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Xbox LIVE Indie Games - The April 2011 Thread

O

OldmanAndroid

Member
OnPoint said:
I put up my review for Notebook Adventures.
Click to expand...

Played this game again this morning...totally agree with your review. Those ropes.....wtf? lol'd at this quote from your review:

"Then there’s the issue with jumping from rope to rope. Why do you grab only 40 percent of the time? Each time this happens I half expect you to remove your glasses and flash me a smile, revealing your true identity to be Trollface."
 
M

mujun

Member
djtiesto said:
Those Owlboy screens look fantastic! Definitely will be one to watch...

I'm really impressed at how some of these 2D indie games have been looking nowadays... Oozi was another game that looked really pretty.
Click to expand...

I've been watching it for 3 years :(

Let's just say they are taking their time.
 
P

Pookmunki

Member
SmallCaveGames said:
Will do - for any ZPK2X fans, there's a small (8+) group of twitterers who are planning thursday evening sessions too. @SmallCaveGames, and then I can link you up.

I got my ass handed to me but it was fun.

For the top 50 list, do something different. I like lists, but I've see the same 50 games listed several times, and we already have a top 50 on the dash, the recent OXM list, etc. I can name 30 of the 50 that will be picked without even trying because they already have exposure.

Have you guys seen the pivot table on xboxindies.com? Use that and do something like "Top 3 co-op shooters" "Top 3 top-down racers" "Top 5 retro platformers for a buck" "Top 2011 puzzle games" or something.
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Thanks for reminding me of ZPK2X, had it on my radar and this post prompted the purchase, fantastic game for 80msp.
 
O

OnPoint

Member
toythatkills said:
I love how everytime someone disagrees with you they promote the Facebook page. It's like they're not even trying.
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I know, right? I'm half tempted to push through the rest of the game and take the 1600 Microsoft points for myself.

I'm dealing with a similar situation with the dev of Craftworld in this article's comment section, though the last comment is at least openly the developer.

Here's my favorite part of his reasoning as to why calling Craftworld a Minecraft clone is wrong:

Feel free to discredit every single new feature and brand the game a dirty clone if you want, but also look at other games. Halo and COD for example. You have a campaign, assorted weapons, jump, sprint, deathmatch, objectives, matchmaking and vehicles and rocket launchers.
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I'm still not seeing that many new features, despite having read the feature list a number of times.
 
F

Feep

Banned
OnPoint said:
I know, right? I'm half tempted to push through the rest of the game and take the 1600 Microsoft points for myself.

I'm dealing with a similar situation with the dev of Craftworld in this article's comment section, though the last comment is at least openly the developer.

Here's my favorite part of his reasoning as to why calling Craftworld a Minecraft clone is wrong:



I'm still not seeing that many new features, despite having read the feature list a number of times.
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Well, he seems to be implementing many elements structurally closer to that of an RPG...we can still fault him, but it's a lot better looking than FortressCraft. Oh, speaking of which...

FortressCraft v1.01 in currently in playtest, so I finally got to check it out. UGH. Buggy, framerate stutters every few seconds (apparently this goes away after two hours!), the interface is very weak. It has none of the excitement or hooks of MineCraft.

But, hey, it's selling well. More exposure to the platform, I guess.
 
O

OnPoint

Member
Feep said:
Well, he seems to be implementing many elements structurally closer to that of an RPG...we can still fault him, but it's a lot better looking than FortressCraft. Oh, speaking of which...

FortressCraft v1.01 in currently in playtest, so I finally got to check it out. UGH. Buggy, framerate stutters every few seconds (apparently this goes away after two hours!), the interface is very weak. It has none of the excitement or hooks of MineCraft.

But, hey, it's selling well. More exposure to the platform, I guess.
Click to expand...

I wish instead of spouting off he'd actually explain the differences in a comment or an email. He should embrace the idea that he's building off of Minecraft and highlight how he's expanding upon it.

FortressCraft is a mess. I almost feel bad for the review that I'll be putting together for it... almost.
 
S

SmallCaveGames

Neo Member
Feep said:
But, hey, it's selling well. More exposure to the platform, I guess.
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I want to see some evidence that the extra exposure is helping the XBLIG platform. (granted, that may take a little time to uncover)

As of last week, the platform was seeing nothing but a massive overall decrease in ratings. That doesn't seem helpful.

Time will tell I guess.
 
H

HadesGigas

Member
NLL 11 is out and... I am not liking it very much. It seems like a step back from NLL 10 in pretty much every way except graphically (Though they somehow managed to go from using the actual NLL team jerseys to one generic jersey with different color schemes that aren't even all correct, and no team logos on center field).

I'm probably the only person in the thread with any kind of interest in box lacrosse, so I'll spare you the explanation, but just feel that overall NLL 10 plays like a better (though still not paticularly great) representation of the sport. Despite it being rougher to look at.

It says in the credits it was made with the SFG Soccer and SFG Brawler engines. That seems like a horrible way to go about making anything good, smashing two unrelated engines together to make something totally new. Definitely wonder why they decided to switch developers for this one.
 
T

toythatkills

Member
Don't forget to rate it five stars!

In Idiot news, DJ Keemstar claimed that the Minecraft devs were suing FortressCraft. Everyone bar one website went "lol, whatever," and then Notch said that of course they weren't suing anybody. How many times does he have to make himself look like a moron before people stop taking him seriously?
 
O

OnPoint

Member
Since we're on the Fortresscraft subject... finding relics is poorly handled. You're supposed to listen for a noise as your audio clue, which gets louder the closer you are to a relic. The best way to describe the sound is "trains stopping". It's like a high pitched whistle. My favorite part is that they're hidden in solid ground. Not in a cave, or a dungeon, or some sort of an open box. They're just hidden somewhere in the ground.

We have trouble enough tracking them down when glitching the graphics and being able to look through the dirt. I can't imagine trying to find them the right way.

Isn't the update supposed to be coming out soon? I wonder what it will fix.
 
P

PepsimanVsJoe

Member
Hopefully a solution to this mess comes around sometime soonish. It used to be that the rating system had some iota of merit, unfortunately with a little effort anyone can throw together a hundred or so five-star ratings to give their own games.

FortressCraft has over 5000 ratings. 5000?! That's almost half of Miner Dig Deep, one of the games that has been around the longest and has the most acclaim.
 
W

wwm0nkey

Member
Speaking of Fortresscraft, Craftworld (the RPG spin on Minecraft) just recently released this.

It’s been a some time, and while there is nothing screen shot worthy to show, we have been hard at work developing CraftWorld.

For the past 2-3 weeks our largest concern has been the performance. We were rocking a solid 45fps on the Xbox 360, and around 180 on PC. While this was good enough, we maintain the idea of having CraftWorld running on Netbooks and lower end hardware. And of course, there is that important WP7 release to consider.

So Daniel ripped the engine to shreds. Every function, every class of not just CraftWorld, but of the Hazzah engine itself was torn asunder and optimised, cleaned and generally improved. The reward? The framerate is well over 600fps on his machine, and there is still a little more to do! This 600 fps will surely drop to something more reasonable when the game begins to get more complex again, but for now it is awesome to see the huge improvement in the core workings of CraftWorld.

As for what I have been doing, it is another time consuming single feature. Infinite worlds. The cycling of regions in and out of game memory, Dan’s on the fly generation has granted us the ability to just run forever and just find more and more mountains, valleys and plains. There is still a little more to do to get this working like a finely oiled machine, but right now it is rather surreal for me to use this. It is some of the most brain bending, complex engineering that Daniel and I have ever ever written, and we are damned proud of it.

We will be back to dumping in new and unique features soon (such as the space based inventory and crafting as well as the DECKS system), but the guts of the engine have to be absolutely perfect before we move on.

Thanks for reading!
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already sounds like a better engine that the POS Fortresscraft is running on. Also unlike Fortresscraft the world will NOT be limited.
 
O

OnPoint

Member
wwm0nkey said:
Speaking of Fortresscraft, Craftworld (the RPG spin on Minecraft) just recently released this.

already sounds like a better engine that the POS Fortresscraft is running on. Also unlike Fortresscraft the world will NOT be limited.
Click to expand...

I just hope that their terrain generation is better than that of Fortresscraft's. Every area looks exactly the same and the lack of underground networks is unforgivable.
 
W

wwm0nkey

Member
OnPoint said:
I just hope that their terrain generation is better than that of Fortresscraft's. Every area looks exactly the same and the lack of underground networks is unforgivable.
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I actually think all the starting areas in fortresscraft are the same....

Craftworld is looking pretty good though since they are re-doing all their textures from the last video and they are heavily optimizing the engine. A RPG version of Minecraft just sounds like a great idea.
 
T

toythatkills

Member
Kafel said:
Delta Energy 2.0 is out.

http://catalog.create.msdn.com/en-U...d=399a373f-68d3-4fe2-b60f-868357be1cd2&type=2


wtf.

the dev creates an impressive 3D tank game with helicopters and jets for 240 points but he ruins everything with cheap ridiculous sounds and noises
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Did anyone find this playable, at all? My crosshair points one way and I'm looking that way but my gun's pointing somewhere else and I have literally no idea where I'm aiming because there's almost zero visible feedback. Then the other tank runs around like it's Vettel's Red Bull or something. How do you play this?

Copter Crush 2 is as good as you'd expect a game with Comic Sans to be.

Tug of Four is what?
 
Fess

Fess

Member
CraftWorld sounds awesome! I'm actually having fun with FortressCraft even though is very bare bone right now, but the slow moving chapter system makes me lose interest in it, CraftWorld on the other hand sounds like something FortressCraft might be after chapter 25 or something like that. Hopefully they'll release it soon. And hopefullly they'll get the controls right on the 360 too since I don't play games on the computer.
 
O

OldmanAndroid

Member
toythatkills said:
Copter Crush 2 is as good as you'd expect a game with Comic Sans to be.
Click to expand...

unfortunately the slo-mo really had no influence on the gameplay....it looked cool, but basically became "infinite easy mode". Needed a cooldown, and higher damage during slo-mo (imo).

鉄鋼歩兵 (black and white cover) was pretty sweet! had a nice "vanquish" feel to it. I'm cursed with having an inverted thumb...couldnt find that option in the menu.

I enjoyed "udder chaos" (to my own surprise), mostly because of the awesome front-end interface and menus...nailed the arcade feel, very high production quality. Great difficulty progression too, bombs initially felt too overpowered.

3 impressive games, overall.

.....i need to get back in the routine of playtesting games, especially with DBP coming up.
 
D

Dark Octave

Banned
toythatkills said:
Did anyone find this playable, at all? My crosshair points one way and I'm looking that way but my gun's pointing somewhere else and I have literally no idea where I'm aiming because there's almost zero visible feedback. Then the other tank runs around like it's Vettel's Red Bull or something. How do you play this?

Copter Crush 2 is as good as you'd expect a game with Comic Sans to be.

Tug of Four is what?
Click to expand...
I just watched a video and I see what you're talking about. Zero hit detection and the tank runs around all crazy.

Not Skywalker quality, but it sounded decent enough for a $3 game. I don't know what Kafel is talking about. I was expecting cartoon sounds the way he was talking.
 
N

Noogy

Member
Dark Octave said:
How complete do games have to be for DBP?
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Not very. It needs to be long enough for the judgest to have a good time and see most everything the game has to offer, but I wouldn't kill myself making a 6 hour build.
 
F

Feep

Banned
I'm not sure how DBP feels about already released games winning. It's not like I'm not going to try, though. = D

But I digress.

Do you live in Los Angeles? Do you not fear social situations in which you know literally no one? Well, if you're free May 7th, come on down to Little Tokyo in downtown LA for the official Sequence Launch Party! There will be sushi! Music! Giveaways! The world's largest gummy bear! (I AM SERIOUS ABOUT THAT IT IS A FUCKING SIX POUND GUMMY BEAR)

And, because this party will be comprised largely of my personal friends, there will actually be more females there than males! (Or, at least, until you guys screw it up.)

If you're interested, please send me an RSVP via PM. I'll get you on the list. = D

Of course, the game has to come out first. But it will. Don't worry. It will.

Edit: DownTOWN*
 
L

LocoMrPollock

Banned
Feep said:
I'm not sure how DBP feels about already released games winning. It's not like I'm not going to try, though. = D

But I digress.

Do you live in Los Angeles? Do you not fear social situations in which you know literally no one? Well, if you're free May 7th, come on down to Little Tokyo in download LA for the official Sequence Launch Party! There will be sushi! Music! Giveaways! The world's largest gummy bear! (I AM SERIOUS ABOUT THAT IT IS A FUCKING SIX POUND GUMMY BEAR)

And, because this party will be comprised largely of my personal friends, there will actually be more females there than males! (Or, at least, until you guys screw it up.)

If you're interested, please send me an RSVP via PM. I'll get you on the list. = D

Of course, the game has to come out first. But it will. Don't worry. It will.
Click to expand...


Ohhh, I've been to Download, LA! ... good times, good times.
 
T

toythatkills

Member
Starzzle is out. It's brilliant. Well, it's brilliant if you have any kind of fondness for puzzles at all. You just slide around the screen collecting all the stars, but you can only stop when you hit scenery, I'm sure you know the drill. There's a little twist later when you have to control two guys together (switching between them) and using one to create routes for the other. It's really good.

This month has been pretty shit quality-wise so far, but this is great.
 
G

Galdelico

Member
Whoa, Infinity Danger seems so great...

I only played it 40 minutes but it feels really solid, love the heavy (yet well executed) bullet-hell going on screen when the enemy ship starts using multiple weapons.

Along with Hypership Out of Control and Revolver360, this is my favourite Indie shooter so far.
 
T

the_dannobot

Member
I'll be submitting Pajamorama to DPB. It's a cute little smash game with girls in their pjs pillow fighting. It's really fun and coming along nicely, but I still have a TON of work to do by the deadline!
 
W

wwm0nkey

Member
Only gold useres can rate content now. While it is not exactly the fix most where looking for, its better.

We’ve heard your feedback and have made some changes to the ratings system on Xbox.com. Starting today, only users with Xbox LIVE Gold subscriptions will be allowed to rate content on the Xbox.com website. By implementing this change, we believe our customers will experience more consistent ratings and a significantly reduced potential for abuse across the entire Xbox catalog. We have also investigated rolling back suspect votes, however, we determined it will not be possible to do this.

In addition, we are investigating users who may have violated their user agreement during this series of events. Violating user agreements may result in actions up to and including banning from Xbox LIVE, removal of currently posted games, and loss of ability to post games in the future.

We appreciate everyone’s patience on this matter and are excited about the fantastic games being posted to Xbox 360 through the Xbox LIVE Indie Games program.
Click to expand...
 
Dr. Zoidberg

Dr. Zoidberg

Member
wwm0nkey said:
Only gold useres can rate content now. While it is not exactly the fix most where looking for, its better.
Click to expand...

I don't know. This sounds like the kind of thing that will spawn nerd rage from silver users.
 
W

wwm0nkey

Member
Dr. Zoidberg said:
I don't know. This sounds like the kind of thing that will spawn nerd rage from silver users.
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:lol Silver users thinking they matter XD

Seriously though when I am at E3 I am going to hunt down members of the XBL update team and speak to them about having a "buy to rate" system.
 
T

toythatkills

Member
I think silver members can still rate stuff on consoles. That's what the statement implies.

So it's still open to abuse, but it would be much slower, and MUCH more work, so people hopefully won't bother.
 
W

wwm0nkey

Member
toythatkills said:
I think silver members can still rate stuff on consoles. That's what the statement implies.

So it's still open to abuse, but it would be much slower, and MUCH more work, so people hopefully won't bother.
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Still going to stick with my plan of hunting down a xbox live update team member at E3 and talk to them about this.
 
H

HadesGigas

Member
wwm0nkey said:
:lol Silver users thinking they matter XD

Seriously though when I am at E3 I am going to hunt down members of the XBL update team and speak to them about having a "buy to rate" system.
Click to expand...

"Buy to rate" is an awful system. "Download/play to rate" maybe.

Another major issue is they need to bring the "rate this game" option back into your library. Volume of ratings dropped drastically when they removed that. People mostly aren't going to go back into the marketplace to give something a rating after they've played it.

Even I will forget about rating things until I happen to go back to the marketplace for something else days/weeks later.
 
D

Dark Octave

Banned
wwm0nkey said:
:lol Silver users thinking they matter XD

Seriously though when I am at E3 I am going to hunt down members of the XBL update team and speak to them about having a "buy to rate" system.
Click to expand...
I would go with at least "play demo to rate". If you bought it, then you obviously though it was a high rating title.

In order for this system to be as fair as possible, we need the full spectrum, which includes the loves and the hates.
 
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