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guppy

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About guppy

  • Birthday 05/27/1975

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Cleveland, OH
  • Interests
    8-bit and 16-bit game consoles
    Nintendo, Atari, ColecoVision
    Retro style modern gaming
    Game development

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  1. guppy

    Movie Cart

    With the attention this project has started to get, it's looking like demand could blow up well beyond the 50-60 quantity you're looking at making. How are the numbers looking for people who signed up to be notified when they're available for order? I hope you can scale up enough to meet demand if it does blow up and everyone wants one.
  2. I placed 3 different orders during the sale. I received one of them about 2 and a half weeks ago (yay!) Normally, when I've placed multiple orders they get fulfilled together. I'm sure he's still working on them, and has a lot to do, so I'm being patient. I remember long lead times during the pandemic year, kept faith, and he came through. That year, I think it was close to 10 months before he shipped; we're getting close to 8 months now. I've emailed @Albert to ask about the status of the other two orders. Normally Albert responds to emails within a day or two, but this time it's been quiet. I followed up two weeks later, and a few days later still nothing. I hope everything is OK. Has anyone received there order recently?
  3. Ebay user greatdeals-7351 located in vernon Hills, IL, listed an issue of Nintendo Fun Club News. I placed a Best Offer, which they accepted. The next day, I received a tracking number for the package. Later that day I received a notification from ebay saying that my order had been canceled and I would be receiving a refund. I didn't ask for a refund or cancellation, so I messaged the seller through ebay to ask what happened. The had given a reason of "item no longer available/damaged" and I asked them to provide photos showing the damage. The seller replied saying that his son had asked for the item, so it was no longer for sale. I replied saying that when they agreed to the offer, and payment was made, that created a legal contract per eBay's terms of service agreement, and re-stated that I expected them to honor that agreement. The seller then banned me from buying their listings, and relisted the item for twice as much as they had listed it originally. Clearly they were unhappy with the price they had originally agreed to and decided to cancel the sale in order to try to re-list it for a higher price.
  4. I haven't tried playing it yet, but the screen shots make me think of a 2D side scrolling sequel to Adventure. I see the Square Knight on the left tower, and the Bat flying at him...
  5. Yes, in your game I get the feeling that the camera angle is behind and slightly above the plane, and we're looking forward and down. This gives me a feeling of depth perception and I expect the plane to be high enough to fly over the ships and any other surface targets. River Raid is a different game entirely, and the POV of the camera seems to be directly above the action, looking straight down. The effect of this is to lose the sense of depth, and it makes more sense for the plane to collide with terrain and targets. But even so when I was a kid playing the game I still felt like it would have made sense for the plane to be able to fly over anything. It didn't though, so I accepted it. It also made the game more challenging since it meant that it was necessary to be dodging obstacles constantly. It feels like you're flying low in a river channel, just above the water surface, perhaps to avoid radar or something. So it makes sense. But in your game the feeling is free and open, and is true to life in that way. So it also makes sense. And in that context being able to fly over the ships without crashing into them feels better.
  6. It's getting better! Collisions are working in this one. I got shot down a bunch of times. It seems like the ships are a lot better at hitting me than the enemy planes are. Criticisms/suggestions: It seems wrong that flying into a ship results in a crash. I should be able to fly over the ships. Hit detection with the ships makes it feel like I'm trying to drop a bomb on the ship. I have to get the "target point" very close to the location of the ship. In earlier builds it felt like there was more leeway with near misses usually hitting the ship. It felt like I could be a little short or a little long and still take a ship out; now it feels like I have to be much more precise and only a direct hit will kill the ship. This requires perfect timing and you can't take a second shot if you miss with the first one, which is a bit frustrating. It also means that ships can always get closer to you than the enemy planes can, which means they live long enough to take a few shots, and I think this is what makes them more dangerous. I felt like in the earlier builds that I was dropping a torpedo when I was shooting at ships, and if I was a little short the torpedo would run out to kill the ship. This gave you a bit of a margin of error, and you could take a second shot if the first one went wide or was too short. I liked that better. Maybe a descending whistle when dropping bombs would help "sell" the difference between bombing and firing bullets. I like the submarine sprite, but if we have a submarine, then I think the next thing is to make it dive and surface, with its sprite changing accordingly, and its ability to evade your fire changing as well. Perhaps you're working on that now... When we get over land there's no ground targets; I'm hoping for tanks and trenches and artillery to spice it up. Maybe a landing strip. For that meter on the right... if you do something with it, maybe put in different game variations where you can opt to play with the meter in effect, or not. I kind of like the free feel of the game without anything metered. As for what the meter could represent, you could have it represent a few things: life, fuel, ammo. You could add power-ups that you need to shoot or fly over to collect more. You could even make a triple-meter that tracks life, fuel, AND ammo. I like the idea of life and fuel being replenishable only when you land at a landing strip, and ammo being able to be picked up when you fly over it. Maybe an enemy plane drops them, or maybe they're just an icon that appears instead of a plane sometimes. Maybe you should get unlimited gun ammo, but need ammo pickups to replenish bombs/torpedoes.... Changing the sprites so the plane appears to bank when moving left or right would take this to the next level. Enemy planes should have more movement to them; just sweeping left to right (or vice versa) at a constant speed makes them a little predictable and boring. If they can respond more intelligently at least some of the time, and change course to intercept you, or to dodge your fire, that would make the game much more interesting and challenging and fun. I love the progress you're making, so quickly, with this, and I think you'll have a memorable game by the time you're done.
  7. I'm seeing enemy shots passing right through me, dead center and my lives count on the left doesn't change. In the previous beta release I was hitting ships pretty reliably, but sometimes my shot would pass harmlessly over, or else fall short and fail to score a kill. Now it seems like the shots are a lot harder to get on target, and I'm killing ships a lot less reliably, maybe 1 in 4 as opposed to 4 in 5 on the last build. While it makes sense that killing a ship should be fairly difficult, it just feels unfair, like the game isn't properly doing hit detection now, and not like it's hard to to score a hit or that the ships are tough and take several hits to kill.
  8. I see the enemies are firing at me, but they don't seem to hit. Is that a life bar at the bottom right? I've seen enemy shots pass through my sprite, but the meter doesn't change. Also I find it is much harder to land a hit on the ships. It seems like shots will go over/through them and do no damage. I can still hit them, but it seems almost random whether a shot that hits them "counts".
  9. Nice improvements! I got to a point where the island became closer, and then the enemy ships and planes stopped coming. Is something supposed to happen next that you haven't implemented yet? Suggestions for further development: Use sprite doubling to create formations of 2-3 airplanes or convoys of 2-3 ships. Sfx for engine, guns, explosions, maybe even water/wind. Some variety in the planes direction of travel. Have some come from behind, or fly transverse to your flight path (left to right or right to left) rather than always flying straight at you every time. Planes that change course, either to try to dodge your shots, or to get closer to shoot at you, would be cool, too. Sinking, crashing animations for when you hit an enemy. Keep going with the concept of getting closer to land, I'm intrigued and curious what happens if I make it to the island... landing strip? Bombing run? Tanks and trenches? Artillery shells firing up from the ground to create a new hazard? Could be a lot of cool possibilities for where this goes...
  10. I like minimalist fighting games, like this, Outlaw, and Surround.
  11. As well, see if it makes the game better if the ships take several hits to sink. They're considerably more sturdy than a fragile wooden and fabric biplane from WWI. As you continue developing this, banking when moving left/right, sound effects for the engine, guns, explosions, would be nice to see. As well as ways for the enemy to kill you. For the title, I like Dawn of Aces. "Dawn" suggests the early time period in the history of aviation, and "Aces" directly conjures the aerial combat of WWI.
  12. Of course, and the thing about that is that Pac-Man isn't an Atari trademark. Atari was given license to port Namco's Pac Man arcade game to the 2600, which Atari developed in-house (Todd Frye). But the trademark for Pac Man remains property of Namco, now Bandai Namco, and is pretty well out of reach for Atari SA. Very likely the value of the Pac Man trademark exceeds that of all of Atari SA. So too with most of the other classic arcade era characters, either owned by others, or not particularly memorable nor successful enough to be worth attaching to a modern re-launch of the company. So much of Atari coin-op classics of the pre-83 era were too old to be from the "cartoon character" mascot period; most were in the "geometry + stick figure" era that preceded it. And in the "cartoon character" era, Atari didn't really develop any characters. Of that era, the notable non-Mario characters are mostly by other companies, many of whom licensed their arcade hits to Atari for development/publishing on the 2600, but did not relinquish ownership of the trademark to Atari: Pac Man (Namco) (Pac man, despite being more of a faceless geometry era character, did successfully transition to being a cartoon character.) Dig Dug (Namco) (would be a good candidate, if it was an Atari trademark) Space Invader (Taito) (The invader bug is recognizable, of the era, but doesn't quite have the charisma.) Q*Bert (Gottlieb) (Another good candidate, sadly not an Atari trademark.) "Robotron guy" (Bally-Williams) Bentley Bear (Atari) (Kindof a generic bear... I guess that's it from Atari's coin-op legacy? Pretty much everything else is a spaceship or a tank) Sir Square of Adventure (but he's just a square. The dragons ARE good and Atari and of the era AND unique; they're arguably the best Atari has.) It'd almost be better if Atari came up with something new today to serve as a mascot. And they just gave us "Mr. Run-and-Jump" ... who is yet another generic stick figure type character, and not really a viable cartoon character mascot. If they cartoonify him, and give him a less generic name, he could work, tho. Mario was once Jumpman, so I don't see why they couldn't rename him, but it seems like they missed an opportunity to give him a more proper name to begin with.
  13. I'm not concerned about the stock price or where it's going. That isn't why I purchased the stock. I purchased it because it's cheap, and it gives me a way to ignore people who will at some point in the future try to tell me that Atari is beholden to its shareholders, so can't do the thing I'd like them to do. Since I'm now a shareholder, I get to say what I'd like Atari to do, kind of like if I was a paying customer. And Atari can still ignore me and do whatever they want to do, because of course they will. But at least I won't have to listen to some insipid argument that starts out with "Atari's only reason to exist is to maximize returns for their shareholders so that's why they had to take a giant poo on [thing I cared about]" if they happen to do something I don't like; I can just say "Hey man, I paid my $130. I own 1000 shares, I got skin in the game, man, and that means Atari is beholden to ME to drive straight into the ground and do the unbusinesslike thing that I want them to do!" I'm not being too serious in other words. But at $0.13/share, I can afford to not be serious. I'd love that $130 to turn into $100,000 in a few years, so sure of course I want the stock price to go up. I don't expect that to happen, though, and I'm certainly not "concerned" about it. I considered it like I would consider $130 that I throw away on a losing bet at an Atari-branded casino. The things I am concerned about: 80% that Atari does well by this community and doesn't screw it up (and I'm optimistic on that); and 20% that Atari does just as you suggest, prioritizes making great games in the future over those other indicatives you mentioned, that I never cared for.
  14. "As a gamer," I'll play any game that's good, and I'll try any game to see if it's good. I don't care if it's a AAA title or an indie title or a game jam game. But a company's performance and financial health can be a relevant concern to a consumer who is interested in the products made by that company.
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