Re: [pygame] Frantic 0.9.7a

["Brian Fisher" <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dave,

I played the version on your site as of Monday March 13th

Frantic was a lot more fun and addictive for me than the last version.
It's looking more polished, and I think it has a pretty good reward
schedule (in that it pays off a little quickly and often, but has big
rewards that you can't get that often that drive you to keep playing)

The music is fantastic, quite perfect for the game, I think

The cloaking mines (with the spinning starfields) look awesome

> One thing you'll notice this time around is that Frantic only supports
> keyboard input.  I have yet to invest the time in a workable mouse input
> that doesn't completely change game play.
>
I think you're probably best to drop mouse control as an option and
just focus on making keyboard control really awesome. I think you
could make great mouse control, but like you can tell, it would be a
different game. The time experimenting with mouse stuff would probably
be better spent perfecting the keyboard control

The control works nice, but there are still a few places where it
feels a little sloppy to me. One is when the ship sticks to a side of
the screen (I'd just zero the x velocity when you hit the side walls,
and just the y velocity for the top & bottom)
Also, I think it helps that you slow down the turning rate when moving
forward or backward (you have a bit more control), but I think the
turning is too slow in these cases. The ship didn't feel responsive
when going from a standing turn to a moving one and vice versa

The one control thing that caused me the most trouble though is the
way another shot comes out as soon as your current one is done if you
are pressing the shoot button - I'd make it so that each weapon has a
fixed repeat rate when the button is held, independent of the number
of shots out. It felt sloppy when it shot multiple times, but worse it
ruined my accuracy when I shot something up close (because of the
second shot) and it didn't feel like my fault

... I really wanted good accuracy too, because of that ten shot kill
all thing. It's a very smart and cool addition that I think improves
the reward schedule a lot. It's kind of like hitting the jackpot on a
slot machine. I think it's worth playing it up a whole lot more. I
would suggest adding some clues for the consecutive shots leading up
to the 10th hit (maybe starting at the 4th or 5th?). Like some sounds
that build in pitch for the ones closest to the tenth. Or adding
something to the explosions as they get closer to the 10th too (maybe
layer the blue spark effect on top, to tie it in to the final reward).
Also, it might be nice to have the ninth shot have some mini effect
(killing a few enemies around it) similar to the 10th (like a
preview). In addition, If it was really clear when you are about to
make the tenth hit attempt, it would build the tension a lot. Like
maybe after nine you have some little effect that plays over you,
and/or some periodic sound to show you've got some energy behind the
shot. Then if you miss you could have some descending pitch sound, to
kind of punctuate the disappointment that you missed.

I like the way the explosions look like fireworks, since people will
see them so often the cooler they are the better, and it's a very
rewarding effect (makes me want to blow stuff up more)

I like the way the explosions are nice and slow, so that you get more
chains. The chains are something else I think it would be cool to play
up more. It would be cool to make it feel more like a chain reaction
that builds - so like maybe the explosions get bigger as the chains go
farther (making it more likely to get even bigger chains from those
that are 4 or 5 long) I'm thinking that the more you can get it to
feel like occasionally you really hit the jackpot with some huge
chain, the more it would drive people to keep playing to get that
reward. also maybe the bonus score could double each time or
something.

The sound in general is understated, which I think is good for the
game. I think it would feel better with some additional rewarding
sounds (like mentioned above) but all the existing sounds seem good

I like that you get end of level bonuses based on your stats - I think
you'd get more mileage out of them by moving the tally from the bottom
middle up to the center of the screen or something.

I noticed that the "speed" setting seemed to relate to the number of
enemies out at once, as opposed to the speed of enemies. It didn't
match my expectation based on the name of the option, and I think what
I most wanted to play was levels full of enemies, but where they move
slower. Also, it made me think I'd like to be able to play a
"survival" level, like in crimsonland (or like the way the original
tetris plays...) where the level starts out slow, and just gets more
and more crazy until you die, and you're ranked based on your final
score

All in all, it's quite cool, I'm looking forward to seeing more