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In fact I'm changing the control system right now...the entire game will be playable with only the mouse (hopefully  ).

sounds good

I have not had the build I made for the competition crash yet sorry about that...can you remember what was happening? Was it human player turn or CPU turn?

I believe it was after a cpu player caught a thief.

oh and btw: did you take photos of the games figures and cut them out?

@Nobiag,
I've taken on board what you've written, thank you for the feedback. I think you may be using the term "polish" incorrectly (at least in my book anyway!  ) - to me polish is all the little details that round out a game. They're not necessarily graphics. Polish includes things like getting all your sounds the same volume, having clear and concise instructions, making sure there's no icons getting chopped off or breaks in consistency. It does include graphics, but it doesn't mean graphics.

i know it doesn't mean graphics, but to be honest the graphics are the only thing bad i see in Battleship. And i just realized its the same thing with almost all the other games too. So Mastermind just stuck out to me, because its fun, the gameplay is good and in addition to that the graphics are great.


- Don't be Angry Human has nice ingame Graphics, but plays too slow and i don't like the menu graphics.

- Stop the Thief is hard to control and it just crashed. So i have to admit i didn't play a full round of it. (and there are some graphic issues again^^)
Just a little example of where the graphics really affect the gameplay: In the instructions the text is hard to read, so its no fun to read the instructions, but you definitely need to read them. And its very confusing, that you need the mouse to control in the game, when you can't use it in the menu.

- Happy Happy Hippos is actually quite fun to play. But when a round ends there could be a better way to show the winner. (and well... the graphics...^^)

- Draco looks overall very good, but there are some minor graphic issues (for example the menus aren't perfectly readable because of the background and the font). Big thing is that the rules don't work, of course he wrote them in this thread now, but they would have been important for that game. Oh and btw i like some details in this game, like the jiggling(?) dungeon pieces, when you drag them with the mouse.

- 4gewinnt: Worst thing (besides the graphics) is that the game ends after one round. But i like how the game window is called "main_tetris", made me laugh 


oh and i really do appreciate the work that was put in all the games, especially since i did not participate and i almost never finish the games that i've started. So Neurox is right, i should stop the nagging when i can't make it better.

The look of games have gone badly wrong somewhere. To me it's all about playability. Good clues on what you need to do, easy to understand instructions and above all, it has to be fun to play. The visualy pleasing comes so low down on that ladder that it's not even mentioned. Most games you buy now just looks like someone went crazy with the art, copying someone elses idea, slimmed it down to just half of the original game and released it as a work of art. I don't call that professional...

Fun is the most important thing of course, but for me those details and the look and feel of a game is part of the fun. A game that looks and feels cheap to me, has to have a very good gameplay concept with some new ideas to really entertain me anyway. And thats hard when you have games based on board games.
Ok this forum is about programming, not about game-design as a whole, i guess. You can see that just by looking at some of the games. And for One-Man-Productions they are ok and all, but this is a competition, you can win a wiz and there was plenty of time. Thats why i really expected to see more games as polished as Mastermind.
And dont get me wrong, i dont need what is called great graphics today. I like retro-style graphics for example. Programmers dont have to be great graphic artists, but when you plan to make a game all on your own, you have to work out a concept first, consider your own skills and should not set the goals too high. And then you should at least have a bit of sense for aesthetic looks and a nice feel.

oh and btw i think draco is ok too.

@FutureCow
Sorry, i didn't want to offend you. I see there is a lot of hard work put into the other games. As i said, i'm just very critical when it comes to polishing and details. Your game does play like the board game, so theres not much bad stuff i could say about the gameplay. It's more the graphics that bother me.
In the mainmenu alone there are some issues in my opinion:
- The texts of the ship descriptions are positioned at a X Value of 0, so they hit the border of the window. Same thing for the headline.
- Most of the information about the ships is useless. I know it may be a nice idea to include those informations but it looks to complex on first sight and 90% of the players won't care about those numbers anyway (once they realize they are of no importance for the game).
- In addition to the last point, the info texts of the ships just dont look good. It's all in one font (no different colors, no different sizes), even the ships names. And they are placed right on the background. Oh and the ships change too fast to read all the information anyway.
- The mouse doesn't look that great either. There are little bright pixels on its edge.
- Overall the style of some buttons, fonts, the mouse, the headline of the game just doesn't fit completely.

You see its just litte things that bother me and i know many people don't care about stuff like that or at least don't write about it on the internet. Because they try to look at things as a whole and what i'm doing is often called nit-picking. But i believe that everyone recognizes those little flaws, at least subliminally. So you just feel theres something wrong.
Thats what i mean when i write that Mastermind feels good. It feels as a commercial/professional game that could be sold.

By the way: I am currently at a school (i dont know what the school form ist called in english) for graphic designers, so i am taught to see things like that and to nit-pick. 

Mastermind : A well presented game here. Some suggestions - as you hover over a square on the board, maybe highlight which of the four position holes (the ones that get the black and white markets) that square refers to. It's missing from the help. I couldn't work it out. Based on my screenshot attached, I thought I had light blue and pink correct, but in the last one where I put blue and pink I only got one right. Am I missing something? The board looks great though I think it would be great if you could click and drag pieces on the board.

Isn't that the point of Mastermind? That you don't know which exact field the black and white markers refer to?

In my opinion Mastermind is by far the best game. Its the only one that looks really polished and feels like a "real" game. I'm very critical when it comes to details, polishing and the overall feel of a game, so i was a bit dissapointed with some of the games, but Mastermind looks really really good.

The only thing i would wish for in Mastermind are drag & drop controls, i think that would give the game a better feel.

ok, sounds great. im looking forward for the different control options

nice! i like the graphics and the music, but i am a bit dissapointed of the controls, because i imagened them being like this:
- pressing x or b uses air and lets the balloon ascend
- the d-pad is just for left and right
- and to go down you just have to wait and press nothing

As far as i've seen it in your game the "air" could just be named "time" because it goes down constantly once you've started (?). When i read "air" on the screenshots i thought it would only be drained, when you press a button to go up.

Well its just my opinion and the current controls are not that bad, but i just expected them to be different.

looks good and i sure would like to play it. But since you ask if it is "worth continuing", i'd say i would prefer your Balloonacy Game
This Top Trumps game concept is something i would play a few rounds but then i would lose interest, because its too much based on luck (and also its something i would rather play against a human than a computer)
But on the other Hand i like the cards itself and i think there could be cool custom decks made by the community, which i would just like to see (even if i would never play all of them )


(sorry for my english. when i wrote this, i was sitting a few minutes looking over every sentence and i still thinks its full of mistakes. also i'm tired so... i hope its understandable )

hmm, stretchanim doesn't work for me anymore since v7.

ups sorry, in der angeh?ngten exe hatte ich den einen Alphamode auf 0, statt auf 1 wie im geposteten code.
(Aber genauso wie in deinem geposteten Screenshot siehts auf dem WIZ aus)

So m?sste es unter windows aussehen:



und nochmal als Anhang mit der richtigen exe:

[attachment deleted by admin]

Hier mal ein schnelles Beispiel. Der zweite Alphamode Befehl kann auf dem Wiz quasi weggelassen werden, weil der anscheinend bei Polyvector nicht klappt. Also auf dem Wiz ist der Hintergrund der Bilder z.B. immer schwarz.

Code (glbasic) Select Expand

scrw=320 ; scrh=240
SETSCREEN scrw,scrh,0



LOADSPRITE "test.bmp",0
LOADSPRITE "test.png",1

WHILE 1

SMOOTHSHADING 0
ALPHAMODE 0

STARTPOLY -1
POLYVECTOR 0,0,0,0,RGB(255,255,255)
POLYVECTOR 0,scrh,0,0,RGB(255,255,255)
POLYVECTOR scrw,scrh,0,0,RGB(0,0,0)
POLYVECTOR scrw,0,0,0,RGB(0,0,0)
ENDPOLY


INC x,-KEY(203)+KEY(205) ; INC y,-KEY(200)+KEY(208)

ALPHAMODE 1

STARTPOLY 0
POLYVECTOR x,y,0,0,RGB(255,255,255)
POLYVECTOR x,y+50,0,50,RGB(255,255,255)
POLYVECTOR x+100,y+50,100,50,RGB(255,255,255)
POLYVECTOR x+100,y,100,0,RGB(255,255,255)
ENDPOLY

STARTPOLY 1
POLYVECTOR x,y+50,0,0,RGB(255,255,255)
POLYVECTOR x,y+100,0,50,RGB(255,255,255)
POLYVECTOR x+100,y+100,100,50,RGB(255,255,255)
POLYVECTOR x+100,y+50,100,0,RGB(255,255,255)
ENDPOLY


SHOWSCREEN
WEND


[attachment deleted by admin]

Hab gerade gemerkt, dass bei Polyvector der Alphamode auch nicht richtig funktioniert. Also ich hab z.B. ein Sprite als Polyvector Textur benutzt, dass selber eigentlich keine transparenten Pixel hat (auch keine halbtransparenten etc... also ich hab jedenfalls nicht den selben Fehler gemacht wie im post oben ). Aber das Sprite wird halt zu den R?ndern hin dunkler und vorm Polyvector hab ich Alphamode 1. Am PC funktioniert das auch normal, aber auf dem Wiz siehts aus wie Alphamode 0.
Ist das ungef?hr der gleiche Grund aus dem das nicht funktioniert (sorry, kenn mich mit dem openGL Kram und so nicht aus) oder ist das noch ein bug, der auf dem wiz gefixt werden k?nnte?^^

hi,
ich hab gerade ein programm von mir auf dem wiz ausprobiert bei dem ich ein paar png Sprites mit halbtransparenten Stellen benutze, auf dem wiz werden aber alle pixel komplett undurchsichtig gezeichnet.
Ist das mit dem Alphakanal auf dem wiz einfach nicht m?glich oder ist das noch ein bug?

I just saw that in the gp32x Forum (but im not yet registered there) and i think it looks great. Cant wait to play it on my wiz

Naja es gibt ja die Bewertungsfunktion, und das Forum mit seiner PM-F?higkeit

Die Bewertungsfunktion ist ja gut, ersetzt aber doch keine Kommentare. Und das Forum ist auch nicht dasselbe: Erstmal w?r ich mir nicht 100% sicher in welches Unterforum sowas kommen sollte und im Betatest Forum muss eben der Autor selbst den Thread erstellen, sonst w?rs ein bisschen unversch?mt denke ich^^
und wenn man nur ne Kleinigkeit schreiben will, will man vielleicht nicht direkt nen ganzen Thread erstellen. Au?erdem gehen solche Threads im Forum unter, im Showroom k?nnte man f?r jedes Projekt die dazu passenden Kommentare sehen, auch wenn sie schon ?lter sind.