Board Horde Stats Update

Hi folk,

I've just added the latest version of Board Horde to the front page. It still needs a lot of tidying up in places, but it should give you a rough idea of how its progressing. The a.i. works a lot better, though there's still a few tweaks I need to make to the routine (mostly to stop it thinking its going to tread on a trap, when it isn't). I also need to delete unused assets, shrink oversized assets, properly cue up some of the new Sfx, etc.

Anyway, please let me know what you think so far, and whether you encounter any bugs or problems.

Appreciated, as always.

Dave Hailwood,

i made one tactically wrong decision, and paid dearly for it. your ai has passed muster sir...lol.

Dave Hailwood,

Like the updated styling of the game, and the new board configuration. Seems like the A.I is working really well too!

Nice job! :)

Blacksmith

Thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad the a.i.s behaving in a bit more challenging fashion. Very well done with Hexzul, by the way. Even if I still haven't scored a single darned point I enjoyed playing it, and thought it a very nicely put together puzzler.

harrio

Nice to hear the computer has been trying its best against you. Get some practice in, and once I have implemented scoreboards we'll be able to see who is the true master; man or machine!

Dave Hailwood,

Thanks, it was a nice surprise! I'm in the process of adding a hint option, so keep trying you'll score that point yet ;)

Let me know when you've uploaded Board Horde to some social sites, and I can get my friends to check it out!

<img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Crashed for me at this point in the game. :-/

<img src="http://cklester.smugmug.com/Other/Miscellaneous-Public-Pictures/i-fdjK3jL/0/M/board_hoard_crash-M.png" border="0" />

My opponent had just rolled and finished his move, landing on a monster, but it got stuck there. And I was going to win, I just know it!

cklester

Aw, man! And 'Your Mom' was doing so well too! Unfortunately that's a persistent bug that I've tried to get rid of many times, but it still keeps coming back for seconds. If I can't locate the source of the problem I might try putting in a fall-back botch job solution (such as- if hero is in collision with enemy, and collision routine has ended, kill enemy). The other real game breaker that only seems to happen on Internet explorer is that sometimes the 'corner detection' array doesn't fire, and the heroes walk right off the board. Also it occasionally has troubles getting past the loading screen when played for the second time on Safari.

Once I have sorted out the bugs and put in a scoreboard, I look forward to seeing Your Mom place highly. Thanks for taking the time to play the game and provide a screenshot of the bug at work.

Blacksmith

Just replayed Hexzul. Great tutorial, and I'm happy to announce that I actually scored some frikken points! For me, it was just like that bit in the Matrix when Keanu announces 'I know Kungfu!'. Oh yes, 80 entire points! Come get me, world! I'm bulletproof!!!

Oh, I had a suggestion... If I only have one piece on the board, it's not really necessary for me to choose him/her. Know what I mean? Just move the piece automagically for me. :-)

Nice work Dave Hailwood, and that's all without the help of the upcoming hint option (just think of the possibilities then!! ;)

Don't forget to post where you've uploaded Board Horde, and I'll help to spread the word!!!

cklester

I had started to implement an 'automatic move' routine for if there's only one hero on the board, but had to disable it whilst concentrating on getting more important features ready for the Newgrounds competition. Now the competition's over I'll probably have the chance to finish adding it at some point, so thanks for reminding me! (bug hunt and asset size reduction is the priority at the moment, though)

Blacksmith

As soon as I start uploading Board Horde to various sites I'll be sure to let you know (any assistance in drawing people's attention to it is always appreciated). It's likely I'll try Kongregate, Clay.IO and Market.js to start with (and update the Newgrounds game).

I hope to have the game ready to upload in about a week or so, and then spend June adding in lots of extra features before I move on to developing something new in July (though I'll still add new boards, potions, traps etc from time to time).

Ah sweet, I'd lost track of this. Haven't checked in on it for a month and it's improved immensely, so good job! It feels really polished now and it's much clearer what's going on - even I could work it out :p

Love the music, really adds to it. And it's clear now what the potions and so on do. Didn't find any bugs and it played through smoothly on mine, looks pretty much ready to go :)

Weren't you planning to launch this for the Newgrounds touch competition, or am I imagining things? Or some other competition? What happened?

farflamex

The Newgrounds entry can be checked out here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/616297

It didn't place in the competition, as it was let down by dodgy a.i. (Which was the best I could get it in the time available). The two that won were very polished and enjoyable games (Magnetized and Space Hamster).   Still, without that competition deadline my game wouldn't be as far along as it is, so I got a lot out of it.

I'm glad you haven't stumbled across any bugs yet, though there's definitely some lurking around. Finding the cause of the problem is made all the more tricky by the fact that the main collision bug seems to happen randomly.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by to give the game another test. There should be a lot more improvements on the way over the next month.

I see you suffered a few hate-votes on Newgrounds too and the game is rated stupidly low. I'm getting a bit suspicious, because I've seen some truly awful games with 4+ stars and some really good ones rated down at 2. I suspect people are getting friends etc to vote up their games because some are very bad. 2.4 for Board Horde is totally unfair. I'd understand it if every game was down at 2 stars because some of the haters state really stupid reasons for downvoting (I've seen people vote a game at 1 because 'I don't like shooters' and it's common to get a 0 vote because it doesn't work on their machine, which is sort of annoying). But some really weak games get 4 stars which is really strange. I think the main trick is to get rid of every bug and get it working on every platform and then re-release it, because that will kill most of the hate-votes and you should get closer to 4. I've added my vote :)

I can't believe someone said the music was annoying, I love it. I found myself humming it while walking to dog, lol!

I guess the point of Newgrounds and Kongregate is to test out your game. Release it, see the response, fix the errors (would help if they'd reply when they find bugs) then release it again. Eventually it should be completely ready to go.

Still, it's a bit lame that my new Jovian War game, which took about 20 hours to complete, got more than Board Horde which is far better and probably took you 50 times longer. I guess the point is, my game is simple and doesn't have bugs or issues on other machines, due to the simplicity. For now, it seems like that way to go.

I'm not sure where to go after the Newgrounds route etc. I guess marketing it on your own webpage or other places would be worthwhile. Not the sort of thing I know much about unfortunately.

farflamex

I have to agree with your analysis of Newgrounds. I have received several 0 votes for submitting "just another asteroid shooter" when another asteroid shooter placed in the top 8.

Overall, I'm not really a fan of the NG community as much more than a place to get basic feedback on a game. The community is largely full of kids who do not provide the sort of feedback we could really use to make our games better.