BOH: A short review

[motorollin]

saimo wrote:
The promise has been kept ;-)
Now the player can press [z] (or any other button of his choice) anytime to double/restore the size of the map.

Excellent! Thank you! :-D

saimo wrote:
The only problem is, as I had anticipated, that when maps are big, they do get in the way of the player, as shown by this picture here: the red line marks the area covered by the big automapper (the small one would cover exactly 1/4 of the screen, from the character center to the lower-right corner) - so, it is not recommendable to play with 2x map always on.

Yes I see. But not a big problem since you can just toggle it back to normal size :-) Any idea when an update version will be available so we can try out the new map?

saimo wrote:
As regards the sorting of the missions, there was a reason why I had not implemented that already: the reason is that every time the GUI starts not only the missions directory must be scanned, but also each and every mission should be loaded and uncrypted to read the difficulty level. Right now it is not a big issue, but what if BOH has success so that hundreds on missions become available? I would not want the startup to be slown down (even if it was a matter of few seconds). Since, as you have already noticed, completed missions are automatically moved to another lister, and since finding a mission of the desired difficulty is not such a big issue, I guess that we can all live with just alphabetical sorting...

Yes, it's a minor niggle ;-)

BTW, does BOH use OpenGL? If so, this would explain why it doesn't work under Wine on a Mac. Apparently OpenGL is broken in the Mac builds of Wine.

--
moto

[yoodoo]

Here's a really short review:

Great packaging
Great game
Great fun

Works great on Linux with Wine with none of the usual Linux-y fiddling around.

For goodness' sake buy this game!

[saimo]

motorollin wrote:
Any idea when an update version will be available so we can try out the new map?

Basically, the update is ready. I'll just wait a bit more for feedback. But, unless some unexpected bug that is very hard to fix pops up, it won't take much longer ;-)

BTW, does BOH use OpenGL? If so, this would explain why it doesn't work under Wine on a Mac. Apparently OpenGL is broken in the Mac builds of Wine.

No, no OpenGL at all. It must be a problem with the MacOS version of Wine.

saimo

[saimo]

@yoodoo

Short as it can be, but still delightful to me :cheers:

saimo

[saimo]

@German, French and Spanish people

Now the player can press [z] (or any other button of his choice) anytime to double/restore the size of the map.

Since the button is reconfigurable, I need a true-to-the-original translation to German, French and Spanish of this simple string: "map zoom" (the context is "left (key), fire (key), map zoom (key), etc.). Can you please help me?
Thanks in advance!

saimo

[Dwyloc]

@saimo

After reading the review and looking at your website it looks like BOH is a must have to play on my same but my finances are a bit tight at the moment so sadly purchase may have to wait until next month, But I defiantly plan to buy a copy.

Do you plan to add network play to a future version as I am a big Alien Breed fan, but Alien breed was best played as a co-op multi player game and BOH looks like it has the possibility to take that to a new level by doing that networked with puzzles were 2 or more players have to split up while working together to open doors and complete puzzles.

[saimo]

Dwyloc wrote:
@saimo

After reading the review and looking at your website it looks like BOH is a must have to play on my same but my finances are a bit tight at the moment so sadly purchase may have to wait until next month, But I defiantly plan to buy a copy.

Thanks for considering BOH a worthy purchase :-)

Do you plan to add network play to a future version as I am a big Alien Breed fan, but Alien breed was best played as a co-op multi player game and BOH looks like it has the possibility to take that to a new level by doing that networked with puzzles were 2 or more players have to split up while working together to open doors and complete puzzles.

I can't remember where I said it (except for this interview, which, unfortunately, is in Italian), but, as major change, BOH 2 would feature a network mode, whereby one player plays as normal and the other one plays the role of the Evil Master. However, BOH 2 will never come into existence if the sales of BOH will not be successful enough ("enough" would not be easy to quantify, so please do not ask). So, please, do not consider that a promise - it is just a wish.

saimo

[motorollin]

saimo wrote:
as major change, BOH 2 would feature a network mode, whereby one player plays as normal and the other one plays the role of the Evil Master.

How would this work in practical terms? Would the Evil Master player be playing through out, placing obstacles in the way of the player, creating enemies, settings traps and eventually playing one-on-one at the end of the mission, or would the Evil Master player only play at the end of the mission?

I like the idea of the Evil Player attempting to sabotage the other player throughout the level, but I also think a co-op mode with special co-op missions would be awesome. Like Dwyloc suggested, forcing the players to split up to, maybe, simultaneously stand on two switches in different parts of the level which must be pressed together to open a passage. Or maybe some passages are only accessible to the "red player" and others only to the "blue player" to force them to take separate paths.

Come on people, get your orders in so we get BOH 2 ;-)

--
moto

[saimo]

motorollin wrote:
How would this work in practical terms? Would the Evil Master player be playing through out, placing obstacles in the way of the player, creating enemies, settings traps and eventually playing one-on-one at the end of the mission

Yes, exactly like that.

I like the idea of the Evil Player attempting to sabotage the other player throughout the level, but I also think a co-op mode with special co-op missions would be awesome. Like Dwyloc suggested, forcing the players to split up to, maybe, simultaneously stand on two switches in different parts of the level which must be pressed together to open a passage. Or maybe some passages are only accessible to the "red player" and others only to the "blue player" to force them to take separate paths.

This mode - which I admittedly never thought of because I'm not a huge fan of co-op modes - definitely opens a whole new world of possibilities; however, I'm not sure I would enjoy doing it.

Come on people, get your orders in so we get BOH 2 ;-)

Just a clarification/suggestion to everybody: please, buy BOH if you like BOH itself. Support is much appreciated, but the main reason for which you should shell out your money is BOH itself. I'm not making promises. I don't know what future will bring. I can't guarantee anything beyond what I said I will do for the current version BOH (namely, the update and the additional themes). Moreover, I have plenty of ideas for other 4 totally different games (2 shoot'em-ups, 1 platform and 1 sport-based), all of which are based on quite original concepts (I think): after working so long on BOH - and I'm not done with it yet - maybe I'll fancy doing something totally different and new (of course, provided that it turns out that making games can help me with going on without starving).

saimo

[saimo]

@motorollin

saimo wrote:
As regards the sorting of the missions, there was a reason why I had not implemented that already: the reason is that every time the GUI starts not only the missions directory must be scanned, but also each and every mission should be loaded and uncrypted to read the difficulty level. Right now it is not a big issue, but what if BOH has success so that hundreds on missions become available? I would not want the startup to be slown down (even if it was a matter of few seconds). Since, as you have already noticed, completed missions are automatically moved to another lister, and since finding a mission of the desired difficulty is not such a big issue, I guess that we can all live with just alphabetical sorting...

Yes, it's a minor niggle ;-)

On second thought, I decided to get rid of it and leave the choice to the user: now there is an specific option in the CONFIGURE page of the menu.

Ah, and by the way... BOH already runs natively on MacOS X now -> see here ;-)

saimo

[motorollin]

saimo wrote:
On second thought, I decided to get rid of it and leave the choice to the user: now there is an specific option in the CONFIGURE page of the menu.

Nice! I hoped it would be optional :-)

saimo wrote:
Ah, and by the way... BOH already runs natively on MacOS X now -> see here ;-)

saimo

:pint: Well done! You have an email from me ;-)

--
moto