hcmffm
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hello Chris,
thank you for your detailed bug report. This is indeed a very minor bug and I much doubt that more than a handful people will ever experience it. I even think that you should stick to VB v1.00 for all other copies #32-#100. Otherwise, 31 players might have a small disadvantage when playing Vectorblade in a tournament like the Vector War. 😉
Just my 2 cents…
Best regards,
Helmut
Congratulations on finishing Vectorblade and first 10 versions! After this long journey it’s good that this comes to an end or let’s rather say to a start! As written in a PM perhaps Vectorblade could become part of the yearly Vector War. Let’s see.
Chris, with Vectorblade you did very well and again. Thank you very much for giving us beta testers the opportunity to influence development by considering and implementing many of our suggestions. Thank you for this, Chris!
Vectorblade is a quite complex game and as we all know there might be some glitches in the final version. This is o.k. as long as the likely hood of these glitches is low. If I see the many conditions for this bug that you have listed, Chris, it seems that probability of this bug is very low so it will occur only in very rare cases. Still it’s a bug and good that you experienced this bug and could track it down right away.
Perhaps it’s a good idea to have another gold version and then start final testing round #2 with a fixed time frame and final date (e.g. a after week). In this time frame as much beta testers as possible should try to track down crashes and severe bugs and sure enough report these- nothing else. If no bug is found within the time frame the gold edition could be final. (When thinking about it I guess that this is not a new idea but much what you’ve tried to do).
Thank you, Chris, for your prompt reply. There’s some misunderstanding: I didn’t mean your run of 100 copies – this fun belongs to you. 😉 I mean the unlimited run of copies which could be published by Packrat Video Games, only.
@vtk: Thank you for your opinion regarding David and Packrat Video games!Your above text and thoughts sound good to me. Instead of offering all the “material” to make his/her own production of Vectorblade, I’d like to suggest a different way for offering unlimited copies of your Vectorblade:
David Flemming (Packrat Video Games) is a really nice guy. As you probably know, David took over the “business” of John Dondzila (ClassicGameCreations), the famous Vectrex programmer and supporter. David sells game for a fair amount of money and FAIK he keeps looking for opportunities to enhance his little business and sell even a larger variety of games. Selling your Vectorblade via David might be a win-win situation, i.e. you would make your Vectorblade available to an broader or even unlimited audience (and not just 100 copies), on the other side David would have another good game in his portfolio of games. If you also think that this is a good idea, you might contact David yourself or I can do this myself. I’m in loose contact with David for years now (e.g. because of the Vector War) and he does really a great job and deserves support.
Please note that games offered by Packrat Video Games seem to be limited to games in plastic boxes. But this is not a must.
David’s website is: http://www.packratvideogames.com
David’s mail address is: ozyr@packratvg.comvtk, Jerome, Peer, Nico, GeoAnas: Do you know Packrat Video Games. If yes you might also post your opinion in some short words and support this suggestion.
EDIT: I just realized that your (Chris’) games Release! and Karl Quappe are offered by Packrat Video Games, already. So you know and have a deal with David, already. Perhaps time for another “deal”. 😉
Thank you, Chris, for your long and detailed explanations. Everything is clarified including the “Bug”. The explanation regarding the bug sounds VERY plausible – the two bugs shoot three shots each makes up six shots, altogether. I saw four shots, only, three shots on the right underneath the bugs and one shot in the middle. So no more issues from my side. 🙂
EDIT: Please note that this post is refering to RC6 – not to the gold edition. I’ll test the gold edition in the coming days and will report bugs but nothing else. Promised! 😉
Just played RC6. Title screen appears after calibration is really fixed, now – and looking very good. 🙂
Minor things that I have noticed:
Bug(?): Shots of the bugs
I don’t remember which level it was, but it was the first level with two bugs shooting straight down three fast bullets. The two bugs appeared on the very right and then they started to shoot. The fast shots went straight down but to my surprise three bullets were on the right, were the two bugs resided while one bullet was in the middle of the screen. Nexts shots looked alright to me. I’m not 100% sure but to me it looked like a minor bug with the shots of bugs.Calibration: Rectangle/screen size
When calibrating there is one calibration page to set the total screen size using a rectangle. I’ve reduced the size of the rectangle a bit. When playing, there were some bonuses that I couldn’t catch because they were positioned too much to the right. My assumption was that if calibration is properly that you could catch any bonuses and malus but perhaps my expectations was wrong. So either a minor issue of the calibration or perhaps this is a feature. 😉Calibration: Numbers
We beta testers do the calibration quite often. It might be helpful if each calibration would display a calibration value so you could write down the values once and set them next time without looking too at the graphics at all. Most likely this is an issue for beta testers, only – normal players won’t notice.Calibration: Default values
Currently, all defaults of the calibration are wrong. This might be on purpose but I’d find it useful if calibration values would be o.k. on standard machines. Question is what a standard machine is and behaves like. If calibration values were displayed (see above) we beta testers might exchange our values and find a better default perhaps. Again: This is a really minor issue.Again, thank you for your excellent effort, Chris!
Thank you, for the new release candidate of Vectorblade and the various changes, Chris. I’ll download the RC and will post here tomorrow night. Great to see the boxes. Finalization is getting closer. 🙂
Some minor issues in RC5:
No full intro after calibration
Problem persists: There is no full intro after the very first calibration.Statistic screen: Order S-B-R
Currently, in the statistic screen, speed, rate, bullets is displayed. The order of these three values is different to the order in the shop, which is S-B-R.
Suggestion: Use same order for SBR entries in both statistic screen and shop, i.e. S-B-R.Statistic screen: Order Cash > Lifes
Currently, in the statistic screen, cash is listed before lifes
Suggestion: Life is more important than cash. Therefore I’d suggest to list “lifes” before “cash”.Statistic screen: More lines per page
Currently, only four lines are displayed in the statistic screens per page. “Shots fired” and “Enemies shot” are split into two pages. The same applies for S-B-R which are also split into two pages.
Suggestion: To me it looks as if there is space for displaying five (or even more lines) per screen. When using five lines per screen, more related entries would be one one page.Level title: Display duration
Currently, the level title appears only for a very short time.
Suggestion: Display the level title a little bit longer so that the user has the chance to read the level title before fighting on.Just played RC5 for a while. Thank you, Chris, for the many changes and improvements you’ve made in RC5!
Something odd that I noticed: Trophees “Greedy” and “Officer Rank 4” weren’t assigned for some reason I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because I continued a saved game (but I thought I didn’t use a saved game at that time)?
Tststs (*shaking head and throwing arms in the air*), you all – why didn’t you find that???
I couldn’t find that one because I’m on holidays in Netherlands and didn’t take my Vectrex console with me. 😉
Something interesting for you, Chris: I’ve just posted two parcels to the U.S. – each was 23 EUR without Track & Trace. With Track & Trace it would have been 29 EUR per parcel. Quite a lot but still better than the 53 EUR in Germany.
done:
Scroll text: LESS BULLET
-> I only have that many letters I can display per line, changed to “MINUS BULLET”Hmm, “MINUS BULLETS” are 12 characters. “LESS BULLETS” are also 12 characters. (?)
I think a good pair would be “LESS BULLETS” and “MORE BULLETS”. Or even clearer and shorter: “LESS SHOTS” and “MORE SHOTS”. EDIT: The term “BULLETS” is used in the shop so that’s not an option.
The chance that a Mine storm is actually a Dimaond storm is about 1:50.
Ouch! I try to avoid the Minestorm bonus because I considered that it’s a malus. That’s probably why I have seen the Diamond storm only once.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on shipping and costs, Chris. I think 60 EUR + shipment costs is fine. But I’m not sure whether the general shipping costs are o.k.: Shipping within Germany will be around 5 EUR while shipping to the U.S. is 53 EUR due to Corona. From my point of view the span for the shipment costs is too large to have just one price for all. And many buyers are located in the U.S., so with 60 EUR material costs + 53 EUR shipping costs you will loose 13 EUR per game. Not a good deal. Last not least, 100 EUR sounds expensive while 60 EUR + shipment costs sounds fair.
EDIT: Actually, what you could try is shipping from the Netherlands. From what I can see on the webpage of post.nl international postage to the U.S. is 23 EUR, “only”, for a parcel up to 2kg. But not sure whether that would be 100% legal.
And Before you get afraid of spending 100€:
Great, thank you, Chris! It was a pleasure for me to do the testing so no real need to give me a copy for free. But naturally it’s nice and much appreciated.
Hat jemand von Euch Ahnung, ob das “legal” ist, wenn ich 100 Stück verkaufe?
Ich habe dir per Mail geantwortet. “Kleinunternehmer” ist glaube ich das Mittel der Wahl.
Best regards, Helmut
