Game Programming Challenge 3: Indirect Control

[Protector one]

Ah yes, those explosions use super GPU-intensive shaders, so there might be some slowdown there.

[Claxon]

Yes but on my main pc, not my laptop.

[Protector one]

I guess PPL is just very picky when it comes to performance. It <i>loves</i> running on my 4-year old laptop.

[Gshonk]

Sorry for the late reply, here are mine.

PewPew Lazor! by Protector One
Originality 4/5
Pretty original concept for the challenge given, I’ve seen similar games but this was pretty awesome.

Audio 0/5
Audio feedback is one of the most important things in games, there are lots of free libraries and things out there you can add sounds to your games with.

Playability 4/5
The game was very playable, I do wish I could grab anywhere on the reflectors to move them then on the ends to rotate but I understand why you went with this control scheme. I feel like the game is really easy though, like you can just take all of the other reflectors and move them off screen and just play with one reflector.

Performance 5/5
No performance problems, being in a browser is always nice too.

Stability 5/5
I didn’t encounter any game stopping bugs.

The Good
Really fun game, posting too twitter is awesome. Great time waster of an idea and fun to challenge yourself with. The game was very stable and I never had any problems with it. All in all great work.

Things to keep in mind and fix:
Sound adds a ton to the game! Having the ability to pause would be really nice as well.

[Gshonk]

Sketch Lemmings by Claxon
Originality 3/5
Awesome idea!! My company made a game similar to this with the drawing mechanic. Having it be real time is a little tricky though.

Audio 2/5
Music was good but it would have been nice to have sound affects for the reactions in the game.

Playability 3/5
The control scheme is very intuitive and works exactly how you would expect. Having the game playing out in real time is a little hard when you are trying to redraw paths over and over again to keep saving guys falling in.

Performance 2/5
The game starts out ok but once all of the guys are on screen plus drawing the path it really starts to chug to a point that it is almost unplayable. This might be because of my laptop only having one gig of ram.

Stability 5/5
I didn’t encounter any game stopping bugs.

The Good:
Great idea and some really fun art! The menu screens and music really added to the theme and feel of the game. The controls were really good.

Things to keep in mind and fix:
The performance really hurt this game; I’m guessing it was chugging because of all of the collisions it was trying to check. If that was fixed and you added in sounds the game would be great!

[Gshonk]

Placeholder Pawk by Nilbmar
Originality 3/5
I really like the idea you described on the forums and I understand why it didn’t come out the way you expected. But it was a pretty cool idea.

Audio 0/5
Audio feedback is one of the most important things in games, there are lots of free libraries and things out there you can add sounds to your games with.

Playability 1/5
It took me a while to figure out what to do, after I typed and hit enter in Strength the game just completed itself. When I hit space bar it reset which would be ok if I wasn’t trying to type out a sentence. The other word bars would not except letters when I pressed enter.

Performance 5/5
No performance problems.

Stability 0/5
I didn’t encounter any game stopping bugs, the code was solid.

The Good
The game looked pretty good and was very stable. The idea was really cool but maybe to much for this short cycle. Having a help menu was also really good.

Things to keep in mind and fix:
Keep in mind how long you have to make the game, also sounds add a ton to the game.

[Protector one]

Thanks a lot for those kind words Gshonk! And I'll definitely implement your suggestions if I ever decide to make an upgraded version.
(For now I'm actually quite happy with the way it is, though.)

By the way, I herd you crazy dawgs liek Facebook, so I put PewPew Lazor on my Facebook, so now you can PewPew on my Facebook while you're Facebooking! http://goo.gl/XBoG

[Claxon]

Originally Posted by Gshonk

Sketch Lemmings by Claxon

...

Things to keep in mind and fix:
The performance really hurt this game; I’m guessing it was chugging because of all of the collisions it was trying to check. If that was fixed and you added in sounds the game would be great!

The actual collision detection is for each lemming is pretty fast. The collision is eassentially generated as an image with different colours meaning different things (Black = no collision, white = destroyable rock, red = indestructable). Then each lemming just checks the colour of a pixel by it's front foot. If it's solid thelemming walks forward, if not it falls. The thing that takes time is when it has to re-generate the collision cache, which it does when you draw a new line, and when the line disappears. I'm still working on making it faster though, becuase I think it could be a fun little game.

[Gshonk]

Originally Posted by Claxon

I'm still working on making it faster though, becuase I think it could be a fun little game.

Ah ok, yea I love the idea and think it could be a blast.

[Protector one]

Shouldn't this Challenge get something of a conclusion? Or are we still waiting for one of the judges?