Battlejewels Alpha 2 Released!

[skeezix]

Things are coming along very nicely (if I do say so myself You can get the gameplay instructions and such on the website here: http://www.codejedi.com/battlejewels/

The direct download is here:
http://www.codejedi.com/battlejewels/binar...7-alpha-002.zip

I suspect theres a couple of little bugs introduced through the development, but should be pretty playable and much more interesting than last time. The AI is much improved (will try to get mana it needs, will steal mana you need, will skull you down when you're lower on health, and it will pick interesting classes and try to use their spells. Watching the AI stealth or heal itself is very interesting If theres any bugs I'll make an update right away, but got a lot to work on .. need to get the Adventurer Store working so you can use the won gold to buy gear and other goodies! EDIT: Oh, and added some more animations and such to make gameplay feal more seamless, and make it more obvious what the AI is doing.

I'll be contacting those who've shown interest in pre-release testing, too.. should be good times.

Hope you like it.. I'm loving developing it, and our artist is doing amazing!

jeff

 

[fusion_power]

hmmm...
Well I like such Tilematch-Puzzlers so I gave this Alpha a try. Without reading the other thread from the first release I build my own opinion about your game.
Its a good Idea to combine This kind of Puzzle Game with the Tilematch / bejeweld setting. It could be a good game in the future but I think there is a lot of work to be done. Like you mentioned, there are a need for more Animationas and stuff that shows that there is something happen on screen - if something happens.
And for non-readme-readers ingame explanations of spells and stuff. I think this is planed (y-buttton)
I had read the instructions but I have still no clue, how all the game stuff is working, what do all the different mana-colors and why I never have enough to dcast a Spell. And when I can cast a spell I have no clue what the spell does or IF there is something happen Ok, Healing is clear and it worked, but there should be more clear signs ingame, what depends on what ,so maybe Colored Text/graphics of spells matching with the required Mana color and Animations like some Magical sparcles or big in-screen-zoming Numbers when healing ore such stuff. Yes, I know it's an alpha and I know you will develop the game in this way - I just report my playing-experiences.
The Game should get a save function for people who like to play just one Level or so. It's not good to start always from the beginning. And the Game-Speed is to slow - for my taste. Everything should be more "flushing" and smooth, and quicker. The game runs even at 200MHz slow and I like to underclock Puzzle Games. But I know it's just an alpha so don't be angry please. ^^"

First I think, the game-flow and Game-working is more important than any graphical decoration. (Only a chess-board shaded playfield background should be added soon for better overview: dark-light-dark-light-squares...)For the next release maybe you add a small description for each spell for example. It would be much more fit ingame, if this is always displayed (bottom or top of the spell window? ), when choosing a spell, so a aditional help-page is not needed for this.

Yes, I write lots of strange stuff but that's the way I play and test games. I use the "what I want in such a game to have fun with it" -view.

 

[skeezix]

For sure there is much to be done; every one of the dialogs and screens outside of the main battle-screen is a placeholder. Spell casting dialog will get totally redone as it needs to reveal the amounts of mana/life needed to cast, for sure. (You can hit L and R to find out about yourself and enemies abilities, though they're not pretty yet either.) There needs to be a character create screen (to name the character, pick class) and down the road the level up screen (pick new abilities, level them up, etc). Post-battle screen to show summary of what happened. Character sheet screens... lots to do

For now, to know what a spell will do is on the website; yep, the help screens need to all go in which help on every screen (how to play, what spells do, what abilities do, etc.)

To help, when you get enough mana to cast 'something', the hint at the bottom does change to let you know, but you have to lean on L to know what spells you have and what costs are; it'll be much better when the casting dialog is friendlier.

Oh, and yeah, spell anims will go in; when blocks get destroyed by spell, they need to crumble or get zapped, and not just vanish; certainly the falling animation needs to occur more often.. spells make it hard to see what happens. ie: When spells cause damage to someone, there eeds to be some fire, or lightnign or something to show..

Still, a lot of that is not gameplay, its candy; ie: I'm working on gameplay first, so that its playable and fun; then spruce it up to look and sound better, since you can always improve that over time without effecting the game itself.

Speed is an interesting question; its pretty demanding since theres a lot of rendering (and alpha blending) going on, and the aI is thinking a lot. ie: Bejewelled is mindless -- you just pay, and play forever. Here we have an AI that works out the future values of moves, including spells, and trying to figure out what is a good or bad move for various scenarios. Not really smart, but we can't clock down to 60MHz like a maki/bejewelled clone can

jeff

Ste is working on dialog artwork this week, so hopefully after some back and forth I can have a much better spell casting/description system in place

 

[fusion_power]

I would be Happy with 166MHz I read more often and often, that our GP2X seems to have trouble with a tiny little thing called Alpha-blending but I belive in our great Handheld, He can do it!
And yes, many graphic Animation stuff is just Eye candy but sometimes such things like Animations help with the overview in such games here and there.

Well, I think you have started a really complex project so I wish you good luck.

EDIT: Hey, someone has stolen your Game Idea:

http://www.siliconera.com/news/0612/pqint01.jpg

sue them! :lol:

 

[pferguso]

I might be able to help you out with some sound effects, maybe some music. Could you get a list of sound together that you need and email them to obstacledelusionsAtHotMailDotCom? Also, let me know if you prefer wav or ogg or mp3?

-Pat F.

 

[skeezix]

I might be able to help you out with some sound effects, maybe some music. Could you get a list of sound together that you need and email them to obstacledelusionsAtHotMailDotCom? Also, let me know if you prefer wav or ogg or mp3?

-Pat F.

mp3 and ogg are too beefy for where I'm going; ie: trying to support gp2x, psp, windows mobile, lots of gadgets Aiming mostly for MOD files right now. But hold on, I'm hoping to twist the arm of a friend of mine into it.. otherwise I'll be bugging peopel here for MOD music using GPLittleTracker

jeff

 

[BCable]

First off, GREAT idea and GREAT work. I'm glad I don't have to get a DS just for Puzzle Quest . I have two suggestions for you though.

First one is probably obvious, and you're probably working on it as we speak: saving. It's a little annoying that I have to start over every time I turn on my GP2X.

Second one is not so obvious. Spells need a way to tell the user how much mana they require. For instance, X red, Y green, Z black or something. As it is I'm still pretty confused what the various skills require.

Other than that, you are doing a TERRIFIC job, and this is a great update. I'm glad to see you added animations to the disappearing, it was moving too fast for me to figure out what was going on when the computer took his turn. Actually, when playing the DS version of Puzzle Quest, I noticed the same exact thing! I guess you have one up on them already

 

[skeezix]

First off, GREAT idea and GREAT work. I'm glad I don't have to get a DS just for Puzzle Quest . I have two suggestions for you though.

First one is probably obvious, and you're probably working on it as we speak: saving. It's a little annoying that I have to start over every time I turn on my GP2X.

Second one is not so obvious. Spells need a way to tell the user how much mana they require. For instance, X red, Y green, Z black or something. As it is I'm still pretty confused what the various skills require.

Other than that, you are doing a TERRIFIC job, and this is a great update. I'm glad to see you added animations to the disappearing, it was moving too fast for me to figure out what was going on when the computer took his turn. Actually, when playing the DS version of Puzzle Quest, I noticed the same exact thing! I guess you have one up on them already

Save/load will come soon, likely just after the store is there for buying goods, since it'd be too annoygint farm gold and then turn off

The left/right triggers show you the character sheet for yourself and the enemy, which includes mana hints. But yeah, we're working on new dialogs.. the existing dscreens and dialogs are all just placeholders until they get redone. So the new casting menu will show the mana costs and such, and let you get help on what the spells do etc.

Glad you dig it .. I'm enjoying writing it, but 10x better when people like it

jeff

 

[prairiefire]

Fantastic work Skeezix, This looks promising to be a great game! I would say after trying it for the first time i'm pretty much in agreement with fusion_power's assessment. As for speed, anything around or under 200 MHz is cool with me Keep up the good work.

Cheers

 

[skeezix]

Hate to say it, but..

Worrying about clock-speeds is pretty much the absolute lowest on my totem for it right now its something only power users care about (most people wouldn't ever know they can change the clock rate), and is an optimization. As a rule, optims should almost always be done last unless they're 'by design' optims. The side effect of serious optims is complexity, whch makes dev longer and more complex, leading to more bugs and nasty code etc. It is always bettr to optim later, when you have a good oidea of how actrual running live workflow works, so you know _wherE_ to optim.

So at this early stage, it would be foolish to concern with clock rates

jeff

But at the end, when everything is good and solid, then I can worry about it. For an emu, performance is usually of top importance, but for a game likt hsi which I'm deisgning cross platform, I'll worry later. ie: I ditched most of the ASM early on, since it slows dev down to keep it in sync with my non-asm versions of things. (When you have a newborn, and code entiely at 3am, these are the decisions you make