Polyhedra of Disorder

[sack]

Those screenshots are looking nice and mental. Have people figured out what the base spec to run the game is yet?

[Jedburgh]

Bastard. I've got important Zelda to play!

[SiN]

I'd like a go at that please.

[Jamesac]

Argh! Feedback (graphics-related, because the gameplay is perfect) delayed by Christmas. Details soon-ish.

James

[Iain]

Argh! Feedback (graphics-related, because the gameplay is perfect) delayed by Christmas. Details soon-ish.

Feedback in here please, all in one place (and it helps bump the thread...).

[Jedburgh]

The shield flickers a bit and it can be a little tricky to see all the little bastards swarming in on you when the visuals are kicking off properly. Some might suggest toning it down a little (or at least providing the option to) and they might be right. I love it, though. It's what being on drugs ought to look like. And I'm totally sold on the pad controls now.

Carry on!

[Iain]

The shield flickers a bit

It flashes on and off as it is running out, but the fade/echo/afterimage (what's it called?) effect tends to obscure the flashing a bit because when it's flashed-off you see the afterimage.

and it can be a little tricky to see all the little bastards swarming in on you when the visuals are kicking off properly. Some might suggest toning it down a little

Yes I know. I tried reducing the brightness of the particle effects but it didn't look nearly as good. That swirly coloured stuff wants to be fully saturated.
I thought maybe I could put some sort of glowy effect or shadow underneath the aliens, but that could look naff, not tried it yet. What I'm going to try next is to increase the number of polys in some of the models, so that there is more likely to be a poly that is pointing in the right direction to show the specular lighting, thus making them look brighter. The tack-shaped ones are bad for that. And they move fast too.

I was undecided whether to leave it only as a full-on swirly rainbow colourfest for freaks, or to accommodate the potential moaning gits. I think I will add a effects reduce option, especially because it crawls on my eeepc when the particles start, although it works fine with just models. Eeepc doesn't have hardware vertex processing and the particles are currently in world-space. I could change the particles to work in screen-space and avoid the vertex transforms entirely, which I suppose I should do anyway.

And I'm totally sold on the pad controls now.

Yes it plays very nice on pad, you don't have to visually keep track of the ship angle like you need to do with the mouse.

[Jamesac]

Ok, so I'm really, really slow at this kind of thing sometimes. Sorry. Have a few thoughts-

1) Really looking forward to being able to redefine the keys. I love the pad controls, but shoot and fire are currently placed somewhat inconveniently, at least on my 360 USB pad. X for Thrust and B for Fire means my thumb can only hit one at a time. I figure that one's just something that hasn't happened yet (or I didn't figure out how to change it) so this is more note of anticipation than anything else.

2) Spheres of Chaos is still my favorite Asteroids-type game of all time. I just got done a 350,000 point run and I could easily jump back in for another go. (Check that, I did go back in and cleared 800,000.)

3) And now for the bit I have trouble with, that I don't find as appealing as I'd hope- the graphics.

I loved the look of the original Spheres of Chaos. Every pixel felt sharp and crisp, and that's a feeling that's gone with the background layer on the new version. When things are calm, and you have time to notice bits like the ship thrust and enemy trails, it feels like the game runs in two layers- enemy and background. Obviously that's the case, but it comes off as disjointed, as if the two are disconnected. Enemies go on this plane, effects on the others.

So, the two things in regards to the graphics that land on my personal radar- the differing planes, and the sharpness of the background plane. Although I will say that the slight fuzziness of the background does a good job of making it easy to differentiate between the bits that are lovely effects and those in the foreground that can kill you.

-edit- Oh, and I get a "Can't create D3D device at all, even with rendering." error if I try the 960x800 version.

James

[noodles]

I loved the look of the original Spheres of Chaos. Every pixel felt sharp and crisp, and that's a feeling that's gone with the background layer on the new version. When things are calm, and you have time to notice bits like the ship thrust and enemy trails, it feels like the game runs in two layers- enemy and background. Obviously that's the case, but it comes off as disjointed, as if the two are disconnected. Enemies go on this plane, effects on the others.

That. I just looked at the screens and the smoothing out or Anti-aliasing or whatever it is destroys a big part of the charm of the original. I loved the crisp pixels look. It is part of what made this game unique visually. Please please put an option to have sharp pixels instead of the blurred effects. It would be awesome to have the same visuals as the original but in higher rez.

[Barney]

OMG. I will so buy this. I'm nuts about SoC, and even keep an old laptop hanging around to play it on!

I have one question (please don't hate me for this) - would it be possible to acquire the source to the original PC version of SoC? I'd really, really like to port it to the Pandora. Nyarla kindly let me port his Forget-Me-Not game, and it went down very well indeed. I'd imagine it might even generate some (though probably not many!) sales for the new updated version.

Anyway, looking forward to this - your screengrabs look fantastic and bring back some very fond memories

[Jamesac]

noodles- The background bits really do look a lot better in motion. When there's a few million effects flying around at once it looks wonderfully chaotic. It's only when you're down to the last few guys that the fuzziness of the background effects doesn't fit as well wit the crisper foreground details.

James

[toxibunny]

I've had a few more goes on this recently:

Athlon 2400+ 768meg, geforce FX5200

Slowdown not as bad as that laptop I was using before, with the sparser parts fairly zipping along, and the mentaler parts remaining 'slow, but not slideshow' - recommended min. specs something around a 2005/2006 mid-range desktop, maybe? My bottleneck seems to be the gfx card, anyway...

The menu should have 'Start game' as the first option, in bigger letters.

Homing shots should be a different colour.

Couldn't you just slow the mouse control rotation down, to make it more playable?

I'm loving it so far, like - all sorts going on, nice variety of enemies.

[noodles]

noodles- The background bits really do look a lot better in motion. When there's a few million effects flying around at once it looks wonderfully chaotic. It's only when you're down to the last few guys that the fuzziness of the background effects doesn't fit as well wit the crisper foreground details.

James

Could I have a go ?

[sack]

noodles- The background bits really do look a lot better in motion. When there's a few million effects flying around at once it looks wonderfully chaotic. It's only when you're down to the last few guys that the fuzziness of the background effects doesn't fit as well wit the crisper foreground details.

James

Could I have a go ?

I was a bit busy before Christmas, but I've got a bit more time and my curiosity is getting the better of me now. Could I have a looksie if the offer is still open?

[Jamesac]

*lights the Iain signal*

James