For those of you who've been listening into my stream, I've mentioned working on an IGF (Independent Games Festival) games several times. Finally, you can play it!!!
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There are some minor bugs with the physics, but overall it seems pretty good! Most importantly, note that this is a prototype version with tons of stuff that needs work, as the entire game was done in 7 weeks. For instance, there's currently very little interaction between the foreground/background, the art needs to be revamped, the animation is a bit wonky, some silly coding bugs still crop up, no sound music at all etc.
But, overall, my partner and I are SUPER pleased. I, especially, am blown away at how the art looks. My partner did 100% of everything from scratch (all modeling, animation etc). So, super mad props to Daniel.
Feel free to leave comments if you want (but be gentle haha. We already have a huge list of stuff we need to work on ;]). Stuff we would like feedback on: 1) Choice of colors for foreground / background - is it too hard to distinguish between foreground and background? Do the bullets show up properly in all areas? Can you see the avatar clearly in all areas? 2) Feel of the movement controls - jumping, movement speed, explosion velocity, control after you've been exploded, aerial vs on ground, movement of physical objects etc. Does it feel ok? 3) Overall difficulty of the game - were parts too easy or hard? 4) Clarity of goals - were you ever completely confused on what you were supposed to be doing?
On December 07 2009 08:51 Chef wrote: What's it about :O
We decided to focus only on the gameplay and worry about that whole "story thing" later. The game is a 2D physics based platformer revolving around speed and mobility.
That's a funny story about the name. It looked awesome when you broadcasted it over livestream, I'll definitely be trying it out after finals are over.
haha i'm just playing through the first level, and it's really awesome
basically it's a side-scroller physics type of game. you're a skinny little guy who is trying to navigate through what looks like a giant science lab. you have to jump across platforms that fall away, time your jumps on spinning platforms, etc. it's really fun, and i have to say the controls are amazingly precise. a lot of games like this you can easily get frustrated by your character jumping too far, or walking too far and going off of a ledge, but the gameplay is very fluid. the biggest complaint is what he said in the OP about the foreground/background blending together at parts, it's a little bit difficult to see your character when it's on darker backgrounds, but overall really fun game. i'm gonna go back to playing.
I think it would be improved if you allowed the user the option to remap the keys... ie so I could remap the left right to arrow keys, and keep the jump as space bar. That way I could use separate hands for each function, which in my opinion makes it easier to control (probably because I'm used to that style of platforming on consoles to begin with). I guess I could use my right hand for the space bar, but it doesn't feel as right.
On December 07 2009 08:59 Chef wrote: I think it would be improved if you allowed the user the option to remap the keys... ie so I could remap the left right to arrow keys, and keep the jump as space bar. That way I could use separate hands for each function, which in my opinion makes it easier to control (probably because I'm used to that style of platforming on consoles to begin with). I guess I could use my right hand for the space bar, but it doesn't feel as right.
LOL oh i forgot to mention, you'll be using the mouse later on.
You need the left hand on the keyboard and the right hand on the mouse. Man, that's definitely something we need to say IN the game
On December 07 2009 08:59 Chef wrote: I think it would be improved if you allowed the user the option to remap the keys... ie so I could remap the left right to arrow keys, and keep the jump as space bar. That way I could use separate hands for each function, which in my opinion makes it easier to control (probably because I'm used to that style of platforming on consoles to begin with). I guess I could use my right hand for the space bar, but it doesn't feel as right.
LOL oh i forgot to mention, you'll be using the mouse later on.
You need the left hand on the keyboard and the right hand on the mouse. Man, that's definitely something we need to say IN the game
On December 07 2009 08:59 Chef wrote: I think it would be improved if you allowed the user the option to remap the keys... ie so I could remap the left right to arrow keys, and keep the jump as space bar. That way I could use separate hands for each function, which in my opinion makes it easier to control (probably because I'm used to that style of platforming on consoles to begin with). I guess I could use my right hand for the space bar, but it doesn't feel as right.
LOL oh i forgot to mention, you'll be using the mouse later on.
You need the left hand on the keyboard and the right hand on the mouse. Man, that's definitely something we need to say IN the game
Yeah, I just got to that part haha. I guess there will just be a learning curve to the game's controls
On December 07 2009 08:59 Chef wrote: I think it would be improved if you allowed the user the option to remap the keys... ie so I could remap the left right to arrow keys, and keep the jump as space bar. That way I could use separate hands for each function, which in my opinion makes it easier to control (probably because I'm used to that style of platforming on consoles to begin with). I guess I could use my right hand for the space bar, but it doesn't feel as right.
LOL oh i forgot to mention, you'll be using the mouse later on.
You need the left hand on the keyboard and the right hand on the mouse. Man, that's definitely something we need to say IN the game
i think it does when you first pick up the gun
yeah, but ideally it would say it at the start so people don't learn to platform w/ 2 hands, then have to UNlearn it later.
well, i just finished the game (well, the first level - there isn't more right now i think ) and i have to say it was pretty fun. Well, it was pretty easy as soon as you get used to the keys and gun, since there was no need to double shoot or something like that.
I really like the combination of movement / shooting to help your movement and the speed.
On December 07 2009 09:11 Jyvblamo wrote: Whew, beat the game in just under 20 minutes. Fun stuff =D
Doing a speed run of this game would probably look pretty cool.
DUDE!! i'm SO glad you brought this up!! The design of the game was inspired by speedruns, so the entire level is intended to be played through as quickly as possible. We are going to have a time attack mode for the game when it's finished .
whoa so impressive. i find the controls a little floaty, especially when youre tyring to land on these tight platforms. i couldnt finish it on a laptop and gave up around when you + Show Spoiler +
shoot the platforms to spin them around
because the respawn was so far away.
1) Yea I thought everything looked good and I had no problems seeing anything. 2) Compared to other games, the gravity seems strong. But it's not bad, just sometimes it makes me underestimate how hard I'm going to need to jump. The worst part for me was the deceleration. Minor movements to adjust still had big deceleration, making it difficult to maneuver yourself on some platforms. When I landed and I'm sliding towards to edge, it's very difficult to time pressing back the other way, because if you do this after the deceleration has finished you send the character off the other end. Maybe it's the laptop keyboard though, not sure. I'll play it when I have a real keyboard again. 3) Seemed hard. Compared to the normal game I play it seemed very hard. I don't think it's too hard, just it's a hard game. 4) Um, sounds like I didn't get far enough to experience this... now I feel like I need to play more lol brb.
hahah chill, we surprisingly ALSO tried it on a laptop and it felt the EXACT same way you described. I'm curious what your experience is with a mouse + computer. We found that, counterintuitively, it was much easier movement wise when you had the mouse as well.
maybe a small amount of cooldown on the gun would be better? it's really easy to just shoot the gun down as fast as you can and hover through most of the level
btw i think this is a bug but when some of the blocks are verticle and the character's body touches the block you can just sort of jump infinitely while touching the block. its hard to explain
you can bug the gun and shoot yourself really far by spam clicking, sometimes like a ball bounces off or something and you go miles. And it's a bit too easy . It's really good though, and fun.
Done...it is awesome Sean. First i wasn't too good with the gun, but then i founf out that you can do all kind of cool stuff with it like almost flying a run so fast. Great game, unfortunately short
Sometimes when I do a gun jump it makes me jump ridiculously high and I skip entire sections. Still really nice. I'd like to see more levels, it's super fun.
fun to play. The background/foreground thing is a little problematic, my attention got drawn between the two a lot. Maybe it was just my pc, but it seemed to be moving around 12-15 fps which made things difficult when I was trying to string a number of inputs together. (i.e. move, jump, fire, fire, move). The physics are nice though and the gameplay itself is fun.
On December 07 2009 09:21 Chef wrote: Sometimes when I do a gun jump it makes me jump ridiculously high and I skip entire sections. Still really nice. I'd like to see more levels, it's super fun.
yep. that high jump is a known bug haha. no clue how to fix it though : ]
whoa so impressive. i find the controls a little floaty, especially when youre tyring to land on these tight platforms. i couldnt finish it on a laptop and gave up around when you + Show Spoiler +
shoot the platforms to spin them around
because the respawn was so far away.
1) Yea I thought everything looked good and I had no problems seeing anything. 2) Compared to other games, the gravity seems strong. But it's not bad, just sometimes it makes me underestimate how hard I'm going to need to jump. The worst part for me was the deceleration. Minor movements to adjust still had big deceleration, making it difficult to maneuver yourself on some platforms. When I landed and I'm sliding towards to edge, it's very difficult to time pressing back the other way, because if you do this after the deceleration has finished you send the character off the other end. Maybe it's the laptop keyboard though, not sure. I'll play it when I have a real keyboard again. 3) Seemed hard. Compared to the normal game I play it seemed very hard. I don't think it's too hard, just it's a hard game. 4) Um, sounds like I didn't get far enough to experience this... now I feel like I need to play more lol brb.
I had a really different experience than chill. 1) I think the character is a little too difficult to see. Probably a combination of small/thin and because he's all black so he blends into some of the background. 2)Gravity seemed all right to me. I guess I sort of agree in that the jumping felt "weird". I think it has to do with the jumping animation rather than the height. Weird arm flailing. 3)Really easy. The "tau jumping" was really intuitive for me from playing Half-life/Adrenaline Gamer. I had to restart a couple times. The reason for that was because I'd click out of the window by accident and when I clicked back on it, it'd shoot the gun.
Also, I just tried the hovering technique someone was talking about and it is sort of silly. You should probably add a cooldown to the gun.
Edit: Just ran through it again but this time in full screen. Would be cool if the saved points would get activated if you go above them as well as through them. The character model is easier to see in full screen but it's still black and blends in with the platforms. Takes away from the nice visuals because of it. There is also some wierd glow from his visor that gets reflected on the platforms.
Ah I gave up on beating it with a laptop... Very nice gameplay though. A little sharper controls and some tweaking on the graphics colours and it'll be a truly epic game.
On December 07 2009 09:17 kaisr wrote: btw i think this is a bug but when some of the blocks are verticle and the character's body touches the block you can just sort of jump infinitely while touching the block. its hard to explain
could you try to explain it a little bit more w/ a SS? This sort of mass user testing is SUPER useful for me because you can find way more glitches than I can. If it's really problematic, then it's definitely something I need to change! :D
The game was really fun, I thought it was just going to be a platformer with jumping alone but the gun made it so much more enjoyable to play! Played it on a desktop and I think it was a pretty easy because you can spam the gun but that was also a fun part.
Yeah really cool game, the rocket jump style was really fun although it allowed me too breeze thrue some areas, using it as a jetpack or runing strate into crates launchers using the gun to boost my speed . time attack would be so cool !
On December 07 2009 09:17 kaisr wrote: btw i think this is a bug but when some of the blocks are verticle and the character's body touches the block you can just sort of jump infinitely while touching the block. its hard to explain
could you try to explain it a little bit more w/ a SS? This sort of mass user testing is SUPER useful for me because you can find way more glitches than I can. If it's really problematic, then it's definitely something I need to change! :D
Yea I get what he is saying. I thought that right away too. So like the place where there is a rocket jump stair and you rocket jump and as you approach over ledge and your jump peaks you slide against the ledge and you seem to prolong the jump (gravity seems to go away for a second) and keep going higher.
actually the spot i'm talking about is right after the SS i posted above.
also, it might have something to do with the time/angle you blast the rocket after jumping. Since im used to quake I wanted to jump and shoot the same time but this doesn't seem to work very well.
edit- yea Seems that if you angle it about man's length behind him tap jump, and tap shoot right after so that you are aiming your body for the corner of the ledge (while holding jump) you will get a super jump. recreated it like 1/15 tries
also, I found this where you can keep jumping off rockets while holding up and shoot
You can navigate the whole level without even touching the ground or movement keys by spamming rocket jumps. Every once in a while one of the rockets (has to do something with explosion angle no doubt) you will get a super duper jump. Maybe it works a bit like samus's morph ball bomb jumps?
here is me wall rocket jumping all the way up the wall to somewhere I shouldn't be (right after the part where it teach you how to long jump)
also you can super run if you keep spamming rockets right behind your feet as you hold left or right
Graphically, I think you should change the blue burst from the gun. It's huge, and I think the splash is too big as well, and really takes away from the other visuals.
Can you make Esc quit in full screen? I haven't found a way to quit. Maybe add in a menu for Esc (Quit, continue).
Hahaha what a great game! This is almost as good as igneous :D ive really missed this kind of platform game for quite some time. I LOVE how you can blast yourself forward with the gun it makes the game so dynamic and fun to replay. The game was rather easy ones you got the hang of using the blaster since you could come out of almost any situation but it was still hilarious trying to get yourself back up if you get to far behind when the floor is falling ^^
1) i found it very easy to distinguish between forground and background, i see no problem there at all. 2) Movement control were excellent aswell, reminded me alot of Crash Bandicoot feels almost the same. the physics were a blast to toy around with aswell, it was really fun blating all those crates around you 3) Like i said early the game gets rather easy ones you get the hang of using the blaster but it was still a great challenge and the final level was really fun in the sense that it was challenging due to the speed of whitch the floor fell, it had to really focus in order to get through that one the first time. 4) i never had any doubts about where to go next but maybe it would be nice to have an arrow hanging in the background sometimes when the next platform is outside the screen range.
The game has a rather fast pace, which is great but it got somewhat anoying sometimes when you failed and had to do it all over again. Maybe make it so that every solid platform is a spawn point?
I had a few other thoughts but i forgot ill edit them in if i recall them :p
GJ on making the game, it was alot more fun than i had expected when i read that you only sped 7 weeks on it.
I like this game, I'd genuinely pay money for this game, similar to Altitude. It's a really simple, yet very entertaining game. I don't know if you've addressed this, but sometimes, if you time movement and shooting just right (I don't really understand how I did it, it just happens by accident), you can make a shot that moves you ridiculously high. i.e. 2-3 times the height of a "high jump." Maybe it can be a developed skill, I don't know. But I really like the flexibility you created with this game. If you allow user created levels, it can be similar to the n-game, where people will develop creative obstacles to get through.
Haha yea that was pretty fun ^^ Play it on a laptop if you want some extra challenge :D The extra boost from the multiple gun shots is unfortunately pretty broken, though. The graphics look really nice.
Edit: This game gave me the same feel I had when playing littlebigplanet, so that's a plus!
Is the finished game going to have some high skill uses of the gun's boost feature? cause just playing through it it seems like with the right set up you could pretty much use the gun to never touch the ground.
Pretty amazing though, one of the most addictive little games I've played since that ignious one you recommended
Haha, I lol'd at Fantastic and Beautiful being options for Graphics Quality.
I actually like the graphics. They're very good in a stylistic way. Took me a bit under 10 minutes to finish it. I really love the gun idea, though there were some abusable physics. It reminds me of using the gravity gun in Half Life 2 to solve puzzles/progress through the game.
Overall, it was a fun way to spend 10 minutes. Controls were very responsive. You have the mechanics for a good puzzle/platform.
You might want to slow down the fire rate so you can't just fly at super speed past some of the more difficult obstacles (like the last stretch). Out of 1-10 for difficulty, I'd say it's a 4. Not much thinking needed. You could also put in some wall jumping esque mechanics. Also I think you can walk upsidedown on platforms by jumping continuously.
I thought the graphics were very nice, and it had a pretty consistent aesthetic. I had no problems with the big blue 'splosion, because the blaster is pretty much the centerpiece, and knowing the blast radius can be the difference between life and death. I had no problems with back/foreground whatsoever.
The controls were simple and intuitive. Not much to say there.
The instructions were all pretty clear, but I agree that you should define all of the controls from the start. I initially had both hands on the keyboard. I never had any issues with where I should be going, though I agree that an arrow or two would make it impossible to fuck up.
The gameplay was pretty straightforward. There weren't issues with difficulty at all, and a time-attack mode would make it so your level of success or failure is determined by your own ambitions (making the difficulty ceiling pretty much infinite). The placement of the spawn points was great, breaking it down into individual tasks/puzzles. I only wish it was longer, as in more levels (though I understand that in its current state it is within the scope of your project).
I hope you find the time to expand it in length and mechanics at some point. Regardless, in its current state it's quite good and very fun.
On December 07 2009 09:34 CharlieMurphy wrote: also, I found this where you can keep jumping off rockets while holding up and shoot
You can navigate the whole level without even touching the ground or movement keys by spamming rocket jumps. Every once in a while one of the rockets (has to do something with explosion angle no doubt) you will get a super duper jump. Maybe it works a bit like samus's morph ball bomb jumps?
I just played through the whole thing in 10 minutes. Overall, I really enjoyed it. The art was really fantastic, major props. The physics for the most part were fine, the only real issue I had was the part where you had to flip the platforms using the particle gun. Sometimes the platforms would flip because of the beam when I was using the gun for a boost resulting in a fatal and horrific death.
Oh and yeah, it can definitely get tricky because this little dude has a lot of trouble slowing down.
Btw, this may sound like nitpicking, but I noticed that the blue shots that fire don't actually come from the gun but straight out of the center of the dude. If you could animate the guy's arm to fire in the direction of the mouse it would look so much better.
And finally, just add some sick indy music that matches the basic, mechanical architecture of the level and you have a winning game.
On December 07 2009 09:34 CharlieMurphy wrote: also, I found this where you can keep jumping off rockets while holding up and shoot
You can navigate the whole level without even touching the ground or movement keys by spamming rocket jumps. Every once in a while one of the rockets (has to do something with explosion angle no doubt) you will get a super duper jump. Maybe it works a bit like samus's morph ball bomb jumps?
Great game. Was a lot of fun. It is pretty fast paced after you get the gun and time attack will be awesome. R for respawn is nice, but for me it was too close to the controls so I pressed it accidentally a dozen of times xD btw I could play it fluently only using the "fastest" option and no more than 800x600.
I ran into a problem I tried to switch the controls off having space bar as jump but it wouldn't respond to my keyboard. It just kept making a sound I tried redownloading it but it didn't fix it.
On December 07 2009 10:16 Belgo wrote: Really nice speed run potential!
Yea, I was thinking that the moment I discovered you can rocket spam. But I thought that might have been intentional by day 9 because of what he said in the op about it being a game about speed and mobility. Guess this isn't exactly what he meant, but hey. This (unintentional bugs that change gameplay) is how games become great in the first place .
1) Choice of colors was fine. 2) The controls feel great. It's pretty responsive overall. The power of the explosion seems kinda weird though, since you fly a lot farther horizontally than you do vertically. Aerial control doesn't seems buggy since explosions on vertical walls don't seem to do much. 3) The difficulty's not bad. I especially liked the ending part - it was difficult, but not difficult enough to be really frustrating. 4) The places where falling is necessary to proceed need an arrow pointing downward. There's an arrow at the first drop, but I don't remember seeing one at the second.
Being able to boost yourself with the gun on the ground is nice, but you really shouldn't be able to force your way through those flying boxes like that.
When you guys redo the art, put hinges on the rotating platforms. They look kinda funny just floating in mid-air. It'd also be nice if there was something for the flying boxes to appear out of.
I noticed that the w and s keys are mapped to "vertical", but the keys were never used in game. a and d are mapped twice to horizontal and walk, which I assume are the same thing.
By the way, having the boxes fall into the background is very much appreciated. I thought I was going to have to navigate through that mess. =P
Bugs: I ran into a weird bug where the a shot from the gun slowly expanded in mid-air until it filled up about a quarter of the screen before disappearing. I'm not really sure how to reproduce this though. Standing in a corner and firing into the corner seems to have no effect. The game made my entire screen would turn black twice. Not sure what caused this. I was running the game in 800x600, good quality, windowed mode. Ran into the high jump glitch a couple times. It's not dependent on hitting a ledge since I've had it happen over an open area. I have a hunch that the game's detecting the same explosion twice.
I think the rocket controls could be just a bit tighter? It's a bit difficult to know exactly where it's going to land so I end up messing up a lot of my jumps. Adding some sort of lazer or target reticle would help a lot.
But that's probably just because I suck. Great game though.
Really fun stuff, found the controls tight and the physics lots of fun. You can really rocket around by running + shooting backwards Sort of reminds me of N game... with a gun. You could try including wall-jumping and especially rocket wall jumping
Had some issues with the map not restarting properly and found high jumping a bit odd, seemed like it was really difficult to get high enough unless you went straight up. Otherwise it was a pretty sweet game, really enjoyed the last part and most of the rocket jumping/running.
This game definitely has a great basis for speed running. I'm working right now on trying to get a good speed run to upload, but I'm going to upload my current best one because it shows a more than likely unintentional bug where you can basically "climb" walls with your gun shots, and also I had a crazy bug where one of my bullets moved very slowly and expanded to ridiculous sizes before eventually fading. Lastly, there's a weird bug that usually happens when you're near a corner where sometimes you will shoot and jump ridiculously high.
That said, the game is incredibly fun. The background/foreground was a little confusing the first few seconds I started up.. I think perhaps making the stuff in the background a lighter shade of gray would make it attract less attention? But I could just be speaking completely out of my ass.
Sometimes it felt like it was a bit difficult to turn around because you sort of decelerate before coming to a stop (but this is only noticeably a problem in the beginning where you have to zig-zag jump, but still).
Like a previous poster said, an arrow or some sort of other thing to indicate when you're going down would be very helpful (unless there is one and I'm just not noticing it?), on my first run through I was like "FUCK, I'm falling.. oh wait never mind I need to go here. cool" but now I have the layout of the game pretty well figured out so it's not as much of a problem.
The game is fun but right now definitely feels somewhat easy, but I think there's definitely potential to create difficult parts. I would have liked to see some sort of innovative uses of the "big block" that we saw in the beginning. And speaking of blocks, the use of the giant piles of small blocks seems sort of unnecessary right now (but by all means its definitely amusing to shoot at them and watch them all shoot all across the screen).
Anyways though.. I'm gunna try uploading a video soon that shows some of the bugs.. but I'm gunna keep working to try and get a speed run that I'm satisfied with. Stay tuned!
I liked the idea and the controls felt pretty good. It only took me about 5 minutes to beat it though, but perhaps I was abusing the fact that you could spam you shots and basically fly over anything. For instance I didn't even realize the last stretch were platforms that fell until I had to repeat it a time or two because I was staying aloft on my shots the whole time.
Input configuration doesn't work for me... I can press all the keys I want but the only thing it responds to are mouse clicks. Seeing as I've experimented with this quite a bit, now almost all the controls are mapped to clicks and I'm going to have to reinstall.
On December 07 2009 10:30 wswordsmen wrote: I ran into a problem I tried to switch the controls off having space bar as jump but it wouldn't respond to my keyboard. It just kept making a sound I tried redownloading it but it didn't fix it.
On December 07 2009 09:17 kaisr wrote: btw i think this is a bug but when some of the blocks are verticle and the character's body touches the block you can just sort of jump infinitely while touching the block. its hard to explain
could you try to explain it a little bit more w/ a SS? This sort of mass user testing is SUPER useful for me because you can find way more glitches than I can. If it's really problematic, then it's definitely something I need to change! :D
Yea I get what he is saying. I thought that right away too. So like the place where there is a rocket jump stair and you rocket jump and as you approach over ledge and your jump peaks you slide against the ledge and you seem to prolong the jump (gravity seems to go away for a second) and keep going higher.
actually the spot i'm talking about is right after the SS i posted above.
also, it might have something to do with the time/angle you blast the rocket after jumping. Since im used to quake I wanted to jump and shoot the same time but this doesn't seem to work very well.
edit- yea Seems that if you angle it about man's length behind him tap jump, and tap shoot right after so that you are aiming your body for the corner of the ledge (while holding jump) you will get a super jump. recreated it like 1/15 tries
also, I found this where you can keep jumping off rockets while holding up and shoot
You can navigate the whole level without even touching the ground or movement keys by spamming rocket jumps. Every once in a while one of the rockets (has to do something with explosion angle no doubt) you will get a super duper jump. Maybe it works a bit like samus's morph ball bomb jumps?
here is me wall rocket jumping all the way up the wall to somewhere I shouldn't be (right after the part where it teach you how to long jump)
also you can super run if you keep spamming rockets right behind your feet as you hold left or right
That's so weird! That bug where you can slide up walls with spamming rockets was fixed in another build. Yesterday, we added in the blue particles for the shot + explosions and now it seems that the bug has returned! Absolutely crazy haha.
Also, the fact that you can float above the air and run really fast as you spam were intentional.
The super high jump is completely 100% random. Has absolutely nothing to do w/ angles or location at all. If you fire 100 times in the exact same direction at the exact same time, every so often you'll encounter the mondo blast upwards. (I tested this in code with 100 identically timed/positioned blasts. I am looking into this still!)
k just encountered a HUGEEEEEEEE bug where I fell through part of the level and landed on the last part of the game.. will definitely post a video of that "speed run" (with a time of 3:04 lol :D)
kk first video just got done uploading. The video quality came out HORRIBLE as it is, and then putting it on youtube, the quality is just god awful, but hopefully you can see whats going on (also I made sure to fraps with my cursor on)
First song is Discotronic - Tricky Disco Second song is Max Farenthide - Number One
On December 07 2009 11:37 Duke wrote: damn i thought people were just blowing smoke but this is awesome. i like the acceleration/deceleration time of running, and spamming that gun is lols
It's a fun game overall but I have a problem with couple of things such as: 1. There is a delay in movement. For example, when jumping, there is a delay when you press space bar and the character actually jumps. So you have to pretty much predict where you are character is going to be after the delay when you're pretty the arrow buttons. 2. The graphic for the bullet is kind of sad. 3. The overall graphics is good but don't you think it's a bit...brown? I think it's more refreshing when there's neon green or some other colour instead of just warm, brown colour. Maybe black and neon green background or something.
That's it for now but it is definitely a fun game...I'll be playing a bit more =o
Biggest comments I'd make are that it feels too easy to climb almost-vertical surfaces by just jumping into them, and the fact that you can slide up walls by holding into it and spamming shots at a shallow angle into it. For instance, the section at 1:10 in ForAlways's video can be done marginally faster by sliding up the far right wall to the top and then blasting to the left straight over the stack of boxes.
Wall jumping is currently done by jumping while shooting at a point against the wall and 1 or 2 character lengths below your guy. I almost skipped a large section of the game this way, but apparently, the insta death layer works both ways. =P
I can't get the giant expanding shot to appear reliably. Shots normally expand, but are usually travel fast enough that they don't have time to get very big before hitting something or going offscreen. These particular shots seem to be launched with a lower velocity, giving it time to become huge.
Oh, and I managed to make a door go through the wall:
I didn't manage to blast myself through the wall - I just did a wall climb to get the screenshot.
That was a ton of fun. I like all the different ways you made the player use the explosions as part of their movement.
For some reason I occasionally got propelled really high/far on some of my jumps. I couldn't figure out the criteria (it only took me 10 minutes to beat), but there's some sort of Super Bounce possible in your game. Not a bad thing, but I'm sure not intended.
On December 07 2009 12:49 number1gog wrote: That was a ton of fun. I like all the different ways you made the player use the explosions as part of their movement.
For some reason I occasionally got propelled really high/far on some of my jumps. I couldn't figure out the criteria (it only took me 10 minutes to beat), but there's some sort of Super Bounce possible in your game. Not a bad thing, but I'm sure not intended.
When he showed the game in his livestream he said that that very high boost was actually a bug =D, still is great
On December 07 2009 12:49 number1gog wrote: That was a ton of fun. I like all the different ways you made the player use the explosions as part of their movement.
For some reason I occasionally got propelled really high/far on some of my jumps. I couldn't figure out the criteria (it only took me 10 minutes to beat), but there's some sort of Super Bounce possible in your game. Not a bad thing, but I'm sure not intended.
When he showed the game in his livestream he said that that very high boost was actually a bug =D, still is great
D'aw there was a tutorial/demo? I feel left out...
Just downloaded and played for a few minutes. It seems pretty fun, although if you build up enough speed you sometimes get rediculous vertical leaps. (Like most of the part where you have to shoot the platforms) and also horizontal leaps (like when you have to jump across the spinning platforms)
I think it's a bit hard to see where you're aiming, especially if it zoomed out a lot. the gun jumping in the last section was a bit tricky to do because I'd accidentally shoot in front of the char or not right below it. Some visual clue in which direction you're aiming would be nice and maybe replacing the cursor with a crosshair or something like that.
I think you need to define what the "end" is. Is it at the exact moment you land on the last platform? Is it when you cross a certain vertical line? What would be defined as "crossing"?
Very fun. I don't consider it particularly hard, but that's because the main platformer I've played is IWBTG, which is like death in a can. I love the physics engine, and I've had a lot of fun just jumping around even after beating the level.
Speedruns for this game would be really fun, but "minimalist" challenges sound like they'd be even more fun: for example, I'd like to see how few times you could fire a rocket and still win. No respawning allowed, of course - start to finish in one go!
Speaking of which, an option to turn off the respawn points would be nice, just so I don't have to keep manually restarting the program when I try this.
On December 07 2009 13:51 CaptainPlatypus wrote: Speaking of which, an option to turn off the respawn points would be nice, just so I don't have to keep manually restarting the program when I try this.
In addition to this, are there plans to implement a level/checkpoint select? I'm lazy, so I don't really want to run through the first part of the level to get to the gun.
WOw sean, this is amazing. Very impressed. my favorite part is how you can control your character by shooting behind you, that shit is not only fun, but it creates a unique style of gameplay for all players. Although I wish i had a little more control to jump back and forth between walls (eg,to make your way up), but it doesn't seem to be implemented for this game (yet)
Absolutely no problems or glitches. Ran through it flawlessly and fluidly.
On December 07 2009 08:48 Day[9] wrote: Feel free to leave comments if you want (but be gentle haha. We already have a huge list of stuff we need to work on ;]). Stuff we would like feedback on: 1) Choice of colors for foreground / background - is it too hard to distinguish between foreground and background? Do the bullets show up properly in all areas? Can you see the avatar clearly in all areas?
I had no problems, but the blue explosion lagged my slow laptop a bit. I didn't try the lowest setting though, but if it doesn't have one a sprite explosion might help a bit.
2) Feel of the movement controls - jumping, movement speed, explosion velocity, control after you've been exploded, aerial vs on ground, movement of physical objects etc. Does it feel ok?
I felt like I should run a little faster, and jump a little less high. If he's going to jump what appears to be 15 feet he should at least have some shoes. I was puzzled by the boxes. I think they should break open and chickens should come out and try to peck me.
Maybe you already know this, but I think it's too easy to jump if you are touching a surface, even if it would be impossible to stand on. It seems like if my face is touching a moving platform I can hit jump and go straight up, quite handy.
3) Overall difficulty of the game - were parts too easy or hard?
I played on my laptop and won easy, although getting through without dying anywhere would be tough. Honestly it could have been easier if I could bind a key to shoot my gun at certain angles instead of clicking onscreen; I only needed an angle to long jump, to go straight up, or to make me run super fast jetpack style. I read the thread first and was expecting something harder harder than SMB1. The only tricky part was moving my mouse to the right spot before clicking a bunch. If I could bind J K L ; (or w/e on the right hand) to various jumps I could win much more easily.
4) Clarity of goals - were you ever completely confused on what you were supposed to be doing?
No problems, except in the beginning when I didn't realize I could push the box.
Thanks for the game! I was surprised when it was over. Very short and easy, and not even any chickens or shoes.
I really enjoyed playing it, there are some things that ruin it a bit like being able to spam fire and constantly fly at ridiculous speeds through the levels.
Overall though, great work, really enjoyed it. Would like to see more levels! =]
Fun game, obviously very short and unpolished since it's 2 guys working for 7 weeks, but fun.
Do you plan to keep the glitches in? If you look at speeddemoarchive or whatever it's called, game's speedruns are usually entirely defined by their glitches.
2) Feel of the movement controls - jumping, movement speed, explosion velocity, control after you've been exploded, aerial vs on ground, movement of physical objects etc. Does it feel ok?
Great game overall, very enjoyable.
One thing however regarding controls, I found jumping to be slightly uncomfortable. Let me elaborate; you have a small jump and a big jump regulated by the time holding the space. This creates for a bit of awkward controlling, since you basically never use the small jump (unless shooting the wall) but consistently use the big jump for everything. This means whenever you are running and want to jump you have to hold the space every time (and at first not quite knowing how long you have to hold it for to perform the big jump), diverging from the common "reaction based button hit" style present in speed-running games. This becomes more apparent when doing a series of jumps going upward where as soon as you land you want to jump again, but from time to time as soon as I landed I found myself still holding the space key instinctively for the long jump, creating a slight delay between my jumps. Also when wanting to boost yourself upward to gain the maximum height it feels like you have to "charge up" your jump, creating slight desynchronization between the jump and the shooting, instead of simply tapping two buttons in a sequence, which I'd imagine is the type of controls a speed based game would naturally want to conform to. If my humble suggestion is worth anything, perhaps the removal of the small jump and allowing for the big jump to be performed with a tap on the space key would facilitate faster accustomization to the controls (or perhaps even replacing the "hold" command with a double space tap, but I'd imagine that would get annoying fast).
This is my opinion based on what the game "felt like" the first time I played it. Adaptation to the controls is, of course, not difficult, but the initial awkward set up (for me) left a slight aftertaste.
This is the only suggestion I could add. Everything else felt great
3) Overall difficulty of the game - were parts too easy or hard?
Overall it was pretty easy but still really fun because of the fast pace. If you added a time trial component, it would boost replay value up quite a bit. Maybe just as simple as having a "Top 10 Fastest Times" list would be sufficient.
so I'll have a list now: 1) custom key bind 2) please let me use my normal mouse drive... my mouse speed changes when I am in the game, i suspect it reverts my logitech driver to default windows driver 3) some kind of "laser beam" that come out of the gun might be a good turn on/off feature so it can help me track the angle
more suggestions again: 1) more fluid stick figure motion, feels bit "stiff" at the moment and the animation is not as good as I'd hoped... 2) glitch: there is a collision glitch that let you jump up the rotating planes very easily if you spam jump, and you won't slid down 3) camera angle change: very annoying cuz i'd be trying to do some crazy jump with the gun but ZOOM the camera angle changed and all the shots are in the wrong position -> i die
haha, fun little game =]. only complain is it was too short and not very challanging, the last little section was the only part that kind had an 'exciting' feel to it, it felt like i was just getting into to fun challenging part but then it ended =[. I'm not saying make the earlier bits harder, because the learning curve is pretty much perfect, just add more and make it progressively more hard :D. It kinda gave me the feeling of playing super mario bros, but there only being the first world. Obviously you'll be adding more tho, i eagerly await .
In the first part where boxes were shot at me, one got stuck in the exit of the room so I couldn't advance without respawning . Also, the game threw some exception and an error box came up. I completed the game, though.
Your questions: 1) It wasn't too confusing. It was disappointing to see a much more interesting background that couldn't be explored. 2) High jump was kind of frustrating. The long jump was a little less frustrating. When I hit a vertical wall and bounce horizontally really far and die it is really frustrating, especially when I am trying to do a high jump in a tight spot. 3) It was ok on difficulty. 4) No.
Oh, I played it on a laptop with the touchpad and had no problems with it. And I'm someone who can't / refuses to play SC or any FPS on a laptop keyboard or touchpad.
I guess I would like to see some sort of meaningful procedural rhetoric. From your posts it seems that the point of the game isn't to communicate anything in particular but to create a game that can that make speed run videos with and probably compete against each other for fastest times. I can see how that would appeal to people at the very right hand of the bell curve for playing skill, such as yourself. I think for me, though, this game was a little bit of frustration to overcome and that's it at this point.
This game is so awesome. When I saw the thread title I was like 'pfft I aint gonna play yo game with that kinda attitude'. Then I saw it was by day9 so I was like 'aight i'll give it a shot but I'm not going to post in your thread because its going to su...........HOLY COCKBALLS DID THOSE BOXES JUST EXPLODE?'
I am making and uploading a video of me playing this because I want everyone on my YT channel to go download this ASAP. It is absolutely awesome. I am VERY picky when it comes to small games like this (small not in the amount of effort you guys have put into it.)
I don't know how else to say how perfectly awesome this game is. The physics, the challenge, the amazing 3d environment physics while running in 2d space, the character, resolution etc etc... its all EPICLY AWESOME.
Sorry if this feedback isn't very helpful, I was just completely blown away by how fun this game is. You had some really creative ideas with the physics and its ONLY THE START. Please keep working on this, it has so much potential that I'm getting giddy just thinking about it.
Is the entire game renderd all the time ? it seemse to bee to heavy for what its doing. only rendering parts near the char might help. guesse this is already the case but dunno.
Nice game though record is at about 5 min for me. you can go really fast just shooting the groundbehind you
Some remarks: *Would be nice if the window captures the mouse (or a setting that allows this) in window mode. *The fact that the explosions have very small effect on you when you are very close to their source, feels a bit unintuitive and unusual. When I first tried to rocket jump I got nowhere cause I would jump and shoot at the same time. However at the same time I like that the "maximum blast" (most velocity gained) requires a little distance from the explosion, since it feels harder to master this way. *I like the brown industrial feel of the graphics. *Overall it's a lot of fun :O go for it!
P.S. Cleared it in about 3:20~3:30 so far, but have no way to record it :/
Very fun game, I do agree with one of the posts before me saying that jumping felt slightly weird, I think the physics and height and distance of the jump all feel right and fun and whatnot, I think its possibly just the animation that could be off, it just doesn't feel quite right, this could be just me though.
Also are you going to post a link to a completed game with more levels and such? cause i would totally play the shit out of that.
On December 07 2009 21:00 Marradron wrote: i found a cheat. if you hug a wall jump and then ceep right key pressed and ceep shootingdown you can wallcimb you can shortcut a bit like that
I agree with pretty much everything stated up until this point. In my opinion the game is a bit on the easier side, especially when you get the gun and start floating through the challenges. I'm not really sure if you should nerf the gun in some way because (ab)using it is simply so much fun. Another idea is that adding a "Shots Fired" overview at the end of the level so you can try to limit your shots while minimizing the time spent playing through the level. That said I don't really have a problem with spam firing the gun if the challenges are tuned to make it less of an end all solution
Another thing is how heavy the game is. My ThinkPad, admittedly rather old, can't really run anything alongside it and whenever I close it the performance gets very low for like 10 minutes or so. Disclaimer: The performance on it is really wonky, but I thought I should put it out there.
Loved the game and I'm really looking forward to playing through more levels.
Edit: After having played the game a bit more the performance issues after closing it have gone, however I get lag (5-10sec) on the third checkpoint every time I play it. Another time which seems to consistently lag my computer for around 5 seconds is upon picking up the gun.
This game was pretty fun! I spent about half an hour to finish it. Reminds me of Mario 64 (without the gun).
The graphics look pretty cool, but the color and background is a bit dull though. I would suggest adding more variety of colors (maybe add a few mountains or clouds in the background or something).
haha , played the game at work a little , people came to see what i was playing and everyone was impressed , good luck from a fellow game developer, i work at Ubisoft .
I was just playing and bam! Your program tried to bring up an error message when unity seemed to crash as you could have seen if I hadn't of overrided the print screen ^^.
I also have the crash report and uploaded it to mediafire here: Crash Report
If theres anything else you need let me know and sorry if you already know about this I'll try replaying it now to see if it does it again.
Edit: I retried and it worked so just one of those weird things i guess. I also got a bluescreen when alt f4ing once but my computer likes to bsod so it was probably nothing. Other then that there are a few little glitched but nothing that cannot be solved with r key. One thing when using concussion to blow away boxes I find that sometimes only the one layer of boxes falls leaving the other side still there but hittable with then gun so I just thought I'd mention that. The odd ramp didn't reset also but no big deal and great work!!
you RULE. I posted your speedrun in the OP. Anyone wanna try to beat it? ;]. I was super pumped when I read during the day[9] daily that people were speedrunning. SO awesome! :D
Loved it. With some more work it can be a nice speed run game. Great concept! Have you tried Elastomania? It's an old dirt bike platformer with a somewhat similar concept. For some reason your game reminded me of it
I managed to get 2:45 not long ago, so [wh]_ForAlways just barely beat me xD. However I did some mistakes so time can clearly be cut further.
Some comments on [wh]_ForAlways's speedrun: 0:58 - 1:01 nice work here, this place ruins like 85% of my attempts. And when I finally clear it I'm still slower then you. 1:03 - 1:11 when you are waiting for the brick to flip over, you can shoot the next brick so that you don't have to wait for it to flip over once you get there. 1:15 - 1:23 I assume you know that you can jump directly to the first tiny block. I have a tendency to make heavy mistakes here, despite the fact that this area is "non-dangerous". ugh xP. 1:40 - 1:44 nice going 1:50 - 1:54 liked this "solution", as this part/door has been troubling me. I usually speed on with rockets over 1:54 to 2:02 as well, but it can be quite risky. 2:15 if you cling to the right wall when falling, you can land directly on top of the boxes. I think it's faster, but I almost never do it cause I'm usually busy with: 2:19 the "draw bridge" can actually be hit from above (quite tricky), from where you are at 2:14 -2:15. This way it will start falling (a little) before you get here. I'm not sure it saves much time at all, but it's cool :D. 2:28 - 2:35. this "running" technique is awesome, I never thought of it myself but have been using it since I saw your earlier speedruns. thx xD.
Overall it looked very good, I liked the consistency (no heavy/really bad mistakes) over all of it. Good work!
day[9], you have no idea how much schoolgirl-esque glee I was filled with when I saw that speed run on the first page. I think I could even cut it down a couple more seconds but for now I'm definitely MORE than satisfied with my current run, but I may be motivated if someone does de-throne me.
Some comments on [wh]_ForAlways's speedrun: 0:58 - 1:01 nice work here, this place ruins like 85% of my attempts. And when I finally clear it I'm still slower then you.
Haha ya I was trying to do this last night and eventually just gave up because I would constantly over shoot off the edge or miss a shot and fall through before I got to the middle "island"
1:03 - 1:11 when you are waiting for the brick to flip over, you can shoot the next brick so that you don't have to wait for it to flip over once you get there.
heh, was definitely hitting myself over that after watching it because its SOOO obvious when you see it but when I was running through it I never even thought about it.
1:15 - 1:23 I assume you know that you can jump directly to the first tiny block. I have a tendency to make heavy mistakes here, despite the fact that this area is "non-dangerous". ugh xP.
heh ya, its just its kind of a risky shot and after so many failed attempts I started to play it a bit safe (because I dont have an exact spot down for getting on the first floating brick, its usually about 30% success ratio lol)
1:40 - 1:44 nice going
<3
1:50 - 1:54 liked this "solution", as this part/door has been troubling me. I usually speed on with rockets over 1:54 to 2:02 as well, but it can be quite risky.
Ya I used to shoot the doors but I kept shooting myself backwards while running through so eventually I was just like "hmmm, well I know if you fall down fast enough you can break the door in that first part so I wonder if this will work." Turns out it does and ya I need to practice rocketing through this part. Every time I tried I would always die miserably to that damn vertical one.
2:15 if you cling to the right wall when falling, you can land directly on top of the boxes. I think it's faster, but I almost never do it cause I'm usually busy with:
ya haha definitely discovered it on accident after I was showing my roommate the game. Can't believe I didn't think of it earlier T_T
2:19 the "draw bridge" can actually be hit from above (quite tricky), from where you are at 2:14 -2:15. This way it will start falling (a little) before you get here. I'm not sure it saves much time at all, but it's cool :D.
Hmmm, I'll have to try that sometime.. in one of my other runs I accidentally hit it by shooting two bullets at around the 2:12 mark + Show Spoiler [Like So] +
You can definitely long jump across the gap though, but I just got so flustered / started laughing when I saw it that I fucked up the jump and was like "oh well lawl".
2:28 - 2:35. this "running" technique is awesome, I never thought of it myself but have been using it since I saw your earlier speedruns. thx xD.
haha no problem. I call it Gun Running
Overall it looked very good, I liked the consistency (no heavy/really bad mistakes) over all of it. Good work!
Haha thanks. I just wish there was a restart option (GET ON IT, SEAN <3). I was playing in fullscreen so it was annoying whenever I screwed up to press F8 to stop fraps, then alt F4 and then restart the game again >_<
I have not read this entire thread, so sorry if this has already been posted:
There is, what I think is a bug, where you can shoot a little bit behind the character while running and the blast causes him to run much faster without leaving the ground.
Obviously this type of thing is needed for the long jumps, but keep this "bug" in mind if you plan on doing some sort of time-attack mode or something of the sort... people could use this to speed up their play by a lot.
edit: sorry it's been posted. great game though, lots of fun!
1:03 - 1:11 when you are waiting for the brick to flip over, you can shoot the next brick so that you don't have to wait for it to flip over once you get there.
heh, was definitely hitting myself over that after watching it because its SOOO obvious when you see it but when I was running through it I never even thought about it.
I've found that the quickest way is to just gun climb the wall to the right instead of hitting the flipping platforms. Saves many seconds.
DAMNIT! that was something I was gunna do in my next speedrun (if I muster up the willpower to do another one) but I was hoping no one had figured that one out yet. But also, I just use an old ass version of fraps (2.8.2) to record my stuff.
[wh]_ForAlways's speed run can be improved at about the 1:05 mark by boosting yourself over to the wall and "rocket jumping" up that to a little above the boxes, getting some distance off of the wall and then blasting yourself over the boxes. It's kind of hard to do, as I was trying it for awhile, but once you get it down it should save some time.
haha ya I know I actually timed it out for the hell of it and I believe it trims off roughly 6 seconds.. but then again I definitely wasn't the most efficient with my bricks, but I also only shot off the wall once I was all the way to the corner at the top, and you can definitely shoot off much earlier... So since I did failures on both parts, I'm just gunna still say that it trims ~6 seconds using the wall jump as opposed to the platforms.
Also, something that my roommate pointed out when I showed him the video. at 1:50-1:52 (ish) i land on a door and glide along with it. I don't know if that actually made me go faster or not, but it sure as hell looked awesome.
On December 08 2009 10:05 [wh]_ForAlways wrote: DAMNIT! that was something I was gunna do in my next speedrun (if I muster up the willpower to do another one) but I was hoping no one had figured that one out yet. But also, I just use an old ass version of fraps (2.8.2) to record my stuff.
Sorry for ruining your surprise
I downloaded fraps, but the freeware version only allows 30 secs of recording. My computer lags too, so you are safe for now.
Too bad, I would gladly have wasted a few hours of my life on this.
I'm not sure how taken-for-granted this is, but the game becomes much, much easier if I just spam shots at an angle slightly behind my character. It ends up looking like he has some kind of jetpack and he just whips through, so there isn't much challenge. If I were going to recommend something to "fix" this, I might try restricting shot speed. For example, only 3 shots allowed onscreen at once, or have a "power meter" that only recharges fast enough to allow 1-3 shots per second. (I'm using 5+ per second in the scenario I'm describing.)
On December 08 2009 10:05 [wh]_ForAlways wrote: DAMNIT! that was something I was gunna do in my next speedrun (if I muster up the willpower to do another one) but I was hoping no one had figured that one out yet. But also, I just use an old ass version of fraps (2.8.2) to record my stuff.
Sorry for ruining your surprise
I downloaded fraps, but the freeware version only allows 30 secs of recording. My computer lags too, so you are safe for now.
Too bad, I would gladly have wasted a few hours of my life on this.
I think XFire has a video recording thing that doesn't have a time limit now that I think about it, but I could be mistaken. And ya recording the game definitely makes it go a bit slower but this game isn't tooooo demanding, but I could definitely see it running slow on max settings (while being fraps'd) on even a computer with decent specs.
SPEAKING OF LAG (well FPS drops rather), the respawn point at 0:23 ALWAYS makes my computer have an FPS stutter, not entirely sure what causes it, but it's the only respawn point that does that.
Edit-- but shit now that I think about it idk if it would work with xfire because it probably only records games it recognizes (and I'm gunna make an assumption and assume that xfire won't recognize Static Alchemist lol)
Sorry for the punishing frame rate for the first bit, my actual game wasnt lagging but camtasia records like a whiny little bitch. I was just doing a trial run with the recorder, and i even made a couple of mistakes, but ended up with making 2:30. when you see it day[9], you will shit a brick.
Sorry for the punishing frame rate for the first bit, my actual game wasnt lagging but camtasia records like a whiny little bitch. I was just doing a trial run with the recorder, and i even made a couple of mistakes, but ended up with making 2:30. when you see it day[9], you will shit a brick.
the reason you are able to fall through the ground is because your frame rate is probably really low. I can fix this bug by giving you a terminal fall velocity (which I don't believe is there right now).
On December 08 2009 11:49 unit wrote: amazing game...bit easy though it had a few challenges at first btw what game engine did u use and if possible can u provide link to it?
Played the game; enjoyed it. I agree that it's a little bit too mindless in terms of how you use the rocket launcher, but the mechanic definitely has potential and the implementation is pretty good.
Also managed to get it working under WINE: nothing special to do, except that vanilla unrar did something weird to the .rar for me. I extracted it using WinRaR on XP and copied the files to my Linux machine where it worked fine.
It does appear to use Direct3D, so it probably won't just work on a Mac, as far as I know, but I think there's a Mac version of WINE which might be one possibility (albeit possible a somewhat complicated one).
Mad props to your Art man Daniel Ponce. The artistic feel is like a tim burton movie and works well with the graphics. The physics work really nice for a game thats only 7 weeks old. The only complaint is about how the physics interract with the player and the gun. As when you get pushed back its like your sliding on ice.
Anyway great game, Wish you luck for the IGF Cheers
got 2:35 but it wasn't nearly as clean as my last one.. so I'm gunna hold out on posting that unless someone dethrones me with a greater than 2:35 time, rofl... Why did you have to release this game the week before finals? T_T
Haven't gotten a chance to play your game yet but after showing the youtube vid to a friend of mine he said it looks very similar to Trine (in a good way). After looking up Trine, I'm inclined to agree. Very cool stuff, can't wait to try it out.
On December 08 2009 00:48 [wh]_ForAlways wrote: DAMINT, SEAN, I'M OBSESSED WITH SPEED RUNNING THIS GAME, but I think I have the best time that I can get without luck for now-- 2m40s (wooo!)
Edit-- video added, but I think I'm done doin speed runs of this for now, lol.
I bet you could save time on the last spinning platform in the beginning if you jump from it to the 2nd/3rd vertical section of platforms instead of the starting point of it.
Also, that last high board that takes forever to fall down, I spent a few minutes trying to wall jump the side to get over it but I couldn't quite get it. I think it could possibly be done though.
Also, sweet game, the art is totally balls and because it was so pretty I had no problems sitting through the entire speedrun, I didn't get bored for a second.
Great job! Fun stuff. I'm impressed you did it in only 7 weeks with 2 people, there's a lot in here already. Couple of comments: - I had a hard time seeing my cursor on the bright background. Would be nice if you had a custom cursor so I know where I'm shooting. - I rocket jumped right through the checkpoint at around 2:06 in [wh]_ForAlways's speedrun and it didn't activate. I died immediately and had to redo that part. - I did a week-long prototype of a game for a class once and didn't have any sounds, and that was one of the first things people noticed. Not having any knowledge of unity, sounds may or may not be trivial to add, but it's something to think about. - Have you experimented with using xbox controllers? I could see it working: left stick moves, right stick aims, left trigger jumps, right trigger fires.
Seems like this a more sophisticated approach at collision detection would be good for this game (falling through floor and checkpoint not activating). But it's pretty ugly to detect collision with nonlinear movement. Speed caps imo are bad for a game with a huge focus on speed runs.
Well, I don't know what kind of collision detection you actually use, but I would assume that it is something that checks at single points of time as opposed to checking the duration between 2 points of time.
Though there were a few minor errors I made (FUCK YOU, DRAWBRIDGE). I was very pleased with the run overall.
Final time: 2m 23.5s
I decided to use more chill music this time. Good luck finding it though because I have it saved on my computer as "Sonic Final Level Remix". If a bunch of people want it though, then I suppose I can upload it.
Also I'm curious to see how speed runs will go once you fix the wall climbing bug, and that will also allow for the possibility of adding parts where you can wall climb up narrow places by shooting diagonally from one wall to the other (like any game with wall jumping really, except instead of jumping off the wall, you shoot off of it).
Another thing, looking through the menu you have controls for Shot 1, Shot 2, and Shot 3. Were you planning on experimenting with different kinds of guns? Because personally I think a vacuum type gun would be awesome for platforming and making more unique puzzles, but you'd probably have to add some sort of cooldown on that gun though to prevent people from wall climbing with it (assuming that you're still sticking by wall climbing as an unintentional bug).
Thanks so much for this game, Sean and pal, its a really fun platformer and obviously I will be keeping up with it
If just run up to the drawbridge, and shoot down you can scale it like you would wall. Just don't shoot it at all until you are ready to scale it. Might help yah =D.
I don't have a movie recording program, or else I'd do a speed run too =(
Hi Day[9]! My friend and I have been playing your game, and we've come to a couple conclusions. First off, the game mechanics that are in the game at this time are pretty tight. There were however possible improvements that we saw could give a better experience. First off all, the jumping mechanics felt a little bit shallow. You can hold to jump higher, and tap to jump lower, but really we feel that sort of thing is accomplished in a little bit more fun way by just a double-jump. My experience with speed-runners (I've spent a lot, a lot a lot of time with speed runners such as Elasto Mania) is that what makes it fun int he long run is just having a lot of buttons that you have to press. Not necessarily "a wide variety of buttons", but more like "you have to press these buttons a lot and at the right moment". Having to wait and stay conscious of my high jumps all the way through just imo. isn't the kind of attention you want to spend in a speed runner. You just want to press the button and be ready for the next thing.
I also wouldn't be too concerned if the user ended up skipping large parts of levels, just because in the way that speed runs work a lot of the really interesting things happen when people end up finding clever stuff to keep the distance you have to run down. Elasto Mania again is a really good example of that, because actually skipping large parts of the map end up being really hard so even if you do know how to do it, you might not necessarily get that advantage right away without practice.
Another thing I want to point out is that having small maps, but really technical, might be interesting ways to keep a player at it. AGAIN, Elasto Maina for reference. (Moposite is a really good reference for pro reps).
You might also consider adding wall-jump, because it's just a cheap and easy mechanic to put in there, and it really opens up a lot of exciting options..
EDIT: Naturally, we might have a couple more impressions after trying the game a few more times. EDIT2: The game keeps defaulting to 1600x1200 res every time I start it. This is annoying when you want to have it at 1920x1080
Also, another suggestion for something to add, and it's probably been suggested elsewhere, but at the giant box at the beginning of the game that you can interact with, you should put a note above it that says something along the lines of how you can interact with certain objects (because it took me a good while to figure out that I could shove the box onto the ground).
I accidently changed the jump key to left mouse and I can't seem to change it to anything else (in fact, my inability to change to anything else is what led to my accidently setting it to left mouse). Is there a way to fix this? I tried re-downloading the game but it seemed to keep my old controls.
On December 09 2009 07:21 Symmetry wrote: I accidently changed the jump key to left mouse and I can't seem to change it to anything else (in fact, my inability to change to anything else is what led to my accidently setting it to left mouse). Is there a way to fix this? I tried re-downloading the game but it seemed to keep my old controls.
I did this as well and couldn't figure out how to reset. I just ended up remapping jump as right click, keeping the gun as left click, and reassigning the other stuff i screwed with to the middle mouse button. Works pretty well.
the overall looks and feel of the game, reminds me alot of Ratchet and Clank platformer series especially with the wooden crates... just need some music to go with it pretty impressive overall, the character is too thin imo give him a marine suit or pandabear costume...
Just a random thought -- was thinking about background to foreground interaction: perhaps some sort of jungle themed stage where there are monkeys in the trees that are in the background that occasionally throw bananas just to mess you up, but that might also just be annoying as shit, lol. Or some sort of pirate ship where you're getting shot at by cannons. Again, just random thoughts that I felt like sharing.
Personally I love the art style though it's definitely not perfectly polished by any means. Like someone else said, it has sort of a Tim Burton-esque look to it. Also, I like the lankiness of the main character. He definitely looks a lot like Johnny The Homicidal Maniac to me (which is a huge thumbs up in my book, and even a huger thumbs up if that was intentional)
On December 09 2009 09:07 Starparty wrote: awesome game dude found no bugs and i enjoyed it. the gun made it like prince of persia but with a twist many fun ways that gun was useable.
How does a gun make a game like Prince of Persia? Or was that the twist?
Though there were a few minor errors I made (FUCK YOU, DRAWBRIDGE). I was very pleased with the run overall.
Final time: 2m 23.5s
I decided to use more chill music this time. Good luck finding it though because I have it saved on my computer as "Sonic Final Level Remix". If a bunch of people want it though, then I suppose I can upload it.
Also I'm curious to see how speed runs will go once you fix the wall climbing bug, and that will also allow for the possibility of adding parts where you can wall climb up narrow places by shooting diagonally from one wall to the other (like any game with wall jumping really, except instead of jumping off the wall, you shoot off of it).
Another thing, looking through the menu you have controls for Shot 1, Shot 2, and Shot 3. Were you planning on experimenting with different kinds of guns? Because personally I think a vacuum type gun would be awesome for platforming and making more unique puzzles, but you'd probably have to add some sort of cooldown on that gun though to prevent people from wall climbing with it (assuming that you're still sticking by wall climbing as an unintentional bug).
Thanks so much for this game, Sean and pal, its a really fun platformer and obviously I will be keeping up with it
@ about 1:44 when you just fall down that spot you can probably shave a half a second or so by jumpimg near the ceiling and shooting upwards to rocket down.
Also taking the suggestions that others have given about the drawbridge would save a few seconds.
btw, I don't think anyone mentioned this, but upon first play-through of this game the background was a little confusing to me. There is a lot going on and it's constantly moving around and changing. Most of the time this wasn't a problem, but on the first part (where you jump on the platforms; that fall to their doom, after you touch them) there is this grey line/floor in the background that almost looks like you are supposed to jump on it. I can't remember if it was like that anywhere else, but things like that can be kind of annoying/distracting in games imo.
This is awesome, but I still have a slight critique : the gun mechanic is, in my eyes, very strange and conter-intuitive. If I understood what happened to me, when you shoot in nothing, nothing happens, if you shoot in something solid, you're projected, and if you shoot in something mobile it moves and you're left immobile. Well, that's not how guns work, if you shoot with a gun, you feel a reaction force whatever the bullet hits or not. So, in my opinion, it would be cool to either switch the gun for a giant fist or bodypart, so that it becomes intuitive that it works as it does, or keeping the gun and change the mechanics.
i just found out you can customize your control... but it's broken. I double click jump to set it, I try to bind it to the "w" key but I pressed w like 12332132 times, nothing happens, and I pressed ALL the keys on the keyboard, nothing happens, in frustration I clicked quit, and the game registered jump as "left mouse button" now my game is fucked
On December 09 2009 10:19 Yakyak wrote: This is awesome, but I still have a slight critique : the gun mechanic is, in my eyes, very strange and conter-intuitive. If I understood what happened to me, when you shoot in nothing, nothing happens, if you shoot in something solid, you're projected, and if you shoot in something mobile it moves and you're left immobile. Well, that's not how guns work, if you shoot with a gun, you feel a reaction force whatever the bullet hits or not. So, in my opinion, it would be cool to either switch the gun for a giant fist or bodypart, so that it becomes intuitive that it works as it does, or keeping the gun and change the mechanics.
This doesn't make sense at all.
It is clearly the energy created by the explosion of the gun's projectile that is causing the character to move. We can assume that the force of firing is insignificant.
On December 09 2009 14:29 evanthebouncy! wrote: i just found out you can customize your control... but it's broken. I double click jump to set it, I try to bind it to the "w" key but I pressed w like 12332132 times, nothing happens, and I pressed ALL the keys on the keyboard, nothing happens, in frustration I clicked quit, and the game registered jump as "left mouse button" now my game is fucked
my game is fucked for good. I cannot unset the mouse left click and it's bind to jump forever. I even deleted all the game files and re-extracted the game from the .rar and the setting remains unchanged still... Huk.
On December 09 2009 10:19 Yakyak wrote: Hi Day[9],
This is awesome, but I still have a slight critique : the gun mechanic is, in my eyes, very strange and conter-intuitive. If I understood what happened to me, when you shoot in nothing, nothing happens, if you shoot in something solid, you're projected, and if you shoot in something mobile it moves and you're left immobile. Well, that's not how guns work, if you shoot with a gun, you feel a reaction force whatever the bullet hits or not. So, in my opinion, it would be cool to either switch the gun for a giant fist or bodypart, so that it becomes intuitive that it works as it does, or keeping the gun and change the mechanics.
I really liked this game awesome work. I did play in fullscreen though and at the end it says to close the game to exit but there was no [x] in the top right and esc didn't do anything
On December 09 2009 14:29 evanthebouncy! wrote: i just found out you can customize your control... but it's broken. I double click jump to set it, I try to bind it to the "w" key but I pressed w like 12332132 times, nothing happens, and I pressed ALL the keys on the keyboard, nothing happens, in frustration I clicked quit, and the game registered jump as "left mouse button" now my game is fucked
my game is fucked for good. I cannot unset the mouse left click and it's bind to jump forever. I even deleted all the game files and re-extracted the game from the .rar and the setting remains unchanged still... Huk.
Yup, this is what happened to me too. Some kind of fix would be appreciated :/
anyone tried level 2? do it backwards! starting at the end point and using the wall climb bug to get all the way back to the start. i just completed it, so i know it's possible... although i'm not sure how i woulda done one part of it without the random extra powerful shot bug...
On December 09 2009 14:29 evanthebouncy! wrote: i just found out you can customize your control... but it's broken. I double click jump to set it, I try to bind it to the "w" key but I pressed w like 12332132 times, nothing happens, and I pressed ALL the keys on the keyboard, nothing happens, in frustration I clicked quit, and the game registered jump as "left mouse button" now my game is fucked
my game is fucked for good. I cannot unset the mouse left click and it's bind to jump forever. I even deleted all the game files and re-extracted the game from the .rar and the setting remains unchanged still... Huk.
The best you can do is set it to right mouse button, then the game is actually playable.
On December 09 2009 10:19 Yakyak wrote: Hi Day[9],
This is awesome, but I still have a slight critique : the gun mechanic is, in my eyes, very strange and conter-intuitive. If I understood what happened to me, when you shoot in nothing, nothing happens, if you shoot in something solid, you're projected, and if you shoot in something mobile it moves and you're left immobile. Well, that's not how guns work, if you shoot with a gun, you feel a reaction force whatever the bullet hits or not. So, in my opinion, it would be cool to either switch the gun for a giant fist or bodypart, so that it becomes intuitive that it works as it does, or keeping the gun and change the mechanics.
Good luck with your submission to IGF !!
It doesn't matter whether you shoot with a gun or kick/hit with similar power, the reaction force is the same.
Also, the bullets of the gun in this game obviously explode on impact. The explosion is what pushes you around. The reaction force you notice when you shoot is very small compared to the force of the explosion (people are not really knocked back several meters when hit by an average bullet, it just looks cooler in movies).
So it does make sense (with somewhat simplified physics).
is there a slight delay for anyone between jumping and moving? Im pretty sure its my shitty laptop so going to try this game after christmas with a new computer
Well I think it could use some optimalization, basically I don't have an up-to-date computer and used fastest mode but it was somehow not smooth. I think the background objects could be optimalized or turned static by an option.
To the game I pretty much like it - most of all I like the Quake plasma weapon design and physics are pretty cool. Props to programming language too as I am a C# developer myself.
Hey I found a bug too!
Basically I used plasma gun to get hyper speed and passed the wall. The green arrow path shows the trajectory.
I think that I didn't colide with the wall object because of the hyperspeed.
Edit : I've noticed the bug has been already reported, gl anyway.
One thing that bothers me about this game is how the character is so hard to see (blends into the background and gets covered up by particles/objects) and the fact that the camera changes all the time. And since the guy doesn't always stay in the middle of the screen, it can be hard to tell where you are at times.
Haven't read any of the posts (im sick and tired litterally) but it would be nice if you had a different jump animation the second time you jump in a row maybe even a third since this seems to be a game where you jump alot awsome game :D downloading
When you make the sequel, can you include some snakes. Because snakes are cool. Or if you really wanted to, you could put some Jet Packs on those snakes, and now they're XTREME!
On December 09 2009 14:29 evanthebouncy! wrote: i just found out you can customize your control... but it's broken. I double click jump to set it, I try to bind it to the "w" key but I pressed w like 12332132 times, nothing happens, and I pressed ALL the keys on the keyboard, nothing happens, in frustration I clicked quit, and the game registered jump as "left mouse button" now my game is fucked
my game is fucked for good. I cannot unset the mouse left click and it's bind to jump forever. I even deleted all the game files and re-extracted the game from the .rar and the setting remains unchanged still... Huk.
On December 09 2009 14:29 evanthebouncy! wrote: i just found out you can customize your control... but it's broken. I double click jump to set it, I try to bind it to the "w" key but I pressed w like 12332132 times, nothing happens, and I pressed ALL the keys on the keyboard, nothing happens, in frustration I clicked quit, and the game registered jump as "left mouse button" now my game is fucked
my game is fucked for good. I cannot unset the mouse left click and it's bind to jump forever. I even deleted all the game files and re-extracted the game from the .rar and the setting remains unchanged still... Huk.
yeah same thing happened to me
ok found a fix
go to your registry and delete the folder HKEY_CURRENT_USER\software\unity3d tutorial
all the settings should revert to the original now
Hello day9! ive recently started watching ur casts on demand and as soon as u meantioned the thread title i came straight here! I couldn't find it before haha. Please re upload that would rock!
EPT
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