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(1 edit)

After submission thoughts:

I am quite glad it is over and I am quite happy what I got done. Main things that I was hoping to get that are not there are following:

There are no sounds, simply didnt have time to add them anymore, and even when I was thinking of adding one or two sounds at least, i was afraid they could cause some issues, so already feeling beat to work anymore, i just, left sounds out and figured the music is enough.

Although what comes to music I am actually bit unhappy about the music in that coding part. It sounded better working when i picked it, but when it is being actually played, it doesnt really work that well. But i was short on time, so didnt want to start replacing it. I think i used about half an hour in total for picking those musics, so considering the time used, not bad result at all, could have gone much worse.

Thing I perhaps miss most is that I didnt have time to implement the idea that BurnerKnight gave me. For he mentioned that there could have been subgame for the actual tuning part. I had very simple and quickly doable idea for that subgame, but not quick enough to make in this short time, and that is a real shame. Not only had it been nice break from usual, but I think it was such a good idea it had been worth implementing.

Save game / load game feature had been one thing i really wanted there to be too, but didnt have time.  This might be quite a convenience for someone who cant complete the game at once. But at least it is very quick to jump through the menus and all. Basically I think the game is completeable in maybe just 5 minutes if you use presaved codes etc. so someone really wanting to continue, it is not that hard to get back to where you were, but it is still a big inconvenience.

Another thing that had really benefited player, was that I was planning to have on those arenas a small window showing the current codeline being executed, maybe showing five lines of code at a time. This had both been helping player to figure out where the problem in his code is, as well as helped him understand how code works as he had seen it being executed line by line. This is a big loss from games and educational point of view, as now players make the code and then they just have to see how it works, without actually knowing what line is actually causing the problem.


Naturally there are lots of small things i would have liked to fix, but time not permitting, at least i got the major issues fixed so all in all i think the result is somewhat good, that mainly small issues are left only, except for the ones that were too big to handle anyway. Like one of the things i would have liked is that you could have coded more complex code., like put several random in a raw, meaning that you randomly pick one of other random commands. But anyway, you can get around this problem by using GO TO commands, and it had been such a big thing to do, that i decided not to use my time on it, but instead focus on other things, trusting players dont try to make the execution fail by purpose, but use it properly.

Another thing I was thinking was that when entering arena code had been checked if there are errors. This could have been even done, but would have took too much time at this point.

What comes to Commands, I am happy i was able to add at least two type of commands more yesterday still, although what  i bit of miss is not having IF implemented yet, or VARIABLES implemented.

I was considering adding IF yesterday still, but came to conclusion that IF alone wouldnt have done any good, that I would have also needed to add some things that IF could have been used at, like IF there is something in front of robot, and those would have took too much time to do, hence IF had been pretty useless, although that had been a real step towards much more sophisticated AI. On top of that, I was afraid IF command could have caused some other problems too, because of the way I had implemented my coding.


What I was very happy was that I actually got there 11 map level, 8 puzzles and 3 fight levels, although those fight levels are basically quite useless since i didnt get far enough that player could actually get useful AI done for fights, hence they are more of demonstrating the idea I had, and also, because I made those three enemy robots, i wanted to show those other two as well, although other one you will actually see only from one side,  since I didnt have time to fix one issue that caused 4th fight level, where you would have seen him in other angles too, not to work properly and hence decided to hide it from the final build.

Although I intended this game to be more of a AI building thing, it ended up more of a puzzle game as commands didnt advance far enough. But even like this, I think this is pretty fun. When I yesterday tested all those levels, most which i did in 2 hours time, I actually had quite much fun figuring them out myself how to complete them.

Had I got someone to do me graphics, I would have got this game further, perhaps been able to implement all those things I most wanted, but on the other hand, I think not having anyone to do graphics also benefited this project, as I was able to realise my idea to good extent, and I also think that while i did graphics quite fast, as you can see especially from the ones done on last day, I am happy that it looks very much like my own creation because of that.

All in all, except for the level of AI, I think I got this game better and further than i expected.


edit: almost forgot to comment the FONT issue.

Today when i woke up, I almost instantly realised I might have made a mistake with FONT. Hollywood (the language I am using for coding) has three relevant FONT commands regarding this: OpenFont(), UseFont() and SetFont()

Now OpenFont is clear, that is the one that loads the font, and that is not to be used when Font is already linked to the program.

However, when Font is linked to a program, or opened, then the proper way to use it, is to use UseFont(). However, I forgot there was this UseFont() and remembered only SetFont() and thought this SetFont was same as UseFont(), which it is not.

Right way to use had been to use USeFont() command, but in my original on time submitted entry I am using that SetFont(). I am not sure how this command works, wether it is setting already loaded FONT, in which case the original submitted entry works just fine, or if it tries to load the font. My guess is that it is setting already loaded font, in which case original submitted entry works just fine, but in case it doesnt, there is now new Win32 and Win64 exes that you can replace the original ones with. Or, you can install to your computer the required font named: "Edit Undo Line BRK", in which case it will work with original exes. I am not able to test if there is problem or not, because I have that font installed in my computer. So if there is an issue in loading it, then I wouldnt have it.