Fish Ball


Sphinxter

Sphinxter

Says What?
Joined
Oct 1, 2006
Messages
2,894
Location
Silicon Valley California, USA
Website
fullsack.com
Think pac-man in a 16x larger soft physics driven maze with a continually increasing number of maze ignoring unrelenting semi-intelligent ghosts you can't eat and barely dodge with dots that once touched become your responsibility and in the middle of this dilemma simultaneously playing a demented left thumb Dance Dance Revolution to stay with the maze indicated by the whirling hypnotic background so your dots can keep up as the bubbling whale sounds attempt to lure you into an alpha state and you've got, The Fish Ball.

fishbal5.jpg


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Game

GBAX 2007
 
I though it was an interesting play but it got me so confused with the moving graphics that I completely lost overview and also interest.

I think either you need to tweak this a little more to make it less confusing or I have to play this again and stop whining :D
 
I liked the idea of this but it didnt seem to come together for me. seemed somewhat confusing with a bunch of stuff going on and not sure how to keep "converted" from being eaten. it sounded like a good idea but in actual play felt more like swimming around randomly. not to bash your work and effort put into this but saying in this form i didnt find it appealing. but maybe with some tweaking it could be a really fun game.

just my opinion though, maybe others got the hang of it more and found it more enjoyable.
 
xnopasaranx said:
I though it was an interesting play but it got me so confused with the moving graphics that I completely lost overview and also interest.

I think either you need to tweak this a little more to make it less confusing or I have to play this again and stop whining :D
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Thanks for giving it a look, I can see that maybe, play was a lot easier but the more I tested it the easier it got the more I tweaked it higher and there is much to tweak on in the game, I documented the external hacks and there is another half dozen constants like how often the sharks sniff around or how often your fish look to see where you went, how far they see etc. Tough trying to find a happy pace when there is only a single level but that was all time allowed. As I add levels I'll detune the early rounds. I have 3 weeks off between contracts with no plans starting Monday, I think we are really on to something great here and want to invest at least a couple more levels worth of time in it. I'm still torn on whether going impressionist on the main game art was a good idea but I really liked the way it turned out, my next game may go cubist.

Check out the tuning guide sometime:
http://gp2x.fullsack.com/cocoon/gp2x/download/fishhack.txt
I'm going to add to that by making all the timings dynamic next cut too. There is a limit the ocean must be a square number of currents, that will change first for the whirlpool is already done.
 
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jbrodack said:
I liked the idea of this but it didnt seem to come together for me. seemed somewhat confusing with a bunch of stuff going on and not sure how to keep "converted" from being eaten. it sounded like a good idea but in actual play felt more like swimming around randomly. not to bash your work and effort put into this but saying in this form i didnt find it appealing. but maybe with some tweaking it could be a really fun game.

just my opinion though, maybe others got the hang of it more and found it more enjoyable.
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Valid, very valid, can't thank you enough for your input. I did all the code and art but the idea was all Ting, and in the end, bek. A contractor from the same company I shared a cube with for a while though working on separate projects at the same client. We saw this special on public television, "Nova", about sharks and it had these killer sharks surrounding a fish ball and driving it to the surface with a shower of clicks and bubbles, awe inspiring slaughter. We discussed it for a week pondering and arguing why fish form a ball. Found a PNAS white paper on fish movement explained mathematically, did a little simulation to run for a while and print out some dots, he said you could make a game of this. Bek walking by after listening to us sticks her head in and says; "What if there is an alpha fish?". Blew our minds completely, white paper out the window, the manned simulation was on.

Swimming around randomly can work well, there are a few extraneous things in there just to confuse you with way too much input, a linus game hallmark sorry, maybe the real challenge of the game is to focus, could have went a bit over the top there. The only way to protect your ball is to guide it away from harm which is tough given ball speed against the current means they'll scatter if you go off the track. There is no safe place in the ocean so you have to keep moving or the predators find you fast. The score is the size of the ball so primary objective is to convert as many as possible, (since the current means a speed boost for you sticking with it can pay off here too), before they/you get eaten which is inevitable since even the alpha fish's role is still at the bottom of the food chain. Maybe I can tune it to a happy medium? Much to tweak and not a whole lot of testing, bent it one way, then the other, took a guess and...

Thanks again for giving it a go! Glad you liked the concept.
 
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I'm glad you appreciated my comments despite the negative nature of most of them. some people can get too defensive and its nice that you welcome criticism. also thanks for describing the inspriation for the game. give some nice insight into it.

when i played i don't think i even noticed which way the current was going. not sure if it was just me not paying attention or it not being illustrated well.

anyway despite not liking the game much in its current form i do look forward to updates and tweaks to the game since with some work i could definitely see this being something i could really like
 
yeah now that i know about the current i can look out for it but it can be hard to follow with the way its shown. maybe have an arrow that points which way the current is going or which way you should go to follow it.

btw: I am starting to enjoy the game more now.
 
I like it, sort of a wind sock function, spinning compass, maybe a fishing bobber, lure or something nautical-ish. Not sure where to put it, have to mock up a few. Maybe looking something like the hit any button only revolving around the population count, could even up the symmetry with a nearest shark direction indicator revolving around the dead count.
 
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