vtk testing notes / findings / suggestions etc

[vtk]

hey regarding the short intro with the galaga style logo and the large ship flies by, is that intro going to remain very short like it is now, or become longer? (the reason i ask is, if it is staying short, i imagine it would be better if i do a shorter bit of music there)

[Malban]

I will probably add something like “press button to continue”.

And keep the music playing till finished – or a button is pressed.

The intro itself will not show “more”… or be longer….

[vtk]

here are the testing notes from the first couple of tests i did with vectorblade beta:

first, just to mention: these notes are not really in any order/categories, they are just random findings as i encountered them.
also, obviously i am unaware of what cycles and memory availability is remaining, so appreciate that certain suggested changes are impossible or very difficult to implement

difficulty level: this seems good to me – playing on ‘easy’, my first go i got to level 25 and my second go the next day i got to level 35

music: on the first day i noticed that the music (title music, achievements music) would only play once and then crash at the point it should loop/restart) .. however on the second day the music looped properly (i will keep my eye on this to see if it happens again and if so will try to note anything which might have caused that)

sound effects: i notice that some of the explosions sound effects (such as enemies exploding or player exploding) sound like they are cut short/abruptly, rather than the sound effect volume reducing down to zero smoothly (is this intentional? it seems a smooth volume taper off would be better / more real/natural sounding)

pause game: i notice that when game is paused and there is some text to read there (stats etc), that the font, letters ‘e’ and ‘a’ look a little compressed / not so easy to read, perhaps a slightly taller font would help

ingame background stars: i thought these look really good and it’s real nice that they scroll left/right when you move your ship

ingame falling icons: i like that they fall at different speeds, looks real nice

‘READY PLAYER ONE’ – i thought that looks real nice to see that large text displayed perfectly stable

falling diamonds: nice feature and fun trying to grab them

WARP FAILURE – love the really nice starfield effect in there

falling cash bundle: i noticed when playing once i think something happened and lots of cash notes fell down at once, ..i think? that was a nice touch (it happened quickly, i think it was lots of money notes anyway)

when playing i got an ‘achievement triple’ – not sure what that was though / what it did.. it’s because i got ‘E X T R A’ ?

when playing i noticed the big beetle bugs enemies seemed too easy to kill (dont need many shots to destroy)

minestorm section: i mentioned this before in the past i think and perhaps u are happy with the current 2-button method of accelerating/decelerating player speed, but it seems like it might be better if instead it is one button (hold) to increase speed and when release button, you reduce speed (‘thrust’)

minestorm entry: i notice the first time i played, i entered the minestorm section many times, it seemed too many, so i was going to suggest change the random number generator for that choice, but then the second time i played the next day, i dont think i entered minestorm area once and i got to level 35.. so that was strange

secrets: i got a secret when playing, but dont know what it was (expect i need to read the documentation perhaps so i know what the secrets are)

ingame ‘music’: i could experiment with single channel ‘music’ eg. drum type beat, but i think u dont want/need that, or no memory for that etc?

stutter the music: i noticed in the title screen/menus – if i press (toggle) any button on the controller rapidly on/off, the current playing music stutters

hidden bullets: there was a couple of times i collected something eg. a falling diamond, but died when i collected it, so assume there was a bullet falling along with the diamond and hidden from view (behind the diamond?) so i couldnt see it or know it was there – can anything be done there to prevent that, such as slightly bigger enemy bullets, brighter? makes no difference if bullet is displayed on top of falling icon? (ie. due to nature of vectors/single colour, so ‘display priority’ doesn’t apply here?)

it seemed one time i was playing, on level 19 i collected the letters ‘E’ and ‘X’, but they were not added to my ‘E X T R A’ are at top left of screen) .. i will keep an eye out for this though, maybe i was confused so i will keep looking out for that to see if it happens again, as not 100% sure it happened at all (i think it did though but i could be wrong..)

first boss.. just wondering what happens if you take too long to finish him.. something comes along / things get harder?

EXTRA: i got (collected) all the EXTRA letters one time but didnt hear a jingle sound to tell me i had got EXTRA completed.. there should be a sound?

autofire: i purchased this for the first time during my testing and thought it was really good to be able to buy that, nice feature works well

BOMB: i thought that was really good to be able to buy a large smart bomb and the large explosion it made looked real nice

additional things to display on playing screen:
maybe there are no cycles to spare or are limitations regarding this, but it seems it would be nice to have remaining lives shown on the screen … little shape like: ^
— one for each life u have remaining? due to the need to keep the amount of vectors drawn/displayed on screen down, no need to display more than 3 lives though if the player gains more than 3 lives) – also if possible something to show how many smart bombs you have left? … simple shape such as: >
— could also show max. 3 even if u have more smart bombs in your arsenal

[Malban]

Hi,

short answers. I leave out the praise :-).

music: on the first day i noticed that the music (title music, achievements music) would only play once and then crash at the point it should loop/restart) .. however on the second day the music looped properly (i will keep my eye on this to see if it happens again and if so will try to note anything which might have caused that)

Should certainly not crash – have to investigate. If you find out more – please tell.

sound effects: i notice that some of the explosions sound effects (such as enemies exploding or player exploding) sound like they are cut short/abruptly, rather than the sound effect volume reducing down to zero smoothly (is this intentional? it seems a smooth volume taper off would be better / more real/natural sounding)

I use sound effects that accompany AYFX – so I did not change them.
What can happen – that new sound effects will play “over” the old one – and thus
overwrite them. I will have a look in the AYFX editor if they fade correctly.

pause game: i notice that when game is paused and there is some text to read there (stats etc), that the font, letters ‘e’ and ‘a’ look a little compressed / not so easy to read, perhaps a slightly taller font would help

That will stay as it is. Using a larger font I can’t draw even the lines that are
displayed now without flicker. Possible I should use large letters only…

falling cash bundle: i noticed when playing once i think something happened and lots of cash notes fell down at once, ..i think? that was a nice touch (it happened quickly, i think it was lots of money notes anyway)

There is a “cash” bomb that you can collect (looks like a “$”) – than all enemies turn to bank notes…

when playing i got an ‘achievement triple’ – not sure what that was though / what it did.. it’s because i got ‘E X T R A’ ?

Sorta… you got a triple shot – that was the achievement!

when playing i noticed the big beetle bugs enemies seemed too easy to kill (dont need many shots to destroy)

I can make them a bit more difficult – no problem.
It’s due to being on level “easy” that they don’t rella need many shots…

minestorm section: i mentioned this before in the past i think and perhaps u are
happy with the current 2-button method of accelerating/decelerating player speed, but it seems like it might be better if instead it is one button (hold) to increase speed and when release button, you reduce speed (‘thrust’)

Yeah, I probably keep it as it is 🙂

minestorm entry: i notice the first time i played, i entered the minestorm section many times, it seemed too many, so i was going to suggest change the random number generator for that choice, but then the second time i played the next day, i dont think i entered minestorm area once and i got to level 35.. so that was strange

Random – or what the random function thinks is random…
35? Is that one of the nasty Kamikaze levels?

secrets: i got a secret when playing, but dont know what it was
(expect i need to read the documentation perhaps so i know what the secrets are)

Pause mode tells you what it is (in short puase mode words…)

ingame ‘music’: i could experiment with single channel ‘music’ eg. drum type beat, but i think u dont want/need that, or no memory for that etc?

Na… given up on ingame music. There will be many shots and blings and buffs…

stutter the music: i noticed in the title screen/menus – if i press (toggle) any button on the controller rapidly on/off, the current playing music stutters

I have to look at that… all button code goes “thru” the PSG… possible there
is some interference…

hidden bullets: there was a couple of times i collected something eg. a falling diamond, but died when i collected it, so assume there was a bullet falling along with the diamond and hidden from view (behind the diamond?) so i couldnt see it or know it was there – can anything be done there to prevent that, such as slightly bigger enemy bullets, brighter? makes no difference if bullet is displayed on top of falling icon? (ie. due to nature of vectors/single colour, so ‘display priority’ doesn’t apply here?)

Hm. happens VERY seldom to me. Might say “watch it”… no there is no priority.
Yes perhaps I can make the shots a bit brighter … dunno if it helps very much
though…

it seemed one time i was playing, on level 19 i collected the letters ‘E’ and ‘X’, but they were not added to my ‘E X T R A’ are at top left of screen) .. i will keep an eye out for this though, maybe i was confused so i will keep looking out for that to see if it happens again, as not 100% sure it happened at all (i think it did though but i could be wrong..)

never happened to me… please look out for it…

first boss.. just wondering what happens if you take too long to finish him.. something comes along / things get harder?

Nothing… you have all the time you need. Also – you will appreciate it
if you ever happen to do him with a one shot!

EXTRA: i got (collected) all the EXTRA letters one time but didnt hear a jingle sound to tell me i had got EXTRA completed.. there should be a sound?

Right – there is no jingle yet… have to do one!

BOMB: i thought that was really good to be able to buy a large smart bomb and the large explosion it made looked real nice

The ability to buy the superbomb was one secret you discovered!

additional things to display on playing screen: maybe there are no cycles to spare or are limitations regarding this, but it seems it would be nice to have remaining lives shown on the screen … little shape like: ^
— one for each life u have remaining? due to the need to keep the amount of vectors drawn/displayed on screen down, no need to display more than 3 lives though if the player gains more than 3 lives)
– also if possible something to show how many smart bombs you have left?…
simple shape such as: —
could also show max. 3 even if u have more smart bombs in your arsenal

Nope – no “time” for that. While yes – it would be good to see things.
I don’t have the time to show it.
Right now both information can be seen in the pause mode.
Only thing I COULD do is show the lives in “score” message box –
alternating with the score.
The number of bombs can only be seen in puase, when you enable “extended
stats” (a secret)

Thanks for your invested time – I really appreciate the feedback!

[vtk]

hey just been having a play, i did better this time reaching almost level 50, i scored around 60,000 points

great job with those enemies and attack patterns once you get to level 40-50; some alien thing turned up coming in from low left of screen and fired a big long laser down and frazzled me .. heheheh

the music not looping issue happened again – i didnt do anything, just turned on vectrex from cold, then after short intro animation, then main menu battlestar music starts playing, but only once, the the music crashes instead of looping to start of music (the game itself doesnt crash though, just the music goes bad).
i checked the high score music and the achievements music also, and they also had the same problem

when i played a game i got some secrets but i notice back at the main game menu again after game over, in the settings menu where it says ‘display secrets’ .. nothing happens when i choose that option .. oh wait u say to look in PAUSE mode? i will try there next time…

so far i have not reached the end of the minestorm section once.. (im not saying it is too hard though, i think i am just not very good at that, but i will keep trying it)

how does your system work regarding playing sound effects? does it work like:

start game, channels 1,2,3 all empty
a sound goes to channel 1
next sound goes to channel 2
next one goes to channel 3
then next sound goes to channel 1 (regardless of if a sound is still playing on channel 1)
…2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3…..
[noise = free for all?]

or is your system:
certain group of sounds will only play on channel 1 (shot related sounds, player and enemies)
another group only for channel 2 (explosion sounds of player, enemies)
other group only for channel 3 (jingles, ‘bonus’ sounds, ‘collect something’ sounds, little in-game tunes (if a little ingame tune is played then no other sound on that channel should be allowed to play until the little tune is finished))
[noise = free for all?]

.. im trying to think which system above would work better. you tell me? 😀
(ps. no need to stress about this stuff, just chatting…)

[Malban]

Great that things are getting better.

I’ll upload shortly beta 2 (see sticky topic 2 in the forum). It will contain mainly these changes:

a) Music should play correctly (yep was a bug of an uninitialized RAM location)
b) enemy shots are a lot brighter
c) Bugs on easy need slightly more damage to be shot

Pause… remember you can scroll the text there…

Sound system – more variant two… dunno by heart which channel does what – but in principle what you described

[vtk]

cool im looking forward to testing the beta 2,
i had a play tonight but didnt get very far this time, it was lots of dying by collecting falling icons which had enemy bullets hidden in them :p … (ok so you could argue that i should not be trying to grab EVERYTHING!) 🙂
… anyway im looking forward to trying the beta 2 version to see if the brighter enemy shots will help me spot those bullets in the icons…

ps. i just noticed tonight i could scroll the text in pause mode as you mentioned. i had a look when i got a secret during playing:- i paused the game and saw the secret listed in the pause screen text (after scrolling down) so that’s all making sense now

[vtk]

just had a go with the new beta 2, got to level 44, then those kamikaze guys got me :p

the music is looping ok here now, although i notice i can still ‘stutter’ the battlestar music if i keep rapidly pressing any fire button

the warp sound sounded ok i thought, although it does seem to cut off the volume when it stops playing quite abruptly rather than smooth fade out of volume.. but well it’s not the end of the world or anything

the entering minestorm music sounded nice there

i liked the new boss animation which i saw when reaching level 25!

for the first time during testing i managed to get the blaster weapon, that was nice! nice big, bright powerful shots 🙂

which reminds me, thanks for increasing the brightness of the enemy shots, that is much better in my opinion (if it turns out that some people like a reduced enemy shot brightness, could you add an option in settings to choose the enemy shots brightness, as i would always want to play with those shot nice and bright so i can see them). there was a few instances during my testing just now where i could see an enemy icon falling which i wanted, but i could see a bright enemy shot falling with it, so this time i could see the danger clearly and stay away

the warp failure was fun, as it eventually became 5 enemies in there all shooting, that was fun and exciting.. (i killed them all.. i think their difficulty level (number of shots required to defeat them) is set very well)

i think the big boss bugs are still too easy to kill though; in my opinion they should require twice as many shots to kill as they do now.. even on easy mode (but that’s just my opinion of course.. you can decide for yourself).. EDIT: that said, if the player has slow weak single shot weapon only, that’s a different story of course

what else.. oh yes i was wondering, how long is this testing phase going on for (for example, a few weeks, or a few months? .. or is it .. ongoing until everyone is right.) just curious — it makes no difference at all to me (well, if it’s only for another 2 weeks, that wouldnt be much time) 🙂

..ok 11pm here now so i have some snacks then play some more before sleep 😉

EDIT: had another go, got to the same level, 44, and died again lol
i tend to let cash build up and buy many extra lives

..i finally managed to beat the mine storm section a few times, it seems as long as i travel slowly i can do it (if i increase speed i find it too difficult.. but maybe with some more practice that will change)

EDIT 2: it was late but i wanted to try again 🙂 so i had another go.. once again, i reached level 44.. lost all lives there. it is a kamikaze round (sharp spiky rocks fall down from dead enemies..), i need to figure out how to survive that (i think maybe there is somewhere safe to position ship and then dont fire and wait for them to go away…)

[Malban]

Music stuttering.
– still on my todo list -haven’t looked at it yet

Warp sound
– I already changed the Warp length according to sound length – seems I have to tweak some more. Keep pestering me with this stuff, sound is always on the backburner 🙁

Blaster
– you want to avoid the blaster for boss one – it makes it harder :-).

Warp failurs
– Depending on the shot you got – they sometimes are really hard, I am thinking about makeinng them a bit more easy.
It is a downward spiral with them – once you die – your equipment gets worse and you prabably die again, and again …
and again… (I once died 9 times in a row (9 = max lives))

Bugs – difficulty
– hm. have to think about them some more – as it programmed now, its “difficult” to make them more persistent on easy…

Minestorm
If you increase the ship speed (Bonus drop “S”) the ship will get much more manouvrable in the minestorm. That in combination with hitting the breaks at the right time…

Beta… Period
I have no fixed date in mind.
The distribution of the final will most probably be terminated by the arrival of the overlays.
So I am sure that will be quite a couple of months.
Since I plan to socket the flash even on the final distribution cartridges – I can make changes “until the end”.

There does not have to be CONTINUOUS beta testing during that time.
I’d say “now” or the next weeks (the others must get there carts) – is some beta “rush” – and after that “now and than” when you have time and spirit – or I have done a major step forward (the only BIG thing missing is the major havoc part – and since I have to add some more sounds to the game, the space for that is being reduced heavily…)

Kamikaze
There are 2-3 Kamikaze levels you just have to KNOW. Otherwise you are dead meat.
And on some levels you should only avoid them – NOT SHOOT at them. The Kamikaze where they drop debris is one of these.
Just stand straight in the middle of the screen and let them pass :-).

Extra lives.
Once you have 9 extra lives – you reach an Achievement – and extra lives can also DROP as a bonus (remember achievements are “livetime” awards so that bonus will drop for all games in future – or till you burn a new beta version .-) ).
That makes also live a bit easier…

[vtk]

i was thinking about the ufo sound, do you think it might not be a good idea to have a continuous sound for it as it moves along the screen, because then, you only have 2 sound channels left (so instead, perhaps a brief sound could be played when the ufo appears)?

i can experiment with doing some sound fx, but how is best for me to be saving them?
arkos tracker can export a song .bin as we know, but also there is the option ‘export sfx only’

if it is helpful to you, here is a test .zip containing 2 files inside –
.. the test1.bin file is an arkos tracker song binary (the .bin is a regular short random song and instrument combined all in one)
the second smaller file called test test2.bin is the same song but this time the arkos .bin is the instrument exported only (no song pattern data)

https://drive.google.com/uc?authuser=0&id=1gavMB9gF6BNHYa7KyKWRWUuUJICYY-MW&export=download

[Malban]

Just export a song – I have not written a tool to actually import single instruments.

But I would prefer if you send always both the bin and the aks file.
With the AKS I can very easily export a YM file if needed.

In game I can not play Arkos music – only pure data.
For the sound effects I convert the single channels to AYFX files and play each channel seperately.
I have not enough RAM left “in game” to play a complete song.

If it is just one channel – then even the better…

[vtk]

hey, really enjoyed playing tonight, doing much better now and learning about things in the game more

i managed to get to around level 60 and scored around 130,000 points

i noticed in your TO DO list, you mention that there will be a ‘game over’ sequence.
.. shall i do a short piece of music for that? if so, 3 channels all ok to use?

i was thinking about in the game you can collect E X T R A bonus icons…
i expect you thought of this already and decided against it, but.. do you think it would be better if E X T R A gave an extra life instead of increasing the weapon class?
(it’s kind of annoying after spending some time collecting all the E X T R A icons, but then sometimes quite soon after your weapon is upgraded, you collect a single shot icon by mistake and then that brief new weapon you gained is quickly lost again)

(if you think that E X T R A for extra life is bad because maybe you would gain too many lives quickly, you could simply reduce the frequency of the falling E X T R A icons)…

if you did the above suggestion, but you dont want to lose the feature in game to increase your weapon class, perhaps you could add a new collectable bonus icon which increases weapon class, and make it rare (so eg. you would only see it once every 10-20 levels)

something else, i’m thinking u probably had this planned already: …
it’s about the list of collectable bonus items icons as seen here:
http://vide.malban.de/vectorblade/vectorblade-bonus
could they be displayed please one by one (perhaps 3 seconds delay between each icon being displayed?) on the ‘computer screen’ which is seen at the title page when the battlestar music is playing?

great job of those enemy ‘sprites’ whizzing around the screen after level 50, really fast, really smooth, so many of them .. i kept thinking “man, this shouldn’t be possible on a vectrex screen” lol 🙂

next — the WARP FAILURE.. i started to experience that ‘problem’ where after many visits to the warp failure zone, you end up with several enemies all attacking you at once.. a suggestion: if you die, i notice you have to restart with the same amount of enemies, even if you killed some before you died. shouldn’t that be changed so you restart with the previous enemies you killed not present? if you dont like that idea, perhaps you could add this suggestion at least for the ‘easy’ mode? you could restore each enemy strength to full if you lose a life, if you wanted to keep things tough.
also.. at warp failure, if you clear the enemies and you then resume the warp ‘out’, sometimes (as you know) the warp failure can occur again right away. maybe this could be disabled from happening? (at least on easy mode)?

[Malban]

Game Over:
I started the game over sequence – the beginnings are in beta 3.
Within the sequence you get bonus score in relation to how well you did in the game. Dunno if there should be a tune accompanying it. I thought to make a “ticking” sound as the score goes up with bonus points.
Once you guys see it – drop me another note about it :-). (apart from that 3 channels would be ok though – but very tiny song)

EXTRA
Yeah, I thought about extra a lot (some time ago) and went with the “solution” you see.
At one stage I had bonus drops for all weapon types – even increasing with difficulty – but IMHO it didn’t do to well.

1+2 shots
Yes – it is annoying isn’t it? But as said before “Watch it!”.
Seriously I think if you only have always increasing shot quality the game gets to easy to soon. If you can “blindly” collect everything… the bonus and the ability to dodge and be concentrated does not mean anything anymore.
Besides … there are two ways to get “shot 1 immunity” one of them is even an achievment which lets you buy shot immunity 1 in the shop for 100 credits (which – if you go for it can probably be done in the first 25 levels).
Also in higher difficulties you can gain also a shot 2 immunity.

I don’t think I want to change the EXTRA/Shot stuff. But I would be interested in the opinion of the other beta testers – if there is an overwhelming opinion against the current system – I might change it!

Bonus on title screen.
Yeah, that is a good idea! I have to look out if I can still do that (space for MH is dwindling very rapitly at the moment).

Warp failure.
Yeah, for level easy, that would be a good solution. I will look into it this weekend!

[vtk]

hey again just been playing so reporting in 🙂

i have found for me, the most important bonus icon to collect/buy in shop is the RATE+ (i try to max that out as soon as possible, so then my bullets travel up the screen super fast which is great for clearing those enemies really quickly)

also i tend to try to collect/buy quite a lot of ship SPEED increase, so i can get across the screen really quickly which for one thing is useful for collecting falling bonus icons/money which are falling spread out across the screen

i also tend to buy autofire, i’m glad that is available as otherwise personally i experience fatigue on the fingers from rapidly repeatedly pressing the fire button (perhaps age related) 🙂

i did well and got to around level 66 i think, but.. well, for the first time during my testing, today i managed to obtain.. the LASER

i don’t know what you think about the laser, but to report on my personal opinion about it.. it made the game far, far too easy (i had it combined with autofire).. so basically quite often i was clearing levels literally in a matter of several seconds.. there wasnt really much challenge

do you have further plans/changes in mind for the laser? to throw my opinion in (as usual) 🙂 .. perhaps if the player gets the laser it can be used with one of the other vectrex buttons available, in which case, you only have the laser for a limited time (perhaps you could set it so the player has the laser for eg. 30 shots or some set amount, so the player will use it carefully in moments of crisis or on a boss etc. or if using autofire, the laser can be used for eg. 20 seconds continuous before it is used up and depleted)

[Malban]

Hahaha!

Yes – the laser SEEMS to make it so much easier.
Question: Why did you only get to level 66 if it was so easy?

If indeed the laser makes it sooo easy – please go to level 350 – than we talk.

ROFL!!!!

[Author]

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