Quantizer

TMR · Post by **TMR** » Fri May 29, 2009 11:38 pm

Y'know... i'm almost scared to post about it here since you lot can be rather scathing, but... [deep breath, holds nose]

Quantizer started life a quick project developed more to give myself a sense of getting somewhere with my BlitzMax code, but it's turned into something that people are enjoying as well! The plot is your usual "blast off into space and do battle with slimy aliens", the ship comes armed to the hilt with a decent laser and three smart bombs and there are bullets. Lots of bullets in fact!

There's even an online highscore table, the top fifteen names from which are displayed on the Illogistix website (sort of like my personal "budget label" for want of a better description) and within the game. Yay!

ForceDevice · Post by **ForceDevice** » Sat May 30, 2009 12:12 am

So... do you by any chance have a demo you could show us? Or are we supposed to comment based solely on the screenshot (which looks cool BTW, in case you didn't rip off those sprites from some other game

)?

EDIT: Oh wait, I can't believe I missed that link. Duh.
Will post some comments/thoughts in a while.

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Sat May 30, 2009 12:25 am

Your site isn't loading for me ..

Want to give a link on megaupload or something?

Also, I'm usually the scathiest guy here. >_>

ForceDevice · Post by **ForceDevice** » Sat May 30, 2009 12:33 am

Hmm... I liked the graphic style, but some things didn't feel quite right. Try adding some animation to the ship sprites; at the very least there should be an animation for the player's ship moving to the sides, since it's a hori. Also, why are the bullets square-shaped and semitransparent?

Gameplay is pretty fun except for mainly two things: enemies take far too long to die and the bullet patterns are a bit too bland. Points for the ship having a small hitbox, which is absolutely necessary for a manic.

The music is pretty cool; the narrator's voice creeped me out at first, but I got used to it.

Also, if I may ask (and I'm probably wrong), have you developed any other game with "quant-something" as its title in the past? Just curious.

TMR · Post by **TMR** » Sat May 30, 2009 1:00 am

Udderdude wrote:Your site isn't loading for me ..

Want to give a link on megaupload or something?

How about a Will Host For Food link since i like their name...?

i expect that you'll find the online highscore system'll disable itself; it attempts to connect to the website, so if one doesn't work the other probably won't.

Udderdude wrote:Also, I'm usually the scathiest guy here. >_>

Yeah, i noticed...! =-)

ForceDevice wrote:Hmm... I liked the graphic style, but some things didn't feel quite right. Try adding some animation to the ship sprites; at the very least there should be an animation for the player's ship moving to the sides, since it's a hori. Also, why are the bullets square-shaped and semitransparent?

It's only a bit of fun to be honest, as well as a live test of the first draft of that highscore management stuff; i considered animations (the sprites are all rendered with Doga L1) but wanted to get the thing out now rather than keep adding to it and delaying things. Oh, the bullets are square and transparent because i thought it looked cool. =-)

As it stands, i'm not planning on making any changes unless someone finds a way to make the thing crash and burn hideously, but any feedback goes towards future projects building on this base.

ForceDevice wrote:Also, if I may ask (and I'm probably wrong), have you developed any other game with "quant-something" as its title in the past? Just curious.

No, this is the first game i've coded with a Q at the start of the name... or at least it is as far as i remember and anything else would've been an 8-bit game! =-)

Udderdude · Post by **Udderdude** » Sat May 30, 2009 1:15 am

Scoring system is pretty broken, you can just kill the small trash enemies and get a huge chain, since they are obviously the best for boosting the multiplier. It doesn't seem possible with the player's wimpy firepower to destroy everything on the screen anyway.

Same 3 enemies over and over, no bosses from what I can tell. I was ready to fall asleep by level 4. Desperately needs more variety, and some levels with entirely new enemies so the player isn't forced to destroy the same enemy type for the entire game.

Didn't recodnise my USB-saturn converter. Also messed up with a 360 USB pad - it used the analog stick instead of the d-pad. Also messed up with a HRAP EX. It did not use the hat switch, instead using the analog input which doesn't even exist on the thing.

Music got kindof boring.

Everything else seemed decent. It's a good base you can build on.

TMR · Post by **TMR** » Sat May 30, 2009 11:09 am

Udderdude wrote:Everything else seemed decent. It's a good base you can build on.

Right, i'm going to ignore the rest of what you said and just listen to this bit!! =-)

Seriously, thanks for the fair comments and they're duly noted and in particular the controls; when my next writing deadline gets out of the way, i'll have to build some test code and ask you to give it a go to see how the various controllers respond.

The next project is going to have more variety, it already exists in early form but needs a lot more work...

null1024 · Post by **null1024** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:25 am

Easy fix for the joypad problem -- use the POV directions, as these are usually mapped to the d-pad on most controllers.