Hi all,

Let me respond to everyone from the Hamsterball Beta Thread by saying thank you for all your help and advice. We implemented many things that were suggested here (if you download the new release, you'll see) as well as considerable bug fixing. So thank you, Dexterity, for all your help.

Well, Hamsterball is "officially" released, although it's not hotlinked on the main site yet. But, if anyone here wants to give it a shot, and have a "first look" you can get the download here:

http://www.raptisoft.com/download/hamsterballsetup.exe

And, of course, as always, screenshots here:

http://www.raptisoft.com/hamsterball

Even if you aren't interested in buying, if you'd give it a try out, just to tell me if anything is broken in the security and unlocking, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Our current tentative plan is to add three more races and multiplayer in the next couple months. Some of you might want to wait until then, if you're planning to buy. However it's going to be a free upgrade, so nothing is lost in buying now. :D

Thanks again for all your help... now I. Must. Rest!!!!!!!!!!!

I think it's great. Similar to my game, Best Friends, but with much more of a marble madness influence. Howeber, it did boot me out just as I was about to win level 4. What part of Michigan are you in anyway?

Hi there... I'm just north of Detroit, in Macomb. Hope to eventually move even further north.

That crash you experienced is in Bass.dll. The game would've released two weeks ago if not for it. :P Can't quite seem to find anything to stop it-- that's why the game saves itself all the time during tournaments.

I liked Best Friends quite a bit-- your framerate is excellent, though I suppose it's just a matter of fewer polygons.

There was an episode at the company i am working part-time as application developer. One of my co-workers came in and asked: Do you know Hamsterball? He knew it from his girlfriend, she was playing it at school all the time with her friends. Then he downloaded the demo and some guys played it with much fun. (Of course i don't approve such behavior during work time :-) )
Again i saw that a multiplayer mode would be great.

Load game with no trouble, begin newbie race, hamster starts to move... as soon as it hits a slope and would have to start changing direction, game hangs.

Tabbed out. Nothing happened for a long time. Thought it had seriously crashed, but in a few minutes the tab finally went through and I was back to the desktop - but my mouse wouldn't work right. It was constrained to a tiny space and would snap back to it if I tried to move it. Had to kill the task via keyboard commands.

My graphics card is rather damaged, so 3d games crashing horribly doesn't surprise me. That mouse problem, otoh, is sort of annoying. :)

(And I do mean *damaged*. It currently takes three boots in the morning for my card to remember which direction is up and stop spewing random garbage symbols onto the screen instead of boot text.)

Originally posted by Raptisoft
Hi there... I'm just north of Detroit, in Macomb. Hope to eventually move even further north.

That crash you experienced is in Bass.dll. The game would've released two weeks ago if not for it. :P Can't quite seem to find anything to stop it-- that's why the game saves itself all the time during tournaments.

I liked Best Friends quite a bit-- your framerate is excellent, though I suppose it's just a matter of fewer polygons.

Yeah I kept bf extremely low poly, usually less than 2k in any scene. It's very limiting though. I could have never pulled off some of those levels you have in hamsterball. Have you considered switching to a different sound system? Like fmod perhaps?

Mouse cursor hit testing is still off by a taskbar height if i have it at the top of the screen.

Originally posted by Raptisoft
That crash you experienced is in Bass.dll. The game would've released two weeks ago if not for it. :PI hope you've been talking to Ian about it. I've had one big reproducable problem with BASS, and once he had a build of the game that demonstrated the problem he fixed it right quick.

Sadly, plenty of folks in this thread (http://www.dexterity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2255&perpage=15&pagenumber=1) had stories of BASS-related woe to tell. I tell ya, it's enough to make a guy nervous.

p.s. "Times New Roman" used so you "Ian" wouldn't look like "lan".

Mouse cursor hit testing is still off by a taskbar height if i have it at the top of the screen

I can't seem to reproduce that, on any of my systems. I guess we'll have to look deeper into it...

I hope you've been talking to Ian about it.

We haven't been able to reproduce it reliably enough. I personally have literally played the game for over six hours, just over and over, to try to make it happen. And nothing. And then, on some random day, boom, it'll crash right when you hit a goal.

So, I didn't want to try to contact him until I had something more concrete to tell him. At that point, the game switches musics, and that seems to be the thing that makes the crash.

about the cursor, it is annoying in windowed mode, i think you should clip it to the window and only release it when the user is in pause. ( i often had my cursor out of the window during the score and when i clicked my window would go in the background.

ClipCursor( &windowRect );
ClipCursor( NULL ) ;

pat.

Hey just tried the release (prerelease) and the game is really fun and polished well. One thing is I still have the same weird semi-transparent color overlay (thats the only way i know how to describe it) that I experienced in the beta. I checked the option to turn on Safe Mode and that fixed it right quick. I'm guessing that was the reason for safe mode? Ok just thought you should know.

Vidcard is ATI Rage 128 and is upto date on all the drivers.
System is WinXP
Athlon 850, 128 ram.

Again, Great Game!! I hope it sells well!

Awesome job, I love the new titlescreen. The performance on my machine is better now, but not yet totally prestine (I'm the one who was having trouble with odd race and toob race slowing down). I haven't had a chance to give it a super good go yet, but I did play up to the green swinging platform level. The controls seem to have changed some, have to get used to them before I can say if they changed for better or worst. I also noticed the weasel time is missing, how come? Trying to beat the weasel time was very challenging and very fun.

Overall this game is phenominally good, and as you improve it overtime with things like multiplayer support and more races ;) I think you have a high seller with a long lifespan on your hands. Congratulations!

I'd just like to say that this game is just brilliant. It goes on my list of "buy straight away after playing the demo", along with Crimsonland and Supreme with Cheese.

I got a crash to the desktop btw :( (Rad8500, Dual1GHz P3, WinXP Pro, latest drivers for everything) just playing the game.

Cas :)

You're onto a sure fire winner there. Excellent gameplay, great graphics and all round fun. I loved marble madness back in the day, so this game was nostalgia heaven for me.

One thing I must say though - I think you give away too much in the trial version. There are loads of levels available for play in the demo - far too many. You might be better off arranging it so you play a selection of the most fun levels in the demo and unlock the rest when you buy.

And on the plus side - the level where you change gravity so you go up the walls are fantastic. Totally f****d up - I love it.

Thanks Damocles...

You think the demo is too permissive? Like, you think it should cut out after lvl5, maybe? I was very torn up on this, could not decide what to do.

It seemed like "You get 20 plays, AND you can't save, AND you can't post high scores AND you can't pass level 5" was going overboard a bit.

But maybe you're right... I know the 20 plays gives people a *lot* of free time to play it.

(Odd race is one of my favorites, too. :) You wouldn't believe what we had to do to our physics code to make it work well, though).

Don't forget Marble Madness only had 5 levels in the whole game! So for sure, you might want to cut down the available levels.

Cas :)

You give too much away - not everyone cares about posting scores. It would be quite possible for someone to complete the game within 20 executions - after that what have they got to left to purchase/see?

If you make the five demo levels the fun ones, say the beginner level, then an intermediate one and three advanced/quirky ones. That would be plenty to get people hooked - I know I was hooked by about level 3.

I also think there are way too many levels for a demo. And even 20 tries I think is too much. I would say to cut both back a bit... maybe 10 tries at 5 levels or something like that? Just a suggestion... I'm in no way qualified to give such advice.

I think I might cut things off after level 5 or 6... you're right, I just went and tried it out, and it's too much game for a demo. Sigh... that's gonna cost me.

I'm still going to leave it 20 plays, but am gonna cut the tournament off after Up Race, I think.

I knew, after just 3 levels, I was going to buy the game. Fortunately, I don't have to yet, because I've still got plenty more levels to see...*

Cas :)

*don't worry, I'm definitely buying it :) But I've got guests and I've made a curry tonight. I type this message surreptitiously as I wait for some saffron milk to diffuse through the basmati. Charlotte thinks I'm slaving over a hot stove.

Okay you bloodsucking leeches,

Download the newest copy, and you'll get, a, uh, free candy bar, right when you download it. Yes, a free candy bar, and not a registration box that won't let you go past level five.

Originally posted by Raptisoft
Thanks Damocles...

You think the demo is too permissive? Like, you think it should cut out after lvl5, maybe? I was very torn up on this, could not decide what to do.


I think the demo is definitely too permissive. I finished the game my first few times through. Very little incentive to buy because I've seen all there is to offer. For me the entire incentive in a game like this is to see what new things the further mazes have or to play later levels. Even a 1 hr demo would probably reveal everything to me. Maybe there's not enough content? Maybe I'm an exception in terms of being able to finish the game so quickly?

One thing is certain, if you had cut the demo off at level 5 I probably would have bought it right away.

- Steve

Hi Steve,

You certainly do seem to be the exception... most complain that the game is too hard. And this after I softened it up for Real.com, even.

I myself can tear through it with little effort, also. In fact, just before releasing a build to real, I made everything a little harder, because I just couldn't live with how easy it was.

Originally posted by Raptisoft
Hi Steve,

You certainly do seem to be the exception... most complain that the game is too hard. And this after I softened it up for Real.com, even.

I myself can tear through it with little effort, also. In fact, just before releasing a build to real, I made everything a little harder, because I just couldn't live with how easy it was.

This is a pure introspection opinion comment, but here are my thoughts on "softening it up" - Take it with a grain of salt... I don't say this with any certainty, but rather with some vague notion of why I think the Real.com crowd might have a hard time with it.

My worry with softening it up is that it doesn't really address the problem of marketing it to the real.com crowd effectively. (if indeed they could ever really be considered the right crowd for this style of game) I don't think players on Real really want a game that's easy. They, like us, want to be challenged, but they need a game that's accessible. Take Zuma for example. That is a really really tough game when you get up past level 6 or 7. Level 12 is near impossible if you ask me. So it's very difficult and yet it sells very well on Real. If customers on that channel really wanted easy games would they buy Zuma? Perhaps in part because it starts out easy, but also it's very accessible. Anyone can pick it up and start playing it in under 5 minutes. Just aim and shoot with the mouse. I think that's probably one of the key things a game needs to appeal the Real.com crowd. Easy to get into, but not necessarily easy.

I showed hamsterball to my girlfriend who is usually, while hardly a scientific test, a pretty good guage for how well a game will do on Realplayer. Problem is.. she just simply can't play it. She's a huge fan of zuma, but controlling that hamster is beyond her mouse skills. She has to pick up the mouse and move it back and roll it some more and understand gravity and velocity, and strange things like the odd level. It's all really cool, but just beyond her. So she wathces the hamster tumble, giggles a bit and gets very frustrated and goes back to playing Zuma. So in a sense yes it was "HARD" for her, but not because the game itself presented a challenge, rather becuase she had difficulty understanding the game and getting into the controls. If players on Real.com say it's a hard game I suspect that they mean it's hard to control and not so much it's hard to beat the clock. the game is supposed to be about navigating obstacles and getting good times in a race, but is that the "hard" part for players that can't get into it?

Then on the flipside players like me complete the game too easily and quickly. What should have been the ideal game for us becomes a quick look at some great level designs. I would have bought just to see the new levels. Purely to see them. But I would have liked to have been challenged immediately too. Maybe a more mainstream audience with a much tougher game is really a better market for this. I would say that if you're unable to sell it well through Real.com make it super tough and try selling it through Garagegames. It might do better.

All in all I think you made a really fantastic marble madness clone. I really do appreciate the art, level ideas, and style of the game. So I hope my view of things is incorrect and you sell many copies, but I do get a nagging feeling that it will be a tough sell.. especially to a casual gaming market. I've been wrong about games in the past and whether theyd do well many times before so we'll see after it's released. I wish my "Will it sell" compass was finely tuned, but alas it's not.

Anyone else us a combination of mouse and keyboard?

I use mouse to move left and right, and up, down arrow keys to accelerate and slow down :).

I found it hard using the mouse, and keyboard so I combined both controls. Now I can get past most levels!

Awesome game. You should contact (everyone with an arcade game)

http://www.tlcind.com

I'm currently trying to get my Cupid game into the Arcade if it fits.

I've read a few posts on another forum to the effect that the demo is too generous (although they weren't really complaining about that). I think the promise of extra levels later on to registered users may well do something to undo this but I think you may have shot yourself slightly in the foot by giving away the milk without forcing people to buy the cow.

Personally I shall be purchasing it along with Platypus when I finally pull my finger out of my ear because I think it's quite the loveliest slice of pie to come along for a long time.

I have a few hamsterball related questions for you:

1) What are eSellerate like? I've looked into using them before, and am thinking about changing my current 3rd party sellers (share-it) for my next title. I like a few aspects of eSellerate. What's their SDK like? Support any good? Fast and reliable? Any negatives to report?

2) What font does hamster ball use? I like it but can't find it.

hi, an old bug still exists in this version. On the Beginner level you can fairly easily get your hamster stuck here -> http://www.dexterity.com/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=23607