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[Quicksand-S]

anyway, the next logical leap that would let you actually clear level 6 is kind of a doozy, I won't say anymore though

Yeah, I think I have an idea. This is really amazing. Great work. I didn't realize how complex this game was, and how much room for exploration there was.

It really looks like it's just a straightforward puzzle game, but it isn't. Seems you need to figure out a way to let people know what it's really like...without actually telling them what it's really like...

By the way, I opened the trademark/copyright/registered door and I'm checking out Level 4' now.

[cystem glitch]

good luck

I actually feel bad now because of how hard it gets down that path... but I'm glad you stuck through the first part and got to see some of the good stuff! Also, I've tweaked my initial post a little more to give people a bit more of a heads up.

[Norgg]

I was really enjoying this, but a couple things:

1) Support for my keyboard was flaky, on the UK layout the # and the ^ are in different places.

2) The level after unlocking using 65536 kicks me out after a fraction of a second, to the extent that I don't even have enough time to see what's going on or how to stop it, leaves me disinclined to even try to solve it.

[cystem glitch]

Thanks, that's the second complaint re: level 6 I've received - it is the first time an entity is really aggressive towards you, but I want it to be slightly clearer what has happened because so far when a player does eventually realize what's happening there they tend to go with it. I will experiment with making the level more readable, or introducing a slight delay.

I was expecting some issues with keyboard layouts, I remember people mentioning that the `/~ key worked instead as a language entry button on some European keyboards and that that caused problems in La Mulana, but I didn't know some of the more common characters were different between US/UK. I will research that and see if I can make a workaround, thanks for pointing it out!

[eyedrop]

[I haven't read any other replies yet. I have a basic familiarity with programming, but nothing this low-level.]

After skimming through your post I clicked on your link I immediately got the "does not have focus" message, which was briefly confusing. After clicking through I got stuck in an "END OF PROGRAM" loop, with the first level flickering on screen for an instant every time I restarted. I was stuck like this for maybe 20 seconds. I kept hitting "R" trying to read the text that appeared in the level, assuming it was significant. Then I tried tapping those commonly-used keys you find yourself trying when you don't know what a game's controls are. After a few more restarts I hit the down arrow and escaped the cycle. Since you said there is no generated content yet, I assume this initial loop is intentional. It did teach me how to restart, and it was kind of cool when I did escape it. But 20 seconds is a long time when it's the very first 20 seconds of gameplay. At the time I assumed it was sort sort of mistake or error, and coming right from the "does not have focus" message I didn't have much of a reason to trust the stability of the game. If you hadn't explicitly stated in your post that the game required players to "think outside of the box", I almost certainly would have quit the game before escaping the loop. I'm reminded of those mindfuck html-based games where the 2nd or 3rd level usually involves altering the URL. They aren't at all afraid to frustrate and seriously challenge the player, but they usually give some sort of "this is what you're in for" start screen. It's your prerogative, but I would suggest something like that.

Moving on, I figured out how to move and lay characters, and began changing the block's direction. After about 4 minutes I had tried a few dozen characters, had restarted half a dozen times, and was beginning to loose interest. I suspected that getting the block to hit the ¤ might start a new level, but I had also suspected something would happen when I got it to hit the ✝ and ǂ, and that didn't pan out. After a couple hours I came back to the game and used j to pass the first level and beat the second fairly quickly. The third level looked a little more interesting but I just looked at it for a while before I decided to stop. I might play more later; I'm not really in the right mood right now.

[cystem glitch]

Many, many thanks. I have added a feature where some levels will have specialized game over screens with a hint displayed - level1's now says (hint:arrows are the movement keys). I think this will instantly click for people while still letting them see that they are just another instruction and what a death looks like / what causes it.

I have edited level1's layout so it very clearly tells the player to step on the first note, I've been testing the levels so long I didn't even consider a player might not try touching those things and thus would never read ANY of the game's notes and hints. Oops

As for the wording when the game loses focus or had never been given focus, yet again I didn't take the time to think that this was a technical term and that it could be unfamiliar to people. I have changed it to "the game is currently paused".

I am sorry that you only got as far as level 3, but thank you very much for the notes! Hopefully with these changes every future player will get started much faster and not waste valuable patience on the piddly uninteresting stuff.

[eyedrop]

Cool, I think those changes will help out a lot. So you know though, the reason that initial "focus" message was weird for me wasn't because I had trouble understanding what it meant, but just because I didn't expect to see something that looked like an error message as soon as I started the game. It only took me a second or two to read it and click past, but it was a slightly jarring. Not a big deal.

[edit: accidentally a word]

[cystem glitch]

I have made an update to the key press code that may have fixed the issue with UK keyboards not putting a '#' when that key is pressed, it might not have worked though I don't have a UK layout keyboard available to check myself. If this didn't work then the way flash is handling the key press codes is kind of buggered and I will either have to make a really hacky work around and/or allow the player to map certain keys if they have an alternate layout. 

Also added death hints to two other hard levels.

[daveasaurus]

I thought it was boring at first, but once I got the hang of it it really got interesting. I think the moment everything clicked for me was the level where you have to make the cursor jump 42 times and getting the hang of using reverse Polish notation to build math. Also for what it's worth, I didn't have any trouble with the 65536 lock.

But I did give up on the pacman level, the damn ghosts move way too fast. It wouldn't have been as bad if it didn't knock me back to the 65536 level every time a ghost hit you. Again the 65536 level isn't difficult, but is just annoying to have to redo time and time again. I stopped playing after collecting all the little pellets and trying to set up a wall or something to block the ghosts, but getting knocked back I just decided I don't want to have to keep redoing the 65536 level just to get back to the pacman level.

Have you considered making it such that being hit by a ghost doesn't knock you back? Really unique concept, I love it

[Quicksand-S]

Have you considered making it such that being hit by a ghost doesn't knock you back? Really unique concept, I love it

I was really annoyed by the ghosts too, until I realized that there is a very, very good reason for them acting that way. There is so much more to this game than you've seen so far. It's kinda non-linear and as you gain access to new commands, it really opens up.

To Cystem Glitch:

Have you considered letting people know that reaching a new level often gives them access to new commands? It took me a long time to realize I could use "G".

[cystem glitch]

you're right, when you kill something it says "unlocked new instruction: X" but in all the commotion it's impossible to see, and then it get's buried in the console by subsequent messages. Instead, if a player get's knocked back and if they have already killed one I will push that message again instead of the level 5 greeting.

Next I need to fudge the footnotes some more so people can actually beat level 6



Edit: Ok, I removed the 2nd footnote entirely because it means nothing till after the player has already beat level 6 and is coming back to it, and it was cluttering the console. I then rewrote note  1:

"try out Every new instruction,↴     ↳Even what's harmful could have uses"

I think this, combined with normal experimentation by the player and better pushing of the "Unlocked new instruction:" messages makes everything clearer and more coherent.

[Quicksand-S]

Ok, I removed the 2nd footnote entirely because it means nothing till after the player has already beat level 6 and is coming back to it, and it was cluttering the console. I then rewrote note  1:

"try out Every new instruction,↴     ↳Even what's harmful could have uses"

I think this, combined with normal experimentation by the player and better pushing of the "Unlocked new instruction:" messages makes everything clearer and more coherent.

I kept seeing those when I was going through the log to find that "key", but I was never sure what was causing those messages. I think I got other two-part messages as well, but didn't always realize that they had two parts to them.

Is there any chance of a key to "expand" the log, so you can see the last ten messages at once or something? I think that would be really helpful because these things often get pushed away before you can see them.

I like the adjustments you've made to levels 1 and 6. Still not sure how to "beat" level 6, though. I took out all the enemies before, and stopped them from spawning. Still couldn't do anything to end it, though.

Oh, wow. I just found what I'm pretty sure is a big bug, although it doesn't really alter the gameplay:

I pressed Del instead of Space by accident to remove a command. I've done this before without issue, but in this new version, it actually deleted something. After that, the rows were misaligned (ie. if I moved down, I also moved sideways). Anyway, to reproduce it, press Del and then try to move right.

[cystem glitch]

oops, yeah I know what causes that - I must have re-introduced it when I was trying to fix the UK keyboard issue. At work and I don't have access to my stuff right now but I will correct it tonight. You are right about level 6 though it can be a real pane in the glass

[dormir]

Cool and fascinating game, though it could be a bit friendlier on the player.

So. I went into the game "dry" and got as far as level 6. Being sent back a level is pretty harsh and I almost gave up there, but I persevered and got to the level-warp level only to find I was missing an necessary item. Again I almost gave up at the prospect of having to restart from level 1. I explored a bit more to little avail and then actually did give up. It's an interesting and appealing game, which makes me want to keep trying at it, but it is also pretty tedious repeatedly typing in code to advance levels that have already been 'beaten'.

I generally agree with the impressions other people have given here and think that if I hadn't gone into this game with extra patience, I might not have stuck with it very long which would've been a shame. The issues eyedrop describes with the first level is a good example of this. I think the main problem is that things often happen too fast to even work out what is going on. Controls to pause or change the speed of the game (or at least the IP) would be a great help, or failing that just make it a bit slower. If the IP was really slow it would be tedious of course, but it's a long way from that at the moment. Being able to slow the game right down would be great for following what is going on with the stack as the IP whizzes around the level.

Kind of hoping for some spoilers about what to do next. I suspect I may need to use the ghosts to access a place on a previous level but the game is quite punishing towards this kind of experimentation. Would it be conceptually incompatible to have a level-advance option for levels already beaten? That would really help...

Oh yeah, nerdiness level is probably medium (some c++ programming).

[cystem glitch]

the warp level was intended as a way to advance to any level that had been previously reached, but I had to go back and change it so it required the bow to operate because a crafty player could 'cheat' and get to even unvisited levels and the bow was the only reliable way I had to lock that down. This is not ideal though because the bow is hard to get, and I wanted the player to be able to use the warp level right after they figure out how to get there. As a temporary measure I have fixed it so if you use what you used to get to the warp level on the warp level you get to the furthest level you have reached so far - I think this will help a lot, but I'll keep thinking to see if I can come up with a better way to handle it. I think I have an idea.

You were on the right track by the way, you can position yourself to reach previously unreachable places. That's one path, if you want to beat level 6 I used a really bad pun in my last post that is a crude hint.


Edit: ok, nevermind. I properly fixed the warp zone so it now doesn't require a bow to use. It looks a little garish, and somebody fluent in befunge could skip a few levels if they were really motivated, but ultimately this will make the experience better for 99% of people. Thanks for the feedback! sometimes I know something isn't the best it could be but it helps hearing it from someone else to get me to actually fix it