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[DopeyFish]

http://home.in.tum.de/~jain/software/gravcombat.php

So good, so very good

this game is such a rip off the game i posted earlier... warheads

 

[Vlad]

I just want them to offer a free downloadable trial of the game with no signup required and give you an offline mode to understand the game mechanics and enjoy it. No time limit, no registering, no need to communicate them whatsoever. A simple download link and you're done.

The game has certainly piqued my interest and I did make an effort to go through the registration process and I even downloaded the ~700 meg file.

Well, as far as practicing by yourself goes, you can create a game for yourself, then just start it before anybody else joins. That's what I've been doing while I attempt to get the hang of the game.

One thing that concerns me, though, is that on the options menu, it says that in order to test to see if the buttons are working correctly, make sure that you can get all of them to light up at the same time (or something to that effect). However, not matter what I map the buttons to, I can't seem to ever get them all to activate at the same time, even if I hold them down. At best, I can get maybe five or six to light up, but I can never get the last one to work. It's always the last button that I try and push, too.

Of course, the chances of me actually playing on a song that would require me to push all seven buttons at the same time is pretty slim, but still....

 

[Priz]

Vlad: yeah. I wished there was an offline mode but they don't agree. I guess we'd have to see if the Malaysian or the Korean parent company did the english localization. (I'm guessing the Malaysian company did all the work on the english one)

With all the interest, the thought HAS crossed my mind of contacting the Korean company about working something out to bring the game out here (for North America). We have an english version to work with, no idea if we could get their code, but I do have access to a programmer or two, just need a translator. The only thing is the money, maybe work something out to cover the cost of the main server to download updates and such as well as the game server (as well as any money the Korean parent company wants). Maybe a one time suggested donation of $20 or $25... other than that, just have as many servers as possible to play on.

The Malaysian site just setup a forum where I suggested that since they're now charging to play that they should add the single player offline practice mode and the response I received from the admin was, and I quote "Online game will never be offline game!"

I then received this PM:

This game is based off Beatmania... that game and stuff like VOS, Ez2dJ, etc, are really good practice tools for coordination and timing. If you're interested, get ahold of me on ICQ, AIM, MSN, etc, and I'll set you up with an emulator for Beatmania. Another forum member (who rarely posts anymore, though I keep in contact with him) is working on a ojm-->bms converter, and the two songs I got from him work flawlessly.

Didn't want to post this publically because it can easily be seen as an effort to undermine e-games' source of income. I suggest you keep it shush-hush, as well.

I'm guessing he's referring to bm98? If anyone's played both - how do they compare?
If there's a way to convert all the songs to bm98... and it's at least on par...

 

[DopeyFish]

Well, as far as practicing by yourself goes, you can create a game for yourself, then just start it before anybody else joins. That's what I've been doing while I attempt to get the hang of the game.

One thing that concerns me, though, is that on the options menu, it says that in order to test to see if the buttons are working correctly, make sure that you can get all of them to light up at the same time (or something to that effect). However, not matter what I map the buttons to, I can't seem to ever get them all to activate at the same time, even if I hold them down. At best, I can get maybe five or six to light up, but I can never get the last one to work. It's always the last button that I try and push, too.

Of course, the chances of me actually playing on a song that would require me to push all seven buttons at the same time is pretty slim, but still....

creating a single room is a room just for you.

 

[Vennt]

Sea_Manky & Wasabi in #ga got me hooked on Escape Velocity: Nova

Great fun little Elite-style game done in a top-down asteroids viewpoint.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/

Freeburn.

 

[Teknopathetic]

They got you too, eh Freeburn? Dammit.

 

[Mashing]

Thanks for all the links to the rogue-like games... I love those. I don't know how many hours I spent in our schools library playing that game... good times

 

[Vlad]

Well, after practicing a little bit in O2Jam by myself, I figured it would be a good time to check out what playing against other people is like.

And as far as I can tell, it's not really all that worthwhile.

As far as I can tell, there's no interaction between players during the song, so it's just everybody playing the same song at the same time for a high score. Not exactly entertaining, seeing as I can do the same thing by myself. I guess I was expecting different people to be playing different instruments in the song or something. I'm probably just spoiled by Frequency/Amplitude...

Not only that, but every single game I played with other people was set to view maybe a single measure on the screen at a time, so notes went wizzing by way too fast to even attempt to play unless you had the song memorized.

 

[Archaix]

Not only that, but every single game I played with other people was set to view maybe a single measure on the screen at a time, so notes went wizzing by way too fast to even attempt to play unless you had the song memorized.

Are you sure the speed wasn't just set high?

Before you join a game you can see the difficulty level and speed. E/N/H means easy/normal/hard, and that is followed by X#, the speed multiplier. X8 is the fastest, 8 times as fast as normal, X0.5 is the slowest, half speed.

 

[Dagless M.D.]

this game is such a rip off the game i posted earlier... warheads

Gravitational Combat v1.00SW (10/09/1999)
* original release (shareware)

Warheads
copyright 2003

...He shoots, he scores

 

[aku:jiki]

Everything here -> http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/index_e.html rocks. rRootage is the best. Freekaruga (among other modes)!

I second N as well. Have been addicted for weeks.

Listen to this man. I finally got into Kenta Cho's games as late as today, in fact, with the recent Xbox ports of noiz2sa and rRootage. It's simply amazing stuff. The gameplay is spectacular, as is the style and presentation.

rRootage even lets you play in Ikaruga, GigaWing and Psyvariar modes, as well as a normal mode. How can you beat Ikaruga meets Tron('s crack-laced underworld)? You can't!

Because pics get more attention than text:

noiz2sa

rRootage

PARSEC47

TUMIKI Fighters

 

[Teknopathetic]

Newbie: BZZZZT. He misses. Warheads has been out since 97.

You lose.

 

[Belfast]

Yeah, you can change the speed of the scroll. After years of playing Bemani games, I'm no longer comfortable with the default speed, 1.5x - 2x is much better. But if you have little experience, I can understand the problem.

That was always my problem with O2Jam, though, and a lot of these online asian PC games, there's often little incentive to actually play with other people. And even if it is, that's usually just so you can get money to buy fruity clothes for your avatar. As tired as I am of Gunbound, its about as close as these things get to a legitimate game. O2Jam needs to put in items that affect the scrolling/notes of your opponents or give you a quick life boost if you're dying or something. And playing different instruments in a song would be great (as opposed to them just being a part of your avatar). However, I blame this on the laziness of the developers. They already know they can get people to play AND pay for it, so why improve the game any? Most of these kinds of games I'm talking about suffer from a half-hearted development cycle.

 

[Dagless M.D.]

Newbie: BZZZZT. He misses. Warheads has been out since 97.

You lose.

I was hoping no one would check up on my 'facts'

 

[Teknopathetic]

I didn't need to check up on them, I played the game at its release

 

[DopeyFish]

Gravitational Combat v1.00SW (10/09/1999)
* original release (shareware)

Warheads
copyright 2003

...He shoots, he scores

the first time i played warheads it was on a PC Gamer 1996/1997 issue where it was tomb raider or tomb raider 2 as the top demo. nya nya! what you see there is Warheads Second Edition... which is really just the same as the first

 

[Vlad]

Yeah, you can change the speed of the scroll. After years of playing Bemani games, I'm no longer comfortable with the default speed, 1.5x - 2x is much better. But if you have little experience, I can understand the problem.

That was always my problem with O2Jam, though, and a lot of these online asian PC games, there's often little incentive to actually play with other people. And even if it is, that's usually just so you can get money to buy fruity clothes for your avatar. As tired as I am of Gunbound, its about as close as these things get to a legitimate game. O2Jam needs to put in items that affect the scrolling/notes of your opponents or give you a quick life boost if you're dying or something. And playing different instruments in a song would be great (as opposed to them just being a part of your avatar). However, I blame this on the laziness of the developers. They already know they can get people to play AND pay for it, so why improve the game any? Most of these kinds of games I'm talking about suffer from a half-hearted development cycle.

Yeah, not only are the items useless, but there's really no incentive to play multiplayer at all. Unless I'm missing something, it's just a bunch of people playing the same song at the same time, with zero interaction between players. At least in Gunbound (and hell, any multiplayer game, really), playing multiplayer allows you to actually interact with the other players in some way. In O2Jam, that just isn't there. It's bad enough as is, but I can't see how they'd get people to pay for that.

As far as the speed thing goes, that makes a lot more sense, now that I think of it. I hadn't played the song before, and figured it was just really fast or something.

Either way, I can't see how that could be considered fun, simply because there's no way to play the songs at that speed unless you memorize them ahead of time.

Another thing that really bothers me about the game is the downright bizarre layout of the gameplay screen. over 3/4 of the screen is taken up by the avatars of the different players in the game, with the rest being the actual gameplay information. Then the tiny sliver of screen you have left to see the notes is constantly covered by a HUGE counter showing what your current streak is, making it really hard to prepare for the notes that are coming next.

However, I did find the core gameplay to be pretty entertaining, if a little hard to get into (not used to having seven buttons to press, I guess).

 

[Teknopathetic]

IIRC, you get much more points when you play with other people. But, once again, the items you get are useless.

 

[DopeyFish]

omg. i downloaded the song kan-kan today my god

I hated BPM changes in DDR and I hate them in o2jam

argh ARGH

i know they're coming it's just right in the THICK of things.

Oh and the ohm busters song (rip off of the ghostbusters theme song) is cool

i dunno about you guys, but I have been sticking to the classical songs for some reason

 

[shpankey]

The Myth series is truely amazing. I have Myth: TFL as the alltime greatest game ever created by human beings. It's not to be missed for sure.

"Get outta tha way!"
"Make way for tha dwarfs!"
"Oops" <--- lol!