Unholy War competition review by Rincewind

Unholy War: Rincewind’s review, TheMI3’s review, Woody’s review
Glowing Ninja: Rincewind’s review, TheMI3’s review, Woody’s review
Killer Ninja: Rincewind’s review, TheMI3’s review, Woody’s review


General

DTM has been working on his game “Unholy War” from the start of the competition, and after presenting us with some hilarious drawings in his worklog we finally had the chance to take a look at the game! The main theme of the game is quite clearly “Internet” as it is an online game, although a small effort has been made to include some other themes(there is a dinosaur character in the game, and (perhaps) a religion-related character). The game’s sophisticated story (which can be found in the readme) about dinosaurs, world domination and candy floss factories ties the game some more to these optional themes.

After starting the game you are immediately presented with a menu screen. This screen also holds news messages downloaded from the master server, but for now the only message there is says there is no news. :’( From the menu you can play a game, customize your settings (online name, character type, keys, http proxy) or quit.

”Play”, of course, is the way to go.


Graphics

The menu holds a title image, three buttons (“play”, “options”, “exit”) and a background image. The title image (which reads “Unholy War”) is pretty, the buttons are standard and the background image is horrible as it is basically just a yellow background with an ugly random line trail on it.

Some kind of graphical introduction to the game would have been nice, especially with 4 months of time on your hands, but I know that it’s not always easy to finish something in time. One way or another it was wise of DTM though that he didn’t start making an intro without having the game totally finished first.

But let’s get to the important part, the game itself!

Pretty much all of DTM’s character drawings leave a permanent impression on one’s mind, as for example I can still remember his bunnies, dinosaurs, gods, midgets, squirrels and whatever he ever drew and posted online. He draws great –loosely, unserious but surely impressive and humorous. This also goes for the characters in this game: there is a snake (with arms (!) to hold a gun), some kind of white religious duck(?), a fat dinosaur (with human head) and a rabbit-human hybrid. The characters are animated by moving and rotating the different parts of their bodies. When you walk with them in game it looks as if they’re moving their heads to the beat of the background music, which is pretty cool.

There are 3 game levels, “Kitty suicide”, “Purple madness” and “Simply green”. Kitty suicide consists out of a box of yellow jump triangles (they launch you to whatever side the triangle is pointing, in this case they all point inwards) with numerous small platforms within. When you spawn you start out on one a platform that looks like a poor black cloud with a face. All platforms are black and white, by the way. And they all have faces, it’s scary. There is this head with a long tong coming out of his mouth where you can stand on. Another one is a flat crocodile. This clearly is all pretty awesome, although they would’ve looked even better when they’d be colored.

The game’s background image is still the yellow map with a white line trail, the one from the menu. That could’ve been done better!

The purple madness and simply green levels are less awesome than kitty suicide, but they are okay. They consist of flat purple and green platforms. I think that overall more energy could’ve been put in level design, the levels are kind of static and flat. One thing though that is worth your attention is the crazy purple gnome statue in purple madness!

There are only two gun types, one is a black shotgun, the other one is a red bazooka. The bazooka fires rockets with faces on them, which are well cool. When someone is hit by the shotgun bullets by the way, some pretty blood effects leak from the victim in question.


Gameplay

When “join game” is selected from the menu, the master server is contacted to see if there are any existing online games. If this is not the case, best to do would be to start a new game. When there are no other players in your game, a bot will join you. The bot is hard. The reason for this is that what it most likely does is get_angle(type player) and then it shoots. Unless you keep moving, you’re certainly going to get hit, and even when you do move you are most likely to get hit. I’ve beaten the bot though by spawn killing, waiting on the spawn place with my shotgun and directly shooting the evil enemy in it’s head. This works but isn’t very entertaining. So unless you’re really really bored, you would be much better off playing a game with friends.

I played a couple of online games so far, one against Woody only, one with Woody, Pilot and Ecko. Multiplayer makes this game fun (but only with the “Kitty suicide” map)! During these games Pilot obviously was best blasting us all to hell!

Personally I didn’t really like the default keys (especially right mouse button for jumping – if a & d are moving left and right, why not make w jump?), but luckily these could easily be changed in the options menu.

I noticed a couple of strategies worked well to kill others on the “kitty suicide” map. One of these was immediately after spawning jumping up and firing rockets down towards the spawning platform. The rocket’s recoil kept you in the air, while you could constantly kill everyone on the platform until someone else came along that killed you.

Another strategy was standing still on a platform away from the spawning place, which gave you a genuine advantage over the rest of the players who were all bouncing around in the level box (because of the yellow jumps). From up there you could either easily kill players that newly spawned, or kill helpless souls bumping around.

When you’re bouncing around really quickly it happens you cannot really use your rocket launcher anymore: you will actually catch up with the rocket you fired and die! This does not happen in reality because the laws of physics prevent it, the kinetic energy added to the rocket by firing it should be added to the kinetic energy the rocket already had (because it was moving together with the player). DTM must have been busy programming games on his calculator during physics lessons! Using your shotgun at high speeds is adviced as those bullets move so fast that you most certainly won’t catch up with them!

While playing with the four of us it really was fun and a challenge to kill others. It was pretty chaotic too, everyone flying around and all. The game even lagged a bit because of all the online action. After somebody had 20 kills the game ended and a new round started.

Playing the map “simply green” was sadly impossible online, because of a severe bug that doesn’t show the jumping platforms for the game’s host while the jumps do show for the clients. I already was wondering how Woody could jump so high, and it turned out he was using yellow jump triangles I couldn’t see or use!


Music & Sound

DTM appeared to be quite worried about doing the music at first, because he had lost his dance ejay copy. But he must have recovered it, because the music of this game is absolutely sublime! Definitely the most pretty music of all competition entries, and possibly, just possibly, of the whole world.

Just kidding. But it is good music for sure, especially the “inconclusive” track! The music also really fits an action packed multiplayer game!

There are also a couple of sounds used in the game – shooting sounds for the shotgun and rocket launcher, and a spawning sound. They fit the game perfectly, although the sounds do get choppy when a lot of action is happening in an online game.

Conclusion

Unholy War is definitely an enjoyable game when you play it online with others (but forget about the bot!) for a small amount of time. There are way too few online games programmed in fenix to date, so this certainly is a welcome addition that might stimulate others to try out creating online games too. The graphics of this game are in DTM’s famous funny style, which is good, but the levels could use a lot more effort. Also some more guns / power ups could certainly add to the fun. Probably due to lack of time some serious bugs found their way to this game, but these should be easily fixable. And last but not least, Unholy War’s music is great and fits in perfectly!