Aerial Antics 1.1
Community Forums/Showcase/Aerial Antics 1.1
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| OK, I've put up a new version of the demo with a few fixes. Nothing too major (fixed 2 control bugs,added a quit button to the main menu, and fixed "Stabalize"), but something important ... I did add the demo that plays itself from the full version. It plays City Center Park Demo 04 so you can see how I play it using a gamepad. Just let it sit on the first menu of the title screen with out doing anything for 15-20 seconds. Hope this helps some people who've found it difficult to play.  |
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| OK, we are going to update the default keyboard controls. But we can't really get a good idea of what would be the most intuitive. I like the way it is as it reminds me of SNES controller 4 directions on the left, 4 buttons on the right. However, some people find this unintuitive. Right now we're thinking WASD for pitch/turn and Space for boost, J for stabilize, K for bomb, and L for camera. That is the default way you hold your right hand to type so it fits. Let us know what you think please. We're not going to attempt to market this game until we've got a more intuitive setup. We've heard some very good comments and have also worked out most kinks. Because we're aiming for a niche we're not changing everything (Pilotwings fans know what made the SNES version good and they'll see it in this game). All in all though it wouldn't be bad to attract new fans. Please help us out here and attempt to play using WASD, Space, J, K, L. If it doesn't feel intuitive then let us know what does. |
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| I can't quite work it out, but are they just the old controls remapped? Developing for a niche is fine and it's fine that you want to keep your game like that, but have no illusions - more simplistic controls would significantly increase the sales, no questions asked. |
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| I didn't re - map them yet. We want to know what others are mapping their controls too. We're having a debate. I think the controls suit the game. As the character in the jetpack has one hand on each control so does the actual user. Still if you don't like it you can re - map it. I mean we're talking about hardcoding the cursors for movement and then allowing for optional pitch/turn to be mapped by default to WASD and then be able to be changed to whatever, but the cursors will then be hogged, so someone who likes the default controls (me) wouldn't be able to use them. But at least the default settins would allow cursors or WASD for turn/pitch. I think that someone who doesn't find the game premise interesting enough to re - map the controls to suit themself would never click the Buy Now! button anyway. I mean if I like a game premise I'll put in some effort to suit the game to myself. If the premise is boring then I won't care how easy the *default* control is. |
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| I think the problem with the controls isn't how they are mapped, I think it is actually the way that you control the pitch of the thruster yourself. It is very confusing. I think that someone who doesn't find the game premise interesting enough to re - map the controls to suit themself would never click the Buy Now! button anyway. I mean if I like a game premise I'll put in some effort to suit the game to myself. Assumptions like this are really dangerous if you want to be selling as many copies as possible. |
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| I only ever aimed to sell copies to the initial Pilotwings fanbase (likely a few hundred thousand players), it's a niche that needed filling. Pilotwings uses the same control mechanic. If I pick up a few users that would be good as well. You can't please everyone, I'm really sorry that you can't come to grips with the control. Think about this, Halo has sold about 3 million copies and I had a debate with quite a few Blitz users as to whether that was a good game. A lot of people disagreed with me on that too, yet that game has it's niche just like AA will. Thinking about this I feel comfortable making the above assumption. Not everyone's going to like the game, but the people that do will change the control to suit their needs and they will enjoy it. Selling software like this is a numbers game. No one selling shareware gets a super huge purchase to download ratio. It stays right at about 1 - 2%. If I don't get that then I'll have to reconsider the play mechanics more. So far all is well though. |
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| Anyway past all that I still have a decision to make for default controls. I just tried mapping the controls this way: Cursors = turn/pitch Space = Boost F = Stabilize D = Bomb S = Camera I think now I feel like a newbie. I cannot control the game very well using this scheme. I think the original scheme is better: WASD = turn/pitch Up Cursor = Boost Left Cursor = Bomb Right Cursor = Stabilize Down Cursor = Camera Change The latter makes more sense for me simply because that is how a console gamer thinks, movement on left, actions on right. Tell me which one makes more sense to you? I got some perspective on how hard this game is to control by switching my hands in this manner. |
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| You are aiming a PC shareware game at a few hundred thousand players of a console retail game? |
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| It's a 10 year old console game and if you seach the web many of those users have grown up and now have PC's like me. |
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| Enough of them? |
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| Well, that is the gamble. I think I've figured out what's so hard for a new player though. I started playing with that new control scheme and it made the game difficult for me to play. It made me feel like I was just learning to play for the first time. The problem with the game is that the jets pitch too slow. I remember when comparing it to Pilotwings that they turned slower but it seemed to be a non-issue at the time. I have uploaded a new demo and they pitch faster. The result is maybe what you were talking about. If you're not holding forward or back you go up. If you hit forward you get almost instant forward motion instead of moving up a lot before getting the effects of the jets in a forward motion. Please check this out. It's probably not the best fix but I think it helps. |
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| Downloading... |
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| That is significantly better. I would suggest that you limit the rotation of the thruster so that when it is completely forward it thrusts up just enough to fight gravity (ie not a straight 90 degrees). Of course, the controls could still be improved a *lot*, but this is definitely a step in the right direction. |
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| OK, I balanced it out. I think it rotates at a good speed so you don't fall too quick when you try to go forward but you also don't go straight up because the jet's don't react fast enough. It's more balanced now and I won't have to change the entire game. I have play mechanic called the juggle ball which requires you to fall with the ball while boosting forward to complete goals. It wouldn't work properly without the falling you get after a while. But now at least you don't begin to sink right away. Thanks Michael! |
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| I downloaded the demo form your site, I think this is the version you are talking about, where you have two platforms and a ring. The graphics are great I must say. I thought after reading the above that controlling this would be very hard but after only a few minutes I was able to fly around and land on a platform, and fly through the ring. Of course I have years of experience from playing "Space Taxi" on the c64! ("Hey cab!!") And I also played Pilot Wings on the snes, but that I don't remember too well. I would prefer to use the arrow keys instead of the WASD combination, plus the space bar for thrust. But even with these default keys I think the controls are good. |
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| I would go for cursor keys as default instead of wasd - just my personal preference. |
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| Yeah, the new version if you erase your User Options file has the defaults: Cursors = turn/pitch Space = boost F = stabilize D = Bomb S = Camera Change |
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| Floppy, go to leadfootproductions.com to download the new game. |
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Ah yes I was looking at the prototype version. However... I am afraid I get a graphical error in the demo version. At first everything looks fine. But when I rotate clockwise a bit, the textures disappear, as well as the info-images and text. The problem is only there when looking in the North-East direction, assuming that the player looks North in the beginning. When I rotate back again, the textures and images re-appear. When I continue rotating clockwise it also returns to normal when passing the 90 degree border. So between 0 and 90 degrees the textures are not displayed. Here are two screenshots:  My video card is a Radeon 7000 with 32 Mb. I have downloaded a new driver a few months ago, I could get the latest driver tomorrow to see if that makes a difference, it's a big download and it's already quite late here. |
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| Doh! I just emailed you lol! Man thanks for that screen. Not really sure what would cause that, it looks strange. Did you try it in different resolutions etc...? I'm using really old drivers, but my partner has the newer ones. However, we're using GF3's. Strange ... very strange. |
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| Thanks for the e-mail anyway! To give some more details, my operating system is XP, and I did try different settings. I turned off all the options and tried both the default 800*600 resolution as well as my desktop's 1024*768, and both in 16 and 32 bit color depth. It's already 01:26 here but I am still up watching the moon being "eclipsed", well, and I am typing this of course. The moon is almost gone. I hope that you can find out what is going on! If no one else reports this maybe it's just my computer and/or the card and its driver. |
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