7. Poet now can affect creatures by poetry readings.

 

Ah, you want it to dynamically interact. Yeah, ok... Theo Janssen isn't quite adequate for that...

Why not go with Theo Janssen's models?

http://www.strandbeest.com/

He seems to have the walker-models down pretty well.

The minimum goal, though, is to make sure that any one merchant (say a guy called "Sam") does not constantly offer the same thing for sale every time, so you look forward to visiting him more than once and having the potential to see a new list of goods.

Oh, I didn't get that part. I thought you only shuffled once when you started the game... 

I did take the step to disable skills within the isolated "puzzle rooms" with the thought that those rooms should require dedicated puzzle solving, but it can still have an impact on how you approach many of the built-in digging puzzles throughout all of the overworld levels.

Ah, a variant on the Metroid approach. That sounds like a good solution.

Hearing you mention it, though, makes me wonder if I could consider adding some sort of a "hardcore" mode, challenging you to play through the game without the ability to use skills.  I'll have to think about it a little bit. 

I'm sure there are some people who would like that challenge

This is looking better and better, and it's clear you're putting a lot of thought into the gameplay design!

When I made the bridge for this theme, I saw all of the whitespace under it and decided to set it up so that you can dig beneath the bridge, even though you can't walk under it.  It'll give me some opportunities to create some new puzzle variants that people who have played previous Lode Runner won't have seen before, while remaining true to the central concepts of the series.

Hmm... speaking of this, I don't know if you're planning on including a tutorial (might be good idea - it's a fairly old game after all), but if you do, maybe you should make two versions:

- n00b, what the hell is going on?
- Lode Runner veteran, show me what's different!

<concept of virtual warehouse system explained>

Does that also mean that not all items are guaranteed to be in a game?

Whenever the player has a chance to complete a quest, I want to make my best effort to make them aware of that.  If you need to collect X pieces of gold in a room for a quest, an indicator at the bottom of the screen will list that you have collected # / X pieces of gold in that room.  In the picture on top, the status message lets you know how many enemies remain in a "survival" wave, which requires you to survive a small number of enemies.

Seems like a good consensus between giving the player hints without complete hand holding.

About the skills, aren't you worried that it will interfere with the handmade puzzles?

I am really, really looking forward to this. Puzzle platformers are getting quite rare.

I totally re-worked the first post in this devlog to remove the old stuff and to make it easier to find the downloads and screenshots and whatnot. The old post was getting messy

While you're at it, maybe you should change the topic title to include the date of the build, so it's easier for others to see if there is a new one.

I'd love to back you, but I don't have a credit card... maybe you can to what they did with the Wasteland 2 kickstarter, and open a paypal-donation option once you've reached your goal?

Nope, still three elephants.

Yeah, the game is pretty fast paced and arcadey, very much a high score chaser, as the temple starts crumbling as soon as you get take the first treasure, so the goal is to get as far as you can before you get pulled off the screen or hit something that kills you.

Like in Warioland 4?

In general it sounds more like the Warioland games than Super Mario Bros/Land/World/Galaxy to me...

Is it inflating a tail-shaped balloon with its....

I'm not sure if I want to see that bug fixed...

Being red-green colourblind, I would prefer a more explicit colour contrast than that...

Hmm... You mean like so?



I'm open to suggestions for color palettes, by the way.

Well, that certainly 'pops' more for me .

It supports MIDI controllers...

It fucking supports MIDI controllers! HOLY SHIT!?!

What about building the environment? Is that done fully through scripts as well?

Judging by the minimalism in your graphics (which looks great, don't get me wrong), that doesn't surprise me.

I like this style. Like I said earlier, it's very Bitmap Brothers-y. I'm sure that seeing it in motion is very different from the stills.

Is that a physics engine?

(needs more friction)

I actually mentioned this color issue a little while ago. When I got a new laptop, I discovered that the colors are quite poor on there. Everything is really bright (it has to be for a 3d screen) and has this blueish tone. The colors all feel very cold. My previous screen had very warm and yellowish tones, but it's also a lot darker. So when I looked at the game on my new computer, it was hard on the eyes because the colors (mainly green) was very bright. It drowned out the rest of the colors. When I looked at on my work computer, it was very different and looked decent. So, my point is I have to try find a middle ground for colors that look okay on all of the displays I have access to. When your game has thousands of colors on screen at once, it's more difficult to notice if some of them are a bit off but when the whole screen is filled with basically one color, slight changes make a huge difference. So far I've only worked out the summer palette, which is pretty much locked for now because I like it, it's not too bright and feels solid and the balance between green and blue is pretty good. It's really hard to describe colors but it feels ... mature somehow, which I think suits summer. The black and white are not in fact black and white, but a bright yellowish and very dark brown color.

Sounds lke a colour temperature (plus saturation) issue. Maybe you could try supporting two/three different, common colour temperatures?

It reminds me of a number of later GBA games which had special colour settings for the classic GBA, the GBA player (in other words, the TV) and the GBA SP. Maybe you could have two or three

Being red-green colourblind, I would prefer a more explicit colour contrast than that...

Good luck on further development! Don't forget us netbook-with-low-res guys!

The latter is kind of a deal breaker.