Yet more problems... mainly in Balloon Racing.

In balloon racing, Jera's Laser Extreme (and the MM1's Shred Extreme) don't count for balloons burst (we came across that one in testing and tuned it, otherwise she was unbeatable ) The Shred Extreme actually times out after a while, whereas Spikes doesn't. However, it will stay on until its allotted time if the character respawns in a deathmatch etc.

The graphics glitch sounds like a problem loading the graphics files, I'll have to look into that.

I'm very appologetic about the grammar. I'll be going over it with a fine toothed comb for the first update (the full stops issue may be a bug in my line splitter. I'll have to check that. Sticking spaces between words and ? or ! is a bad habit of mine, but missing full stops isn't usually).

I'll check just in case, but I definitely remember spending a day making sure it was coded out everywhere

(edit) duh, except for one possible case that will be fixed in the first update too.

I know the balloon race level is possible, as all our testers got through it, but it is difficult You may find that using thrust rather than saving to use your extreme power might be a valid tactic, as you can barge Jera into trouble (and away from being able to hit the burster and building up her extreme power).

a little 'didn't make it in at the last minute' feature that's due for the updates was the ability to simply type in the level you wanted, but down from 1 = highest is also a good one to put back in. consider it listed

btw. at some point we'll have to release an update to cope with 64 bit long level numbers. The level system technically can have around 230 billion unique levels with the combination of powerups, but currently we're only using a 32 bit variable for the level number. So when it looks like people are getting near to level 4 billion or so, we'll have to release a '64 bit' version

Additionally, when playing football if you go to tiny mode, the sticky bat (goalie) will not shoot until you revert to regular size.

Thanks, another one to add to the update list

Glad to be able to help.

Is there any way you can email me the save file for anything past Jera's level. I'm not a big fan of the "spend XX hours to enable full functionality" (especially for games that are really made for multiplayer), but Jera's balloon race is ridiculous. Thanks.

actually, if you email me, I can probably let you test one of the early betas for the 1.01 update.

btw. ABE's primarily a single player/multiplayer on one machine game. While it's also fun on a LAN, our main focus is always on the single machine

Just wanted to clear up the last post was coming from extreme frustration (Jera's hard!). In fact, even though I played the first Airburst only with 1-2 friends on a local machine (and am looking forward to multiplayer in AE with all of the cool new game types and gamesmith), I must admit I am totally addicted to the single player/story game of AE. I also must commend Zwilnik for the effort to quickly patch the game and maintain good relations and a pleasant demeanor on the board (in spite of some of us *ahem* whining). While it is obvious that some quality controls were missed prior to the release of AE, it's good to see an earnest effort to fix them. Kudo's to SF's customer support and especially Zwilnik.

Thanks

Unfortunately, all quality control failures lead to me too In my defence (apart from the embarassingly bad grammar, for which I should have done better), one of Airburst Extreme's biggest features is the wide variety of combinations of game types, characters etc. that you can end up with. Testing all possibilities would have been impossible, so we concentrated on the major bugs first and tried to catch as many of the small ones as possible. Fortunately, it's feasible to release patches and updates to Mac games, and this also gives us a chance to add new features (such as ToySight control, HID control and Rendezvous connection) at a later date too

we actually tried dual control years ago in a variant of the Dogfight II game we did on the Amiga. One player flew the aircraft and fired the forward guns, while another player (or the CPU) controlled the turret. It was actually quite fun

a Double bat game, where you always play 2 player, with one on each bat (but on the same character) could be quite fun, especially as a kids + parents game variant. I'll have a think about it for future updates

mmm. HID... I can already see my 4 playstation controller hub working overtime... drool

well, i had the graphics error to, but it disappeared after restarting and never came back (yet) :). Well now to the ballon racing: I'm going to have some kind of anger management rehablitation soon, because when you are 3 steps from winning, Jera takes a nice little jump in the race, and wins the whole race, well, we need some kind of update solving this, i've tried like 40 times to win this, and i'm getting tired of it. Well an update is what we need OR somebody mailing the save file before i toss my entier computer out of the window.
Well, otherwise, this is the best game ever done, so simple, so fun, so beutiful.
Enyoy you'r life, your worth it.

Yes, go play Mario Kart Double Dash. It is EXCELLENT fun with one guy controlling the kart, one guy controlling weapons, and cooperating to get the boost on start and drifting mini boosts.

Just controlling one bat each will not be quite as fun, but maybe you could think of some other cooperative tactics. (Press a button together for extreme power, maybe if you do timing right you get certain boosts or powerups.)

I beat Jera on my second try. The key is to keep your balloons down pretty low, which is counterintuitive, but having a full set of balloons is suicide with her. Remember that less balloons means you're a small target as well.

interesting tactic

theoretically, jamming yourself in a corner with a burster and bursting your own balloons would also deny them as points to the other players

Zwilnik, can you please send me a save file with the progress? I SO don't want to beat the game all over again, or most of it anyway, but having the cheats on feels so dirty. I mean I deserve at least a semi-legit progress don't I?

no problem. In return, can you try running the game after creating a blank text file called debug.txt in the Airburst Extreme directory, then send me the debug.txt file. I'd like to try and track why your prefs aren't saving (we can't re-create it here and the other occurence of it that we had reported was due to the APE manager blocking the save).

Zwilinik, I did fix the save problem. It was the APE

And you don't have to send me the file, I just ended up copying my cheat prefs file to my regular prefs, and deleted the cheats. I know it's like the same thing, but I have less of a guilty conscience somehow when I play it.

That's good to know (ie it's a bug with someone else's software ).

sorry if i burst your bubble (get it?), but i easily beat Jera's level on the first try with ease.
as for the story mode, in general, i liked the humor and it was a lot of fun, but it was really short. oh well. also, in a future update, i might suggest giving the player a choice whether or not to play a game at a planet that he/she already beat; after saving and coming back a while later, i forgot what planet i had to go to so i was forced to try them all and play the games.
also, i'm quite distraught because i can't for the life of me figure out how to unlock the other two characters. i just got the game the other day, so i haven't had much time to play and test my theories, but what i'm working on now is playing the story mode on the "Nnnnaarrrgh" setting. anyone want to give me a hint?? please!?
in conclusion, Airburst Extreme rocks my world. really.

I beat Jera in balloon racing on the second try. Then again the 3th or the 4th time.
Thought I was just lucky...

There is a topic with a hint on where to find the last two robots.
Here it is...

going through the second time with jera (for a certain reason, some of you know why...) took me about 5 tries, but by the fifth time, i realized i had it on Nnnnrrraaarrrrggghhh!! (or whatever) setting, so i put it into kids mode and it was a lot easier.

also, a few more suggestions for next update-
1) put in a checkbox or something on the character selection menu that gives you the ability to change characters after every round. this would be awesome for me because i usually play with more than 2 other people, so we have to switch controls often. this might also include another box for ending the game even if you beat it (like some other modes), which will let us get on the high score list without having someone else playing for the same score. please consider this idea, because it would be quite convenient for us. thanks!
2) co-op team levels, just because that would be cool
3) more to come...

Yup I'm having the same problem with Jera. That laser extreme power /does/ count for points on the balloon race (although thankfully the shredder extreme doesn't).

In fact I wasn't sure so I had my brother keep an eye on Jera's points and activities. We set it to 'kids mode' to make things less hectic and sure enough:

"Extreeeeeeeeeme!"
*BAM*
Jera's moved half way around the board.

I'm using the .mac Download only version. Perhaps I'm missing a bugfix?

Finally managed to be Jera. The Laser extreme bug nonwithstanding. Got the little orange fella' trapped in a corner with a home-team Megaball (mwahahhahhahha!)