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[quantumpotato]

I like the new swinging-loop mechanics. In the last version I thought you *didn't* want players to be able to loop, it's much nicer feeling now!

I can't shorten the rope. I tried left click for rope and a mouse button, the space bar and A for jump and couldn't shorten. Tried on platforms, the Tug ziplines and pink walls.

Menu annoyances: Having to click "Go" in the bottom instead of using movement keys and rope button (left click) or a jump button to select next level. Having to exit planet to change controls (would be nice to do mid-level)

[maxl]

I like the new swinging-loop mechanics. In the last version I thought you *didn't* want players to be able to loop, it's much nicer feeling now!

Awesome! Glad you like it. I think my muscle memory was SO strong that I just didn't realize how bad the old swinging system (force is always applied horizontally) was for new players. If I have to pick between making it more accessible and making it harder, I want to pick the former. I want to grapple ALL the people who like rope swinging

I can't shorten the rope. I tried left click for rope and a mouse button, the space bar and A for jump and couldn't shorten. Tried on platforms, the Tug ziplines and pink walls.

You probably still have some old settings file that doesn't contain the proper new key bindings. If you go to the options menu, you'll probably see that the rope shorten button is unassigned... I hope *fingers crossed*

Menu annoyances: Having to click "Go" in the bottom instead of using movement keys and rope button (left click) or a jump button to select next level.

You can simply click a second time on the already selected level to start it. Or did you expect something else?

Having to exit planet to change controls (would be nice to do mid-level)

True, that'd be nice! Put it on my neverending list of missing features 

[maxl]

Implemented the first version of online leaderboards for individual levels:


Still looks very bland (good monospaced fonts are hard to find), but people can start competing for times now

I also implemented a proper replay validation system: whenever a player beats a map, the game collected the player's input through the level and sends it to my server together with the time and other stuff. To validate a replay, I wrote a headless (i.e. non-graphical) console application that loads the inputs together with the level and with that simulates the playthrough. If the simulation doesn't finish or the time differs I know I either have a cheater... or a source of indeterminism in my code, which is currently the case unfortunately

To help track down these sources of indeterminism, the replay that is sent to the server currently also contains the player's positions throughout the level. I can compare that with the respective player positions  while running the replay simulation. Then I know the exact moment when the inconsistency starts and can start debugging that exact moment. Otherwise I wouldn't even know when the simulations starts to differ, only that it does.

If you're interested in helping me, just play the game (with the latest version) and let me collect your essence...ahem... data:
https://imake-games.itch.io/rifter
 

Thanks a lot!  

[io3 creations]

and let me collect your essence...ahem... data:

So that's what the kids call soul these days?


Today's Challenge:  Make your game deterministic! 
Interestingly, the latest post of Remnants of Naezith is exactly about that:  https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=50838.msg1337610#msg1337610

Would that be possible for your game?

[quantumpotato]

+1 for inputs only and fixed timestep - that's the simplest way to do replays.

Delta time step is still doable, just look carefully. You should literally be replaying inputs as if it was a controller, not using a special "reply game engine" if that makes sense.

I tried this with www.QuantumPilot.me but ran into a bug not in the replay system but transitioning between levels. I don't think that would be an issue for Rifter but it's worth checking at what point your timer starts for recording inputs (ie could it be before the player spawns?) and when you start receiving inputs vs when the game level is ready to run. GL!

[maxl]

Today's Challenge:  Make your game deterministic! 
Interestingly, the latest post of Remnants of Naezith is exactly about that:  https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=50838.msg1337610#msg1337610

Would that be possible for your game?

Yup! I've been talking to the RoN dev semi-regularly. I'm doing more or less the same thing as he is, but we have different specifics. His project is C++ and SFML, mine is Scala/Java/JVM and LibGDX. He uses homegrown physics code, I'm using Box2D. etc...

+1 for inputs only and fixed timestep - that's the simplest way to do replays.

Delta time step is still doable, just look carefully. You should literally be replaying inputs as if it was a controller, not using a special "reply game engine" if that makes sense.

Yeah, I got a logic loop with fixed 60 updates per second while the render loop interpolates to the monitor refresh rate (or higher with vsync off). Input calculations (like button presses and releases) are also updated as fast as possible to not lose inputs.

I don't believe a variable logic loop would work very well. You'd need to store update delta times within the replays and run the simulation/replays exactly like that. Which in turn has all sorts of caveats. Physics libraries and its integrators don't like variable updates either and tend to behave uncontrollably in such cases...

All in all: fix your timestep, dammit! :D

[maxl]

Yes! I finally got some replays from players running on an AMD processor and it looks like it is fully consistent with the Intel processor replays  
Here's a glimpse of the data in my database in my stoneage-old phpmyadmin interface:



It doesn't look fancy, but it shows that the game runs fully deterministic across 64 bit AMD and Intel processors (the ones with a bunch of "null"s in osData are Mac replays). This means

• I only need to store player inputs on the server and still be able to reconstruct the full gameplay. Considering I do 60 logic ticks per second that saves me a bunch of space (input data is currently 5 bytes per tick, 8 booleans + 1 float)
• players can watch other player's replays regardless of their hardware without desyncing
• I can automate the whole replay validation and battle cheating very effectively. I'll probably still run the validator offline for some time simply by downloading, simulating and uploading the results again. Validation still takes 2-3 seconds per replay and takes a full CPU core in that time. This could get expensive quickly if I move it onto a server.

There still might be problems down the road like 32 bit systems behaving differently or some weird floating point-related calculation changes happening at runtime(!). I'll tackle those when/if they pop up. But I'm now confident I can solve them.  

[quantumpotato]

Nice touch on music fading when you go under water. Reminds me of the headphones in Solipskier.

[maxl]

Demo updated!

Looking at the replays from the last days I found that certain parts of the game don't work as I had intended. The biggest design fail on my part was making the colored rock formations hook-able. I've had this feature in since day one, it was in fact the first proper "thing" in the game and what I envisioned to be its central mechanic. While it took a much less prominent role in the last year or so, it was still a part of the game. But looking at the replays of other players, I see that it just doesn't work and IMO the reasons are:

• The regular hook points provide a semi-auto aim which helps new players tremendously. But then I introduce the colored rocks which they have to properly target and it's just hard having to fully aim without guidance. The irregular shapes of the rocks doesn't help that either.
• As the rocks themselves are solid/impassable, players only have a limited swing radius when hooking them. This became the most apparent at rock-overhanging sections. Players would have to repeatedly hook the solid rock above them while swinging forward. This is really hard because if you unhook to early you fall and if you unhook too late you simply bump into the ceiling or get a bad, short swing. Having played the game for 100s of hours, I have no problem doing that but others struggle a lot. I can't imagine this is fun for players, it certainly wasn't fun or cool to look at players trying it.
• Hooking and pulling yourself up at a rock edge requires a lot from the player. First you have to hook the ledge using LMB, then hold SPACE while you keep holding LMB to shorten the rope, then once you're there move left or right to actually get OVER the ledge.
• Colored rocks are the third distinct "thing" that is hookable. And while the other two are conceptually close enough to each other while still adding something unique, hookable colored rocks look and feel just completely different to the other two, making it hard for players to mentally group them together as "things I can hook".

So it pains me a bit because that's how it all started but the rope swinging on colored rock formations had to go. Funny enough, when redoing the level designs to account for this change, I realized I wasn't using colored rocks as a proper gameplay mechanic all that often to begin with. So even from a gameplay point of view, it didn't add much to the game.

Colored rocks are now just decorative and will stay in like that. I'm happy with the change for now. We'll see how it works out. If you wanna try it out yourself, head over to https://imake-games.itch.io/rifter and play the demo (Win+Mac).
 

[maxl]

I have a STEAM PAGE!!!!1

http://store.steampowered.com/app/625740/Rifter/

I'd  it if you'd wishlist! 

[quantumpotato]

How's the game coming?

[bombjack]

I just played the demo. I'm not good at the mouse control but the game look really nice and polished!
Amazing job done on this game. The 80's synth music reminded me of my young times.
This is a really great game filled with nostalgia and challenge.
Everything is great in this game, the art, the music, the difficulty ramp and the overall feel playing it. 

[maxl]

I just played the demo. I'm not good at the mouse control but the game look really nice and polished!
Amazing job done on this game. The 80's synth music reminded me of my young times.
This is a really great game filled with nostalgia and challenge.
Everything is great in this game, the art, the music, the difficulty ramp and the overall feel playing it. 

Thanks for playing and your feedback! Much appreciated!

The game dev progress is currently going very slowly because I had a bigger contract work gig. Hopefully it gets better soon. I wanna get back to Rifter ASAP. 

[quantumpotato]

I just played the demo. I'm not good at the mouse control but the game look really nice and polished!
Amazing job done on this game. The 80's synth music reminded me of my young times.
This is a really great game filled with nostalgia and challenge.
Everything is great in this game, the art, the music, the difficulty ramp and the overall feel playing it. 

Thanks for playing and your feedback! Much appreciated!

The game dev progress is currently going very slowly because I had a bigger contract work gig. Hopefully it gets better soon. I wanna get back to Rifter ASAP. 

Hey I know how that works 

You do programming for contract work?

[maxl]

I just played the demo. I'm not good at the mouse control but the game look really nice and polished!
Amazing job done on this game. The 80's synth music reminded me of my young times.
This is a really great game filled with nostalgia and challenge.
Everything is great in this game, the art, the music, the difficulty ramp and the overall feel playing it. 

Thanks for playing and your feedback! Much appreciated!

The game dev progress is currently going very slowly because I had a bigger contract work gig. Hopefully it gets better soon. I wanna get back to Rifter ASAP. 

Hey I know how that works 

You do programming for contract work?

Hello fellow contractor! Yeah, programming... but also quite a bit of other related stuff recently, like IT infrastructure across a bunch of topics. 

[fireboy]

Awesome, wonderful!
Looking forward to seeing your work on Steam. It's already on my wish list.

[maxl]

I will be at Gamescom next week!

Who else is going? If anybody wants to meet to talk about game development over a or   and play each other's game, just tell me!  
 
I'll also have a new demo ready, which tremendously improves the game on a lot of fronts. In order to get the game ready for presenting, I spend a lot of time working on controller support. The new control scheme is much more intuitive. I'm using the analog sticks for aiming AND movement and cut unnecessary button presses. Only the jump button is still in, the rest is controlled with the two analog sticks (or the D-Pad if you only got one). I myself still play a tiny bit better with mouse+keyboard, but that might just be me. It's a blast to play though!

Awesome, wonderful!
Looking forward to seeing your work on Steam. It's already on my wish list.

Thanks a lot!

[maxl]

Work on the game is picking up again, been fleshing out and fixating a lot of stuff, regarding gameplay, story, setting, etc.

Game's getting better and better! 

Last thing I worked on. Player actions generate actual "rifts" in the ground, which is 100% cooler!

https://twitter.com/IMakeGames_/status/918940823018004480

Fits the game's name too!

Also got a new demo out on itch.io: https://imake-games.itch.io/rifter Steam build is also ready, including steam-backed leaderboards. But that will stay pretty much private for now.

[quantumpotato]

Hello! Stil making? 

[maxl]

Hello! Stil making?  

Definitely! Thanks for asking! I'm hard at work and hope to be done with development until April. I just didn't find the time to update this blog regularly. The itch.io demo is already pretty outdated and I will pull it down soon.
The game now features more than 60 levels happening on three planets, lots of new enemy types, optional challenges, upgrades, 3 boss fights (two of which are still WIP though), new NPCs... just lots of stuff

If you or anyone else is interested in testing, just pm me and I'll get you your Steam key!