alright, well if you want my honest opinion, then it's hard as hell to control. I don't understand how to flip my guy or anything to do damage, or even if that's what I'm supposed to be doing.

the colors are weird, unorganized and don't really make sense. if I were you, I'd get with an art guy and have him do the graphics and you program.

I'd have to understand exactly how the program worked, I'd have some more suggestions for you. we can talk over aim some time if you want to turn it into something that armorgames would sponsor.

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[link] :-0 :-0 :-0

Yeah, I kind of picked that up at the NG thread: [link]

I just wrote a long response at the end about what I realized.

About the colors, I actually have showed it to some art people, like someone who has worked as an art director on commercial games, and they liked it a lot. :/ But I have some other -flashier- versions that are much more popular with the NG audience. Check my Scraps.

Well, once I start experimenting with the controls again and try to come up with an actually helpful, structured tutorial, it would be great to get some of your feedback. I'll let you know.

Thanks.

I heard about this on the GameDev.net forums, so I thought I'd give it a try.
Honestly, I think...it's pretty good. I don't know if it's supposed to feel like your character is swimming or not, but I'd prefer a more floaty feel myself, the way they jerk around can be a bit hard to control. I like the simplistic gameplay, I picked it up in no time, so props for that.
Graphics could be fleshed out, but I don't think it deserved anywhere near a blam on NG for that. In fact, fleshed out with stages and different levels, along with tougher enemies that would progressively show more direct control over their limbs, I think this could be a great, challenging game.
Nicely done!

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'Cuz.

...sorry

I like it how they move ^-^

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"We should talk..."

Hmmm, I didn't really expect that anyone would read my post on GameDev, but I'm glad you found it.

If you've been using the keyboard, try using the mouse (the blue player) if you would like a smoother feel to the controls.

It's nice to hear that some people do understand the controls - are you a game designer? Maybe it's easier for game designers to pick up. Or if you play a lot of musical instruments or do martial arts or something.

I keep hearing a lot about adding levels and backgrounds and such, so I'm trying to think of how to do that. But I'm not too familiar with level design. For the enemies, I wouldn't change their control scheme to directly control their limbs, but I could try to make them able to block and take advantage of openings the way an experienced player can with these controls.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm glad that you noticed. The physics and character design is probably what I spent most time on, to get the motion right.

I was hoping that people would appreciate the simplicity of the graphics because it makes the motion more clear, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I was actually using the mouse controls, and it moved smoothly, but kinda jerked around...as if you're swimming and make a stroke to change directions. Using the keyboard controls felt a bit smoother to me, actually; they still shot towards opposite edges of the screen for seemingly no reason, but the jerking around was either not there or not as apparent. As far as adding stages, the battlefield should be larger for one, with the camera zooming out/in, sorta like Super Smash Bros. That gives you more room to work with...but even then, I'd keep it simple, like just having a giant block in the center for one level, or cup-shaped things around in another. See Combat for the 2600 for an example of what I think would make decent levels for a game like think. Heh, maybe it is easier for game designers to pick up...haven't done anything professionally, or even finished anything really, but I do come up with stuff, document it and that whole spiel.

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'Cuz.

Hmm. I guess I'm not completely satisfied with the controls as they are now, so I'll be experimenting with them some more. I'm not sure why you would shoot to one side of the screen or another though, unless you bounced off your opponent... Is that what happened?

About the larger battlefield, that's what Ragdoll Masters does, and I could do that, though my original intention was for this to be a simple project.

Once I add music, I'll probably be working on some other more conventional projects with ragdoll physics, where hopefully I'll get some practice doing larger levels and collision detection for platforms and such - maybe I should take a look at the Metanet tutorials.

I may eventually return to this project, or more likely start over and make the epic ragdoll fighting RPG that everyone seems to be asking for...