Wire Hang Redux
Community Forums/Showcase/Wire Hang Redux
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| I was recently told about a great little Java game called Wire Hang! You have to use a hook, Bionic Commando-style, to jump from platform to platform. Falling off-screen means game over. I became addicted and wished for certain elements to be added to the game. Unforunately the Japanese author who wrote the game in 2001 did not respond to my emails, so I decided to rewrite it myself in Blitz. All in all it took about a day over last weekend - tweaking the control mechanic/feel took the longest time! I'll be adding some nice extra elements to the game in the coming weeks.    http://www.blitzcoder.com/cgi-bin/showcase/showcase_showentry.pl?id=matt_sephton06212004184132&comments=no |
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| It looks like you're writing it for a PDA Looks quite cool... infact looks quite a lot like jumparound to a certain extent! |
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| Well the original was that resolution. I'm aiming at 100% copying that for starters, then I'll increase the size of it. The concept does, however, work best on a portrait display. Imagine Jumparound but with a level that goes infinitely upwards! ;) |
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| Not as playable as making the hook aim directly for the mouse. I would prefer making the hook aim where I click rather than the dial below. At present it isn't as good... |
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| I think that would make the game too easy to play, Rob. Definitely, it would have been easier to code! ;) But I'll have a play around and see what's what. |
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| Looks nice. How about porting it to GBA with Dragon Basic!? Cheers, Ryan |
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| I agree with Rob, might be easier to play, just make it get faster as you go up (increase the gravitational pull downwards). Or remove the mouse movement and use arrow keys left and right instead. |
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| Thanks for the suggestions folks. I think I'm 99% there in reproducing the original Java game. DragonBASIC is a distinct possibility, I was hoping there'd be a GP32 version of that soon? I think the joystick would work slightly better than the GBA d-pad, that and the screen is bigger! ;) More feature suggestions have appeared here, including point multipliers, speed ups/downs and more: http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=20375 I was also thinking of introducing things that can snap the wire? All this in a second redux mode, which can be selected apart from the original mode. |
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| Hey Matt, haven't seen you on Gamiko in ages! ^_~ Awesome game remake, this is even better than the cow dropping game. Infuriating gameplay, but really simple too - fantastic stuff. I'll look forward to seeing what you do with Wire Hang, as it's a great game concept. |
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| Awesome lil' game! I got 8268 on my second go :D |
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| You should use the angle between the little person and the mouse, not the angle of the mouse relative to the center. |
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| Why not recreate Bionic Commando's (used to play that for hours ;) ) |
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| Looking nice. You can add a minimize button to B+ graphics windows with this, if you want. Makes the interface more user friendly :) |
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| Thanks all, glad you're enjoying it. As it's a remake I want to stick as much to the original as possible, but I might put an option in to have the laternative (gal/mouse as opposed to gal/radar) control scheme. My first tests with this method have shown it does sometimes make it easier to aim - generally when you're aiming upwards. But it also makes it much more difficult to gauge the angle of fire, meaning i was firing a lot more shots completely sideways. So, I can see why the original author chose the Radar method. I'll test a little more though, before I decide either way. I'll add minimise and close buttons to the window. Dock: nice to hear from you mate. I love the 3D work on your site, especially DropHero. Ever thought of doing a game with her in? |
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| reminds me of that one game...bionic commando or something like that...love it :) |
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| One difference I noticed is that the web version changes the background to some random sketch of a girl when you get past a certain score, but yours doesn't. Any plans to change the background as the score progresses? I think what would be especially cool is if the background had interesting features at certain heights (people in balloons, etc) to go past. They would be interesting visually, and they would provide the player with a sense of progress, and incentive to get further. Glad you like Drophero (it's actually a boy! XD). I did plan a game involving drophero but I canned it as I knew it was beyond my abilities as a coder. I have a new project, but I'm really limited with coding, I could use help in that department. My 3D has improved lots since then, as it's now my day-job. :) Your game projects seem interesting, I like that you do portable versions too. |
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| Feel free to give me an email regarding working together. Well done on the job, too! I'm going to wrap up the remake aspect of Wire Hang soon. Then I'll be adding some elements of my own, along with new graphics. They're be of a smilar feel to Terra Firma - the cow game - but with a nice Japanese twist to them. |
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| Great fun...I did play Bionic Commando as a kid a few times, and I really like the idea of swinging from platform to platform - it always was and is fun. I love these sorts of games. |
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| New version released, fixing some small things and making it a lot nicer to play. Hiscore saving and sharing in the next version! http://www.ewtoo.org/~matt/wirehang/ |
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| I LOVE THIS GAME!! Thank you! |
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| Not a problem - I'm glad you like it! If you want to, thank the Japanese guy that thought it up. |
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| Pretty cool, but the mouse cursor needs to be hidden as I keep trying to aim at the cursor, which I don't think would be that bad actually. |
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| Love the game -- simple and addictive. |
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| Glad you are all still liking it. Hi score challenge and new modes coming soon. You can hide the mouse with the M key, don't forget to read the docs! ;) |
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| Gah, I can't play this. Every time I click outside of the teeny tiny window the game loses focus and freezes. |
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| Love this game, but I have one suggestion maybe if you lock the mouse in the center and use a mousexspeed and mouseyspeed to incress and decress the angle instead of the mouse location it would improve on the mouse going off the screen all the time and this would help on game play... anyways nice game :P |
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| Minor issues: It's annoying that you die when you drop below a certain height even though you've launched a hook that would have saved you. I think your hook should be allowed to run its course if launched before you drop, and you only die if you are below the bottom of the window AND you have no active hook OR the hook has missed. I also suggest the mouseX alone should determine hook direction. So if mouse is at left side of window, you fire directly left. |
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| @9572AD: don't click out of the window then. ;) you can also resize the window if it's too small? @fbepyon: not heard of the mousexspeed command, so i will look that up right now. i do wonder how you'd get away from the window if i locked the mouse in the window centre? @podperson: that's the skill of the game, to be able to exploit the small below screen recovery zone to fire hooks of Marvelous distances. not sure just having mousex affect angle would solve anything? What I have just thought of is having the space bar also fire a hook, so you can use the mouse to aim and space to fire. This would reduce the need to click and lose window focus. ;) |
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| I agree that it's a skill feature, but it seems to me that the cut-off is more artibtrary than it should be. The lose focus thing is actually an exploit -- you can deliberately lose focus, then aim carefully. |
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| With mouse cursor hidden you can get the red dot to do odd things with the mouse near the bottom of the screen (like appear in the center of the dial). Click with the red dot down there and the program crashes. BTW -- with mouse cursor hidden it becomes VERY hard to aim sideways. |
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| Hi podperson, Thanks for spotting the bug when the mouse is very close to the radar! This has been fixed ready for the next release, which will be next week. As to the size of the recovery zone, what do you suggest? |
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| I'd suggest that there be no recovery zone per se, but if you get a hook off before you fall off the screen the hook can save you if it sticks to something... As for how far the hook can go, I'd say it can only bounce off ONE side wall and can only go the height of the screen (which means it can't reach diagonally from bottom left to bottom right). Some other ideas: 1) Not so evenly spaced ledges 2) Not all ledges at a given level the same width (e.g. all 5 blocks, then mix of 4 and 5, then all 4, then mix of 4 and 3...) 3) Ledges that block/reflect the hook but can't stick. Anyway, I love the game. I wish it wouldn't lose focus, and that the hook direction were based purely on mouseX, but it's very addictive. |
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| Thanks. I love the game too, the Japanese guy that made the original has become a hero of mine ;) I've added the space bar to fire the hook, which will cure the focus issue. Look out for the new release soon. I have some great ideas for the Extra mode (ie. the mode that strays from the original). Thanks for your suggestions. |
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| Is there any way window resizing could be constrained to maintain the aspect ratio? Or a key for scaling the window to fit the available space in proportion? |
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| There are a couple of tools that can be used to resize a Window. The one I use at home attaches to system menu and even provides a right click menu on the border of the window. http://www.brianapps.net/sizer.html The WireHang window (without chrome) is 320x240, if you try to resize it smaller it won't go. Sizer will tell you what the actual size of the window is, then you can deduce the size of the chrome (varies between 98,2K and XP) and enter values for a 2x window size, or whatever. |
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| Anybody know Japanese? ;) http://www.forest.impress.co.jp/article/2004/07/06/wirehangredux.html edit: English translation up at the Wire Hang Redux page above. |
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| If you look at that page on your G5 you can probably copy and paste the text into sherlock and translate it. |
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| Thanks for the tip, I'll try it later. I tried translating it using Alta Vista's Babel Fish, but it was quite nonsensical. |
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| Sherlock uses the same translation system as Babel Fish (SysTran) so it gave the exact same output - albeit faster. I've just added a boss key to the game, new graphics will follow soon. |
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| WORK IN PROGRESS 13 July - Added boss key that makes window look like Notepad (TAB). 05 July - Added window icon. Getting ready for hiscore sharing (again). 29 June - Optimised collision detection. Space bar can be used instead of mouse button. 25 June - Added some sound effects in preparation for Extra mode. |
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| Mac version released. Thanks BlitzMax! |
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