next »

[hyperduck]

Seems rocking so far :D that music is awesome, your own?

[Titch]

Nope. Music is placeholder it can't keep playing the epic boss sequance in the quiet, I'm waiting on my musician friend to set me up with the final bespoke music.

[mokesmoe]

You cant get out of the pit below the tower even with max level jump, and if you have enough endurance, you cant die either, and are stuck forever. The constant stream of "evade" is also annoying.

[Titch]

I realised today it's been nearly a month since I updated the playable build online. Totally unacceptable.

Big 'thing of the update' is the new EXP display. I've ditched the old bar in exchange for something else. I'm hoping it's relatively obvious how your actions effect the display and how the display represents your progress but any feedback on this would be appreciated.

Boss is kinda started, it is switching to the boss event and back but some of the daytime stuff that is supposed to reset, doesn't. Added some fancier intro stuff and new placeholder music to test my Modplayer plugin. The codex backend is done. It's pretty annoying that all the entries are being added but there is no way to browse through them and see what you've collected (of the 60 odd entries about 27 are collectable).  There are now 5 giant gems hidden around the level for obsessive collectors and the 8 spawn points now work correctly.

I've addressed some of the issues brought up here. The pit under the tower can be escaped, be it only by suicide. Evade no longer streams out and there is a VERY short delay after cancelling damage in which you won't take further damage.

I'm waiting on a friend who is writing/editing my scripts to get some more NPC's into play so that all the skills are buyable and adding in a stats screen for the challenges certain NPC's will lay down for you.

[Triplefox]

Progress is looking awesome as usual. With the last build I was worried the bugs were going to go out of control but it looks like they're being resolved.

If you let me, I'd track up some mods for this, though I have no idea what style I'd want to use. I just like the game that much

[Tazi]

For some reasons the visuals remind me to old DOS games... That is good! 

[Rumrusher]

yeah one thing I notice is the boss doesn't go all rip you a new one.
it kinda sucks when you don't have any means of attacking and you have a 6 hearts and a fast recovery and a higher evade. so do I have to lose to her dark self or dodge for 4 hours?
oh and I have the game still running.

[Titch]

I've been balancing the boss strength out against Regen speeds and Fortitude in the newer build. Added a bunch of new attacks and cut the boss health a lot. It should be a LOT more engaging in the next build. I haven't done it until now because a LOT of bugs where creeping in when I add the boss to the build and I needed to go through the code to fix them.

Right now you can get around Regen being overpowered by doing a an air recovery before you get stunned. It shouldn't be like that but as I said, I've had other things on my mind other than making the boss right. I would rush the next build out buuuut, there are things right now that I don't really want exposed in the dialogue tree that need fixing.

@Triplefox: That would be awesome. I'll be in touch...or you can get in touch. I don't really mind.

[Rumrusher]

well the tame boss was easy to get out of if I just keep ramming into her.
the one problem I want to address is that there is no way to replenish hearts except by going to the jerk boyfriend.
which is fine just that he's a jem waste pit even more of a waste pit when you forcefully since the girl is some type of super pacifist that makes Iji on a no kill run look like insane psycho mad hell bent pms'ing she-bitch from the ninth level of cyborg-hell.
and as much as I enjoy that it gets worst when the boss decides to ditch the game half way into the 3 encounter I get rocks but I end up auto-evading them but seeing how it in her dreams now in a coma.

[Titch]

You have to stand still to replenish life. I'm pretty sure it's been working in every single build up until now.

It's pretty lame, from a game play perspective it really bothers me, but that's what you get for trying to engineer a situation where you are rewarding a player for doing nothing. I've been thinking about tying it up with gem collection or add extra health restoring items. Hmm.

And yes, I know about the Boss dropping through the floor issue. It's being addressed. I've had too much on my plate to deal with stuff the tends to occur late on the play cycle simply because I don't have the time to play the game for that long between coding sessions XD.

[Rumrusher]

so I need to ask how do one beat the boss or that's not done yet.

[Titch]

You can whittle down the boss health by luring in into the path of boulders  and then grabbing the gems it drops. I have a feeling the death events aren't in that build so you won't actually get anything for doing it, aside from my eternal respect for you patience

[Rumrusher]

how? by dashing into her?
or smacking my self into her?

[hackedhead]

Hey. So I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but this doesn't quite render properly in flash under Linux, all the sprites (girl,boy, gems, baddies, postboxes) are just black shapes. Having just verified in Windows, I'll edit this with more details when I boot back into Linux... in case you care.

Flash games are nice in that they are "cross-platform"... hopefully. =P

Excellent work otherwise, I enjoy it.

[Titch]

Hey. So I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but this doesn't quite render properly in flash under Linux, all the sprites (girl,boy, gems, baddies, postboxes) are just black shapes. Having just verified in Windows, I'll edit this with more details when I boot back into Linux... in case you care.

Flash games are nice in that they are "cross-platform"... hopefully. =P

Excellent work otherwise, I enjoy it.

Thanks for letting me know. This sounds like an oddity associated with the Flixel framework. Could you pass on what version of Flash you are running on Linux and which distro and browser you are using so I can pass on a bug report to Adam?

I'm working on menus right now. It's not much to look at, but I might have a menu system nice framework I can share once it's done.

[Titch]

RIGHT. New version.

You'll have to excuse me, it's 1:30am and I've been running of espresso and the kind of hate only a person that has had the same cold for nearly a week can generate.

New Stuff
+ Menu.
+ Stats and Codex sub menus.
+ Improved gameplay for low end machines.
+ Skills are much easier to level up.
+ Added stuff to the boss.
+ Frame worked in new stuff for the Boy's dialogue tree (there are some placeholder bits still in there).
+ Added some extra animation to the boy.
+ Balanced out a lot of damage values.
+ Radar skill partially works.
+ Re-wrote EXP bars again.
+ Made the boss more beatable.
+ Cleaned up the boss win/loose events some more.
+ Updated Title screen and Music.

Known Bugs
- Menu can be abused during cutscenes to mess up events.
- Boy is now hidden behind fence. Going to fix that real soon.
- Bits of the stat page keep clipping.
- Some stats don't record correctly.
- Some Roundite quests don't work or are not completable, or do work when they aren't supposed to.
- Evade spamming is back with vengeance.
- Codex is still not completable.
- Help Bubbles still don't match up.
- /n still showing in dialogue boxes.

I've put in the framework for the ending too, although you won't be able to get to it untill juuust about everything else is done. Spoilers and all that.

[Zoggles]

Hehe great fun and wonderful concept. Very much enjoyed playing through it until it crashed on me :S

It crashed after I repeatedly talked to the guy that 'wanted to be helped down from here' can't remember what the critters name was, but that and the screenshot should let you know where. Game time froze, cursors, X and C/Space do nothing. 1 Does still bring up the console and volume can be toggled.

Had staved off the flaming sword a couple of times and held on to my skill levels.. just couldn't seem to find the last 12.3% of crystals before that game froze up.

A few other things noticed:

Hulker's poetry speech includes the aforementioned "/n"'s (Didn't notice them anywhere else)
-edit-
> also on the boy's line Roses are Red, Violets are blue.. when leveling up romance.

The dash skill after being reset by losing to the boss is lost and can't be regained.

Dashing at the boss along the bottom of the screen from left to right (maybe other way too) slams you into the wall and into a 'safe' zone where the boss seems to be unable to hurt you. Your only option to get out of this odd position is to jump, at which point the boss can get you again.

The guy I eventually crashed on.. I seem to remember the first time I played, he initially asked me to do, something about running to a tree? On the second game however, when I went back to check, I got no such message. (Perhaps it just has some prerequisite though)
-edit-
> Ah.. ok, its a second way to get the Dash skill. Therefore I presume inactive dialogue if you bought the dash skill in the form of trainers. Likewise, when I had dash in the first game, the trainers guy wouldn't sell me them and kept referring to the overpriced fake rolex.
 
Lastly, second screenshot shows a small hidden pit which doesn't seem intentional.




-Z-

-edit-
Third play through Boss falling through the floor bug. Also I think I have confirmed that 'Dash' is lost after you lose to the boss and you can't regain it from either source. Still in the codex, but unusable.

[hackedhead]

Wow. Um... latest build. many comments, bear with me Titch.

The black sprite problem is not longer occurring, if you have the old version hosted somewhere I could recheck and make screenshots if you are interested. This is with Firefox 3.0.13, and flash version 10,0,15,3.

In this build, I now feel like I'm leveling a lot faster. I explored, I think, a lot of map during Day 0. I think I made it to most of the corners of the map, whereas previously, the same thing was taking me 3 days... maybe that's just because I know how the mechanism works now? But it still seemed like I was leveling faster. Not sure if that was intended or not, but it did take away a lot of the grind...

I really like the new meters for showing how far a skill is progressed. A few notes though. The fortitude meter is gray/black and doesn't show up well (I didn't realize it was filling because it was hard to see). Run, Jump and health meters, upon reaching level 5, were mostly filled except for a thin bar at the top, so I got the pop up message for level 5 before the colored square was totally full .. ?

The first time I collided with an enemy the message has a typo ('loose health' should be 'lose health') It was a spiky in the area a bit farther up and to the right of the house that has 3 spikeys, and tunnel down and then three more on the other side, with gems between the baddies.

The Roundite in earth Village sells you Dash for 10 gems, but the explanation is of double jump. Oops.

Finally, that major issue, but the most confounding: After Day 0, the boss fight happens, and I got the "You black out and remember nothing..." message twice, then the house reappears, get the "tired" message, the LVL/EXP reset msg, and then pretty immediately, get the 'black out' message again twice, it throws me back into the boss fight and then just spams the 'black out' message. and then starts looping between the boss and the house those three messages cycling and i can't really accomplish anything else.... it eventually resolved: i wound up getting the "you get tired and go home" message while _in_ the boss fight, and then the 'wake up' things happened correctly and I could continue




Barring that, I'm still really liking how it's shaping up. let me know if you want any more details.

[Titch]

Wow. All this feedback.

OK! One point at a time. Here goes.

Zoggles
Fleet Crash Bug :- KNOWN but not yet fixed
12% Issue:- Percentage relates to CODEX and not gems. Some entries not yet accsessible since the related objects/code aren't in game
/n's Bug: KNOWN but I hate writing RegExp to fix it. I'll get on it eventually.
Hidden Pit: FIXED thanks for the screenshot.

hackedhead
Black Sprite Issue: May have been caused by me compiling in Debug mode. Good to hear it's gone away now though.
Level Speed : Has increased, as a result of me normalising a lot of timers across frame rates. I'll probably be nerfing it all again a bit as I think there is enough content for an average game to last 3-4 game days. It is supposed to be a -little- bit grindy to encourage players to find neat tricks to levels up faster.
Meter Problem: KNOWN but I'm not seeing it as a massive deal right now. I'm glad people like the new meteres, the old EXP Bar bothered me terribly.
Village Roundite: FIXED, now sells you DOUBLE JUMP like she is supposed to.
Major Bug: Oooh, this sounds interesting. Whatever happened the event processor must have bugged out, or something. I have a feeling I'll be working on that for a while.

None of the fixes are live yet. I don't really like doing new versions more often than once every few days because I loose track of what bugs where in what version.

[Titch]

I've been coding up a storm. New version brings.

+ Added some more sound to the boss and the menu system.
+ Updated the percentage display to cover a lot more stuff (Gems, Codex, Postboxes)
+ Fixed NPC quests. Nails,Mamma,Joy and Hulker's quests all work.
+ Added TALK/SANITY levels. As TALK drops, text boxes will get MUCH harder to read.
+ Rewrote the music module to work better in the Flixel framework.
+ Put gem sparkle effects back.
+ Added gem respawning when you die to the boss. Gems you've collected before are slightly transparent.
+ Fixed the /n problem.
+ Attempted a fix for the boss event bug, but we shall see.
+ Added another event if you walk passed the boy
+ Reduced some of the EXP margins again to make the game less easy.

- Exp icons still need fixing
- Sound control still misbehaves sometimes.
- Having to be at a complete stop to open the menu is annoying.

Most of the non-boss/non-ending stuff I've got now is tying up loose ends and cleaning stuff up. The only really big new thing that may go into the game is the special challenge enemy and a secret ending bonus for completing the game under special conditions.