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 Havoc Zone
Author: Benjamin Submitted: 10th January, 2007 Favourites:0
Genre: Shoot 'Em Up Downloads: 532
Rated:


Current Beta of my Vertical Shoot em Up Havoc Zone... Blazing fast 60 frames per second, 13 Enemies, 6 weapon systems, chain-system, Ingame Help, completely original graphics and Music.

Not yet included in this version:
one missing enemy, long boss fight, 3 general difficulty settings, Logbook, innovative Ranking-system.

Sheduled full version release: Early March 2007.


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http://www.megaupload.com/de/?d=A40TZPS9 (22 mb )



Posted by Noyb 10th January, 2007

Nice graphics, and the gameplay seems solid. It started out nice and smooth, but then got unbearably slow, about 1-3 fps even when there wasn't much on the screen. I'm on a 1.3 Ghz processor with 512 mb of ram. Then again, Titan Omega: Exodus and Bob the Schizo ran really slowly on this computer, too.
 
Posted by Comrade the Soviet Under Dog 10th January, 2007

Oh no! Omnivore creatures!
 
Posted by Spiriax 10th January, 2007

The game ran just fine on my comp, and I'm on a 1.7 ghz and 512 mb.

Very professional. However there is one thing that annoyed me an enormous amount. When it is already hundreds of projectiles coming at you in these kind of games, why did you have to put in projectiles coming at you, as points? I had a hard time distinguishing the points from the enemy projectiles - and that's not the kind of thing you'd want to do in a fast-paced game like this. Why not just let the player receive the points directly when you kill the enemies? Having points coming at you like that sure is cool but it was very irritating for me.

Oh, and please, use button 1, button 2 etc instead of having events like "Upon pressing S".
If you include the Ctrl+Y command in your game, please make an option that you can switch control keys and even use a gamepad.
I'm noting this because if I remember correctly, when I entered Ctrl+Y the button 1 and button 2 were set to Ctrl and Shift, but still I had to press A, S and D.

Some other minor tips is that you could use real voices instead of those that were in the game, just to be more professional. If you want it robotic, make the real voices robotic. And another minor tip is that if you press F2, the game music will still play. You should set it to turn off at the first frame.

Apart from some small stuff, wonderful graphics and music, and I look forward to the finished product.

Oh... and I noticed the "Overlord dies" Starcraft sound effect there.
 
Posted by Jason Orme 11th January, 2007

Fantastic graphics!
 
Posted by 11th January, 2007

Looks and feels very professional. I simply love the graphics and the music.
I must say the game ran very slow at some times(probably my computer messing up ) but other than that i really enjoyed it.

Good work!
 
Posted by Taofeld 11th January, 2007

Gets unplayable into the 1st level on my Athlon XP 2100 (1.7 ghz), 1 gig of RAM.

From what I was able to play, looks good.
 
Posted by Benjamin 11th January, 2007

Thank you for the good feedback, guys. Trying my best to do one of the best "click em ups" ever!

@ Spiriax:

Yea, the issue with the E-crystals was mentioned a few times now... I don't like the ideam that the energy is automaticly added to the hypermode-bar, but I'll find another, better way.

buttons -> ok I'll work on that too. A feature to map the controls like the player wants is a good idea, though, I don't have an idea how to do that, since there are 5 buttons in total, and so the internal feature isn't realy helpful...

-I'll make it in the menu like you suggested

- real voice would be nice, I might add them though the only good voice in reach, the voice of my girlfriend, will also be used as the girls voice from the ingame communication.

@ sound fx: yea used a lot of sounds from many games, especialy at the beginning of the development... I did some own effects too though.

@ all I'm working on the performance issues; expect better performance soon!
 
Posted by 11th January, 2007

I dont know if it helps or anything but i thought id say that its only when the player dies that the game starts to slow down(for me atleast). And then its nearly unplayable. But except for when that happens; it runs really fast...
 
Posted by Benjamin 11th January, 2007

I dunno, I almost never Die, I gotta try that... though that should not happen
 
Posted by Reno 11th January, 2007

Hey this looks fun
 
Posted by RenatoDep 11th January, 2007

I don't know why I click on the download link it takes me to a page..do I have to sign up to be able to download it??
 
Posted by s-m-r 11th January, 2007

A lot of people mentioned their CPU and memory along with their system requirements...but what about video devices? Might those be the culprit?

I haven't seen any system specs from the folks here, but I'd wager that some folks who experience problems with Click games have integrated chipsets, as opposed to actual video cards.

Rule of thumb: chipsets = bad. Video cards = good.
 
Posted by Benjamin 11th January, 2007

@ @ Newt: no you don't need to sign up; there's a 3 digit code along with a input-thingy, just input the code there, and click the link, wait a few seconds and save the file anywhere on your HD.
 
Posted by Silveraura 11th January, 2007

@s-m-r: MMF games have very little influence from the videocard, I have a GeForce 7900GS and still have slowdowns in games.
 
Posted by Spiriax 11th January, 2007

Sounds really cool, Benjamin.
It seems you didn't include anything about more stages in the description, then that means the game will focus about this stage, in different difficulties and ranking etc? A longer game would be nice but would of course take a lot longer time.

About those energy crystals; if you want to keep those crystals in vision I suggest you make those head for the point counter instead of the player. And maybe make them a little quicker and transparent too, so they won't take too much attention. Then you could have a cool circle-effect at the point counter when they reach it too.

Dang it that you use 5 control buttons instead of 4. That would really limit the control changing with Ctrl+Y but there is ways to still do it, with ingame control customizing. If you want I could support you with that stuff if you need it later when you're gonna concentrate on that part.
It would though be alot easier if you changed controls for some button so that you would use it by pressing some button twice or pressing two buttons at the same time, or something like that.

Oh, and it seems the game only ran fine the first time I played, but not anymore...
 
Posted by Benjamin 12th January, 2007

@ Spiriax:
There are plans for a 5 Level version, but still I will first focus on this one level version first. Only when I am satisfied with this version, I'll include more levels, that also won't take place in the colonization ship, and will feature new graphics and new enemies.

I gave the crystals 80% transparency, that makes them less visible, but still gives the player the feedback that they are collecting stuff, and also gives impression of not being chased by green bullets.

Oh, I didn't know that MMF2 supports 4 buttons now, still though it where just 2. I just got MMF2 on tuesday, and I converted HZ fron MMF1.5 to MMF2. I will convert the coding to the normal buttons. Maybe you could realy help me at some point; I'll write you an E-Mail.

that's a real bummer, dunno why that happens :/
 
Posted by Spiriax 12th January, 2007

Oh, I see! Interesting.

Nice! Sounds really nice. Maybe you should speed them up a bit too because it was kinda weird that you could avoid them and the pile of energy crystals just got bigger and bigger since you could avoid them all the time.

Okay! I would be glad to help you out, you can send me an e-mail or more preferably a personal message here at The Daily Click.

Have you checked the amount of active objects at runtime? You said that you do not die too often, right? Then it is probably some kind of loop creating active objects that occurs when you die, increasing and increasing the amount of actives. Can happen by the slightest mistake.
But now then you have MMF2 the game should run smoother. Still the next time you submit your games you should bugtest everything; and that includes dying.
 
Posted by Ganymede Graphics 12th January, 2007

Is there a way to change the resolution, alt-enter dosn't work. I need to change it because I can't tell whats going on in the game.
 
Posted by Derek_R. 12th January, 2007

dloading . . .Hope the gameplay is as good as the graphics.

btw this is you . . right?

<a href="http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=11887">shmups.org</a>

 
Posted by Derek_R. 12th January, 2007

just played a bit. Looks okay. Nothing to exactly jump out of your chair about. The graphics are quite the opposite though. They're great.

It just doesn't feel like much of a shmup to me (and also you should indicate that you are doing damage to the larger enemies by flashing or something of the sort. That would make it feel more like a shmup).

I'll play more later and crit more, but I'm quite busy atm.

Great work on the graphics, good work on the game (great work compared most people on this site though =p).

I honestly think you can improve this though so maybe you should study some shmups like dodonpachi, strikers 1945(though its not really manic or anything), 19xx(not manic either), etc. Maybe some tohou (imperishable nights). I'm sure you've probably heard of most of these since I really don't think someone would decide to make a "hardcore" shmup just out of the blue.
 
Posted by Benjamin 13th January, 2007

@ kikkoman: I'm sorry to tell you, but the current version does not feature that.

@ Derek_R.: Yes, that's me, and yea, I know pretty much all the games you mentioned. I made the gameplay different on purpose though, as I'm striving for a different feel; Rather than dodging all the time, I wanted to let the player go crazy with the chain-system. According to a topic of the "do's and don'ts" in a Shmup, the destruction over dodging formula is bad, still I think it always depends on the game.

Also, MMF doesn't allow very good dodging gameplay in my oppinion anyway... as default MMF only allows 32 directions, wheras good "dodging-shmups" (let's call them that way, for now), allow full 360 degrees of directional value. So, I'm a bit limited on that side as well.
 
Posted by Derek_R. 13th January, 2007

Yea the 32 directions bs sucks, but if you try you can come up with some pretty sick bullet patterns with workarounds.(even if you don't want to have too much dodging they could probably help at some points).I still haven't played more, so next time I play I'll give some more accurate/proper crits .

You could also get 360 directions with advanced math extensions/trig etc., but I don't know trig so I wouldn't know how.
 
Posted by Taofeld 14th January, 2007

I think you guys already figured it out, but I'd like to confirm that dying indeed is what causes the slowdown. Goes from 60 FPS to 1 for me when I die
 
Posted by Benjamin 15th January, 2007

I tried it out on both of my PCs. It never happend on my work-comp, though I did manage to recreate it once on my laptop, with a stand alone exe... I realy don't have an idea, why it happens... also, since I wasn't realy able to recreate it in MMF itself, I can't realy pinpoint the culprit. It only happend with the compiled exe... so, I can't realy check if there are objects created... would be good if everybode could post his specs, if this happens on your computer.
 
Posted by Zethell 19th January, 2007

You couldnt possible find a better place to download from?..
 
Posted by Zethell 19th January, 2007

Hmm, wow you did some extremly nice work there, compareable to tyrian, but tyrian won!

Soo far the best "Shoot-em-up" i'v ever seen here.
But then, i have very sleepy eyes soo i could had easly let alot of them get away.

Nice job (y) Thumbs up.
 

 
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Benjamin


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