I need some feedback on the difficulty curve and balancing of my entry in singleplayer and if possible multiplayer. It should run on all windows 2000/XP machines but not 98 (I remember reading that the minimum spec machine for judging included windows XP so I didn't bother fixing the memory leak in 98). I'd prefer if any judges didn't try out, first impressions count :) Some graphics and audio are still temporary or missing, but it should all be in by monday. Download at www.tevong.co.uk/Timeblasters.zip The filesize is 39mb but 90% of it is due to the audio wav files which can be halved by reducing the bitrate, I was just too lazy... P.S. If you were wondering the robots are on level 2 and the ninjas on level 3! edit: It should run fine on modern PC's with XP but would be interested to know how low it can go before it's unplayable. [Edited by - Kyo on October 26, 2005 9:55:41 PM]

I really like your game, its cute which is a good thing. You should try to fix the collision detection a bit, like when i was being chased I would lay a bomb and the monster would pass through it if hes near me, thats type annoying. Anyhow good frame rate, which I guess your not really concerened about

My Spec were

1.8ghz AMD Sempron
512 DDR RAM
256 GeForce, 5500 GT OC

I just played it and the difficulty seemed right on target with what it should be. The only thing I didn't like was that the level with the ninjas (level 3) was a bit hard because every time I layed down a bomb they would throw something at it and make it go off, killing me. I died twice in that level and then it just took me to level 4, the ice one. I don't know if it was intended to do that, although maybe the ninjas died at the same time I did? I haven't tried doing this again so that might be what happened.

Anyway, other than that the easy wasn't too easy and the hard wasn't too hard, but it was just about what it should have been. If something could be done about the ninjas making my bombs go off it would have been ever better.

Hope this helps.

Chris


EDIT: I'm ran it on XP on an 3.2 P4 and it ran great, but I figured you knew it would run fine from all the testing done. So I figured you weren't really asking about that stuff. Also I thought it was a nice game. :)

But they're NINJAS :)

I could increase the time it takes for them to throw a shuriken, but the timing needs to be just right to keep up the pace and not make it too easy to drop a bomb and get away.

I designed the game around the principle that anyone should be able to finish it, so you're given 4 lives and if you fail a level twice it automatically lets you through to the next level. The incentive for not losing a life is completion medals and an unlockable playable ninja for completing the game on experienced without losing a life, both of which I still have to implement.

Fun game!

A couple things that felt like bugs (although they might be deliberate):

If you choose 'practice' mode and pick a level, you continue on to the next level afterwards, although 'practice' suggests you're trying just that level.

The skip to the next level after dying twice also felt like a bug. You should indicate that it's deliberate.

When the dynamite power-up dissapears and you have bombs on the map, it's very frustrating. I think that power-up should vanish after use, and never after bomb placement but before detonation.

I think there's also a slight balance issue in the game. On some levels, the only way to have a reasonable chance of winning is to get good power-ups, so you spend the first 30 seconds ignoring the enemies and just getting power-ups. It might be better if you started the player with a flame power and maybe another bomb to reduce that time.

The balance might also work better with the robots and ninjas if they couldn't blow up your bombs. They get very frustrating.

Lastly, there's no reason the download should be this big. Your music should be compressed, presumably into .mp3 or .ogg. That involves no bit rate reduction and would cut out 30 MB.

try our humble entry by following this link :)


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