BT Triathlon Game: Testers Needed

I'd like to see finer control on the left/right steering.

What's with the rest of the pack starting so far before you do?

Just to get used to the controls.

When you move left or right from straight, it should be very respnsive BUT there is a delay in returning back to going straight, is this what is happening?

This was intentional to kind of mimic the 'sluggishness of the water' environment, but maybe we can reduce the delay.

i say leave it where it is.  at first it was weird but after getting use to it, it works.  you're right, real life doesn't happen instantly.

I assumed that that was us catching up with the wave before.

the start should be more brutal like in a real race.  i never have to steer around people at the end, just the beginning.  also the controls were not very good

The core engine that generates the game places 'enemies' intially beyond the visual horizon...this was investigated early on and was not something we could change within the scope of this project.  It is most noticable in the swim game due to the very slow pace of movement (in order to acheive a realistic game)...in a running version of the game, 'enemies" will appear more rapidly.  Even more so in a bicycling stage built off our core engine.

The sluggishness of the controls (going back to straight) for the swim part of the game are intentional to make the game more challenging...so if you want to turn between two swimmers, you have to plan for not automatically 'getting back to straight.'

And remember everyone, this is our first game, it's going to be like the Atari 5200 - not the latest and greatest gamebox...to make everything perfect and realistic would make the cost so high that it would not be feasible...so we designed the game engine to be usable for ALL the stages, swim, bike and run and concessions had to be made to keep it simple up front.

We do plan to keep coming out with more updates to add levels of difficulty, etc.

Oh, oh! Can you make it for the Atari 5200?!? Or maybe the Commodore 64?!? That would be SWEET!!

Just kidding. It's a fun little game!

here's my "brain dump" fwiw:

Yeah, there seems to be instant response for going left/right but much slower to go back to centre.  If it's supposed to emulate real life, wouldn't the delays be the same, i.e. it should also be sluggish to start going left or right?

I also don't get the idea of hitting left to mean "go left for a bit then straighten out again".  I would think hitting left means "go left" and would continue doing that until I let go of the left key or I push the right key.  Because it automatically straightens out, I find the most of the time I really just try to work out when to tap the left or right key in the hopes that it straightens out at the right point for getting through the large gaps.  For the small gaps, forget it - I don't have any control and it just gets frustrating.  I know of the rationale for delaying the direction changes and am not arguing against it by the way.

Also, the graphics don't seem line up for getting through the small gaps.  The only way I don't bump is to slightly overlap my swimmer with another.  If I aim to go through the centre of the gap, I bump.  This is when swimming through diagonally.

At the end of the game it would be good to only have to see one screen rather than several when you want to try again.  The "Challenge your friends" should be the very last thing it asks before exiting, rather than asking every time you finish a game.

Since the game is keyboard only, it would be good to just use the keyboard to get past the end game screens, rather than having to switch back to the mouse to click on things then back to the keyboard to play again.  You lose valuable time at the start of the race because the timer starts instantly rather than when you first press a key.

If you run out of energy, the game shouldn't instantly flash to a scoresheet. It's disorienting for first time users since it doesn't tell you anything useful.  Ideally the swimming screen should just announce something useful like "You ran out of steam" or "You Lost!" or something, with a "press any key" to go to a highscore/"Try Again?" screen (with the Try Again's "Yes" button already highlighted so that pressing any key will restart the game.

Bumping into someone straightens the swimmer out, which is the last thing you want if your approach is diagonal, since it simply puts you directly behind the obstacle you were trying to avoid.  In real life your swim direction doesn't change like this (well, mine doesn't!)  Further testing shows that this happens because I don't keep the left/right buttons pressed, and is probably coinciding with the "automatic straightening out" timer expiring.

After playing it 20 times or so, the swimming really just comes down to knowing when to push the left or right button and how many times you can tap the space bar per section.  So the high scores will all end up being almost exactly the same, representing anyone that didn't bump anything and tapped the speed boost the right number of times. 

It'd be more fun if there was some challenge involved, such as having to "swim" manually - like pressing left-right-left-right over and over to represent strokes.  Then you could have it so that the timings between strokes (representing the glide) would be very important as well.  The player would have to learn "left stroke (glide...) right stroke (glide...)" and get the pace correct for the speed.  The same would work for running I think.  For cycling, some sort of gear change (L-M-H?) would contribute to the skill needed.