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[Zaphos]

i guess i'm a lurker here, but this project is looking SICK!  how about a secret barbershop level where guy has to sacrifice what little hair he has left for the evil barber's sick toupee fetish?

I am a fan of bald short men with giant scissors.  Terrifying stuff.

[ravuya]

Is that from the hedgemaze level?

[Akhel]

I like the story, it's simple and nice. In the end, he could find out he didn't just lost his games: they were stolen! And then he'd find and fight (or whatever) the thief. 

I am a fan of bald short men with giant scissors.  Terrifying stuff.

Have you read Stephen King's Insomnia?

[Arne]

You know, I think I was planning on getting a little sillier with the game [...]

I don't mind silly though. A diverse kind of silly, but still consistent. The Impossible Mission Impossible map is kind of silly. I mean if un-silly keeps us from doing fun stuff... we are kept from.. you know, doing fun stuff.

But there really needs to be a core of something that makes it obvious that the silly stuff is really silly. Relativity.

[BMcC]

Yeah, absolutely.

By "getting sillier" I meant that I think I wasn't originally going to sweat the design/continuity as much.  You know, 'cause it was just going to be a side project or whatever.

But the more I work on this, the more invested I'm finding myself.  I wanna do it justice.

[Arne]

Yeah, I thought of it more of a mini project with a bunch of strange levels aswell.

Here's an idea to bring consistency. One level could have a Materializer that needs to be used in a puzzle, and he must figure out what diskette that has the Software to run it.

If the pleyer puts in the wrong diskette, say a game, then a Shambler/megaman enemy or whatever might Materialize and kill him in a fun way.

This way the integrity of the universe is kept, and we can still add off-character stuff.

Likewise he could be sucked into Metroid or some game with a dematerializer.

[Arne]

How about this

Re: Story/Setup
One scenario that could be used to explain the homages is that the Evil Boss used the Materializer Balding invented, and used it to spawn lots of enemies from Baldings game/software collection, which is also lost. Now he needs to find all the games/software to reverse the damage.

[Dan MacDonald]

Are we really going to call milestone 1 done without a demo or even a postmortem discussion? Milestones generally arn't achieved because the developer says so, in the professional world anyway, there are acceptance tests and generally some other stakeholder besides the development team determines weather the milestone has been met. I'm not advocating a full blown software development processes and practices on this project but it would be nice to have SOME deliverable at the milestone markers, after all that kind of the point of the milestone to pull together all the loose ends on the "in development" functionality so that you can start bringing in new functionality to work on.

If it's not in a state where you would want to show people then it's likely that the milestone was not actually it. I'm not saying the features are not there and working, but there is a difference between a developer saying "it's done" and a customer saying "it's done".  Developers tend to call it done when the functions are all in place and their pretty much doing what their supposed to. Customers don't call it done until all the little bits are working together and it resembles something they can use.

(If I missed a WIP download somewhere let me know...)

BMcC: Don't worry about people judging you or your code.  No one is expecting you to be John Carmack on this thing, we're just really happy someone is passionate and motivated enough to actually be working on it.

P.S. If there's any need for hosting the builds or an SVN repository I'm happy help out in that regards. I have a dedicated box over at liquidweb that rocks and currently I'm using about 9GB of transfer a month and I can use up to 1600 GB's before I have to pay extra.

[BMcC]

Re: Milestone One -- It was more than done yesterday.  The goals set were accomplished, but beyond that a core engine was put in place with a nice tile system, animation system, and physics as well as elements that weren't even part of the goal (like climbing ladders, crawling, etc.).  And everything in place was bug free and solid.

And I 100% guarantee you I'm paying more attention to the little details of the engine than anyone.  (How you gonna play me like that, D-Mac?!)  I've been living in it for days.

We're definitely going to have milestone postmortems and we're definitely going to have playable builds, but cut me some slack, gosh!  I am but a man. 

P.S. -- My code rocks.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

EDIT:  By the way, we're talking specific plans for the first playable build behind the scenes.  It's going to be sweet, don't worry.

[Dan MacDonald]

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as scolding. I just want us to do all the fun stuff that you can do when you have a community behind a game. The play & postmortem feedback loop is one that the whole community can participate in and enjoy while you keep knocking features on the next milestone.

Don't get me wrong BMcC, your kicin' @$$! 

[Bezzy]

How about this

Re: Story/Setup
One scenario that could be used to explain the homages is that the Evil Boss used the Materializer Balding invented, and used it to spawn lots of enemies from Baldings game/software collection, which is also lost. Now he needs to find all the games/software to reverse the damage.

Maybe, after a retro gaming binge, Chris Crawford hit his head really really really really really really hard on a c64, and when he came to, the world around him was a retro-styled pixellated video game. Is he mad, in a coma, or inside a video game?

[Dan MacDonald]

And I 100% guarantee you I'm paying more attention to the little details of the engine than anyone.  (How you gonna play me like that, D-Mac?!)  I've been living in it for days.

I wasn't questioning that, or doubting your attention to detail. It's just that there are often different expectations of "done". For example (and I have no idea the current state of the build so this could be totally off) Say one of the features is to have the guy "walk". It's a very simple sort of high level requirement and at the very minium it means the guy can walk back and forth on a flat surface. But what happens when he stops? what happens when he walks against and obstacle? or over an edge?

In your case you've likely handled all of these, you've likely put the stand frame in both directions so when baldy stops walking he stands and something similar probably happens when he walks up against an obstacle.

One of the things to notice is that there's a lot more then walking back and forth on a flat surface to signify that feature is complete. There's other subtleties too, like maybe when you walk against an obstacle, instead of going to his stand frame you actually show the pushing animation to educate the player that sometimes things can be pushed. You say "well pushing isn't going to be in until M2" (or whatever milestone) and so we make a note, "when pushing goes in M2 make sure that he also uses his push animation against walls or obstacles that don't move".

Now, you've probably been though all these steps already and tackled these issues. The project is quite simple now and with the basic features for M1 there's not a lot of complexity but as the project grows there will be a lot of complexity and having the community involved in the milestones will help make sure things don't get missed. In any project there's things you see so many times that you start to accept that they are O.K. even though you fully intended to fix them early on.

agg.. gotta run to a meeting brb.

[BMcC]

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as scolding. I just want us to do all the fun stuff that you can do when you have a community behind a game. The play & postmortem feedback loop is one that the whole community can participate in and enjoy while you keep knocking features on the next milestone.

Don't get me wrong BMcC, your kicin' @$$! 

Hey, no problem.  Sorry if I was rude or anything. 

It's just, it seemed like you were implying I was just banging it out or saying it was "good enough" or something.  I assure you, that's not the case!  I hit Milestone One like a $3 hoe.

And we are definitely doing the whole community thang.  We just need to pull stuff together and do it right.  (The project's getting so big, now!)  The plan is... I will do a detailed postmortem for each milestone.  Then, in between Milestones, we'll release public builds.

Now, we could put out what we have so far, but remember -- Milestone One was not "Make a playable level."  It was basically just, "Get dude moving and stuff."  I want the first build to be more fun than that.

We'll put it out ASAP, I promise.

[BMcC]

Man, how do you say, "I wasn't doubting your attention to detail" then immediately question my attention to detail? 

I assure you, I'm obsessing over every little thing.  Do you seriously think I just got him sliding left and right and then leaned back and my chair and went, "Yep... that's walking"?

But keep the criticism coming!  Criticize my code, too!  It's cool.  I want to make this a great game -- and not just great for some guys or whatever.  Great on it's own.

EDIT: Let me clarify further.  My expectation of "done" is "perfect."  Not "passable" or even "playable."  I'm talking "just right."

And I didn't just do whatever to reach Milestone One.  I could've done that in an afternoon.  Instead, 90% of the work is behind the scenes, laying the foundation for the rest of the game, and keeping options open.

Argh, you've got me frustrated now.

EDIT 2:  AND ANOTHER THING. 

You're goin' on like I don't understand.  Dude, I get that games are complicated.  Sheesh.

I agree, though, it will be really good getting everyone's input and criticism and stuff as it gets developed.  This is such a brilliant community, I don't think a single detail will be missed by the time this thing's done. 

So, I guess what I'm saying is... I'll try to get a public build done sooner rather than later.  We're working on it.  Just hang tight, alright? 

[Xion]

For an obstacle, Giant fans are a necessity. Blowing Balding to and fro, letting him jump higher or inhibiting his progress.

[lowpoly]

So, I guess what I'm saying is... I'll try to get a public build done sooner rather than later.  We're working on it.  Just hang tight, alright? 

man, if you don't have a download ready by midnight tonight, you might as well just close the thread 

seriously tho, the speed at which this game has developed is absolutely mind boggling. You guys are kicking ass and taking names

[Zaphos]

It might add an interesting level of character depth if the more interesting enemies sometimes had their own wants that the surroundings would clue you in on, and if you could help them, good things would happen.

For example, maybe there's a hydra-lady somewhere, and even though she's trying to kill you, really she just wants to be loved.  So if you carry flowers to her, she helps you out.
And you could chain these item-puzzles across screens -- take the path to get the rare ingredient to help the chef to get the recipe to feed to the lion, etc.  I wouldn't demand the player do any of this, but it'd be a neat way to present secret content.  And it could really reward repeated play ...

[DrPetter]

Zaphos: That sounds like a great idea. It'd be a bit like Mega Man where you need trial and error to figure out the order of things (if it's not obvious, and it shouldn't be) and it enables you to pass some bosses without fighting. For regular players it's nothing to worry about since you can just beat up all of them regardless of their hidden wishes.
The entire game doesn't have to be linked in this way, but having a fair few of the bosses chained would be cool.
The items might not be delivered automatically when you beat a boss either, but rather hidden somewhere in the boss room - or anywhere really. Maybe in destructable tiles a'la Castlevania or something.
And like you said - helping one of them might unlock some content as well as give you an item or maybe a text hint for where you can find something else (like in Zelda, aww )

[Zaphos]

Oh, and if we're doing the game disc collection thing, it also might be cool if friendly NPCs (and recently befriended enemies?) could trade collectibles with you.  So while some discs will just be lying around, others you could only get by bartering ...
At the very least, it would add a fun extra layer of character on to the NPCs, since you get to see what type of person they are based on what games are in their collection.

DrPetter: Yeah, definitely!  (... it's cool to see people expand on one's ideas )

[Alex May]

Don't fight!