Ultratron beta

WIP games, tools & toy projects Archived Projects
#1

A little bored… so uploaded a quick tester for Ultratron to try out. I’m especially interested in:

[]People getting less than 60fps, and what machine specs said people might have
[]OSX and Linux users!
[]Jerkiness, and what specs people experiencing jerkiness have, coz I’m using a different timer these days
[]Gameplay gripes

It ain’t finished, there’s bugger all sound and no music, and the hiscores screen isn’t finished yet. Don’t forget big screen toggle is F1 and T swaps left/right handed keys (which are still cursor keys and WASD).

And anyone already with Puppytron will discover that it’s a free upgrade :slight_smile:

Cas :slight_smile:

#2

Shiny! :o

And anyone already with Puppytron will discover that it’s a free upgrade :slight_smile:

Woohoo! ;D

And now a bunch of things in random order:

The new particle effects look great. Screen transitions are nice. New hud is also neat.

Toggling those items isn’t that distracting anymore, because there are less particles and they don’t fly across the half screen anymore. (I still would prefer pseudo random items, which are always good - eg no slower firerate on power up… well, it’s your game).

Title of the window still says puppytron.

The explosion particles of mines are too close to the bullet color. I dodged em for 3 levels. ::slight_smile:

The white check puppygames.net for more games blabla message overlaps the buttons.

Entering register details is quite annoying if you make a typing error. I had to restart the game. At the end of the registration process it said press any key or press the mouse… pressing any key didn’t work, but the mouse did.

I wish I could play it with one of my game pads. Playing with the keyboard gets uncomfortable after ~15minutes.

The variance of enemys is much better now.

Well, I’m really surprised. Good work Cas :slight_smile:

#3

It already does this :wink: But it’s quite subtle.

ALL of the particle effects are just placeholders until we do the final polish. Some will stay, some will go!

I’ll change it to let you try again.

Need gamepad support in LWJGL again :confused: Maybe we should just explicitly code it to work with GC, PS2 and XBox pads (or clones thereof), which is what most PC users probably have if they’ve got a gamepad. Or am I completely incorrect?

Cas :slight_smile:

#4

[quote]And anyone already with Puppytron will discover that it’s a free upgrade
[/quote]
:smiley: I honestly never bought a game with more bang for the buck!

  • It looks much better than puppytron
  • Fortunately, the gameplay didn’t change
  • I couldn’t use the mouse for the GUI so I had to TAB to the ‘PLAY’ button.
  • The first time I played, the sound was buggered. The 2nd time it was fine.
#5

But it’s quite subtle.

Guess I’ve overseen that, because they are still switchable.

Some will stay, some will go!

Just stay clear from the bullet color :wink:

I only know psx rebuilds, but there are adapters, too.

Well, I’m afraid that most users don’t use those (that statement is based on a rather small sample of ~20 users with a gamepad).

In this case a user would only need to reconfigure 4 buttons… fire up, right, down left (eg in one go). Everyone will use the dpad for moving direction (and there is still the t key).

#6

Why gets the multiplier disabled if I pick up a shield?

Oh and usually a fixed pitch font is used for the highscore (or at least for the numbers), because that makes the differences more obvious.

#7

I was toying with a skill based score bonus… how long can you hold out with that x5 multiplier before you’re forced to start worrying about your shields? I suppose it’s a little irrelevant if you lose it when you get shot. Which do you prefer - losing the multiplier when you get shot or losing it when you pick up a shield? (Yeah I know it’s like a choice between burning to death and drowning but sometimes life is tough :P)

Cas :slight_smile:

#8

run very nicely here for me, i’m on suse linux, amd 3000+, only thing i can compain about is i get a warning box before the game starts about not having a sound card or one with proper drivers! however i do get perfect sound in game!

#9

It starts up, but as soon as I press a key it closes and brings up a purchase page on your site.

I tried space, ctrl and enter…then gave up :frowning:

#10

[quote]It starts up, but as soon as I press a key it closes and brings up a purchase page on your site.

I tried space, ctrl and enter…then gave up :frowning:
[/quote]
I was confused too for a little while trying to click with the mouse.

Try the arrow keys.

Ultratron ran fine smoothly on a 2.8 P4 Windows w/ Java 5.0

-Sam

#11

Which do you prefer - losing the multiplier when you get
shot or losing it when you pick up a shield?

Losing it when I get shot.

Because losing the multiplier is a bad thing… like getting shot. Wheras picking up a shield is a good thing.

Losing it when you pickup a shield makes sense - rule wise, but it’s counter intuitive.

Hm. Now I’m not really sure anymore. Which one leads to more interesting gameplay if that rule is abused to the max? Filling up with shields and then play till the end of it or playing as long as possible without getting hit once? The former is a game specific strategy and the letter is “just” playing good (or godlike).

Ah. Of course! You can have both kinds (basically). By that I mean two different game types… the usual one with pickup=disalbe and survivor where one hit=death and there are no shields at all.

I also think that doing so would broaden your audience a bit, because the game would be a 5 minute game then as well. For some unknown percentage of players that means more replay value, because it lowers the barrier to start the game (it takes only 5 minutes) and the gameplay is more intense (there are only life or death decisions).

#12

Doh! Yup, it works and it’s MUCH improved over the first.

Two thumbs up!

#13

Did a quick test on MacOsX 10.3.9, Java 1.4.2_05, G4 733Mhz, 1GB ram, had no problems at all. Looking very nice :slight_smile:

#14

gameplay wise, what might be cool is if the enemies were slightly smarter, as in instead of just moving towards you, they could gang up and come from different directions just to get you! (i was thinking a bit like pacman, where they cut of your escape routes)

#15

You won’t be thinking that on level 20…
I’m trying to broaden its appeal by making it much easier for the first few levels. The difficulty ramps fairly linearly and it’s tuned to how good you are as well (formula is maxbottype = level * 2 + gun fire rate + (shields > 5 ? shields - 5 : 0) + bonus multiplier - 1)
in other words if you’re good enough to start accumulating the bonus multiplier and / or shields it ramps up in difficulty much faster.

Cas :slight_smile:

#16

…more updates!

Beware the bosses now!

Cas :slight_smile:

#17

Patterns! ;D

Fixed pitch numbers in the highscore!

And you can also use the mouse in the menus. Great! :slight_smile:

But it looks like I cannot submit highscores. It behaves like it’s working but the score doesn’t show up at the end. The console also doesn’t indicate any problems.

edit: mh works now… odd (meh meh meh)
edit: doesn’t work again (onyx)

#18

Actually the hiscores have always worked that way, they’re just a bit confusing, so I need to put up some feedback about what’s happening.

Basically to stop the hiscore table looking like this:

  1. BAZ
  2. BAZ
  3. BAZ
  4. BAZ
  5. BAZ
  6. BAZ
  7. BAZ
  8. BAZ
    …
  9. BAZ

what it does is check to see if you have submitted a score under that name & unique installation ID before, and if you didn’t beat that score, it doesn’t go up on the hiscore table.

Cas :slight_smile:

#19

It currently seems much easier than the first, which is a good thing for me cos I died very quickly in that one and this one I last for a couple of levels…

#20

That’s the idea. And it will probably get even easier. But fear not! It has a built in difficulty adjuster. If you’re good it rapidly gets hard as hell. And your scores soar.

Cas :slight_smile: