SWAT (By TacticX)

[Mo'Minis]

SWAT was created by TacticX. Check the game here.

The White House is having a major pest issue. It is your job to guide the President throughout the White House and advise him on the best fly swatting strategy. Avoid the butterflies and be sure to kill the spiders when you see them. If you let too many flies inside, the White House will become infested. Don’t forget the Commander In Chief has a busy schedule so be sure to advance through  levels and kill as many flies as possible to gain extra time.

Good Luck!

[omerp]

Epic game name.

The controls are bugging me (no pun intended) though. Allowing multi press and moving the A key to Fire would help a lot. Also, you don't have a set position action in your Position events. Make sure to place it at the edge of the screen so clicking again will not allow the player to move outside of the screen.

I like the gameplay itself though, it's awesome :)

[zvir]

It's actually quite fun

A great game in my opinion =)

[TacticX]

Thanks for the positive feedback.

SWAT was just the project name I used until later on. I actually forgot to change the game name to Obama Fly Hunter before submitting  I don’t want to clog up the MoMinis site with duplicates so I will just have to leave it.
You are right about the controls and screen position.
I was not aware that the studio could do multi key press. I couldnt see any instructions in the help guide on the subject. How can I do that in the studio? I will be sure to make the requested changes and update the game ASAP.

Thanks again!

[omerp]

First of all, a lot of phones can't do it (notably most Motorolas - they ignore key presses if you already have a key pressed down). Of course, it's worth it for the ones that can.

The way to do it is by using relative speed. Something like this:

Right, KeyDown: Relative speed X:self.Speed,Y:null
Right, KeyUp: Relative speed X:-self.Speed,Y:null
Down, KeyDown: Relative speed X:null,Y:self.Speed
Down, KeyUp: Relative speed X:null,Y:-self.Speed

And the opposite values for left and up.

Like anything in the Studio, there are other ways to do it, but this is the one that I prefer because it means that if you hold down both left and right then the object will not move.

Also, we should probably add a way to change the game name of submitted games...

You're welcome

[TacticX]

Updated. Swat moved to fire, player can continue to move after swatting and player cannot leave screen. I had implemented multi-press but for some reason I could not swat when the left and up keys were both held down. I hope to have it working by contest end. Please let me know if you like the new swat movement or prefer the old way as it has changed the game play a bit.

Cheers!

[omerp]

Replayed with the new version, the improvements are very nice.

I still want multipress.

Got a bunch of new stuff I thought about, hope you like constructive criticism :

1. When the spider appears on the screen, he often isn't moving. This seems weird... It's probably on purpose, but...
2. More levels? 8 is a bit low, especially when it's not really possible to get a high score (the max high score is 1009).
3. Speaking of which, you submit score when the game ends, right?
4. Maybe have a progress bar on the screen that shows you how much % of progress you've made on the level? Just a bar that gets filled... 
5. You've got 5 full screen background images, plus some large images of Obama and the main menu. This probably won't be able work on low-end mobile devices, which is a shame since the rest of the game would work perfectly.
6. This might be too feature creep-ish, but maybe add power-ups that can be picked up if you swat it fast enough? Like bug spray that kills surrounding flies, something that makes the paddle faster, something that attracts all the flies towards it so you can make big combos?
7. Additional survival mode that goes for high score rather than time-trial levels?

Lastly, it may be possible to manually change the game name on our end. If so, you'd like it named "Obama Fly Hunter", right?

[Mavaros]

Really nice game, good idea, fun, good graphics, like it.

[TacticX]

Thanks Mavaros!

Omar-

I updated the game with a new score attack mode and a bug spray upgrade.
I appreciate any criticism. I wanted to address some of your ideas.

1- I wanted to have a few spiders that would just sit in the corners or top of the screen. This makes the player move out of the way to get the ten points and allows more flies to come on screen. This creates more of a challenge than the spiders that just move down and back.

2-Your right about the levels being low. I hope that the new added mode helps give the game more replay value.

3- Yes game submits score 

4- I am actually using this in my next game.

5- If I make backgrounds tiled and bring Obama into the game in different sections will this make the game playable on low-end devices?

6- I am worried about too many power ups changing the gameplay for worse. I would have to do allot of changes to the balance of user control and difficulty as well as fly spawns in a game I think is fun right now. Perhaps I could use these ideas to do Obama Fly Hunter 2?!

7-Just added!

Yeah, if you could change the name that would be great!

Thanks for your help so far and let me know if you think I am off base on some of these ideas.

[tzachh]

Hi,

I'm not sure i understand your question in 5, but if you:

split and the backgrounds into tiles

and

reuse the tiles in between all the rooms (always having the exactly same collection of images in the pool)

and

all the rooms have the same size

and

you separate the Obama image into its own object and place it in different position in each room


This combined would make things run much better on weaker devices

hope this helps

[TacticX]

Hi Tzachh,

Thanks for the reply. I am just trying to clarify for understanding. So the obama object would need to be separated into smaller pieces and then placed within each room. Is that correct? Also, I would have to have the background images of all the rooms split into separate tiles and then have all the tiles from every room loaded into the pool of every single room even if they are not being used in that room?

If so that makes me wonder. Will the size of the .mom be the same as the jar file when converted? If so that would be very big file if I had every tile from each of the nine rooms and the score mode in every room pool.

Thanks for your help

[tzachh]

Mmm... looking back at the design of your game I believe I was a bit mistaken.

The goal of splitting objects and backgrounds into smaller pieces (or tiles) is to be to reuse the same piece of graphics in a few different places, often having it reappear in the same background image. This means:

1. Splitting Obama into smaller pieces would probably not provide too much gain (All the pieces would appear in the exact same way in every stage eliminating any gains). Doing this may even result in minor slow-downs...

2. Splitting the backgrounds would also not do too much to help, because you either have stages with the exact same background or completely different background. Had you created backgrounds that reuse tiles between levels that could have made a significant difference.

Lastly, the size of the MOM and the size of the JAR are different (The JAR would usually be substantially smaller), but still, you are correct, doing what i recommended in the previous post to your game would result in more bad than good...

I guess I'll have to get back to the drawing board and think of something else

[lidor323]

Excellent game! loved it! althought maybe you should make the aim more noticeable  it will make the higher levels  much more easier

[bojan]

Good game. ;-)
Just one thing which would make it more interesting not to mention that scores would also vary a bit more if you implement it.
When you hit two flies with a single stroke then you should get double points for them.
When you hit three flies with a single stroke then you should get triple points etc.