I’ve been reviewing Liberated Pixel Cup Games. This is one of 48 Games.
Disclaimer: I’m also competing in the cup, I’m not a judge!
BitBrawl [Download me!]
This is the first software I’ve used that was made in Haskell. I learned a couple of things, like this “Cabal” thing that apparently handles its own dependencies, independently from Fedora’s yum / rpmdb. I decided not to use cabal to install dependencies, and instead used Fedora’s own Haskell packages for everything.
After I compiled the game successfully, I had to move the binary from the dist/build/bitbrawl/ folder back into the main folder so that it would launch correctly.
This one’s a multiplayer game. It supports up to 4 players simultaneously on the same computer. The use of gamepads is heavily recommended as getting several people crammed over a keyboard is just a bad idea.
As soon as you start the game, you’re asked to set up the keys to start, select, movement and the 4 skills available for each player. Once you’re all set up, you can press start on any player’s start button to start the match. There’s a 2 minute timer which, once it reaches 0, ends the match and declares a winner. To win, you must kill the other player(s) by using your abilities.
I played a couple of 2-player matches against my brother., and it took us a while to get started. Apparently none of us read that we had to *hold* the ability button before releasing it so that it would actually deal damage (Usually resulting in one-hit K.O. if fully charged).
There was a small variety of skills, as well as 2 usable classes, A Monk and a Warrior. The monk could use A Fire Lion, a Thunder Thingie, a Shield and bitch slap punch (I think). The warrior, on the other hand, could use a bow, a dagger, a pike and another dagger (with a different animation).
We found the warrior to be completely uneffective, so we stuck with monks, usually throwing fully charged fire lions at each other as a quick way to try to kill each other out. Due to the small arena it was easy to do so.
After the 2 minute time runs out, the game just quits/closes, so the next match, you have to re-configure the buttons again which was very annoying.
I would’ve liked more variety in terms of maps, as well as a bit more balancing and new character choices, but I can see how this game could be used for multiplayer matches in the long run.
Thanks for the feedback!
Normally I wouldn’t reccomend cabal in my README for use as a package manager, only as a build system, but in this case I actually mainlined a patch for Hipmunk (my physics engine) during the competition, so the bleeding edge version was needed.
Interesting that you had to move the binary. Did typing `dist/build/bitbrawl/bitbrawl` not work to run it on Fedora?
The game actually supports an arbitrary number of players but, as you note, until I get gamepad support in there (soon!) more than two is a challenge. In testing we actually used disjoint keys as though we were on one keybord, but with multiple keyboards plugged in.
If you both spent all your time casting fire lion (a popular choice!) your stamina/energy bar would have spent all its time very low, explaining your one-hit KO’s. Low enough stamina, and the punch (or, “slap”, heh) can take you out.
Do you have any suggestions how I could make the charge-ups more intuitive to the player?
Joey’s “other dagger” is actually “block with dagger”. That probably needs to be more intuitive as well.
I hear you on play-another-game-with-same-keys. That is something I will try to add soon.
The single map and two players basically came down to time. I hope eventually to build a map generator so that the arena is different every time. New players can actually be built with little-to-no code (hoping for “no code”), I just have to set up more sprite sheets and do more play testing, which I ran out of time to do.
Anyway, thanks for trying it out, and hopefully I can address most of this in the future!
Regarding Cabal? It worked on Fedora, hah. Not sure if we’re including your Hipmunk patch.
I didn’t try typing dist/blah/bleh/bitbrawl, I simply moved it to the main folder so it would find the resources.
For multiplayer? I haven’t yet figured out how to hook up more than one Wiimote to my laptop, but for two players, it was fine.
I didn’t know the lower stamina made us easy to kill, we simply spammed Fire Lions because it worked
I didn’t know the other dagger animation was ‘block’, that makes more sense. Does it reduce damage taken?
As for the Arena… yeah, the limited time available in the contest meant we all had to cut corners, hah.I look forward to an improved version of the game!
One thing I didn’t point out in the review is that sometimes in the player set up screen, the keys would ‘lock up’, making me unable to switch to warrior, and when that happened, I couldn’t control my character in the arena. I think it might be related to trying to assign a pre-assigned key, to player 2.