Caboodle - Alpha
Community Forums/Showcase/Caboodle - Alpha
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| A very alpha version of Caboodle which has been in development for just over 10 days, it should be ready for release soon. This evaluation is limited to 20 mins run time. This is our first BlitzMax project and are very pleased with the results so far. You may have some Audio issues as we had to delve into the BMAX source code to reduce the latency of the PlaySound command. This will hopefully be fixed in a new version of BMAX. Please try switching the resolutions, and renderer and please report FPS. The FPS shown on screen is the actual speed of the game loop, the reason it is so high is that the GFX render code is limited to approx 60FPS. Play with Keyboard or GamePad, use either/or Mouse for menus. The ides is to Match groups of four blocks by moving and rotating the pieces as they fall down the screen. Cursor Up rotates, cursor down drops the piece. http://www.caboodlegame.com/downloads/caboodle_alpha.zip   |
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| Unfortunately, All I got was a black screen when the window opened up (Music was playing). Probably something with BlitzMax's graphic engine. Specs: WindowsXP,Direct8.1,126MB Ram,Celeron 1300mhz, Intel Graphics Chip. |
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| plays well, no glaring problems with it. looks like something you could play in your lunch breaks at work ot something like that. it's pretty good :) |
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| All I got was a black screen when the window opened up (Music was playing). Probably something with BlitzMax's graphic engine. It's the Intel Graphics chipset. Some people have managed to get BMax working fine after a driver update. |
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| Hi, It lacks tension. It takes too long to build up any kind of mess, I played for 15 minutes before getting to a point where it was challenging. A simple solution would be to make the playfield smaller, or add obstacles from the start. The 'Next' display should be reversed, blocks drop down, yet the next block is displayed at the top. There are some unexplained things in the demo, like: 1: what are the red blocks for 2: why does stuff all of a sudden move around 3: what are the blocks with colored dots in them 4: what are the meters at the bottom and sides And it happened a few times that blocks that should be removed stuck around, so only half a square remained. It was removed at the next sweep. It happened when the sweep was simultaneously with a drop. The music is nice. |
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| This alpha version has a lot of features to assist gameplay enabled at the start. Redblocks : Obstacles, they can not be removed. Coloured Dots:- These are various objects to assist gameplay - Red : Remove blocks in a 4 block radius - Yellow : Link and remove all connected blocks - Green : Flip Board Horizontally - Blue : Flip board vertically When a meter reaches the full level it emits an energy charge that removes all blocks in line with it. Fixed the 1/2 sqaure thingie |
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| I liked it, smooth and relaxing:). Only suggestion I would make is to make more powerups and level changes. Special FX are awesome by the way. |
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| The final game will have stages which you unlock, each stage has new music and gfx (blocks, grid and background and particles). We will also be releasing skin packs which will again include sounds, music and new graphic elements. The alpha version is the Space Skin others in development are:- - Cartoon - Psycodelic |
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| Is this based on the PSP game? |
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| Loosely based on a hybrid of Columns (circa 1980) and Tetris with some gameplay elements influenced by Lumines. |
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| Not even nearly as good as GEOM. Its just my taste tho, i dont like these kinds of matching bricky games. And i know its alpha and that the finished demo might be better. I think its just a variant on so many very similar games like it. Its just that i get the same exact feeling when playing it as i do if i play any other games. The music is a bit boring, who makes your music? |
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| This music is just a place holder it belongs to someone else somewhere else. I write all the music for the games including the music for GEOM and previous titles. |
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| I think you may need to adjust the joypad dead zone (or make it adjustable?). The menu kept 'floating' to the top. In game, the boxes were continually rotating and I couldn't move using the joypad which made it a bit hard to play. :o) Graphically, both GL and DX seemed to work fine at all resolutions. 'FPS' (DX): Menu - 330,000 -> 344,000 In game - 57,000 (empty grid) -> 8,000 (nearly full grid) [edit] Joypad : Sidewinder Pro I couldn't remap or reconfigure the controller either [/edit] |
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| No issues here, both renderers worked fine. 300,000 fps menu 120,000 in game Nice looking, but rather dull. I love playing lumines, which this is based on, but IMO this is missing *something* to make me want to keep playing. A few things I can think of, (probably personal preference things) Sorry for all the comparisons to Lumines, but that's basically what this is. 1. the blocks drop smoothly,... I think this would be better if they dropped full squares at a time, making the movement a bit more "clicky" 2. The timesweep. In lumines, it is constantly moving across, so you can see how you need to get a piece down before it passes. Perhaps if you want it to go across so fast, you could add a sound to let the player know it is coming. It could also come by just a bit more frequently, it's too easy to build big combos now. 3. when a piece is partially completed as the timline passes, it is not removed. This is correct, but it stays flagged for removal on the next pass,... this is incorrect. (Of course, I'm comparing to lumines again) 4. When a piece is dropped, it would be nice to only drop while the key is held down, so you can do a half drop, or make a quick correction during the drop. That's all I can think of right now, good luck. |
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| The Gamepad is more trouble than it's worth. I'll go back to the code to see what can be done. Thanks for the feedback so far. |
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