Zir0's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Cold Boot Plus]

Kinda Frustrating

Hey.

I had a difficult time just getting through the three doors on the second screen. When you are on the platform just to the left of the door (outside the little room), once the door is open, you have to short jump to get through it. Player should just be able to walk through. Furthermore, when you exit the door, your player falls through that platform... I'm guessing the game is remembering that last short jump you did to get by the door in the first place?

Is it possible to just mute the music and keep the sounds?

On the level where you get the wall jump: If you go back section on the lower left, where there is a one-block opening, and jump on the wall above it, and try to simply "slide through", you'll find it quite challenging. The robot gets hung up on the upper right corner of the tile below the opening, switching between upright and wall-jumping positions. (if you need a screen shot or video, let me know - I'll be happy to send you one.)

There are various spots where the robot gets hung up on a top corner of a tile.

I'm guessing you had some trouble or didn't care for categorizing the game, and just decided to put "Game"? This should be under Action - Platformer - Puzzle, although I didn't encounter much action, but that's the closest description. (:

In the Storage Lobby Lobby screen, the text underneath that was too small to read. The "Storage Division Lobby" label itself, could be a little bigger, too. The size of the fonts in the upper left were fine.

Bit of a difficulty curve in the game. I gave up on the level that starts you on the right of a diamond-shaped tile structure with water inside it.

_______________________
- Ziro out.

GreyKnightGames responds:

Thanks a lot for kind of stopping and actually making a good (in an objective way) review.

I agree with the problems this game has, but i'm afraid there's not much i can do, it's the engine. You see, i'm not using flash itself to make it.

About the category, i was sure i selected just that, A/P/P... must have slipped through my mind.

And i apologize about the storage loby screen, I am on a 1080p 27" screen so i thought if i could see it anyone could, heh. I'll take this into account for future projects.

[The Average Stick Guy Bet]

Get fundamentals solid 1st before adding extras

Hey.

Considering that was written in the author comments, I feel you on getting constructive feedback - it's like pulling teeth - you won't get it often. Regarding the beta aspect: people generally prefer finished submissions on Newgrounds, and dueto the blam/protect nature of things, if may have been better to submit to the alpha section of the site (I don't even know if that section is working - it always gives me an error when I try to go there), or to simply upload it somewhere else altogether, like FlashKit.

On to the game, sounds like you have some ambitious ideas, but based on what I've seen so far, here are some suggestions. Since there isn't much gameplay here, most of these are related to user friendliness and user accessibility, both of which I often find overlooked in Flash games.

- Since you are using mouse and keyboard to control the player's actions, and this being a platform game, add the WASD keys for movement. Your current config of arrow keys is nice for left-handed people, and right-handed people will want to move the player's character with WASD keys while moving the mouse.

- Currently, the mouse is only being used to interact with the black box. Unless the mouse will become a crucial part of controlling your character, I'd place that function as a key on the keyboard.

- You should also consider adding the ability for the player to remap the default keys as they like.

- Adding specialized animations for ascending and descending during a jump are nice polish, and I like how you took it a step further by adding more poses for moving jumps to differentiate them from a non-moving jump. However, the character jerks back a little on the moving jumps when it witches from ascending to descending.

- After battling the opponent the first time and dying, each time thereafter, it doesn't refill my health, and the opponent instantly attacks, killing me.

- Clean up the terrain movement, so the player moves smoothly along the hills. When moving down hills, you can see him leaving the ground for a split second at times.

- Once you get to adding audio to your game, please consider adding the ability to mute sounds and music separately.

- Throw a pause function in as well.

- I didn't see the game measuring distance from the ground anywhere. Was this meant to be visible? There is a green text that always reads 250.

- It look like your doing a quick "sweep" to keep the screen scroll focused on the player. Personally, I never liked these "sweep/tween" scrolling methods in platform games. They're fine when resetting your player after a fall (although I'd slow it down a bit), but I don't like it when it sweeps while I'm moving, even if the duration of the sweep is small.

- No ActionScript run-time exceptions were encountered.

- Clean up the engine, get everything solid, then focus on improving your graphics, gameplay, and all the other things you plan on adding.

Oh, and come up with an interesting name for your engine, too. (:

Good luck/skill on your project, soldier.
* salutes *

________________________
- Ziro out.

alexkolozsy responds:

Thanks for an excellent review! I just took into account everything you said, added a pause button, changed it from being so 'twitchy' which I think was VERY true, and also smoothed up movement over the ground. I am working now on changing the movement of the camera, so that it tweens over (relatively) slowly after death, and before game start, and afterwards stays completely focused on the character. Late tonight or early tomorrow I will add acceleration, a 'slide' animation, a duck button, and a crawling, where you duck and move. I smoothed the animations (slightly) but I don't think they look better, and I kind of want the cartoony look. I adjusted the health etc. so that it restarts and you can re-battle. I'm in the process of adding another enemy. Music, I will ask someone about giving me full rights to some good music, maybe for a tip. Removed the green debugging text. Thanks again for the helpful review. Going to get a better name. No storyline yet, but I'll make one. <-- That's the easiest part. Thanks man. Once again. UPDATE: *** Okay I just attempted to display the distance from the ground. It freezes flash player. I also tested it in GC and MF and IE, and it worked on none of those. It overloads the system I guess. I'm troubleshooting it but I think I might just have to not display distance from ground. It DOES allow me, although, to check it every second or so allowing me to tell whether he is about falling distance or jumping distance and return an animation based on that. ***

[Snake Arena]

Regarding Offline Mode

Hey.

Regarding offline mode: my first impression of this mode was that computer AI would control the other snakes. Consider changing it so that the number of computer players could be varied. That would make offline mode a little more appealing to the single player.

Also, when my game is overs, when starting a new game, I get this message:

Error #2044: Unhandled IOErrorEvent:. text=Error #2035: URL Not Found.

Other than those, nice game.

______________________
- Ziro out.

[The hardest platformer]

More Like an Skill - Avoider game...

... since it's one-hit kill, and you can't fight back. If you can fight back at some point, then I haven't made it that far.

- The music is a short, annoying loop, and there's no way to turn it while keeping just the sound effects. Graphics could use much improvement, too.

Add some kind of scoring system to the game.

If there's not one already, I'd highly recommend uploading a video or series of videos of you yourself playing and finishing the entire game. This can give players tips on how to pass certain areas, and hopefully trial-and-error and luck are not part of what makes the game hard. Furthermore, this will also let players know that, yes, the game can actually, be finished, and yes, the person who made the game can actually beat it himself.

__________________________
- Ziro out.

paala responds:

Thank you for the review.
I updated with a sort of walkthrough. If you want easier version search for Just Another Platformer.

[Free Pool Game]

Not too Shabby

Hey.

- The collision engine misses sometimes. If the cue is hit too hard, it tunnels (goes though) the other ball. While you could simply hit the ball softer, or reduce the maximum force that can be applied to the ball (also recommended, by the way), those still don't solve the underlying tunneling problem.

- Graphics could be a little better, perhaps make the balls look like they're rolling around.
- Could use sounds too.
- When I scratch, and other balls are still in motion, I shouldn't be able to shoot again until all the other balls have stopped. It works fine though when you don't scratch.
- Consider adding aiming guides, which are lines that show the direction the cue ball is going to travel after being hit by the cue. You could then show another short aim guide that indicates the direction of the rebound if the cue hits an edge of the table first, or if it would hit another ball first, show guides for both the cue ball, and the other ball it would hit.
- I like how you can't place the cue over another ball, and only inside the kitchen.

- Regarding the rules: these may help:
http://www.pool-table-rules.com/bca8b all.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-ba ll

Good skill / luck.

_______________________
- Ziro out.

[Mazeman]

Cool Jazz

Hey.

The songs are really nice, and I like how you're using Jazz to try and set the mood.

I took a look at your Edward engine from your website. It looks impressive, but the game design itself could use some more work.

Graphics need some work, though, especially the backgrounds. Large, single-colored backgrounds, especially white, are quite the turnoff. Consider adding more illustration to the backgrounds, especially in the later levels, where you're on moving platforms, so it looks like you're actually moving.

When you go to the bottom of the screen, the player is cut off at the bottom. At various points in the levels, there are "leaps of faith", where you cannot see where you are jumping. Please bring the target platforms closer into view, or redesign those portions of the level, so that such leaps are not required.

I like how the scroll stays locked onto the player's character, and doesn't slowly sweep behind him.

Change the Textfield objects so that they cannot be selected. Also, allow players to skip the opening storyline.

One thing that stands out is the file size. I've played the first few levels, and from what is presented, including the various cool songs, this doesn't warrant a 10MB SWF. Please consider optimizing assets where possible.

Having infinite lives and the checkpoints are cool, too.

Again, your engine sounds really impressive, just get your game design skills near the same level (or outsource the design). (:

* salutes *

_____________________
- Ziro out.

[Star Forge]

Cool Game

Hey.

An interesting spin on the tower defense genre of games.

Graphics and audio were well done, and I like all the different configurations for the towers.

I feel it takes too long to get a new tower going. You have to wait for the Forge to produce the tower icon, then wait again for it to actually be constructed. Furthermore, once you start losing towers, it's really hard to replace them and get them up to speed. Consider some way of helping the Forge produce units faster, or maybe some ability for it to have more than one queue, or something like that, although I'm sure once you start losing towers, it might still be pretty difficult to replace it. One positive about building and upgrading is that there are no resource costs. I also like how the upgrades restore a piece of health as well.

You should probably add some keyboard shortcuts for all the various Forge abilities; I'm sure some experts out there might appreciate that. Pause and mute of music and sounds (individually I might add) as well as in-game quality settings are all good accessibility options.

I only encountered two Actionscript run-time exceptions.

The first one is thrown when the game finished loading, but before the continue button appears:

Error #2044: Unhandled ioError:. text=Error #2032: Stream Error. URL: http://media-mgmt.armorgames.com/deli very/timber.php?bannerid=14&campaigni d=3&zoneid=1&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-m gmt.armorgames.com%2Fbroker%3Fr%3Dhtt p%253A%252F%252Fuploads%252Eungrounde d%252Enet%252F572000%252F572949%255FS tar%255FForge%252Eswf&cb=55fb636de5
at com.armorgames.display::ABS/log()
at com.armorgames.display::ABS/handleURL LoaderComplete()
at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatc hEventFunction()
at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatc hEvent()
at flash.net::URLLoader/onComplete()

The second one is really weird. I start the game, and once the tutorial is done, I pause, and return to the main menu. Just wait at the title screen for a few minutes, and it will suddenly play the "tower constructed" sound effect, and throws this this exception:

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at _-8B/_-KS()
at _-IS/_-IV()
at _-0q/_-Df()
at _-0q/_-Fy()
at _-0q/Run()
at _-8B/Run()

When I start the next game, a tutorial window is stuck, and I can't get rid of it. And the pause button doesn't seem to work anymore. Using Firefox 4.0.1, and Flash player debug 10.2.

Overall, very nice game, soldier.

* salutes *

_______________________
- Ziro out.

[KJW's Maze Game 1.2]

For Windows Users

Hey.

The anti-cheat functionality and other updates are nice and all, but for Windows users, MouseKeys (accessed from Control Panel -> Accessibility Options -> Mouse tab for Windows XP users) can be used to control the mouse with the keyboard.

_______________________
- Ziro out.