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[Raku]

@Grog, thanks for the feedback! Thank you for the positive compliments as well.
On to the negatives:
-I'm going to look into controller support, despite not using controllers myself or designing this game to use controllers. I do not use GM studio, I use Gamemaker 8.0 Pro, so I'm not sure. Though I'm glad people can still use controllers to play using other programs like you mentioned.
-The tower level where you're autoscrolling isn't actually the first stage that tileset is introduced, it's the second stage. the stage before that is a big climb up the tower, so it's odd to me that you would think the autoscroller was the first stage with it, so I'm not sure what to do with this feedback here.
Strangely enough, I made the tileset there busier, because of a complaint earlier in this thread that the tileset there was too boring.
Thank you again for this feedback though!

On to new things. Due to seeing many people streaming or putting up videos on youtube playing the newer demo, I've been able to get a lot of new data, and I've been hard at work fixing everything I've noticed or seen people having trouble with. Along with those various fixes, some new things to note, and new screenshots.
One thing is that now the scarecrow hat will change into a different appearance when it's on Jack's head depending on what abilities or combinations of abilities he's holding (this way he's not throwing out boomerangs while wearing a bland-looking straw hat on his head which looked silly to me)

here are a few examples:

Also with a few of those, you can see that I've made a few melee abilities much bigger, due to some complaints that they were too small to be useful.
some other small changes are things to make various abilities that werent very popular with players, I've added little pros to using each here and there, such as using the gas ability on any flora-based enemy causes little white flowers to bloom out and float for a bit before poofing into money.

Those annoying hopping yellow blobs are now not as annoying, as they can be dealt with in a few specific ways, such as solidifying them so they dont hop anymore

Those annoying blue circle enemies that fly in circles are a bit less annoying now, being slightly smaller (and looking less bland) and also being pacifiable using a certain ability on them as well

These little blue flowers near the start of the game are a bit better looking now, and now they don't fire immediately when Jack's in range, they hesitate for a second and glow before firing

The shop has been spruced up a bit, being more clear when you've bought something, and now there are little markers now to show which abilities you're currently holding onto (not shown in this screenshot though)

ALSO, now the scarecrow hats don't fly off when you dodge, or when you bounce on anything bouncy. Before I had done that because it would cause a graphical bug on the hat if it stayed on Jack during these, but I found a way to fix it. The point of keeping the hat was meant to be incentive for players to not get damage, not to make them avoid using the dodge move! An unintentional side-effect of this poor decision on my part.

(pictured: Jack bouncing but keeping his hat on!)

Another small thing is that you can go through the tutorial text at your own pace, rather than it going by automatically, it's a small change, since most people will only do the tutorial once, but Im sure it'll be an appreciated change.


I'm happy that people are playing the demo and enjoying it so much, and that I'm getting so much feedback and getting so many things fixed that needed fixing.

[fall_ark]

Awesome update. Looking forward to more hats!

Since I'm late to the devlog I might be repeating some old stuff, but basically I seem to mistime my jump off platforms a lot (i.e. pressed the jump key while running towards the edge but fell down before I could jump). Does anyone else find it harder than desired?

[Grog]

@Grog, thanks for the feedback! Thank you for the positive compliments as well.
On to the negatives:
-I'm going to look into controller support, despite not using controllers myself or designing this game to use controllers. I do not use GM studio, I use Gamemaker 8.0 Pro, so I'm not sure. Though I'm glad people can still use controllers to play using other programs like you mentioned.
-The tower level where you're autoscrolling isn't actually the first stage that tileset is introduced, it's the second stage. the stage before that is a big climb up the tower, so it's odd to me that you would think the autoscroller was the first stage with it, so I'm not sure what to do with this feedback here.
Strangely enough, I made the tileset there busier, because of a complaint earlier in this thread that the tileset there was too boring.
Thank you again for this feedback though!

I just checked. Broken Seal is the map where you cross the bridge and enter the tower. The next level is Power Surge, where you ascend up the tower with auto scroll. The next level after that is called Ascension, and is a normal level. Am I missing something?

Busier also isn't a bad thing, as long as it's done well and not in excess I guess. My only issue is that I'm still pretty sure the busier set is introduced in a stressful environment. :p


No problem, it was my pleasure, as well. Love seeing more hats too. :D

[Raku]

I just checked. Broken Seal is the map where you cross the bridge and enter the tower. The next level is Power Surge, where you ascend up the tower with auto scroll. The next level after that is called Ascension, and is a normal level. Am I missing something?

Busier also isn't a bad thing, as long as it's done well and not in excess I guess. My only issue is that I'm still pretty sure the busier set is introduced in a stressful environment. :p


No problem, it was my pleasure, as well. Love seeing more hats too. :D

Ahhh I see what you meant now! Sorry for the misunderstanding, I thought you just meant the purple tower tileset in general. The busier parts are definitely exclusive to the autoscroller. I'll ease the player into that by sprinkling it around in the previous stage as well. I've also taken out the blue circular enemies in the autoscroller because they were absolutely unfair, and would always cause unsuspecting players to take damage and fall behind. Also, I've lowered the hitbox on the energy below, for a bit more leeway if the player falls behind.

As for the hats, look forward to them! there are several for normal abilities, and a few more combo-specific hats too!

[Glyph]

Looking really great! All of these changes seem to be steps in the right direction.

I know GM 8.0 has native controller support, see the section titled "The joystick" in the documentation. However for my current project (which is also in 8.0) I used xinput because the default was flawed in some way or another (I don't remember the problem anymore though). I'm sure there are more recent dlls out there too, but xinput worked like a charm for me.

Edit: Ah yes, xinput was xbox-style controllers only though. I feel like they're quite ubiquitous anyway, but it is a shortcoming.

[Connor]

i actually program controller support into most of my games and i use gm8.1, so i can confirm that controller support for gm8.1 DOES WORK. if you have any questions at all about setting it up that doesnt involve gml (im lazy), feel free to let me know via pm! here to help!

[gunswordfist]

Sweet hat collection!

I love that the drills and chainsaw are much bigger. I completely ignored both abilities due to seeming uninteresting, tbh.

Solidifying those yellow jumping jellies looks cool!

And I am of course happy that the hat stays firmly on Jack's head. I believe that might subconsciously be why I barely used the dodge feature.

Awesome update. Looking forward to more hats!

Since I'm late to the devlog I might be repeating some old stuff, but basically I seem to mistime my jump off platforms a lot (i.e. pressed the jump key while running towards the edge but fell down before I could jump). Does anyone else find it harder than desired?

That happens to me at times. I'm not sure if it's my laptop or the game though.

[gunswordfist]

Early this morning I beat Atlas Armada. I forgot that that was the end of the last demo. The end of the Gunshow fight still seems like random comedy to me. lol Salvage Mission was an interesting change of pace. I'm of course happy to play as PoiPoi again. Luckily, I got through that level in one try as it looked like it had no checkpoint. Also, trying to figure out where PoiPoi's hitbox was was confusing. It seems to be much smaller than she is. Then I left off on Fortified Resurface. Obviously, I loved the music. I also love the shift from a slow to fast level. It reminds me of how old school games switch it up. I'm going to try and get past that fire part now.

[koutetsusteel]

Working on some of the Japanese translations to (potentially, if there is time and motivation) be added after the game is complete. These may be be subject to change as I will be conferring with my Japanese friends.  The accuracy isn't an issue so much as the word choices themselves. I want it to sound cool ;P  In fact, even as I look at this, there is something I need to change.

But in any case, here's the first introductory sequence to maybe whet someone's appetite...? lol

[Shilag]

Hello Dreams Bell!

I made an account just so I could tell you that this game looks absolutely amazing and adorable so far.
I haven't made it through all of the demo yet, but I just wanted to mention a bit of opinionated criticism.

Right off the bat, the thing that bugged me the most about the game is the jump detection when running off platforms.
I feel like you lose the ability to jump (i.e. fall off) much earlier than what the art indicates, though this might be a hard thing to tweak if there are jumps in the game dependent on it to be hard. I was just a bit frustrated from the amount of times I run to make a jump off a platform, yet simply walk off the edge instead. So personally, I feel it should be a bit more lenient, but as I said that might cause issues, or maybe this is what you prefer.

Secondly, a minor thing, but when trying to attack in quick succession it's a bit difficult to get the rhythm down. Since there's no form of input buffering at all, if you tap the attack key just a little bit too quickly after an attack it will completely cancel the input until you try to attack again. Of course, if you try to keep too long in between button presses then you're not attacking optimally. Once again, it felt a bit frustrating to be attacking an enemy while spamming X only to find one of your inputs missed and you get hit because of the short time until you can release and repress your key again. So maybe there should be some added input buffering with the attacks, just a few milliseconds that would queue up another attack command even if you press it just before the animation finishes.

These two things are relatively minor and definitely didn't break the game for me, but preferably I'd like to see them changes. Of course, making things more lenient might not be what you're going for, and punishing sloppy inputs might be what you're going for. These are just my opinons.

Great work for the game so far. I truly feel like you could (and should) get this game commercialized in the future. I would gladly get a game of this quality on Steam or other stores, just saying. Keep it up!

Edit: I also noticed that when you get to a new screen in a level, you have to release and repress your movement keys to start moving. I feel like it would be better if you start moving immediately if you're still holding a key down after the transition. I hope that makes sense.

[gunswordfist]

Two night ago, I was on the Rusted Gate level and like after 30 minutes of trying to get the timing right of those Mega Man style appearing platforms, I got stuck inside of the right wall. I could move left and right in place and jump but I couldn't escape for the life of me. And I had to quit. I hope I didn't lose progress. I'm about to check...

[capakowski]

So the demo starts up just fine for me, but once I start the actual game it crashes immediately after I gain control. This happens in both the tutorial and the first stage. I thought it might be an issue with Windows 10 but compatibility mode didn't help at all. I also downloaded the missing songs but again, it didn't help.

Any idea on how I can fix this?

[gunswordfist]

I finally beat the demo today. It took some old school gaming stubbornness to get past Rusted Gate's first set of platforms but after about an hour, I did! The rest of the level was an interesting change of past. Man, you can draw.

@DiabetesForecast ahh, I actually forgot to put that in! they should be waving goodbye, since they don't appear later on anywhere (sorry! apparently there are some people who are fans of their designs)

Noooo! I wanted to see them again.

[Raku]

@Glyph, ahh I see thank you for telling me.
@Connor, why thank you! When it comes to that, I'll PM you and ask if I can remember to.

@Gunswordfist, Im glad you liked the changes mentioned. PoiPoi's hitbox is a tiny square in the center of her stomach.

@Koutetsusteel, thanks! This will come in handy when it comes to the translation (probably one of the last things to do in the game)

@Shilag, thank you for coming to comment! I can see what I can do about those two problems you're having, though I'm not sure how to fix the platform problem, since people had asked me to make his hitbox thinner before and I had changed it for that. I have an idea how to buffer his attack though. As for the problem of not running when you get to a new screen, that's actually a problem that gamemaker has, and I've been trying to think of a way to fix it. I might have to hack something together.

@Gunswordfist, ah Im sorry that happened! Can you tell me where you got stuck in the wall? I really need to refine that room for sure. And thanks! Im glad you beat the demo. What were you referring to about drawing?

@capakowski, Im sorry I really have no experience with Windows 10, I hope someone can give an answer though.

As for new things. I've been continuing to refine things in the earlier parts of the game and redo a few sprites, etc.
Also, a quesion: I've been wondering if I can put an extra item in the shop, since you can swap the second item, so why not make the third item swappable as well? If there are any suggestions for items that can be tossed out and used up, that would be helpful. I'd prefer suggestions from those who have played through the demo at least most of the way, so that they would know what the game already has in it, rather that people who are unaware and might suggest something that's already there. The reason it should be a tossable usable item is because the two interchangable first items are items that auto-use when their condition is met, so the secondary one should match it's Urn use in some way.

So far from asking others I've gotten a few good ideas, for example: an item you can shoot or throw that pacifies any normal enemy/turns them into something small and weak, could be used as a last resort if a dangerous enemy confronts you when you're low on health, or if you'd just prefer to avoid a certain enemy.

[gunswordfist]

I meant all of Rusted Gate is so well drawn.

When you first get into the ruins/the room with the appearing/reappearing platforms then you go up and it's the wall connect to first small platform to the left. I think Jack got caught pushed back by one of the appearing square platforms that's by the wall and then sent into the wall. I'm not sure since it was late and I was in zombie mode.

And how about a throwable health container?

[Glyph]

For the input issue - take a look at keyboard_check_direct. It fixes that, but it has the minor drawback of still accepting inputs when the application is out of focus.

I wish I knew more about how items work, but I never use 'em so I don't have much insight. If there's nothing that can heal you yet, maybe 'Portable Scarecrow' might be a cool one

[banannaman]

Hi I'm new to this site so i don't really know how this works too well but here i go.

First off i loved the game, the art is adorable, the backgrounds were especially interesting in some cases, like the level "Broken Seal", and most paramount to me, the challenge felt real (nothing felt unfair).

when going through the game i really loved using the shield power up, however, this lead me to realize some things about the shield. The first issue I really had using the shield was that I sometimes had a hard time jumping as far as I needed to and pulling the shield out (this may have been due to me using a controller though). The next thing was that things like the gas+shield combo were great, but I had situations where I wanted to fire forwards and needed to hold my shield in front of me as well. the last thing was that shovel+shield and shoes+shield felt unusable since they were just the abilities stacked instead of being a combo, I'm not really sure what to do about the shovel one but i was thinking you might be able to do some sort of charging attack with the go fast shoes? like a shoulder tackle with your shield in front of you and maybe you stop when you travel a certain distance or hit something, just an idea. (I used the search function on the site to tell me about things that were said about the shield power up on here but this may have been addressed already so let me know if I'm just repeating stuff here)

The shovel seems to suffer from the same issue with the shield for me, not the pull it out when i need it thing, being on down was fine for me, but the issue of not really having a combo. shovel+gas was awesome, I ran around with that for quite a bit, but stuff like drill+shovel and shoes+shovel felt lacking. (I may have just not found something out about drill+shovel so please correct me if I'm wrong, I keep wanting the treads to be a back hitbox for some reason)

This is just my two cents on things that could be improved, nothing that deterred me from the game by any means, but things that I'd love to see implemented.

I'm going to recommend this game to all of my friends, keep up the good work 

Edit: in "Wide Open Spaces" whenever I killed the candy/toy dispenser enemy the game crashed, and in the same level if I used bullet+boomerang and walked forward the bullets would overlap like normal but if those ran into the speedy raptor things the game would crash, and sometimes the laser+boomerang weapon would cause my game to crash from hitting multiple enemies with it.

Edit 2: while playing "Fortified Resurface" again I received this error message when i died as the rain fell
___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 3
of Alarm Event for alarm 1
for object GasolineRain:

Error in expression:Player.x
 position 8: Unknown variable x

and in the same level i took damage while the rain spawned and received an error, after ignoring the error the rain no longer spawned.

[ernanir]

everytime I come here this game looks better

[Raku]

@Gunswordfist, Ah I see thank you! And I'll definitely make that section a lot less frustrating.
@Glyph, Thank you, I'll note down to change it to that then, unless the application out of focus thing causes any problems.
Also to both of you, The portable health item idea is nice, but the two buyable items on the left deal with health already. I believe I've actually gotten a good idea on what I want it to be, and have already started work on it, I'll talk about that in a minute.

@banannaman, hello. Thank you for your feedback! And thank you for the compliments first of all.
As for that issue with the shield and interfering with wanting to attack forward, I've noticed this as well, and I've been trying to think of solutions for this problem. What I'm thinking of doing is just making it so that if you're standing on the ground, downward attacks don't go downward, you just have to jump to do so.
As for the shovel, I can understand what you mean there too. Shovel + Drill definitely has a specific useful combo, I'll say that much!

I'm aware of the game-crashing glitches you mentioned, thankfully, and they'll be fixed in the next update.
As for that second edit, thank you I didnt know about that error! I know how to fix it.
Thank you again for your feedback.

@ernanir, thank you! I appreciate that!

Now to talk about that new item, here's the shop icon for it.

by pressing C on the Urn item, it will switch over to this and you can purchase this in it's place instead.
The use of it I'm thinking will be to pacify any normal enemy you stick with it by firing out a Jack-sized syringe full of this blue fluid (with 8 shots per purchase in the shop?)
(concept art)
turning that hit enemy into a harmless blob that you can avoid (maybe that blob will have some special attribute, like they follow you around and damage enemies with an electric field, or they give a lot of crystals when killed)

[banannaman]

oh man, that is so cool. thank you for telling me as much as you did about the combo.

 i found another weird glitch trying to 100% stuff where if you do the laser thing on "broken seal" it threw me into the next level and then had a weird visual glitch pop up where a hud appeared scrolling near the end as if it was a part of the stage. not sure if that describes it well enough, i guess let me know if you want me to try to replicate it to try to screenshot it.