Quadratis 1.1 Released *WITH SCREENSHOTS*

Great work! Lots of fun. Couple neat features in there: the projection shadow is helpful, and it's pretty cool how it recognizes bad moves (signaled by the sound FX).

I found the bombs pretty annoying; makes it next to impossible to get Tetris', but with the option to turn them off, I guess I can't really complain.

Can't wait to see what you do with a more original concept!

Matt

Thanks Matt, I'm glad you liked it. After looking over your site I am humbled to receive praise from such an accomplished game developer. I am still in school and therefore naturally assume that everyone on here is also, lol.

I too find the bombs annoying at first, but at the later levels they are invaluable. After playing many many times I figured out that the best setup for me is bombs on, drop shadow on, and preview off. I consistantly get the highest scores this way. The great thing is that peoples play styles differ a lot and other people might find another setup more appropriate. It adds another element of strategy to an already very strategic game.

You will have to wait a while to see anything original from me, lol. I have already started my next project and it is another old style game with new ideas added. I am making a 2 player arkanoid/pong game that can be played either competitively or cooperatively.

In competitive mode each player will control their own paddle on opposite sides of the screen from each other. whenever the ball hits your paddle it turns your color. When the ball is your color the points for all the blocks broken with it get credited to you. After all the blocks are broken it turns into pong with the winner getting bonus points.

In cooperative mode you are each responsible for making sure the ball doesn't go off the edge of the screen. The points are shared and the high score table will allow 2 names per entry.

This could easily handle four players as well, with one paddle on each edge of the screen.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to do multiplayer over LAN... anyone care to point me in the right direction?

[Edited by - CHollman82 on March 7, 2006 7:39:18 PM]

Here you go:

PROS:

+ Really great music! I liked it a lot! Nice job!

+ Shadow thing, liked that too.

CONS:

- Bombs fall too frequently. I totally agree with Matt - impossible to make a tetris. Makes sense to limit their frequency if they come randomly.

- Too sensitive controls. Very unusual. Often I pressed space and dropped 3 pieces at a time. Or moved the piece further from the place I needed it to be. Was hard to play the game (for me at least).

- Pressing ESC during the game doesn't warn you, just quits the game without saving.

- No windowed mode

- No separate controls for music/sounds. Even basic on/off. What if somebody wants sfx but without music?

- What's the number on left/top in game mode? FPS? Why is it there?

- Explicit lyrics :). Looks great if you don't plan to sell the game but otherwise may cause problems :).

- Relatively big distributive (19 mb) for such a simple game. You should really think about compressing graphics (particularly backgrounds) and music.

- No mouse. No mouse??? In Windows??? :)


Overall the game left a good impression. I had some nostalgic feeling about good-old DOS times, 286 computers and low-sampling-rate sounds. To me looked very nice :). Again, music rocks!

Why did you choose such field size? IMHO, it reduces game dynamics, since you "pop" less lines (per minute). Any notes on that?

Looking forward to you reviewing my game :)

Best regards,
Rubs

Thanks rubs. Here are some replies to your comments:

On the playfield size:
I originally used the correct size from the NES version of the game. After playing it MANY times I thought it was too difficult for the majority of people. I didn't want to slow down the pieces because that makes it boring. So, in order to keep the fast paced play and to reduce the difficulty I chose to increase the playfield size, giving you more room for error and less of a chance to screw up due to no good placement option.

About the bombs:
They do fall to frequently, right now there is a 10% chance that any new piece is a bomb. This can be changed easily, I just keep forgetting to do it, LOL

Mouse support:
I can and do use the mouse in other programs (IE, I know how). If I did add it to this it would only be for the menu screens. It seemed to be a lot of work to make a custom cursor that would only be used on the two menu screens in the game. I wouldn't want to use mouse input to play the game, I'd rather keep it "oldschool"

Seperate music and sound controls:
Good idea, I'll keep this in mind if I ever go back to this.

Windowed mode:
Honestly, I don't know how. I have never made a windowed D3D app, I suppose I should learn sometime...

Too sensitive controls:
Other people have mentioned this as well, but I just don't see it. I am good at tetris and play at a very fast pace, the fast controls suit me. Either that, or my keyboard is different than others and they actually have a different experience with it, I don't know.

[Edited by - CHollman82 on March 7, 2006 7:58:01 PM]