You Sunk My Sackleship! - A "Battleships" remake [2P online ONLY]

[Ali_Star]

Greetings all.

It's time now to take you back to a time before the wonders of online gaming. A time when you'd sit down with a chum or a family member for a night of heavy (board) gaming. Tired of killing Nazi zombies? Tired of dismembering a certain teen singer? Then look no further. Join up with an online buddy and marvel at the joys of a far simpler time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you:

You Sunk My Sackleship!

After a short introduction, and the option to watch a superbly-made tutorial, you will then enter the Virtual Training Pods:



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On entering the "arena", you'll be greeted by a screen like this:



Then.... it's time to Battle (or should that be Sackle?)!



Please note: This level will only work with 2 ONLINE players, ie on seperate consoles. Also, when you're in the arena, there may be a little bit of lag due to the high amount of logic, which may effect the sound effects.

http://lbp.me/v/2ny1wq

[AlistairMcAlistair]

Alright Alistair.... first off, your level was great, me and the other guy who playe it both loved it! I can not stress enough how great the concept was and how well your logic worked. There are just a few areas where you can spruce things up a bit....
- Add more general decoration, around the beginning area.
- The layout where your hits and your opponent's hits are on the same board is a bit confusing, perhaps you could have two boards and switch between them? just a thought
- We found it a little bit hard at first to notice when each of our respective turns had ended. Maybe add a sound or something flashier to indicate the other person's turn.

If you just change those things, this could become one of the greatest online-only levels there is out there, definitly more unique than the hide-and-seek ones. Thanks for playing my level, btw!

PS The home-made music also added a creative flair. Did you make it yourself?

[Ali_Star]

Cheers for the reply Alistair. I shall respond to your points.

Firstly, did you watch the tutorial by pulling the switch on the projector? This explains how you know whose turn it is. There are sound effects, but there may be a problem where you don't actual hear the sound effects because of the lag caused by a high amount of logic. When you fired a shot did it make a sound? Also, when receiving a shot, did you here a "whistle and explode" sound?

I would have liked to add more decoration, but was limited by thermo space. My thermo was practically full! Also, aesthetics has also been a weak area of mine.

I did think about having two seperate areas for placing your pieces and firing your shots. However, logically speaking, the way I did it was much easier. Also, I think having two board areas one one screen would make things a bit too cluttered. Another point to make - each square of the board has it's own microchip. Each one has the same logic, but the difference comes with the tag names, which all have grid references. For example, if you shoot at the top left square it will activate an "A1" tag. The "A1" tag sensor on the opponents board will recognise that. There are also seperate tags for whether a ship was hit - eg "A1hit". Ok, so all in all, that's 200 microchips I have to alter individually...... adding an extra board will double the amount of microchips, which would probably add a significant amount of lag, and more headaches for me. A rather long winded explanation there, but I think you get my point

Yep, I made the music myself. I wanted to make something with a military beat to it.

Thanks for your comments, I'm off to your thread now to post mine.

[LBP2_Tutorialist]

A certain teen singer huh... lol

[EnochRoot]

Grabbed a buddy and played this 2 player level. Usually I'm not a fan of board games translated to lbp, given the creative possibilities available it seems to be redundant to do so. BUT....and it's a big but....this actually changed my mind. It works really, really well and is a lot of fun in two player. The tech is top notch as is the in game humour from start to finish. I like the fact that poppit controls weren't disabled allowing for rude comments to be passed back and forth as we sunk each others ships. Encountered no bugs or glitches at all. Only suggestion, depending on thermo, would be to add more comedic effects as the ships sink...sharks, survivors etc. or random pirate ships passing by. overall an excellent level.

[rialrees•]

This went really badly for me and Smasher last night - we replayed twice and one of us (whoever got into the second pod) kept getting killed when it tried seperating us! Not sure what was happening exactly, but all we could see was one player going 'off screen' and reappearing at the first checkpoint. We'd sat in the controllinators and off we went, but only one of us at a time got to see the board. Such a shame as it was looking really promising. Just thought I'd let you know so you can see if you can replicate this and fix it.

[Ali_Star]

Grabbed a buddy and played this 2 player level. Usually I'm not a fan of board games translated to lbp, given the creative possibilities available it seems to be redundant to do so. BUT....and it's a big but....this actually changed my mind. It works really, really well and is a lot of fun in two player. The tech is top notch as is the in game humour from start to finish. I like the fact that poppit controls weren't disabled allowing for rude comments to be passed back and forth as we sunk each others ships. Encountered no bugs or glitches at all. Only suggestion, depending on thermo, would be to add more comedic effects as the ships sink...sharks, survivors etc. or random pirate ships passing by. overall an excellent level.

Thanks a lot. Really appreciate your feedback.

- I did toy with the idea of disabling popit controls, but it would have been a nightmare during testing when trying to communicate with my friend. Did you (or has anyone) watched the tutorial slide show? Do you think it was alright? I'm actually quite proud of that.

- My thermo was practically full. Sure, it would have been nice to add a few more features, such as random giant shark attacks, and kidnappings by Somali pirates.... but you know

- I always try to add a little bit of humour in my levels. Afterall, LBP is a game played with little wollen dolls on cardboard surfaces.... it's a silly game meant for sillyness

This went really badly for me and Smasher last night - we replayed twice and one of us (whoever got into the second pod) kept getting killed when it tried seperating us! Not sure what was happening exactly, but all we could see was one player going 'off screen' and reappearing at the first checkpoint. We'd sat in the controllinators and off we went, but only one of us at a time got to see the board. Such a shame as it was looking really promising. Just thought I'd let you know so you can see if you can replicate this and fix it.

Hmmmmmm. Were you playing on the same console? Sometimes when I was testig in game mode, I'd plug in an extra controller, and when entering the arena, what you described would happen. This is the only thing I can think of at the moment. Because the game relies on a seperate camera for each player, activated when you enter the pods. Playing on the same console obviously defeats the object of Sackleships because you can see where the other person has placed their ships.

What are your internet connections like?

If it's none of these problems, I'll just have to have a look when I can.

[Xaif]

Hey, I played your level with some guy the other day.

It's an incredible reproduction of the Battleships game. When I played I didn't really come across any bugs not already mentioned here. The sound effects were the most buggy, the majority of the time there weren't any at all although I understand it's not something you can control. Something I did have a bit of bother with was the placement of the ships, it seemed to have some sort of grid snapping system in place but it seemed to be an inconvenience as I struggled to get the ship to go exactly where I wanted at points. Again I'm going to put this down to the same thing as the sound effects, with the heaps of logic in the background here, in addition to online strain, it's likely that lag came into play a bit.

One thing I did want to mention was your projector, I was very impressed by it. It is pretty long though, I don't know if it's because I know how to play Battleships that I tuned out half way through or whatever, and saying that I don't know why I pressed the tutorial button at all. I guess I didn't expect it to go on for that length of time. Visually stunning though.

All in all brilliant level, I'm sorry you haven't had more plays. I guess it's just the nature of 2P only levels.

[Ali_Star]

Hey, I played your level with some guy the other day.

It's an incredible reproduction of the Battleships game. When I played I didn't really come across any bugs not already mentioned here. The sound effects were the most buggy, the majority of the time there weren't any at all although I understand it's not something you can control. Something I did have a bit of bother with was the placement of the ships, it seemed to have some sort of grid snapping system in place but it seemed to be an inconvenience as I struggled to get the ship to go exactly where I wanted at points. Again I'm going to put this down to the same thing as the sound effects, with the heaps of logic in the background here, in addition to online strain, it's likely that lag came into play a bit.

One thing I did want to mention was your projector, I was very impressed by it. It is pretty long though, I don't know if it's because I know how to play Battleships that I tuned out half way through or whatever, and saying that I don't know why I pressed the tutorial button at all. I guess I didn't expect it to go on for that length of time. Visually stunning though.

All in all brilliant level, I'm sorry you haven't had more plays. I guess it's just the nature of 2P only levels.

Yeah, the problems you talk of are due to a very large amount of logic. Initially, I did the sounds a different way, by having individual sounds attached to each microchip, set to "local". However, this made the sounds in the far corners very quiet, so I altered it and swapped them for tags, and put a sound chip in the middle of the board.

With regards to the projector, yes it is quite long. But I wanted to make sure I didn't get idiots coming in saying they didn't understand it. Plus, I wanted to give people enough time to read the tutorials, considering there could be non-English speaking people playing. I could make it shorter I suppose.

Thanks for your kind words. Even though it's not getting many plays, it's comforting to know that people do like it, apart from that one problem that rialrees had.

[Stunkel]

Awwww you beat me to it I was in the middle of making it, but yours looks so much better than mine. I'll check it out ASAP

[Ali_Star]

Awwww you beat me to it I was in the middle of making it, but yours looks so much better than mine. I'll check it out ASAP

Don't let that put you off releasing it! You'll probably get more plays than me anyway.

Plus, it'll be interesting to compare logic and aesthetics.

BTW, if you're having any problems with the logic.

I'll give your level a go tomorrow.

[Stunkel]

Ok, I just played this with my friend. And it was pretty good. I really liked it alot. The intro thing you had with how to play and the projector was perfect. It all looked nice too. I liked the idea that the players were actually going to battle with eachother when they went into the pods. The actual game play was pretty good too, although at times, it would not respond to my clicking. It was no big deal though But some people might be annoyed with it. Everything else was pretty fun. Now onto the checkers level . But for Battleship, you get a and a from me. Great work. And when you play be sure to give a review on the page on the website!! Thanks

[Ali_Star]

Ok, I just played this with my friend. And it was pretty good. I really liked it alot. The intro thing you had with how to play and the projector was perfect. It all looked nice too. I liked the idea that the players were actually going to battle with eachother when they went into the pods. The actual game play was pretty good too, although at times, it would not respond to my clicking. It was no big deal though But some people might be annoyed with it. Everything else was pretty fun. Now onto the checkers level . But for Battleship, you get a and a from me. Great work. And when you play be sure to give a review on the page on the website!! Thanks

Yeah, as I've said, the response is actually due to the clutter and the large amount of logic. I'm gonna have a look tonight, because someone booed my level because they had the same problem that rialrees had, I'll have to msg him via PSN to get more info though. I think I can save some space. The "X" marks that appear when you hit a ship are just holo that is switched from off to on. I'll probably make it so they're emitted when they're needed. I might have to stop the custom music playing when you reach the arena, and just use one of the normal ingame tracks at that point.

I'll give your level a go later, and of course I'll leave feedback.

BTW, I also have a thread for my Checkers level (that died a long time ago). If anyone has any other levels that they want feedback on, they can post feedback for my Checkers level and I'll respond in kind.

EDIT: Who the hell plays a level that says "2 player ONLY" on their own???

Update: Ok, I've edited a few things. Hopefully it will improve the problems that a couple of people have had.

[Mattoosie]

Hey! Great level! Quite enjoyable! The logic was very well implemented and the board looked great! I would make it a little more obvious whose turn it is though as it is kinda hard to tell. The tutorial was very nice and the intro was well done. Nice job!

[Ali_Star]

Yeah... a couple of people have said it's hard to tell who's turn it is. Is the red square around the lives counter not clearly visible?