Dave Hailwood's Forum Posts

  • Excal

    It's probably worth putting 'construct2' and 'touch jam' in your game tags, as although its made it through the judgement process it hasn't been listed amongst the touchjam entries (my game is currently under judgement).

  • mineet

    thanks for the words of encouragement throughout the whole process. I made sure to include you and a few of the other marvelous forum chaps in the credits (which can be found by pressing the in game pause button).

    I might still have a bit of a tinker at the weekend, but a jolly long sleep is very high on the priorities list!

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  • Soooo...

    got there in the end, though there's still plenty I plan to do with the game. If I get the chance at the weekend, I might make it even more obvious how you're supposed to play the game, as even a button marked 'rules' doesn't seem to be enough. It's kind of understandable, though - even when testing the other games I have a tendency to avoid the instructions and just get straight to the game.

    Looks like a few 'Arrow Helper' objects might be a useful addition at the weekend, providing I can be bothered (after four solid months, I'm bloomin' knackered!)

    Thanks for all your help, guys!

  • Chaotic Cubes, Pigo and Turmoil Deluxe are three games that spring to mind. Turmoil Deluxe is probably the closest example you'll get to a space shooter, like you're intending. The trait all these games have in common is that they don't push the graphic capabilities too far, and keep things nice and simple.

    I haven't seen any complex C2 games on there yet, though I know Arima has an Rpg in the works which he's constantly optimising to increase the chances of it working properly.

  • ViZiONEER

    The animations are looking great - very smooth. I'm not sure about the last one though, as it looks a bit like his nipples are on fire. Perhaps it would work better if you positioned his hands slightly further away from his body?

    • Dave

  • Excal

    I'm glad to hear you managed to find a solution, as it must've been very frustrating for you. I'm sure I'll encounter many a browser issue once I get mine uploaded (I have a lot of optimisation to do if my game's to ever work on a phone - currently it quits instantly on ipod touch, which is the closest thing to a phone I have to test on).

    Anyway, whatever happens, you've made a fun game that plays well and looks great. And there'll be plenty of time after the competition to iron out any kinks.

    • Dave

  • Ooh, a lovely bit of Cross-Posting there!

    The button you need to press is the middle one, to the right of where it says 'Icarus - Wave Attack'.

    So, no need to withdraw from the competition, which would've been a shame considering how much effort you've put into the game.

    • Dave

  • Okay, just tested in Chrome and I got the same issue. The worst part of it is whenever I press the space bar to shoot, the screen scrolls down and obscures the picture completely.

    Having just done more testing, it seems that if you click the option to play the game in a new window it completely fixes the problem, so providing that's mentioned somewhere in description text you shouldn't have anything to worry about (phew!). Perhaps you've already mentioned it somewhere and I simply missed it?

    Anyway, best of luck with everything - I'll test the game more later.

  • Excal

    well done in getting your game uploaded.

    I've just had a quick test on the PC, and it seems that because of the way it is displayed in a browser, whenever you move the arrow keys on a keyboard up or down to manoeuvre the ship it moves the screen as well (which means you can't always see what you're doing). This is using Internet Explorer 9, by the way (I'll try Chrome later)

    Thought I best let you know, as there's still plenty of time to fix things. I'll try on the ipad later and let you know if there's any other strange occurences

    • Dave

  • Great looking video demonstration. I love the extra touches, like the corpses hanging from the ceiling, and the way you can do a Strider style wall slide.

    It's nice to hear from some of your previous comments you used to program in Shoot Em Up Construction Kit. That and AMOS on the Amiga 500 used to keep me busy as a kid (not that I ever completed anything).

    I think I also read somewhere that you've done a bit of comic book work; anything published on the small press/indie circuit? I've been knocking around on the UK indie comics scene for almost 20 years now, so it's always nice to encounter fellow comic creators.

  • Excal

    just tested it on ipad3, and it took exactly 1 minute and 30 seconds to load (using Chrome browser, though that probably doesn't make a difference), which isn't that bad (if you get get it down to a minute, you're laughing!)

    One thing I did notice (which may have been mentioned elsewhere by others) is that on the PC, the scoreboard stays up when it's game over, and you can review your progress. On the ipad, the scoreboard vanished instantly and the game began again. This is probably happening because on the PC I needed to click the screen to start, whereas on the ipad my fingers were already 'in touch' on the screen so it thought I was wanting to begin again.

    This problem can easily by solved by putting a well positioned start button on the highscore menu, located away from the edges of the screen where the players fingers are likely in touch, rather than having it be 'touch anywhere' to begin.

  • Excal

    that doesn't strike me as being too big; my own board game was close to the 15mb mark at one point (before I optimised it a bit, got rid of all oversized objects, unused SFX and compressed some of the images to get it down to 9mbs). I'll time the load on my ipad during my tea break, and let you know what I get.

    Just had a play on PC for the first time, and the game handles brilliantly with the keyboard controls; I love the ship thrusters, and the enemy ship a.i. and difficulty scaling is pitched just right.

    Anyway, a cuppa and a computer game beckons!

  • Hi Excal,

    although I'm tempted by the idea of a collaboration, I have a ridiculous amount of projects to get through at the moment (I was just five chapters away from finishing a novel, when I decided to start making a computer game instead!). I might be able to help out in a limited capacity, though.

    well done in cutting your project size by 2mb. How big is it in total at the moment? It might be worth trying out some of the larger art assets in different file formats to see if that makes a difference (such as turning anything from png32 to png8, or jpg; you can do this from the sprite editing screen)- I managed to trim about 5mb off my project that way (though you can lose a little quality, that's probably better than having players give up before playing the game due excessive load time).

    When I get the chance I'll give the game a test on my wife's ipod touch (which is the closest thing I have to an iphone) and report my results back to you.

    Anyway, keep up the good work.

  • harrio

    thanks for the kind words, and all the ideas. I'm still hoping to have the hero move automatically when there's only one hero out, if I get time to include the feature.

    I've encountered a few weird browser issues (such as bits of art not loading in, or the music playing over itself again and again) which only occassionally happens, but hopefully once I've got a proper pre-loader for all the art and sounds in there in might solve the issue.

    I thought I'd gotten rid of all the game breaking bugs over the weekend, but discovered a new one a few seconds after I uploaded; if you die on the first square of one of the boards (the one I like to call 'Butterfly'), and then immediately roll a six and come out again, the hero forgets to turn the corner and goes off the board! If I can't figure out what's causing the issue, I may have to cheat and make the board one square longer before the corner (so the hero has more time to mirror, signal and manoeuvre).

    Also, on rare occassions the a.i. seems to freeze up for no apparent reason, which is a tricky problem to figure out.

    Once I've finished updating the tutorial, destroying the bugs and adding in a few 'helper' items for people who are playing for the first time and can't be bothered to read the rules (i.e, everyone), I will see if I have time to optimise for mobile (even if that just extends to being able to click the heroes Portrait picture to get them to move, as that's a larger Touch area than the heroes themselves). Though board games are much better suited to larger touch screen devices.

    Anyway, the plan is to upload on Friday afternoon (so there's still time to make changes if the Newgrounds community encounter any issues) and then go straight to pub for a celebratory pint!

    If anyone notices any more bugs, or has minor improvement suggestions then please let me know (and if anyone can see how it looks on iphone, that'd be hugely appreciated)

  • Hullo again!

    Right, I have my latest update now playable on the front page. I still have a day or so of free time left for refinements, but next Friday ill be uploading Board Horde to the Newgrounds site for their competition.

    Here's the change list:

    1. Better text objects to draw attention to potions, traps etc.

    2. More attack animations.

    3. A menu theme tune from the marvellous Olivia Egbunike (https://soundcloud.com/olivia-egbunike)

    4. Better functioning A.i. That's less prone to crashing.

    5. Far less bugs! (Still enough to keep me busy)

    Anyway, once the competition is over I will get down to all the features that I'd hoped to add, such as scoreboard, advanced a.i., special skills and more boards.

    All suggestions for improvements are hugely welcomed, as always.

    Cheers!