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[Zack Bell]

you know what could be interesting

a mode where you play as a super fast character in a series of time trials. if you start to feel that there's no gameplay challenge or variation in simply finishing levels, you can make an alternate goal like speed and design around that.

Yeah, we've always liked that, regardless. Some form of race/time trial

[Blambo]

no but

your guy has to eb really fast

like a blur

a blue blur

[gggfhfdh]

[Zack Bell]

I died.

[premonster]

Having to walk to acquire the teleportation doesnt make any sense, as you can just keep walking left and right on the same spot until you fill it, and that goes against the action-oriented feel of the game (and a waste of real-world time). Why put a hold on the main game mechanic?

Other than that, the back to original design was great! With the inclusion of the new platform types, it looks very dynamic.

Looks fun!

[Rat Casket]

Are you sequence breaking on purpose?

Or rather, building shortcuts on purpose?

[Zack Bell]

Having to walk to acquire the teleportation doesnt make any sense, as you can just keep walking left and right on the same spot until you fill it, and that goes against the action-oriented feel of the game (and a waste of real-world time). Why put a hold on the main game mechanic?

Other than that, the back to original design was great! With the inclusion of the new platform types, it looks very dynamic.

Looks fun!

It's not walking, it's just while on ground. Originally, it was to make boss design simpler (can't spam), as well as to have some form of progression (gain more teleports per charge and ability to change while in air).

It will probably just have reload time now. Somewhat less of a constraint. Or just "touch a surface before teleporting again".

[premonster]

"touch a surface before teleporting again".

This actually reinforces the mechanic, sounds good! No more time wasting on waiting for a refill - you have to reach it to earn it. The faster you get to the recharger, the more you can "connect" teleportations.

[Superb Joe]

today was a fun day

i owned a neo geo pocket colour

[Zack Bell]

I threw this together for a few Twitter followers. It's just a glimpse at what I've been working on over the past two days. I have a few things to clean up, but I'm pretty happy with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk0GkuSOrM4&feature=youtu.be

[Low_Chance]

I threw this together for a few Twitter followers. It's just a glimpse at what I've been working on over the past two days. I have a few things to clean up, but I'm pretty happy with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk0GkuSOrM4&feature=youtu.be

Nice, it's looking very good. Right now, the art style and level of polish in the visuals is really working for me.

[Scott]

Looking good - it's nice to see the original design in play because it really makes the game stand out. How did you end up handling teleportation when no wall is available, as can be seen during the boss battle at some points?

I like the "touch something first" idea to teleport again but that's obviously harder to predict without trying.

[Zack Bell]

Thanks, guys. The only special case left is the one that you mentioned. The "open-space" w/ nothing to teleport to. One of two things will happen: 1) Nothing. By nothing I mean no movement, but there will be a visual/audio cue. 2) Infinite loop. I tested this thing where the player would wrap continuously, as if stuck in an infinite loop. It looks cool and gets the point across, but it's almost chaotic or sloppy.

Either way, it won't change the way that the game is played or designed. 

[gggfhfdh]

messing w/ teleport stuff. i was about to get to work on a new dash line to slap between the effects but im not sure it really

needs one


like thats easy to read for short distances  i m o, but would it get confusing for longer teleports??

[Scott]

Some art is amazing simply for what it leaves out, especially because our minds automatically fill in the missing bits.

I think that's one of the major appeals about the way this appears in motion.

[Zack Bell]

Another chunk of a level I was working on this morning. It has changed a bit since the GIF, but w/e.



Here's this guy, if you didn't want to watch last night's vid.



Also, I thought this thing was cute. So here you go.

[Zack Bell]

I really like how the moving platforms are feeling, so I'm trying to add more of those to some of the older levels.



As of now, I can speed-run the four levels + the boss that I made this week in roughly two minutes.
I'm trying to determine our gameflow. For example, 5 levels -> min-boss -> 5 levels -> boss.

[rek]

I was AFK for a week and I'm catching up, so feel free to ignore if it's irrelevant now...

Many classic games, and their modern emulators and imitators, could be reduced to a single yes/now mechanic choice: should I jump now? should I stab now? should I dash now? should I drop a bomb now? and so forth, because that mechanic was often the only tool the player had in addition to walking. There's a sort of purity in that kind of game which I think contributes to their longevity and reincarnation. So I don't think there was anything wrong with Super III's teleport mechanic, or the vertical orientation of its levels, as they stood a week ago.

Where I am seeing a weakness is in the level design itself. Assuming the art and animations we've seen is an accurate representation of the direction the game will take, there's only a single correct route to take and anything needed to make that route traversable (switches, etc) is placed in the player's path. In short, there's a lack of choice or ambiguity. Mario let you choose to go under or over brick platforms, hit the ? blocks or ignore them, stomp an enemy or jump over them; Link could go in any cardinal direction most of the time, try his sword or bombs or arrows on various enemies and obstacles, and take on dungeons the order they were discovered; even Tetris, a game with a sole mechanic, gave the player the choice of clearing single lines or building them up and hope the right piece would appear at the right time. Sometimes a choice paid out and sometimes it killed you, but having that choice lead to a richer and more varied experience even though the mechanic never really changed and the layout or orientation of the levels stayed the same.

Being able to speed-run the first four levels in two minutes should be a byproduct of practice and familiarity, not because there's only one path through those levels.

[Zack Bell]

Short response: the level design will open up. I've been strictly showing level's 1 through 5. Literally forcing people down one path so that they understand screenwrap and understand the teleport. But yes, I agree with you on all accounts.

[Slader16]

If you want some more ideas for puzzles check out Guacamelee!, it had some awesome level design too.