Swarm Development: Postmortem

Baron · Thu 27/10/2011 05:09:19

BETA 5

UPDATES FROM LAST BUILD:
-Readme
-Mad scientist telephone animation and background
-Alarm flashes in command centre
-clearer credits font (difficult due to the game colour depth not supporting alpha channels, but hopefully it is more readable than last time)
-credits spelling fixed
-magnets background doesn't stand out from fridge anymore
-TAB should bring up new inventory (er.... not tested)
-Rogue tooltip labels fixed
-Mouse disappears for cutscenes
-Crashing bug fixed
-Vampire Twin sisters cutscene now has a background (of sorts....)
-Message stating how to access inventory

STILL MISSING:
-2 voice lines for Merrick (in progress)
-Some sounds (in progress)

Let me know if you see something out of place. I'm really angling for a weekend release so that it will be available by Hallowe'en in all time zones.

Ghost · Thu 27/10/2011 06:00:58

Now downloading.

- Credits font still a bit jagged when playing windowed at x2 filter. It has improved though.

- Custom text window? I got one right here...

x3

- "Dat banana might come in handy." Best quote ever. Whoever plays this without grinning must be DEAD.

- Found nothing that hasn't been mentioned. And it's awesome! Congrats, Baron, and yay Swarm!

Armageddon · Thu 27/10/2011 06:41:12

This is great! Just two things I noticed, why does clicking on the title skip the intro? And 'drop item' in the inventory seemed strange to me at first, I thought I was actually going to place it on the ground, shouldn't it be 'select'? Also, most every item is still a pixel hunt to get and I don't know how to set it to 2x scale.

ShiverMeSideways · Thu 27/10/2011 06:50:33

The last two Merrick lines shall be delivered today!

Dualnames · Thu 27/10/2011 07:03:18

Quote from: ShiverMeSideways on Thu 27/10/2011 06:50:33
The last two Merrick lines shall be delivered today!

filthy lies!!

Hudders · Thu 27/10/2011 07:27:48

Bravo

There are still tooltips on the cutscenes. I can move my (invisible) cursor around and see "Mad Scientist" floating in the air. This is pretty minor though.

The telephone animation is fantastic btw. Far better than what I was expecting. And with the flashing lights behind it just looks awesome.

Ghost · Thu 27/10/2011 12:14:38

Quote from: Armageddon on Thu 27/10/2011 06:41:12
...and I don't know how to set it to 2x scale.

Run winsetup and select the x2 graphics filter.

I'm playing windowed here mostly and agree that some items are small enough to miss them first place, but since there aren't that many locations it's no big issue IMO.

cat · Thu 27/10/2011 12:52:48

I had no problems with pixelhunt.

I have to agree that "Drop item" is a bit misleading, I thought I would drop the item to the floor too. Could you rename it to "Deselect" or something?

Tabata · Thu 27/10/2011 20:30:01

I am playing in fullscreen whenever possible, so this might be the reason, why I don't have probs with pixelhunting.
The telephone scene is highly powerful and I really like, what you made of it.

It's very impressive to see this nice little game now getting near to the final stage
and I am proud of all the swarmies and especially for the leader of the pack, who makes it possible.

Baron, you are really ... "a good daddy, swarm queen ..."

Jackpumpkinhead · Thu 27/10/2011 20:41:44

Quote from: Tabata on Thu 27/10/2011 20:30:01
I am playing in fullscreen whenever possible, so this might be the reason, why I don't have probs with pixelhunting.
The telephone scene is highly powerful and I really like, what you made of it.

It's very impressive to see this nice little game now getting near to the final stage
and I am proud of all the swarmies and especially for the leader of the pack, who makes it possible.

Baron, you are really ... "a good daddy, swarm queen ..."

for sure
i am really happy with it too

Icey · Thu 27/10/2011 20:56:22

If it wasn't fixed yet, Baron you could set the mouse position to 1x1 and same goes for it's bounds. Then back to 320x240.

Armageddon · Thu 27/10/2011 21:34:45

Quote from: cat on Thu 27/10/2011 12:52:48
I had no problems with pixelhunt.

I have to agree that "Drop item" is a bit misleading, I thought I would drop the item to the floor too. Could you rename it to "Deselect" or something?

Or just unselect with right-mouse button like you can do when the GUI isn't open.

Snarky · Thu 27/10/2011 22:20:21

Quote from: Armageddon on Thu 27/10/2011 21:34:45
Or just unselect with right-mouse button like you can do when the GUI isn't open.

This.
So much this.

Also, the cleaner way to not have mouseover labels when in a cutscene is probably... to make the mouseover label not visible when in a cutscene.

Armageddon · Thu 27/10/2011 22:35:21

Or you could just not give that object a label. Just make it a space or something.

Baron · Thu 27/10/2011 23:16:14

RE: TOOLTIP LABEL - I forgot to disable the label in all cutscenes when I disabled the mouse. Should be fixed now.

RE: DROP ITEM BUTTON - Yes, "deselect" or "select" would have been my choice too, but neither fits very neatly onto such a small button in such a small resolution. You have to appreciate those letters are only 4 pixels high -there's not a lot that can be done with that space and still make sense. I like the right click option. I've implemented it for right-clicking the GUI background, but I can't figure out how to intercept right-clicks for the Inventory window (i.e. not the items, which need the right-click for descriptions) -any ideas?

RE: SKIPPING INTRO WHEN CLICKING ON TITLE - Well, there wasn't a "skip intro" button on the new title screen, but for testing purposes it was handy.... Frankly I'm inclined to leave it as a feature in case someone wants to replay. I don't think a lot of people will randomly click the title by mistake....

RE: PIXEL HUNTS - It is a 320x200 game. I have it set up to run full-screen, since I have a hard time even reading the text at 320x200 let alone seeing the details. I guess that explains some people having problems exiting rooms as well.... Given the level of detail of our art I really do recommend running the game in full screen mode. I had assumed that since I had the compiled folder's WinSetUp configured that way it would be the default on other people's machines as well, but I guess that's not the case. Does anyone know how to make this the default, so that people would have to intentionally change the settings to run in a window?

RE: CUSTOM TEXT BOX -I like the art, but the colours I feel are all wrong. Any suggestions? If we're going to pursue this I also humbly request that you frame in those elements so that I know what to select and what to cut (your art runs between segments).

If anyone has some last minute sounds I'd appreciate them. I'm off to scour the internet for an alarm, a phone ringing, a CRASH! and a BOOM! Anything else we'll just have to do without unless someone else finds the time for it.

Ghost · Thu 27/10/2011 23:35:58

Re TxtWin:
Sorry, my bad! This one's clearer and more in style with the overall palette I hope; feel free to alter if necessary. It's cleaner, too, with all panels the same size and less clutter.

x3

Armageddon · Thu 27/10/2011 23:39:59

Quote from: Baron on Thu 27/10/2011 23:16:14
RE: PIXEL HUNTS - It is a 320x200 game. I have it set up to run full-screen, since I have a hard time even reading the text at 320x200 let alone seeing the details. I guess that explains some people having problems exiting rooms as well.... Given the level of detail of our art I really do recommend running the game in full screen mode. I had assumed that since I had the compiled folder's WinSetUp configured that way it would be the default on other people's machines as well, but I guess that's not the case. Does anyone know how to make this the default, so that people would have to intentionally change the settings to run in a window?

It is set to full screen by default, but when I play AGS games I always make sure it's not fullscreen because I hate blurry pixels, and when it stretches my resolution it resizes windows which also annoys me, could you just add an option to double the screen size? That's what I use for all AGS game that allow it. I'm a picky person I know.

That new text box looks great!

EDIT: Oh I didn't see the 2x filter thing, nevermind. I'm used to having a box that shows the size you choose. Also it takes like two seconds to skip past the cut scene at the start, but that's just me.

Baron · Thu 27/10/2011 23:51:04

Well I tried the 3x filter and it looks much crisper than full-screen, so I guess we'll release it like that for people who like to do multiple things at once (

). Unless you guys think there are a lot of people with low res screens that can't handle that, in which case 2x would be safer as the default?

Thanks for the new text box, Ghost. The skulls on the corners would have been cool, but the new one I think better suits the game.

Armageddon · Fri 28/10/2011 00:12:41

I think 2x would be good.

Also I added the black bars to the control room background and I animated it because a control room that doesn't move isn't a control room.

Hudders · Fri 28/10/2011 00:38:27

I did actually record my phone ringing on the first take of my voiceover but I get so few phonecalls that I hadn't realised my phone sounds nothing like anybody else's... it's less a *ring ring* and more of a *meheheheeheh* kind of noise... so, I cut it out.

Also it was incredibly loud and, upon picking up the phone, I completely forgot what I was doing. Clearly I am unable to read a script and also hold a telephone. It's a good job I'm not an actor.