EAB/Lemon Super League 2013: Round 4 - Downfall

[Graham Humphrey]

Now this round has finished I will reply to some of the suggestions/issues raised (I didn't do it during the round as I didn't want to derail things whilst the competition was ongoing).

Firstly, as Predseda said, it was never intended as a straight conversion. That's why we took the route we did in designing the game, to give it its own identity. Obviously the concept was stolen totally from the Jaguar game but we coded and designed it totally from scratch. I played the Jaguar version several times and watched a couple of videos; this was my only referece.

Having read lifeschool's review, I thought it was a very interesting read with some good points and I really liked the effort that clearly went into it. However I must say I find it a bit harsh to mark it down (partly) based on the backgrounds and the lack of speech. Were these to be rectified, it would still be the same game - just with different backgrounds and speech! Personally the speech annoyed me so that's why I never considered it but that's obviously down to personal preference. The scoring system could probably have been made a bit better but scoring in millions seems a bit unnecessary. Certainly though the two score rate pickups are pretty weak and don't really add a lot. To be honest though most of that stuff is cosmetic and it shouldn't really be seen as a vital factor.

You've probably all guessed that I don't have any interest in updating it at all - I'm working on a new project and don't want to revisit Downfall now (although I will be interested to see what Mike does with it, and if anyone else wants to have a bash at changing it the source code is on the website - feel free to do what you like). In hindsight I would have maybe added a few more levels and ditched the score pickups, and probably make the scoring system itself a bit more interesting and rewarding. However I would like to do a sequel at some point and there are some ideas here I would probably incorporate - capehorn's "energy reserve for sprinting idea" I particularly like, as well as maybe scrolling speed changes (if I could pull it off properly). I would probably make it a finishable level-based game, with some added obstacles and features on each level - but I would make sure a 'classic' mode went in for those who would want to play it the 'traditional' Downfall way. That's all for the future though, I haven't given it too much thought yet.

Anyway, thanks for all the comments everyone, some food for thought. I'm glad a lot of people enjoyed it and I am impressed at the performance of many people in this round

[lifeschool]

Thanks Graham I appreciate where you're coming from with your thoughts on this. Just one thing, I didn't mark it down at all because it didn't have the Jag backgound or the speech, I was just saying if it had those things I would have maybe scored it a bit higher; basically because those elements would have added to the rather low score I give it for graphics, and maybe would have raised the SFX score from 7 to maybe a 9. The only thing that marked this down in general was the 'rewarding' factor, which you mentioned, and for those reasons: x2 / -2 and low scores etc. Scores in the millions was again just a personal suggestion. I don't think 63% was so bad for a weighted score outcome for the v1 game, especially because poor ATR only got 65% from me using the same system (which I think was a bit low, it should have got 72% at least). But anyway, my dumb scoring systems aside, congrats on getting the game in the compo and having us all bashing away at it. Good luck on your next project (I'm guessing it's some sort of adventure title)

[Lonewolf10]

Originally Posted by mihcael

Maybe they have started daylight savings in UK?

yes we did. I think it was a week or two back...