Yuku free message boards

1. Putting a reasonable max distance on the cross-hair distance.

--All I did to the cross hair distance was make it better reflect the reality of where the bomb will hit; they're still dumb bombs, so I can't very well constrain the distance without setting a max ceiling on the plane. Although I thought about doing that, I'm a bit worried that if I make that change now we'll run the risk of no longer being able to do some of the same wild jumps & risky high-alititude loops that work now.

2. Decreasing range at which central stuctures can be blown.

--Intentionally made huge, 1.3 times standard building radius, to ensure that (a.) beginners in early levels will "stumble" upon how this works pretty easily, even if they've never seen it happen (and b.) it makes the core reachable in later levels where the are around it is saturated with smaller buildings which otherwise might absorb most of the damage. I'll keep an eye on this though when considering a v1.2, especially if we hear anything about it from the other playtesters.

3. Removing the feature of a broken shield, simply have the shield be the life gauge, and always capable of recharging. If the feature stays in, I strongly recommend that all crates hold both money and shield-recharge (if they don't already - or is it currently on a need basis?).

--All crates give health, provided that you have less than "green" health. They also re-activate your shield if your shield has been broken. The feature is in fact documented somewhere (or was at some point?), but I'm kind of happier with it being a less obvious little tidbit. Encourages exploration, and rewards players that talk to one another about the game. The expert trick for later levels is to bomb the grouped Supply Buildings early but leave the crates, wipe out the nearby defenses while you have enough shield to do so, then head back for a shield reconstruction when you need it. I mean I do that. Of course, I'm crazy.

4. Allowing the player to skip through the "Mission Success" by clicking, or maybe pressing enter.

--Probably a good idea. I know I've sat there at least 50 times late in the project cycle wishing I wasn't watching it again, but I thought perhaps it wouldn't be so annoying to someone who hasn't played the game so much. Plus, Barndollar's victory music is just so cool. But for the next version (if we do one) I'll probably either shorten it to 50-75% of the time, or give the click out option.

Small, unimportant bugs/errors that may or may not be worthwhile:

1. Main Menu button on "try again" screen does not take you to the main menu (but I like where it does take you).

--You're right - I "fixed" it taking you to the less convenient screen, but forgot to update the graphic. This is probably another one that would be nice to fix, but people probably won't notice too much if it stays...

2. Screen-skipping bug (or is that just because a particular part of my computer is lacking?).

--This anomoly is a byproduct of the timing/framerate control mechanism I'm using, in conjunction with how much I'm asking of the video card (transparency, 2 fullscreen blits every frame, tons of little sprites drawn in an unpredictable ordering, all at 35 frames per second). There are ways I can optimize this to try to mitigate it a bit, but they're a lot of work for relatively little gain. The main question for me: was the frame skipping frequent enough to impair your ability to play the game? Or to negatively affect your experience?

3. Do not allow player to both win and lose a level. (explained in 2nd to last paragraph of original post).

--Yea, you must have just beat that level by the hair of your chinny chin chin, as in, in the last second or so of fuel. I can look into it, but it's also a rare enough case that I might let this slide...

-------------------------

All of these are things I'd like to fix, but I'm not sure it's enough yet for me to warrant putting out a new version. I'll see if what the other playtesters can provide in the way of feedback gives me a bit more to do. Until then, thanks again for your help! We made a huge difference in usability between v1.0 and v1.1!

I've addressed all of these points on my local version - I'll wait until I hear back from the new playtester(s) before pushing up a new install package, though, since none of these changes are system critical.

Please try to get the playtester(s) to submit their input to the board by Sunday at noon, if possible, even if they haven't had a chance to finish the game by that time. I'll also need to know at that point which names to add to our playtester credits. I'm aiming to fully wrap up Eternal Storm before I have to start going to the office every day.


Thanks again!