I put together a demo for beta testing, to see what bugs need fixing in the last couple of weeks. If anyone is interested in trying it out, please check out the ZIP. The following things have already been done since the demo, but are not shown in this release (will be done for the final release): * particles fade away as they get older * the rocket trails aren't nearly as long * nearly everything casts shadows now, instead of just the airborne planes * additional sound effects have been added or updated * little graphical emoticons whenever "emotion" is displayed, helps the judges find it Click here for the demo! Known bugs: * you may be immediately disconnected from a server - simply connect again if you are unable to move * all cutscenes except the first are wrong * in-game chatter for Level 2 is wrong There is a Linux version in the ZIP. Unfortunately it has two additional bugs: * The single-player game starts on level 3, not level 1 * The game is windowed (should be full screen) Please let me know what you think! [Edited by - hornpipe2 on November 16, 2006 4:23:43 PM]

Thanks a lot for the comments - I will definitely fix some of those issues. Glad you enjoyed the game.

For those interested in testing, cheat codes are available in single player only. Open a chat window ('c') and type the following (no quotes) then press ENTER.
'VICTORY IS MINE' - win the scenario
'GAME OVER MAN' - lose the scenario
'SHOW ME THE MONEY' - toggle team money display (this will become a permanent fixture in the final version)
'RAISE THE ROOF' - show the commander overhead view (movement gets buggy here)

Those could be useful if your teammates keep causing you to lose but you want to try another scenario. I've found that you unfortunately only have a small impact on the overall win/loss of your team, which is something I definitely plan to tweak before the deadline - it sucks when your heroic fighting is undone by a teammate running over two allies on his way into a lake.

And, the multiplayer IS fully functional (with server browser) - start server.exe from within the server/ subdirectory and you can try it out. View online servers here: http://nwserver.webhop.org/servers.php

This is a fun game, Hornpipe2! I'm looking forward to trying the full version of it, with the changes that you mentioned and any others that you decide to include implemented. :)

I'd agree with ndk5027 on the leg movement - I found it quite easy to lose track of which way my legs were pointing, and the turn rate seemed a bit slow to me. I would suggest increasing the turn rate, as did ndk5027, but if you want to keep the "turn left, turn right, forward, back" movement that you have (which I rather like in this case, I think), you could perhaps indicate it with a simple directional arrow that gives the "forward" direction, placed at the character's feet.

This would also make the player character stand out a bit more amidst the ranks of similarly-attired allies.

Another thing that ndk5027 noted, but which I only really noticed on looking for it, was the firing issue. I'm guessing that you currently have a timer that counts in the background, allowing the player to fire only on a certain value (or within a certain range of values, perhaps), and which cycles continually. As ndk5027 pointed out, this can potentially cause a little frustration on the part of the player, so why not consider changing to a timer that only counts while a weapon is reloading?

Simply put, your timer would start at the "weapon ready" value (0, for instance). When the player fires their weapon, the timer starts, counts to a certain value, then resets itself to the "weapon ready" value and ceases counting. A similar mechanism would allow for continuous fire weapons, and multiple counters could provide reload times for different weapons.

This way you have a reload mechanism whose length you can set (by changing the value to which it counts before resetting), but which also allows the player to fire in (I would say) a more intuitive manner.

Another thing that I'd like to suggest is that you add an icon of some sort to indicate the current weapon, and perhaps a set of icons to indicate currently held weapons - this would just make it easier to determine what one has available, it seems to me.

I would definitely agree that it could be a bit more fun if the player could more easily have more effect on the outcome of the game. While improving the controls a bit might help this, perhaps simply beefing up the player character would be the simplest way - make him tougher than the rest. Another idea might be to provide weapons more often, since at least some weapon drops are of course taken by other soldiers, or to perhaps make them more powerful in the hands of the player.

Fun game, the only problem I see is movement is lacking. I would suggest you do something that makes a and d / left and right straff and when pressing w / up you walk forward while your guy faces where you have your aimmer, this would make movement a ton easier.

I went with a little red arrow that points in the direction you're facing. This helps to distinguish your player from the crowd and aid movement. (I didn't want to change it completely - I like that moving players is the same control scheme as moving vehicles). I also doubled the turning speed. The result is much more easily controlled and more playable. Thanks for the tips on that.

Unfortunately, I'm losing steam now that the time is running out, so I probably won't get to some of those things (the click-reload sound effect, for example). The shot timing bug is a little bit tricky: the client tells the server every 80 ms what keys are being held down and the server tells the client every 200 ms what is happening in the world. Currently, the player had to be holding the button down when the 80ms hit, and that packet needed to be the last one in before the 200ms packet came back.
I changed mouse buttons to be "sticky" until a 200ms packet is received... once pressed, the game sends 80ms packets as if the button was still held down - until a 200ms packet is received, after which the correct mouse button state is restored. This helps, but does not totally fix the problem.

For the footsteps, I made the volume fall off much more rapidly over distance - now they don't crowd out other sounds as much, so you can generally hear over them. Again, a "proper" fix for this would be much more involving.

Anyway, I've added the team cash display and a semi-transparent minimap to the top right. I added a map rotation system and copied the single player maps over to multiplayer, so there are five maps available (and each is played 5 rounds before moving on to the next). Also, I finished all the correct cutscenes and in-game chatter. I think I'm just going to focus on game balancing until the due date. Most player-held weapons shoot too far right now, and I don't think it's fair for players to be able to sink enemy battleships armed with just the wimpy pistol. Basically vehicles don't seem to be worth the investment - especially planes. I'll fix that.

Finally, after testing the single player a bit, I think the player IS capable of affecting the outcome - but it generally involves exploiting problems in the AI (e.g. driving over people from behind in the jeep, planting mines around the capture points, etc) I'd still like to improve the AI about flying and driving ships around. I suspect a combination of better driving plus better commander purchases will fix it.

Thanks for all your help, everyone who commented (you've all earned a place in the readme.txt). I'm going away for Thanksgiving weekend and I'll probably be pretty busy when I get back, so I locked everything down, finished a few loose ends with the game, and I'm calling it Version 1.0. Look for it in the submitted entries forum when a moderator approves it! After that, I'm only interested in fixing very serious game-crashing or game-ending bugs.

Again, thanks for the comments!