Round Em Up Alpha 2

[Guyfawkes]

EDIT: New test build with touchscreen and a few other changes, see post #21 on page 2 for more details.

This game is released as unfinished and as such some features may be missing when they appear to be there. Please ignore any errors, I normally do a lot of beta testing but this time I am releasing it to the public for feedback as there was not much interest in the game when asking for private testers.

Round Em Up is an arcade puzzle game where the aim is to get the sheep (the white blobs ) into their sheep pen (the lighter green area). You do this by guiding them to the sheep pen by placing the primary obstacle the bushes or special items such as rocks or pits.

Full details on the game can be found in the readme included with the download. Please note this is an unfinished game and its continuation depends on feedback from players on how to improve the game. I didn't get much interest on my initial request for private beta testing so I will try this method instead.

The Story Mode has not been started so you will have to rely on the Custom Levels or the Random Level generator to try the game. I have included two short tutorial levels and one proper level. You can use the built in Level Designer to create your own and hopefully share them by uploading to the forums or something. Please read the readme for the full details on the Level Editor and how to use it.

If there isn't enough interest this will unfortunately be my last release for the GP2X as my work rate on creating games means you wouldn't see anything for another year and I am possibly looking to start coding on the JXD 301 in the near future. So if it is my last release, thanks for playing my past and present games and I hope that you get the chance to try out my new stuff on other consoles in the future!

Please leave any feedback on this forum post, as mentioned in the readme at this stage I am mainly looking for new features to add to the game and not so much bug reporting. If you can help out in any way it would be much appreciated. Bribery time, I will add touchscreen support if there is enough interest, although I will need a tester to do this Have fun playing!

You can download the game from the GP2X Archive here.

 

[senquack]

I tested this out earlier today and it is a fun game, folks, check it out. I already left my feedback.

It probably took a lotta effort time to write this, what with the level editor GUI on top of everything and all. Herding the sheep is fun, thanks for the game, Guyfawkes.

 

[sensible GP32]

great game!

love your games guy.

 

[gp2x.info]

Thanks Guyfawkes!
Love the game, its fun, and very suitable for a quick game.

A story mode (with levels and saves) would be great, because then you have the feeling
you progress in the game, which makes it more challenging in the long run.

You could incorporate small bonus games, e.g. round up the sheep with a sheepdog.
(whistle for left, whistle for right, lay down, approach etc.) without the obstacles.


I don't really care for a level designer, i don't have the patience for it, but that's clearly a personal thing.

For F200 user touchscreen would be great, but even with the stick it's fast enough.

 

[reeced]

Really nice game, and very addictive.
If I could suggest a little element of danger - a pond, initially surrounded by bushes, and a random fire element just like the clouds which could destroy the bushes and thereby potentially drown the sheep. Or a slow moving wolf, or wolves which would need to be shot with special item - a gun

 

[Alex.]

Very nice, I like it a lot! It feels very clean and intuitive, and the concept is very original. I like how pressing R takes the cursor to the items menu, that makes the lack of item auto-repeat not get in the way of a continuous game. The graphics work very well too, the only thing it needs are more levels. Maybe I'll whip some up and post tonight, everyone else should too!

Thanks again Guyfawkes, I hope to see more of your creations on my GP2X!

 

[Guyfawkes]

Auto repeat will be added as a user preference if the game goes ahead. I was supposed to add it in this release but totally forgot, it was the reason why I added the X to cancel if a special was selected

Keep the feedback coming, any ideas are useful as I really want to expand on the game.

 

[Magic Sam]

Hi,

When you're in the first menu, you have to incline the gp2x to see a farmer holding a sheep in his arm behind the big white square, is it normal ? Same thing for the in-game clouds, when I hold my gp2x in a normal way, they are white, when I incline it, they turn transparent...is it a bug, is it me ?

All I have to say is that your game features a funny "country" music, a nice Level Designer, nice graphics (I like the clouds in the sky) and some nice gameplay mechanics, which is the most important part

A dog you can whistle at, wolves, bears, guns, wolves/bears traps could be great additions !

What about a short day/night circle that influences bears and wolves behavior, night being a more deadly time, so you have to hurry to complete the puzzle (time factor) ?

I'm expecting my F-200 to arrive today, so I hope that you'll keep coding for this console in the future Stylus support would be great for that kind of game, even though it works very well on the F-100.

Thanks for your game !

Bye !

Magic Sam

 

[Guyfawkes]

The white square on the menu and the clouds should be alpha blended i.e. you can see partially through it. I had this problem before on my other game Squares where certain GP2X's would show the alpha blended squares lighter or darker, I think this could be the same problem, maybe different screens or something? What MK model F-100 do you have?

EDIT: It should look something like this without tilting

 

[Alex.]

I think this is a problem with the MK2 screen, the easiest solution would be to decrease the alpha of the white square and of the clouds (or make it adjustable).

 

[Guyfawkes]

Yeah I done similar for Squares in the end, about two hours before the coding compo deadline, the squares were hardly visible on MK2 GP2X while they were fine on MK1. Even some of the beta testers didn't notice there were supposed to be squares on the screen until they saw a video

It looks like there will at least be one more build with some bug fixes and possibly touch screen support as soon as the code is fully working. I am still 50/50 if I will continue the game in a larger capacity so keep the ideas coming!

 

[norm]

just tried this out for five mins or so and i love it, i really hope you find the enthusiasm to work on it more. *trots off to play some more*

 

[Magic Sam]

@ Guyfawkes : I tried this game on a MK2 GP2X...Now I use it on my new F-200 and every works fine, I can see transparency effect

 

[Alex.]

I played some more, and this game is growing more and more on me

I made a custom map, the editor is very nice and easy to use! Download the map from here: ALEX01.DAT and put it in the Custom Levels folder.

Oh, one request, how about a 'reset level' menu option?

Thanks again for the game, I hope lots of people will make new levels for it!

PS: I took the liberty of making a quick temporary icon based on your screenshot,

 

[Guyfawkes]

sorry for late reply. nice custom level alex, I gave it a quick go and that is exactly what I wanted the level designs to be like, nice work. I will add this to next release.

I have also added a Level reset menu option to the list of things to be added to the next release. This wont be a big release with any major gameplay changes but will have most small changes and tweaks suggested and touch screen support. Touch screen is still being worked out by developers and is very nearly working so once it is fully working I will start adding it to the game.

If someone can test the touch screen (when its added) for me that would be great, I do not plan to buy a F200 just for adding support to a game It will share most of the mouse input code so it shouldn't be a major problem so you would only need to spend 30 mins max trying the game and the menus etc.

 

[b._.o._.b]

If someone can test the touch screen (when its added) for me that would be great, I do not plan to buy a F200 just for adding support to a game It will share most of the mouse input code so it shouldn't be a major problem so you would only need to spend 30 mins max trying the game and the menus etc.

No problem, would be glad to test the touch screen function.

 

[Guyfawkes]

With the help of Paeryn who added touchscreen to the SDL HW libs I am hoping Round Em Up now has touchscreen support. According to Paeryn the touchscreen is now found as a usb mouse so if you have a real usb mouse connected to your GP2X you will need to remove it.

Please download the original alpha 2 release from the archive and then download the new gpe from http://www.emuboards.com/scratch/RoundEmUp-touch.zip and overwrite the old alpha 2 roundemup.gpe with this new one.

Give it a try and let me know if it works. It may be a little strange to use as the cursor will move when you touch the screen so it might be a little off putting? Any feedback on playability with touchscreen is much appreciated as I cant test it myself so its up to the f200 owners

 

[b._.o._.b]

Touch screen works!
It is sometimes hard to click on small icons or texts, they are easy too miss. Especially on the edge of the screen (is this a 'driver bug'?). Normal gameplay is not effected that much, The editor has more problems because of this. Especially clicking on ' menu ' is difficult.

Game is made for touch screen! Nice, fun and relaxing.

 

[Guyfawkes]

I think that could be the inaccurate touchscreen code. Paeryn updated his libs earlier on where the code is more accurate so I will make a new build tomorrow along with some other changes.

 

[b._.o._.b]

I think that could be the inaccurate touchscreen code. Paeryn updated his libs earlier on where the code is more accurate so I will make a new build tomorrow along with some other changes.

I've read that in the dev section, also think that should do the trick. Great job you guys are doing!