Gemserk - Super Flying Thing With No Name – New game prototype

[arielsan]

Hi guys, we are working on a new prototype. The game is about flying (a ship most likely) through an obstacle field to reach a safe destination with a secondary objective of taking some stuff (coins, powerups, fuel, etc) in the way.

For now it is just a prototype so lots of stuff can and will be improved.



The game can be played on android downloading this apk or desktop with webstart

[size=36pt]Play on PC[/size]

Instructions:

    LEFT key to rotate ship left
    RIGHT key to rotate ship right
    SPACE to release the ship
    R to reset the level and generate a new one on random and practice modes

[size=36pt]Play on Android[/size]



Instructions:

    Touch LEFT half of the screen to rotate left
    Touch RIGHT half of the screen to rotate right
    Touch screen to release the ship
    MENU key to reset the level on random and practice modes

You can check our blog post with more info about the game and our plans for it.

hope you like it.

UPDATE: updated links with Android Market url

[philfrei]

Neat, but I am finding the controls rather hard to manage. It really zips along quickly. Animation is smooth, though.

One strategy I tried, and you want to be aware of, is to just go into a holding pattern of a donut (keep the right or left key down). The circle is tight enough that this can be a good way to get some semblance of "control" and incrementally move across the board. But then, I still had difficulty figuring out the timing so that I could release the turn key and have it go where I was aiming. It is easier to time the release with the larger circle of the station.

Still, I thought this ploy worth mentioning, because if someone was able to master it, it could vastly change the character of the game. There's always a danger a simple strategy might arise that makes the game too easy.

When I tried your random setting, one of the goodies was within the walls of a polygon and thus impossible to "eat".

Seems to have definite potential, but I'm not clear what I'd do to make the steering challenge a more interesting one to take on. I don't see a discernable path to mastery. I can make small adjustments via taps, but if a bigger adjustment is needed, it seems outside of normal human senses to hold the key just the right amount of time. So, a turn of under 45 degrees is plausible (via taps). But to hold it longer than a tap, one can easily be off by 180 degrees or more. At least, that was my experience. Maybe if there were a way to vary the turning speed? Or Shift-left as a slower turn that straight left? That sort of thing?

[Mads]

Worked fine on win7 64-bit.

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[jojoh]

Nice start, but it is WAY to twitchy using a phone. Reduce the sensitivity a lot and it will be quite good. It was also a bit strange trying to do sharp corners using PC, gentle corners all the way through worked fine.

[arielsan]

Thanks both for playing it and great comments, we are trying different controller values to make it easier to play and to improve the feel of being controlling the ship. Seems like playing on Android is harder because it is more sensible despite both controllers are using the same logic, will have to make some differences to improve it based on the fact the game will be mainly for Android.

[arielsan]

Hi guys, I have made some updates to the game:

- modified ship controls to reduce ship sensibility
- added a practice mode, similar to random but you are invulnerable
- added a challenge mode with 2 levels for now
- fixed random items to never be inside obstacles on random/practice modes
- added fps label (on next release it will be enabled with a key)
- added a debug mode, enabled by pressing 0 (zero) on main screen, if you are with debug mode enabled then you can make modifications on ship's control when you are playing (only available on PC)

Same links of the first post if you want to try it.

[loom_weaver]

Worked good on my MacBook Pro.  Silky smooth animations.

I would recommend including the instructions in the game itself.  I had to come back to this post to determine that you press the spacebar to launch and use the arrow keys to steer.

On the screen where you select the level all I see is 2 white rectangles.  Is that intended?

I had a bit of trouble quitting.  I can close the window but its system menu still remains.  I ended up having to right-click on the icon in the dock and select Quit from that context menu.

Thanks for sharing!

[arielsan]

Worked good on my MacBook Pro.  Silky smooth animations.

I would recommend including the instructions in the game itself.  I had to come back to this post to determine that you press the spacebar to launch and use the arrow keys to steer.

I will add in game instructions, I didn't yet because I wanted to add some kind of tutorial explaining that rather than a screen with only text, but the second could be the quick solution for now.

On the screen where you select the level all I see is 2 white rectangles.  Is that intended?

It is, they are placeholders where, level thumbnails will be (I hope so).

I had a bit of trouble quitting.  I can close the window but its system menu still remains.  I ended up having to right-click on the icon in the dock and select Quit from that context menu.

what do you mean system menu? mac stuff?

Did you press the Exit button and it failed?

It works right on Win and Linux, maybe on mac it does a different behavior.

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks to you for playing it and for the comment.

[loom_weaver]

If I click 'Exit' in-game then it shuts down okay.

If I click on the close window button (red circle with an X in it) or try and quit from the System menu (command-Q) then it does not shutdown correctly.  It's Mac specific behavior.

If you can squish that bug and you're feeling inclined then FYI to add better Mac behavior:
1. Look for a file named OSXAdapter.java (written by Apple) and include it in your project.  It'll automatically add hooks for the System About and Preferences menu and also wire in the System menu quit.
2. Add the following to your main:

1   2   3   4   5

// On macs, use screen menubar instead of a menu inside the frame System.setProperty("apple.laf.useScreenMenuBar", "true") // Apple Application Menu System.setProperty("com.apple.mrj.application.apple.menu.about.name", "Super Flying Thing With No Name")

[arielsan]

Thanks for the tip, I will ask however to libGDX people, because when I close the game using Exit I call a method of libGDX library, maybe the fix could be made on the library itself. If they say no, then I will try adding that on the game.

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[arielsan]

happened before with other LWJGL games?

[jojoh]

- modified ship controls to reduce ship sensibility

Much better  Now you can make the game difficult rather than the controlling of it. I can imagine moving obstacles and badies. The game was still more difficult to control on phone. Couldn't say quite why    Possibly simply because I am so used to use keyboard and not touch to turn.

[arielsan]

We have updated more stuff on the game, new levels, etc. More info at our blog.

Hope you like it.

[dr-snipe]

Nice, played quite well 

Not sure if you know but in practice mode once you reach the other planet it doesn't do anything except keep spinning you around it. Just thought it was supposed to reset itself or send you to a new level.

[arielsan]

Yeah, I knew but also I forgot

Thanks, I will fix that. Dunno however what to do with practice mode, I want to add a tutorial instead and random mode will be the mode where you can practice whatever you want.

[arielsan]

Guys, there is a new version available, if someone wants to play it

Thanks, hope you like it.

[Mads]

Guys, there is a new version available, if someone wants to play it

Thanks, hope you like it.

Still looks good, and plays well. I had one crash in the beginning though, where i clicked the background in the game, it turned white and the game game started not responding and taking weird input, and finally crashing. Didn't get the trace :L

What's about with the JGoogleAnalytics?

[arielsan]

Yeah, I saw a bug in another place too, I have to take care of them.

JGoogleAnalytics is a library to interact with Goolge Analytics, as the name says . We are using it to register some game events like someone played challenge mode or random mode, etc. Here is the original project and here is a github mirror project with our own fixes and/or new features, to generate patches for the original version and submit them.

The good part is we are using it for Desktop and Android applications independently, and seems to work well.

The bad if you are a programmer and want to contribute is, for what I heard, code is not so clean. But I am talking with no one to say that because I never touched a bit of code of the library.

@ruben01 knows more about the library, he was the one making changes and submitting patches, I only use the library in our games.

Thanks for playing the game.

[m77]

after the game was started i just pressed left, right and the app was closed
i used WebStart version at WinXP

[arielsan]

I tested it on ubuntu 32bits and windows 7 (not sure if 32 or 64 bits) and never happened to me :S

cant you give me more information like which arch is your win XP?

Thanks.

[m77]

no
cause i don't like the title of the topic
from that seconds of gameplay i don't think it's a super flying thing 

[arielsan]

Thanks anyway.

[arielsan]

New update of the game, if someone wants to play it.

@Mads, couldn't reproduce your bug , was it on Android or PC?

[dishmoth]

It's nicely presented, and in particular the rotating ship looks cute.  With some interesting levels, obstacles and power-ups, I can see this evolving into a decent game.

But the controls are still not pleasant at the moment.  (I played the PC version.)  I found it difficult to get the ship to go in the direction I wanted, and threading it through the tiny gaps in the later levels just became frustrating.

Simon

[Mads]

New update of the game, if someone wants to play it.

@Mads, couldn't reproduce your bug , was it on Android or PC?

It was on PC, win7 64-bit.

I liked the feature to see where you died earlier. Why was it removed?

[Apo]

Nice game und it runs smooth =)
But like dishmoth said I don't like the controls too.
Possible solution: reduce the sensitivity

I missed a goal like: you have only 3 tries to solve that level or reach the goal in 20 seconds.

[arielsan]

There is a new update available with some bug fixes and new stuff.

@dismoth and @Apo

Controls were modified again to make the ship easier to control. Happy you liked the game, will try to make more levels and more game modes to keep improving it.

@Apo

The goal is not so clear right now, one possible and basic idea is to reach the target dying less times as possible and taking as many stars as you can. There will be different game modes also, like playing the same level but you only have 1 life, more interesting in large levels.

@Mads

Added death ships on challenge mode too, they were only on random mode. We are thinking in a feature to show you the replays of each death, like Super Meat Boy does.

Thanks all for playing it.

[ra4king]

... We are thinking ...

Are you working with someone else?

[arielsan]

Yeah, I """work""" with ruben01.

[loom_weaver]

I just tried the update.  I like the new ship with its 3d model.

You should differentiate the practice from the challenge a bit more... perhaps a different background or something.  Also when one crashes in practice there should be some kind of indication e.g. "Ouch" even though you don't explode.

Challenge should have lives or something to be more of a ... challenge! 

Looking good and a big improvement from the first iteration.