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[Torerane]

EX VITRO

A platformer/shooter with emphasis on non-linear exploration, akin to a ‘Metroid’ clone. Your goal is to explore the depths of the planet and uncover new weapons and defeat bosses. If you’ve ever played a metroid-type game before, you’ll know exactly what to expect.















http://torerane.deviantart.com/
http://exvitrogame.blogspot.com/

Category: Platformer/shooter

File Size: 58MB (Extremely bloated, I realize)

Requirements: Generally if you can play Game Maker games, it should work on your system. Depending on your memory, it may have longer loading times. Also, you need more than 64MB (possibly as much as 128MB, but I haven't confirmed this) of memory on your graphics card to get the special effects to work properly.

Download Links:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/ex-vitro
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/164451-ex-vitro

Controls documented in game. Read the README for hints and help with gameplay.

I guess I'm mainly looking for general feedback on things like atmosphere/graphics/gameplay, but especially bugs or glitches.

I am a one-person team, so press F1 to see the massive number of examples and tutorials I used to build the program. I’d really appreciate comments and constructive criticism!

[azeo]

The first piece of feedback I have for you is that the game seems a little bit too much like metroid. Most of the areas seemed to be structured the same way, most of the power ups I saw seemed to be the same, or just slight variations, and the character even looked the same. It's a nice looking game, and it plays fine, but the only thing I could think of while playing it is "why am I not playing metroid?".

I didn't play for too long, about twenty minutes, so maybe after that it gets a bit more original, but I lost interest in it before then. Maybe focus on making the open areas a bit more unique? And maybe a bit more excitement? Not necessarily tons of action or anything, but something to draw the player in.

The one other piece of feed back as to do with ducking. It just looks awkward, especially when you shimmy forward. Also, how you have to hold down to crawl forward, even when you're in a crawl-space.

But it looks good, and there's obviously been a ton of time put into it, especially apparent in the menus.

[bigGIANTcircles]

The first piece of feedback I have for you is that the game seems a little bit too much like metroid. Most of the areas seemed to be structured the same way, most of the power ups I saw seemed to be the same, or just slight variations, and the character even looked the same. It's a nice looking game, and it plays fine, but the only thing I could think of while playing it is "why am I not playing metroid?".

I didn't play for too long, about twenty minutes, so maybe after that it gets a bit more original, but I lost interest in it before then. Maybe focus on making the open areas a bit more unique? And maybe a bit more excitement? Not necessarily tons of action or anything, but something to draw the player in.

The one other piece of feed back as to do with ducking. It just looks awkward, especially when you shimmy forward. Also, how you have to hold down to crawl forward, even when you're in a crawl-space.

But it looks good, and there's obviously been a ton of time put into it, especially apparent in the menus.

That's more or less the same feelings I had.  Although I didn't really lose interest b/c I love the Metroid platforers.  The movement felt slightly awkward to me initially though, mostly b/c I more or less expected it to play exactly like Metroid considering the similarities. 

So I'm not sure if you'd want to change a lot around or not b/c of that.  It being so similar being interpreted as good or bad is really just going to depend on who's playing it I would think.

But the game looks pretty cool and I enjoyed it for the small bit I've played so far.

[Torerane]

Yeah I definitely regret keeping the gameplay nearly identical to the Metroid series. I was so enamoured with that type of game that I guess I crossed the boundary of homage to rip-off. If I were to start again, I would try and add some original mechanics just to somewhat differentiate it. I had already put a lot of effort into the game, so I figured I might as well release something, even if it was more or less a thievery of the Metroid style.

None of the animations are particularly well done, I'll admit that for sure. I'd like to think the character itself is somewhat of a placeholder, at least until I develop an idea for a more interesting character. But I'm not much of an artist, so that will be a work in progress for a while.

Thanks for the comments.

[fraxcell]

Pretty cool! I thought the environments and most of the enemies looked great, although I agree that the main character animations were a little off. I think a lot of the visual effects looked great, especially stuff like the water and the door opening animations. I wasn't a big fan of the explosions though.

One other thing; I think the typewriter style text on the options screen that appears when you highlight an option should appear much more quickly, so that you don't have to wait for it to fill out when you read it. And on a related note, I'm not sure why the data logs are turned off by default, I thought they added quite a bit to the game.

[Torerane]

Thanks for the compliments. I'm pretty happy with a lot of the environments and most of the effects, but there is still some serious work to be done. The main character in particular is far too generic and little more than a 'Master-Chief' clone, even on top of the wonky animations.

I think I disabled the datalogs by default because I was a little self-conscious about the quality of the writing, but most people seem to have liked it, so I think it will be on by default in future versions. I didn't want to bog people down in essays and such, but I suppose if it will help the game have a little more personality than I will keep them in. Thanks again.

[Saint]

Very nice! It was very close to Metroid, yeah, but I really didn't mind. One can have worse inspirations. I do have some feedback, though;

- The art was generally nice, but the backgrounds were often very noisy - especially the starry sky in the beginning. It was kind of hard to make out the important bits at time.

- The delay when firing was annoying as you could click some three or four times between each shot. In general I thought the enemies took a little too long to kill (especially those insect things that follow you around and caused continuos damage once they get you)

- The platforming provided some interesting puzzles but at a couple of places it seemed needlessly hard - the controls and movement was a bit too jittery and imprecise to allow it. In general (and this includes the last point) I felt that the game stopped your progress a bit too much which is not something you want in an exploration game.

... And some nitpicks..

- If you're ducking, crawling through a low area and then release 's', you stop. As long as you're in the vent, I think holding the crouch key shouldn't matter.

- In the very beginning, rocks covered the exits of the path you had to take and it was kind of confusing.

- Add an ingame option to play the game in windowed mode.

- If you fall off a platform instead of jumping, you cannot double-jump - this made a couple of places harder than they needed to be.

- Not sure if you can change this in GM, but when the mouse moves outside of view the cursor will remain at the edge but the actual mouse position is someplace else, this was a bit annoying.

All in all though, a nice game.

[Torerane]

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts. I've been the only one playing it for so long that I guess I missed a lot of obvious problems.

- The art was generally nice, but the backgrounds were often very noisy - especially the starry sky in the beginning. It was kind of hard to make out the important bits at time.

Hmm I guess I was going for a big awe-inspiring sky, but perhaps I went a bit too far. Was that the main problem area, or were there other places? I didn't notice many of the other ones being too distracting, but I guess I've been looking at it for so long I've blocked them out. Maybe the rooms with the big glass windows?

- The delay when firing was annoying as you could click some three or four times between each shot. In general I thought the enemies took a little too long to kill (especially those insect things that follow you around and caused continuos damage once they get you)

Was it the primary beam that you felt was too slow, or the EMP? Because I plan to have upgrades that reduce the time between shots, so maybe I'll introduce that earlier. Also, I'll be adding upgrades that increase the damage for all of the weapons, but maybe I should tweak the variables as well. Yeah I guess the bugs are more annoying than they should be!

- The platforming provided some interesting puzzles but at a couple of places it seemed needlessly hard - the controls and movement was a bit too jittery and imprecise to allow it. In general (and this includes the last point) I felt that the game stopped your progress a bit too much which is not something you want in an exploration game.

Yeah I think this is mostly because I've been so accustomed to the controls that it's become second nature to me, but would be tricky for first time players. My bad. So when you say it stopped your progress, you mean it was too difficult? Or unclear where to go?

... And some nitpicks..

- If you're ducking, crawling through a low area and then release 's', you stop. As long as you're in the vent, I think holding the crouch key shouldn't matter.

Yeah this was a dumb oversight on my part, so I've gone into the code and added this function.

- In the very beginning, rocks covered the exits of the path you had to take and it was kind of confusing.

Ok, I'll look into adding some better indicators on where to go.

- Add an ingame option to play the game in windowed mode.

Should be fairly easy to do.

- If you fall off a platform instead of jumping, you cannot double-jump - this made a couple of places harder than they needed to be.

Yet another dumb oversight on my part. I've added this function as well.

- Not sure if you can change this in GM, but when the mouse moves outside of view the cursor will remain at the edge but the actual mouse position is someplace else, this was a bit annoying.

Yeah this might be a limitation of the engine, but I'll look into it more closely. It bothered me at first, but I guess I just ignored it. Hopefully adding a windowed mode will alleviate this issue.

All in all though, a nice game.

Thanks for playing, and thanks for the feedback!

[Terrorbuns]

Yeah, everyone else pretty much pointed out my nitpicks! Except one, I actually don't like the mouse controls and would prefer to control with the keyboard fully, but it's fine really. Also the player sprite needs to be redone. The animation is just, yeah. I can't really say anything nice about it x: I suggest just going back into the story and whatever the character is supposed to be (I didn't get far enough to find out) and work on a new design. Or get a better animation? I dunno. Also the rotating arm bugs me but that's just my annoyance with mouse aim

I really enjoyed the environments though. What you have is pretty good so far! (I suggest weakening the first boss a bit, it took forever to kill and was hard to hit :u) I personally did not mind the starry background of the first area! I think it is rather nice! (Also the desert night sky generally looks like that but the stars would be smaller )

[Saint]

Hmm I guess I was going for a big awe-inspiring sky, but perhaps I went a bit too far. Was that the main problem area, or were there other places? I didn't notice many of the other ones being too distracting, but I guess I've been looking at it for so long I've blocked them out. Maybe the rooms with the big glass windows?

This was the main problem area, yes... There were some other small things (the health pickups could be hard to spot when the background was the same tint of green) but nothing really big. Overall I'd just say think about how you want important objects to stand out from the background.

Was it the primary beam that you felt was too slow, or the EMP? Because I plan to have upgrades that reduce the time between shots, so maybe I'll introduce that earlier. Also, I'll be adding upgrades that increase the damage for all of the weapons, but maybe I should tweak the variables as well. Yeah I guess the bugs are more annoying than they should be!

Both, actually. I think it's mostly a psychological thing; it feels like the game is holding you back if you can click much faster than it allows you to shoot. But maybe it's just me, I'd suggest trying out bullets dishing out half the damage at twice the speed and trying it on a few people to see what they think.

Yeah I think this is mostly because I've been so accustomed to the controls that it's become second nature to me, but would be tricky for first time players. My bad. So when you say it stopped your progress, you mean it was too difficult? Or unclear where to go?

It's not that bad, but the character moves quickly and the ground is fairly uneven and hard to read compared to low-res games where moving in pixel increments is a possibility so I think you need to be a bit more lenient on the precision jumping. Or just avoid places where you have a long sequence of tricky jumps and missing one will cause you to have to redo all of them. It is really your choice of what kind of challenges you want...

[Torerane]

Yeah, everyone else pretty much pointed out my nitpicks! Except one, I actually don't like the mouse controls and would prefer to control with the keyboard fully, but it's fine really. Also the player sprite needs to be redone. The animation is just, yeah. I can't really say anything nice about it x: I suggest just going back into the story and whatever the character is supposed to be (I didn't get far enough to find out) and work on a new design. Or get a better animation? I dunno. Also the rotating arm bugs me but that's just my annoyance with mouse aim

I really enjoyed the environments though. What you have is pretty good so far! (I suggest weakening the first boss a bit, it took forever to kill and was hard to hit :u) I personally did not mind the starry background of the first area! I think it is rather nice! (Also the desert night sky generally looks like that but the stars would be smaller )

Aww don't be too harsh on the little guy! It's not his fault he was made by an amateur! Haha. But there are several major roadblocks ahead of me:

First is that I'm not an artist/animator/modeller in any sense, so unless I take classes I'm not sure if it will ever be all that great. I could hire someone, but that would require money I don't have at the moment!

The other issue is that the engine will need major overhauls to the code to really make it smooth, ie by adding transitional animations (falling to landing, standing to ducking, etc.). This is beyond my abilities at the moment, but I'll get in touch with the original author of the engine and see if he has suggestions.

But I think having a keyboard-only control scheme is within my abilities (hopefully), and it's definitely something I plan to have.

Yeah the environments are definitely a lot nicer to look at, and I enjoy making them a lot more.

Thanks for the comments!

[Fyren]

So, I got the second weapon, opened the map, then hit escape to close it.  Which, of course, closed the entire game and it won't let me continue.

Besides that, the map screen itself should draw instantly instead with the slow animation.  Most of the time I spent looking at it was waiting to see what I wanted to see.  The map should also show door colors.

You need to allow changing the keys.  I can't hold space, D, and S at the same time on my keyboard, making the little crouching maze puzzle a huge hassle.  (And in general, I use ESDF to move in games and would prefer up to be jump in a platformer.)

Regarding movement, I would suggest you get rid of momentum completely so that pressing left/right immediately changes your direction.  This felt pretty annoying to me while in the air.  Walking up slopes also slowed you down, which was irritating, even though I could just jump.

Earlyish on there was a room with a yellow door in the upper right with a missile expansion in front of it.  It's possible to make the jump up to the door to get it, but the ledge you jump from is small.  When you walk off a ledge you kind of get propelled forward, even if you crouch and walk.  This made it annoying to figure out where the ledge actually ended.

I agree with the comments about rate of fire and using the mouse at all.  While the mouse control isn't a bad idea, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of level/enemy design to particularly take advantage of it, so it feels like pure keyboard control with 8-way shots would be fine.

[Terrorbuns]

Aww don't be too harsh on the little guy! It's not his fault he was made by an amateur! Haha. But there are several major roadblocks ahead of me:

First is that I'm not an artist/animator/modeller in any sense, so unless I take classes I'm not sure if it will ever be all that great. I could hire someone, but that would require money I don't have at the moment!

The other issue is that the engine will need major overhauls to the code to really make it smooth, ie by adding transitional animations (falling to landing, standing to ducking, etc.). This is beyond my abilities at the moment, but I'll get in touch with the original author of the engine and see if he has suggestions.

But I think having a keyboard-only control scheme is within my abilities (hopefully), and it's definitely something I plan to have.

Yeah the environments are definitely a lot nicer to look at, and I enjoy making them a lot more.

Thanks for the comments!

Didn't mean to sound harsh! D: He (she? dohohohoho) just looks rather awkward. No need to worry about smooth animation, you should focus on getting good base sprites first, and work from there (for example, the idle animation just bugs me. :u) But like I said, the environments look fabulous so don't be too hard on yourself! (Also chances are you can probably find someone willing to do some graphics for you for free around here! I'd do it myself but I am not that good hurdur)

You got an interesting thing going here, and I am excited to see more!

[baconman]

 

Code:

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object oLightingEffect:

Trying to use non-existing surface.

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object oLightingEffect:

Trying to use non-existing surface.

 '

 
__________

Checking out some assets, all the animation needs is a bit of line-of-action tweaking. And the crouch/movement could be as easy as checking for a collision one tile above the player: If you press left/right and there's a collision there, do the crawl motion instead of the walking.

And I can see how the controls are supposed to work, pinky on shift, thumb on space and all... but the mouse aiming! X$ So many cool games plagued by MOUSE AIMING! (I use a netbook, and netbooks don't do "movement keys + cursor moving," it's usually one or the other.)

[Torerane]

So, I got the second weapon, opened the map, then hit escape to close it.  Which, of course, closed the entire game and it won't let me continue.

I've added a confirmation screen when you press escape so that shouldn't happen any more.

Besides that, the map screen itself should draw instantly instead with the slow animation.  Most of the time I spent looking at it was waiting to see what I wanted to see.  The map should also show door colors.

Yeah the problem with this is that the map is drawn dynamically each time it loads (from an array), and I wasn't the original author of the map system itself. I can probably minimize the loading, but there will always be some delay. Yeah I admit that adding door colors would be very helpful, but again, it isn't my programming so it might be somewhat challenging to integrate. What I'd really like is a note-adding feature, so people can put their own comments onto the map.

You need to allow changing the keys.  I can't hold space, D, and S at the same time on my keyboard, making the little crouching maze puzzle a huge hassle.  (And in general, I use ESDF to move in games and would prefer up to be jump in a platformer.)

Yeah I'm still working on controls, but I've added an auto-crouch so hopefully your fingers will get somewhat of a rest in future versions. Pressing up to jump is a good idea as well.

To be honest I'm pretty happy with the physics of the game, so I'm not sure how much I'll change in regards to momentum/friction, etc. But if I continue to hear complaints about it I'll definitely change it. There will also be new items in the game which I hope alleviate some of the issues, such as higher jumping/quick dashes etc.

Didn't mean to sound harsh! D: He (she? dohohohoho) just looks rather awkward. No need to worry about smooth animation, you should focus on getting good base sprites first, and work from there (for example, the idle animation just bugs me. :u) But like I said, the environments look fabulous so don't be too hard on yourself! (Also chances are you can probably find someone willing to do some graphics for you for free around here! I'd do it myself but I am not that good hurdur)

You got an interesting thing going here, and I am excited to see more!

Thanks for the support! I think I will probably end up looking for someone who can redo the character entirely, but that will have to wait for future builds.

Checking out some assets, all the animation needs is a bit of line-of-action tweaking. And the crouch/movement could be as easy as checking for a collision one tile above the player: If you press left/right and there's a collision there, do the crawl motion instead of the walking.

And I can see how the controls are supposed to work, pinky on shift, thumb on space and all... but the mouse aiming! X$ So many cool games plagued by MOUSE AIMING! (I use a netbook, and netbooks don't do "movement keys + cursor moving," it's usually one or the other.)

If that error message popped up as soon as you started, it means you need to disable surfaces in the option menu (or use a computer with more video memory, at least 128MB I believe). If it popped up elsewhere, let me know where and I'll get back to you on that.

Regarding the animation, some of the test sprites I did were extremely exaggerated, and due to the way the character is programmed, looked very 'jumpy' (eg, arms and legs flailing about one second, arms and legs closely tucked the next). Ideally, I should have 'transitional' sprites when going from standing to running, falling to landing, etc, which I think would improve the hell out of the character. Sadly, that sort of thing is beyond my abilities as a programmer.

Aw I kind of like the mouse+keyboard controls, so I wouldn't call them a 'plague'! Haha. But I guess I never considered laptops/netbooks without mouse support.. I guess it just comes from my old FPS days! I hope to get some keyboard-only controls implemented eventually.

Thanks for the feedback all!

[Theon]

Wow.
I haven't tried the demo yet, but the video looks very impressive!

[ithamore]

At the beginning of the story there shouldn't be a back button, and the end shouldn't have a forward button.

I'll have more after I get into the game.