Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: "pal" Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: BreakDown Date: 13 Sep 2001 10:39:34 GMT Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 52 Message-ID: <01c13c3e$3fa37380$LocalHost@pal-s-omnibook> References: <9ndh5t$e5h4@www.netyaroze-europe.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: nas-cbv-2-31-93.dial.proxad.net X-Newsreader: Microsoft Internet News 4.70.1155 I love the idea. I never played the Flash game (how could this be played with a mouse!?), but I remember playing a similar arcade game (under Mame), although it was limited to four directions I think (kind of minimalist Robotron), and hence played somewhat differently. Criticisms (minor and hopefully constructive): - I feel Breakdown does not give enough feedback. A bit of sound fx should improve this easily, even if just 'beep beep'. - the pace (level start and ending) is a bit flat. The "energy-level-style" player death (if you see what I mean ;) ) increases this feeling. This is a matter of taste of course. I hate energy-level-style shoot'em-ups :) ... Same thing with the bonuses (feedback sound should change this). - the gun direction is not visible enough for me. - a notice that analog mode is required would be a good idea (if it really is, that is, otherwise just call me dumb). Bugs: - the direction of shots sometimes appears not to precisely match the angle of the gun... which is annoying considering the game. (Or maybe I just don't know where I'm aiming?) - sometimes an enemy happens to explode (not just disappear) without being shot - when the last-but-one gets shot apparently. (or maybe I do not see the shots well enough? The machine gun ones are tiny) - sometimes when firing whith circle I got a weird angle (about +90deg). - I think I saw some rotating enemies vanish (but you already mentionned that). Suggestions: - what about having two guns, one for each stick? This would make the game unique to the Psx... and perhaps unplayable ;) (what about a 4player game with 2 pads :) ) - being able to shoot more than one bullet would not make the game too much easier but would definitely improve playability to my mind. Although I understand that there is the machine gun, I'd really like one or two bullets more, because the enemies are quick... and I often miss my target ;) Misc: I looked at your sources looking for the disappearing enemy bug. I was confused by "bot_a" (among other things ;) ). It seems to be used differently in various places. In "collision" it seems to mean "alive or not", but in "ctrlAI" it stores an angle. This is made more confusing by the fact that although its element type is int, NULL is sometimes put in (NULL is meant to be a pointer, and you're not supposed to know that its value is 0). I think there's a bug source in this bot_a. I'm sorry I could not look more precisely, because some of your variable names are not expressive enough (bot_a, bot_b, fire_t... ;) )... Anyway, Breakdown is a nice achievement. Cheers, pal