Glaiel-Gamer's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[EXPGEN]

Well it's well programmed...

But, the editor itself is not intuitive. There's too many menus, and too many options, and buttons and all that junk. It takes too long to make a level, i just played your pre built ones as examples. I never even finished a level of mine cause i didn't want to spend an hour making a level and figuring out all this stuff and how it works. But I can see that it's well done, so props for that. But, a few little things that can make it better:
When placing items, have it so you can hold the mouse and drag it around to place a line of items like platforms, essentially drawing with the item you're using. That way it doesnt take 2 days to design a level.
On the menu, show all the items you can place down, as buttons. That way it's just open the menu, click the item, place it on the map. It really does help if you can see what your making. Rather than flipping switches around for 3 types of items, i'd rather take up more space and just clutter the screen with a lot of buttons that dont involve arrows. Also, use hotkeys. Nothing says you shouldnt use the arrow keys to scroll, or space to open the menu, etc. It makes it more intuitive.

About the graphics, sounds, etc. Rectangular blocks make a game look clunky (like in the mario game) The sounds you have are kinda monotonous, almost as if the editor would let you compose music yourself. Which would be a neat idea, for even more customizability. Perhaps even draw your own graphics (bitmap data ftw). It's all possible, but it would make the codes larger. You'd probably want to create a compression algorithm for the codes.

Speaking of te codes, I've only seen 2 level editors made in flash where they give you a code (not saying there aren't more than 2, but these are the only 2 i've played). Your game, and my game (see my news post on NG or on my site). Now on yours, i notice that you keep telling people not to post their codes in reviews. Well, why not? Yes, the line breaks and all that junk. So why not just ignore all the characters in the code that involve spaces or line breaks? After a little fiddling, i managed to do it with my editor, cause believe it or not, people WILL post codes in reviews and on forums and stuff. So work your program to the people playing it, dont make your people cater to the limits of the program.

So ya, this is definately well programmed, and defiantely has a lot of effort put into it, and is a good idea. But it's not executed as well as it could be. Plus, the customizability options of it are limited. There's only so much you can do with a character, an enemy, a block, and a coin. You need to add stuff like fake blocks, and blocks that do things if you jump on them or press down when your on top of them, and moving blocks. But i really think that adding doors into it could be helpful. You'd create a few maps, then place doors that link the maps together. You could essentially make a warp pipe in mario with these combinations. Just have some fake blocks, some trigger blocks that you fall through if you press down, and some doors on the pipe.
There's a lot of possibilities for this game that you never added in here. And yes, I know that it will make the codes huge. So who says you have to stick with the codes? Just have like a couple of PHP files and a database on your site, and people get an ID when they make their levels. It could be cool, and then you wouldnt have to worry about codes being the size of this review.

So in summary, you definately need to work on your execution of this game. It's a good idea and well programmed at that, but in a game requiring this much user input you can't afford to sacrifice intuitivity to increase performance or looks. Plus, as it is, there are so many limits to what you can do in the game that it doesn't really hold your attention while playing it. You make one level, then bam, all the levels are so similar it just doesnt feel good. Please play my editor before responding, and I would also like it if you could contace me on AIM, I know your a fan of mine based on the metroid games.

The-EXP responds:

Yes, I would like the review posts to work, but it hadnt even crossed my mind that they were formatted when writing the code to render levels. Unfortunatley, the code is constantly manipulated during runtime by enemies/coins to find out if theyre already dead as well as current posistion before respawing themselves, so the code never stays the same. I've tried just skipping the characters which arent included to get around this fact but it never seems to work and causes huge slowdowns during gameplay. The problem will be soved in the next release of expgen because i'm adding in an extra code processing..thingy which rewrites the code correctly before loading the level. Sadly this is another reason why a compression algorithm woudlnt work (it'd be lovely since theres all those wasted 0's) and i like your idea about id's. I'm currently working with someone to have an effective way of just exporting a file to windows in the correct format to prevent all this cutting and pasting but its proving difficult, relying on a webpage to be active to bounce back a php code and 'download' your level. Any further ideas email me, you're pretty much a guru of coding, sadly i dont' have AIM but an email would be handy. Nice mesh on the frontpage by the way..

[NG Sketchbook Tour 06]

lol@toms

only 3 of us didn't have the artsy button on... glad to be one of them :)

Luis responds:

yeah, its a shame actually. I think the fact that it was a sketchbook scared away alot of the actionscripters. I think that it doesnt matter anyway its more about being part of the community than making a masterpiece.

[Nephi's Adventure]

cool game

as said before though, its a bit short. Just make the next few ones a bit longer.

Oh and to fix the white preloader glitch, on all your sounds with linkage, right click and deselect "export in first frame". Of course, now they wont be put into the swf at all, so make a dummy clip and stick the sounds in the timeline of that clip. Bam, problem solved.

BoMToons responds:

Thanks for the review.

I tried your method (took me a bit on approx 200 voice files :P) but it didn't work...the sounds in the dummy clip weren't being attached.

[K-FED: Dancing with Fire]

Sweet game tom

i enjoyed it. A few things though, it was rather short, maby more fights or something. And second, with all the clicking, i did occasionally click outside the window. Perhaps adding a border around the SWF could help.

Other than that it was a fun enjoyable minigame (like the last piece of cake.. lol it reminded me about that)

TomFulp responds:

I experimented with a buffer border, but it didn't seem to help a whole lot so I ditched it... But maybe it would have been worth keeping. :)

[FlashMotion: Bubble Burst]

GREAT! But

My webcam reverses my movement, likeit doesnt show a mirror image. Not sure if this is a standard, but for people like me could you have an option to flip around the screen?

EliteNewbie responds:

Yes, thats the same with mine... reversing the image from my end is a little hard, however you can most likely do it. I have a logitech webcam, and if i go into the settings there is an option to change the image... i will see what I can do from my end though.. thanks for the tip ;)

[Finalslam]

Great

i remember a topic on this and i regret making a character for it :(

(i made NGC way back when and i should have made a character for it. sorry..)

But still great unique game. Good work

josh-tamugaia responds:

It's OK... there is a fighter creation section... Thanks for the review!

[Plops Tournament DX]

Great, but

very original, rather fun and cool. But i didn't notice many differences between the 2 versions.

You're allowed to update the SWF on your submissions you know

ReduxGames responds:

The differences are in the programming and the tutorial, I just couldn't redo the graphics anymore.. I've spent like a week working 40 hours a day on this ;).. my whole vacation (the graphics), the programming has been realy tightened up and the scoring system too. thats why i released it as another version. Too many people found bugs in the first one.

[Isometric Sokoban]

What's with the rush of isometric games?

It's like OMG i begin to make an isometric block sliding game (sequal to one of my earlier games, gave me my first portal award) and then BAM cubrius comes out (very well done game tho), now BAM it's your game! I better hurry up and finish mine before people claim it as unoriginal.

So now yours comes out. Graphics were basic but get the job done. I only played 2 levels. I cannot stand the control schemes. That's the biggest problem with isometric games is control. So many people love to make up a diagonal direction and stuff. It get's confusing at this angle. Cubrius solved the problem by angeling it different, so that it's obvious which way is up and left and right. My game solves this by offering diagonal movement. Your game, well both control schemes stink. Also, when remaking a puzzle game, offering twists and special items and stuff really helps.

It's good, but it needs a lot of work.

Arclite83 responds:

Looking forward to seeing your game, Glaiel. I wasn't really trying to do anyhting new and exicitingly different; I mean, where do powerups and such fit into Sokoban? I decided on isometric, and yeah, the controls are kindy wacky, but I think they work alright; I could have done it head-on, but then I think it would have just looked strange.

[Flash Racer]

Great!

Say NC, you know what would make it great for version 2? 3D! Like get (or make) a mode7 engine and then make it like 3D! It would ROCK!

Rustygames responds:

heh yea I guess it would. Only problem is flash really doesnt handle 3D well. If I wanted to make a 3D game that is played in the browser I would switch over to director (thanks for the suggestion though), im glad you liked the game) :D

[How to make: basic games.]

pathetic

seriously

a. Copying codes is not "How to make games". It's "how to ctrl-c ctrl-v" Nobody learns from copying

b. You didnt even write the platformer code. It looks just like the open source one on the bbs.

c. the way you did the mouse avoider game sucks. They could easily skip over the walls. You need more than a line. Plus hittest are much better than on roll overs

d. your fonts kept overlapping each other

try harder

Mechabloby responds:

Next time, I shall try harder.

I am pretty nooby at flash so that is why it is shit.