Bouncing Game Up and Running

[tango88]

Hi All,

I have a new game freshly completed: www.flashbynight.com/qbob2

It's a reworking of an older game that I wasn't happy with and I'd love to get some feedback from you all.

[rawmantick]

Pretty good and not-easy game. Few things:

1. No need to keep "press <space> ..." along the entire game
2. No need to have level and karma selectable
3. Too simple background. Make it more interactive, animated...

[nakedkafka]

pretty nice,
you have to "soften" up the controls, it's way too hard to land of the plattforms, perhaps the bounce should be lightened abit. would make the game abit easier, and more playable.

[kkbbcute]

I would have to agree with the previous posts. Too fast paced and hard for someone ordinary. If you were just browsing for free games, a game that is too hard will not capture anyone's attention.

Also, I think that your easing of the animation can be improved upon, it just feels too weightless when it bounces.
And make the background less minimalist, it'll help.

[tango88]

Thanks guys,

Mainly it's too hard. Of course I played it a hundred times when I was writing it, so I probably didn't realise how difficult it was.

I'll adjust the difficulty of the first five levels at least.


1. No need to keep "press <space> ..." along the entire game
2. No need to have level and karma selectable
3. Too simple background. Make it more interactive, animated...

I can work on all these. To make the background less plain without increasing the filesize too much is the tough one. Filesize at the moment is about 220k.

Great feedback guys, thanks.

[kkbbcute]

I have made quite a few Flash games (all uncompleted due to performance issues) and based on my experience, its easy to add detail without increasing the file size too much.

Firstly, use gradients, overlapping gradients make for great eye candy; if you don't believe me go to the local library and try to find Chris Georgenes' "How to Cheat in Flash". It gives you many vector drawing tips and should be quite helpful.

Secondly, tile your game elements. Tiling of game elements greatly reduces file size, especially if you intend to use a lot of bitmaps in your game.

With vectors only, your file size should barely increase by more than 50kb max for a large-ish game, and tiling could potentially reduce your file size by more than half if used well. If you intend to use a lot of vectors and you are really worried about performance, just get flash to cache your vectors as bitmaps at runtime, there's a check box for it somewhere in the properties panel I think.

[tango88]

Thanks, kkbb. To be honest, my artwork sucks and I usually get the graphics from elsewhere, such as free vector packs. I reckon one background would be doable, but one for each level (20) would be tough for me. Anyway, I will think of a way.


I have made quite a few Flash games (all uncompleted due to performance issues)

Too many movieclips looping will cause this. Is that what you mean by performance issues? I had this problem with my war of shapes game (www.flashbynight.com/warofshapes) which still runs slowly on older machines

[kkbbcute]

Too many movieclips looping will cause this
Actually its not because of that, my games are more like tech demos than games, most use shading tech that I come up with myself, such as ambient lighting and basic shadowing effects like this one http://avaxmultimedia.com/tech/ Its just a random tech demo.

If you want, I could make some vector backgrounds for you in my free time, just tell me what you want, the rough dimensions and all that, I won't mind helping;)

[tango88]

If you want, I could make some vector backgrounds for you in my free time, just tell me what you want, the rough dimensions and all that, I won't mind helping

Thanks for the offer, that's very generous, but I'll have a go myself when I get the time.

[tango88]

Hi all,

I finally put some background graphics into the game as everyone suggested and made a few other changes. (Game url: www.flashbynight.com/qbob2)

You'se like it?

[kkbbcute]

Somehow or rather the game still feels to fast paced and uncontrollable, maybe you could try slowing the bouncing speed down by a small notch, or create some difficulty levels.