EAB/Lemon Super League 2013: Round 4 - Downfall

[prowler]

This evening, I moved the Amiga from my workshop into into my office and now I can play from the comfort of my office chair instead of perched on a stool or standing up.

What a difference! The number one rule of EAB competition game playing - if you're just starting out - must be to make sure you're sitting comfortably!!!

In this short session - after a couple of false starts - I beat my previous high score twice, and there's still two days to go!

28,381

[leathered]

106229
I was just trying to survive and get a better score and the game looped! Now watch some nutter loop it twice

[prowler]

Another session today and I'm still getting better...

35,900

[Lonewolf10]

Originally Posted by Lielo

I was just trying to survive and get a better score and the game looped! Now watch some nutter loop it twice

Congrats on looping it. You are now part of an elite club

[Graham Humphrey]

That's me done now sadly. I won't have time to play tomorrow and the highest I have scored since the last one I posted is about 58k! Not good...

[capehorn]

I can't break 60k again. Something always goes wrong around the 50k mark. I've tried adjusting my strategy for the later levels but I can't find anything that works.

Graham, I know you're probably finished with this, and it's a perfectly good PD game, but like a lot of PD games, with a bit more work it could be great.

I'd suggest the ability to jump between platforms, maybe baddies on some of the platforms and the ability to fire, also to be able to fire at collectables you don't want (no more being force to collect the snail shell on later levels). Perhaps faster scrolling speed on later levels, and also an energy reserve so the mouse can sprint for a couple of seconds at a time if you hold down the fire button to help you out of the tighter spots, then the energy reserve could slowly increase over time. Then you could change some of the collectable items (increase energy, jump height or weapon, adjust screen scroll speed, maybe get rid of the + and - score tokens as they are a bit pointless) and keep the score at 10x if you wrap it rather than going back down to 1x, or doing the other hard levels rather after level 10 rather than going back to level 1. If you did some of these things, then it would be the type of game you could keep going back to - as it is after 4 goes or so I have to stop because who wants to do levels 1-4 again after getting to level 9 and dying, it gets a bit boring doing all the easy bits again. I'm just thinking about getting the game to a point where you don't die on level 8 or 9 and think that it wasn't entirely your fault, to give the player a bit more power to get out of the difficult situations, rather than just dying because there happened to be a snailshell on level 9. Then you could play all the hard level designed to be levels 8-10 after level 10 so it still stays hard despite all of this, and maybe the ultimate goal of reaching the bottom and having the screen stop scrolling and a completion screen after you've played 20 or so levels.

That said, we've had 22 players and 7 have played long enough to wrap it, so I guess that speaks volumes about it's current playability. I must have played this 30 times, but only played Babeanoid twice.

[mihcael]

I did implement jumping in one of the beta versions, was very handy for collecting items but you tended to jump off the top of the screen and die too often.

[jPV]

Despite being so simple, it's still very addictive and difficulty level is quite perfect as seen in the compo. So, fine game for what it is. Getting difficulty that spot on would be really difficult with more fancy stuff I guess...

I've been thinking if we should take this game to one public gaming event in summer. We organize few Amiga tournaments, but also could have one hiscore hunting game on each day and this could be possible option for that. Simple to play for visitors without too much learning and good hiscore list etc. We need more games like this for all kinds of competition plays

[capehorn]

Exactly, it would have it's benefits and dangers too, although I wonder if it could be programmed that you would never actually jump of the top, just hit the top and come back down, so that the only way you would die is by actually standing on a platform as it hit the top of the screen. I know there are platformers that are programmed that way, I just can't think of one offhand.

[mihcael]

Originally Posted by capehorn

... I wonder if it could be programmed that you would never actually jump of the top, just hit the top and come back down, so that the only way you would die is by actually standing on a platform as it hit the top of the screen...

yep, that's what i ended up doing.

Im actually considering making an updated version, "2013 super league edition"

a few changes i would like to make
-an option for easier difficulty, done by making the character a little faster 10-20%.
-a harder option that only plays levels 7-10
-changing /2 and X2 to -1xlevel p/sec and +1xlevel per/sec to make them more significant.

[capehorn]

That sounds great! Especially the hard option.

I know some of the ideas I posted are a bit much, but the one I do like the idea of is the 1 second sprint, especially as the fire button doesn't do anything at the moment.

[leathered]

I think if you're hitting 50-60k you've already got a good strategy. I only went above 60k once, most of the time I take far too many risks getting the fruit or on the harder levels I die floating towards the bottom of the screen without enough savvy to end up on a platform. Being aware of those mistakes and with a bit of luck I found a balance, but only once. In the later levels the threats of getting sqaushed on those long platforms or not reaching terra firma can become quite polarised, hang around too much at the top of the screen or 'jump' too soon and you're finished.

Still hope we get a late surge (ahem).

This is a great game Graham. I feel somewhat like a 'wild card' entry as the league goes, I don't get on here often enough which puts me off voting.
Points scoring competitions have such a classic feel, I wonder if some of that incentive is missing from most modern gaming platforms.

[lifeschool]

Originally Posted by capehorn

Graham, I know you're probably finished with this, and it's a perfectly good PD game, but like a lot of PD games, with a bit more work it could be great.

My feelings exactly! I tried to say as much in a little review I did on the Lemon pages, but I think Graham may be aiming to make another game soon and may have got a bit bored making this one. I certainly thought about how good this game may be with a jump option as it seems like the most obvious omission, but then I decided not to mention it because the Atari versions didn't include jumping so this would have been going beyond a perfect conversion.

For me, I'd be perfectly happy if the following was updated to bring it more in line with the Jag version; perhaps all of which are just very small tweeks.

1. Make the background on the AGA version match the Jag background. I even made of rip for Graham to use:



2. Have the score go up at least twice or three times the rate; ideally so the player can score 10k by end of level 1, 30k by end of level 2 etc, so that the top scores are in the 100Ks - just like the Jag version.

3. Include the programmers scores in the high score table to give the single player something to aim for (it's always a pleasure beating Graham).

4. Fix the broken egg/target/orange cup-cake icon thing and make it a Zool head or an Amiga Tick or something related to the Amiga.

5. Include the classic Downfall speech samples thoughout the game.

If all these tweeks were in there I'd give the game 70%+ no problem. If the player could jump with fire (or run faster with fire held) and there were difficulty levels easy/hard, I'd might even give it 75%! Just a few tweeks - thats all.

[Predseda]

Sorry, we didnt want to make a 1:1 conversion

[clenched]

The Full rules and FAQ thread used to say these contests end at 11:59 but this thread shows 23:59? I will have at least one better score to post.

EDIT: in bold. New top score wouldn't have helped EAB anyway.

[prowler]

Originally Posted by jPV

Despite being so simple, it's still very addictive and difficulty level is quite perfect as seen in the compo. So, fine game for what it is. Getting difficulty that spot on would be really difficult with more fancy stuff I guess...

I've been thinking if we should take this game to one public gaming event in summer. We organize few Amiga tournaments, but also could have one hiscore hunting game on each day and this could be possible option for that. Simple to play for visitors without too much learning and good hiscore list etc. We need more games like this for all kinds of competition plays

My thoughts exactly!

I think this game is real fun to play and perfect as it is. Any tweaks to the game - to facilitate jumps between platforms, for example - would destroy the beautiful simplicity of the game, which is its strongest point in my opinion.

I've been playing this game in all my spare time today and got a maximum score of 33,333, but I've enjoyed the competition tremendously this week and will try to make an effort to come back soon.

And, of course, my congratulations to you if you are the eventual winner!

[Graham Humphrey]

This round is now over!

I'll reply to some of this stuff tomorrow, I'm too tired now but thanks for your thoughts everyone.

[mihcael]

Originally Posted by clenched

The Full rules and FAQ thread says these contests end at 11:59 but this thread shows 23:59? I will have at least one better score to post.

It should have read 11:59 pm, i have now changed it to 23:59.

[vagrant]

Congrats to everyone on their scores
I planned to put an hour into it this morning, even set my alarm for 7am (+8 timezone here..) However it seems the comp finished at 7am.. I thought it ended at 8am, not sure where I went wrong there.
Anyway I'll have to make up for that in future

[mihcael]

Originally Posted by who

Congrats to everyone on their scores
I planned to put an hour into it this morning, even set my alarm for 7am (+8 timezone here..) However it seems the comp finished at 7am.. I thought it ended at 8am, not sure where I went wrong there.
Anyway I'll have to make up for that in future

Maybe they have started daylight savings in UK?