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[Sparrow]

Amazing, love the graphics and mechanics.
I saw the posts about vertical levels and personally I don't really mind.
Look at Flappy Bird, an insanely linear horizontal game popular with a lot of people around the world.

Anyway whilst reading the posts something dawned onto me that might interest you:
Vertical Teleportation

It would work the same as normal teleporting only vertical, wrapping around the camera of course.

Code:

   o      = player
   :..    = teleportation
   x      = powerup/pickup/button
    ______________________     ______________________     ______________________     ______________________
   |                      |   |          :           |   |                      |   |                      |
   |                      |   |          :           |   |                      |   |                      |
   |                      |   |          :           |   |                      |   |                      |
   |                      |   |          :           |   |                      |   |                      |
   |   _______o___________|   |   _______:___________|   |   ___________________|   |   ___________________|
   |  |                   |   |  |                   |   |  |       o           |   |  |        ..........o|
   |  |               __x_|   |  |               __x_|   |  |       :       __x_|   |  |               __x_|
   |______________________|   |______________________|   |__________:___________|   |______________________|

Keep up the good work!

*Edit
NVM, I reread the whole thread (been lurking for long but forgot about most of the early posts) and saw that you guys tried to have 4 directional TP and that it broke gamedesign.

[Scott]

Yeah, this thread grew so fast I'm not sure where the posts are that started talking about left and right panning, but I definitely liked the pure feel of just up/down scrolling plus the screen-wrapped teleportation. I don't really see why the camera has to go 4 directions to be fun. Working off the previous post, it could even have some sections that are just up/down, and some that are just left/right. imho

[battlerager]

It's impossible to give accurate design judgement / advice from the sidelines. This armchair designing is getting a bit ridiculous, in my opinion.

To the dev(s): Watching people playing your game is the #1 source for accurate feedback. If you keep trying to wring more interactions out of few, simple mechanics and make it work, its more elegant than compromising the design. I'm just saying, I'd take all these design ideas with a grain of salt or two - not to not consider them, but to be careful.

Best of luck!

[Scott]

Exactly what I was trying to say (the simple mechanics part, specifically of the original design). I mean that's a big reason why most people love pixel art right? Limitations tend to bring about extraordinary creativity. Just my thoughts.

[Zack Bell]

Thank you all for the feedback. In all honesty, I think I could make something great no matter which avenue we decide to go down. It's just that one would play quite a but different from the other. One plays more like super meat boy and the other would be something closer to a Megaman or Mario (in terms of feel/pacing).

All of the player code is done now. Literally all of it. So I will mess with both variations today and throughout the weekend.

[Rat Casket]

ITT:

People that don't understand the binarity of the screen wrap teleport.

The discussion has little to do with the way the level scrolls and everything to do with it being a product of the main mechanic. A mechanic which shoehorns the stages, puzzles, challenges, obstacles, etc into a simple decision of if you should or should not screen wrap. Is there a wall with spikes on it? Yes? Screen wrap. Can I climb over this wall? No? Screen wrap.

To prevent the player from simply dashing to whatever wall they want to you have to make the wall insurmountable OR cover it in hazards. Which turns every obstacle a matter of teleporting to one of two possible safe locations over and over again. Everything is immediately obvious because it is the only possible solution to whatever the problem is.

You can spice this up by making the player hit a button to make new platforms appear but again its simply a matter of hitting the button by teleporting to the only possible safe position. Unless, say, this triggers some other event that the player has to escape somehow. However you have an instant teleport that gets you out of harms way. Even when not screen wrapping you instantly escape danger.

This makes the difficulty a matter of lining up the teleport and little else. Lining up the teleport shouldn't be difficult (most of the time) because it is the only thing the player can actually do. Making the teleport location ambiguous is just going to cause frustration. This also turns every difficult part of the stage into threading the needle, which as I just said, will only be frustrating (depending on the gravity speed and all that jazz). Either way you do not want the main challenge to be "where the fuck am I teleporting". This is easily solved by the charge up teleport because you pause for a moment, give yourself time to line up, and possibly rethink/re-position yourself to stick the landing. Hell you could even add a directional beam in this state showing the player exactly where they will go before they go there.

This is why Mario is good. This is why Super Meat Boy is good. You have precise control over your character at all times with no ambiguity as to where you will end up or what you are doing. Its an extension of yourself. You think it, you execute it, it happens. Anything that clouds that is simply bad design. Period.

And I guess on the argument of only tower stages its as Catguy said before. You can't fall down to the start of a Mario level. Losing progress by failing to make a jump and falling too far is abysmal. Which is why in Fez if you fall x distance you just die and respawn because reclimbing stuff is horrible.

TL;DR

Nobody actually cares about screen panning direction. We are talking about directional exploration to break up the monotony of all levels being the same thing.

Also for what its worth I think you can do a lot of cool stuff with the current mechanic and the setup of the game. You just can't stretch it into 40 stages and 150 missions without it being tedious and getting progressively worse.

@Battlerager

No its not. Its just difficult.

[Zack Bell]

Yeah, man. I agree with that. My argument has always just been "no, it's not bad". Whether or not it could actually be 40+ lengthy levels is a totally different argument. It probably would be repetitive.


This stuff is all bug-free now.

In other news, I'm doing camera code now.  

EDIT: Btw, background tiles? Pretty or distracting?

[Netsu]

Background tiles are great, but I would both fade them, tint them blue and keep the background tileset separate from the foreground, so there are no tiles that could be mistaken.

[Rat Casket]

you can make caves and shit with those. keep em.

[Zack Bell]

Cool. Thanks, guys. I'll probably ask Hunter to recolor the background tiles. I just used an overlay made from the darkest color in the tile palette.

Here's my first quick "I've always wanted this!" example.

[premonster]

My fist post on this topic is about up/down teleportation to break monotony. I still think it should be in the game. Just make the camera NOT follow the player when teleporting, both for sides and up/down. You always wrap the screen you are when you teleport, doesn't matter the size of the level.

Another important thing in a puzzle game is that it shouldn't be liable to brute force.

Super Time Force is an example of puzzle game that i've been waiting for so long and when it came out i played only once. Cause it was repetitive (specially with the rewind mechanic) and i solved everything with brute force (30 lifes and no puzzle that you have to do in a certain order with a certain character). I just had to amass an army and throw them at the enemies, over and over. Boring as fuck.

[Zack Bell]

4-directional teleport is no longer an issue now that teleporting can't be spammed (long-distance teleporting). I can test that as well.

[Rat Casket]

Besides, I have a trademark on 4 way teleporting right now.

[Zack Bell]

Besides, I have a trademark on 4 way teleporting right now.

And we all know where that rabbit hole ends.

[Zack Bell]

CAMERA. What the hell do I do with it?


IF we go for the charge-shot teleport and the other things discussed within the last few pages of devlogs, we still have the extreme movement issue caused by long-distance teleports. However, they would be less frequent. So...How should I handle the camera in these situations?

First, I slowed that camera down so it slowly pans across.


Then I said screw it, and made it instant. Like the teleport itself. This is how a teleport would FEEL in real life. I guess. In theory. Or something.


I thought the second would be stupid, but I don't actually dislike it. It makes sense. Thoughts?

[SafetySnail]

In that example I definitely like the instant snap-to camera  better but I think it will become a bit of a readability issue with any further distance than that. You're either going to have to be very careful with level design or incorporate some sort of max distance to the teleport effect.
It is nice to see this game expanding to the horizontal though, agree with others that straight up and down was going to get old pretty fast.

Another thing though, why does that particular block move down into the earth? Will terrain with this feature eventually have a different look to the rest of the ground or is it going to be a guess everytime?

[ink.inc]

do a decent lerp, not this linear nonsense

view_xview[0]=approach(view_xview[0],desviewX,abs(view_xview[0]-desviewX)/DUM)

where DUM is any number; the lower the DUM, the faster the lerp

[Zack Bell]

In that example I definitely like the instant snap-to camera  better but I think it will become a bit of a readability issue with any further distance than that. You're either going to have to be very careful with level design or incorporate some sort of max distance to the teleport effect.

Yeah, I'm not super sure. I like the instant more than I thought that I would. That's going to be about the max distance that you can teleport because you won't be able to teleport off screen. It would screenwrap if there's nothing in your direction.

It is nice to see this game expanding to the horizontal though, agree with others that straight up and down was going to get old pretty fast.

Thanks. I'm hoping that it works out.

Another thing though, why does that particular block move down into the earth? Will terrain with this feature eventually have a different look to the rest of the ground or is it going to be a guess everytime?

I'm honestly not sure. It depends what this design change does to the overall design of the game. I like the 1001 Spikes-ish "Just guess and remember", but it certainly depends on level length and everything else involved.

Answers/Comments in bold.^

do a decent lerp, not this linear nonsense

view_xview[0]=approach(view_xview[0],desviewX,abs(view_xview[0]-desviewX)/DUM)

where DUM is any number; the lower the DUM, the faster the lerp

I tried this also. I didn't really like anything faster than that slow linear value, so it would end up being linear until the camera got "close" anyway. I'll post that, too.

[Zack Bell]

Shit, spoke too soon. I tried a few more DUMs and found one that I don't hate. Thoughts?

[SafetySnail]

Yeah that looks great actually.