Hello all, you can grab from here:

http://www.winterwolves.com/games/SpinAroundSetup.exe

the beta demo of my puzzle game Spin Around.
It should be quite stable, but of course any bugs/suggestion you have is very welcome! :)
I'd be also grateful if someone speaking good english could report errors in the help file (located in the help directory of the game).

Thanks!!!

Any screenshots? :)

erhm, surely, I am making the website now :D

I'll just upload one here in the forums. The demo is only 1.6 Mb though :P

The game couldn't find bass.dll, so I used one I had on my drive.

It's not really my type of game so I can't say much about it, but one thing that got my attention was that it felt like the game was running in slowmotion when you rotated or moved a row, but maybe that's just my old computer?!?

The game cannot find bass.dll, so I couldn't test it out.

Sorry you're right :D
Now I uploaded the new version, this one doesn't require bass.dll at all!!

About the slow-play: be sure you have installed the latest ATI - Nvidia drivers, you need OPENGL acceleration to play the game.

After a few moves, a message came up about "Please register" and after that I couldn't play anymore, since all the balls were suddenly invisible.

Game gets ****ed up when the nag screen appears (check the image).

When I click help in game, it will quit.

When I click online scores in main menu, windows resolution won´t change to normal it will just stay in same with the game resolution.

I could see black "background" on texts/some images.

There was option for music volume but I didn´t hear any music in game.

edit: I decreased images colors because image was too big with full colors.

Thanks a lot for the testing, obviously I need to fix some bugs with the nag screen :p
The fact that the game quits with the help is because I need to be in normal resolution to display the html help file, it says so when you rollover the mouse on the button...
You don't hear the music because in the demo I didn't put it :p I was thinking to add the music to the game only in the registered version (but I can change that).

The black background and those balls disappearing, may be a driver problem: if you have an ATI graphic card, be sure to update the drivers to the latest version. I have a ATI Radeon too and had those problems with OpenGL games before.

If you could update and try it again that would be a great help :)

No, I don´t have ATI, I have GF2 Ultra. About drivers, newest drivers won´t work too well with this card so I´m not going to update.

I have a GForce 4, and recent drivers. I don't have problems with other OpenGL/DirectX games, and yours worked fine until that "please register" message popped up.

Thanks again :)
Alex: maybe you're right, but you have checked latest? I heard they fixed all the problems with DX7 games compatibility, maybe they now works. Not sure though, since I passed to ATI 2 years ago :p

Mike: then apart for that nag bug you didn't see any "garbage" on screen? ok at least that's encouraging :)
It does happen EVERY TIME the nag box appear? it does appear then the table get cleared of every balls instantly?

Thanks again for the help! Hope I'll be able to help back some way :)

Mike: then apart for that nag bug you didn't see any "garbage" on screen? ok at least that's encouraging No, and it looks exactly like the screen shot Alex_Code added. The transparency is gone (like around the cursor) and it is as if you are drawing the board on top of everything else (you can still keep playing, but all you see are the white balls for a second when you have a match and perhaps a line of shadows at the right of the board).

Jack, Who is your demographic for this game?

One thing that "I" thought was a little off was some of the sound. It sounds like a shotgun each time I move the balls. also the sound for the hover over on the arrows isn't that appealing either and would where thin pretty quick.

You might take a que from casio video games or some of the puzzle games like popcap makes to see if there is some more pleasent sound ideas.

Of course there are times when you want to have something sound harsh. So you want to really think what reaction you want out of folks with the sound design.

I did like the idea of the spining board. but again,the sound...er not sure about.

Hope that helps.

Jack,

Same problem here when "please register" message shows up. ( same as Alex_Code's screenshot ). It happens always when message shows up.

Config: P3/1000, GF GTS, WinXP

Well ok, then maybe I'll just remove the Nag box! :p
That's the easier solution, and limit the number of plays to 10 matches or so.

About the sounds, you're right, I'll change some. They were just temporary, I need some "softer" ones :)

Jack Norton: Infact I have to take my words back a little bit because I´m not sure about that. I mean, sometime ago I downloaded the newest drivers but it can be that they have released new one since. When I was using does drivers I got critical error when tried to go 3d card properties and some games didn´t work enough well to be playable but these drivers I have now have been working pretty ok as I remember so I will just stick with these now.

Found the bug!! a memory leak :p
(thanks to patrox! hehe)

now I uploaded the new version, if someone that had the bug can download it again, this time everything should be ok!!! :)

Thanks a lot again!

Some suggestions:

Maybe you can allow the player to drag the row of balls left and right, as an alternative to clicking the arrow buttons. This is how some word games do things and I personally find that much easier to use.

The grey balls were hard to tell from the grey background for empty slots. Maybe that is because I am using a TFT screen, where colors tend to be a little different from normal monitors.

Someone else already mentioned that the game quits when you press help. This was totally unexpected for me, even with the rollover text (which I didn't notice). It was also unnecessary since I played the game in windowed mode, not fullscreen.

Hope this helps!

Maybe you can allow the player to drag the row of balls left and right, as an alternative to clicking the arrow buttons. This is how some word games do things and I personally find that much easier to use.
the movement based on row is essential for the game rules: moving the entire row left or right by dragging the mouse could be interesting, I'll implement it maybe in future :)

The grey balls were hard to tell from the grey background for empty slots. Maybe that is because I am using a TFT screen, where colors tend to be a little different from normal monitors.
the balls should have been black not dark grey. Yes you're right, I'll what I can do (maybe just change the board color).

Someone else already mentioned that the game quits when you press help. This was totally unexpected for me, even with the rollover text (which I didn't notice). It was also unnecessary since I played the game in windowed mode, not fullscreen.
I think I'll add a check and if you're playing in windowed mode the game doesn't quit. The problem is that is hard (at least from what I know) in OpenGL to switch between full-screen and windowed.

Thanks for feedback. Since you don't mention the nagbox bug, I think I solved the problem :D

Since you don't mention the nagbox bug, I think I solved the problem I did experience the nagbox bug, but I didn't try out the latest version.

I did experience the nagbox bug, but I didn't try out the latest version.
ah! ok :)
if you can, try the new one... I just need to know if that damn bug is corrected or not. With my pc was fine even before (such a bug I'd have noticed myself while playing if it appeared!) so I can't tell if it is really ok :)

Thanks in advance!!

I just tried the latest version and the nag screen thing appears to be fixed. However, the nag screen itself still looked odd, with black squares behind the letters. The rest of the screen also doesn't redraw properly when the nag box pops up -- it appears like the game has locked up, while it really just sits waiting for a mouse button press.

In my opinion, it would help to display a quick tutorial in-game, explaining what to do. You already display roll-over help in the box at the bottom of the screen, which is fine. However, I couldn't be bothered to read all that, and you have to rollover the various screen items to begin with. For example, I didn't even know that you could click the big arrows at the top to rotate the board!

Talking about the rotate feature, it starts to get a little tedious to wait until the screen has rotated. Maybe you can speed this up?

Yes, now it does work. There seems to be something wrong with the text in the register now box as Matthijs Hollemans describes.

I just tried the game full screen and it looks like you are using 60 Hz, which is awful if you normally have 85 or 100.

I played it for a little longer now and I was wondering what I'm supposed to do when no more moves are possible (when there are only balls left at the bottom two rows and it's impossible to get a row of three anymore). I waited for the time to finish, but after 0:00 it started counting 0:-01, 0:-02, etc. Then I chose Quit and was surprised that there was no high score (BTW, why do you split the game in to a timed mode and score mode?). Then I tried the top score mode but it also had no kind of ending, I just had to quit when there were no more moves, and nothing about scores, eventhough I had much more than the entries in the on-line high scores.

Also, why don't you check for diagonal rows as well? And I agree that there might be a better sound than that gun shot for moving rows.


[Edit]
I hadn't noticed that you can rotate the field (maybe it's an idea to show it rotating when it comes up or something). But still, now I can get one or two more rows at the end and it only says "game over" and doesn't do anything with my score.

Grr... ok I'll look at those text that doesn't display well :p
About the 60hz question, I'll ask patrox since I'm using his PTK :)

To Matthijs:
you can change the speed of the game with the left menu, clicking on the green balls to adjust the speed. That way the rotation should be much faster!

To Mike:
when you can't do a row or column of three, you need to rotate the board with the spin arrows. In that way you'll see that it's possible to align them :)
I notice now that I really need a tutorial since either you and Matthijs didn't know that you could rotate the board with the top arrows! :p
Anyway thanks to you I found that when time reaches zero it should automatically say game over instead of going negative numbers!! :))

Thanks again, you're both really good testers!

...now going to make the tutorials... :)

Perhaps let the game give a little hint if it detects that you've never rotated the board and you can't move the normal way.

I uploaded what I hope to be the final beta :)
I've added a small tutorial: if you click Help button, it explain quickly what you must use, and two yellow mark appear near the arrows, so it should be more clear now.

But still, now I can get one or two more rows at the end and it only says "game over" and doesn't do anything with my score.
If you're trying with time attack or top score mode, it should connect to internet to check if your is a highscore.

Obviously if you aren't connected, it does nothing :)

In the final version maybe I can add a box that explain that was unable to connect to internet :rolleyes: