- This topic has 522 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 4 years, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Vectorblade_Beta26.bin – 18th June 2019
I found a little bit of spare time today – so I did some small changes.
done: high score hi lite selected
done: hs blink an “underscore” under the current seclected initial instead of letter
done: high score – no moving while shooting
done: Boss destroyed you… ” text
done: to test – end of game count down – multiply by officer rank
done: shop exit shop with button 4 – but initialize with position -1
done: too get a better sense of “scrolling” in the achievement view – I added slight “offsets” after scrolling…
done: get rid of highscore entry – initials “pulsating”
done: scrolling, and paging in pause mode, “like” in achievements, paging is visualized by TWO arrowsAlso I finaly found the bug, that sometimes a EXTRA bonus letter can have a “Schrödinger” state – its collected but not displayed! This happends, when a letter is “travelling home” and you die while it is travelling. Than it is collected but “not home”. And will never be displayed – and you can’t collect it anymore, since you already got it.
I didn’t fix it yet – but this was secretly bothering me for months :-).
Tomorrow is my last day before holidays… so for at least 10 days no more updates from me!
Cheers!
thanks for the update, here i took a bit of a break for some days but now looking forward to getting playing again with this new beta, will report in here as usual 🙂
@Hurray Banana: Welcome! Have fun playing Vectorblade and finding out about its tricks and riddles!
___
Yesterday and today, I played Vectorblade more. Found out how to dig for money and encountered the Moneysucker for the first time. In one game I had a final score of 580.000 and Admiral rank. But Level 75, only, this boss gives me some headache.
Gz!
Money suckers only appear if you have more money than 1500$. The loss is a bit random but around 1100-1200 or so.
Perhaps I should lower the achievement for money. The lowest (easiest) is 5000$…
Today I spent some hours optimizing. I discovered the current version of the shop can “wobble” (Refresh < 50Hz).
If you place the “cursor” on “rank” and rank is not available, than it refreshes in about 32000 cycles – which wobbles terribly.
For a couple of hours I kept searching an optimizing. Now I am below 30000 again. But I am certain without losing any stuff already displayed – the shop can not display more.
Now I’ll look at some more stuff recently reported.
Cheers
Perhaps I should lower the achievement for money. The lowest (easiest) is $5000…
Once you know how to get the money its not that hard anymore. I had more than $5000 and got the lowest money achievement. With the money I bought several lives and got also the live dropper achievement; so two achievements at a time. Dropping the lowest money achievement to something like $3000 might make sense but I don’t have the overall feeling for good values and the overal “game physics”, yet.
Now I’ll look at some more stuff recently reported.
Cool. But please take your time.
Progress report – but no new beta:
Unclear!: Crash: Star wars boss, player on the complete right, destroyed by laser, 4 shot…
done: shop complete up, second from top not top displayed… (well – I know what that means 🙂 )
done: boss 4, player can die when shot is absoult left (minus) and player absolut plus …
done: shop with 1000 money wobbles (+ N/A)
done: Pause wobbles with x 5 (second scroll)
done: lost EXTRA when dying when in air
done: pause and scroll still decimates the intro pattern
done: end of game countdown / score display it longer!
– each score is at least displayed 1 second
– final score waits for button
done: A short pause after killing the last enemy and then displaying the shop might things clearer and smoother.
#The shop might even appear at the end of the level as some kind of planet/asteroid/… but that would be probably a bit too much.
– for now a 1 second pause (just an empty screen … continuity)
done: At the end of the “movie” the text “KEEP THE VECTREX ALIVE” scrolls in. Currently, this text disappears as soon as it reached the center of the “screen”.
– 5 additional empty lines
done: Suggestion: When selecting one of the four menus while the menu is fading in both the triangle and the
symbol should be highlighted. When deselecting the menu, again, brightness should be set back to current “fade in” brightness.
done: Yesterday I achieved “ADMIRAL 1 BRONZE STAR” which filled out the full screen width. Adding “RANK:” doesn’t make sense.
Perhaps centering the rank might look good and might be worth a trial.
– not changed: a) doesn’t look better, b) takes time, since length of string is “unkown” and has to be computed
done: Greetings: Four times “Chris”
I do know that there are many Chrisses around in the Vectrex scene. In the greetings “Chris” is mentioned for times. This looks a bit like a bug. Suggestion: Add the first letter of the surname to differentiate the four Chrisses. E.g. Chris P., Chris M., …
done: Boss 1 background noise
done: READY player 1 scroll in with SOUND
done: HighScore scrolling direction changed
done: some sound was wrong – collecting immune? -> crash aftwer “sound” finished – YES
done: shop speed bullet etc – are they still positioned correctly? cranky vectrex looks bad!
Cheers
Vectorblade_Beta27.bin – 10th July 2019
Following a list of mainly small changes:
done: shop complete up, second from top not top displayed…
done: boss 4 player can die when shot is absoult left (minus) and player absolut plus …
done: shop with 1000 money wobbles (N/A)
done: Pause wobbles with x 5 (second scroll)
done: lost EXTRA when dying when in air
done: pause and scroll still decimates the intro pattern
done: end of game countdown / score display it longer!
– Each score is at least displayed 1 second
– final score waits for button
done: A short pause after killing the last enemy and then displaying the shop might things clearer and smoother.
#The shop might even appear at the end of the level as some kind of planet/asteroid/… but that would be probably a bit too much.
– for now a 1 second pause (just an empty screen … continuity)
done: At the end of the “movie” the text “KEEP THE VECTREX ALIVE” scrolls in. Currently, this text disappears as soon as it reached the center of the “screen”.
– 5 additional empty lines
done: Suggestion: When selecting one of the four menus while the menu is fading in both the triangle and the
symbol should be highlighted. When deselecting the menu, again, brightness should be set back to current “fade in” brightness.
done: Yesterday I achieved “ADMIRAL 1 BRONZE STAR” which filled out the full screen width. Adding “RANK:” doesn’t make sense.
Perhaps centering the rank might look good and might be worth a trial.
– not changed: a) doesn’t look better, b) takes time, since length of string is “unkown” and has to be computed
done: Greetings: Four times “Chris”
I do know that there are many Chrisses around in the Vectrex scene. In the greetings “Chris” is mentioned for times. This looks a bit like a bug.
Suggestion: Add the first letter of the surname to differentiate the four Chrisses. E.g. Chris P., Chris M., …
done: Boss 1 background noise
done: READY player 1 scroll in with SOUND
done: HighScore scrolling direction changed
done: some sound was wrong – collecting immune? -> crash aftwer “sound” finished
done: shop speed bullet etc – are they still positioned correctly? cranky vectrex looks bad!
done: end of game level count down ping?
done: add minestorm success sound – same as officer promotion!
done: inital positions in Highscore were always DOWN
done: 9000 shots fired / hit -> page two in pause wobbles
done: black hole sounds wrong!
done: level ninety ten
done: level 50-56 one to much
done: level spoken after “LEVel “display
done: level spoken doubled
done: to test: final score “x2″/”x5” must be deleted “beforehand”
done: to test: EXTRA still not always corect?-> extra in air before shop is displayed after shop in EXTRA and benus is still going up!
done: to test: bug: E from extra taken two times? (was hard difficulty)
done: to test scoopy can be f*cked up (left) – not displayed -but “there”
done: level boss = announced as level 24
failure announced as next level
done: money rank 1 not given!
done: money rank 1 displays rank 5
done: remember levels with difficulty – if 1 than max
done: to test: money sucker explode (+secret) – results more “centered”?
done: minestortom success sound also when aborted!
done: super dimond displays wrong
done: pause screen 2 million points x2 8000 shots. timer 175
done: to Test laser + EXTRA -> LARGE POINTS! ?
done: again: to Test money sucker explode – results more “centered”?
This is a “Tester” release. It has all secrets “open”, everything can be bought in the shop, difficulty can be selected.
The highest “played” level can also be selected (left right), starts “action packed” with a good equipment.
VecVox is enabled… Voice changed slightly, and a “level intro” included.Amongst others some sounds were again added.
Right now I have only about 4000 bytes left.The current “vision” would be:
– do a “small” Major havoc part, that randomly ends a minestorm
– 3-4 different small levels – which on first play through give game extras, like:
* enable VecVox
* enable Level Select
* enable Hardcore modeOnce these are achieved – “normal” bonuses can be found in the levels.
Hardcore mode is not implemented yet – its supposed to be a game with ONE live (no extra live obtainable).Dunno if I can pull that of with the 4000 byte that I have left… :-(.
But if – that would be my favourite/final version.Cheers!
PS
VTK thinks the Laser weapon should be nerfed – they are too strong. What do other testers think?
thanks for the new beta i will report in later with notes etc
as Malban suggested could everyone try out the laser weapon now that it is unlocked to buy
here i think that because you can just hold down the fire button with the laser weapon so the laser line stays solid on the screen and cuts through everything easily, it’s fun but for me it makes things too easy taking away too much of the challenge
to fix that, my suggestion was to only allow the laser weapon to be fired in ‘bursts’ (regardless of if you have autofire or not)
Thanks for beta 27, Christopher. I’ll be on holidaysfor two weeks in Zealand (Netherlands) and most likely my Vectrex console will stay at home. After holidays I’ll check out the current beta.
Hi guys, and sorry for the long silence. The semester is at its end, and right now all the exams are taking place and I am completely busy grading papers. Hope to find more time for testing soon. Still, some quick notes:
VecVox: I liked it, and I think this is pretty cool and should be kept.
Laser: Oh what fun! At least for me it does not (yet) make things too easy, but admittedly I lack training and am not a great player right now.
Major Havoc: 4000 bytes left. Is it worth / Do you want to try saving some more bytes in other places? There is some potential in simply rephrasing / shortening some parts of the help texts.
GeoAnas: Since I do not have an email adress of yours, I shot you a PM some time ago on the Vector Gaming Forum. Not sure if you read there. I have some questions regarding the Commodore C64.
Cheers,
Peer
- The forum ‘Vectorblade beta test’ is closed to new topics and replies.