Denvish's game Reviews on Newgrounds

[Tricky Ball]

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Extremely frustrating. Didn't obey any of the laws of physics that I learnt at school. Also, I should probably also add: don't upload movies to NG if they're not your own work. I can't find the FAQ page that said it, but it basically said, if a Flash isn't your own work, get the original author to submit it.

Oh yeah, here we go: from the FLASH SUBMIT page, which you viewed when you were submitting this swf:
Your movie must not be someone else's work! We will delete your account as punishment.
If you see something you like elsewhere, ask them to submit it, or notify us.

AnonymousFlash responds:

hes my friend he TOLD me to submit it under MY newgrounds account. but thanks for that awful waste of a review. :D Happy Holidays My Friend

[Invasion 2]

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Good game. But how many times are you intending to submit it before you actually finish it? I can understand doing it once to get some feedback, but then you should have gone back and added all the features you intend to; THEN re-submit it one more time for bug-testing before the final submit. The way you're going, you're going to have about 10 versions of it on NG before it's completed.

In terms of gameplay, it's still a little easy beyond the first 2 levels. Just stack up on swordsmen and send em all in at once. Beyond the 2nd level, it's a walkover - you need to make the enemies do more damage (cluster grenades?), as well as raising the castle HP.

VENGEANCE-GGG responds:

No grenades. It's in medieval times. But I might make watch towers...

[update tut]

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Hmmm. Maybe you should've listened to my advice, and acted on it before you re-submitted this. It's currently awfully close to blammage.

amit-patel responds:

blah blah blah. thats all i see ass*#!?

[Flash Tips 1-3]

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Wow, that's one excellent song, where did you find it? =)
Great tutorial. I was thinking of writing something like this, but you beat me to it...
Good job. Thanks for the plug...

FLiXD responds:

I found it in the trash-bin
It made me laugh, so I brushed off the gravy and placed it firmly but gently into my movie

[Flash Stuff Tutorial]

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Could have been a whole lot better.
The tuts were good enough for basic users, but the presentation of this flash was awful. Why didn't you take a little more time to produce something that looked good? It wouldn't have taken much to line the buttons up, put a frame around it, make the buttons better-looking... if you're going to submit tutorials for new users, you should be setting an example. Tht may have taken a while to build, but the overall look was of something that was thrown together in minutes.

amit-patel responds:

thanx ill take this and put it into my next tutorial.master.

[Robert, the valient elf.]

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Would have been better with a quicker framerate I think.
I liked the idea of the pixel-style animation, but I'd like even more if you added some colour. Gameplay was pretty repetitive, and got boring very quickly. Would be a good basis for a game, but needs a lot more depth. Good choice of music.

The-EXP responds:

Yeah, thanks for taking the time to see Robert's origin...it helps to understand the game.

[Heaven or Hell]

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Graphics: Good at the start. Going to hell animation needs improvement.
Animation: See above
Style: Good
Music: Both good choices
Sound FX: Fine
Voiceover: Excellent
Gameplay: A bit annoying
Coding: OK
Other: Strange choice of subject, but cool. Liked the zealots

Overall: Yeah. Simple game, but well enough made. Good job.

TheOtherTruth responds:

Thank you for your review.

I wish it had felt simple when I was making it.

Limited coding, 34 scenes

[Black Cat Ops]

Well, you certainly surprised me

After seeing your tank game demo, this is the last thing I would have expected from you. Reading back through the reviews, some of them are pretty harsh. I guess it's just that good ol' NG mentality - my advice: pinch of salt.

Now, the game. The controls are simple, but I found it quite fun. Maybe you should add a status bar which shows any boost-ups/enemies left/levels left - then again, I quite like the clean look, the fact there's no clutter. The graphics were good, and the music wasn't overpowering (suggestion no2 - volume control/jukebox?). Character animation was nice, AS worked a treat.

I'm guessing that the reason that so many reviewers have called it boring is because there's no way to die/lose - so long as you persist, you can win (although it gets bloody hard). I'd suggest having timer that runs down for each level, and 3 lives. Most NG users would probably like it better if more blood was involved, too... sad, isn't it?

BrianSexton responds:

Thank you for the feedback, including the suggestions.

Why was this so surprising after my tank demo? Because a first-cat (har har har) shooter is very different from a tank game?

I have been working on an updated version of Black Cat Ops with various improvements, including difficulty/skill selection, but I want to be clear that I am working on an update right now, not a completely new game with significantly different gameplay. I have considered implementing a timer to emphasize the fact that time is a factor, but I also enjoy the clean interface and I do not want to overcomplicate things in the update (I may, however, revise the gameplay more significantly in a sequel).

Thanks again for the feedback!

[All Hallow's Eve]

Excellent work

Hope you bother reading your reviews

Cool game. Sapped my CPU way too much (99% on AMD 2.6GHz) on levels 20+, and during the in-between levels screen.
Like the style though, and it kept me entertained for a good hour or two. Other suggestions, add a little music maybe. I've read what other reviewers are saying about the crosshairs being too dark, but I think that's right to leave it like that; more distant targets should be harder to hit. As for crosshairs being BEHIND the zombies, if it's not intentional, just use swapDepths("xhairsmc", 99999) and it'll be in front.

People have also mentioned gamesaving, which would be nice, as would a pause button.
If you don't know about Flash cookies, check out SharedObject.getLocal:

Create a savefile like so (on main timeline):
var savefile = SharedObject.getLocal("savefilename");

Write data to savefile like this:
savefile.data.zzzzz=xxxx;
savefile.data.22222=_root.somevariable;
savefile.flush();

Pull data from save file like so:
if (savefile.data.zzzzz=="xxxx"){yyydothisyyy}
or
_root.somevariable=savefile.data.22222

I don't know enough about your coding to suggest what to do about CPU usage, but it's a big problem, even on loQ

Anyway, enough negatives... I loved the game, keep up the good work!

Seawana responds:

I have lightened up the crosshairs since so many people have asked for that change. However, they remain behind the enemies on purpose. Why? Because YOU are aiming from behind them.

As for a game save, thanks for the info. I had thought about adding a game save, but didn't have the time to implement one just yet.

Agreed on the CPU usage too. There's a lot of actionscript going on in the background and I'm not a guru just yet, so I don't know the best way to optimize it. Hopefully in the future I will be able to fix that. It runs pretty well on my 2Ghz Athlon, so I figured that was aceptable for now.

Thanks for the helpful review.

[Playable Tank Demo, V10]

Very, very nice coding

And good, clean graphics. You submitted this ages ago, why haven't you turned it into a game yet?
The controls are a little tricky. They're not too intuitive. But I'd definitely make the effort to get used to them if this was a game.
The tank needs to be smaller, or the screen bigger.
The music is jarring, and is the worst thing about this demo.

I hope you get round to finishing the game. I can only dream of being able to code like that.

BrianSexton responds:

Thank you for the kind words and the constructive criticism.

I have not yet implemented this tank in a game because I have been busy with college classes and other projects, including experimental Flash game engines that use both scrolling and perfect-wrapping (game entities can smoothly slide from one side of the screen through to the other instead of just popping over instantly). I will try to put the tank and console to good use soon, though.

Controlling both vehicle and turret movement can be a bit tricky, but I have not yet decided upon final controls, so hopefully I can get that smoothed out for you. I might offer multiple control sets and/or customizable controls.

I agree about the size; I want to make the screen larger, but I am not sure how well that would be accepted. 800 x 600 might be safe for Newgrounds gamers. Hmm . . . perhaps I can work multiple resolutions into the game engine (I could leave it scalable, of course, but Newgrounds needs to know the size, so I need to work around that).

I thought that was kind of fun tank-driving music, but whatever music makes its way into an actual game with the tank (or tanks, as is likely to be the case) will be appropriate for the game.

Thanks again for the kind words and constructive criticism.