looks really flat for some reason on my iphone.., I've tried searching but couldn't find info on glbasic/iphone limitations when talking about alphamode....

Anyways.., A couple more features, as you can see by the picture, and also some bugs to straighten.., but it's coming along nicely

[Hemlos]

The site you are hosting the game on, tends to have some adult oriented advertising, considering children frequest these forums i would only make this suggestion to host your game on a less risque host site such as http://www.binhoster.com/signup.php

I also dont want to hijack this thread, and im only going to make a suggestion here, no demands...
Its free, has a really nice cpanel, and the advertising seems a wee bit more on the neutral side of life.

PS> pretty cool concept for a game here, keep up the good work! 

[erico]

Really good work, I agree.
The line path is a nice sfx, can´t you do it some other less taxing way?

[r0ber7]

I'm liking the lighting. How did you accomplish this? Polyvector brightness adjustment? If you did, perhaps that is why it seems flat on some devices. One time I heard someone on this forum say that RGB(x,x,x) for polys didn't do much on phones. I could be wrong, I never tried it personally.

[Emil]

This is what it looks like on my wifes iPad.

I'll try to get the line FX to work somehow. Don't know exactly how yet though...

The shading is done with textures that I lay on top of everything with the help of alphamode -0.5 (or some similair value depending on if I want to brighten or make it darker). But as you can see it doesn't work on the iPhone/ipad.

I deleted my link to the file Hemlos.

[erico]

Just out of curiosity, how are you drawing them? Drawsprites or polivectors?

One alternative could be using alpha -1 and apply a pre-set(photoshop, etc) transparency on it, you could also make it weak, like a 10% and stack it up  to get it whiter.

Hope it helps.

[bigsofty]

Looking good, iPad shading aside, i hope you see this through to completion. 

[Hemlos]

The shading is done with textures that I lay on top of everything with the help of alphamode -0.5 (or some similair value depending on if I want to brighten or make it darker). But as you can see it doesn't work on the iPhone/ipad.

Did you find a bug, or is this expected on apple machines?

I deleted my link to the file Hemlos.

No problem, an alternative would be to simply put a direct link to the file for beta testing purposes.

-Neil

[Emil]

Erico, I'm using drawsprites (rotozoomsprite to be precise). I'm avoiding polyvectors right now since I got such a huge framedrop with them.

Bigsofty, thanks! That's my goal.

Hemlos, I created a new program that drew semitransparent rectangles with this technique and it worked. So I'm probably doing something else that breakes it.


I'm looking forward to my next update. Having a big family really constrains my time to work on this.

[Emil]

After a long time I've finally managed to do some more work on this project!

Have rewritten and fixed lots of bugs. And I'm proud to say it rus smoothly on the iphone now. Had some issues before but theyre gone now 

[Emil]

I crafted a little demo of the game that you can try out!

It's only the first 20 levels then it restarts at level 0 again
use WASD to move around, down key gives you another instance of the level(different seed value) and space jumps to next level.

https://www.box.com/s/gujw1p1gkmvqcsx98u4b
Hope this works and please tell me what you think of it!
I'm interested in how the puzzles feel to play and not so much graphics right now.

[erico]

Gave a first try, very interesting concept, I like the visuals and sound so far.
Will give a deeper go on the puzzle´s mechaniks later on.

Congrats, it has been a while and it all looks great!

No front end or endings? Or did you remove them for the solo purpose of gameplay tests?