[Police-]

Police- It looks like you're not going to have much trouble picking up pixel art.

Tennis- Yay, more viking art. I've been looking forward to this ever since that first mockup you posted.  I like the desert particularly. Are the backgrounds placeholders? The gradients, soft clouds, etc. look kind of odd with the otherwise consistent pixel art.

Ishi- Is that the four player Treasure Treasure sequel you threatened to make? I really like the original, it's one of my favorite recent independent games.

JLJac-
I know what you mean about the reflections in animals' eyes. I think the part of what makes that effect so neat is that sometimes when the animal you're looking at is close by, you actually catch a different reflection in each of your eyes, so it's like viewing two mismatched images at the same time.

I love the texture and color in that drawing you did, by the way.

Edit-
Here's a quick mock-up I did a while ago of a random game idea.

Hempuli- I like way you used rotation. That sounds like it would make for some creative reuse of rooms. Thanks for sharing, I really enjoy hearing other people's game ideas.

BaronCid- That sounds like a fun project. I can tell you put a lot of love into it. I can see how it would become overwhelming, though! It's one of those games ideas that invites a ridiculous level of detail. I would have trouble making it without giving in and trying to add a bunch of crazy features.

Oh, but I think this caters more to the XBox Live demographic:

the sequel will be - Rescue: Suicidal Goth Schoolgirls.

 

As some of you no doubt already noticed, Spelunky is being featured on the IndyGames blog today.

Congratulations, Derek!

Now everybody go and write propaganda make intelligent, objective remarks in the comments section!

You're quite the industrious one! It's always inspiring to see people hard at work.

Hey, do all his eyeballs pop out when he dies?

[How to make a slimey:]

How to make a slimey:

Ew Ew Ew!  :D

I'm listening to The Ink Spots. Bill Kenny is amazing.

You know, it definitely seems to be true that flat panel monitors are fast improving in their weak areas. I remember having this same discussion on a different forum two years ago, and at that point a lot of people were really freaked out about dead pixels, ghosting, and viewing angle. Certainly the technology is still imperfect, but it's come a long way.

Hi everybody!

As far as video games, I'm that pretentious faggot who thinks games should integrate atmosphere, story elements and immersion into it's gameplay...

You're in the right place. Welcome to the club!

[edit: good lord what is that underneath my screen name]

That was my reaction too. Just post a few times and it will go away.

Hugs to Derek for making Spelunky.
Hugs to Mr. Piglet for making Jed.

Go team!

...rather than having more pieces unlocked by travelling to them, you would find them in the game world. For example you might open a treasure chest and be rewarded with a scrunched up ball of paper. You then unroll it and you have a new piece of paper to move around wherever you like.

I definitely think you should use the taped/fastened down idea too, to make the game a bit harder. I could see it becoming a little easy if you were able to move every piece of paper.

These are good ideas. The crumpled up paper pieces would help add variety. And it's true, the game wouldn't be very interesting if everything were movable. Some care would need to be taken to make sure the rules didn't break the game.

I've tried to do almost the same thing by myself earlier (and actually it worked quite well), but it was in a single level.

Oh, neat! What sort of game were you working on? I'd love to hear more about where you went with the idea.

Sounds like Stubbs the Zombie.

*Goes to Wikipedia*

Yeah, you're right.  I need to play more games, I guess. :/

In my book, it doesn't matter how much an idea has been used, as long as it's good. And you thought it up on your own, anyway! For instance Braid used ideas that were previously in the Sands of Time games and Blinx (shudder), but I still think it was right to make it.

I like that ducking animation.

[Paper Pieces Game]

Tell me what you think of it..
I'm thinking of remaking it with better graphics+gameplay in the future, after some other projects I'm working on.

Hey, that's pretty fun. I think it would be worth revisiting.


I wrote a quick design summary for the 'pieces of paper' idea- I'm pretty excited about it, and I think I might make this in the future.

Paper Pieces Game

We are a simple line drawing of a character who runs and jumps through a set of hand drawn environments. The world is divided into discrete areas, each drawn on its own scrap of paper. We can run around in the game world, leaping or walking between neighboring paper scraps and discovering new areas. The world starts with a relatively small number of areas accessible. Each time a new area is discovered, it is added to the world map.

At any time we can pause, zooming the camera way out, and freely rearrange the paper scraps we have discovered. Here are a few of the ways rearranging the paper pieces can be used.

• move an obstacle out of the way, and turn it into a useful platform.
  
• recursively move two staircases (or even simple blocks!) so they form an ascending chain, unpausing to jump up one step after each move.
  
• place a staircase next to a tower without an entrance
• put a stone block within pushing distance of the appropriate pressure plate lock.

Paper scraps we have not yet reached in person cannot be rearranged (and appear only faintly in the map view, or not at all). The scrap of paper we are currently standing on cannot be moved, so though the environment is rearrangeable, we still end up physically travelling from one part of space to another.

Graphics- hand drawn, rough scribbles on textured white paper. The game has a slightly desolate, lonely feel. Use several frames for everything, even static objects, so the game jiggles slightly, like a low framerate animation done in heavy graphite. Each scrap is hand drawn as a set piece, with no tiling. Scraps are torn  at edges. The main character can move between scraps, so how does he look when over the background?

For a totally free world, allow movement of any scrap of paper anywhere, provided it doesn't overlap another piece.
For a more limited world, have some scraps tacked, taped, or otherwise fastened down. We can reach these areas by arranging the pieces that are movable into runways, horizontal or vertical chains of islands, etc.
For an even more limited world, scraps can only be arranged along a horizontal strip, like railroad cars.

Ha, ADOM player? That's a great game.

I wonder what Derek added?

Hey, if anyone hasn't played this yet- download it now! It's nonviolent OCD robot jetpack semi-exploration puzzle platforming at its finest.

I'm revisiting the game and trying for 100%. The secrets are consistently rewarding and fair. I've had a lot of great revelatory moments when I finally figured out how to get to a hidden robot. I still haven't managed to get all 5 robots in level 6 without getting hit, though! Eep.

The rocket feet animation works well, I think it adds a lot to the game. I never really had any issues with the jump, but hopefully this will make it more intuitive and likeable to those who do.

I don't know if this is a problem but sometimes I fall in the water with quite a few bots but I'm not sent back to any platform, I stay in the water and eventually die.

Bah, I haven't seen that one in a while, I'd thought I might have caught it entirely but apparently not.. I'll have to see if I can tighten this behavior up any further.

I have run into this in the long jetpack section over water in level 3.

Your builds are coming out faster than I can play them. 

Ah, he looks neat! He's pretty expressive, and I really like the little stripe on his shirt. I think his legs could use a little more work, but that's only because his arms are so nicely drawn, not because his legs are bad.

I once attempted making a text controlled platformer. Basically, you type in the command, like "jump" to make the player jump. It actually turned out to be really interesting, and kinda fun. Although, in some levels, you had to type pretty fast.

Do you still have that somewhere? It sounds really fun. I wonder if a voice activated version would work.

I wonder the same thing, and I live in the US.

People eat some scary things over here.

As an aside, mainstream games are pregnant with metaphor, though it isn't necessarily conscious. For instance:
giant gun = ?
ugly aliens that speak broken English = ?

Freud would have a field day with modern videogames.