Calus’s Haven

Many of us have heard of Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, which is infamous for being released as an unfinished game. Many critics also cites it as being one of the worst game of all time.



GameSpot’s Alex N. gave it a 1.0, this is the lowest score ever given to a game on the site…that record still stands today.

You would think Stellar Stone would quietly disappear and all employees would attempt to move on with their lives. But I guess this will not be the case, as they are currently working on Big Rigs: Online! The screenshot is hilarious; I am beginning to speculate if this company creates games just for laughs.

Sadly, I am having quite a difficult time trying to chose the graphic style along with the character graphic for LineWalk. After a day of looking through a ton of graphics ranging from the game Shift 3 and Exit 1, I have came up with these four choices.



Out of these four characters, one of them will be the one you will play in my game. Of course, the one that is chosen will be revamped to look a lot cleaner. So my question is what character, if any, looks the best? I am willing to take suggestions for both the characters and the game.

Gameplay
"You have one health point left and there are several enemy tanks surrounding you…"

This is a common situation in Bombard, which is a BYOND classic. Upon logging in, the user is greeted with a general guide that will teach them how to play this simple, yet addicting, game. Players can choose their tanks color by selecting its RGB. Essentially, as the guide states, Bombard is an artillery game where players take turns calculating trajectories and setting up shots attempting to take out their opponents.

The game is fairly simple, but what makes it a little more challenging is the addition of wind, which can alter a shot. You get one point every time you hit an enemy and you get a four point bonus if you take out the player completely. Two points are subtracted from you when you die while four will be subtracted if you commit suicide.

With the points you have accumulated over time, you can use them to buy secret weapons. These weapons can only appear once per game and can be expensive. But the damage they create is priceless.

In order to win this exhilarating game, you must put yourself over thirty points, but this is not as easy as it may sound.

Presentation
The guide in Bombard is rather straightforward, but it is informative. It explains all of the basic rules in this artillery game and it also tells you about each secret weapon.

The graphics for this style of game is tolerable, but I feel that the tank does not fit in well with the terrain. The map is randomly generated each time a new game starts, which will lead to players having a different experience each time.

One downfall to this game is that there is no sound; it would be nice to hear explosions from the missiles hitting player’s tanks and the ground.

Originality
This artillery game really does not add anything new to the well known artillery genre. There are a ton of games which are extremely comparable and there are even some that are a lot better. But with being the first artillery game for BYOND, I will give it a few points in this category.

Overall
Bombard is no doubt a beloved BYOND classic that people of all ages can enjoy. Even though Leftley no longer works on this, users can easily lose track of time while battling their friends or foes. It would be pretty neat to see Leftley update this game with a nice looking interface, but I do not see this happening anytime soon as he has mysteriously disappeared. I would recommend this game to any person looking to waste hours, while having fun!

Ignore the title, it has nothing really to do with this post, I just wanted to include line or walk.

Although I did not receive as many comments as I would have wished, I did speak to a few people who played my demo and they all enjoyed what little they saw. Because of this, it has motivated me to create a few small updates before I officially start working on my fighting concept I posted not too long ago.

For those who do not know, yesterday I created a post about LineWalk which is a demo where the user can draw lines to help them create paths towards victory. It uses several of my unreleased libraries such as c_pixel, c_display, and Pixel Mouse Drag.


This video is not as smooth as I would have wished.


As seen in the video, it is now a race against time in completing this basic map. I am now aiming to make LineWalk a platformer where users must attempt to get to the end (which in this test, is a yummy cake!). Users may be able to upload their fastest times to prove they are the "king of the lines" on a certain map. There will hopefully be several levels that come packaged with the game. I would also like to complete a make editor, where users can create challenging maps for others to play on.

Now I was discussing the following feature with someone, online 4 player racing. Now originally I disagreed with making this project an online platformer. But recently, I got a chance to see how LineWalk worked online; it went smooth although some of the collisions were off (which shall be fairly easy to correct). This online racing mode will allow you to connect with up to 4 other players and try to get the fastest speed on the map. Each player will be a color different than the other players, along with their lines. The person I was speaking with said it would be fun attempting to jump over users and blocking them off with your lines making them having to erase them.

I will like to get more videos out, especially with this online mode. As you can clearly see in the video I posted, it is not smooth, so I will need to find a way to fix that. I also fixed a few bugs such as the one Vermolius reported. I still cannot reproduce the crash bug, which is plaguing this game. But I now found out that it does not only occur when jumping on a box spring, but lines and grounds also. So if you find anything new about this bug, please report it!

Of course once I get this project off its feet I will give it a new name, but until then, it shall stay LineWalk. I also would not mind some obstacle ideas; so far I have box springs and spikes.

P.S. What would you recommend me to do to make these post more interesting? It feels like I'm not giving it enough "liveliness" to keep peoples attention and make them want to reply.

Not too long ago I got an idea of creating a single player platformer where users can draw lines to help them complete levels. I got pretty far; all it needed was more obstacles, a story mode, and a map creator. But I lost interest mid way and stopped working on the game. Originally, this game was named "WoodnString" but I just changed it to LineWalk Demo seeing as this is an incomplete demo.



In this demo I used my c_pixel library. This dealt with nearly all of the pixel related stuff in this demo. For example, it allowed me to define the collision box of an object by setting its x1, x2, y1, and y2. I also used my Pixel Mouse Drag demo which allows me to drag on a tile, pixel by pixel. (Both the library and demo have not been released)

I know this demo is quite choppy at the moment as there are several bugs in this demo, one is with the movement. Pressing right and left and then letting go one of the keys will sometimes make you run faster. Also, switching from left to right, or vice versa, very fast will not allow you to move. I know how to fix these problems but I am far too lazy to do so at this moment. I also cannot find out why this bug occurs, but randomly the game will crash while jumping on the spring box.

Hopefully I'll finish this game one day, I like the concept and potential. I can see a huge community in which they create challenging maps. Have fun with this test demo!

Controls:
Arrow Keys - Move
Left Click - Draw Line
Right Click - Erase Line

P.S. I'm still working on the concept I posted two days ago, I just wanted to stop this from rotting away on my desktop.

http://www.byond.com/games/CalusCoRPS/LineWalkDemo