Health bars are good.
Feedback to the player is usually a good thing. A small bar on top of his head when you hit him (and not all the time) could work.
I think you just have to tone down on the flamethrower damage.
For now I've got his face art and a healthbar like the players at the bottom, but I kinda like your idea. I'll mess around with it later.
Flamer damage is now 70% of what it used to be.
Alright here are a couple of comments...
First, please change teh level switiching button something else than space bar. I know it's a debug feature but don't assign it to a button that can be easily pressed by mistake. I suggest mapping it on the functions buttons (F1, f2 f3...)
Second, I think you should give a bit more control on the jump height and less on the jump lenght. Right now, the jumps are of a fixed height and the player can completly control the lenght. I believe I've posted something about that before. Anyway, her's an image that will help illustrate what I mean:
A jump has a height and a lenght. A jump as a minimum and maximum height, influenced by the walking speed. The height is based on how long the player holds down the button. This means that, on a ButtownUp event or when the character reaches the max height, the falling routine should start. Tapping the button will result in a jump that will reach the minimum height (unaffected by speed)
A jump also has a lenght. This lenght is heavily linked to the walking speed. Once the player jumps, the lenght of the jump is fixed. Well almost. The player can affect it a bit by holding a direction. If the direction is the opposite of the jump direction, it will reduce the jumping lenght. If it's in the same direction, the jumping lenght will be slightly increased. If applied to this game, you wouldn't need to check for the height of the jumps affected by the speed since the character's speed is constant. Still, the height and lenght control could be enhanced
Speaking of controls, they felt a bit unresponsive. Specialy the jump button. Many times I have fell in a pool of "something" when the character didn't jump while walking. In an action game, the priority in terms of input managing should be the attack button first, then the jumping button and finaly the arrows. Why? Because it's better for the player to be able to attack before he get's attacked and it's better for the player to jump over pits instead of falling into them. Moving can dodge bullets, true, but most bullets travel on the x axis while the jump movement travels on the Y axis.
On another topic, I would change the color of the health bar to another color than red since it's the color usualy associated with pain or bad stuff. Doesn't have to be green but I think that red is not the best fitting color choice in this context.
Can we switch weapons? I got this upgrade gun but I want to keep it for later. Is there a way to switch back to my old gun?
I'd personaly try to change the color of the exploding barrels so they don't look too much like they are part of the ground. Their color, some sort of grey-ish brown, feels very similar to the color scheme used for the ground (brown, green and light grey-ish brown). Perhaps they could be a shade of yellow or orange, which would fit with the general colors but help to make them standout a bit more...
And yes, the firethrower dude is unfair. A bit less health is a good start but I'd also lower his damage power so he doens't kill us almost instantly with his 3-missiles attack or only a couple or 2 or 3 firethrower attacks.. His fire attacks can also go through the ground so I'd remove that as well (I got killed by his fire attack when I was next to the health pack).
I really like the level where you have to raise the "something" level to continue. Really a nice touch.
Well, good job! Keep it up!
Space bar fixed.
Already added variable jumping. Not sure if I'll keep it though...
Walking speed won't change jumping height, since it doesn't use friction and it's no platformer. You want absolute control.
About the unresponsive controls: That's probably because it runs at 30fps and has such a small resolution. The player moves 1 pixel per frame, so it's easy to miss. You gamers are just spoiled with the 60+ fps nowadays.
I like the healthbar the way it is.
No weapon switching, I want to keep it simple and limited. You can still use the melee attack though if you want to save ammo.
Not sure about barrels yet.
Flamer damage reduced, and it will stay able to go trough walls, sorry.
Thanks for the guertsy critisism! Very useful.
Developer
