Sounds like a plan! And here's some more feedback for you: My fiancée sees me playing it and says: "Ooh this looks cool, what's the name of this game?" already rushing to the app store.. Then I say "it's some game I'm beta testing, it's not out yet " But she liked it so much she even installed TestFlight on her phone so I could download the game for her. So yeah, it looks promising! Edit: about the thread, metalcasket is one of the moderators (sorry I can't provide a link to his forum user, I'm on the TA app right now) And another Atari2600 user here! o/
Oh cool Glad she's interested If she signs up for the beta I'll be able to add her to test flight, too.
I'm getting a few requests for an Atari 2600 theme, which I'm totally down for. I could make a new theme, maybe 4 or 5 ships - how about you give me some of your favourite Atari 2600 games and I'll see what I can get together (spoiler: one of them will probably be River Raid 2, because it's the best)
Cool! I'll tell her to sign up for the beta too! About the 2600 games, Megamania was a huge favorite of mine, with all the different alien enemies. Demon Attack and Cosmic Ark were great too. Edit: metalcasket's profile -> http://forums.toucharcade.com/member.php?userid=49167 I think he can help with the thread title.
I saw my fiancé playing and found it very cool. I signed up as a beta tester too, and maybe contribute somehow!
So here is a short list from my favorite games. I hope it helps in something! In ATARI 2600, my favorite shooting games were Atlantis, Megamania and Chopper Command. In MSX computers, loved HYPE from Methodic Solutions and Galaga, which Shooty Space reminded me. I liked very much the idea of having a Galaga-like game any time in my iPhone! Finally, in iOS devices, I became a huge fan of Five Nights at Freddy's games recently.
I've added you to Test Flight Thanks for the suggestions! I'm pretty busy for the remainder of the week, but I'll definitely have a stab at some Atari 2600 stuff this weekend
So far I've played for about 30 minutes and the game is awesome. One very small suggestion I have, you should change the name of the "phone booth" to "police call box". Assuming that is indeed supposed to be the TARDIS. As for 2600 games, my favorites were always River Raid, Spy Hunter, Space Invaders, Defender, Asteroids, Zaxxon and, although I'm not sure it was ever on the 2600, Galaga (my favorite arcade machine of the time). Also, Warlords, though that could be a hard one to incorporate. Classic ships in general: anything from the original Star Wars trilogy, especially x-wing and Falcon. From Star Trek, Klingon bird of prey. That's all I have right now. Thanks for letting me play the game.
Another 2600 game that came to my mind is H.E.R.O. - although not exactly a space shooting game, it's probably one of the best and most iconic games from that time, along with River Raid and Pitfall probably (well, Activision has published a lot of great titles) I was also thinking that the perspective used on the endgame screenshots looks really good. Have you considered using a similar camera during gameplay or that would be weird, since you can't actually move in 3D? I'm currently having a lot of fun trying to have all powerups active at once, it's really a blast playing with rapid fire + big shot + spread shot and then keep getting powerups and extending their time! I once got the shield too, but that seems more rare to drop. Now saving coins for the next update!
So I just got a great sequence of powerups and managed to get a score of 508! :O I noticed that beyond 300 points or so the animation gets really choppy, as if the device can't actually render things fast enough (playing on an iPhone6, and it's even worse on my iPad mini 2). Does the game speed ever stop increasing? I think there would need to be a (lower) speed limit to keep the gameplay smooth.
I've certainly thought about different ways I can use the camera. Not for launch, but definitely in future I'll have a play with it. I've even thought about making it First Person and play a bit like Wolf 3D I'm not sure how well that would work in practice though...
I had a big slow down too, I'm not 100% what's causing that, and I need to dig into it. Thanks for letting me know. The speed does max out after a while. I'm going to play around with the difficulty increase this weekend. I've been getting a bit of feedback that it ramps up too fast. I'm also going to add in the single hit enemies at the start, then move on to the double hit as you progress. I'm also going to make the giant invaders tougher and worth more points
Cool, I'm looking forward to the new update! You know which 2600 game would be cool too? Snoopy and The Red Baron (*looks at self's avatar*)
My absolute favorite so far is the telephone booth. When it goes back and forth the effect is really awesome. The relative control in this game is EXCELLENT! The Crossy style business model is great too and what I like is it's purely cosmetic. This game requires pure skill to get high scores. I like the responsive developer. I like the game and the way it's evolving. I like being able to share my scores on Twitter. I can't wait to play the final release beta with all the ships to get the full testing experience. Billy
James, Sloth. Again. Latest beta. I bet if you took it out I'd still get it. Lol the game is taunting me too. Billy
Thanks I'm glad you're liking the build. I've had a few requests for ships to do different things, but last thing I want is for the game to be pay to win. It's important to me that the game is fair for everybody. And thanks for letting me know about the sloth! Either that sloth really loves you, or I've got a bug. I'll dig into it and see if I can find out what's going on.
I played the new build for about two hours last night! Impressions: I love the new ships and enemies!!! Great job with the Atari 2600 references! The slowdowns are gone, the game runs super smooth all the time now! I suppose it was that bug with the bullets you mention in the release text. The shielded enemies are super hard! 4 shots to kill?! I do like the new pace though. But by the time all invaders are shielded if I can't keep those powerups coming, it's certain death. I also like the new score system, it feels more rewarding and I was able to get a new hiscore I'm not sure if the shield design is final, but I'd like to suggest it would be more like an energy field around the enemy ship, with a visual cue of it's depletion. I added a screenshot with a rough idea, using different levels of transparency to indicate shield status. (Maybe you could also play with shield thickness?) About the coins: in this new build I get an average of 5 coins per play, and around 10 coins in an exceptional match (over 500 points). I was getting a steady 10-15 coins in the previous build. Last night I was so sleepy already but I was only around 30 minutes away from my next free gift, so I kept playing to unlock a new ship. So I suppose it's good to give the player some extra motivation to play, but it definetely feels more grindy now. How about a small chance of a brute invader dropping a coin as well as motherships? About the duplicate prizes: I really like the way "Diver Dash" handles the duplicates. Everytime you get the third duplicate of any character, the game will reward you with a random coin box, just like a free gift. Then again, I unlocked everything pretty fast in that game (although I played it a lot) so I understand it's a critical balance to achieve. I don't seem to have any "stuck" prizes though.. I got one or two duplicates on each device, but nothing exceptional (I didn't get the Sloth on any device yet) I will play more and post more comments/ideas as they come by!
