The Daily Click

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Author:	MitchHM	Submitted:	21st April, 2007	Favourites:	0
Genre:	Puzzle	Downloads:	322
Rated:

HeliBot - Engine Demo

This is a one level engine demo, just to get some feedback about how the game plays so far. The goal of the game is getting your robot to the end of the level, by using your Heli to drop boxes and mold the level to your needs. There's an unlimited supply of boxes in this demo, so it isn't a puzzle yet. This is just to play around with the engine, and see it it all works well. Thanks in advance...

Character-Mode:
Jump: Shift
Move: Arrow Keys
Go to Heli-Mode: H
Punch: Control
Crouch Down: Key Down

Heli-Mode:
Go to Character-Mode: C
Drop box: Space
Select box: 1-2-3-4

Review This Download

http://www.klikacademy.com/cc/Mitch/HB.rar (400 kb )

Posted by Torava

22nd April, 2007

Very fun game. It would be better if it is multiplayer. Player one moves character and player two moves helicopter.

Posted by Ski

22nd April, 2007

awesome concept

Posted by JustinC

22nd April, 2007

It is a cool concept. The character looks a lot like the robot I had in my Robot demo though. This concept is similar to something I was thinking about. I've been trying to find a cool way to incorporate the mouse into a platform game and I think this game could do that well. Also, having to use H and C to switch is both out of reach and kind of pointless. It would be best to have one key switch modes back and forth and have it easier to reach. Anyway, I think if you could control the robot with the keyboard and the box mechanism with the mouse it would be better. It wouldn't slow the game down as much.

Posted by Sketchy

22nd April, 2007

Pretty good so far. Just a bit of (hopefully) constructive criticism though, and even some praise.
I'm going to assume you've played "Go! Go! Tank" for the gameboy (massive coincidence otherwise as this is *very* similar - I recommend everyone plays it by the way). To be honest I much prefer the GGT engine as I think there's a lot more skill to hooking the blocks and then definitely in getting them to land where you want. How exactly will you pick up the blocks in the final version? I *do* like that you get to control the robot - that could potentially add quite a bit to the gameplay. The breaking blocks are nicely done too. It ran very sluggishly on my 700Mhz pc though - I know that's slow by everyone elses standards, but it should be able to handle something this basic if it's done right. Only real bug was the heli getting stuck when the screen scrolls (accompanied by stupid "move your heli" message). The long pause for the animation when switching between the heli and bot modes gets annoying after a little while too. Hard to tell exactly how the different blocks are going to actually work in the game - at least, I can tell what they do, but I'm not sure how I'd build a level forcing the player to use them a particular way, if you get what I mean. Anyhow, I think good level design will be easily the most important thing with this game. Also, please don't use "shift" as a control key - it messes with the "stickykeys" thing in XP (up arrow key would be good). I liked the graphics by the way. Will there be any enemies/obstacles? If so, where are the weapons? Is that where the red (exploding?) crates come in? I can't help but think the little robot should be able to kind of glide if you press the jump key in midair, like when Mario gets his tail. Think that's all I've got... Like I said, good work so far - main annoyance is it'd be nice if you could make it run a bit faster though

Good luck finishing it.

Posted by JFrudy

22nd April, 2007

its a good so far.
a bit of help though,
your jumping is terribley triangular, it goes up to a point, and then back down /\ like that. also, im a big supporter of using few colors in a single sprite, like in your trees. other than that, i loved it. keep it up man.

Posted by maVado

23rd April, 2007

Please work on the controls, mouse control is very common nowadays, use it to select helicopter or robot and also the boxes on top, make the switch between robot and helicopter no more then 1 second as it gets anoying after a while. If the Rebot cannot go up with the up key anywhere use it for jump instead of shift or ctrl keys. If you want to stick with keyboard only control put the switch to one key, like enter or space, something very common. Besides that it's a fresh concept and could perform well as a good game at the end.

Posted by Plooscva

23rd April, 2007

Great concept, liking it a lot.

"Very fun game. It would be better if it is multiplayer. Player one moves character and player two moves helicopter." I support this idea, two players on one computer, both helping each other.

Posted by JFrudy

23rd April, 2007

if you could do something like always move the box to the mouse's position, and use the mouse wheel to change the box type, that would be cool too. ^^.

Posted by JFrudy

23rd April, 2007

well, not always, but it moves to it. or whatever =P

Posted by Dustin Gunn

24th April, 2007

well it's pretty buggy and slow (gameplay-wise) and you had the same puzzle over and over so I can't really see where you're going with this, but it's nice and the concept does have potential.

My suggestion is work on the controls so they're more unified and responsive (like make jump also drop blocks, I don't see why not).

Posted by ~Zigzag~

24th April, 2007

Its way too slow to keep the attention of the player.
Try changing the movement to Arrows for the Bot and W,A,S,D for the Heli or make the transaction between and their speeds quicker.

Posted by Pixelthief

25th April, 2007

Just a note; its very nice to reduce the total number of controls for a game; perhaps changing some abilities to be controlled by holding a button. Generally goal of a 2d game is to get everything down to the shift/ctrl keys on their own, and maybe the enter, but its a good idea to stay away from # keys and arbitrary stuff like H and C, which really puts off people not used to it.

Otherwise pretty cool

Posted by JustinC

26th April, 2007

Another thing you could try that I've done before is use the arrow keys to move the robot and 1,2,3, and 5 to move the box thing if you didn't want to use the mouse.

Posted by JustinC

26th April, 2007

Whoops I saw someone mentioned w,a,s,d which is basically the same thing, although I prefer the numbers.

Posted by Reno

8th May, 2007