YakYak

I think the best part of SOC is the sound; I love the idea of composing with your gameplay. The whole of it sounds very Aphex Twin-ish...

This and G++ are the only reasons I boot up my PC anymore...

Actually the two versions are the same now, except that if you buy it from me I get about £4.20 or so, but from idg I only get 40p. (and I thought it was a shop sales only contract too, silly me!). IDG have not been providing the quaterly sales figures they are supposed to either...

p.s. my highscore is 18 million :-)

Welcome to the forum mate!

Let me guess, we Llamasofted your site and you came to see where all these referalls came from?! Am I right?

Sphere's of Chaos is rather nice BTW. I shall be purchasing a full version ASAP.



One has to wonder if this sort of thing is the reason Mark Sibly has taken the BlitzBasic distribution away from them?!

Muttley

I was playing this a short while ago, pootling along with just over 1 million points, when suddenly, I can't remember if I did anything, but the game went into overdrive! I was getting continuous "aaaah" sounds bending up to a much higher pitch than I'd heard before, aliens were just flittering across the screen like leaves and my score, and lives, were going up like the speedo on Knight Rider! If I let go of the keyboard it didn't stop. It was actually slightly alarming, wondering if my PC was about to explode like an untethered washing machine! I ended up with a doubled score and about 50 lives or something and played through to a final score of 3016220

I wonder if I broke something or if that's meant to happen? Pretty cool it was. It'd be good if I could make it happen while someone else is watching me play, cos then I'd look like some kind of D.A.R.Y.L who could cane computer games at unnatural speed

I'm fucked this weekend. I have a 15 page paper to write, another 10 page paper to write, a large test to study for, have to replace the rear breaks on my car, AND I have to play this damn game.

Welcome, Iain, to the fluffiest forum in town

Like I always say, we can never have enough Ian's (no matter how it is spelt!)

Welcome Iain, To the fluffiest forums on the Internet

Cheers everyone



You acheived criticality...
It's an effect that is caused by the power-ups. Collecting them tends to make you more likely to collect more of them. They usually increase firepower, which makes even more of them, and they can also be collected by shooting them. Sometimes it can run away and go mad for a while. It used to happen far too easily, so there are a bunch of hacks in the code to reduce the number of powerups. Now it's more difficult, but can still happen if you try. If you increase the powerup chance % much it will still run away easily. Because you usually end up with a score multiplier maxed out at 10* you get lots of score & extra ships. The aaaaaaahs are the extra ship sound, and the note they play goes up. It's a note, not just a frequency, the white notes. The game isn't tuned into a proper scale though. Guess where the sample is from. I won't be able to tell you if you guess correct though, or the lawyerbots may be after me....

Incedentally, some of the fx in the original Acorn version where filched from llamatron (with permission), with some extra crunchy distortion

Iain, I am REALLY impressed by this game. It's of top quality! I'd llove to see it ported to something like the GBA.

If you want to advertise it to a large audience for very little money, I'd try posting it on Fark.com. This site gets around 1/2 Million page hits a day, and offers very cheap advertising. You can sell banner ads on it, or you can sell Classifieds which can get a lot of hits. I bet that many Farkers would really enjoy this game, and some would probably buy it. Seriously though, many people who visit this site like playing simple games, and nobody has really advertised any yet on the site. Being the first one may bring vast success. I'm rather familiar with the Fark.com community, and if you would like any input on advertising there, just Personal Message me and I'll be glad to help out! And no, I don't work for or own Fark.com. I'm a humble poor college student who owns stock in Tootsie Roll.

Bump! (naughty me ) Having this SoC thread on the first page produced a noticable increase in sales.

Someone told me quite a few Mac coders hang out here. Any of you fancy porting SoC to the mac?. It's nice plain old C source, with all the OS dependant stuff segregated of into seperate files. If you can set the appropriate screen mode & blit from a mem buffer then it should be a doddle to do. Anyone fancy porting it to something else too?. (Split the dosh 50/50 on sales, not that you will get rich)

Can I have a lil sheepie now?. Awww go onnn!. Ok, how about a fluffy kitty then?. I like kitties.

Korruptor might be able to help you on the Mac front. And if I were you I'd have a quiet word with Dreadz about a GP32 version...

As for the sheepies... In these post-whoring days, the only way to get 'em is to just be around lots and post stuff.

Or you could always make yourself an avatar with a sheepie/kitten/otter in it.

I have to say - that's a top game. I heard all the talk on here and looked at the screenshots on the website. "Hmm... doesn't look all that great to me," I thought. Then I downloaded the demo, saw it move, and more importantly HEARD it, and a new purchase was on my credit card within about ten minutes.

Does anyone else think that audio is a much neglected aspect of video games nowadays? There's lots of games with amazing visuals but really naff soundtracks. SoC really impressive because it sounds great - a blind person could wander into the room and hear that there's lots happening on the screen - it ties in really well with the action and makes it a more exciting experience.

Worst offender in recent memory I think is Super Monkey Ball. It's a cracking game, but the tunes really really get on my tits.

I've just discussed this with Iain - I'll have a pop at moving the Linux version over to OS X. I'll keep you posted...

You do know I will worship you, correct?