Red Jumpy Ball Arcade Game Released

[Ryan]

Well, the subject of the post says it all!

After a couple weeks of sacrificed sleep and homework, I've released Red Jumpy Ball, the first fully featured arcade game (that I know of) for FreeBASIC.  It's a remake of a game I tried to program in QB but could never get to function right until now.

Red Jumpy Ball features 5 game play modes in a race against the clock and random hazards to score the highest score possible. Bonuses on the randomly generated levels add a strategic element to the game and keep players (especially my roommates who should be typing papers) coming back for more.

The game play modes are Classic, a One Screen challenge, a Keep It Up challenge where you have to stay off the ground, a Time Attack challenge that's a race against the clock, and a Marathon that takes you through the country of Ecuador in 8 stages which have their own challenges.  Completing Marathon mode with 250000+ points opens up a special cheat menu that turns on extra bonuses in the different game types.

I've included the ability to export an encrypted scores list.  Think you have a high score?  Export them and email the scores.enc file to me.  I'll be making a spot on my web page for the top scores in each game type.

The game is available from quickhost.tk:

http://qh2.qbtk.com/505-d

from freebasic.tk:

http://www.freebasic.tk/

and from my Geocities site (unreliable bandwith):

http://www.geocities.com/szrrya/

I'd really appreciate feedback from as many people as care to leave me a message.

I highly recommend reading or at least browsing through the readme so you understand game controls and scoring rules.

Because the game was running slow on machines with XP, I added a speed adjustment option from the main menu.  Push S and when the screen pops up, push space for the ball to bounce across the screen.  Optimal speed (which I get on machines with Win9x mostly and some XP) will leave 37 on the clock.  You can adjust it if you're going too slow.  The best I've found if it's too slow is setting the speed multiplier to .78 so another speed test would leave 35 on the clock.  You need this to be set properly for the game to play well.  Settings are saved, and the code accounts for slower speeds in level generation and player control.

[relsoft]

Uber cool!!!!

[Anonymous]

yeahh this was form that one button compo a lonng friggin time ago.. hehe this games cool ;P

edit: i found the laser! nice was that in before?

[Ryan]

hehe  Yeah, it was there before.  I had to keep it because, even though a red jumpy ball is cool, it's a lot cooler with an awesome, powerful laser.

Glad you guys enjoyed it.  

[aetherfox]

Damn, my LCD monitor doesn't support 320x200 or whatever screenres you used, so i had to play it in a window  :normal: but i liked it...it was a VERY original concept that I didn't play from that one button compo.

Good job.

[whitetiger0990]

I SALUTE YOU! *salutes*
Thank you sir! You are too 1337 for this world. Thanks for wasting 30 minutes of my time until I was able to pull myself away.

[Dr_Davenstein]

Yeah, that's a cool game.  

Ryan, did you win that competition? I can't remember... ::

[Ryan]

Unfortunately I used FLib to make it and hardly anyone could play it (including Lachie).  So I think the only votes I got were myself and a friend of mine who was hooked on it for weeks and registered just to vote for me.  :wink:

I tried to fill a few of the high score lists with people from the forums, but I missed so many.  I know I had relsoft in there but took it out cause I couldn't remember if that was his forum name.    Dr_D's there, though.. along with Strongbad & Co., the FF6 crew, and BoF chars.

Has anyone unlocked cheat mode yet/did you like it?  (It's actually quite frustrating playing Keep It Up with the cheat on and getting toward the end with a x32 bonus only to fall to the ground.. Several times I was nearing 1000000 points and bombed.  :x )

[Lachie Dazdarian]

Hey, Ryan. I actually played the QBasic version of RJB few weeks ago in WinXP using VDMSound with the VESA patch.

I really like the remake and all the modes you added. A highly addictive game. Excellent concept.

I only had time to play Marathon mode properly and I was so excited when I easily reached level 8(well, I did lost 3 lives in that level with water ) but after seeing it I realized what a twisted man you are. But I did got somewhere in the middle of the Marathon highscore table. Not sure if I should brag with that.

What I didn't like is the lack of better graphic design in the game. Yes, I know what Rob Adams (Deleter) said in his QB Express article about keeping it small but I don't really agree. Well, to some degree. When you already have a great concept and a guaranteed gameplay why not doing that minimum graphic design to make your game appealing to a broader audience.

Just look what I did with the brick tile which I really didn't liked:



Sprites file altered: http://kentauri.digitalblackie.com/graphics.bmp

I know, it's not something great(I could only work with 4 colors) but it adds a lot to the look of the game. By my option.

I'm to sure why you have to use 16 color palette for sprites and tiles. Didn't had time to check your code so I don't know if it has to do something with the background images. But even if you can only use 16 colors you can improve the look of the game with really small interventions that don't take more that 1 hour to do.

It also wouldn't be bad that you add a custom font in the game and a main menu image. If you want, I can make one for you in the style of KENTAURI games.

[WinderBoy]

That game sounds a bit cool.

[Ryan]

Lachie... that would be amazing.  

My major problem in making games is making good graphics (obviously).  And yours have always kicked butt in my opinion.  I love the brick you came up with, and would love any help you're willing to give in the graphics area.  My big thing was how to deal with only 10x10 sprites and make stuff look good.  I'm not so hot at shading and mixing different colors for things.  Actually, there is no 16 color limitation, I just didn't know what colors to use so I used the standard Windows Paint palette.  :wink:

I'd be totally up for releasing an updated version with better graphics, a menu screen (as per Joe King's request in the Delta Code review), and some snappy background music.  The FMod tutorial made adding sound to stuff a breeze for me.

So.. let me know if you'd be up for making a title screen and/or redoing the tiles for me.  That'd be awesome.  

(A custom font would be cool, too.  I actually just used print because I hadn't seen gfxlib's gfxprint capability yet or even looked into anything else.)