Messages

1101

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 07, 2010, 10:36 PM »

Our non-British friend are going 

1102

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 07, 2010, 03:46 PM »

Twigapples-and-pears-plates-of-meat-and-gawd-bless-the-queen-muvvatelle

1103

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 07, 2010, 12:09 PM »

I can use that. I shall start a "skins" option for the game, and create a Cyeb folder.

Speaking of which (although it's barely necessary I would say) - the game can be translated into any language. Any need it in non-English?

1104

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 07, 2010, 10:57 AM »

Twigatelle is back. Sorry about that folks. 

1105

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 07, 2010, 10:55 AM »

bars are ok up to 32x16

1106

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 07, 2010, 09:14 AM »

Well that's really nice to hear. I think it's the latest release of IntelliJ IDEA - it's not rolling all the resources into the jar. I may have to downgrade. 

1107

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 06, 2010, 11:59 PM »

New build uploaded with level 3 now in place.

Well, also level 4 but that's boring since at the moment it's the same sort of thing as level 5, i.e. random distribution (based, as if anyone cared, on a custom fast Poisson distribution method what I wrote)

Anyone got any ideas for level layouts based on the shapes now available?

Enjoy. Still some bugs in there folks, but I will get them fixed.  

[Edit] Sorry folks, Twigatelle is unavailable for a short time while I figure out why the jar file has stopped building correctly!

1108

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 06, 2010, 10:04 AM »

Awesome! I've always loved pinball games as well. I'd ask how you were able to code the physics for the non-flat surfaces, but I'm guessing that's not something that's easy to explain or that you'd even want to explain it lol. I'm going to begin my research on that though because I think you did a very nice job of doing it and I'd like to be able to do things like this

-ch33s3r (January 06, 2010, 09:36 AM)

Thanks very much. The trickiest part of the coding was calculating the ball rebound angle from the odder parts of the other objects (e.g. the inner curved yet also angley bits of the curved bumpers - you haven't seen those bumpers yet, but they'll show up in the next release. Imagine a quarter of a donut)

Information is not easy to find, and in the end I just started from scratch. Probably wasted a lot of time but at least I understand it   I have no problem sharing what I came up with.

1109

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 05, 2010, 10:10 PM »

I forgot to mention that the purple bars are almost impossible to distinguish from the blue bars.

-Deozaan (January 05, 2010, 09:49 PM)

Blame me for that. Nudone gave me some nice graphics then I faffed around with paintshop to give them colours. I'm in the middle of a clean-up anyway, so I'll see if I can make them more distinct.

About to restore the mystery levels 3 & 4!

1110

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 04, 2010, 12:04 PM »

Ah ha, thanks! 

1111

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 02, 2010, 05:40 PM »

...and I'll make sure there's a Credits screen in the game.

1112

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 02, 2010, 11:33 AM »

Your efforts are only wasted if you give up! If I get a new set of bumpers I'll roll them into a 'skin' and folks can choose a look they like.

I'm sure mine are 'different' not 'better' 

1113

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: January 01, 2010, 11:40 AM »

Thanks for the feedback.  I wonder if the game cannot save to your local disk...

Levels skipping to 5 is deliberate - I'm holding 3 & 4 back for the moment until I get the rest of the graphics into place.

1114

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 31, 2009, 07:20 PM »

New version of the game uploaded! Nowhere near as complete as I'd like, so there will be several more releases over the next few days.

But at least you get a couple of new levels!

Please let me know how the framerate looks, particularly for level 2.

Happy New Year all!

1115

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 31, 2009, 06:37 PM »

Have you sussed out what each colour bumper does?

-timns (December 22, 2009, 09:23 AM)

Maybe.

Red: You must touch all of these to beat the level.
Blue: Other bumpers.
Green: Random power-up.
Purple: Lots of extra points.

-Deozaan (December 30, 2009, 11:25 PM)

Correct! Hit the purple one as soon as possible to maximize your score.

At some point I guess I should write a little user guide.

1116

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 31, 2009, 04:19 PM »

IDEAS

New game modes if you are up to it.

1. A mode where the objective is to strike a particular bumper in the least number of bounces. Scored like golf, the lower the score the better.

2. A mode where bumpers are not destroyed between balls and special bumpers that light up when struck. Objective is to turn on all the lights, challenge being that the lights are toggles so if struck again they turn off. Not sure about how to score this one, but I think it would be fun.

-dragonmage (December 31, 2009, 07:22 AM)

How about a mode where the bumpers are randomly scattered, and the screen is entirely dark except for the ball launcher?  Then you shoot at the bumpers, lighting them up and the bumpers around it?  Just an idea... 

-Cyeb (December 31, 2009, 03:37 PM)

I love it! That's a really nice one.

Timns!  How do you like my blue bumper on the previous page?  Here it is again:
Alternatively, you could use that as a ball?

Looks good. The round bouncy bit of the bumpers should fit into a 16x16 square. What I'm going to do is a quick release so I meet the deadline, then a series of updates to introduce new graphics and levels.

1117

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 31, 2009, 10:47 AM »

Wow! Thanks folks. I appreciate the feedback (and even the bug reports  ) and I apologise for the slow response. I was expecting to be off this week so I could do a bit more with the program, but ended up back working.

I'll do what I can today and we'll have some sort of release at the last minute!

1118

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 28, 2009, 11:01 AM »

I hadn't noticed those, I just thought it was a nice game!  

Hey, timns, when are you going to "put out the call to us creative types"?  Don't you have only three days left to complete it by New Years?

-Cyeb (December 28, 2009, 10:50 AM)

Er... ah ha.... well the game will be slightly less buggy  and also I hope have several more levels by the due date, but the intention is to have 'expansion packs' too which add more levels and different graphics over time.

With the next release, which I hope may even be later today, I shall include elements that you can use to design levels, or use as templates to provide new graphics 

So thank you for the reminder. I shall now proceed to panic.

Yarg.

1119

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 28, 2009, 10:57 AM »

Cool game so far, even though I'm only getting 32 fps. It made me late for work yesterday  

-dragonmage (December 28, 2009, 09:32 AM)

Er... ah. Sorry. How's your framerate if you turn off the antialiasing?

I have found a couple bugs.

1. High Score list seems to be completely inaccurate. All recorded scores are way lower than the score reported in game. I haven't tried calculating to see if it's a certain percentage yet.

Dagnabbit, you're right! There'll be a new release of the game in a day or two: I'll make sure that's fixed.

2. I got a Ball Frenzy and in the ensuing chaos another green bumper was hit and may have been Assassin Ball, not sure I didn't actually catch what was activated. At any rate the last two balls came into proximity of each other at low speed and became "caught in each others' gravity." That's the only way I could describe it. They bounced off of each other then pulled back together, endlessly. I had to start a new game.

Ensuing chaos is such a great way of putting it. I'll see if I can guard against that somehow.

Also had some ideas.

Pong Mode: Would it be possible to control the "paddle" in Pong Mode? As it is now Pong Mode only tracks one ball at a time, so a ball could go right by the paddle because it is tracking one that bounced back up.

Assassin Ball: Allow the player to "put a hit out" for a particular peg. Click on the problem peg, the ball then goes after that peg.

Claw Mode: Why not combine this with another arcade favorite the prize grabbing claw machines? The launcher could turn into a claw which could be launched, giving you a chance of grabbing the ball back to relaunch it. If you wanted to get really tricky with it you could also allow it to grab a peg and hold it. The cable could then become another surface for the ball to reflect off of.

Very nice suggestions! I can see significant added value for pong mode and assassin ball, so again I shall see what can be accomplished. Claw mode is very appealing so I will see if I can at least add some variant of what you propose.

Thank you very much for the feedback.

1120

Older Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for December 22nd, 2009 - "NANY EVE"

« on: December 23, 2009, 09:40 AM »

My 2010 NANY entry will be complete by 2060 

1121

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 22, 2009, 09:23 AM »

Sounds like the gloves are off.

Have you sussed out what each colour bumper does?

1122

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 21, 2009, 04:06 PM »

Ooh, I like it!  It works on my netbook.  Some things run slowly, but when you're actually in game, it works perfectly.

Just another thing, methinks the game is a good idea, only the graphics...well...I can help you if you want.  Oh wait, I see up there ^ you say nudone is helping you?  Can I is help too? 

-Cyeb (December 21, 2009, 03:54 PM)

Thank you Cyeb. I greatly appreciate the offer and in fact you reminded me of something I keep meaning to post:

LEVEL DESIGN!!!!!

Once we have the other shapes in place (the game supports round pegs, square pegs and also curved pegs) then I shall be putting out the call to you creative types for some nice layouts.

Are you up for it?

1123

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 21, 2009, 03:47 PM »

Nice, reminds me a lot of Peggle. Except this is harder.

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (December 18, 2009, 12:37 AM)

Need more balls? I had actually reduced the number in order to make that one solitary level last a bit longer

1124

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« on: December 19, 2009, 07:30 PM »

that is pretty impressive.. let's see if anyone can beat my score: (see attachment in previous post)

-mouser (December 18, 2009, 12:17 AM)

Let me know if you'd like a list of hints 'n' tips so that you all can beat mouser 

New levels coming up in a day or two, with new graphics too.

1125

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Teaser: Twigatelle

« on: December 18, 2009, 09:19 AM »

Yes it was the demo of Peggle that made me wonder if it were possible in Java.