I need some help with the controls :(

Game Play & Game Design
#1

Hi all,
I don’t know whether my new game is too “awkward” or not. I like the controls but Charlotte hates them. Has anybody got any constructive thought on the controls?

http://www.puppygames.net/downloads/hallucinogenesis/hallucinogenesis.jnlp

I’ve tried a hands-free version as well that rotates in the direction you move the mouse but usually that means you’re facing away from the things you’re trying to shoot :confused: My only other alternative I think is the accursed crosshair and keyboard for movement. Aargh!

Cas :slight_smile:

#2

Well, hmmmm, being completely new to the game, all I could figure out how control was move the ship using the mouse and fire with left button. But the ship always faced to the right and I always shot to the right. If that is the limitations, then I found it fairly easy to control. But I was trying to figure out how to turn the ship around unsuccessfully.

#3

Have you thought about Llamatron style - rotate in the direction you move the mouse when the mouse button is up and lock the direction when it is down (and fire all the time)?

#4

I vote for the accursed crosshair! Aim and shoot with mouse and use the cursor keys for movement - similar to Alien Flux.

The current control system got me totally confused. I was constantly shooting the void and trying to fiddle around with X and Y keys. And the rotation itself was way too fast.
BTW: The tail of collected objects often covers the ship so you can’t even see the direction you’re targeting at.

Otherwise it’s a funny little game with lots of explosions ;D

Tommy

#5

Ok, I’m going to update it with a new version that allows you to switch between the different control methods we’ve thought of and see which one you prefer. Then I’ll post a poll.

Cas :slight_smile:

#6

I don’t know the Llamatron game, so I don’t know the controls for that, but the game reminds me of Asteroids a bit. That might be a way to do it (two rotate keys, thrust, and fire).

It took me a bit to figure out how to control the ship but I was able to do it.

Willie

#7

Charlotte hates them

me too :>

Luke’s suggestion sounds pretty good. But I would do it the other way 'round. Aim in the opposite direction you are moving. Press the mouse = fire + direction lock.

If you are at the screen boarders you need to be able to fire towards the center, that would work by either using a dead zone (a border you cant enter) or by working with deltas instead of absolute coords.

I would also turn the smoothing (speed cap) almost off. Heh it’s a mouse if you want it slow just move it slow :wink:

This way it should be rather twitchy.

Oh and for the relative stuff… since you can be directly at the screen edges you need to mark the spots were enemys appear (small flashing arrow) or just blast em into the screen in places were you currently not are. But it’s nicer with random spawns imo, because it forces the player to move more - thus the perceived action is a bit stronger.

You could also use two different arrows. Simple ‘>’ alike thingies for slow appearing enemyies and bigger flashing (beep beep) warning arrows for enemy formations wich bust in with high speed.

Hmm… right now they spawn somewhere in the middle - effectively forcing you to the borders. That feels a bit restricting and is also kinda anti 360°.

The spread of the bubbles make it also hard to adjust the aiming direction. Those “bullets” are used as primary feedback for the direction you’re aiming at, therefore it should be a bit clearer (straight ahead).

Oh and if you want to know how good your controls are, make it one hit = dead. Then you’ll see. Btw having a energy bar in a shoot’em up, jump’n’shoot or jump’n’run is a two edged sword and in general it’s more on the bad side. In the design phase you won’t necessarly notice unfair things, suspense is softened, the amount of important decisions per minute is highly decreased and players with some experience will say things like “Oh an energy bar - i’m sure the controls suck.” the first time they see a screenshot. Well, most won’t say that but their intuition would tell 'em something like that.

#8

New version now up has “locking” and directional control. Use shift, RMB, or caps lock to lock the direction you are facing in. Just move the mouse to move now. Z and X are still enabled for comparison.

Please take no notice of the start level. A very small percentage of levels are going to have a swarm of aliens spawning in the middle and following you like that. “Fruitini!!!” (4,5) is what most of the levels will be like.

I have adjusted the speed of the mouse tracking; it’s much more responsive now.

What do you think of Fruitini, Angry Pumpkin, Strawberry Fields, Swarms of Twitchy Pods and Once Twice Thrice?

Cas :slight_smile:

#9

Well, it finally runs on linux (instead of just crashing), but the mouse pointer is seriously f-d - cursor responds to input at a rate of approximately 1Hz!

Got to the screen with all the question marks, had no idea what to do next. Clicking, double-clicking, and hitting enter all did nothing.

#10

Works on linux and my computer too ( ::slight_smile: )

Likes the z+x+mouse version best - even though pressing z or x IMO rotates the ship to much (minimum of ~45 deg. - I guess about 10-15 would be great instead)

Also a possible bug: in angry pumpkin my ship and the pumpkin got lost “out of screen”?

#11

what to do next

Click on one of the quads without a questionmark. (maybe they should blink or something?)

I like the shirt/rmb lockable way much more, but I still think, that I would prefer aiming in the opposite direction.

#12

You’ll only prefer aiming in the opposite direction on the few levels where you need to actually run away from aliens chasing you and shoot them at the same time. Most of the levels aren’t going to be like that! The red spikes/bubble level is just a test.

The sensitivity problem is… a bug in the timing code! It’s completely getting the timing wrong and running at like 200fps! Don’t know why yet :confused: Works on my XP boxen, Nvidia and ATI, dual and single processors.

Cas :slight_smile:

#13

No idea why your mouse cursor is b0rked blah^3… again, might be the timing code going awry, somehow. I’m investigating.

ps. Try clicking on the only different square on the map, in the middle…

Cas :slight_smile:

#14

[quote]No idea why your mouse cursor is b0rked blah^3… again, might be the timing code going awry, somehow. I’m investigating.
Cas :slight_smile:
[/quote]
I have similar massive slowdown problems with the latest cosmic trip (c.f. my post in that thread), with less than 1 FPS on the menu screen.

It may be there’s something funny with latest versions of LWJGL. However, right now I’m more for blaming linux for having screwed itself up (this is the machine I was trying to rebuild, and have only partly got there). I will let you (and Kev and etc) know if I still have problems post-reformat-and-install.

So don’t worry much unless someone else gets the same problems…

#15

That’s a really fun game you’ve got there in the making Cas. I love the mouse control! To me it is much more intuitive than keys.

#16

Works for me!

I like the “mouse to move, LMB to shoot where ship is facing” system. It’s a bit tricky to fire in a specified direction when you are being pursued, but that’s half the challenge, hey?

Is the RMB being used for anything atm? Could be used for an alternate (back-facing) fire, if you wish.

Probably a bit early for this, but hey:

[BUG] Strawberry Fields. Naturally I decided that the best way of grabbing everything was moving the mouse really, really fast. Unfortunately the player ship completely left the screen… ;D

Edit: Hmm, just caused a complete VM crash as well. You generating any logs anywhere?

#17

I’ve crashed on Twitchy Pods twice now. Webstart console log:

Java Web Start 1.4.2 Console, started Tue May 04 21:05:56 BST 2004
Java 2 Runtime Environment: Version 1.4.2 by Sun Microsystems Inc.
Logging to file: C:\My Documents\Webstart.log
Not creating bubble.appearance
Not creating jelly.appearance
Not creating gunner.appearance
Not creating twitchypod.appearance
Not creating pumpkin.appearance
Not creating orange.appearance
Not creating banana.appearance
Not creating apple.appearance
Not creating strawberry.appearance
Creating room.5,5
Creating room.4,3
Creating room.4,5
Creating room.5,4
Creating room.3,4
Creating room.4,4
Creating a genesis.TitleScreen
Creating a genesis.MapScreen
Creating a genesis.InstructionsScreen
Creating a genesis.GameScreen
Creating a genesis.EndGameScreen
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: No more sprites are available.
      at com.shavenpuppy.jglib.sprites.SpriteEngine.allocate(SpriteEngine.java:128)
      at genesis.Screen.allocateSprite(Screen.java:323)
      at genesis.Emitter.emit(Emitter.java:101)
      at genesis.Room.collectionEffect(Room.java:694)
      at genesis.Player.collect(Player.java:393)
      at genesis.Behaviour$Action.doAction(Behaviour.java:463)
      at genesis.Behaviour$Action.access$0(Behaviour.java:443)
      at genesis.Behaviour$Event.doAction(Behaviour.java:554)
      at genesis.Behaviour.handleCollision(Behaviour.java:766)
      at genesis.Alien.onCollisionWithPlayer(Alien.java:105)
      at genesis.Player.onCollision(Player.java:151)
      at genesis.Room.tickAllEntities(Room.java:533)
      at genesis.Room.tick(Room.java:404)
      at genesis.GameScreen.doTick(GameScreen.java:270)
      at genesis.Screen.tick(Screen.java:183)
      at genesis.Screen.tickAllScreens(Screen.java:332)
      at genesis.Game.tick(Game.java:437)
      at genesis.Game.run(Game.java:380)
      at genesis.Game.main(Game.java:358)
      at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
      at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
      at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
      at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeApplication(Launcher.java:837)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeMainClass(Launcher.java:797)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.continueLaunch(Launcher.java:675)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleApplicationDesc(Launcher.java:390)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleLaunchFile(Launcher.java:199)
      at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.run(Launcher.java:167)
      at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
#18 
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: No more sprites are available. 
 at com.shavenpuppy.jglib.sprites.SpriteEngine.allocate(SpriteEngine.java:12 8)

Mwahaha, can I interest you in a ResizingSpriteEngine Cas? ;D ;D

#19

Hehe :slight_smile: Bugger off, I’ll just allocate more sprites!
Logs are found in docs & settings<user>\Hallucinogenesis

RMB locks your ship’s direction. Not the easiest thing in the world to use. Shift might be easier.

For reasons that will become clear to you as I reveal more levels, firing backwards with another button ain’t an option…

Cas :slight_smile:

#20

[quote]Logs are found in docs & settings<user>\Hallucinogenesis
[/quote]
Heh, it’s created a C:\WINDOWS\Hallucinogenesis directory on my Win98 box. But there are no files in there.

[quote]RMB locks your ship’s direction. Not the easiest thing in the world to use. Shift might be easier.
[/quote]
I have to say that that’s a control system that sounds bloody awful on paper, but in practice works really, really well! But I hope you realise that it makes (for instance) the red sparkle levels essentially trivial?

[BUG] Something that’s really annoying me: the angry pumpkin needs an angry face! >:(