Vektar Review

[Alex.]

hmm. flip burgers and have greasy hair for more money....or....


sell video games for less.


:lol:

Neither, why not make video games? :lol:

- Alex

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

not interested


This is just a crappy job. I dont intend to work there long enough to get the promised 'employee benefits' for working there 10+ years :lol:

 

[TelcoLou]

So uh ... yeah, I hope to get my copy this week. I'm now busying myself with Kid Chameleon until then ... getting the old reflexes back in shape ... which reminds me ...

 

[daclassicgamingmaster]

lol. I started like a week ago and am almost up to the same part as you.


BUT IT'S TAKING YOU LIKE 15 YEARS :lol:

 

[Gadget]

At the end of the day, it's a great game and I hope DZZ gets / got some financial recompense from producing it. I don't think it's any of our business, because at the end of the day it's up to DZZ what he does with his games. Does Microsoft tell you how much of the money goes to the developers, and or bill gates?

The question is, is it worth the price, and I believe it is!!! Great game, I will be ordering the download version when its available.

 

[TelcoLou]

lol. I started like a week ago and am almost up to the same part as you.


BUT IT'S TAKING YOU LIKE 15 YEARS :lol:

I had to start over again ... I lost my save states :angry:

Oh, and based on the new demo, I think I'll be well into my retirement before I finish Vektar :lol:

 

[sensible GP32]

i finished kid C in round about 8 years
god bless savestates, before that i just got very angry................................ alot.

this game looks bad ass,
ill have to give it a go at some point

 

[FluffyPanda]

Sort of off topic, but here we go anyway.

I personally think that hiding your salary as an employee just hurts you. If everybody was more open about their salaries then you would know a lot better what you could expect to be on for the job you are doing. I imagine there are many people in this world sitting next to someone who's not as skilled and still earning more.

And I earn 24,000 Great British Pounds a year, before the tax man takes his cut.

 

[Aaaaaaaa]

£4.50/hour

Im a glass polisher!

Also. Vektar.

 

[Goity]

I earn 10p a year. I help my dad do stuff on ebay as he is computer illiterate.

 

[TelcoLou]

Sorry to get back on topic, but I'm a proud new owner of Vektar: The Commercial Version.

Review forthcoming ... (The package looks nice ... and I got a free cap too )

Review:

Well, the first thing I noticed was the shabby, ink-jet printed SD card label. It wraps around the top of the card, and most of the ink is already worn off. VERY poor job ... why not just print a small label and pasted it on the font of the card?

Next, after booting up with the game inserted, I saw my ugly GP2X menu ... (double checking the card supplied with the package, I see the words "Plug & Play"). It is not plug and play, it's plug and navigate to the Games menu, then SD card, then Vektar. I can't seem to make a proper autorun.gpu for the game either ...

The cap supplied with the game sucks. Bad. VERY bad ... It sits way too high on the joystick shaft, increasing the throw.

On to the game itself. Four levels in, and only playing around to get the feel of things, I love it. I can't wait to add some custom .oggs

Edit: The initials entry system needs work; the letters fade out as you scroll thru them, it's slow and hard on the eyes. Needs work.

So, final score:

Presentation: 6/10
Game itself: 9/10

 

[craigix]

They are not inkjet printed, they are phasered (that is why it shines)

But hey, at least the game is good

 

[TelcoLou]

They are not inkjet printed, they are phasered (that is why it shines)

But hey, at least the game is good

... check your phaser settings; 'stun' just ain't cutting it

The game well and truly rocks! I was pleased to beat the first boss

I plan on using The Prodigy's "Firestarter" as one of my custom tracks ... yay!

 

[silversmurfer]

Game arrived this week - superb - a quick question - I hate swapping SD cards around sooo I thought I'd just copy the contents of the Vektar card over to a dir on my 4Gb card - but it just sits at the loading screen - any ideas or is this a protected app?

 

[craigix]

It is protected yes.

The reason why I didn't use an autorun script is because people who don't know unix very well would not be able to copy over their own music files as the game would keep autobooting rather than allowing them into the usb menu.

But you can easily add one if you want one

 

[darkman]

I've been playing a lot of mamegp2x this week. I've noticed a lot of similarities between the game "Zektor" and "Vektar." Did some of the ideas come from this old game? In my opinion Vektar is a much better game and I'm speaking of the homebrew one here. I haven't purchased a copy of the commercial one yet. Some of the enemies even look the same. :huh:

 

[Dzz]

I've been playing a lot of mamegp2x this week. I've noticed a lot of similarities between the game "Zektor" and "Vektar." Did some of the ideas come from this old game? In my opinion Vektar is a much better game and I'm speaking of the homebrew one here. I haven't purchased a copy of the commercial one yet. Some of the enemies even look the same. :huh:

I can't speak for all the new content in the commercial version, but I've never heard of Zektor. The names are similar, but "vektar" is just supposed to be a more-or-less homonym for "vector" as in vector graphics. If enemies look similar that's probably because there are only so many different geometric shapes you can easily draw with a few lines

If the gameplay is similar, well the Asteroids concept is archetypical.

There's nothing really original about the freeware Vektar, it was just something I thought I could code fast enough for the coding competition in february, then I fleshed it out a bit more to make the "full" freeware game. From what I've seen so far (still waiting for mailman to deliver the commercial game), Craig made the concept a lot more original with the directions he took it.

 

[darkman]

I've been playing a lot of mamegp2x this week. I've noticed a lot of similarities between the game "Zektor" and "Vektar." Did some of the ideas come from this old game? In my opinion Vektar is a much better game and I'm speaking of the homebrew one here. I haven't purchased a copy of the commercial one yet. Some of the enemies even look the same. :huh:

I can't speak for all the new content in the commercial version, but I've never heard of Zektor. The names are similar, but "vektar" is just supposed to be a more-or-less homonym for "vector" as in vector graphics. If enemies look similar that's probably because there are only so many different geometric shapes you can easily draw with a few lines

If the gameplay is similar, well the Asteroids concept is archetypical.

There's nothing really original about the freeware Vektar, it was just something I thought I could code fast enough for the coding competition in february, then I fleshed it out a bit more to make the "full" freeware game. From what I've seen so far (still waiting for mailman to deliver the commercial game), Craig made the concept a lot more original with the directions he took it.

Gameplay, the ingame box concept, enemies, ai, and a lot of other things about the games look very much alike. I do agree about the commercial game in the demos I have played. It has taken on a very different direction. And I think that is a good thing. Someone at Sega might have noticed some of the similarities also.

edit: Vektar does add some great new ideas with some freshness to that old retro feel. I do like the directional pad used for acceleration rather than pressing a button. It gives you some neat strategical moves to come up with. My favorite is to accelerate through enemies spinning and firing at the same time.

 

[Dzz]

Someone at Sega might have noticed some of the similarities also.

If Sega apparently doesn't care very much about people pirating their actual game itself it seems unlikely they would be interested in games with some superficial similarities in obvious areas like "gameplay is in an enclosed space" or "the enemy follows you".

 

[nickspoon]

You can't copyright a game mechanic. Clones are perfectly safe.