Beat Ball 2

Community Forums/Showcase/Beat Ball 2

Imphenzia(Posted 2006) [#1]
Hello,

Got a game released a while back made using Blitz - so feel free to have a look at it :)

It's the sequel to Beat Ball (another Arkanoid clone) but this time with advanced graphics, more features, multi player support, internet highscores, level editor, media pack editor, voice pack editor and much much more!

General game page:
http://www.imphenzia.com/games/beatball2.asp

Direct download:
http://www.imphenzia.com/games/files/bb2/BeatBall2.zip

Screenshots:
http://www.imphenzia.com/games/beatball2_screenshots.asp

Have fun!

Stefan


Barnabius(Posted 2006) [#2]
Actually CTCC looks much more interesting (at least for me). Any chance of finishing that one soon?

Barney


Imphenzia(Posted 2006) [#3]
That's the idea :) Only 2 problems I am batteling with:

1) Internet LAN gaming is waayyyy tricky in 2D games I've noticed - it quickly gets very choppy and I sort of wish I'd done the whole thing in 2D in 3D - but it's too late as I've come so far on that game.

2) No car manufacturers will allow me to use their cars in the game really and fictious names takes the fun out of it

I'll do my best to complete the game though!


LineOf7s(Posted 2006) [#4]
2) No car manufacturers will allow me to use their cars in the game really and fictious names takes the fun out of it

Don't let that worry you. Supercars 2 didn't need 'real cars' to be the premier top-down racer of its day. (And if I'm totally wrong and it *did* have real cars... well, I didn't know about it - and it didn't hinder it.)

1) Internet LAN gaming is waayyyy tricky in 2D games I've noticed - it quickly gets very choppy and I sort of wish I'd done the whole thing in 2D in 3D - but it's too late as I've come so far on that game.

Since any internet multiplayer I'm likely to do anytime soon will be in 2D stuff, I'm curious as to what exactly you mean by this. I'm not sure I understand why 2D would be inherently choppier than 3D. I suppose it depends on how one defines 'choppy'. Could you elaborate, pretty please? :o)


Barnabius(Posted 2006) [#5]
Yes. The game speed is quite O.K., so it should work great over LAN. What LAN lib are you using? There are some great libs out there you can use. Changing 2D sprites into 3D sprites should not be too complicated. Just use nSprite2 or Sprite Candy. I am sure you can change everything into 3D sprites in a day or two.

Barney


Imphenzia(Posted 2006) [#6]
LineOf7s - when I calculate everything in 2D (aiming to get it "ultra" smooth) I have to make a multiplier for the refresh rate of the video board that I continiously multiply the car speeds with. In 3D I would have used a delta value to multiply with since last time an object was moved, but when I did trials with that method the car would maybe jump 4 pixels in one refresh, 2 pixels in the next, 3 after that, 1... then 5... and it really dropped the smoothness I was after. Since I calculate a multiplier, computers connecting through a LAN or over the Internet will be using different refreshrates and will get different multipliers that will be of slight advantage or disadvantage for some. not the best solution, I know, but I designed it before I started thinking about multiplayer. When I did my initial tests over LAN and Internet I struggled to come up with a good way to handle this, still having a play around with it.

Barna - I'm using BlitzPlay2.0 , any others around? I haven't looked for a while.

I also bought SpriteCandy before that I plan to use for future projects. I would improve performance _alot_ by converting CTCC to be using it - only issue I will have may be the tire marks as I alpha them ontop of the bitmap so they are presistent. Not sure if I can use the same method for the tracks if I go to 3D mode, would the limitations of the texture sizes have an effect considering my tracks are bitmaps of 1280x1024 and 1600x1200 (I wanted to make them like that instead of by tiles to make them more custom).

It's too late for me to write anything that makes sense I think =) Not too good at explaining tonight lol.

Thanks for the interest though :)


Grey Alien(Posted 2006) [#7]
Hey not bad, nice menus too. Couple I things I noticed:

- windowed mode doesn't let you take the mouse cursor out of the game! What's the point in windowed mode if you can't do that?

- Also in windowed mode the window title bar has no icon and there is no icon on the task bar either (well just a B3D one).

- The powerup woman's voice sounds like it was recorded in a small metal room, perhaps the reverb could be improved?

- When the explosions fade, they seem dithered. Why is this?

- I wish the ball (and maybe bat) were bigger.

- By the way, I've downloaded lots of your music in the past, it's really very good indeed (e.g. Himalaya Radio Edit, Try, Club Phaser etc). The game doesn't show enough of it off, the title music is good, reminds me of a couple of Airbase pieces but then lots of trance is similar to other trance just cos of the instruments used...

good luck with it!


QuickSilva(Posted 2006) [#8]
Just a quick question, is this made in Blitz3D?

Jason.


Grisu(Posted 2006) [#9]
Great work!

I just dislike the ball sound and the fact that I have to write down passwords. You should save the reached level somewhere.

@Quick: Yes, as you can see from the exe icon.


Grey Alien(Posted 2006) [#10]
Just a quick question, is this made in Blitz3D?
I say yes due to the B3d default icon on the taskbar.

[edit] oh, Grisu already said this...


Imphenzia(Posted 2006) [#11]
Hello - thanks for your comments :)

Grey Alien:

> windowed mode doesn't let you take the mouse cursor out of the game! What's the point in windowed mode if you can't do that?

Very good point =) Only problem was I couldn't release the mouse cursor when method of paddle movement was changed (the initial method lead to other problems)

> Also in windowed mode the window title bar has no icon and there is no icon on the task bar either (well just a B3D one)

Thanks will add that.

> The powerup woman's voice sounds like it was recorded in a small metal room, perhaps the reverb could be improved?

Believe it or not but the only microphone I had available at the time was a really crappy one and the PC fan revvs up too so much that it sounded awful. I am finally about to set up my music "studio" again so I plan to replace all the sounds. The reverb was a way to make it more arcadey and to coverup the quality issues :)

> When the explosions fade, they seem dithered. Why is this?

Not sure - should be 32 bit if that was chosen in the menu?

> I wish the ball (and maybe bat) were bigger.

Something I won't change because that is what I feel is wrong with every other arkanoid-clone, everyone insists to make both paddle and ball way toooo big for my liking :) but everyone's different

Glad you like the music. I decided to leave the music out of this game because Beat Ball (1) was 32 mb and I had so many complaints on how such a simple game should be so large in size. So I've now enabled so that you can drop any playlist or songs (obviously all the free ones available from www.imphenzia.com :)) into the subfolder "PlayMusic" - unfortunately I don't think too many people knows about it.

Grisu - I had that in Beat Ball 1 but decided to go for passwords after all. May reconsider and change it.