   Game hobbyist looking for free help
  I have a 2D board game that I have written.  It is pretty much finished, but lacks a few important elements:1)  Better graphics (my home-grown ones are Ssssscary, man!)2)  Some sound effects3)  A good technical peer review on what I can improve!!4)  Beta-testers.5)  A web-page describing the game.The game is written in C#, with some DirectPlay and DirectSound support thrown in, courtesy of the DirectX 9.0b SDK.  So you will need the .NET Framework (1.1) and DirectX runtimes to play the game.The graphics are in GDI+.  I would love to move this to Direct3D in a future version!  If you know Direct3D and after seeing my game would like to help with this, you have my thanks in advance and an open invitation to contact me.This is purely for fun (at the moment).  In fact, my plan is to release this game to the public domain, along with the accompanying source code (probably by request to anyone who wants it).To download and play the game, visit:http://www.knowltonfamily.com/release.zipUnzip the folder and run Robotz.exe 
  Some thoughts:1. It's kind of guesswork figuring out your game, perhaps a help screen or doc enclosed?2. You really should keep your images as resources or such, as you've made all of yours accessible in their native format.3. Use labels or uneditable textboxes for the ship description and the two numbered boxes. You can edit them at present which isn't really much of a feature .4. I cna break the file load procedure with an invalide char in the  map data text files. It should be easy to add a disregard if unrecognizable part to the loading function.Keep up the good work.   [edited by - woodsman on February 10, 2004 1:19:47 AM];quote:Original post by Woodsman   Some thoughts:1. It's kind of guesswork figuring out your game, perhaps a help screen or doc enclosed?2. You really should keep your images as resources or such, as you've made all of yours accessible in their native format.3. Use labels or uneditable textboxes for the ship description and the two numbered boxes. You can edit them at present which isn't really much of a feature .4. I cna break the file load procedure with an invalide char in the  map data text files. It should be easy to add a disregard if unrecognizable part to the loading function.Keep up the good work.   [edited by - woodsman on February 10, 2004 1:19:47 AM]Woodsman:I really appreciate your comments, and they are good ones, too!1)  Help doc:  Agreed...this is needed.2)  Images as resources:  I'll need some time to figure out how to do this.  One question I have is....will I still be able to edit them easily once they are saved as resources?  Also, will performance improve once they are saved as resources?3)  Use labels instead of editable text box for piece descriptions:  Yes....my bad.  I'll correct this in the next version.4)  More robust checking on load game file:  Agreed.  I never bothered to add checking....wondering why anyone would want to corrupt this file....but probably something I should add.Thanks!  I will post here again when these items have been addressed.  If anyone else has additional feedback...please sound off!   [edited by - Tom Knowlton on February 10, 2004 12:56:14 PM];quote:Original post by Tom Knowlton  2. You really should keep your images as resources or such, as you''ve made all of yours accessible in their native format.2)  Images as resources:  I''ll need some time to figure out how to do this.  One question I have is....will I still be able to edit them easily once they are saved as resources?  Also, will performance improve once they are saved as resources?I honestly couldn''t tell you whether it would speed up the app, though I''d suspect it would, not having to go out and find each file initially. I do it because you can distribute one file instead of an .exe with many pictures, as well as making the pictures harder to steal from you .Here''s a good link to a site I''d found, as I''m getting into C# now after a few years with C++. ;  Thanks for the link!I am seriously considering doing this (moving my art to a resource file) ;quote:Original post by Tom Knowlton  I am seriously considering doing this (moving my art to a resource file)   I think it makes a difference. I''ve been working on a map editor to toy with C#, as I only started a few days ago, and this is far easier to deal with than a zip full of images etc. ;  Impressive.Please tell me...how did you deploy this so I could view it?Is this ASPX? ;  Haha. That''s a straight .exe/app you would''ve dl''ed off of a host site. No asp. (yet ) ;  Still very cool...I liked it...looks good. ;quote:Original post by Woodsman  Some thoughts:......3. Use labels or uneditable textboxes for the ship description and the two numbered boxes. You can edit them at present which isn''t really much of a feature .......Keep up the good work.   [edited by - woodsman on February 10, 2004 1:19:47 AM]Woodsman:You will be pleased to know that I have been able to make atleast one of your recommended changes:http://www.knowltonfamily.com/release.zip(needs .NET and DirectX runtimes installed)UPDATE:  If the game won''t work, here is a screenshot:http://www.knowltonfamily.com/robotz_screenshot.gif