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Murudai

6 Game Reviews w/ Response

All 26 Reviews

Great job

For all you reviewers who like multi-unit shooters like this, check out Shoot 1UP on XBLIG. It's a great game released a while ago with very similar gameplay to this game.

What I really like about this game is the control over formations and how that integrates into gameplay. However, I have one gripe. The system where as you change formation it pauses to show you info about it... that's unnecessary because you can already see what the formation is like when you do it! And since this is a twitchy shooter, having that pause is teeth-grindingly annoying when I want to quickly switch around to take something behind me or on the sides. The little icon can still pop up showing formation information, just maybe off to the side instead so as to not obscure view of the formation and let the formation itself come up instantly on your units.

Fix that one flow breaking 'pause' and the game mechanics will be perfect.

Glaiel-Gamer responds:

the pause is necessary for the mouse wheel control so you can select which formation you want, trust me when it was instant it was a lot worse as ladybugs would spread out when you were cycling through the formations and hit stuff without you wanting it.

Alright

I won't repeat points that other people have said, there have been some really good reviews for this game.

Just like to add with the particle stuff. It looks cool, but you've overdone it. I have a decent computer, and hitting just two asteroids induces lag. Good, smooth gameplay is more important than getting a few extra particles. You could cut it down to 10% of how many you have at the moment and it will make little difference visually to the player.

Plus, you could make them more efficient. That's got to be, only about 100 particles before lag. That's not that good, I suggest you run through your code and try to make it as efficient as possible. Sometimes the difference between a good game and a great game is the ability to push the code to that extra level, and I'm not seeing that here.

ChromeShark responds:

Thanks for reviewing, there sure have been some amazing reviewers and I'm really grateful for all the suggestions people are giving. Regarding the lag, I didnt get any on my PC (it is quad core though :p) and as none of my beta testers mentioned it I didnt realize people would have problems, but I'll definitely improve upon it for the next one.

Good implementation

lol, I think most people here will think you made this game yourself. But like you say in your credits, the physics engine is Box2D.

This is a really clever game and a really good implementation of a physics engine in Flash.

This was a really well designed game, but since you rely very heavily on a physics engine you did not code, I can't give a high score. 6/10.

isfland responds:

I've used not only box2d, but few other libraries: PureMVC and Tweener.
It's more fun to write game actually, than just another physics engine. And it's good for players to see good physics than ugly, glitchy buggy hand-made physics (there are a lot of games with such disadvantages). Box2d is great engine and it was created to help developers make games - why does it bad to use it?

Huh?

I was playing it, and I kept playing the same level over and over again. I'd play it, beat it, get Gold, then I'd just play it again? And I did that 20 times before I just got bored. Am I doing something wrong here?

And that lag at the end of the level. You would never get away with that doing Flash for a client. For the sake of learning and improving I suggest you find out what that was. That kind of lag looks like either a loop of some kind or it's trying to draw a ton of objects onto the stage at once. So look for something like that.

You can use code like:

lag = getTimer();
trace(getTimer()-lag);

And make sure you declare 'lag' as a class variable (main variable), not an instance variable (unless it is in the same block of code, so it wouldn't matter) and that'll tell you the lag in milliseconds between two areas of the code. Put it between two pieces of code, like this:

lag = getTimer();

for(var i:int=0;i<10000;i++){
var test:Object = new Object();
}

trace(getTimer()-lag);

And that will show you the lag required to make those 10,000 'Object' declarations. That code is in AS3 format, but it would be virtually the same for AS2, I'm sure you can figure it out.

Phendrana responds:

I thought it might have something to do with my clear function. When you beat a stage, it does a for loop to clear any remaining objects created during the stage. It still lagged when I commented it out, so now I'm stuck again. I'll keep your suggestion in mind and try that code out.

Well...

This is very obviously a direct rip from cubefield. Not only is the gameplay exactly the same (even the 'track' part is the same), but so are the graphics.

I personally don't mind it when people copy the elements of other games when they try to expand and improve upon it, but this doesn't seem to add anything new or even have different graphics, it's just the same thing, except 2D. Which, the original was good because it was pseudo 3D. Meaning what you've got here is nothing special.

I've given you 7/10 because the game was very cleanly made. But really, there was nothing original here. If you're going to copy a game, try and add some exciting new gameplay elements and your own style of graphics.

tanner09 responds:

Hey, how far did you get in the game, because I added several new shapes to dodge that move side to side, grow, rotate etc..

Exploitable

It's a fun game, but it was kind of ruined for me because it's so ridiculously easy to cheat.

I actually downloaded it as the swf and played it, as I like to do because it saves on my internet costs for games when I want to play them again.

But here's the thing. To run you need to press ctrl. But if you press ctrl+left/right it skips forward/back frames. Meaning whenever I wanted to run to the right, I jumped to the next level, lol. I even figured out that if you get to a save point then use this cheat to jump forward a level, you end up at the save point of the next level!

It's a little different for the embedded Flash version on a website, since that ctrl+left/right cheat doesn't work. However, you can still right click and go forward/rewind and do the exact same cheat. Which honestly... this is a HUGE exploit that just shouldn't appear in the game and is a massive oversight.

But this exploit also allowed me to see how you made the game. Seems you made everything on different frames and programmed the game like that. It works, but honestly this is a very bad practice to fall into. My first game was like that, but every subsequent game I've made since then has used Classes instead of Frame Scripting, and I've never gone back.

So try and learn that if you aren't doing it already. Your games will be much simpler, easier to edit, easier to understand the code, less code, less file size, etc. You just need to get yourself over that first hurdle ;)

All that aside. Your level and game design was simply fantastic. If I could give you a score just for that, it would be 10/10 :) But I'm giving you 7/10 due to that exploit.

Lambtaco responds:

I was totally aware of that. If someone wants to cheat they should be able to cheat, that's what makes the agme fun for a lot of people. Specifically people who suck at games.

You can just play the file in a browser to stop the running problem.

I hate Flash.

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