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[vdgmprgrmr]

Ah, yes, agreeing ecstatically with the idea to make craps houses more like Toad's House. That would be awesome, I would use it more, I would be happy to see one when I pass it by.

Yeah, perhaps you could reuse symbols, but make it so that the resultant object is different if there's a block of a certain type next to it.

We also need the spaceship parts. And the boss alien. And the alien's force-field.

And I also like the idea (as always) to have more stuff change in the main menu room. Golden letters, maybe an idol-head-wall-mount for beating the game or such. Doesn't necessarily have to be complex, just enough to see and feel happy about.

[ArmyofNone]

So awesome that you're still working on this amazing game, Derek. Thanks a million, telling everyone I know about this game (Even up to the point of playing it in the front row of my biology classes to get people behind me interested).

[Haighstrom]

Oh something else I noticed: If you throw enemies (which are still alive) off the bottom in area 3 they don't count as kills.

Climbable trees would be awesome. Any idea of timescale for next version?

Just read further back about the craps. The only thing I do with it is nick the dice so I can steal the shopkeeper's gun lol. I love the LTTP idea with crates.

If you particularly want to keep the dice, you could use them in some way so that rolling them gives you different stuff, e.g 12 gives you jetpack/shotgun etc, down through to snake-eyes spawns the ghost or something. Not sure what context you'd have it in though. I always thought that stealing the dice should earn you money like the idol though.

[pgil]

Yeah, we will.  I'm adding them now... although I'm running out of symbols to use!

Could you store them in binary files?
..although that might make current levels obsolete

[astrospoon]

Have you started using all the crazy characters, like:

©¥½æ§έű

Or are they handled differently in memory?

[JpC812]

I think it would also be nice if the Mattock was somewhat more reliable.  Perhaps a guaranteed minimum of strikes before random breakage.  There have been times I got one whack and couldn't even get out of the snake pit without a bomb.

Such behavior could also benefit level creation as it could then be counted on for at least the minimum # of strikes and be used in the Metroidvania style levels.

P.S.  PureQuestion, your levels are awesome.  They bring an entirely new dimension to this already incredibly awesome game.

[kalis_choice]

Nicely done
Currying kali's favour 


but if you've angered her,
very hard to get on her good side again

accidentally destroyed one altar

still angry after 8 icemans

[rjb]

Hmm...  Having spent several levels pleasing Kali with sacrifices, I just discovered the door to the black market hidden beneath an altar, which left an unfairly tough choice, I feel.

[Hyooz]

One thing I think might be really interesting to do with the altars is implementing some kind of 'worship' system. Say, you come across a level where an altar spawns, but there is little or nothing to sacrifice. Hop on the altar yourself and bow down for a few seconds (to make sure you can't accidentally do this) and gain X amount of favor with Kali (or maybe she just outright grants you a boon) at the cost of some sort of quest/geas.

Say you bow down to Kali. She grants you the climbing gloves, but demands that you bring her a golden idol. Or grants you a jetpack, as long as you never jump on an enemy's head again. If you fail, Kali punishes you somehow. If you don't bring her an idol, she'll summon the spiders, or if you jump on an enemy's head, you take damage instead.

Basically, an alternate way to get items where you spend favors instead of money.

[Radix]

Standing on the altar for a few seconds should sacrifice yourself and give you something really great. Which you can't use due to being dead.

[Zen]

Getting knocked out on the altar could do it.  You could have all the gear in the game rain down on the altar afterward.

Or 99 virgins.

Don't actually do anything like this.

[AlexWeldon]

Standing on the altar for a few seconds should sacrifice yourself and give you something really great. Which you can't use due to being dead.

Well, unless you have the Ankh. That could be an interesting alternate use for it, if you don't feel like doing the other quest which I won't spoil for people... sacrificing yourself to Kali kills you, but drops something awesome - even more awesome than the Ankh, if that's possible - but unless you have the Ankh to bring you back to life, you can't use it.

Maybe just standing/ducking on the altar shouldn't do it... you should need to actually kill or stun yourself, e.g. by falling onto the altar from high up, or throwing an arrow/rock and having it bounce back and hit you.

[rjb]

Don't actually do anything like this.

I actually think that it would be great to have Kali take you as a sacrifice if you're knocked out/killed on the altar.  I mean, how often does that actually happen?  And even more to the point, would one more obscure one-hit-kill make any difference to the difficulty of the game?

Actually, I have one or two little ideas that have occurred to me during my last few plays:

1) A bonus for "combo-killing".  That is to say, I sometimes pull of some pretty spectacular "bounce off one enemy onto another" stunts, and now and then I manage to rack up quite a few kills that way.  It'd be cool to receive some little bonus for it; maybe each successive enemy could drop a little bit of treasure, for instance?  It would tie in nicely with the game's classic platform pedigree (the classic Mario and Sonic series both awarded gradually increasing amounts of points for successive kills), and also allow it to capture a little of that Skullpogo feeling now and again.

2) There could occasionally be doors hidden randomly in levels, leading to little treasure rooms.  They could be detected using the Eye, which would give it something extra to do in addition to finding the Market.  I think it would be cool to have some more extra-special locations like the Market itself, but just having little one-room areas with a small amount of treasure, or an item/some monsters/etc. would be really cool too - and it could lead back into the level again afterwards, rather than counting as a separate stage.  I guess I mean something like the little rooms full of coins accessible through warp-pipes in the classic Mario games.

[baconman]

Another trip I made, I got clipped in the wall by falling and taking damage; while landing on the top/platform part of a ladder. This caused a total lockup, not even Esc functioned; so I had to Ctrl+Alt+Del the application.

The prize houses are a great idea, but I still like Craps just being Craps. Only changes I think you should make is stackable betting (multiple bets on one outcome); or possibly a "Field" bet, in case you're just into making one quick roll. Or maybe have a little extra time (0:30 or so) on the "ghost timer" if there's a Craps house.

And maybe have the levels sometimes feature the shops from Black Market, where they're open on both sides. Occasionally, this does create a bottleneck; but not too often.
__________

This game is such a delightful experience as it is, I think it's about ready to go, as is. More of these ideas can come in the form of some kind of follow-up title; personally, I'm curious to see how another similar game of this sort would play, if the objective were to work your way from the bottom of the levels to the top, instead.

The tree workaround might be nice, but the obstacle it provides makes you really watch your resources. That is the point, right? I mean, the occasional screw-you game will always occur in procedural generation. It's inevitable Hence the unattainable Udgat's Eyes and such; sometimes one element is up high, in an unattainable position. It doesn't cripple the main point of the game though, just the interesting side quest.

Sometimes crap happens, you know. You can't always get everything, you have to make decisions. But with Spelunky, getting screwed is infrequent enough that it isn't really frustrating. You've got a really good balance going here! And that's hard to pull off, too.

Plus, it makes it all the sweeter when you DO pull off that special combination.

[Typhin]

One thing I think might be really interesting to do with the altars is implementing some kind of 'worship' system. Say, you come across a level where an altar spawns, but there is little or nothing to sacrifice. Hop on the altar yourself and bow down for a few seconds (to make sure you can't accidentally do this) and gain X amount of favor with Kali (or maybe she just outright grants you a boon) at the cost of some sort of quest/geas.

Say you bow down to Kali. She grants you the climbing gloves, but demands that you bring her a golden idol. Or grants you a jetpack, as long as you never jump on an enemy's head again. If you fail, Kali punishes you somehow. If you don't bring her an idol, she'll summon the spiders, or if you jump on an enemy's head, you take damage instead.

Basically, an alternate way to get items where you spend favors instead of money.

This idea reminds me of the Conducts in NetHack.  >.>

When I get bored/frustrated with dying all the time, I start doing silly things, like seeing how long I can keep a single rock (and killing everything with it), or the key (whenever it spawns without the chest, or the chest is in some inaccessible location) since it can be carried between levels.  ^_^

Also, now that I messed with the teleporter a bit in a test level, I've become a fan od Stupid Teleporter Tricks.  ^_^  It's a shame you can't carry anything else while using it, but it helped me scout paths to take the idol and damsel to the exit using fewer bombs.  Well, until I misjudged the amount of grace it gives you, and wound up just barely stuck in a floor, the top of the beacon sticking up.  Oops!