Anime Bowling Babes Released
Community Forums/Showcase/Anime Bowling Babes Released
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| Well not released, but it's playable. WARNING : It's buggy, it's not optimized AT ALL, it's really rough around the edges, there's tons of stuff missing. The textures have been crammed down to make the download smaller, there's very little sound. GOOD BIT : It's playable and won't do anything nasty. It's under 3Mb ( It was 20 before I started last night. ) http://www.blackwolfgames.com/bowling/betaone.exe ( No, it's not an installer, it's a self-extracting 7Zip archive. There's no registry, no shortcuts, no nothing.. just open the folder and run it. ) What I really want to know is how it performs ( probably badly if you've got less than 16mb of vidram ) and I really, really want feedback on the controls and the physics. I'm aiming for fun physics and easy controls, but I may have overdone it. NOTE : Practice 1 and Practice 2 are DIFFERENT. Practice 1 is the typical control system, with bars. Practice 2 is a new bowling system where you move the mouse to bowl the ball. Practice 2 is the one that I feel really needs tweaking, but I'm open to thoughts on it all. I know there are lots of things missing, so by all means tell me, but don't be surprised if I say " yeah, i know.. it's not done yet." |
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| Pretty good in my opinion I like the graphics, the song wasn't really annoying. Practice 1 was really nice, you feel you have full controle, practice 2 I didn't really get it, and it goes to fast so... Anyway, overall its coming along super great! Keep it up! |
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| Thanks. Glad you liked it. Practice 2 is certainly an acquired taste, but I wanted something a bit more flowing for those who wanted a change from the usual bars and arrows. I figured by having 2 control methods, I double the odds of people finding one they like. |
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| Looks and plays pretty good so far. Will definitely keep my eyes on the progress of this. Like Kaisuo, Practice 2 doesn't work for me. Everything happened too quickly, no sooner had I started to move the mouse sideways to line up my shot, than she bowled. Much prefer Practice1. |
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| Yeah.. Practice 2 probably takes some practice before you get the most out of it. And I think it needs some tweaking form me to make it work better. Not entirely sure what yet, but I'll see what I can do. |
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| I think you shopuld have an extreme violence mode where you throw bowling balls at each other. hey I was playing anime tennis baes the other day.i quite enjoyed it , although i wasn't very good. I kept losing. I will try and test out this latest one soon Oh and thanks for the heads up on that contract work, it seems as though I will be doing the work now. If it definitely comes off and I get paid ,I will buy a copy of your game |
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| Oh and thanks for the heads up on that contract work, it seems as though I will be doing the work now. The American History project NMuta was talking about? Cool. ATB is definitely tricky at first. It does get easier the more you play it though, you'll be winning soon ;) |
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| Looks nice, but two comments: - It looks kind of weird & unnatural how the girl keeps tilting her head back and forth while waiting - After shooting a ball, and the camera pans back to the start of the lane, the girl doesn't get rendered -- and then all of a sudden materializes into view. |
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| Nice presentation. No balls or pins!? I think you should remove the 'aim and shoot option' and instead focus on a better camera. (By better I mean one that isn't there just to focus on her candy ass. ;) ) Also, more visual cues would be helpful. As I wasn't really sure what was going on, other than the camera started to pan down the alley. But again with no ball/pins it's impossible to comment how this would affect the gameplay. Whenever in doubt, ask yourself this 'How would sensible software done this?' ;) |
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| yeah looks great Sybixsus ! but me too, I can't see any balls or pins ... that must be one of those 'to be added soon things' ! :) also the control looks kinda tricky , wasn't sure what to do .. i like how you can look at the scoreboard or pins by clicking on them ! and the intro is good how it zooms into the scene !!! :) felt 'cinematic' :) |
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| Quite nice.. some graphics glitches as xlsior stated.. when you click "aim and shoot", the camera goes slightly through her shoulder (observe left bottom of screen). the camera move SO slow!, it is that esc will 'snap' but you should make the camera behave a little quicker in the "cut scenes" anyways. Get rid of "practice 2", it's horrendous! Practice 1 is nice, too easy tho.. i get strike after strike.. move the arrow a little to the right, aim it as straight as possible, no spin, full power... strike every time. Also, when one of my first shots hit the pins, one of em flew up REALLY fast, and never fell back, i am assuming it flew out of the 'world'.. NASA could use that technique no doubt! :) Tracer |
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| I like the fact that you need to click her bottom to aim and shoot. Or perhaps thats just me! Physics are nice of course. Pinching on the characters is inexcusable now. It doesn't take long and is worth the effort to set the verts near the pinched ones to about 50-75% blend. It would dramatically improve the appearence. Onto practise modes.... Practise mode 1: is cool, I understand exactly what is going on and it does the job. Practise mode 2: don't understand it at all. The instructions flash on the screen for about a second then I'm cluelessly sitting there. I liked the camera once, and then it's farting about became very annoying quickly as it's too smooth. After a while you feel a little sick. I would do the centre line they do in films - ie, keep the camera on one side of that imaginary line at all times, and the character on the other. Use any camera shots you like, but never cross the line. Your camera crosses this line and makes you try to work out where it's going. It's also too smooth. Try speeding up some bits and doing a couple of cuts there. Above all, I think it's likely to turn out to be the best bowling game around, but it needs careful consideration on a couple of things. At least you're concentrating on playability (I think :) |
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| Here's a few immediate thoughts - some might have been said by others already, but anyway.... Looks OK, and I hate to drag up the control system issue again, but it all feels very 'sequential' - click now to position, click now to aim, click again to set spin, click AGAIN to set power... etc... etc. Real life bowling isn't like that. You deal with direction, power and spin all at the same time. A further point I think is worth mentioning - the camera transitions are excruciatingly slow. When a player clicks on the pins, he doesn't want to wait ten seconds before he can do anything else. Also, the camera scrolling up to the scoring monitor seems a bit pointless, since its just a static texture on the monitor screen - the ACTUAL scores are just plonked on top as an overlay. Lastly, why do you have to click on her arse to 'aim and shoot'? Sexual innuendo? [edit] Oh - almost forgot - on my very first go i knocked down 9 pins. The tenth remained upstanding (sort of), but it was leaning at an angle around 30-35 degrees. |
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| OK, I'll try to cover everything : 1) If you don't see any pins or balls, turn off shaders. I don't do any kind of checking yet. If you select shaders on a videocard that doesn't support cubemaps, spheremaps and stuff like that, it will let you. 2) There are visual cues. There should be a text prompt whenever you move the mouse over a "hotzone". Don't know why you wouldn't get one.. maybe the shaders thing again, but I doubt it. 3) Yes, her ass is in the way. That's easy enough to take care of. 4) The general consensus is that the camera moves too slow. That's easy enough to fix. For now, be aware that right clicking will skip any camera pan. 5) Method 1 and Method 2 are both going to remain, though they're both subject to considerable change. In the proper version ( the one I have that hasn't had a bunch of stuff ripped out like the one you have ) lets you choose the control method per character, so everyone can use the one they prefer. I want one method to provide a very artificial, sequential, step-by-step method. That's method 1. Yes, it's probably a bit too easy ( though I wish I could hit strike after strike like Tracer.. he's better than me at my own damn game :P ) I was thinking of making the bars move at different speeds depending on whether you choose easy, medium or hard difficulty level. Would that be a good thing? Then those who don't find it easy can still play easy, and those who do find it too easy can pick another difficulty level. Method 2 would be a lot easier if there were instructions. Well there are, but they won't remain on screen if you move the mouse. So don't move the mouse and you'll see what you have to do. Basically you move the mouse forward / side to side to aim the shot, then as soon as the power bar clicks in, move it left to right to apply spin. It might be a little too fast, I don't know, but I wanted something which kinda sorta simulates the way you actually bowl. Sorta like how Virtual Snooker simulates the way you move the snooker cue. 6) The backboard is very short and pins have a habit of going over the top of it. That's one of those "yeah i know, I haven't done that yet" issues. 7) The clicking on her ass has been mentioned. I guess I'm just too innocent to have noticed :P I'll take care of it. Well I'll just move her ass out of the way altogether. 8) Yes, the character rig is an old pre-blended weights rig. I simply haven't had time to update her, but it's on my to-do list. 9) Yes, I'm focussed on playability. 10) I may put the score on the monitor at a later date. I still like the camera panning up to the monitor though, even if it's purely aesthetic. 11) I'm really surprised you caught the pin leaning, because I check the pins by angle, and if they're 30-35 degrees, they're well within the range I pick up as dead pins. I'll look for a bug in that, but I'm very puzzled at the moment. I've played frame after frame after frame and I've never seen that. Odd. If I've missed any points, I apologise, please remind me. |
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| BTW I could really use some constructive feedback on control method 2. I'm quite definite on wanting two control methods to cover most players, and I'm aware that method 1 may be a little too easy and that method 2 just isn't right yet. But what would make method 2 better? ( Apart from the fact that I should have given you the instructions before now :( ) Should method 2 be slower? More/Less sensitive? |
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| I liked the first version. Nice gfx, and main character. Played pretty wel i think. The second version is just weird though. Doesn't feel right at all. Good stuff tho man :) |
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| I think method 2 needs some visual feed back while you're moving the mouse. At the moment the power and spin indicators only appear once they've locked. This makes it extremely difficult to judge just how much power and spin you are actually applying. Apart from the odd bits already mentioned, it all looks pretty good so far :o) YAN |
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| there was another blitz bowling game before i think the controls on that one were pretty good they were nice and simple ... yep i like the monitor scrolling thing too because it makes it seem more like you are in the bowling alley ... yep. i like the scrolling but after a while it does get a bit slow and boring so it's good that you can skip it. i'll try it again with shaders off. i like all the colours that were chosen it looks really nice! |
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| I think method 2 needs some visual feed back while you're moving the mouse. At the moment the power and spin indicators only appear once they've locked. Good idea. I like that. I'll see what I can do. How about speed and sensitivity though? Are they about right or would you like them tweaked one way or the other? |
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| This is definately better than the Tennis Game. You're doing the scoring wrong though. When you get a strike you get the score for the next two balls added on not the next two frames (four throws). A spare gives you the score from the next ball. Of course if you get more than one strike in a row you still get two throws before the frst strikes score gets added. Its always two throws (unless you're on frame ten) I haven't tred but you get a third ball if you get a spare or a strike on the tenth frame don't you? What do I think of the controls? I think the first control system is ok but there are too many clicks to get anything to happen. Maybe if you combine the direction with the spin - move the mouse to position click and hold then move to set the spin. I quite like the second control system. You should make it more visual though. In virtual pool you got to see the cue moving before you hit the ball. You should be able to see the speed whatsit moving, and the arrow turning until you press the mouse button. Also the control text shouldn't be there when you aim as it is you click and then have to try too aim and set the speed with the text obscuring the screen. You should add walls to the sides of the lane where the pins are. In real bowling they are there to stop pins from bouncing across to the next lane. They also make is possible to pick up a 7 10 split - which is where the two corner pins are left standing. You can do this by bouncing one pin off of the wall and getting it to hit jump across to the other side of the lane. I agree that the camera moves are too slow, and also think there are too many. Maybe you should add the option to remove them in the options screen. Or... maybe you could add a camera speed option in the options screen (off - slow - medium - fast) with it defaulting on medium (a bit faster than you have now) |
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| I haven't tred but you get a third ball if you get a spare or a strike on the tenth frame don't you? I didn't get that far either, but, you should get an extra ball if you get a spare on frame 10, two for a strike. |
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| Yeah, I know how the scoring works, and you're right, that's not done yet. The control text is really only there because there are no instructions. I was thinking of making them only pop up if you hold the right mouse or something. Everyone seems to agree about making the camera movement faster, so I'll just do that. I haven't found any good reference pics of alleys yet, so I wasn't aware of the walls thing. ( Though I did managed to nail a 7-10 split a couple of times ) But that makes sense, so I'll add those. And yeah, adding some visual reference to control method number 2 seems like a good idea. I appreciate all the suggestions and criticism so far, and I'm looking forward to more. I couldn't be happier at the moment, as most of the suggestions can be implemented simply by changing a constant or relocating a couple of lines of code. I'm anxiously awaiting the "no, no, no, you'll have to tear it all down and start again comment." ;) |
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| Fixed the cameras and added visual reference for control method #2. I've made it a little bit less sensitive too. I don't know about anyone else, but I found I was almost always getting maximum power with control method #2. Some feedback on minimum specs would be handy. I've no idea how slow the Tokamak calls are going to make this. I know it'll choke a card with less than 16meg of vidram ( possibly fixable when I optimize.. it's likely to be cd-only, so I can afford to put in multiple resolutions for the textures. ) but I'd like to know how it is on something around a 700mhz p3 with a GF2/GF3. Ok, you probably won't be able to crank up the res and turn on AA with that setup, but I'd like to know the base system where it's playable at 640x480 with everything else off/min. |
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| Uh, there's no ball or pins or anything??? What's that all about. Anyway, it all seems cool, just the camera transitions are slow. |
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| turn off the shaders (apparently) to see the pins. all the pins were white on my pc anyway. |
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| Uh Jeremy.. don't you have a high end Radeon? I've had a couple of people with really low end videocards find they can't see the ball or pins, but your card ought to be able to handle cubemaps, no? Very odd that. Anyway, like Rob says, turn off Shaders if you can't see them and it'll just render a single texture layer. Kinda ugly, but it beats no pins or ball. |
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| Looks cool! one thing I did notice though, is that if you choose really high power, it looks kind of weird because she throws the ball in slow motion, and then it goes flying super fast :) maybe adjust the animation speed according to the power? |
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| Hmm.. I was planning on making the animation speed variable but it looked about right to me. But if it's not right, I can certainly vary it a little according to the power of the shot. Thanks for the pointer. |
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| I think you should check driver caps just to make sure. They are 110 for cube maps. |
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| Hehe, I'm on my laptop away from home atm, that would explain it. It's only a 16MB S3 card. |
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