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[pgil]

The Moonkeeper

v1.0

Instructions:
1.Explore the moon base.
2.Destroy the alien pods.
3.Go home and have lunch.

Get it HERE  (willhostforfood)
of HERE(GameJolt)

Finally got it to the point that I can get away with calling it 1.0

Review: Gamemaker Games

Also: I've put up a video walkthrough:


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[Curseman]

Interesting game.  It looks like this was probably inspired by the old Metroids.  I thought the minimalist coloring and sounds really made it feel like an old nes or dos game.

I thought that it was kind of light on the numbers of abilities the player could pick up throughout the game, even though it is pretty short.  The level design had some clever points in it.  I felt that the enemies were fairly harmless, and the real threats were things like the spikes that pop out of the ground.  The end boss put up a little bit of a fight, at least.  Oh, and the grenades were basically useless.

A map of some kind in the pause screen would be nice to have.  It might just be that my navigational abilities are terrible (because they are), but I had a hard time finding my way back to the "lava" area when I needed to get back there.

The "boots" thing was really funny.  I had to wonder what other elements of the game were parodical like that.  The ending story text certainly seemed to be.  Were the grenades intentionally made to be trash for that reason?

The only bug I found was that I managed to get myself stuck in the closing wall at the point with the boots incident.  Making those close up faster so the player can't trap themselves, or making them die from getting crushed by walls or adding a suicide button or something like that would probably be for the best.

Anyway, all things considered, I think you did a good job.

[cactus]

Nice game! What was this created in?

I really loved the graphics in this one, except for a few small things:
-The black border around the screen looked horrible. I would go for a completely solid frame or no frame at all.
-The player's jumping pose was pretty bad. Looked like a walking frame more than a jump.
-I liked the white-ish background, but there could've been areas with backgrounds/backgroundtiles (I didn't play all the way through, so maybe there was).

There were also some other things that annoyed me:
-When you pick up a health thing without having lost any energy, you get a fourth health point that disappears after a frame.
-Shots that hit enemies/walls just disappear. It would probably look better if there was a small hit animation thing.
-Too many precision jumps too early on in the game.
-I would've liked more of a story in the game.
-As Curseman said, the grenades didn't seem to be very easy to handle.
-The game crashed suddenly while I was playing and I have no idea what might've caused it.

Other than that I really liked this, and would love to play all the way through it. The graphics had a very interesting style, and I'm a sucker for this kind of games.

[deadeye]

Very nice game

I just played through the whole thing, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  There were some tough jumps that required a lot of backtracking if you missed (kind of a pet peeve of mine) but overall it was pretty good.

I also found the grenades to be rather useless overall.  That it, until the last battle... but by then I had saved up so many that I didn't have to be careful with them so I just spammed them everywhere to get rid of the little jumpy bugs.

I disagree with the map thing, I think the game was small enough that it didn't really need a map.  Then again, I'm an old codger who played Metroid back in the day with no map... uphill, in the snow.

I can kind of see what Cactus says about the vignette border around the screen... it could be smoother, I suppose.  But I didn't really mind it.  I think it added to the old, worn, and washed-out look that I think you were going for.  Which the desaturated blues and reds did nicely, like an old photograph or a poster in a store window that's been there for too many years and has been faded by the sun.

I didn't have any crashing issues or other bugs, except a little bit of wonky collision on the moving platforms.  One thing I did notice, though, was as I destroyed the breakable blocks the game got noticeably faster.  The more blocks I destroyed, the faster it ran.  I think those destructible blocks are eating up a good chunk of processing power.

What was this created in?

My guess... MMF2.

[Curseman]

I disagree with the map thing, I think the game was small enough that it didn't really need a map.  Then again, I'm an old codger who played Metroid back in the day with no map... uphill, in the snow.

I'm probably the only one who had a problem.  I don't deny that my sense of direction is terrible.  I didn't beat Metroid 2 until years after I got it only because I managed to get really lost.

I can kind of see what Cactus says about the vignette border around the screen... it could be smoother, I suppose.  But I didn't really mind it.  I think it added to the old, worn, and washed-out look that I think you were going for.  Which the desaturated blues and reds did nicely, like an old photograph or a poster in a store window that's been there for too many years and has been faded by the sun.

I thought the border is kind of nice, myself.

[pgil]

Nice game! What was this created in?

Game Maker

-The game crashed suddenly while I was playing and I have no idea what might've caused it.

That's weird. Did it not show you an error message?

A map of some kind in the pause screen would be nice to have.

I originally had an automap, but I couldn't work out some of the technical stuff, like hiding rooms you haven't been to. I decided to scrap it because the game world isn't that big, but I could still put it back in.

The only bug I found was that I managed to get myself stuck in the closing wall at the point with the boots incident.  Making those close up faster so the player can't trap themselves, or making them die from getting crushed by walls or adding a suicide button or something like that would probably be for the best.

Oops... yeah, I didn't know it was possible to get stuck there. I'll make it close faster.

One thing I did notice, though, was as I destroyed the breakable blocks the game got noticeably faster.  The more blocks I destroyed, the faster it ran.  I think those destructible blocks are eating up a good chunk of processing power.

Interesting... There's probably a lot of stuff in the game that could be optimized.


I'll work on the screen border. That was a 30-second job in the GM sprite editor, and it shows.

As for the grenades... Yeah they are pretty useless. I think I'll give then a bigger radius for damage.

Anyway, thanks for the comments. Keep playing and tell your friends :handshakeR:

[deadeye]

Nice game! What was this created in?

Game Maker

Oops!  I guessed wrong .

Interesting... There's probably a lot of stuff in the game that could be optimized.

If it makes you feel any better, this game ran really well compared to most GM games on my computer.  I can only play maybe one out of every ten GM games, if that, because they run way too slow.  In your game I didn't even really notice that it was going slow at all until I started breaking those blocks, and the speed increase wasn't really significant, just noticeable.

[pgil]

Update!
0.91 is out

http://willhostforfood.com/dl.php?fileid=66289
(see first post)

CHANGES SINCE 0.90:
BUGFIX: The game should now run much faster.
BUGFIX: Collecting health when full briefly showed an extra bar
BUGFIX: Player could sometimes be seen on message screen
BUGFIX: Player could get stuck in some closing walls (FIXED in all known cases)
BUGFIX: Collision for grenades was too small. Now they're actually useful
BUGFIX: Grenades went right through destructable blocks.
BUGFIX: Pod giblets stuck around too long.
OTHER: Title screen doesn't wait as long to show instructions.
OTHER: Formatted text to look nicer
OTHER: New (better-looking?) screen border

Turns out I had turned off some optimizing code at some point when I was testing the game. That's why the game was slow on some computers. Should be much better now.

[rekcah]

This game was pretty cool! It reminded me so much of Metroid. Definitely enjoyed it though.

[Curseman]

One thing I meant to mention before, but forgot: would it be better if your character didn't pick up health packs at all when he's at full life?  As far as I can tell, there's finite life available in the game, so it's a pretty big waste when you accidentally get those and you don't need them.

[Dr. Sleep]

You have a -real- eye for subtlety.

I'm surprised that no one was gushing about that nice little strobe effect you put in there, because doing that so that it's noticable, yet doesn't give anyone a headache/seizure is Not Easy.

Well anyway, I'll gush about it.

'Gush.'

There.

Now, a couple of questions.

Old DOS games, the likes of which probably influenced this to some degree or another, were seldom ready-for-primetime affairs. They didn't pay much attention to things like making their assets visually consistent, so it was stupidly obvious that a guy with one idea about how things should be made all the scenery, and another guy with a completely different idea about how things ought to be sprited the player and all the monsters. If I'm way off, don't take this the wrong way, but you kinda have that going on with MK, is that intentional? If it is or isn't, I like it.

Thing the second, are the individual rooms actually rooms, or do you have one view hopping around one large room?

[deadeye]

Ah, the improvements are very nice.  The grenades are good, and the vignette effect is much nicer, I think.  And overall the speed and responsiveness of the game seems greatly improved.

Awesome job

[pgil]

Dr. Sleep: It was definitely inspired by old Dos games. Especially old shareware games like Arctic Adventure or Jill of the Jungle. The inconsistencies in the graphics probably come from the fact that I didn't work on the game for about a month, so when I came back to it I wasn't in the same mindset.

Thing the second, are the individual rooms actually rooms, or do you have one view hopping around one large room?

The game takes place in one big room. It makes it easier to keep track of the layout, and I don't have to worry about moving critters to another room if they walk off the edge of the screen 

Oh, and I'm glad people haven't mentioned the strobe effect. I was worried it might give people seizures 

[pgil]

Another update. fixed a bug in the ending screen, and added some helpful graphics to hopefully eliminate some "leaps of faith"

[Fate]

hey pgil,
a very cool game you have there!
i liked the plan 9 from outer space feeling(awesome movie ) and the retro style
i haven't played it through yet, it's really pretty hard... in my opinion.
but that's okay, games like this have to be challenging

i have found a bug, in this one room, with all the moving plattforms... i once was stuck in a plattform... had to quit and restart the game :/
here is a screenshot:



 

[JustinGameDesign]

Won't play on my system.  Stops working about 6 seconds into actual gameplay, no matter where or what I'm doing.  Maybe I can try again with different system settings.  I'll let you know if I figure out what's going wrong.

[redcords]

Crashes at random for me with the standard XP crash message.

[pgil]

i have found a bug, in this one room, with all the moving plattforms... i once was stuck in a plattform... had to quit and restart the game :/
here is a screenshot:

Hmm.. Sorry about that. I thought I had solved any problems with moving platforms. Did it happen when you hit the ceiling? I'll look into it.

jocastus and redcords: How much RAM does your computer have. And what kind of video card? I think Game Maker has compatibility problems with some cards.

Anyway, I'll keep testing it.

[redcords]

jocastus and redcords: How much RAM does your computer have. And what kind of video card? I think Game Maker has compatibility problems with some cards.

1 GB Ram and an Nvidia 7600 GT, it's an oldish system but runs something like Spelunky fine.

[pgil]

jocastus and redcords: How much RAM does your computer have. And what kind of video card? I think Game Maker has compatibility problems with some cards.

1 GB Ram and an Nvidia 7600 GT, it's an oldish system but runs something like Spelunky fine.

Hmm. I really have no idea what could be wrong.. I can't reproduce it on my computer. I watched the task manager while I was playing to see if I could catch any memory leaks, but I didn't see anything change dramatically.

I've uploaded a new version. It hopefully fixes that moving platform bug that Fate mentioned. See the first post.