next »

[ortoslon]

summary of what i told droqen in irc and earlier by email:

healthbar is even more annoyingly distracting than before (shaking added to blinking and changing length). droqen has suggested an perk for some indication, i think that interface perks are evil

melee is still clumsy

counting squares to determine safe fall distance is still awkward

new rate of fire of horizontally shooting enemies is ridiculous

new suggestions:

infinite stomp with a restriction: you can't stomp the same enemy twice in one jump safely. as long as you keep bouncing from one enemy to another, you're safe and dealing damage

stars could get stuck in walls and remain there for several seconds so you could collect them back (a la shurikens in house of dead ninjas (btw droqen, play it, you might get more ideas from it))

stars could wrap too

downwards star throw could make you jump mid-air (double/triple/etc. jump as long as you have stars)

[droqen]

healthbar is even more annoyingly distracting than before (shaking added to blinking and changing length). droqen has suggested an perk for some indication, i think that interface perks are evil

proximity is misleading. health display won't change ever o:

edit ::

The new ability tree comes in the form of a 'circle' although it still fills in from bottom to top.
(row sizes are 3/5/5/5/3 and are organized in an attractive manner)

The old 'magnet' (attracts bubbles) ability has been split into two tiers. The first will be a slightly weaker version, and the second will be a more powerful version (which also synergizes with the 'star recycle' ability).

50% of regular abilities will be inaccessible before purchasing the previously-less-useful Tier Up ability. Now, it is necessary to purchase it to access the top half of abilities but hopefully that point will feel like a point well, and tactically, spent. If it's bought too early, it can weaken you in the early game -- you'll be an ability short. Too late, and you'll need to wait for the upper tiers to unlock at a slower rate, thereby weakening your mid-late-ish-game power.

Then, of course, there's the magical and glowing Super Tier Up ability (names not final at all) which will unlock all four Super Abilities of which you will, currently, only be able to acquire one but I'll see about allowing at least one more to be bought after some time.

LEFT COLUMN: Three abilities about vertical movement. The super ability is Double Jump.
COLUMN 2: Five abilities about punching and horizontal movement. The super ability is Undecided?
COLUMN 3: Star^, Tier^, and three passive & defensive abilities. The super ability is Super Tier^ (arguably not so super)
COLUMN 4: Pretty much every single 'traditional' star ability. The super ability is Infinite Stock.
RIGHT COLUMN: Three abilities related to floaty pickups. The super ability is Heart Shield.

[mokesmoe]

For making more super abilities available, have super tier up stay available, but cost a bunch of points to use again, or maybe just make them available after getting every other power.

Or maybe you can buy as many super powers as you like, but you can only use one at a time
No, that would just be awkward.

[droqen]

Same but different?

New build so soon; I promise >_< (This is so much worse than 'just one more turn' games)

It will only allow you to purchase one of the super abilities for now, whilst I work on a way to allow for crazy people to buy more.

edit ::

There are now 26 abilities. Aside from the repurposed tier up ability, I didn't remove any old abilities (although they have been rearranged somewhat).

New abilities are...

heartshield supertierup airpulse staragility starcycle magnet+

Also, in terms of the base character... I have modified starting conditions slightly. You might notice. Anyway, I'm definitely definitely uploading a build today (i.e. in the next 12 hours).

edit * 2 ::

healthbar

:3

melee is still clumsy

Is this purely the punch, or all melee attacks? (i.e. include stomp, leap)
In either case, stars suffer from an ammunition limitation and in general cost more points to get up to their full potential.
Melee is going to be clumsy, because you use it to attack opponents who are very near to you and some opponents do their damndest to stay away out of that danger zone.

counting squares to determine safe fall distance is still awkward

Yup. I don't personally find it too bad, but I don't think this will change.
I tried a meter out a long time ago and I didn't like it :x

(and not because it was done badly -- rather, because it worked well enough that I didn't enjoy things quite as much)

Granted, it might be even worse with Knees (more squares to be counted) but oh well D:<

new rate of fire of horizontally shooting enemies is ridiculous

Well okay. I figure they're probably a pretty weak enemy otherwise (horizontal attacks aren't quite as scary or screen-spanning as vertical ones) but I may tone it down -- especially considering how difficult they can be to hit sometimes, those bastards.

infinite stomp with a restriction: you can't stomp the same enemy twice in one jump safely. as long as you keep bouncing from one enemy to another, you're safe and dealing damage

Will play with this for stomp. Current version will stay the same.
'New' version I upload today will stay the same.

stars could get stuck in walls and remain there for several seconds so you could collect them back (a la shurikens in house of dead ninjas (btw droqen, play it, you might get more ideas from it))

New ability starcycle does something vaguely like this.
I played it on your recommendation (found the sword way more annoying than p0's punch T_T also the ads made me not really want to go back to try again now hm)

stars could wrap too

downwards star throw could make you jump mid-air (double/triple/etc. jump as long as you have stars)

Very likely not keeping wrap, unless someone thinks it's really, really valuable and interesting and provides a good argument for its survival.

Multi-jump at cost of stars would kinda devalue double jump, which is now one of the super tier abilities (and for good reason, I think).

Will keep it in mind, though. Just in case.

[mokesmoe]

You could have an ability that lets stars (and punches too?) collect bubbles.

Also, who counts squares? Real men just glance at a fall and can tell.

[ortoslon]

healthbar

:3

:|

melee is still clumsy

Is this purely the punch, or all melee attacks? (i.e. include stomp, leap)

itty bitty punches and (less so) one-stomp-pre-jump

stars could get stuck in walls and remain there for several seconds so you could collect them back (a la shurikens in house of dead ninjas (btw droqen, play it, you might get more ideas from it))

New ability starcycle does something vaguely like this.
I played it on your recommendation (found the sword way more annoying than p0's punch T_T also the ads made me not really want to go back to try again now hm)

chrome adblock cuts the ads

stars could wrap too

downwards star throw could make you jump mid-air (double/triple/etc. jump as long as you have stars)

Very likely not keeping wrap, unless someone thinks it's really, really valuable and interesting and provides a good argument for its survival.

i think wrap isn't valuable or interesting

Also, who counts squares? Real men just glance at a fall and can tell.

i do. after >10 hours total of playing p0, i still can't tell a safe fall at a glance.

[droqen]

aw hell yeah
are you ready
because p0 flash version
zero point smallnumber
is out.

don't play it with music.
it don't work yet

[mokesmoe]

I played it once and can't load the page again.

[ortoslon]

this bugged me in the old p0 and still is in the new p0:



if i stand in the corner of the top-right square (as pictured) and an enemy (for example, the flying enemy with a polygonal-chain trajectory) flies into the top-right corner of the bottom-left square, i will get hurt. this is unacceptable because these squares don't intersect. please adjust hitboxes (btw you might need different hitboxes for stomping)

[droqen]

mokesmoe: Oh dear. Does an empty blue screen show up?

ortoslon: Fine, fine, I'll fix it ;_;

[mokesmoe]

No, a dropbox error message shows up, it works again now, so I assume it's their fault.

[droqen]

Okay, cool :3

ortoslon: It's fixed (but not in the uploaded version). Also, I could alter this but I think I'll leave it -- enemies will no longer hurt you as you skim juuust over their heads. Might upload another new version tonight, dunno. Hoping to get music fully awesome.

Oh, and as usual, if you've mucked around enough to have an opinion:
How are the new enemies? The new abilities? The new ability tree split right in the middle?

[mokesmoe]

I like star-cycle, and don't mind faster shooting being a powerup.
I haven't gotten past 3 abilitys, and therefore haven't used any other new powers.
I like the bomb-guy, but he seems a bit to good at attacking you with with fast movement and erratic pattern.

I thought of a super ability, although it doesn't fit in your tree. It makes the screen scroll faster when your near the bottom, and slower near the top, making it harder to die off-screen in either direction.
You should add multiplayer.

You could add that only exp power as a bonus mode. Maybe have levelups not give hearts so it's actually harder early on?

[Curseman]

I liked the thing that explodes into a bunch of spider creatures.

How come escape is unpause instead of the space bar?

[droqen]

1. Thanks for the feedback (everyone present and past!) :3

How come escape is unpause instead of the space bar?

In the past, people used to always always press space or enter to buy stuff, when that exited the pause menu -- and often they'd think that meant they bought the thing they wanted to buy, leading to confusion ):

So I figure Space/Enter to get into the menu is fine, but ESC to get out (it will be clearly indicated, of course) will ensure that everyone understands what's really going on.

~~~

bomb-guy: Yeah, he's pretty nimble, isn't he? And not so easy to dodge once you freak him out. I'm thinking of making them try to run away once triggered, but that makes their explosion a bit harder to use usefully (then again it's pretty tough to do so anyway) and it doesn't make much sense. At least the explosion doesn't hurt you though, like I considered originally ;3

screen scroll: two subtle steps ahead of ya already and in mind, ahead of ya here too

star-cycle: cool :3 I'm glad you don't mind the faster star shooting powerup, and I hope it turns out to be an actually useful ability... it's definitely built for synergy with infinite stars.

explodes: I have one word for you: Metronome.

[mokesmoe]

I don't like pressing esc because it's awkward to press esc and then come back to the z and x keys. It has hurt me quite a few times, as there is half a second where I can't do anything. Having to move my hand across the keyboard to do something I need to do regularly is very inconvenient.

EDIT: wait what? the explosion doesn't hurt you?

[droqen]

@ EDIT: hahahahaha yeah it only hurts blocks (not you, not enemies, not bubbles- nothin'). It can, however, mosey all up into your grill and hurt you that way.

I'll do my damndest to get some control customization in (:

[Curseman]

Yeah, that's my problem with the escape key.  Sometimes you need to unpause and then jump right away, but keeping fingers on Z and X while pushing escape is very awkward.

[mcc]

Wooo finally I get to play this.

I don't really know what's going on but it's kind of fun!

It seems to run a bit sluggish on my machine.

The repeatedly changing "chances for survival..." is distracting and makes it hard to pay attention to the counter. I guess that was in the original though?

I at one point saw a probability 0 before I'd actually died and when there were in fact ways out

[droqen]

So. The current version has some cheat codes embedded.

hold D + H = DeptH up (+100 m)

hold L + U = Level Up (also adds a preset bunch of abilities including the unique infinite knees and manystomp)

At best, this is a test for an alternate game mode.

Oh also there's working music at last, which is kinda cool. Let me know if it lags.