Testers Wanted for my Game(s) - Asteroid Destroyer

[Deozaan]

Hi folks,

I've started a new challenge for myself in an effort to improve my programming skills and give myself more experience making games in Unity 3D. The challenge is to make about 24 games in a year, or about one game every 2 weeks.

My first game was a Pong-clone called Paddles which didn't turn out very well due to procrastination on my part. This time it's an Asteroids-clone called Asteroid Destroyer and I'm not procrastinating. In fact, the due date isn't until this Wednesday (the 10th), and I think I'm pretty much finished with it.

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So what I'm looking for is anybody who is willing to test it out for me. I need people to try to break it and report any bugs and feedback. I'm probably not looking for any feature requests, since the idea is to keep it simple and without feature creep. But it would be helpful for people to try it out and report any strange behavior I may have missed.

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You can play it in your browser from this link, which also has links to download standalone executables for Windows (32 & 64-bit) or OSX.

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Thanks!

http://games.deozaan.com/unity/AsteroidDestroyer/

"Uninstall" directions

The standalone game saves high scores and other data using the Windows registry. You can find and remove this data from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Deozaan\Asteroid Destroyer

If you use OSX, high scores are stored in something like ~/Library/Preferences folder, in a file named unity.Deozaan.Asteroid Destroyer.plist

[TaoPhoenix]

Some quick thoughts:

1. Don't confuse the "limits of the time" with gameplay. Think of Star Trek. When the captain orders "All Stop", he isn't telling the helmsman to "turn around and thrust in the opposite direction and hope you don't drift into something". If I plan a strategic spot to be, I wanna bang a key (numberpad zero?) so I instantly stop right there, facing the same way. Reverse thrusters would be nice too.

2. Where is the teleport? The Oh-$hit option when all that maneuvering didn't work was "hyperspace-and-hope".

[vlastimil]

No bugs encountered, maybe a little one - when I reached level 3 or 4, the big asteroids appeared relatively close to me or the ship was going too fast and I exploded like 1/2 second after they appeared.

[Renegade]

The pause didn't work. Died there.

But, seems pretty good. You might want to up the difficulty level, or add difficulty levels as I was able to play pretty easily, and I usually die pretty fast.

I liked the graphics. Nicely done.

The spacecraft seemed to have some pixleation around the edges, but it wasn't too bad.

The explosions were fantastic.

[wraith808]

I'll echo the nice graphics and explosions.  The thing about newtonian physics in asteroids was that you could accelerate continuously and continue to gain acceleration- you might want to think about if you want to go full newtonian, not newtonian, or keep it as is.  I'll definitely echo the difficulty level, and not sure what you are going to do for long term playability- after a few levels, the sameness sets in.  Also, a way in the application to adjust the volume other than on or off would be nice.  But nice first shot.

[Renegade]

Also, a way in the application to adjust the volume other than on or off would be nice.

That's *almost* there. In the options on the start screen for on/off. (For the benefit of others.)

I installed Unity there, went to make myself a drink, and the volume pumped. I initially cursed in my head, then thought, oh yeah, it's a game - they do that. Canceled the cursing, came back in turned the volume off (physically - I have a physical volume control), then turned the music off and went back to making a drink.

But I have to say, I didn't need to reboot or restart the browser or any of that stuff that drives me batshit crazy. It was rather nice.

[Deozaan]

Hi everyone. Thanks for the feedback!

1. Don't confuse the "limits of the time" with gameplay. Think of Star Trek. When the captain orders "All Stop", he isn't telling the helmsman to "turn around and thrust in the opposite direction and hope you don't drift into something". If I plan a strategic spot to be, I wanna bang a key (numberpad zero?) so I instantly stop right there, facing the same way. Reverse thrusters would be nice too.

2. Where is the teleport? The Oh-$hit option when all that maneuvering didn't work was "hyperspace-and-hope".

As I said, I'm not really looking for feature requests right now so that I can avoid feature creep and just keep my goal of making a complete game within two weeks. That's not to say that your ideas aren't good ones--I think they would be quite useful and fun, actually--It's just that time constraints prevent me from spending time implementing and testing out a lot of features. Thanks for trying it out, though.

No bugs encountered, maybe a little one - when I reached level 3 or 4, the big asteroids appeared relatively close to me or the ship was going too fast and I exploded like 1/2 second after they appeared.

That's not really a bug. It's more of a design flaw, I suppose. The asteroids spawn positions are predefined. So if you are in a spawn location and one happens to spawn there, you die. I used to have the game reset the ship's position back to the center of the screen where it was safe at the beginning of each level, but I felt that interrupted the flow of the game too much. But maybe it would be better if I put that back in?

The pause didn't work. Died there.

Erm.. Yeah. I didn't implement a pause feature when you bring up the menu in-game. Maybe I should do that.

But, seems pretty good. You might want to up the difficulty level, or add difficulty levels as I was able to play pretty easily, and I usually die pretty fast.

I liked the graphics. Nicely done.

The spacecraft seemed to have some pixleation around the edges, but it wasn't too bad.

The explosions were fantastic.

Thanks. I didn't really do any of the graphics, so I can't take credit for them. And yes, the ship does seem a bit jaggy. I wonder if it's the texture I've used for it. . .

How can it be made more difficult? Faster asteroids? More asteroids? I figured the early levels would be easy enough, but once you get a lot of asteroids on screen it would be tough.

I'll echo the nice graphics and explosions.  The thing about newtonian physics in asteroids was that you could accelerate continuously and continue to gain acceleration- you might want to think about if you want to go full newtonian, not newtonian, or keep it as is.  I'll definitely echo the difficulty level, and not sure what you are going to do for long term playability- after a few levels, the sameness sets in.  Also, a way in the application to adjust the volume other than on or off would be nice.  But nice first shot.

Thanks for the feedback. Since a lot of what you said is echoing what others have said, I'll refer you to my earlier responses for my response to those things.

Is the audio way too loud by default? I'll see if I can do something to fix this. (I also realized that the game doesn't save your audio settings, so they default to on (and loud) each time you start the game!)

As for the Newtonian physics, I think the original asteroids had a max speed. But maybe it was much higher than what I've currently got it to be? It's been a long time since I played the original, so I'm just going off of memory. I'd like to keep it how it is (not newtonian, with a max speed) but perhaps increasing the maximum speed would make it more fun and help with the difficulty issue?

[Renegade]

For "pause", I pressed the ESC key and got the menu. I figured that was "pause".

[Deozaan]

For "pause", I pressed the ESC key and got the menu. I figured that was "pause".

Yeah. What I meant was that I implemented an in-game menu but I didn't implement pausing the game while that menu was open. (I've edited my original response to make that more clear.)

But I've actually just added the pause feature to the game (but haven't updated any of the builds yet, so the update isn't live).

Oh, and I fixed the pixelated ship, too. (c:

And I added more volume options and have it remember the volume settings between sessions.

[vlastimil]

The asteroids spawn positions are predefined. So if you are in a spawn location and one happens to spawn there, you die. I used to have the game reset the ship's position back to the center of the screen where it was safe at the beginning of each level, but I felt that interrupted the flow of the game too much. But maybe it would be better if I put that back in?

Yes, I think resetting the position would be better. At the end of the level, players are focused on destroying the last asteroid and not ready for the fast change of the situation. If you don't want to reset the ship, then maybe adjusting the positions of the asteroids so that they don't collide with the ship for at least a second if no action is taken would be good and letting the new asteroids appear one by one would help too.

[Deozaan]

Yes, I think resetting the position would be better. At the end of the level, players are focused on destroying the last asteroid and not ready for the fast change of the situation. If you don't want to reset the ship, then maybe adjusting the positions of the asteroids so that they don't collide with the ship for at least a second if no action is taken would be good and letting the new asteroids appear one by one would help too.

There is already a couple second delay between when the last asteroid is destroyed and when the new ones are spawned.

I've updated the WebPlayer build with all of the changes I've made from everybody's feedback, including resetting the ship's position at the beginning of each level. I even made some changes (more asteroids per level and a faster maximum speed for the asteroids) to try to make the game more difficult.

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

[Deozaan]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I've "officially" released the final version of Asteroid Destroyer. The link in the original post will take you to the latest version, or you can view my blog entry announcing it here:

http://blog.deozaan.com/2012/10/10/asteroid-destroyer/

I'll be sure to ask for feedback/testers on my next game, so stay tuned.

[mouser]

Nice work Deo 

[wraith808]

Congrats!