by Newbie_Man » Thu, 09Dec31 21:19
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - there's a ton of potential in these games, but they're marred by bugs. And, unfortunately, it looks like the bugs get worse with each game. Crystal was a lot more stable at release than this one was.
Some suggestions:
Learn Javascrïpt. Like I've said before, there's absolutely no reason to have different games for different browsers. Modern Javascrïpt coding techniques can give the player a better experience, and make your work easier in the long run. Use a simple framework like jQuery to handle the cross-browser issues if you can't figure out how to do it yourself.
Don't turn off the back button, or at least give the player the ability to go back to a critical decision upon failure. There's nothing more frustrating than having to go through the same choices over and over just to get back to that critical moment deep into the game. It would be simple to implement a checkpoint system by adding another flag to the cookie specifying which 'act' the player was in before they failed. A checkpoint system could also facilitate a more modular game system, allowing you to plug in different scenarios at various points in the story.
Test the game. It's obvious that each game is being rushed. Take your time, and test the game. You should test it in at least three browsers - IE, FF, and Chrome. I'd rather have a deep, polished game that's worth the wait rather than something that's virtually too frustrating to complete because it was rushed and full of bugs. That's how Shark does it, that's how Pusooy does it, that's how Leonizer does it, etc. This isn't to say their games are 100% bug free, but most of the game-breaking bugs are gone before they're released to the players.
You should also take a look into redesigning the website. The table layout you currently have is broken (I have a 1440 x 900 resolution, yet I still need to horizontally scroll to get to some of the links). Besides, no one (at least, no one who knows what they're doing) uses tables for layout any more. It's all about div elements and CSS positioning now.
Again, I'm not saying this to be negative, but to spur you on to realizing your potential with these games. The premise is incredibly sound, and there's the possibility of creating something truly great and unique here. Right now, however, you're shooting yourself in the foot by rushing the process and not debugging the games before releasing them.
TAKE YOUR TIME. You're not really getting paid for this anyway, right? So it's not like you have a real deadline to meet. And people will play your games regardless of the time between releases if they are quality games. Again, look at the following Shark has here, even though he only releases a few games a year.