Nice! I've just experienced a bug in the junkyard level. Around 200 yards (left) I wasn't able to advance, even though I've killed all monsters on the screen. If I remember correctly, only 3 Frankenstein monsters showed up, so I guess I couldn't advance because I couldn't kill the 4. Frankenstein. By the way, I've just barely managed to beat the 6. level in time and I feel so lucky that I wanted to share the screen.
Wowzers, the update(s) you have planned sounds great! Playing on the iCade is going to make Fangz and whole new game for me. Bring on the hardcore difficultly! I still have some hair to lose. Have you had any time to look into a colorblind blood option? . . . . It's really not that big of a deal, I managed to complete the game as-is and I'm very colorblind. Honestly, what would help the most is having the puddles of blood dry up faster (if that makes sense?). I read that one of the rappers is going to be changing to a white guy named "Slim Fangy" or something like that. . . . That's going to be funny I can't wait! These updates sound awesome.
Sounds good. You are definitely going to need tweets. Believe it or not, you can make it through level 3-2 without taking damage when tweets is upgraded a little. . . . Tweets, mini-gun, plasma gun, and the chainsaw are all really good weapons.
The option to control the amount of gore is only going to make it on the second update, sorry. I'm not even sure all items on the planned list for the first update are going to make it (if not, they'll be pushed for the second update). After discussing with Alex Gallego, we decided to maintain the colour of the rappers as it is currently. It's obvious that we meant no insult whatsoever. Furthermore, if I changed the colour of one of the rappers to white, I'm pretty sure I'd get more hate mail, saying that by changing the colour to white I was implying something else. It's simply impossible to please everyone. These are fictional characters and they're not meant to represent, let alone insult, any race, culture or nationality.
I Love This Game All the little extra mechanics (yes, even losing health for jumping), it all brings together great old-school risk/reward hardcore gameplay. Loving it! Wish I hadn't waited so long before picking it up. =oD
If anything, it is more 'racial' or stereotypical to have all the rappers on levels like Downtown and the Subway and the white characters only in Suburbia, as opposed to just the 'color' of them. Personally, I think art imitates life and people need to realize this, especially when they are playing art. It doesn't make anyone racist. Nor should people be using a video game as a scapegoat for trying to change the world. Really they should be using the video game to escape the real world. How I look at the characters in this game is that the Valfs and 'Dracula-like' vampires have bitten the towns people and turned them into vampires. I'm not sure if I am accurate in this view, but it's tangible regardless. In this respect, I like how the Valfs and Draculas are mixed in on the boards with the 'former-humans,' like they are the ring leaders of a vampire takeover. A board like Downtown demonstrates this well, with the rappers and Draculas together. EDIT: What would be REALLY cool is if there were humans walking around the environment and were bitten by the vampires and changed into vampires AS YOU WERE PLAYING. For example, in Suburbia, a man is gardening and then gets bit by one of the Draculas and morphs instantly into a Dracula and then joins the attack against Frank. So, the rappers are cool and definitely fit; there are just too many of them used on too many stages. I like them on the Downtown and Subway levels, but not so much on Vamp Street and the Junkyard. Hypothetically, I've been trying to think of a replacement for them on the Junkyard board, but can't think of any since who really inhabits a junkyard. Vamp Street is a good opportunity to break up the rapper theme a little, maybe with more of a white collar type of vampire to accompany the lawyers. The duality of vampire as both literal and figurative bloodsucker is a strong theme and could definitely be highlighted more. I'm not sure if I like the hulking zombie monsters since they are the only enemy that is not a vampire and the game does a good job defining itself solely as a vampire game. I guess they're there for contrast, but I do wish they were just a type of giant, formidable vampire instead (while being different than another giant formidable vampire already in the game that I will not mention). I also think the third section of Vamptasia is a little much, since it is basically just a repeat of the first section: a barrage of Valfs. Valf: I'm just thinking out loud here about the boards and characters, since I've been replaying the campaign. The update sounds awesome.
Alex, I saw your list of likely or possible updates. Five difficulty settings seems like overkill. I think the difficulty level itself perfectly fine. It's purely the timers that are the root cause. In rushing through to complete the level on time, one has to take risks or play recklessly, which leads to lots of hits. I would suggest toying around with the timer first (extended by 50% or eliminate as a second difficulty option), then seeing if any other changes are necessary. EVERYTHING ELSE IS PERFECT. I love this game.
ZOMG I finally completed the campaign! Is the financial crisis over? :/ And I did it whithout ever jumping... Anyway, for those having trouble with levels 7 and 9, the shotgun is your friend! Try to ignore the vamps that are not in "biting-mode" and keep shooting the others!
Yes, there's a glitch there. I'm looking into it. We actually had a video showing people turning into vampires, and initially we even had animations showing the transformation. I took out the video because it didn't add much, and I took out the transformation state because it made game play slower. Overkill is what this game is all about But I may eliminate the extremes of the difficulty levels. I'll have to play it first and then see some different beta testers playing it. This is how I do it But there are many other strategies that work. BTW I PMed you a week ago. Did you get my message?
Yeah, interactions with the environment are always a plus to me, whether it's you or the enemies. Like in the first Zombieville, where you could go inside the homes (which is missed from the sequel)--that is a good example of being able to 'enter' the background. It really adds an element of depth, which, in terms of Fangs would be fitting, since the enemy patterns are pretty standard. Instead of enemies just filtering in from the sides, they could attack regular humans and spawn more vampires AND come in from the sides. You could even have an element of the gameplay where you can try and save humans on the streets before they get turned into vamps, similar to singling out the humans from the hordes of zombies in Zombie Gunship. THEN you'd be cookin' with gas On top of this, transformation is one of the beauties of going from human to beast, whether it's vampire, zombie or even werewolf. These are just things I'm seeing. I don't know how feasible they'd be to implement, like with the performance issues that Alex mentioned. I'm sure it's a lot more work and the next couple updates are probably pretty stacked. It would be a good idea for Fangz 2 for sure.
No, what I meant by it slows down game play, wasn't that it slows the game because it's too performance intensive, but rather that gameplay becomes slower, meaning that vampires will take a longer time to reach you. This in turn may create unexpected side effects and soon after I'll loose the ability to send enemies at the rate I want to attack the player. It's one those things that looks good, but hurts gameplay. All that you mentioned is perfectly feasible. That being said, I have to make a living My plans are to update Fangz up to where I can look at it as a the best that's possible to do, given reasonable economical and time constraints (remember, I have no IAPs that keep on supporting this game, and Fangz hasn't paid itself yet). Then I'm doing another game, of a totally different type, to recover from the burn out from Fangz (both to me and Alex Gallego), and then, hopefully, we'll try to up the ante in this kind of game again.
I think that idea may work better as just being contained within one level, where there are humans running around and the vamps are attacking them and you have to save as many humans as possible to pass the level. Some vamps would be attacking Frank, while others would be attacking the humans. You're tasked with getting rid of both sets of vampires to save as many humans as possible within a certain time limit. We'll put that one on the shelf for Fangs 2: The Thirst for Blood.
Yes, if you press up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, jump, fire, jump, fire, you can play with the developer's face superimposed on Frank's body.
Alex, strictly hypothetically speaking, if you were to remove the big zombie-like monsters from the game and replace them with a type of vampire that was also large and moved slowly, what do you think you would have it look like? I was just looking on the web and found the example below. This is of course a relatively generic example and is not nearly cartoony enough, but it is more 'vampire/monster-like.' Like I said, strictly hypothetical. Also, do you feel that the light saber is too similar to the Katana? This isn't to say I don't like the saber, but I go for the Katana every time. I love the animation of the saber, but it just isn't different enough to me--or good enough, in my opinion--for me to choose it over the Katana. The Katana has the awesome finishing punch at the end of a combo... Have you considered adding something like that for the saber? Like a super swipe? Or maybe a type of thrust move, where the saber puts a hole through the enemy?
