Odonata Playable Demo Release!!


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ODONATA shooting game playable demo release.
visit gp2x korean official site
http://gp2x.co.kr/data/data_std_view.asp?b...chk=&direc=
[CUT]
keys

A : fire
push A a second : power shot
X : bomb
Y : pause[/CUT]
 
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This was OK but it needs a bit of work in some areas in my opinion.

There are frequent pauses from time to time. You can't change the volume without going to a menu (why not just use the vol buttons?).

The backgrounds are very grainy and dithery looking. It was like they took a many colored 24 bit image and ran it through a program that removed colors and converted it to 64 colors with dither.

It is decent and not bad but for a commercial game it lacks a bit of polish. It now looks like a good quality homebrew game. Hopefully the final version will be a bit more polished.
 
I gave it a shot and it's acceptable, but not really what I was expecting. Foreground sprite graphics are decent, but background art uses about 256 colors and is hideously dithered; it does nothing to take advantage of the color capabilities of the GP2X. The large objects moving around in the background move choppily as if there were a slideshow going on behind you-- they look like paper cutouts moving around jerkily, not fluid at all. The graphics are rendered 3D but in the end, simply sprites-- they are not realtime generated 3D as was speculated. Explosion sprites are small, off-center, have nearly no animation, are choppy and vanish too quickly.

Framerate is pretty good most of the time, though it gets quite choppy at times. When it lags, it doesn't become slower and smooth like most programs, it just skips lots of frames which feels jerky and looks tacky. Controls are good, and makes you forget a lot about the GP2X's sketchy stick. Music is disinteresting and bland; they're really just short, boring and generic loops. It's easy to forget there IS music, and when it is playing, it's very quiet. Sound effects are fairly lackluster but serve their purpose. Sound samplerate is very low making the sound dull, washed-out and scratchy.

What bothers me most is that the game is essentially a Mars Matrix clone but lacks the cohesive and smooth feel of that game, as well as the art direction. Your ship looks like the Red one in Mars Matrix. In fact, both ships in the title screen look just like the Mosquitos 1/2 from Mars Matrix. Their color, shape, everything. The red ship's wide-sweeping shot is nearly the same. Its close-range attack is identical to Mars Matrix's 'Piercing Cannon' except that you need to charge it up. The bomb is similar to Mars Matrix except that you cannot charge it or absorb bullets with it. Enemies are, design-wise, identical to many in Mars Matrix, most notably the white and red enemy with the large wings and the rolling ball enemies which are from the first and fifth (might be fourth) levels in MMatrix. The background hexagon effect is more a throwback to Donpachi, but the Ship Select screen from the video footage is just like MMatrix's. All it's really missing is the scrolling text.

Gameplay-wise, the density of the bullet patterns and size of the player hitbox makes it mostly impossible to dodge through enemy bullet patterns, so you have to make wide sweeping movements around them, which is often not possible. This makes the difficulty curve very high, but it's a control and collision issue rather than any issue of player skill. Perhaps if the player hitbox were a quarter of its existing size and the player had a D-Pad they'd be able to play this effectively, but as it stands even a skilled shooter veteran will struggle with the first level.

In addition, there are pretty major bugs-- most noticably, it crashed twice I started a game after recieving a Game Over. I also got a Game Over the instant I started a game and could not get it to stop happening until I closed the game and re-launched it! The title screen also vanishes and reappears after a set period of time as if it was going to play a demo, but it never does. All of these bugs happened within my first 5 or 6 minutes of play and consecutive times between which I had to keep resetting my machine. It feels as if it wasn't really tested before release.

It's a good effort, but it feels more like an old late-90's PC game that was ported over than it does an original title for the GP2X.
 
Very cool. I agree with what davec has said about the backgroud images, and I'm not sure what's going on with the weapon powering itself down all the time, but for me this is definitely the most exciting comercial game so far.
 
the game is fun but the graphics could be better. if this is coming out in september this demo better be from an early build of the game because it just doesn't seem ready. after a game over you have to exit the demo before playing again. im not quite sure how powering up your ship works. the level just ends in the middle of a boss fight.

i was able to beat the demo and im not a shmup expert (though i am fairly good) so i dont think its too difficult.

the game does have the look of a game that was ported over from a weaker system and then didn't take advantage of the more powerful systems abilities.

despite criticisms this game could be a really great game with some tweaking.
 
hmmm, it's OK. I don't think I would buy it though - Epicentre is right, it feels like an old 90's shareware title not a commercial release.

The mechanics just don't feel polished, all the downsampled graphics etc. could just be due to this being a demo release (?) but the mechanics should feel nice even in the early stages - a little momentum on the ship, enemies that move in wave patterns instead of just straight lines, that sort of thing.

Noiz2Sa is still the best shooter on the GP2X (so far...)
 
That was pretty good fun - the background movement seemed quite jerky while the foreground stuff was pretty good. Collision detection seemed pretty tidy, control felt nice and tight. Shame it didn't really have much to differentiate itself from the masses of vertical sh'mups around.
 
Im not much into this type of game, so for the record i wouldn't have bought it anyway.

However, i think it is cool. Despite the low colour backgrounds, i liked it how there
was more going on than one ship fighting through enemies.

I had the impression that the game was 3D, its hard to tell from screenshots but
its very apparent in game that its not. I would have preferred real 3D, it could
have made the game much better, mostly to just make it different to most of the
other 'shmup' type games avaliable.

One thing i did find odd was that you didn't really have rapid fire, it kept charging
up some kind of short range thing instead. I thought some wide angled rapid fire
weapon was the bread and butter of these games?

All in all it's good, its worthy of being a commertial game IMO but i agree with a bit more
work it could be really great. And as i said, this isn't my type of game so im perhaps more
critical than i should be.

-Twixn-
 
I completly agree is is a Mars Matrix -bad- Clone. :(

Epicenter, I tested the hit box of the ship and is not that big comparing with the ship.

The problem every thing is too big so is very difficult to do stuff that we do in Mars Matrix like going arround the whole screen taking the piss of the bullets. :lol:

I hope I can make a better game for our GP2X.;)

Anyway, this is the best game (of this style of games) for the gp2x at the moment. So I am happy to see how the software for the GP2X is getting better and better.:D:D:D
 
Everyone already stated all the problems and dislikes i have. That being said, its a half decent game. I can see myself getting some enjoyment out of it. Im hoping that this was more of an advanced preview than a demo, and that it will be polished up before release.

Epicenter and JimmySlam, im also much looking forwad to the projects you guys are working on.
 
I've never played Mars Matrix, so maybe that's why I thought it was a pretty fun game. I liked the concept, the charged shot move is really intuitive. Graphics need work, but they're okay. My real complaint is the sound, I'd like something more atmospheric. Also, the demo was really amateurish, you couldn't play two straight games :\ Hopefully that doesn't mean the game will be buggy.

I'm interested.
 
My guess is that it's not going to be much different on release. I'm going to stick to the great neogeo shooters
 
Mr_Munk posted on Aug 12 2006 at 05:12 AM said:
hmmm, it's OK. I don't think I would buy it though - Epicentre is right, it feels like an old 90's shareware title not a commercial release.

The mechanics just don't feel polished, all the downsampled graphics etc. could just be due to this being a demo release (?) but the mechanics should feel nice even in the early stages - a little momentum on the ship, enemies that move in wave patterns instead of just straight lines, that sort of thing.

Noiz2Sa is still the best shooter on the GP2X (so far...)

I agree! Noiz2Sa is the best shooter! Can't get enough of it! :D
 
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Why can't we have THIS shooter?

http://www.idreams.pl/screenshots.php?idProduct=6

000145.jpg




It looks 100 times better and it is a game ported to every device with a CPU it seems except the GP2X. I have also read comments from those that have it and they say it is great.

I e-mailed them and they said they were interested too but didn't know of a distributor so they couldn't sell it. I then e-mailed Craig and told him and he said he would distribute it but it seems they never got in contact. I e-mailed IDreams again but got no reply. Too bad really, something with this quality would make the GP2X look good.
 
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