Vortex00 
Today we dive into the pool at Nanako to test out the UMCH swimming minigame as Maiko. I wanted the swimming mini to make a return in UMCH. It is however quite different as it is now in first person, similar to an older swimming flash minigame I made.
to swim down the pool just move the mouse up and down. Please post your times here if you try it out so I can get a idea about what people are getting and adjust the difficulty of times you need to get to beat other students.
these are two of my times playing this without umch2.swf
811
933
this is with playing with umch2.swf
1262
1253
Maiko’s hairpin doesn’t do anything here yet. And I’m not sure how I might implement splashing.
Also since i use zooming here the images gets pixelated towards the end. I will need to make it higher quality and scale it down I think.
here is the dl link:
[button color=”blue” link=”http://spiralvortexplay.com/games/UMCH_pool_mini.zip” target=”_blank”]Download[/button]
remember to post your best time(s) here please it will help out.
in the umch2.swf also are the buttons for other modules I have finished. or at least mostly finished. you can get a idea about how far along I am with playable content. Other non hentai minigames I plan to do are a new music minigame and probably a magical kitty since it is pretty easy to do.
Also the swim outfit in the pic I don’t plan to use but I will use the goggles. I’ll remake the swim outfits. maybe modeled based on the the old school red ones.
Update:
[button color=”blue” link=”http://spiralvortexplay.com/games/UMCH_pool_mini_v2.zip” target=”_blank”]Download v2[/button]
I took comments into consideration plus added my own ideas.
the distance was previously 40 frames I increased it to 400 based on suggestions
also based on suggestions, instead of up and down moving forward a frame, it now increases speed that gradually declines over distance traveled.
in the this test Maiko’s swim speed is at lvl 2 out of probably 5.
[ Z ] – kick
maiko can kick off walls when she is near the end of the lap, you need to be at distance 381 or more before hitting 400.
you only have one opportunity per lap to kick off the wall (press z) so don’t F’k it up and do it too early.
(It is actually a bug in the game. I meant for it to be 380 or more but I will change I later I am running short on time currently for other stuff I have scheduled to do today.)
[ Spacebar ] – sets the distance to 380
This is a debug feature that sets the distance to 380 for testing.
[ S ] – Hairpin toggle on/off
Maiko’s hairpin sets her minimum speed to her speed level instead of zero.
when it is off it charges back up to 100. I plans to make it drain slower but it is at least currently implemented.
it found it good to use it to smoothly glide into the wall to time the kick properly.
Distance bar. I added a distance bar be the debug stuff will now be one the screen under normal circumstances.
It focuses attention on it to time the kick properly but that is okay I guess, seeing as how people were mentioning all they saw was white and blue on the screen anyway.
Overall, it is more skill based. if you time all your kicks you will be done quickly.
also previous the swim was running at 21 fps, but umch2 was at 30 fps. that is why the times were so different. I made them both at 30 fps now.
I got 644 as my time. getting all the wall kicks timed correctly, and using the hairpin at times to make sure my speed never dropped to zero.
About Author
My score 3865 damn I suck, I know now that I have to move the mouse up and down. In and out of the water.
This water mini is better then the old first person mini well done. Also when she turns facing the doors the doors look like there getting flooded you might want to fix that. LOL
2415 I bit better than the last score.
I like the up and down mouse, the problem I can see is those that don’t have a mouse. I can see a touch pad from the laptop work. But on a tablet or mobile if you ever plan on it. You might want to have different options.
What the other user said tapping a button or a screen might be to tiring on the hand. I like the water effect of going in and out of the water. The other side needs to be fix where the doors are sown. Looks like it is getting flooded. LOL
yeah I need to fix the graphics. but it is a minor concern at the moment.
I’m not concerned about laptop of phone right now. yeah it will probably bite me in the ass later. but I’ll deal with it then. making touch controls or touch pad cripples much of what is planned for the game. I gotta focus on mouse and keyboard and possibly controller.
So far I like the idea better than the old first person view mini you use by pressing the hands left and right. LOL
I updated the post and the mingame
yeah is much better then the old version. heh. I actually can’t even do there here because you can’t move horizontally anymore since I made the overall size of the game to 1280×720 up from 800×600.
@justjoe2k
Try the new update got 4138 by the fail kicks. LOL Try again and got 1256 the game is much better with the speed and kick being added in. It does takes a learning curve to get into top speed. So in other words it takes skills in learning the pattern. I try one more time got 1003 using hairpin. The kicks is very important in beating it record time.
Anyways nicely done it makes the mini more challenging that you really need to pay attention what your doing.
Yeah thanks for trying it out. I think few tweaks and it’ll be done. Looks like 1k might be a good goal to beat at lol 2 speed.
Big fan, first comment.
I’m not sure if you want “review’s” or ideas here, but I’m posing one anyway.
1700-1900 average.
I don’t like it…. it doesn’t look good or feel fun to play to me.
I like the perspective and i like the visual’s its just the way its played. (except the pixeltaion, its not horrible but would be nice if you could tweak it a little)
Instead of a speed test “how fast can you smash your mouse up and down” how about making it rhythm or accuracy based?
Maybe if you get a good rhythm going you can speed up?
Or an upwards and downwards target where the closer you hit the centre the faster you go?
Thanks for taking time to give feedback. I’m not sure what to say, I certainly don’t have a unrealistic expectation that everyone will like this. However I feel people who visit here would be more likely to like the mini then to not.
A few reason why I don’t want to make it rythm though because a rythm’ish game is what will be used for the new music mini game I mentioned in the post. Also because to get to the other side of the pool it is only 40 frames. it’s really not that far. if it took like a minute or so to get to the other side then I could see that working out more. But speeding up in this sense means skipping frames. skipping even one frame per stroke cuts the whole game in half.
it is why i haven’t implemented maiko’s hairpin for this yet. I was going to make it speed her up but I ran into this dilemma. I might make her hairpin or some ability she has to just glide under the surface of the water for a while.
871 on umch1, 1694 on umch2..
I like the idea of it too, but playing it doesnt seem super fun, like on my screen all i kept seeing while swimming was blue and white flashing on my screen pretty much which was under water, over water… and if i wanted to go faster it just meant more of that. the pixelation didnt bother me that much, i actually liked the graphics for the swim sequence. maybe change it to an overhead view? or a view from the side.
i know its just a test, but also wanted to add, when i start the game, it just throws me into the swimming, a nice set-up phase for it would be cool, like… get ready to use the controls to start swimming. for a first timer starting it, not quite sure whats going on, that means the other swimmers already passed u a little bit lol.
I did plan to have a delay before it begins yes. or it begins when you move up or down enough to count as a swim stroke. might be easier to code and give the player as much time as they need. I think if I make Maiko having the to glide through the water at times will remove the chaotic nature of it.
Also I was trying to keep as much of this is first person as possible. I think a bit of the connection is lost when viewing maiko from outside of herself. But at times I understand that a disconnect is necessary for people for certain stuff heh.
first person is fine, i was if anything not a fan of the bobbing so quickly in and out of water to go faster, but at the same time i didnt have much constructive to suggest to make that better or more fun lol.
Updated the version please check the updates to this post when you get a chance.
@tigerbalm008
the new version is much better, it takes a little getting used to toggle hairpin and keep speed decent to time your kicks, but I felt it was a good addition. just curious if its possible to slow down the up and down motion a bit or is that more framerates?
the swimming speed felt kinda too fast, and the speed died down kinda quick. like building up enough speed for the first bit then toggle the hairpin to glide into the kick. agree with boom, i also thought the kick pushed you a little further then needed it was half the pool and just about ready to hit the wall and kick again.
overall i found this way more enjoyable then the first version
Thanks, it’s a bit tricky to play with the frame rates. whatever they are that is how they will have to say. there aren’t any settings I can code in to adjust them based on preferences or pc specs. this is mot Maiko’s starting speed. It might be 5 levels of speed or 3 i’m not sure. but this is somewhere in the middle. It’ll have to work for now until I can test out masking to animate the water traveling towards her.
I think if you add enough frames you could get a more smooth animation like motion.
Rather than each up down movement being a frame maybe motion/acceleration? a slight glide less instantaneous speed and more momentum based movement.
say 400 or maybe 4000 frames each way?
maybe the up/down target would work better than rewarding accurate movement, I hope you understand… I have always found its hard to explain my ideas in text…
Maybe i could try to edit a screenshot to show the idea…what do you think?
I tried everything you mentioned here except the accurate movement. I really don’t want to do accurate mouse movements, a rythm based timing game, or anything with a consistent gradual increase in speed to a max. and I do believe I understand what you are describing. if not you can certainly post a picture if you want. to me you are describing a system for front crawl aka freestyle swimming and not breaststroke swimming.
Removing or toning down the reliance to super fast mouse movement I believe was the point of the argument so that what I took from it.
4k even 1.2k was too much it was as if she was not even moving. I also don’t want to skip too many frames since it is 30 fps. 400 frames seemed to work with a acceleration speed system you mentioned.
Please check my updated information in the post.
(im not sure why clicking the reply button made a new post, hopefully this one wont.)
Yeah the visual’s don’t fit the idea of moving the mouse up and down that fast, you end up with a blur of blue and not much to look at (which is sad because you make it look so good) you seemed to get what i was hinting at.
V2 is a nice improvement, well done!
Kick seems a little powerful, it seeme’s to push me half way across the pool. (240) maybe a longer pool will be enough?
400 seems a little short maybe 500-600? and maybe a little more “glide”/slower speed drop.
Water is a little high (compared to background) on return.
Have you got any ideas about the background?
Would it be possible to have image’s that load as you cross the pool?
maybe just a higher res picture will help like you said.
I think remembering the images at higher resolution and in correct position is all that is needed.
The speed boost is 15 I already tried 10 and it wasn’t enough. I can try another 100 to see how it might be. But keep in mind maiko begins a bit slow than this.
It’s an interesting Idea, I quite like it, though when going fast it does get a bit jumpy for me.
My score was 939 without umch2
and 1157 with (but I was moving the mouse like a mad man to compensate for the timer going up faster? or it appeared too anyway.
yes it was based on how fast you moved the mouse. I updated the game try at your convenience.
@Stormal
My time with umch2: 1344
Without umch2: 1006
I really like the idea and the feeling of this mini game, but it’s a bit too fast paced in my opinion. I very much like the way it looks, especially the point of view is very nice.
Maybe, and I really hate myself for saying this, build some kind of power meter? If one would still use the level system from Classroom Cheaters, one could say Maiko has 4 levels of swimming training.
At level one, no matter how hard you move your mouse, the power meter would not fill at all and Maiko swims at snails speed. With each level of training, you would “unlock” more parts of the power meter. By moving the mouse up and down then, the power meter would fill as far as it can go.
So with 4 levels of training, it would look like this.
Level one: No speed
Level two: 1/3 of top speed
Level three: 2/3 of top speed
Level four: top speed.
This would even give you an opportunity to use her hairpin: top speed for a short time without moving the mouse at all.
I hope this all makes sense. I don’t know how hard this would be to programm or if you even like the idea, but it’s just a suggestion.
And yes, while writing this I noticed how similiar this would be to some very bad porn flash games on Newgrounds. However, the power meter would atleast give you some sort of measurement.
Thanks for the feedback. Try the latest version I posted. I’d imagine you were writing this as I was updating the post. I guess I did something similar to the idea you mentioned. especially with the hairpin.
Keep in mind this assumes Maiko is at the level where she can swim at a decent speed at least. If she was going too slow I wouldn’t even make it a minigame. Would instead just make a animation saying she is training like in umcc swimming before you challenge the club leader and Luma. So I don’t want her going too slow as if she can’t swim well because it wouldn’t make sense that defeated Luma in swimming.
maiko’s hairpin is a bit tricky to find ways to implement. it is mostly not Maker her good, but instead boosting the areas she is lacking. So in the case I made it where it doesn’t make her speed max, but it makes the lowest speed more then zero.
Okay, I gave the new version a burl now, and this plays a lot better. I like the idea with the kicking, and from the few times I tried it it seems that this could be both challenging and fun in the actual game.
Good job!
Thanks, I am also trying to find a way to implement splashing. I’m thinking particles right now but that will probably make it lag.
I updated this post with a updated version of the game
30fps? Why not 60fps?
Anyway nice idea.
Fps for flash in as2 doesn’t work the same way you are thinking. The graphics don’t smoothen out with a higher frame rate unless I adjust the length if animation in the flash. Without doing that increasing a flash to 60 from 30 will make it run at twice the speed. Also there is no way to change the framerate in as2 so I waned to pick a rate which is not too fast to lag but still decent. People have very different computer specs.
In this case 30fps is a good compromise.
You have the intention to do something similar for the section running?
How you use the Hairpin in UMCC 3 ???
I don’t plan to have any running game in UMCH.
Well for update v2 I got 999 fuck I can’t beat the score of Stormal! LOL
Speaking of high scores i was going to make this a arcade mini. but I didn’t want to reduce the dimensions of the game for it.
I only played the updated version, like the idea. Took a few tries for me to figure out the kicks but I couldn’t figure out the hairpin at all. I know ‘s’ turns it on and off and it’s supposed to change your minimum speed when it’s on but I could never tell if it was on or off and focusing on it usually made me miss kicks.
With kicks alone i got a 1282 on my best run.
I also found a super easy exploit to get a lower score. If you play it in a windowed browser and you move the mouse outside the window it automatically resets the position to as up as the mouse can go. So you can place the mouse at the very bottom of the window and slide it from the bottom of the window to just below the window rapidly to make perfect strokes without much effort.
Doing this i got 823 without kicks or the hairpin.
ouch looking at the motion was giving me a headache I was forced to look away, well I just moved my mouse up & down at the speed of light but spamming is the only way I do those mini game stuff lol going ham, got around 1100 btw
770 with the update hehe
oh ok thanks. yeah I might have 800 as hard mode.
It can’t be that bad lol. actually I got around 650 earlier without spamming. then around 870 today also with spamming with a few mistakes and slowing down at the ends to make sure I get the kick every time. Most of my attention is on the meter at the bottom. Thanks for posting the score. most in the game so far is designed around a adjustable difficulty setting. seems like 1.2k might be easy, 1k normal, and 800 is hard at lvl 2 swim speed.
I dislike this 1st person view
and 8 lap: too much
and any sound (FX, music….)
and the tits are hidden (only the arms)
Thanks for the feedback, however it will definitely be in first person.
There may be different time trials to beat with different amounts of laps.
Sound I always add last in nearly any game so it wont prematurely inflate the size of the game.