Support NeoGAF

[Ventron]

Hey, I'm watching the trailer here and just curious about how it controls, is it actually left thumbstick for left ship and right thumbstick for right ship? Why do you have to press A sometimes, it is necessary or just gaining extra points?

My impression of watching the video is like it's a shooting game for drummers that can do multiple things at once with their limbs

I remember you saying somewhere that right side can be controlled with AI or something, so I'm a little confused. Either way looks like a creative game and as long as it has level variety (and nice box art ) I'm prepared to drop points on it

You could say its a shooting game for drummers without anything to shoot (hence why it isn't in the shooter genre).

The main mode is left is you, right is AI, and occasionally the Andromium can come onto your side of the screen which you must collect, then press A to shoot back. The regular 1 player mode is not shown in trailers because the screen looks much blanker than it does in the mode I'm playing, which is "Mastermind". In that mode, you control both ships through two level streams, and it is insanely hard. It's essentially New Game+.

I didn't intend for the main game to look hard in the trailers, just awesome Ask anyone who has played the game in playtest, it's not hard to play.

I included the shield because levels are procedurally generated, and in case the generated level had some tight spots you can still get past them. There are no weapons because that would make the game too complicated (or too easy, depending on how used to complex controls you are).

 

[Gaspode_T]

Ahhhhhhh, that sounds cool, I don't know why but I always like to find games to compare these games to, my feeling from at a glance was something like "River Raid with Two Ships at Once" so you should probably just try to find some 10 second pitch for why people should play the game

I like the soft lighting you have and sort of sci-fi broccoli hurtling at you You might port it to WP7, looks like it would be pretty easy to control with touch?

 

[OldmanAndroid]

Basically my point is, it's a bit of work porting to PC, though XNA certainly makes it easier. The challenge then becomes making your game more flexible for different hardware and input configurations. Then your challenge becomes addressing bugs on different platform configs.

Thanks so much for explaining all of this. We've been working on the PC version simultaneously with our 360 version, and I was very confused about how to break out of windowed mode/DX10.

Have you guys thought of porting to Xperia Play/Android? Still waiting for Project ExEn. Also, at what point were you able to quit your day job? Before CSTW?

 

[Ventron]

Ahhhhhhh, that sounds cool, I don't know why but I always like to find games to compare these games to, my feeling from at a glance was something like "River Raid with Two Ships at Once" so you should probably just try to find some 10 second pitch for why people should play the game

True, but I aimed to make a completely different design of gameplay, which makes it hard to think of a 10 second pitch when your aim is to make the game incomparable to anything else

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Plague looks interesting, but I read the aiming controls aren't analogue, maybe they can fix that in a patch? Anyone try this? How does it compare to Grand Theft Froot?

I'm working through the full game. Hopefully I'll have the review by tomorrow.
A bit distracted thanks to Boulder Dash XL and Bastion though. =)

Having played both(Plague and GTF) they're very different games. Plague is closer to Contra but it doesn't have any of the refined aspects that make that game classic. Still it has a bunch of cool ideas and could really be fun with some friends(hate this lack of online coop in everything).

 

[Gaspode_T]

Yeah so many of the XBLIG games would benefit from some sort of online support (official leaderboards and P2P matchmaking), although ZP2KX (online play) and Avatar Ninja 2 (leaderboards) prove it's not impossible.

I'm surprised there has been no news at all (interviews, feedback, whatever) from either Gamefest UK or Develop, two big game dev conferences that happened recently. I was hoping people would ask MS employees about indie game situation in interviews and at least get clarification on what the current official line is...especially with all of the negative press coming from the CSTW Steam sales announcement

 

[T-Matt]

Just wanted to say I got OSR unhinged based on toythatkills past comments about it. I've sunk so much time into it and I can't believe it only cost me a buck. It is obviously similar to Trials but it also gives me this nostalgic Uniracers type feeling when I play it.
I also am looking forward to sinking into Sequence.

 

[Kafel]

CastleMiner teaser, coming out this month.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrCTxHil8-U

Guess what kind of game it is.

*

Fist Puncher trailer, coming this Fall :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv3zHIJjFrM

 

[toythatkills]

Looks like some kind of FPS where you play as a zombie.

 

[Kafel]

Just noticed there are Korean and Chinese forums on the XNA App Hub now. MS opening the gates.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Plague review is up:
http://www.extraguy.com/2011/07/plague-review-like-a-real-disease-more-fun-in-a-crowd/

Just noticed there are Korean and Chinese forums on the XNA App Hub now. MS opening the gates.

Nice. Looking forward to what they'll bring to the table.

 

[Kafel]

Dead Pixels gameplay trailer :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YuAd08Fmk0&feature=youtu.be

 

[HadesGigas]

So I just noticed Tobe's Vertical Adventure is no longer on Xbox. Seems kind of lame to pull the $3 game on Xbox right when the $5 PC version comes out.

Looks especially bad right when you have something like CStW doing it the right way (Same price on both platforms, Xbox version gets all the new features too).

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

So I just noticed Tobe's Vertical Adventure is no longer on Xbox. Seems kind of lame to pull the $3 game on Xbox right when the $5 PC version comes out.

Looks especially bad right when you have something like CStW doing it the right way (Same price on both platforms, Xbox version gets all the new features too).

Wow that's some kind of ass.

 

[nbraun80]

Tempura of the Dead and Aban Hawkins are made by a single Japanese dude and they are both freaking awesome:

Aban Hawkins and the 1000 Spikes: http://8bits.nukimi.com/1000s/
Tempura of the Dead (more Ninja Gaiden-ish??): http://8bits.nukimi.com/tod/

Not exactly like Mega Man but they are both 8-bit style, pretty much must buys if you like NES style games.

thanks for the response, those both look cool, and I'll give them a try. That first one looks like it could be really fun, but I'm afraid it's going to be a tough game by being cheap, and not being tough by good level design, if that makes sense.

It just seems like it's hard to find a quality, challenging action-platformer like mega man.

On a sort of related question to anyone, how difficult is it to work with the XNA software? I have a little coding experience, but not much, and I see that as a current college student I get a free year of XNA so I thought about giving it the ol' college try.

 

[Trumpets]

On a sort of related question to anyone, how difficult is it to work with the XNA software? I have a little coding experience, but not much, and I see that as a current college student I get a free year of XNA so I thought about giving it the ol' college try.

Give it a go! Like you say it costs nothing and XNA / c# is very forgiving. Download one of the starter kits and fiddle around with the code to see how everything works, then strike out on your own.

 

[Gaspode_T]

thanks for the response, those both look cool, and I'll give them a try. That first one looks like it could be really fun, but I'm afraid it's going to be a tough game by being cheap, and not being tough by good level design, if that makes sense.

It just seems like it's hard to find a quality, challenging action-platformer like mega man.

On a sort of related question to anyone, how difficult is it to work with the XNA software? I have a little coding experience, but not much, and I see that as a current college student I get a free year of XNA so I thought about giving it the ol' college try.

XNA is easy, I tried to learn game programming by directly jumping into Michael Abrash assembler books or on the other side of the spectrum ass backwards Win32 MFC programming and first gen OpenGL/DirectX, it was not very fun. XNA is so easy that I would try to focus less on XNA and more upon what you are doing surrounding the XNA bits (learning data structures, how to manipulate and store data, etc).

Speaking from perspective of quite a lot of experience of wanting to do things but not quite getting there, I really want to give two points of advice that could make the difference:

1) Don't focus on understanding what every class or property is there for, you will get frustrated and caught up on things that don't matter yet. Focus more about getting into a cycle of actually getting results, get one of the starter kits to run and then just tweak it and make it do things you think are cool. That's the best way to learn and still be fun at the same time.

2) Don't go alone, if you can, it's much better to find someone to learn with. Going completely solo has a lot of pressure to keep yourself motivated and also when you get stuck there will be no one to bounce ideas off of. Of course you can find people online, but if you are in college there is almost no excuse to not find another game loving student that is interested in working on a game...some students of a game programming class made Minions which is one of the better selling XBLIG games.

 

[nbraun80]

Give it a go! Like you say it costs nothing and XNA / c# is very forgiving. Download one of the starter kits and fiddle around with the code to see how everything works, then strike out on your own.

Thanks for the encouragement, I'm going to give it a try.

XNA is easy, I tried to learn game programming by directly jumping into Michael Abrash assembler books or on the other side of the spectrum ass backwards Win32 MFC programming and first gen OpenGL/DirectX, it was not very fun. XNA is so easy that I would try to focus less on XNA and more upon what you are doing surrounding the XNA bits (learning data structures, how to manipulate and store data, etc).

Speaking from perspective of quite a lot of experience of wanting to do things but not quite getting there, I really want to give two points of advice that could make the difference:

1) Don't focus on understanding what every class or property is there for, you will get frustrated and caught up on things that don't matter yet. Focus more about getting into a cycle of actually getting results, get one of the starter kits to run and then just tweak it and make it do things you think are cool. That's the best way to learn and still be fun at the same time.

2) Don't go alone, if you can, it's much better to find someone to learn with. Going completely solo has a lot of pressure to keep yourself motivated and also when you get stuck there will be no one to bounce ideas off of. Of course you can find people online, but if you are in college there is almost no excuse to not find another game loving student that is interested in working on a game...some students of a game programming class made Minions which is one of the better selling XBLIG games.

Thanks for the advice man, I'll keep that in mind, and I think i know someone that would be interesting in do it with me. I've got it all downloaded now, and so the adventure begins. ha

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

This week's PVJ round-up is here. Woop Woop

http://www.extraguy.com/2011/07/xblig-weekly-roundup-72511/

 

[FunInfusedGames]

Yeah so many of the XBLIG games would benefit from some sort of online support (official leaderboards and P2P matchmaking), although ZP2KX (online play) and Avatar Ninja 2 (leaderboards) prove it's not impossible.

It's do-able certainly. My game Hypership has online leaderboards too, but we're forced to use peer-to-peer sharing to keep them up to date. This works alright if you have a critical mass of gamers (as ZP2kX and Avatar Ninja do) but once usage slows, they become mostly worthless (as they now are for Hypership). We really need a true client / server option... I don't care if even the official Microsoft Live Leaderboards, just being able to hit my own website and database would be a HUGE improvement.

A similar situation goes for online play. It's possible to do but is it worth investing huge amounts of development time into a feature that very likely will hardly be used? I'm not seeing enough downloads of my games at this point to justify it

 

[HadesGigas]

Defy Gravity joins the ranks of XBLIG making the jump to Steam. Priced at $3 too.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Defy Gravity joins the ranks of XBLIG making the jump to Steam. Priced at $3 too.

Well.
It adds about double the content. Which I guess is fairly justifiable.
Although I remember the main game taking me less than thirty minutes to complete.

 

[Gaspode_T]

At the very least XBLIG devs should be worrying/studying about RESTful protocols because that's basically what's powering most leaderboards and even asynch games like Carcassonne/Words with Friends/Scrabble/etc on mobile, I think those sort of games will be big and maybe focusing 70% WP7/30% XBLIG is a good bet anyway with a flood of Nokia phones to hit the world sooner than later. I still think it will be easier to get approved as an official WP7 dev than it will be a Xbox 360 XBLA dev, and the reason is kind of obvious (dev kit, NDAs, etc are stricter on console platform), and if you have WP7 game with achievements and people love it maybe it can be a stepping stone towards console games.

Different topic but I'm at a loss of words about the fact that there are currently 3 or 4 games related to "finding your true love" or "increasing attractiveness" on the top selling list.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Different topic but I'm at a loss of words about the fact that there are currently 3 or 4 games related to "finding your true love" or "increasing attractiveness" on the top selling list.

I still can't believe somebody hasn't taken my idea and started work on "Leopold the Aardvark Helps You Get Laid". The action-platformer where in-between stages Leopold gives you advice on how to get action.

Oh and more indie games definitely need online play. I'm working with a friend of mine on doing the youtube thing and anything that helps us get together to shoot the shit and record some footage is worthwhile.

 

[Feep]

Defy Gravity joins the ranks of XBLIG making the jump to Steam. Priced at $3 too.

(shakes head) I'm storming the beach. Valve Headquarters. August 25th, day before PAX. I will sit in that lobby all day if I need to.

I'm serious.

 

[toythatkills]

I thought Defy Gravity was rubbish. Baffling how that can get on Steam when Sequence just sits in limbo.

 

[OnPoint]

I still can't believe somebody hasn't taken my idea and started work on "Leopold the Aardvark Helps You Get Laid". The action-platformer where in-between stages Leopold gives you advice on how to get action.

I'd play it just for the platforming... yeah... the platforming...

 

[toythatkills]

Fawnix might be the worst game I've ever played. I probably make that statement a lot but it amazes me how much worse games can get when you've convinced yourself that they can't possibly.

I, as a man of nearly 29 years, can spell the word "cat." I can also pronounce the word "cat" brilliantly, if I do say so myself. Years of practice. In Fawnix, however, I can not spell the word "cat," and I can not pronounce the word "cat." Assuming that this is meant to be some kind of educational thing, how on earth are children expected to be able to do it when I can't bloody do it?

The controls are more poor than Greece.

 

[Ventron]

Anyone here a premium member? I'd appreciate some help in playtesting Andromium, since it got knocked out of peer review once and I can't afford for that to happen again without delaying the projected August 12 release.

http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/82150.aspx

Oh and more indie games definitely need online play. I'm working with a friend of mine on doing the youtube thing and anything that helps us get together to shoot the shit and record some footage is worthwhile.

Well, I could do a Kris Steele and make some avatar games
In fact, I have two ideas for games which could feature avatars and both of them are online. Obviously they wouldn't be crap, but they wouldn't take me long to do either.

 

[toythatkills]

I don't think anyone should be embarrassed to make an avatar game, or frowned upon for making one. A good game is a good game whether it uses avatars or not and if you're using avatars to the good of the game and not just to get trials there's no issue with it.

At the moment the market seems to be heading towards "how 2 do sex with girlz and make them luv u n stuff: avatar edishun," if this game is ever released I'm done with XBLIGs.

 

[OldmanAndroid]

Anyone here a premium member? I'd appreciate some help in playtesting Andromium, since it got knocked out of peer review once and I can't afford for that to happen again without delaying the projected August 12 release.

http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/82150.aspx

Wish I could help you, I'm having enough trouble finding "evil checklist" related bugs in our game. We already failed peer review once, luckily we dont have a deadline. I just feel really bad about wasting peer reviewers time.

Ive said this before, but we need a 3rd party business/person that can thoroughly check for game failing bugs. Not necessarily in-game bugs, but all the crazy tests that involve yanking out controllers and hard drives at certain times. Getting others to check for "evil checklist" related bugs in the playtest stage can be difficult.

Someone pls take our money for "evil checklist" bug testing....currently everyone expects to fail peer review at least once. Broken system.

 

[Trumpets]

Defy Gravity joins the ranks of XBLIG making the jump to Steam. Priced at $3 too.

I'm tempted to resubmit the first Apple Jack to them if they've started accepting playable but unattractive platformers. I got as far as signing something the first time round but it went no further back then.

Or perhaps I'll wait until the second game is finished and see if they want a double-pack?

 

[toythatkills]

If you submit just the first game, would that affect your chances of getting a double pack accepted? If not, just do a double pack if the original release fails! And if it gets on, then the sequel's pretty much guaranteed to get on there with a ready-made audience.

 

[Trumpets]

If you submit just the first game, would that affect your chances of getting a double pack accepted?

Well, it may make them think, "Oh christ, not that stupid apple thing again. We don't want your stupid apple game!". Delete.

Hitting them with both games a little later on might have more impact. Dunno.

 

[Gaspode_T]

Well, it may make them think, "Oh christ, not that stupid apple thing again. We don't want your stupid apple game!". Delete.

Hitting them with both games a little later on might have more impact. Dunno.

Honestly I only have gotten to observe it second hand but my impression is that the approval process at almost all publishers has way more random and nearly arbitrary human factors in it than most people would believe (someone's mood that day, whether they see your e-mail at all, how busy they are at that time, etc). It reminds me a little bit of the disconnect between being a hiring manager and being a good candidate that somehow can't get in touch with the right people, I've been on both sides of the fence and usually both sides would love to meet each other but for some reason can't.

Sort of begging to be on Steam or sitting in their lobby does not really seem to be a healthy business plan, if anything I would take a step back and try to look at your pitch from an outsider's perspective...the little details of presentation, the way you write your e-mails, do you have a website that looks professional, etc...those sort of superficial things probably matter way more than they should.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

I'd like to think this isn't based on some lottery.
If I run a service that is looking for quality games, send me some freaking quality games, I'll look at them. Really not seeing the difficulty in this.

'Cause honestly if Defy Gravity can get in, that may as well mean that a large percentage of XBLIGs can get in as well.

 

[toythatkills]

If Defy Gravity can get in, Try Not to Fart should be able to get in.

 

[Feep]

Sort of begging to be on Steam or sitting in their lobby does not really seem to be a healthy business plan, if anything I would take a step back and try to look at your pitch from an outsider's perspective...the little details of presentation, the way you write your e-mails, do you have a website that looks professional, etc...those sort of superficial things probably matter way more than they should.

It's not really issue of me "getting the presentation right", though I certainly may be off on a few things. The first E-mail was incredibly professional, and I've tried variations in my follow-ups. But I just literally can't get them to *respond*. Not even with a no. It's incredibly frusrating.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

It's not really issue of me "getting the presentation right", though I certainly may be off on a few things. The first E-mail was incredibly professional, and I've tried variations in my follow-ups. But I just literally can't get them to *respond*. Not even with a no. It's incredibly frusrating.

Probably too risky to try but have you considered getting friends, other GAFfers, etc to ask about Steam about it? On one hand I'm sure they'd start deleting emails out of spite due to all the pestering but on the other hand maybe they'd divulge an answer if they heard there was enough interest floating around.

 

[FunInfusedGames]

(shakes head) I'm storming the beach. Valve Headquarters. August 25th, day before PAX. I will sit in that lobby all day if I need to.

I'm serious.

I'm trying to get on Steam too. Submitted Hypership, crossing my fingers.

In an unrelated note, we've got the official trailer for the first 8 finalists in the Indie Games Summer Uprising, check it out: http://youtu.be/ASnq9jP_ilk

 

[FunInfusedGames]

It's not really issue of me "getting the presentation right", though I certainly may be off on a few things. The first E-mail was incredibly professional, and I've tried variations in my follow-ups. But I just literally can't get them to *respond*. Not even with a no. It's incredibly frusrating.

How long have you been waiting? I hear it can take a couple months to get any response. I've been waiting at least two weeks now after sending my email.

 

[OnPoint]

Fawnix might be the worst game I've ever played. I probably make that statement a lot but it amazes me how much worse games can get when you've convinced yourself that they can't possibly.

I, as a man of nearly 29 years, can spell the word "cat." I can also pronounce the word "cat" brilliantly, if I do say so myself. Years of practice. In Fawnix, however, I can not spell the word "cat," and I can not pronounce the word "cat." Assuming that this is meant to be some kind of educational thing, how on earth are children expected to be able to do it when I can't bloody do it?

The controls are more poor than Greece.

Yeah, it's an absolute mess of a game. But I'm going to go ahead and say GHXYK2 Classics Vol. 1 is even worse.

 

[Princess Skittles]

I'm trying to get on Steam too. Submitted Hypership, crossing my fingers.

Nice. I would double dip on Hypership, although the multi-player is infinitely easier to accomplish on the 360 (for me).

We've had some crazy fun with it in four player mode on game nights.

I saw on your Twitter that you added a pink Hypership for the Windows Phone version, was that ever put into the XBLIG version?

 

[toythatkills]

Yeah, it's an absolute mess of a game. But I'm going to go ahead and say GHXYK2 Classics Vol. 1 is even worse.

I'd already decided that Fawnix was the worst game ever about ten minutes before I loaded GHXYK2! At least Fawnix tries to pretend it's a game, I guess.

I'm dying to download a new game that's just come out, but for some reason the Marketplace isn't letting me!

 

[FunInfusedGames]

Nice. I would double dip on Hypership, although the multi-player is infinitely easier to accomplish on the 360 (for me).

We've had some crazy fun with it in four player mode on game nights.

I saw on your Twitter that you added a pink Hypership for the Windows Phone version, was that ever put into the XBLIG version?

Glad you enjoy the multiplayer, it's kinda nuts right? XBLIG is probably the only version that will have that, I just don't see PC or mobile gamers playing with multiple players on one screen.

The WP7 version has a Pink ship and an Orange ship (plus the original 4 colors). I doubt it will ever be in the XBLIG version though. Hypership for XBLIG is an XNA 3.1 release. We can no longer submit 3.1 games to XBLIG, 4.0 only. The 4.0 changes destroyed the online scoring and it would be a TON of work to fix it. So unfortunately it is unlikely I'll be doing anymore updates to Hypership. Even doing something like adding a couple ships is now a major update.

The PC, Mac, and iOS versions will have these extra ships though. Future sequels probably will too.

 

[qupe1975]

I'd already decided that Fawnix was the worst game ever about ten minutes before I loaded GHXYK2! At least Fawnix tries to pretend it's a game, I guess.

I'm dying to download a new game that's just come out, but for some reason the Marketplace isn't letting me!

Was that Pixel Blocked!? I couldn't download that yesterday


I just played Fawnix. The only way that game will be educational is telling my daughter Daddy was wrong in swearing.


Couple of games have changed their prices: Hello Rocket is now 400pts and Decay Part 4 is also 400pts. Tri Linea is now 240pts

 

[HadesGigas]

Out now for 240msp, it's CastleMiner. Minecraft. Again.

This one is free build peaceful creative mode. The slight difference this time is there is some point to going into caves and mining. There are certain blocks that are locked until you perform certain tasks (basically like achievements). Mine all the way to the bedrock and you unlock a block type, mine 10 coal and you unlock another block type, etc... It also has 16 player online, and uses your avatars.

 

[qupe1975]

Pixel Blocked is a game puzzle fans should enjoy.

What starts off as a straight forward game soon becomes more challenging as you try to complete levels within the time limit. Definitely one puzzle fans should try and buy.

 

[HadesGigas]

Pixel Blocked is a game puzzle fans should enjoy.

What starts off as a straight forward game soon becomes more challenging as you try to complete levels within the time limit. Definitely one puzzle fans should try and buy.

Just tried it and bought it. Though I don't care much about the time, it should keep track of how few moves you make instead of how rapidly you did them.

 

[toythatkills]

Was that Pixel Blocked!? I couldn't download that yesterday

Yeah it was. Though having played it, my excitement for it has pretty much gone. I've finished 120 of its 180ish levels, and I've had to stop and think precisely once.