Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: "Chris Wallace" Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: BreakDown Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 18:51:05 +0100 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 117 Message-ID: <9nqrr3$2qp7@www.netyaroze-europe.com> References: <9ndh5t$e5h4@www.netyaroze-europe.com> <01c13c3e$3fa37380$LocalHost@pal-s-omnibook> NNTP-Posting-Host: host217-35-2-177.in-addr.btopenworld.com X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Cheers for the reply, should be alot of help when i come to see what i can implement :) > 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'. I dont know sound fx yet, but they are deffenatly needed > - 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 :) ... I know what you meen by the flat ending of levels, they just end and another starts.. what could i put in there thats easy? And is the a better what of showing the damage? I'm concidereing smoke for the holes but im working on the basics first =) > Same thing with the bonuses (feedback sound should change this). I just added a fade when shot function for these which makes it a little nicer to look at. > - the gun direction is not visible enough for me. Yeah, i noticed this yesterday also ;) > - a notice that analog mode is required would be a good idea (if it really > is, that is, otherwise just call me dumb). I will add this to the title screen if i still cant get digital pads working, which i tried from the start and failed =\ > 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?) The angle gets more acurate as you collect the (green) speed powerups, it starts off odd because of the int rounding errors. I will have to play around with the start speeds to get this to come out right > - 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) I just made the machinegun bullets both more and bigger so they're a little more see-able. The 'dead' enemies sit at 20,20, and an explosion appears when the last enemy is shot, but i think I've also seen it end to early as well.. something to be looked 4.. =( > - sometimes when firing whith circle I got a weird angle (about +90deg). ive changed the weapon used with circle to laser now, have to see if you still get this > - I think I saw some rotating enemies vanish (but you already mentionned > that). > Yup, that one confusses me > 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 :) ) For the double turret option, it had very much corssed my mind to have this and either use the sholder buttons to fire or have them do it automatically. Something now some1 else has mentioned I will look into :):) > - 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 > ;) > If you get enough green powerups you can shoot more than one, you just have to find them ;) > 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... ;) )... > Ah! yes, i thought that there may be a problem with bot_a hitting 0 while in play, which would mess up everything. I may try to set it to something else when dead and see if it helps, a new variable for the dead/alive testing would perobably be better, but ill see if i can work around this first. in general the letters mean _t = type _b = behaviour _a = angle urm, cant remember the others > Anyway, Breakdown is a nice achievement. Cheers! > Cheers, > pal > Chris