Comments - Armitage1982

Yay :D
So now ? Time to plan another game, make another pack of free levels or both ? ^^

Hi
The game as been released since :)
It stayed in beta for a long time to make sure no one had serious issues and listen to suggestions.
The level editor did not change much so you should still be able to play your levels :)

About the price, it's less than a Belgian beer !
And to tell the true, since the release I was only able to drink tap water...

Just popping in to reply that I don't forgot either.
It's nice from your side :)

I wonder why the email notification of Desura isn't working when there is activity on this page !?
Anyway, I don't know if you saw lastly but I finally release that update I was talking about.
I still need to produce a trailer or something to catch a bit more attention on Metagolf...
Thanks for popping in ;-)

Hi Lunick
I'm currently trying to save a bit of money on my own to revamp this project but things aren't going as fast as I want. That's basically all I'm waiting before leaving the alphafunding phase :-)
I do have an updates correcting the player animation sequence and various other small things, but I was waiting to complete the revamp first before releasing it.
I did not plan any other updates soon but I'm listening to ideas and I'm open to any suggestions, so don't hesitate to drop me an email about that if you want.
I don't think that the level system will change much in the final version so anybody can start making his own campaign or levels in the editor right now :-)

Yeah me too Lunick :)
Considering we were giving to a lot of others games and developers a chance to see the light of the day. But it's not so grievous for Metagolf, we were just testing something new while trying to be as generous as possible. Each backers received a 75% off coupon and since many enjoy the soundtrack, it will stay accessible under the Metagolf data files rather than being encrypted in the executable like planned before :). So everybody win a little something in the end of this "Kickstarter bundle" experimentation.

Now regarding to the improvement of the game I must admit I did not reach the required amount of money to hire a professional graphic designer and revamp a few things like Players, Backgrounds and artworks. but I hope to release a trailer soon to invite new gamers to try and enjoy Metagolf like you :)

I'm thankful for each person's giving me feedback on Metagolf and I'm pleasantly surprised most of that's comments are very encouraging and supportive. This is something really great when you are working alone on such project, and for so long, as I wish to go full time on this job one day but currently can't afford it.

Thanks again for the kind words and see you at the game premiere :-)

So normally each games start with the auto-shoot option turned off (if not then just uncheck this feature in the level menu).
Then, as you may guess, you simply need to release the mouse button (or the related keyboard key/joystick button) when the cursor is mostly filled.
To actually shoot something you need to touch or get close enough to an object (golfball, objects, other players, ...). When releasing, that object should normally follow a physical curve influenced by gravity, that why you generally need to aim a bit higher than necessary to reach the desired area.

The first time they play, most people fail to aim correctly or simply/frenetically clic to shoot which is equal to the weakest shoot :)
If it's not the way things are working for you, I would be interested to know more about your general configuration and problems you may encounter so I can try to resolve it as best as I can. But I'm nearly sure it is related to graphic driver that need an update :)
You can send me an email if you prefer to stay private : info@metagolf.net

Thanks for the kind words!
Glad you like it, it's nice to hear :)

I find this perfectly normal to help people who try my game. It is very encouraging to receive feedback, even if it's for something that not working great. No game is perfect afterall, but this beta phase and alphafund is here to solve as many issues as possible before the final release.

The next beta release is planned for next week if everything is OK. It will feature the first complete pack of levels, I'm currently finishing the second additional multiplayer pack and hope to freely release more pack later if things are following (I try to stick myself to a release every 2 weeks but I'm a bit late this time due to my job search and personal reasons).

Hi.
Thanks for the feedback :)

About your shoot problem you simply have to keep the mouse button down to increase/decrease the power jauge. It's adding a bit of randomness in your accuraccy. Can you please give me more precision if there is still a problem with this ?

Most of the time, graphic problems can easily be fixed by updating your graphic drivers.

It would also help me to know on which Operating system you are so I can look at it.
Nobody ever reported glitch or problems like this before so I need to make sure before atempting to fix something that your system is up to date. Hope you understand that :)

The game is DRM Free so I encourage you to try it on a friend machine to catch differences, and if he likes it : he can have it :D

Glad this update is working for you and thanks for reporting :D

About the screen resolution, the best one is 1024x768 (the native pixel perfect resolution :).
To avoid blurry rendering, image distortions but mainly slower performances I prefer to stick to that resolution which is pretty standard and common for 2D games.

The 1280x1024 is an hard coded resolution I was sometimes using for development purpose. I will probably change this on a future release.

Thanks for the precision :)

I'm please to tell you that OpenAL will be available as the default sound layer in the next version, with the abilities to switch back to PulseAudio if ever needed. It will also be an option for Mac Os and Windows users as well.

Glad we sort this out thanks to you guys ;)
Next version should be available by the end of this week if everything goes well while testing it.

I hope so :-)
I also thought it was a good solution to use PulseAudio :p
Time will tell.
I will leave a PulseAudio option available in my config.xml file just in case ;)

I'm currently working on this Linux issue.
It's actually the reason why the beta 5, while ready for Mac OS and Windows, is not out yet.

FMOD and BASS are not cheap (from 500$ to 9000$). I can't afford this on my saving.
I was using Freeaudio for Crossplatform reasons but it was buggy on some distro.

I'm working on an implementation of OpenAL. It will be available as soon as I have found a work around for the Channel limitation. A limitation that PulseAudio don't have and which is working great with most Linux users.

I can't figure out why having this driver installed is a problem for Linux users ?

By checkpoint you mean saving portal ?
You may look at the video of soul667 here on youtube : Youtube.com It goes through the tutorial level without any problems at all.
It's simply mean to learn how to play, maybe in a few updates I will improve the way you learn how to play.
The controls are a bit "aerial" but it's intended and you get used to it. If you have ideas to improve it I'm open to any suggestions.
As for the menu you could go straight to level selections and play them without even the need to change any options. They are just available so you can tune yourself the experience and add a lot of replayability :) In the full version a championship is even driving you from levels to levels.

I'm really impress by the quality of your video!
You've brilliantly understood the gameplay and describe this beta in an excellent way.

Actually there is a drop down list in the KEYboard Options that let you choose between joysticks (gamepads, joysticks, xbox360 Controllers), Keyboard and Mouse combo. I will try to make this more obvious on next updates :-)

You're on the beta 4 Demo version actually.
Not too many levels, no additional golfball types / game modes, no championship with unlocking courses and the level editor won't let you save maps or exchange levels on Internet.

Nice trick to activate the Max shoot option for passing the boxes! I never think about it myself hahahah :D Most levels are currently a bit too hard and need a good revamp before any final release.

It's a very interesting and pleasant way to point me out where I need to make improvements, thanks a lot for your video!
This will help me a lot :)

I have changed the Linux Audio driver several times already.
It turns out that Pulse Audio was the one who works on every tested distributions.

I did not go with OpenAL at first simply because I remember it was a driver you had to install back in the day. Now that I know this driver is more consistent on Linux distributions I will try to use that one first then draw back to the current Pulse Audio Driver and if none of these audio drivers are available on host I will try to implement a fix to bypass this error :)

Thanks for reporting this.
I'm trying my best to support Linux distribution but my old development equipment is not 100% recognized which is quite a pain sometimes. Believe it or not but I'm still working with an AMD Athlon 64x2 from 2005 lol... At least, the game is working perfectly on it which is a good thing for old configuration like mine :-)

I will post a new when this problem will be addressed.

Thanks for reporting !
This telling me you are on Linux and by the look of the error you probably need to install PulseAudio Drivers. Some Linux Distributions does not always come with them.
What Distribution are you using ?
Mine is Linux Mint 12, Metagolf was also successfully tested on Ubuntu :-)

Thanks !
If everything goes in the right direction I may improve them a bit more again :-)

I intentionally left a few rooms for features like Networking, but it won't research this before the final version.
I also need to be sure if networking is possible due to the true physical nature of Metagolf (synchronization problems may appear more regularly).

I would love to but currently my compiler does not support 64bit for cross-platform reasons. But everything evolves and I wouldn't be surprise to see this feature supported in future.