pipmak-users

The Sphere - a pipmak game made in less than two weeks

[excentri <car...@gm...>]

Hello everyone!

Me and a friend of mine have made a small game with the pipmak engine. We
are studying game graphics and decided to make a game in two weeks using the
pipmak engine. It was fun to make the game and I hope you want to test it
out.

You can download the game  http://blackpolygon.com/files/theSphere.rar here 

It's pretty hard to know what to do in the game as it's not obvious how to
make progress. But if you give it some time and read everything you may find
out what to do. Otherwise ask me if you're stuck and I can give you some
hints. 


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Re: The Sphere - a pipmak game made in less than two weeks

[Christian W. <cwa...@gm...>]

Hello excentri!

Wow - I'm blown away! This is awesome. This must be the most  
professional completed game I have seen in Pipmak to date. It has a  
story, great graphics, animation, sound, music, cursors, everything -  
and all done in two weeks. Hats off! I'm really impressed by what you  
have been able to achieve using Pipmak's limited capabilities.

I would like to feature this on the Showcase page (http://pipmak.sourceforge.net/showcase.php 
). May I?

I think I have completed the game (if completion means dying :)), but  
I haven't looked at the code yet. A few things that caught my  
attention (I assume you're aware of most of them and taking care of  
them just didn't fit into the two weeks):

(SPOILER ALERT: those who haven't completed the game, stop reading  
here.)

- I found it a bit irritating to be unable to walk directly from one  
corner of the room to the next, without going back to the center.

- I was quite confused by some things that show a clickable cursor,  
but don't appear to do anything when clicked - I was never quite sure  
if that was supposed to happen or if it was a bug that would  
potentially preclude me from making progress: The control panel on the  
bed door (is that a bed?) and the "Games" button in the computer.

- I was going to count the marked floor tile on the "Sphere  
Blueprints" screen in the computer under the same category, but in  
hindsight I have empirically determined that it actually does  
something. Perhaps a short sound or some other subtle kind of feedback  
would make that more obvious?

- I spent quite some time unsuccessfully trying to click (or stand) on  
the special floor tile after activating it in the computer, until I  
discovered that it only has a hotspot on its upper half. Is there a  
reason for not covering the whole tile with the hotspot?

- When walking away from the opened floor tile with the lever in the  
"open" position, it still appears in the "closed" position from the  
other nodes.

- The "Sphere Blueprints" screen shows some kind of control panel in  
the bathroom next to the door that isn't actually there in reality. Is  
that an oversight or a deliberate red herring?

- You should override the global keydown handler to stop the annoying  
"unused key 97 pressed" warnings and prevent users from accidentally  
showing hotspots, opening the Lua command line, or doing other  
potentially spoilery or dangerous things.

- There is no obvious way to quit in mid-game, other than to discover  
the Q or esc keys. (And it occurs to me that there should be a way of  
having Pipmak prompt you to save your game before quitting.)

- When loading a saved game, the music does not resume, and after  
that, approaching the door to space after having unlocked it produces  
a Lua error related to it.


I hope you had fun using Pipmak, and if you have anything to say about  
your experience with it, I'd love to hear it!

  -Christian

Re: The Sphere - a pipmak game made in less than two weeks

[excentri <car...@gm...>]

Hello Christian!

I'm glad you like it. :)

Of course you can use it in your showcase page. That would be great!

Yes, you completed the game. No happy ending here. :D

I know the bugs and irritating problems you mentioned. We would have
polished the game some more if we had the time. But we only had two weeks to
make it as complete as we could.

I'm really impressed that you really completed the game. There is much lack
of feedback and you have to guess your way to the end, but you managed to
understand it anyway. Hats off! :)

As for the saving, I haven't even tested to save the game myself. The game
is very short and we didn't thought it was necessary to save.

We really like 360 panorama games and we chose to use pipmak cause it was so
easy to learn. None of us have any advanced programming or scripting skills
but we did the best we could.

It's possible that we're going to polish the game further if we find some
free time.


Christian Walther wrote:
> 
> Hello excentri!
> 
> Wow - I'm blown away! This is awesome. This must be the most  
> professional completed game I have seen in Pipmak to date. It has a  
> story, great graphics, animation, sound, music, cursors, everything -  
> and all done in two weeks. Hats off! I'm really impressed by what you  
> have been able to achieve using Pipmak's limited capabilities.
> 
> I would like to feature this on the Showcase page
> (http://pipmak.sourceforge.net/showcase.php 
> ). May I?
> 
> I think I have completed the game (if completion means dying :)), but  
> I haven't looked at the code yet. A few things that caught my  
> attention (I assume you're aware of most of them and taking care of  
> them just didn't fit into the two weeks):
> 
> (SPOILER ALERT: those who haven't completed the game, stop reading  
> here.)
> 
> - I found it a bit irritating to be unable to walk directly from one  
> corner of the room to the next, without going back to the center.
> 
> - I was quite confused by some things that show a clickable cursor,  
> but don't appear to do anything when clicked - I was never quite sure  
> if that was supposed to happen or if it was a bug that would  
> potentially preclude me from making progress: The control panel on the  
> bed door (is that a bed?) and the "Games" button in the computer.
> 
> - I was going to count the marked floor tile on the "Sphere  
> Blueprints" screen in the computer under the same category, but in  
> hindsight I have empirically determined that it actually does  
> something. Perhaps a short sound or some other subtle kind of feedback  
> would make that more obvious?
> 
> - I spent quite some time unsuccessfully trying to click (or stand) on  
> the special floor tile after activating it in the computer, until I  
> discovered that it only has a hotspot on its upper half. Is there a  
> reason for not covering the whole tile with the hotspot?
> 
> - When walking away from the opened floor tile with the lever in the  
> "open" position, it still appears in the "closed" position from the  
> other nodes.
> 
> - The "Sphere Blueprints" screen shows some kind of control panel in  
> the bathroom next to the door that isn't actually there in reality. Is  
> that an oversight or a deliberate red herring?
> 
> - You should override the global keydown handler to stop the annoying  
> "unused key 97 pressed" warnings and prevent users from accidentally  
> showing hotspots, opening the Lua command line, or doing other  
> potentially spoilery or dangerous things.
> 
> - There is no obvious way to quit in mid-game, other than to discover  
> the Q or esc keys. (And it occurs to me that there should be a way of  
> having Pipmak prompt you to save your game before quitting.)
> 
> - When loading a saved game, the music does not resume, and after  
> that, approaching the door to space after having unlocked it produces  
> a Lua error related to it.
> 
> 
> I hope you had fun using Pipmak, and if you have anything to say about  
> your experience with it, I'd love to hear it!
> 
>   -Christian
> 
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Re: The Sphere - a pipmak game made in less than two weeks

[Squeak <mar...@ou...>]

Wow...
Graphics, music etc ... are amazing...
What did you use?
You have all the elements of the story line...
What inspired your game?

It took several... tries....
I had a think...
and tried again...
and
several other thinks...
eventually...
I also completed the game...

Certain hotspots should be bigger and (if I remember right) cursor change
will then help the player...

As an example...
when 'Riven' was play tested they found people couldn't workout how to get
though the wooden gate at the beginning of the game, to get into the
rotating room via the cave...
To get through the gate you needed to crawl under it...
but there was no reason to click below the gate...
So they put a 'Rivenese' style knife there...
and when you clicked on it you found yourself in the cave...

On the other end of the scale...
the handles in the clock tower on 'Myst' island...
show certain types of players need a less impulsive style of play... 



-----
The picture is of a fledgling robin I moved out of danger.
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Re: The Sphere - a pipmak game made in less than two weeks

[James C. W. <jfc...@ya...>]

This looks awesome. Christian's already stated all of the small "bugs" there are, so I'll just say I'm quite impressed:)
 
James

--- On Mon, 2/21/11, excentri <car...@gm...> wrote:


From: excentri <car...@gm...>
Subject: The Sphere - a pipmak game made in less than two weeks
To: pip...@li...
Date: Monday, February 21, 2011, 1:28 PM



Hello everyone!

Me and a friend of mine have made a small game with the pipmak engine. We
are studying game graphics and decided to make a game in two weeks using the
pipmak engine. It was fun to make the game and I hope you want to test it
out.

You can download the game  http://blackpolygon.com/files/theSphere.rar here 

It's pretty hard to know what to do in the game as it's not obvious how to
make progress. But if you give it some time and read everything you may find
out what to do. Otherwise ask me if you're stuck and I can give you some
hints. 


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Sent from the pipmak-users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


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Re: The Sphere - a pipmak game made in less than two weeks

[Urs H. <ur...@an...>]

Christian Walther wrote:
> - The "Sphere Blueprints" screen shows some kind of control panel in
> the bathroom next to the door that isn't actually there in reality. Is
> that an oversight or a deliberate red herring?

I thought it was intentional. The database clearly shows that the 
developers of the sphere were in a hurry. Some features have not been 
implemented, for example the communication between the inhabitants of 
the spheres. I guess the missing control panel also is such a feature.

Re: The Sphere - a pipmak game made in less than two weeks

[Urs H. <ur...@an...>]

excentri wrote:
> Hello everyone!
> 
> Me and a friend of mine have made a small game with the pipmak engine.
> We are studying game graphics and decided to make a game in two weeks
> using the pipmak engine. It was fun to make the game and I hope you
> want to test it out.
> 
> You can download the game  http://blackpolygon.com/files/theSphere.rar
> here
> 
> It's pretty hard to know what to do in the game as it's not obvious
> how to make progress. But if you give it some time and read everything
> you may find out what to do. Otherwise ask me if you're stuck and I
> can give you some hints.

By all means, this is an excellent game. I managed to complete it. As 
Christian said, the game has it all. It even has the special feeling we 
know from the Myst games. All in all, this is the first pipmak game 
which can really be called a complete game.

One thing that comes to my mind: Running the game in full-screen mode is 
good, but please do not set the resolution. The game looks much better 
on my system if I choose the maximal possible resolution but activate 
interpolation.

Greetings
Urs