HyperBowl

4 replies [Last post]
Fri, 19/03/2010 - 11:43am
technicat
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Joined: Mar 19 2010
Posts:

Hi, just joined this site, thought I'd start off with a Showcase post. Here's the web player and main site for my HyperBowl game.

http://hyperbowl3d.com/

It's also on Facebook using dimeRocker and on the iPhone. (I have to get back to the dimeRocker version and get the leaderboard working - I'm in a post-GDC take-it-easy mode right now). This is a licensed version of the original HyperBowl arcade/attraction game which I worked on ten years ago. I was pleased at GDC to see that it's still available in its original location in the Metreon!

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Fri, 19/03/2010 - 5:22pm
#1
Geko
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Joined: Sep 27 2009
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Looking good, but you should

Looking good, but you should get some of the social engagement stuff in like wallposts or challenges.

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Sun, 11/04/2010 - 10:24am
#2
BadBumble
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Joined: Aug 5 2009
Posts:
Feed back.

Hello,
It looks good, but there's a couple of things I would change personally and I only played the 10 Pin balling game (right hand side option).
First thing is the music drove me mad. I had to turn it off after a minute. It felt like fingers on a black board to me. I would of expected something light and cheerful not dark and sinister like the current music.
I didn’t really like the control system of the ball. Having to constantly slide the mouse forward seems really strange to me (unless I’m doing something totally wrong) and my mouse kept coming off the mouse mat and started to annoy me. I would much sooner prefer a power bar where the player had to constantly kept hitting with the mouse button then moving the mouse forward all the time.
Main menu screen is a nice idea, but to long to select anything. I think a simple, straight forward menu screen would work better, especially if you are aiming for Face Book which I think the game will do really well on when you add the other features you mentioned in.
I’m sorry if any of the above sounds negative as it’s not meant to be, as I think you have a good game on your hand and with a bit more work, it could be a cracking little game.

Hope it does really well for you.

Cheers,
Mike.

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Tue, 13/04/2010 - 11:54pm
#3
technicat
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Joined: Mar 19 2010
Posts:
Geko, sorry for the late

Geko, sorry for the late reply - I didn't get any email notifications and I haven't been checking the forums lately. But anyway, yeah, after upgrading to the March 13 drclient, I started adding code for wallposts (and hopefully a fix for the leaderboards), following the new examples on the in the online docs, but got some hanging behavior, so I haven't updated the executable. I'm planning to revisit it again, now that I just got the latest iPhone/iPad release out. That version does have challenges and leaderboards via Scoreloop so I am moving in that direction overall, although I've been ambivalent about wall posts since I'm not crazy about seeing what my Facebook friends have been doing in Farmville and Mafia Wars, lately.

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Wed, 14/04/2010 - 12:13am
#4
technicat
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Joined: Mar 19 2010
Posts:
BadBumble, thanks for the

BadBumble, thanks for the feedback. Actually, the lane you played is the least popular. Of the three there, probably Rome (the middle one) is the most popular, although some people do like the Forest lane better (or the ones I haven't implemented, yet).

I don't have a lot of flexibility as far as game design, since this is a licensed port (original art and sound assets converted and imported into Unity and reconstructed to play like the original, ideally). The mouse control is the same as the original PC game, at least conceptually, although the original original was an attraction game with a tall projection screen and a real bowling ball as a trackball (still can be found at Dave and Buster's and the Metreon in San Francisco), so the original developers chose that mouse movement as an approximation of that control. (I was one of the developers on the attraction game, but not on the PC game).

The mouse controls drive me crazy from a development and testing point of view - the Magic Mouse doesn't work at all, the Mighty Mouse just sucks and the bottom cover on mine falls off with that sweeping movement, those little laptop portable mice don't work well, and Unity has issues with mouse motion values and IE. Personally, I like the control scheme I have on the iPhone and iPad where you sweep the screen to push the ball. That feels natural to me, although I think some people still get confused (maybe a tutorial is in order)

I did take some liberties with the menu screens (I chose to start from the attraction screens instead of the PC game screens), and I am thinking of streamlining them a little bit, e.g. the player name entry could be optionally selectable within the coin/multiplayer selection, although at the risk of being less obvious.

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