Reviews for Asteroid Hell

[NeonSpider]

You have to hold down the space bar or L key to fire. Simply pressing it won't do a thing. But if you hold it too long you'll fire two or more. A single press should fire a single shot, so I consider this broken.

Also may as well not even have the screenshots thing if you're just going to discriminate like that. You do know it's easy enough to hide things on Windows too right? Or to make a mock-up screenshot on any operating system using pretty much any paint type program? I mean pretty much any online achievements are going to be highly dependent on the honor system anyway because everyone's machines are going to be different and there's no real way to verify anything for 100% certain. All this does is show and prove that you have personal biases because you personally use Windows. It's the online equivalent of a "Now Hiring" sign with "Irish need not apply" underneath.

B1KMusic responds:

It's not broken. The reason for the delay is to stop you from spamming the shot too much when you don't want to. I let it tick 3 frames (which at 24 fps is about 0.83 seconds) before it allows a shot. Otherwise holding down the shoot key would generate 24 bullets per second. I guess that's the price I pay for wanting rapid fire.

I suppose I might have to set a flag for when the space/L key is down/up and allow only one bullet per pushdown.

"Also may as well not even have the screenshots thing if you're just going to discriminate like that. You do know it's easy enough to hide things on Windows too right? Or to make a mock-up screenshot on any operating system using pretty much any paint type program?"

Good point. I put a digital watermark in the game to rectify that. It's a bit complicated and involves checking all the data for every frame and encoding it into a binary string, which is translated to a hexadecimal string, then drawing some small pixels in the colors that are derived from the string. Looking at a screenshot, it's extremely difficult to see, but using od (octal dump) to look at the data of a screenshot, I can then use an algorithm to decode it back into the frames, "play back" the gameplay, and immediately notice if a bunch of asteroids suddenly go missing.

"All this does is show and prove that you have personal biases because you personally use Windows"

Actually, I use Linux. The game itself was made using vim and gimp. That's also how I know how easy it is to hide things.

For example, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and you're in TTY1, a terminal screen that can't be seen by a screenshot tool that's limited to the scope of X11 which typically runs on TTY7. From there, you could just run scanmem and with enough meddling, erase all the instances of Asteroid()

[Peanutpie8you]

addictive, but annoying. The game idea and everything is nice, but the shooting sucks. I like the idea that if there are too many little things on the screen you die quickly, but you should have a faster response to the spacebar pressing to make up for it. There is a lot of lag there, so you have to calculate the time it takes to respond, and then add it to the time it takes for your chosen asteroid to get into the target line and work from there to calculate when to start pressing. And if you make the tiniest mistake, you end up shooting 50 things and destroying everything (including yourself). Would get a 4 or even a 5 from me if you had it set up so that a simple tap of space would shoot, but you had to hold down for a second before it began rapid-firing.
Also, for the smallest things, their contact-boxes seem a bit messed up. I have directly shot some only to have the bullets pass right through. As much as I enjoy the idea of the ghosts of asteroids past, if that is what they are, it deserves to at least be mentioned. I understand the idea of having to be more and more risky, but added to the lag before shooting, it becomes almost impossible to kill them without spamming, which comes with its own problems.

overall a fun game. It is simple, but especially with the way you phrased your description (NOBODY has beaten this game) was a big draw. Just curious--do you have something at the end for the eventual psycho who finishes the game just to prove they could after 50 straight hours? Because one will come.

B1KMusic responds:

Thanks for the feedback :)

"addictive but annoying"

You don't know how happy that makes me that someone found it addictive. The implications, etc.

"The hitboxes for the smallest asteroids are messed up"

It's actually because the bullet's skipping over it. Total pigeonhole. My Bad!

EDIT: I've updated it to check for the size of the asteroids before checking the hitboxes. Now if the size of the asteroid is 1, the hitbox of the asteroid will (not visibly) double in size for the bullet.

"Just curious--do you have something at the end for the eventual psycho who finishes the game just to prove they could after 50 straight hours? Because one will come."

I do now :)

[IcyDrifter]

You're trying... The mechanics don't quite capture Asteroid tough, there are no sounds, and no menu, as well as no score or anything. It looks like it just needs polishing. But seriously, the controls are really clunky.

[olvvvvlo]

Well I think that it's an interesting idea, but it doesn't really apport something to the game, Is like asteroids but with smaller rocks, so it's just like the same, besides this like some users said the controls are difficult and it's very very fdifficult to point at the smaller rocks, you can make a game as difficult as you like but you have to make the main character just as skilled. In brief I would reccomend three improvements, first improve the controls, make it more accurate more easy to point at the smaller rocks, I would use the mouse for aiming, second add something new to the game, I mean people like classics but that doesn't mean that you cannot add something else, and third, I didn't have problems with the size of the ship but some players may think that the ship is too small.

B1KMusic responds:

1: As I've already, said, I've sorta pigeon-holed myself in the controls. I made the turning specifically 8-directional. Adding more directions would require an overhaul of the entire Ship and Bullet classes. And at that point, I might as well make a whole new game. As for using the mouse, I explicitly wanted to make this game with keyboard controls.

2: Couldn't think of anything. This game *was* an experiment, after all. I challenged myself to see if I could make an asteroids game with graphics that aren't squares.

3: If I made the ship bigger, the game would become even harder than it already is, if not impossible. Plus, it's 10x10 pixel art; that doesn't scale well :/

[jayocaine]

You took basically all of the fun things about asteroids and got rid of it, and the result is honestly just a crappy knock off. For starters, the controls are absolutely atrocious, why would you make 8 directional movement for an asteroids game is beyond me. I'm not sure if you're just new to game dev or what, but you want to use floating point numbers for the movement for smooth turning. There is also no juice whatsoever in the game, no sounds, no tweening, no animations, menus, any sort of visual or audible feedback not even a point system. These are the things that make playing games fun and rewarding for the player, I would look into the basics of game design philosophy it will really improve your skills.