Hey people, remember me? I just finished this game called Worm Wars. In this you are a worm who tries to eat other worms before they try to eat you. Tell me what you think of it.

Download it here...

http://www.geocities.com/worm_wars

I don't like your game to reside in my Windows/System32 folder !
This is exactly the kind of stuff that *deeply* annoys me, and that I will not forget.

$Platform_List{"Windows"} = "move $Executable_Name %windir%\System32";

I'm not going to try it this way. Could you upload an executable ?

Well, if you check the code, it's very short, or even the HTML docs, I think it isn't worth the time, at least my time.
This is too basic to actually call it a game nowdays.

It's snake clone (litle different on rules) and the display is ascii on the console.

It reminds me of VT100, VT120 VT340 games that came builtin on those terminals, but they had a much better ascii art. I remember playing space invaders in one of those at the Uni.

Ok, I'll put an executable up.

Too basic! Why do you say that and why are you telling people not to play it? If you actually played it you would not think that. Fine, I'll put the executable up right now.

Oh my, what's that ? It's nice that you're trying to learn C++, but I feel the need to say that this won't actually fascinate anybody. Yes, it's too basic. Please have a look at some of flipcode's IOTDs, and see a difference.

I mean no disrespect to your work.
The game play can be interesting or even addicting, I won't say it isn't, I haven't tryed it, and I think that it is simple but probably hard to master, which is always a good start for great gameplay.

What I meant is that until you do something with it (graphically), you don't have much chance that anyone will play it, or even compile to play it.

Try to lear Allegro, SDL or something else that provides a simple 2D Graphical interface and then present us a version with that.

I hope you see the difference after doing this exercise.

When a game ends it says:

"Press RESET to play again."

Never saw this key, but ENTER seems to solve the problem.

Moving the worm only when pressing a key as the bad side effect that if you loose akey press while another worm is chasing you, you lose one or more segments.

These are usability problems, start to learn to deal with these early in your game building education, and you will be a lot better in the end.

I also think the routine that checks the worms eating is wrong, because worms can pass over each other when they go head to head.

It also seems easy to eat another worm, by pushing it vertically to an edge and then reverse while on top of it but before the edge. This might be due to the problem/bug I refered before.

I think Francois is quite aware that this is not the very best game of all times. Implying that he isn't is just mean.

I think for a start the game is quite ok. I've seen ppl doing much worse. It didn't crash or anything.
Furthermore, many games which do have blasting 3d gfx just suck on the gameplay side because most time was spend creating impressive gfx rather than good gameplay. This is especially true for professionaly made games.

I think it's good you concentrated on the game and got it done. Sure there is things to improve. You can build on top of it or create something completely new with what you learned here. So don't be discouraged by some of the comments. Some might even be helpful by hinting at how worm wars 2 could be an even better game.

Most hobby projects don't ever get to a point to be released because ppl spend too much time attempting to make it look like doom5 rather than getting it done.

Alex

Just a note:
By game interface, I meant how you interact with the game, I didn't had graphics in mind, that was already mentioned before.

The important thing is that if the user usually assumes he can control is player with the cursors keys, then that should be supported and be the default configuration.

I for example expected two crash with the other worm when going head to head, but instead worms works like ghosts and they pass over each other, which is inconsistent with the eating process, where user expects one solid thing to eat another solid thing.

It's stuff like this that can make or break a game, that is what I was refering to as "Playbility/Usability".

P.S.
Everyone here wants to help, but people have to want to listen, work hard and improve, at least this is my perspective.

Maybe it won't facinate you but not everyone thinks like you. Some people actually like simple games like this. Right now the game is very young but in the future it might really be something. Try to look on the other side. Not all fun comes from graphics.

You are right, "best" is a relative term. Ppl like different games..so talking about the "best game" is not 100% accurate. On the other hand you shouldn't take everything 100% literally.

FrancoisSoft wrote:
"I did spend a lot of time debugging it. Why do you hate the game? Have you played it?"

I played it I and I don't hate it. The gist of my last post was that the game is "quite ok" (or "not bad" in other words). It's positive that it didn't crash and a plus for your coding. What I meant to say is that the other ppl commenting should be less intimidating because your game is after all ok. So instead of being sacrastic in their comments they could be a bit more supportive.

Alex

I agree. This game might never improve graphically but it will improve intellectually. In other words the worms will get smarter. Also the levels are subjected to change. i.e. There will be bonus rounds and multiplayer mode. I may colorize the worms for the latter purpose. Just stay tuned the game will change!

This is a ludicrous amount of posts for the source material - its a snake game. move on.