next »

[hydrophoenix]

OK, since there are over 100 pages to this forum already, I don't know if this has already been asked but:

I love this game and have been playing way too much of it, but my one criticism that isn't directly related to my "just not being good enough to do X yet" is that I think there needs to be an upside to the "dark" levels. Right now, all they do is make me rush to the exit because it's annoying to juggle a flare and something else, and it's just generally harder to do things in the dark. Possible upsides include doubling the value of all treasure, or a guaranteed rare item. With an upside, it would be worth the risk to explore in the dark, whereas right now the dark is all risk and no reward, so the best thing for me to do is just to get past it as quickly as possible.

If there already IS an upside to the dark that I just haven't noticed, please let me know!

I always assumed the little golden scarabs were the upside for the dark levels, but I might be wrong, I tend to do the same and just scurry through the dark levels as quick as possible.

[luvcraft]

Anyhoo, you can also trigger a "Trying to use non-existing surface" if you change your monitor resolution while Spelunky is running.

Ah, then that's probably what's doing it on mine. Locking the workstation when I go to lunch or run off to do something changes to a lower resolution for the "workstation locked" screen, and when I come back I have that error.

[luvcraft]

I always assumed the little golden scarabs were the upside for the dark levels, but I might be wrong, I tend to do the same and just scurry through the dark levels as quick as possible.

Oh, do the scarabs drop gold? I just saw them and thought "Oh great, more monsters" and rushed through as fast as I could.

[hydrophoenix]

I always assumed the little golden scarabs were the upside for the dark levels, but I might be wrong, I tend to do the same and just scurry through the dark levels as quick as possible.

Oh, do the scarabs drop gold? I just saw them and thought "Oh great, more monsters" and rushed through as fast as I could.

Nope, they don't drop gold, they *are* gold! They don't harm you and are quite valuable, if you can catch them!

[luvcraft]

I always assumed the little golden scarabs were the upside for the dark levels, but I might be wrong, I tend to do the same and just scurry through the dark levels as quick as possible.

Oh, do the scarabs drop gold? I just saw them and thought "Oh great, more monsters" and rushed through as fast as I could.

Nope, they don't drop gold, they *are* gold! They don't harm you and are quite valuable, if you can catch them!

OH! Well then, disregard my suggestion, since it's already been implemented.

Derek, why you gotta be so much smarter than me?

[Muffenz]

Wow i checked the forums yesterday and the max page was 98, nows it 102

[interiot]

Wow, I checked the forum yesterday and the max page was 98, now it's 102.

Way to contribute to the problem without saying anything new.

 

[Hideous]

level generation bug i guess

how i was supposed to enter exit, without being killed by spikes? i had no bombs

You're safe from the spikes when you're in the 'going out the door' animation.   Just get close enough to trigger them once, and after they've retracted, run in quickly and exit before they have a chance to come out again.

Actually, several times I haven't been, and they've killed me when I was walking in.

[Captanblue]

it happened again! I was running to a ladder and there was a roof tile over it. I had the damsel in my hand but when I jumped to the ladder the damsel disappeared and died somehow.

Basically, the ladder goes to the roof and I jumped into the corner and that somhow insta kills her.

[danieltalsky]

Not to brown-nose too much, but I agree with many here that this game is clearly an important part of video game history.  Comparing it to Roguelikes exactly provides context, but it's silly when people say, "I don't agree this is a Roguelike because..." or "This is just a copy of..."

The game is clearly something where Derek took the lineage of many beloved games, but then pulled it all together into something new and shockingly fun.  I think one of the things that makes it more like a Roguelike is that you only learn by dying, and you really have to have a sense of humor about dying, like: Okay, one more lesson learned.  Of course it's frustrating when you get further than you ever have with plenty of bombs and ammo, and discover one more of the 1,000,000 new situations you can die in.  You learn, you adapt, and then you still make stupid mistakes.  It's magical.

If you don't enjoy playing the first level over and over again, or that decision-making process of "do I want to risk dying just to get a chance of one more heart if I go get the girl without a mistake" then trying to beat the game alone is always going to be frustrating.  In a way it's better than a Roguelike for this reason.  Playing levels 1-3 of a Roguelike are boring.  You are scuttling around with your stupid dagger killing the same stupid Jackals or whatever when you were just a mighty wizard with the Stick of Smiting like 10 minutes ago.  In Spelunky, though, you die on the 9th level, and you still have an interesting and challenging situation waiting for you on level 1.

Okay, my tips to new players:
Rock is awesome.  If you see a rock, pick it up.  Learn how to throw it in 100 situations. 
The trick to whipping things in the air?  Press the whip button slightly BEFORE the jump button.
It's common for keypresses in the between-level tunnels to be recorded, so when you enter a new level, check to see if you're holding something and carefully put it away if you are.
Running is REALLY useful.  You can jump a LOT further and get into areas there would be no other way to reach.  You can also run over gaps of one space, or two spaces if you give a little jump.
Yes it's hard and unforgiving, but look at every life you lose as a new lesson you learned about how to play.  You play a handful of times and you WILL find yourself more resilient.

And Derek, no one else has said this that I know of but OH LORD why did you make it with Game Maker!  I know you had no idea it would blow up like this, but I think that the majority of the compatibility problems people are experiencing are as a result of Game Maker and its inherent problems.  I have three computers I could potentially play it on (An XP box, a Server 2003 box, and a MacBook Pro with parallels) and of course I can only get it to run on one of them (thank god!).  This is a dead-simple 2D platformer for chrissakes, and making it work reliably with video and sound cards is a huge problem, like it was some huge 3D MMO or something.

This game's reach and influence is going to be so sadly limited by the choice of GameMaker... this seriously would kill on XBoxLive Arcade or DS, and I have no doubt you could attract real publishers, but it's going to probably require a rewrite, making it not the same game. 

But... who knows how things are going to go when you first start them, I know this is something you just dug into without a lot of planning.  I can't wait for 1.0 and I hope you're going to surprise us with stats.  That would be the best.

[Muffenz]

WARNING SPOILER!

I love playing as the women, its different.

http://img108.imageshack.us/img108/4581/lady1go4.jpg
http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/7033/lady2jn9.jpg
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/8581/lady3wa9.jpg
http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/1284/lady4ts9.jpg

[tyroney]

The nice thing is, later when some source is available, I'm sure someone could work out a deal to port this game.  Heck, maybe I'll be able to do it.  Whaddya say, Derek?  (Maybe I'll try and coordinate a more community-style project, so as to avoid facing up to my lack of long-term coding attention span.)  Getting it up on xbox live would probably be relatively not a pain.

Back to why I'm here this time:  Has anyone brought up/solved the big black screen / transparency issue?  My friend and I suspect it's related to GM. (either messing up transparency, or not initializing something correclty) If you play some other game, (tf2 seems to work well,) and later launch spelunky, transparency messes things up pretty bad.  For the first few screens, it looks like there's a big layer over everything that makes the fade happens.  When it's supposed to be done fading and clear, instead it goes solid black.  If you hit esc/pause, the paused text comes up just fine over the blackness.  (and again it fades normally for a moment)

If you actually get into the game, all the forground dirt over all the tiles is solid black, meaning you can't see yourself, creatures, or anything on the ground.  (you can see yourself if you jump up above the ground-level tiles)

Rebooting seems to be the only way to get it happy again that I've found so far.

[Twiccan]

Wow, thanks to you, Derek, my productivity at work just hit a new low! 

I am a huge fan of roguelikes, so when I saw a platformer that supposedly had roguelike characteristics, I had high hopes but not so high expectations.  But then I played it, and I am really impressed.  It has the feel of a Rick Dangerous / Montezuma's Revenge type game, but the random element of a roguelike.  And it also has that "just one(or two or three or four) more game" quality to it.

Can't wait to see where it goes in the future.

[Caio]

I hate dark levels

[Hideous]

I bought a wired 360 controller. It works with this but the left and right triggers don't do nuttin'.