Automagically! Review

Overall Score: 2/5
Presentation: 2/5 Gameplay: 2/5 Story: N/A

Presentation: 2/5

Graphics: 2/5


This is possibly the most diverse part of the entire game.

The game featured very boring and repetitive graphics throughout. Everything's uninteresting; the levels, the enemies ( All two of them. ), and the character. I never saw any real diversity, and because the graphics that you do see over and over and over again are so boring, I can't say this game fared too well here. The graphics are clean and destinct, though, so: 2/5

Audio: 2/5

Again, the game has only repetitive sound-effects and only one BGM.
But I gotta say, the BGM is pretty cool. And the Kazoo-of-victory after beating a level? Killer. Seriously, though, the audio isn't much better than the graphics. You'll get tired of everything after about level 3 or 4. 2/5


Gameplay: 3/5

Mechanics: 3/5


That's really as close as it'll let me get to that block.

The gameplay mechanics are pretty good, actually. Jumping isn't too well tuned, collision detection is definitely not too great, and there are only two types of enemies with two variants each. It's also worth noting that you can walk backward by pressing left while going right. You attack enemies by throwing deadly-accurate tomatoes at them. Tomatoes can also, interestingly, be used to blast yourself up higher when you're jumping. I never found it necessary to use this technique, but it did make some of the harder jumps a lot easier, and It's a nice way to use all the free ammo the game throws at you. If not for my ealier complaints, this area could have gotten a 4 or maybe even a 5. But, no. It gets a: 3/5

Enjoyability: 1/5

The game just isn't much fun. Level design, especially after levels 2 and 3, got really bland. There's one level where you do almost nothing other than traversing onflat land. The game doesn't even have a solid difficulty curve. It just kinda fluctuate from "Easy" to " Hard" and then back again. 1/5

Longevity: 1/5

The game's short, and it has absolutely no replay value. It plays like an arcade game, but the score system's really underplayed, and I don't think anybody'd be into competition on a game like this anyways.



Overall: The game's not terrible, or even bad. But It's just too short and uninteresting for what it is, to really be worth anybody's time. But at least It wouldn't waste much time.

...huh? I'm pretty sure I remember there being three different enemies: purple squids (which had walking and hopping versions), bears, and walruses riding on balls.

I mistook the walruses for bears.

Harsh.

I guess I did have the game drone on for too long. I had planned to both change backgrounds, and music, but the purple background I made turned out terrible and the person making the music never came through, leaving me with a song I had left over from a colab game that seemed to have died. (Did anyone notice what song I spliced to make this one?)
I also think making it shorter and a bit harder would have increased enjoyment. Maybe have a top ten score script? O well, the idea just didn't come together in a number of ways. I mostly blame my lack of enthusiasm.

Also:
There's 4 enemy types. All different from one another.



Please expand on this.

I count only three enemies, one of them just has two variations.
It's worth noting that I originally mistook the walruses for bears; hence the review saying something along the lines of two enemies with two variants.

It's hard for me to count enemies that look the same, but have different behaviors, as different enemies altogether.

On the side of Collision detection and jumping:

If I remember right, you don't have much controls over you jumps. Not as much as I like, anyways. You can't control the duration you're in the air, and there's really no momentum-use for building up jump distance at all.

The collision detection just feltwrong. Mostly because It's not all pixel-based. I'm probably just picky about my platforming mechanics, but, heh, oh well.[/quote]

The walruses on the balls
The squids that just wander.
The Bears that wander but chase you if you hit them and die if hit again
and the balloons that fall on you.
I wasn't counting the squids that go up and down (they were actually a mistake that I decided to leave in.)

anyways...


I AM tweaking things for an up coming game, so feedback on this game is very appreciated. Thank you so far. As far as collision goes. Are you talking about this:

or about the enemies hitting the player/tomatoes hitting the enemies.
Because, it is pixel based. I just don't check every pixel in each sprite. I normally do about 1 or 2.
There was however a bug I found with the tomatoes. I had them going to fast, so sometimes they'd skip over an enemy completely. If this is the complaint then it's completely justified and noted.

About the jumping... You're kinda asking with:

However, you're not the first person to mention this. The air duration I can see doing, but the momentum thing is a lot more work then one would think. I guess I could try making it so you gain momentum slower/not at all while in the air.
I'll play with this too I guess.

Anyways, thanks for the input, even if it was in the form of a hateful review.

Momentum's not too hard. You just need a history of your past positions over the last two timesteps.

We can define
x_n, x_nm1 and x_nm2
where x_n is the position at the current tick, x_nm1 is the position at the previous tick, and x_nm2 is the position two ticks ago.

By pressing the sideways keys, the player exerts a force on the game dude:
m*a = F_player (1)
which can also be written as
d^2x/dt^2 = F_player/m
(m is the mass of your game dude)

The trick is to approximate a in terms of x_n, x_nm1 and x_nm2. Knowing that
a = dv/dt and v = dx/dt
We can approximate approximate:
v_n = (x_n - x_nm1)/(1 tick) (2)
and
a = (v_n - v_nm1)/(1 tick) (3)
and we can now substitute:
a = ((x_n - x_nm1)/(1 tick) - (x_nm1 - x_nm2)/(1 tick))/(1 tick) (4)

Subbing (4) into (1) you get
x_n = (2*x_nm1 - x_nm2 + F_player/m) * (1 tick)^2
So pick a value for F_player/m and you're done.

You might want to select different F/m and d values for when game dude is on the ground and when he's airborne.

The only catch is that this allows the player to accelerate to infinite speeds.
To prevent this, add a drag term into (1)
m*a = F_player - d*v
where d is a drag coefficient which you need to pick.
Equation (2) approximates v, so again, you can solve for x_n.
Proper selection of values of F/m and d should allow you to determine the player's acceleration/deceleration and terminal velocity.

Incidentally, this is almost exactly what I did for giving the Boulderbeast's body parts mass. I just pretended each stone was on a spring and used the SHO equation.
m*a = -k*(delta_x) -d*v
The effect doesn't look very good in any of the currently available releases, but it looks pretty awesome here at home.

I don't really consider those "enemies." I'd compare this more to stalactite in caves -It's just an obstacle. But I guess It's pretty subjective.

I had no problems with interaction between tomatoes/enemies/player.
I was talking about the environment's collision detection.

And just to clarify, in case it wasn't to clear, by "momentum" I mean't moving while jumping should should produce a wider jump than just jumping in a direction while standing still.

@TwirlySocrates: Interesting, though perhaps a bit more complicated then need be. The main problem with the code is it would require a complete overhaul of my current code, and that just seems silly.


@Sh4dows:

enemies: fair enough.

collision detection: Oh ok, yea I agree.

momentum: Hmm I could do this, easily in fact, now that you've brought it to my attention.



-Thanks for the feedback

I'm all about the physics simulation :-P

I wonder how they did it for Super Mario World... he's clearly got momentum, drag forces, and a terminal velocity.

Super Mario always seems to be the base that sidescrollers work from. It definately has a good system. I think one of the things that it does that I don't is the mid air friction, or lack there of.
Anyways, a lot of people spent a lot of time on super mario world, so I can't exactly claim to be able to do the same, by myself, and between work and school.
Still, it doesn't hurt to try I suppose.

Just played this game, and it was pretty amazing. I have trouble making classic RPGs, which the OHR was intended for, I think... To make this is awesome. I agree that it gets a little repetitive, but repetition is hard to avoid when the game is 20 minutes long! All in all, I liked it a lot- I think the single song might have been the worst part.

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You can't fix stupidity.