Hydro Hydra

Featured Games
#1

Hey there. Welcome to my topic on Hydro Hydra :slight_smile:


http://scarzzurs.dk/ProjectsIcons/HydroHydraBanner.png

Hydro Hydra is game i’ve been working on for quite a while now.
It is built on the same game engine as Dust and Rocks 2.

The game:
You are put into the role of a tentacle creature that has to eat other creatures in order to evolve and face bigger challenges.
The game is split up into stages. At each stage you have to have a certain tail length and eat a number of creature of a certain type in order to pass the stage. When you do you get to select a upgrade and more creature types are revealed over the game.

Sound and Music:
The sound effects are from SoundSnap.com.
The music is made by Anthony Antfactor.

Feedback and bug reports:
I’m very interested in hearing about game design ideas aswell as bug reports and specific/overall critism.
In general all comments are welcome, even if you think the game is shit :slight_smile:

I hope you try the game and have a great time and perhaps leave some comments :slight_smile:

  • Scarzzurs
#2

Ah love the game, tis damn addictive. Does remind me of flOw though (which is not a bad thing).
Can’t really think of any criticisms atm but ability to save your progress and return to it a later time would be nice (can applets do this through cookies?)

Did have a very rare lag on the game where the game freezes for a bit your creature jump a bit, could probably be fixed by capping the delta for the game.

Other then that very nice and polished.

#3

This is a really fun game. It kind of reminds me of the demo videos that have been released for Spore.

I’m not very far yet (I just unlocked the pirahanas), but the game is very intriguing for some reason, and you’ve set up a cool atmosphere

#4

Does the game ever end? It says that I’ve reached the maximum stage and lets me play even after that (I got bored after tail length 80 or something).

#5

yep same here cant see the end ?

#6

@kapta:
I am not sure about the saving and loading, but you CAN click outside the game to pause it as it is now.
I guess i should explain this a bit better than the current message.

I am not sure what to do with the lag, i’ll try to cap the deltatime like you suggest, right now i cap it at half a second.

@woogley:
Hmmm, would you have a good idea as to what might make you come back another time to try the game further? :slight_smile:

@DzzD & Jackal von ÖRF:
Hmm, yeah, i guess the game should explain this…
However, once you get to the last stage your highscore is submitted and the game just goes on forever with no progression beyound tail length perhaps :slight_smile:

Thanks for all the comments so far, they’ve been very usefull :slight_smile:

  • Scarzzurs
#7

@Scarzzurs

The game would be alot more fun if there was consequence to it… once I found out the pirahanas can’t actually “kill” you, the game felt kind of pointless, making the goals more of a “matter of time” instead of an actual challenge

I would love for you to expand this game to include more creatues and objectives, it is a great start

#8

A lot of people have said that they have problems with lag and jumps. I may have fixed this by making the game standalone and enabling opengl pipeline through java webstart.
I’d be very happy if people would give the following links a try:

http://scarzzurs.dk/?target=HydroHydra <- Old java applet version
http://scarzzurs.dk/HydroHydra/PlayHydroHydraOpengl <- Java webstart with -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true
http://scarzzurs.dk/HydroHydra/PlayHydroHydra <- Java webstart

The applet version should be run without sound and with graphics quality to compare to the others.
This might be asking too much, but it’d be really awesome if i could get average drawtime for the three versions…

I’m afraid there is no change in gameplay… I have been working on other projects and i have yet to come up with something good for this game. Suggestions are still very welcome :slight_smile:

  • Scarzzurs
#9

Very cool, game. Played till the end.
Was a little slower when the tail grew to 100.
I was using the openGL, I saw a light jump when my tail grew by 1, when my tail was long.

#10

Quite interesting.

It would be nice to have a save feature though. I didn’t have time to play all the way through the game and had to quit.

#11

Thanks for testing it fletchergames and zammbi :slight_smile:

Yeah, the save feature has been suggested before and i should definetly look into it at some point. :slight_smile:

I’d be really great if i could get some comments on the comparison of the three versions. Again, some people have been unable to play the applet version and have had luck with the standalone version, so i was hoping to find out if this is generally the solutions to the problems i’ve had before, or if the previous successful tests stand alone…

  • Scarzzurs
#12

I opened the JOGL version, and in the upgrade screen the game window vanished.

I suspect a native crash.

#13

Hmmm, maybe… The game uses little to no System.exit() calls and i was able to test it pass the situation you described, so there’s a high change it’s a native crash like you suggested.

Can you tell more about the situation in which the crash happened? Also, when i’ve had a native crash, a log-file was generated in the same folder… Did you get such a log file?

  • Scarzzurs
#14

Fun!

#15

@Scarzzurs

I dunno if you remember me from #lwjgl irc but I was playing your game again and I have new comments:

  • Blue fishes almost always manage to escape from me, at the beginning I could think “I am too slow to catch them, that is the reason”, but after some upgrades and time they keep escaping. For someone not so used to play games, it could be a bit frustrating.
  • Parasites are confused with the game background, it is an aesthetics detail but could affect game play a bit at the beginning. When you show the tutorial screen about them it is not clear what is the parasite, all that I see is a blue box with some spots of different colors :S
  • Maybe you could pause the game when pressing Escape key.
  • I feel like it has a slow start.

Sorry I didn’t join your forum but I don’t want to create more Internet user accounts.

Are you still working on this game?

#16

Wow…way to revive a really old thread.

#17

@arielsan

Hey, thanks for the comments. :slight_smile:

While I not developing this particular game any more, you’re comments are not wasted as I am working on the sequel / a remake.
I believe many of the issues you’re pointing out has been fixed in the new version (and hopefully now that have read your comments, I won’t do them again). :slight_smile:

I’ll see if I can make a thread about it here sometime in the near future and drop a post here about it too.

  • Scarzzurs
#18

Played this a couple of weeks back, and there was some problems. Heavy lag, once I got far enough into it. Laggier, as the creature gets longer.
I also remember a lack of creatures to kill. I’ll just try it again.

#19

My fault, I played the Hydro Hydra Evolution first when you asked for someone to play it on #lwjgl irc, then time passed by and I wanted to play it again and I went to your page and played Hydro Hydra (not evolution) thinking it was the same game. Now that I played evolution again, it is really better than the other and you have already fixed a lot of stuff I put here.

Looking forward to test it again.

Cya.

#20

I quoted the incorrect text :S

I wanted to answer to Scarzzurs.