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Post by Janne Kivilahti on Jul 28, 2009 12:55:01 GMT -5
Q-Lat3 is our new game we have been developing the last half a year, and it will make it's first public appearance in Assembly '09 festival's game development competition. According to Assembly's website that should happen tomorrow! More info about the game at Q-Lat3 homepageEDIT: The game can now be downloaded from Piste Gamez site as well!!
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Post by azoman on Jul 28, 2009 13:14:46 GMT -5
Hm... It's looking very good. I hope you will relase this soon
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Post by Xfactor21 on Jul 30, 2009 10:18:36 GMT -5
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Post by azoman on Jul 30, 2009 13:45:42 GMT -5
Wow... Super game, but sometimes too hard. incidentally, some news about PK3?
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Post by accuman on Jul 31, 2009 13:39:54 GMT -5
Awesome game idea and good execution for the most part. That said, I do want so share some thoughts after two sessions (about 20min each):
Some of the levels are very easy while some (especially the ones with lasers in them) and significantly harder. This makes it faster to gather points in the easier ones to the point that I didn't even try to 'finish' the level with the wood background and the four(?) small square blocks as obstacles. I'm not quite sure what the time limit is good for, since the levels vary so much in difficulty. It seems it doesn't make it worth the effort to try and clear the levels because of the time spent doing it and not focusing on points gathering (I don't think I ever made it past stage 4).
I also found out that the best strategy is to not try to make all of the balls the same color, but to have as many different colors and franticly bump into everything making the gameplay very chaotic to say the least. By doing this my points went from average of a few k's to tens of thousands.
Some sort of bonus rounds every two or three rounds would have been great as well as a motive to clear the levels. Oh, more levels are needed as well.
I score the game 8/10 overall.
Best of luck in the Asm game compo!
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Post by Janne Kivilahti on Jul 31, 2009 15:20:24 GMT -5
Thanks for the feedback and good points. I'm aware of the move-your-mouse-around-randomly-to-score-high-strategy. I've tried to make clearing the levels more rewarding with the extra time and extra points plus the bonus color system, but I suppose I need to balance the game more.
There will be a new updated version available on Monday, that should have some of the issues addressed. Keep the feedback coming!
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Post by accuman on Aug 1, 2009 3:47:11 GMT -5
Are you by any chance planning of making a level editor or otherwise making it possible to create your own levels?
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Roobar
Junior Member
Posts: 36
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Post by Roobar on Aug 1, 2009 4:44:11 GMT -5
I forgot to mention that this game is significantly better than Q-Lat 2 or 1. Actually it's so good that it can't compare to the previous ones. Excellent job and well done!
Still, the only thing to complain about is the difficulty. I can hardly pass through 2 or 3 levels max.
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Post by shockedfrog on Aug 1, 2009 11:40:53 GMT -5
It's a very different game from Q-Lat2 - 2 was more of a chillout game, while this is pretty chaotic. I prefer 2, but definitely think this is pretty good too and could go in some interesting directions. So far, my thoughts on 3: The menu screen looks awesome. I do like the graphical style of the rest of the game, but there's a bit too much going on, and it's hard to see some things. Part of this is probably due to having to play in widescreen, though - support for standard resolutions (even with black bars) would be ideal. I tried windowed mode as an alternative, but the game ran quite slowly. The time bonus for completing each level is a good addition, and feels a bit more balanced than the reliance on time bonuses in Q-Lat2, but since some levels are so much harder than others there's still a lot of reliance on luck to get anywhere, and some will end up being complete game killers. However, the difficulty of any particular level depends on so many things, not just the level itself, so I can't really offer any suggestions on balancing them. Treating black balls like other colours is going to take some time to get used to, but it does make things quite interesting and challenging. It would be nice to have this change mentioned in the tutorial, though. The change I'm not so keen on is the colour-changing balls, all they seem to do is waste time and I'd rather they settled on a colour after being hit instead of having to wait. The music, not quite as much to my taste as Q-Lat2s in general, but still good stuff. I'm hoping the next version will have options to choose which background music to use, and perhaps being able to load custom stuff, since the music is now protected in the .game file and can't be replaced normally. I second the request for a level editor, that would be beautiful. Best of luck in the compo!
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Post by Janne Kivilahti on Aug 1, 2009 19:52:11 GMT -5
Thanks for the feedback shockedfrog. There will be quite a lot of changes and fixes in the next version, which will be released on Monday at Assembly site (according to schedule). So it's worth checking out. Here's some change log of what has been updated/fixed so far: - Increased speed in windowed mode - No more option to run in full screen if 1280x720 not supported by monitor - XBox360 gamepad left analog stick support (extra ball control with right analog stick) - Balls self destruct after a while (no more endless milking of points in one stage) - Bonus color for player 2 in two player mode - Increased bonuses for clearing a level with bonus color (stage*1000 points) - Less frequent extra player balls - Color shifter ball stops swapping colors if hit and swaps colors very fast - max combo bonus is now 100 - 2 new levels - Eyeball surprise - Lasers are more time off - Adjustments to levels to balance the difficulty - In windowed mode the window is centered - Loading times are faster - Bugs in reloading already visited stages fixed - 1 new ball texture (faces)
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Post by accuman on Aug 2, 2009 2:34:50 GMT -5
I completely agree with shockedfrog. Indeed there is a bit too much going on in the graphics department. I recall the first couple of times when I played the game, the ball's respawn position was not clearly enough shown, so I took a while to continue the game after falling into a hole. Maybe a blinking or flashing effect can fix this. Regarding the balancing of the levels, I suggest you test each level by playing it about 10 times, summing up the points and writing them down, then compare the results. It's not clear to me when exaclty does the player get extra balls? Pressing the Esc key should resume the game in the main menu (if a game is started). Ideas for bonus levels, that in my opinion would bring variety to the style of how the player should control the ball, thus reducing repetitiveness: 1. A maze-like level with lots of walls and narrow passages and a short time limit and have the player try to hit (and simultaneously destroy) as many balls as possible for bonus points. Extra points for hitting every ball on the level. Some precision required. 2. A boardwalk type of level with narrow passages (no walls, just holes on all sides). Extra precision required. 3. A go-nuts level with tons of balls and no walls. Sometimes is just fun to go berserk PS. I'd be interested in modding the game graphics and sounds if only it were possible (I already figured out how to browse the data file but could not extract the files.).
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Post by Janne Kivilahti on Aug 2, 2009 4:15:56 GMT -5
A lot of the game play issues are related to the change from 800x600 resolution to 1280x720 only a few days before the release. This was of course our bad for not reading the competition rules carefully enough.
The bonus level is not a bad idea. I'll see if I can get it in for the monday update (among some other changes).
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Post by pekkafan on Aug 2, 2009 4:42:10 GMT -5
First of all: Thank you for this really enjoyable game. It is great to see a result of your hard work and I definitely wish you good luck.
Now on to my suggestions to improve it:
When I collect a bonus I never know what the bonus does. Often I can't even see a change. I think it would be great if the type of the bonus I collected would be displayed in one corner of the screen.
Another problem I have is that I don't have a tutorial level in which I can try things out. I suggest to add a tutorial level without walls or other obstacles. This level should have no time limit so you can try to improve yourself without the need to hurry.
Janne, you wrote that you will improve the balancing of the levels so there is no need for me to say a word about that until the improved version comes out on monday.
And in the end I have a question: Yesterday I played a level with lasers. After some time the lasers were turned off but I don't know how that happened. Was it a bonus I collected? Are the lasers automatically turned off after some time? Or is there a secret way to turn them off?
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Post by steng c7 on Aug 2, 2009 15:10:13 GMT -5
And in the end I have a question: Yesterday I played a level with lasers. After some time the lasers were turned off but I don't know how that happened. Was it a bonus I collected? Are the lasers automatically turned off after some time? Or is there a secret way to turn them off? Same happened here
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Post by Janne Kivilahti on Aug 2, 2009 15:19:32 GMT -5
The lazers go off after 15 times, to make the stage easier to complete if you are stuck with it. In the next version the lasers are more time off, making the stages easier. Here's the updated change log: - Increased speed in windowed mode - No more option to run in full screen if 1280x720 not supported by monitor - XBox360 gamepad left analog stick support (extra ball control from right analog stick) - Balls self destruct after a while - Bonus color for player 2 in two player mode - Increased bonuses for clearing a level with bonus color (stage*1000 points) - Less frequent extra player balls - Color shifter ball stops swapping colors if hit and swaps colors very fast - 2 new levels - 2 bonus levels added (appear every 4th stage) - Eyeball surprise - Moving blocks - Lasers are more time off - Other adjustments to levels to balance the difficulty - In windowed mode the window is centered - Loading times are faster - Bugs in reloading already visited stages fixed - Blending issue with particle effects fixed - 1 new ball texture (faces) - New speech samples for bonus color change and extra time
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