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[MartyMan]

The Island is a 2D platformer game made in Game Maker with some influences from Zelda games. It's using Matt Thorson's Grandma Platform Engine, something of which I am very grateful exists.

At the moment, the game is currently in the debug stages. After getting the basics down, I'll feel ready to create the levels and whatnot.

I have a small Tech Demo. It's my debug room- can you give it a try and tell me how it feels?

Latest:
Download

[Xion]

your link is fucked

Download

[MartyMan]

Whoops! Sorry. Fixed it.

[Shiny]

I played with it for a moment and:
- The initial room transition isn't so smooth. It seems like there are two of them in sequence for some reason.
- Creatures don't pause when there's text on-screen.
- It seems strange that, when struck, creatures are not pushed away at all.
- The hit-stun seems slightly too long.
- The contiginous-yet-sectional camera zone thing is neat, but sometimes the transition feels somewhat jarring and unnatural.
- Even with X held, the text still seemed to progress rather slowly. The line wrapping is kind of messed up as well.
- The coins are not quite bouncy enough for my liking!

Other than those minor issues (most of which I'm sure you are aware of), it's very promising. The controls are responsive, and the art is lovely. Plus, bouncing on slimes trying not to fall off is fun!

The idle animations are a nice touch as well.

[MartyMan]

I played with it for a moment and:
- The initial room transition isn't so smooth. It seems like there are two of them in sequence for some reason.
- Creatures don't pause when there's text on-screen.
- It seems strange that, when struck, creatures are not pushed away at all.
- The hit-stun seems slightly too long.
- The contiginous-yet-sectional camera zone thing is neat, but sometimes the transition feels somewhat jarring and unnatural.
- Even with X held, the text still seemed to progress rather slowly. The line wrapping is kind of messed up as well.
- The coins are not quite bouncy enough for my liking!

Other than those minor issues (most of which I'm sure you are aware of), it's very promising. The controls are responsive, and the art is lovely. Plus, bouncing on slimes trying not to fall off is fun!

The idle animations are a nice touch as well.

Hey, thank you for your feedback!

The Big Puffs are supposed to jump back a bit when hit by the Wooden Sword. It's an oddity with their code I still have to iron out, not to mention they still have basic behavior. I lowered the hit stun a bit, tried messing with the text speed, and made the coins a little more bouncy! (Too bouncy and they jumped all over the place)

The text wrap issue I can't really help. It does it to the currently drawn string- It can't see the whole word ahead of time and bring it down until it's done typing.

EDIT: Oh yes, I also added a variable for freezing enemies so I can make them stop while text is on the screen.

[MaloEspada]

...haha, Mii music.
well, now onto feedback:
-not really sure if i like all the inertia you have on the protagonist. maybe tone it down a bit?
-the yellow blob thing once got stuck on a.. wall. i mean, it didnt get INSIDE the wall, but it didnt move, so i think it glitched?
-i think some of the polish stuff you are awake of, like monsters exploding or a death animation for them..
-i think you could make it obvious which key scrolls text faster, btw
-the engine looks really solid so far, i specially like how you can bounce on monsters! (and the art is really good)
-i'm going to disagree with Shiny on the camera, i really like the effect.

also,

- It seems strange that, when struck, creatures are not pushed away at all.

they bounce in my version (just a bit, but still).

-lastly, i think the explosions are from LoP? just checkin' haha.

keep going, it looks rad so far : )

[RotateMe]

- the voices are awesome
- the graphics are first class (aside from a few things like the higher resolution bomb explosion)
- I, too, don't really like the camera scrolling effect when it occurs so often but in certain places it's nice
- I think the hero moves too fast and the jump feels strange, like a mixture of ghouls and ghosts, castlevania and super mario... or something like that
- you manufactured a very premium game as for now!

[McMutton]

 After pressing Enter on the splash screen, the level shows up for a second and then goes black. I can still hear the sounds, though. I also sometimes get an infinite amount of this error:

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Begin Step Event
for object obj_screen:

Trying to use non-existing surface.

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Begin Step Event
for object obj_screen:

Trying to use non-existing surface.

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Begin Step Event
for object obj_screen:

Trying to use non-existing surface.

[MartyMan]

McMutton- That's odd. I'm not sure what could be causing that. It's supposed to destroy itself if a surface can't be mad.

[MartyMan]

After a haphazard crash course on how Arrays work, I manage to get an inventory system working!



Still needs work, but the items are there!

[sfried]

I was able to jump off the stage. Dunno if that was intended.

Also I got some few friends over at Madman's Cafe to test it out:

Other than the text speed being a bit slow, its a nice tech demo. I hesitate to comment on jumping mechanics and running speed because it's just my personal preference, but I would prefer a little more acceleration when you start the run (right now it seems very binary). But if he's designing the levels around that then it's already too late.

There is some other common sense stuff, like don't put enemies that can hurt you in the same area as powerups that prevent you from moving around while you view description text.

Also maybe in the air C can do the stomp down maneuver, as some people have trouble double tapping.

Just off the top of my head.

Very nice!

From the text, I'm assuming the issue with music only coming out of one speaker is known, and you say the issue with text not freezing the game's state is also known, so I'm ignoring those.

Aside from that, I'm not noticing any glaring issues. When Ralph dies he doesn't respawn or restart the level so I have to quit, but it's no big deal for a demo. And when you walk off the map to the left you just fall infinitely offscreen until you quit the level, but I'd never grade level design on a test map.

My only real criticism is that with the text, the way the words appear on one line and then teleport on to the next when the word wraps is distracting and a bit annoying. It'd be better if the word wrap case was handled before each word was rendered.

Other than that, the rest of these are just nit-picking:
-Since you have to double-tap to do the diving move, it's a little hard to control when it comes out, and if there's an interactive object beneath, you end up interacting with it. If the velocity and gravity of jumping isn't going to change, it might be better to assign the move to a single press, like KTallguy suggested.

-I noticed by tapping the attack button at the same time as the opposite direction Ralph is facing, you can make him attack while moving backwards, which is pretty cool. If this was intentional I'd prefer a more consistent method, though.

-The swimming feels good, but right now there's really not much of a visual cue to sell that he's underwater so it looks no different from dry land. Like a translucent effect, or bubble particles rising.

-A minor thing with health in general and the air gauge, it's always nice to have a little warning signal when it's getting low. Just a little beep or something.

None of this is all that bad, though. It's a solid and fun little engine. I'm interested in seeing what comes of it.

I also felt that jumping should be assigned to X rather than Z (with that button being attack), but that's just a personal preference.

Will we get to download the latest build?

[MartyMan]

Will we get to download the latest build?

Sure. 

Download

Notes:

• The Scarf is meant to turn off during special animations, but I haven't put in that switch yet. (It sticks around during his death animation).
• Wanted to make the text go even faster when holding down the X button, but the speech sounds became really obnoxious. Thinking of a solution for that.
• You can interact with the sign on the left side of the screen to "reset" the room.
• The A and S buttons switch between menus in the Pause Menu. Tried making the game show which buttons will do this (as well as showing the button for speaking) but the methods I've tried shows the key's value instead of the key itself. Thinking about that one too.
• Not really noticeable, but I put in the framework for starting some extra sword attacks. Hopefully I can get an air attack move in so he does something different while in the air.

[sfried]

Tried your latest build. Some comments:

• Scarf isn't flowy enough, especially in water. It also looks more like a string instead of a scarf...(I suggest you make it look like it's fluttering up and down while you move, and make it more than just one pixel in width.)
• When Ralph's head reaches the edge of the water's surface, it should begin to splash. Instead sometimes when he's swimming it seems like he's still floating above water. Speaking of which...
• Bubbles while in water (your previous engine had this)
• I still find it odd that his idle animation while in water is still the pingpong paddle and...
• He just plops to the ground instead of going through his spinning death routine when he suffucates in the water during his idle animation.

Edit: Looks like F9 does screencap and F4 does fullscreen. I also noticed there was a Dark Cavern ogg file in the music folder and some Item Get themes. Are they suppose to be cued?

[MartyMan]

Tried your latest build. Some comments:

• Scarf isn't flowy enough, especially in water. It also looks more like a string instead of a scarf...(I suggest you make it look like it's fluttering up and down while you move, and make it more than just one pixel in width.)
• When Ralph's head reaches the edge of the water's surface, it should begin to splash. Instead sometimes when he's swimming it seems like he's still floating above water. Speaking of which...
• Bubbles while in water (your previous engine had this)
• I still find it odd that his idle animation while in water is still the pingpong paddle and...
• He just plops to the ground instead of going through his spinning death routine when he suffucates in the water during his idle animation.

Edit: Looks like F9 does screencap and F4 does fullscreen. I also noticed there was a Dark Cavern ogg file in the music folder and some Item Get themes. Are they suppose to be cued?

Added the bubbles and fixed the death animation error! Thanks for pointing that out.

I haven't made the game play some cool music when you find something yet.

About the stomping- Double Tapping the down button feels fine to me. If some people are having trouble doing it, would increasing the window of time for pressing the button a second time help?

[sfried]

About the stomping- Double Tapping the down button feels fine to me. If some people are having trouble doing it, would increasing the window of time for pressing the button a second time help?

It might have to do more with "accidental activation" (since Down is also linked with interacting with objects). You can, for example, activate the sign post and reset while trying to stomp the Puff monster. I think its more for balance than convenience.

I can wait to see what they say, though...

Edit: Stuff they said...

I don't think double tapping is hard, it's more of an accessibility thing. Some people find double tapping hard. It's OK if it's double press down though.

It's not that the motion itself is hard, but the motion combined with the gravity of jumping.

For example, if you're standing right next to an enemy you want to stomp, doing a forward jump and immediate stomp on it is a bit laboring because it takes three button presses (one long hold to position him above the enemy and two quick presses to get him to stomp), and by then you're past the peak of the jump so you'll probably end up hitting or bouncing off the enemy before it comes out. IMHO a move like that is only ideal if you can do it without too much effort at the peak of the jump, at least.

Edit: But it could be that I'm just not used to playing games on a keyboard. USB pad support would be nice.

The demo looks good! Nice pixelart. I unfortunately can't run executables on this machine so I can only give impressions from what I'm seeing, so please take my comments without much seriousness.

1- I agree with Gojira about the text wrapping-- it needs to be preprocessed.

2- The screen seems to constantly re-center vertically whereever there's enough stage data to do so. For example, when you're under the Puppetmaster or at the right side of the stage with the pink house, almost half the screen gets filled up with the ground. Also because of that, the screen shakes vertically when you get hit at some areas of the stage, while it doesn't at some others.

For the latter part of #2, there's a few very easy ways to prevent that, like prohibiting vertical scrolling unless the character hops/falls for more than a designated amount of pixels.

Other than that, it's just some aesthetics that needs completion. BTW, love that paddle-ball.

Oh, and I also tried the areal combos thing. Pretty neat, although it would be nice an manageble if enemies can be juggled upwards to take advantage of it. 2D Devil May Cry? Hmmm...  

[MartyMan]

Got this goofy thing to work.



I also made a special animation for the last hit of the combo...



And an aerial spin attack, which does about 3 hits at most.



EDIT:



I wonder if there's an easier way to do large menus with lots of things you can hover over...

[Aquanoctis]

Are you doing each item/letter/whatever in the menu as a separate object?

[MartyMan]

Are you doing each item/letter/whatever in the menu as a separate object?

No way! All the letters/items are just being drawn.

[Aquanoctis]

  haha yeah I was just wondering if that's what you were referring to when you wondered if there was an easy way to do menus with lots of things in.

[sfried]

Is the latest build up for download? I'm excited!