Notaz releases Super Hexagon into the mix.. woowoo
I've just posted an updated BattleJewels to the repo, now with Compo4All support
BJ was a tough one to drop in .. its a complex and subtle game with a lot of strategies, so I'm having a hard time working out a good scoring method; let me know if you get any creative ideas
- when you start it up, you can 'start new compo4all game', which is basicly a group of presets; you can save and load this game, and it'll do savestates/suspends as needed; but that shouldn't effect your score.
- when you load a game, the slot list will show 'compo4all' to differentiate those slots from normal game slots
- c4a mode implies Gladiator class, and implies always-refill the board mode (AI has a fighting chance; in non-refill mode, the AI performs poorly.)
- the 'score' submitted to C4A is simply - wins minus losses, where the result is more than 0. ex: if you've won 5 matches, and lost 3, it'll submit a 2 for you.
This is a simple scheme, but .. at first I was going to score for faster victories, but didn't want to penalize slow deliberate players over wreckless fast players; I can't award pure-experience-points as score since its an RPG and experience just goes up and up; I didn't want to score based on experience per match, since you might fluke into a victory, or get a random loot drop thats insanely over powered etc, and most matches are fairly linear experience reward .. theres a lot of factors, but consistent playstyle tends to end up around the same ballpark per matchup; etc etc.. so much to worry about!
We'll see how this scoring method words; or maybe I'll have to open up several score tables in C4A for BattleJewels, so you can see how you rate in multiple dimensions.. speed, numebr of wins in a row, number of spells used per match, etc etc..
Right now it implies Gladiator (warrior class) for C4A; a simpler straight forward class, and one where the matches tend not to drag out; for healer class they can reaaaly drag on; the rogue tends to damage-over-time the opponent after he scores a few levels and get some abilities and skills, but a healer opponent can drag that out, etc etc.. but the gladiator usually ends up with some abilities that let him finish the match quicker, at least more controllanbly than the others..
.. but if you like BJ, you'll end up doing a lot of matches, and getting into the gear options and abilities and so forth..
game is self documenting (hit 'Y' a lot), but some of the options don't stand clear:
- 'q' may be pressed to bring up a 'suspend' type menu.. forcing a savestate, or letting you quick-quit the game, return to menu etc
- when buying spells/abilities .. the higher point count may mean a better ability, but more likely it just means an off-class ability; the warrior, wanting a rogue ability.. it'll cost him a lot of pick-points, since its not his tree; peopel tend ot think 'oh, that ability must be awesome, it costs a lot'.. but no, it just is off-class (like trying to get Stealth for the Gladiator. Awesome combo, but cost you 3 picks to get; the Gladiators ore abilities are all 1 pick, and pretty good.)
... well, I hope this brings BJ to a whole new generation of players; I didnt' have preview pics on it before which may have turned off a lot of potential players, but I hope C4A brings more life to it again.
I'm pretty proud of BJ .. spent a lot of time making it a few years back; made it during the Dark Days, when my first daughter was born; writing games on zero sleep is weird, but its something I do when I have kids apparently
And it even worke dout pretty well.. good looking, really good AI (I mean, it can be good, and it can be bad; it has AI moods, intelligence and aggressiveness levels, etc; you'll see it throw a move to try and sucker you, you'll see it play well or badly depending on things, it'll try to use abilities to screw with you as you get more levels... etc.)
If anyone is a seriously good pixel artist, let me know.. so much more to do in BJ, its tempting to pick it up and rewrite half of it.. it was meant to be head to head multiplayer, but I never added that; it needs a 'paper doll' inventory screen so I need a huge pile of little artworks for items; it needs an overworld map with quests
it needs art for new resolution sizes (you can see some lettergoxing here..) etc.
I hope you enjoy!
jeff
