Hi deadlychicken, I'd like some details concerning the following bits:
Although neat looking, the backgrounds start to all look the same after awhile (not literally).
Well, that helps maintain a certain visual consistency, smooth abstract was the main goal.
This is hard to explain as it is entirely my opinion. I agree with the idea of a visual consistency, which you did quite well. However, in my opinion, they seem
too similar. I think it may have been better to have boards that had mixes of a certain shade of color rather than the rainbow colors. You could also have blended colors together better than you did. If you don't need it to be completely abstract you could give boards a theme. Have simple themes, such as sky or woods or water. That would add a great deal of visual variability while (if done properly) maintaining a consistent visual quality. As you don't have a question here, I'm not sure exactly what detail it is you want explained. I gave you an 8 for graphics, which is the highest score I gave out. This was because I thought your game had some of the best graphics in the competition, but there is definite room for improvement. The backgrounds weren't the main problem.
The disk and the players look pretty good, but they seem to occasionally "stutter" which looks awkward and hurts the fluidity of the motion.
Most (if not all) SDL games have an occasional stutter, take a look at Dodgin Diamond II or Noiz2sa (the gp2x ports)
I know this sounds harsh, but then you either shouldn't have used SDL or you should have accepted its limitations. I'm not rating these games based off of the code behind them but on how well they run on my gp2x.
Another problem with the sound, which seems to be common with the gp2x, is that the volume is very low, even when turned all of the way up.
Yes, well, I can hardly be blamed for the hardware, can I? Try disabling the volume limit if you want loud speaker sound in a regular environment.
I will criticize a game for whatever problems it has, regardless of who is at fault. I am not blaming you. I know this sounds unfair. However, if I were to consider hardware limitations off bounds I wouldn't be able to dock points for poor controls as these can be blamed on the gp2x control stick. Your job as a developer is to make the most out of the hardware you have. Maybe you can't increase the volume, I don't know. However, your low score in the sound section isn't due to this but the lack of sound effects. As I said in the review, it makes the game feel empty, as if it isn't physically happening. Sound effects are an important part of making a game "feel" good. I think you addressed this before, saying the sound effects for bouncing into the wall got annoying. Maybe that is the case or maybe you just need to have more than one sound effect. However, there should be something in there to connect the player to the game.
As I said before, I probably made a lot of mistakes in the reviews. I'm sure they aren't all consistent, I'm sure some of my comments are picky, and I'm sure that some of my scores aren't appropriate for the game, the category, or the comments I made. I thought that Airplyr, Altitude, and Laser2x deserved the top 3 places. Only one of those three made it. In my opinion, this is due to a flawed rating system. However, it was clear from the beginning that this is the system they would be subject to. I followed the system to the best of my ability and after that it was out of my hands.
