Super Hamster Ball Released
Community Forums/Showcase/Super Hamster Ball Released
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| I'm happy to announce that Super Hamster Ball is now available from superhamsterball.com Those of you who have followed my worklog over the past couple of years will know what Super Hamster Ball is all about, but for those that don't it's a game where you must control a hamster in a ball by tilting the level, and avoid it falling off the edge. The full version has 60 levels in all, spread across six game zones (garden, garage, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and attic), with three difficulty modes and three unique endings. There's also a freeplay mode for playing individual levels, where you can try and beat your best score for that level and also save replays and share them with others. Super Hamster Ball also comes complete with it's own level editor, so you can create your own level paks and then play them from within the game itself. A couple of screenshots:   More screenshots can be found here. Download the demo from here. |
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| Sweet ! ( Made In Blitz ) |
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| A parody of Super Monkey Ball, I assume? |
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| Super Monkey Ball? What's that? [insert huge winkey smiley here] |
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| Super Monkey Ball ( and SMB 2 ) is a Gamecube game by SEGA that is the same as super hamster ball, just with one of 4 monkeys in the ball. :) |
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| Irony is lost on some :) Congratulations on completing it, nice game |
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| Simply amazing game. Wonderful feel & execution. I will not go on suffice to say I'm really quite impressed. I will point out everything thats wrong about it though as this IMHO is the only way I can help: 1. the tutorial should be one button and three missions, then done. Don't make them go back to it. 2. [edited]: the menu doesn't make it clear that different difficulties mean different levels. I first tried medium thinking it's the normal challenge and got a rock hard level. This turned me off from the game... perhaps call them "worlds" instead... with a brief caption of how difficult it is. With a picture of the world style. 3. Try making the hamster sprite rock gently and almost imperceptibly left and right as the speech bubble comes up - it will make him seem more alive. Put little shines on the buy and continue buttons to entice people to click. Everything is just a little bit too static. Small differences make big differences to people who haven't seen your game before. I believe a little quality assurance and polish will make a huge difference. The game overall is nearly perfect but needs a few small but firm changes that are easy to do. In it's current state I will stake my reputation on you losing many sales over a poor choice of first level (see above, I started on medium thinking all were the same). Add a little bit more life to the gui and a little more get up and go. Streamline the options screen and definately streamline the turorial - there is no need at all to have 3. The less work for the user to learn, the better, so make the user do all 3 one after the other without any extra button clicks. All in all, a great production that suprised me. I'd like to see it do really well. |
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| Oh yeah! as regards to pimping, the screenshots don't show the wild rotation that makes this genre fun - add some colourful maximum tilt shots so people will get an inkling of the fun to be had! |
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| OK, thanks for the detailed feedback Rob. I'll see what I can do about those suggestions. I'm surprised you consider the first medium level rock hard - I guess I'll have to consider making things easier. |
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| It was quite clear that it was meant as irony. I just wanted to make sure that even no-console gamers understand that the game is much of a copy and not much of "originality" ... which is, sadly :(, standard for most pc games ... Perhaps you find some ways to extend the ideas of the game, especially as the best part of the 2 games were the minigames and sport games :) |
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| Nice game. Where did you get the inspiration to make such a game? EDIT - :) |
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| .... -_- ..*rolls eyes and smacks himself in the forehead...* |
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| Ahhhh! I hate you! :-) With my own ball rolling code you have completed a better ball rolling game than I'm ever likely to finish! I enjoyed the first set of levels I played more than I enjoyed any of the levels I've played in SMB. |
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| *rolls eyes and smacks "theduck" in the forehead* |
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| Downloadin.... never mind downloaded in 7 seconds. Time to go play. |
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| Very sweet ... I might have to list 2 Independent games of the month this month. |
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| Well done Simon. Very nice game. Couple of things you might want to tweak/fix: Seems to require you to be over exact on where you sit the ball in the finish circle to end the level. I noticed the first credit page isn't numbered correctly: it says "1/1" when it should say "1/2". As regards difficulty: I played on medium and found it frustratingly hard with the mouse (for my first couple of goes), but satisfyingly hard with the keyboard. Hope that helps you tweak it. All the best with it! |
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| Fun game, I didn't much like the camera control though. It gets in the way having to manually turn the camera. |
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| minor 'bug'... on world 1-3, (easy level 3) I completed it, and at the end it's a fairly fast pace you're going (2 hills yeah) and I zoomed over the finish pad thinking I'd have a nice fast finish, but the collision failed to register, leading to a lot of fustration as I'd legitmately done the level. You might want to consider extending the collision zone higher at least... |
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| Yep, as mentioned, extend the collision zone but carry on (or blend) the animation. I agree with what Blood said earlier about renaming the hardness buttons as worlds. These are all minor niggles. It is a very nice package. |
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| Problem with difficulty might possibly be that you're only getting 3 tries on each difficulty level with the demo version. If you ran through all 20 easy levels on the full version before attempting the medium levels, they might not be so difficult. Maybe in the demo, run through about 6-8 easy levels so the player can get a feel for what the game will do and one medium and one hard level so that the player can know what challenges are yet to come? Just my opinion, I am in no way a marketing expert. :) BTW, I've never heard of Monkey Ball. Most of my video games are played on the PC. One more thing, I really like this game and am considering registering it. When you get the end zone problem fixed and such, I'm sure you'll have the upgrades available? I didn't see any upgrade policy stated on the registration page. |
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| Yes, upgades will be available to full version owners. I'll tweak the zone thing and a few other things shortly. |
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| I zoomed off the end too, but I thought it was like that deliberately in order to sucker me. Which I kind of liked. |
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| The zooming off the end didn't really bother me. I just think it forces you to slow down and be more careful. But there are times when you are fully in the circle, not going full speed and it still doesn't register because you are not in that exact spot. In the camera tutorial, at the end it tells you to go to the end zone. I walked over it again and again without it registering. I finally had to force the hamster to stop in the circle, then nudge the hamster little by little til he was centered just right. |
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| Excellent work simonh, very polished. Bit of feedback for you: * There are some artifacts on the mouse arrow pointer image (menu pointer). * The first medium level was much harder than the second and third, for me at least. * On the free play level selector, when selecting a different world, it might be a good idea to auto-select the first level in that world. Then the new world will also be visible in the mini screenshot. As it stands, if you select kitchen, the garden world is still displayed in the screenshot. Yet another great Blitz game, good luck with it! :) |
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| OK, I sent you stuff through the feedback form however, here's some more comments: You can slip through the disks on level 3 (bloody annoying) I think you should make the demo 5 levels, but get the learning curve right, levels 1 and 2 are so easy by comparison to level 3 it's frightening. Level 3 is long enough to have rescue points so you don't need to keep doing the whole thing over and over. Other than that though, bloody good, enjoyed it, the tiltly level (world) thing is good. I've not played monkey ball so I don't know how much of a rip off this is, but it feels right. Nicely polished. Like the growing icons when you roll over them. A couple of bonus level suggestions: Evil sub game where it stops being cutesy and you run over bunnies or something causing massive blood baths. :) A level where you have to roll your way out of someones arsehole after you've been inserted for their pleasure? OK, probably not inkeeping with the rest of the game? |
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| Evil sub game where it stops being cutesy and you run over bunnies or something causing massive blood baths. :) A level where you have to roll your way out of someones arsehole after you've been inserted for their pleasure? OH MY! That's hilarious. Anyway, I'll be picking this title up. I think it will be my November game of the month. |
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| A couple of bonus level suggestions: Evil sub game where it stops being cutesy and you run over bunnies or something causing massive blood baths. :) A level where you have to roll your way out of someones arsehole after you've been inserted for their pleasure? Well, the full version does come with a level editor. :) |
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| Congratulation, very nice game! |
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| This is some very nice stuff. I was pretty good at the monkey ball for the Cube, so i don't find anything to hard here. Man, it plays like it too. I love this :o) Only thing is the camera. It is a little fiddly :o) But it works excellently. Very good work. Rotating collisions and all! |
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| A cool idea for a level would be the lights turn off sometimes for a short period of time. This would be fairly nerve wracking, and welcome if limited to only 1 or 2 levels. Other ideas would be a level where you have two rollers in the ground, which if you roll forwards or back wards on, it causes various levers to move, doors to raise, drawbridges to lower, etc... moving off it sideways will allow you to continue. Those are all ideas that are 'too late' now but maybe for a sequel :) |
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| Something tells me Simonh isn't going to be particularly receptive to grand fancy new ideas when he's just finally finished and released the game... Having said that, it wouldn't hurt to have each level start by being propelled from someone's arsehole. I'm thinking kind of like the launch sequence in Elite? |
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| Having said that, it wouldn't hurt to have each level start by being propelled from someone's arsehole. Thanks for helping me give my monitor a coffee rinse. [edit: And making that comment shamed me into playing it -- what a fun game! May very well end up getting this one. Nice job Si!] |
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| great work. one of the most fun games ive played in blitz. though, 90 seconds? thats not enough :( great work :D Something tells me Simonh isn't going to be particularly receptive to grand fancy new ideas when he's just finally finished and released the game... New monitor required here too... i just wish i could stop laughing.... |
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| It's got a toilet roll in it! Respect! :) |
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| Hi! I've never played any other game like this so imho i think it's tops. I know peeps are saying its an copy of a sega game but Ive never played it so can't really compare. Good work Simon :) |
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| OK, thanks for the detailed feedback Rob. I'll see what I can do about those suggestions. I'm surprised you consider the first medium level rock hard - I guess I'll have to consider making things easier. I would have to agree. But then I suck at these types of games. Lemmings for example stymies me after about 10 - 15 levels. :) I found the easy worlds just that. Easy. Well... I died twice on the third one because I didn't expect the pinball thingy to come whack me off the bridge. And another time cuz I didn't know the platform was moving... But other than that, pretty easy. Medium... tried it 3 times and gave up. Got further each time but it still didn't seem like a gradual step up from "easy". Didn't try the other levels. I will say that despite my suckiness I did enjoy it for the few minutes I tried it. So much so that it might actually be the first blitz-made game I buy... That 14.95 price is....... enticing. |
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| Well done! I love this cute hamster... :) |
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| I enjoyed, but it needs something extra. Perhaps a chance to bounce back up if you fall off?. It seems too harsh to get totally killed just for one slip. Thats the main thing that put me off. Graphically nice and generally fun. |
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| I found it a lot easier with the keys. And I keep coming back to it, which is a good sign for a game. Often I just uninstall and don't look back :) |
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| simonh, after playing the full version for a while, I have noticed a very serious bug. Seems some of my system resources are being depleted. The first thing I noticed was that I was loosing a lot of time. I figured it would return after I finished just one more level, but then I began loosing sleep. Then it seemed that procrastination crept in affecting all my other projects. I really think you should look at these issues and do something about the problems. Thanks. |
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| Haha, thanks TomToad. You actually had me worried there to begin with... |
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| I like it with my analog gamepad ;) |
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| Thats a good game. thanks The thing I dont like is the goal, you have to be almost stopped on an exact spot to get the goal. It would be much better if you changed it so you could just hit anywhere on the goal area and you win, without always worrying about going too far and running right over the goal, then falling out the other side. I like the level editor also. I couldnt find any bugs. |
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| Just tried my gamepad. A Saitek P880. Used the analog thumbstick on it and it is much easier than a mouse. Use the buttons to change camera view instantly instead of having to stop, then change views with the RMB. |
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| Great game, just about to buy it. One question before I do. How versatile is the level editor? Could you give us some more info on what it can do? I will still buy it regardless. Jason. |
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| I've found the editor to be very versatile. I don't think there is a level in the game that couldn't be created with the included editor. There are 5 basic platform shapes; square, angle, outer curve, inner curve, and ring. They can be combined together to form custom shapes such as doorways, discs, ramps, etc... There are already some custom shapes included. You can also import from a modeling program. I haven't messed with that yet. You can create textures for the levels as well. The editor comes with 2. A green checkered texture (like you see in the garden level) and concrete, but you can add more as you go along. You can create zones wich modify the behavior of the platforms; moving, turning, rotating, tilting, etc... I'm still experimenting with what the editor can do. It'll be fun trading levels with people and see what everyone comes up with. |
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| How versatile is the level editor? Well TomToad explains it quite well, but basically the editor allows you to do anything within the constraints of the game. You can't expand it unfortunately to create new hazard types of new types of collectables, but everything else is possible. I don't think there is a level in the game that couldn't be created with the included editor. Well there shouldn't be, as all the levels in the game were created with the editor :) |
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| It plays quite well with my XBox controller too. It's not quite my cup of tea, but I'll rope the missus in to have a go, she'll probably like it. |
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| OK I`ve got it :) I must say that it`s one of the most fun Blitz made games I`ve played (and frustrating, in a good way though) and the inclusion of such a great level editor really tops it off for me. I encourage you all to go and buy it, it`s a real bargain. I would like to see a feature to turn off that timer though, especially in my own levels but barring that it`s ace! One small question before I go. How on earth do you get your .ogg format songs to loop so well? Could you give us some idea as to how this is done as I cannot manage it with my own songs and I`m sure there are others out there like me, at least I hope there is ;) Jason. |
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| One small question before I go. How on earth do you get your .ogg format songs to loop so well? Not sure to be honest - the musician supplied with me the songs and I just used PlayMusic! I think it's mainly due to the songs having the tiniest of pauses at the start/end, as well as a dramatic change in the tune. Thanks for the nice comments. |
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| Your welcome :) Thanks for the neat game! Jason. |
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| Very nice game! Could you shed some light on using Blitz3D with ActiveX? Very interesting idea and seems to work really well. Thanks, |
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