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[melos]

protip copy the assets folder that way the game has a development directory to save stuff to.


also add new maps into assets/world.map (in the develoment directory)so the game can load them again. kinda confusing oh well

[melos]

first let's play of the demo :D

[SuddenSight]

Do you mean the gray/purple flaoating block?

Yes. It is the block right underneath me in this image:


And then I died just as I reached the exit here:


I tried recreating it, and I'm not 100% certain of the steps to reproduce the error.  I have discovered that the exit pictured above does *not* typically load the next screen (normally you die instead). You can get through that entrance by reaching it from the 2nd screen first and going backwards (though you still cannot normally go forwards). I eventually was able to reproduce the error and get a screenshot by repeatedly clicking and pressing f (for fullscreen) as I died while standing in the above location. Then I was re-spawned with a screen that looked like:


If I die again, the respawn message goes away, but not if I simply change screens.

Also, I hope spinning makes it into the final game (I may have spent too much time on this lovely demo)!


And embarrassingly, though I have now spent at least 2 hours on this demo, my best speed run is a pitiful 1:37.31

Also, doors don't reset when you load the gauntlet room. I was able to get a much better time of 1:06.23 by running through the gauntlet more than once and taking advantage of the fact that I didn't need to go for any of the door buttons.

It occurs to me that you might be interested to know I am running the Mac version on 10.7.5, Intel HD4 integrated graphics.

[MallowyGoodness]

YOU FOUND THE PEE CUBE

[melos]

ooh, good call with the gauntlet not resetting. Normally they reset, but only after re-entering the gauntlet room after you've turned the gauntlet off (the tmier right now isnt' turning off until you go to a fire to save your game.)

There's probably some weird overlapping of dyig and room transitioning behaviors (isn't making games FUN) with that other thing, I'll take care of it some time. Thanks for letting me know!


The spinning is beause those things, floating items, usually have a spritesheet with a "spin" animation. When I don't set an ID for the items they just load the normal yellow square (pee cube) and throw that error. There aren't going to actually be floating items in the final game, it's a holdover from before we decided to get rid of that stuff!

[SuddenSight]

There aren't going to actually be floating items in the final game, it's a holdover from before we decided to get rid of that stuff!

Ah well, it makes a fun secret to find in the demo anyway!

[melos]

Yeah, we had discussed that extrinsic motivators feel too much like superficial fluff on top of what we are really interested in doing with the contrast of Nature and Gauntlet areas. It is slightly fun to have items to collect, but it conditions the player to be drawn to explore the Nature spaces for things that increase some numbers in the inventory, and I think that is a bit distracting from the game at hand...so! It may inevitably lead to the "BORING EMPTY AREAS, TOO MUCH TEXT" but maybe it will make people think about how they are manipulated by games. Hm.

I mean, I like Collecting Things as much as the next person but I don't usually feel great after doing a lot of it.

[rubna]

Yeah, I think I'd like not having collectibles everywhere. A lot of people (like me  ) will hunt down every last collectible there is to find out of pure OCD, and often that's just not fun.
Also, all of the open-world area's would have to be fully explored to find all the collectibles, and that takes away a lot of the openness and mystery of the level.
Lastly, I think the pacing of the game will be a lot better if you don't reward people for tediously exploring every corner of the world. And if they want to slow down and "sniff the flowers", they still can.

[MallowyGoodness]

are you going to include secrets though, which for the purpose of gameplay I guess would probably work like collectables, but without the game patting you on the head for it

I just want to see peecube and kurt's elk in the finished game

[melos]

Yeah, there will be secrets, probably. I want to try to minimize the amount that I condition the player to wanting to seek out every single thing, exhausting the game world as some sort of abstract checklist...doing this is hard. And adding secrets might add to that, even though secrets are fun. If I can figure out a way to add secrets that can emphasize themes of the game, then maybe. Hard to say!

[MallowyGoodness]

And then there are people like me who will do that anyway.

As much as it kind of disappoints me that the game will be without these little things to hunt for I really respect the decision to go so nonconformist, it's really neat.

[SuddenSight]

If I can figure out a way to add secrets that can emphasize themes of the game, then maybe.

Nyfflas (of Knytt fame) gave a nice talk on this very subject:




Long story short: don't tell the player there are secrets to find, so secrets can come as a nice surprise as opposed to seeing items appearing on a checklist.

From my own experience (as a player, not a dev) it is entirely possible to make aimless exploring fun without resorting to secrets. My favorite thing to do in Minecraft, for example, is just to walk in one direction for a really long time. Or in World of Warcraft I used to abuse the somewhat glitchy slope physics to climb up places you weren't really meant to get to. And, of course, I love the original Knytt as an exploration game. While the game did revolve around searching for items, the environments were a joy to move through and filled with fun little things, such as weird animals walking around or odd architecture and jumping puzzles.

I'm looking forward to seeing how you approach the issue.

[kittakaj]

We're now thinking of placing "Memories" throughout the world where you can go to various places (some secret and some not) and find icons that allow you to witness a scene that happened in that spot in the past. This would allow us to delve into some of the more interesting characters a little bit more. They would be just for the player, i.e. not affect Aliph's knowledge of the world.

So it would be like secrets but not a checklist. The checklist is your mind and how your perception of the characters is changed. (or the wiki. ha)

Also I'm pretty sure Kiri was in a dream I had last night which is bizarre because I have no idea what she looks like

[MallowyGoodness]

Anodyne Evangelist Kiri has invaded!

I like the memories idea, but I'm not sure that doesn't just still invoke the original worry of having players conditioned to check around, because if a player likes the game they're probably going to be interested in finding the lore.

At the same time though, it's one of those situations where one concept probably outweighs a conflicting one - I think everyone would enjoy additional lore in place of either true collectables or a non-conditioned experience.

[melos]

It's still conditioning to seek out the memory things, but, not having a checklist helps some from making it less of something thrown into for the sake of secrets. (Arguably all games are a form of conditioning, but there are different levels of how those conditionings can work)

I think that the memories idea justifies the secret placement: Nature areas are really about looking at the level design structure of the area, its aesthetics, the verbal communication given by the NPCs, and how those relate. in Even the Ocean, NPCs are a function that convert the widely-open-to-interpretation mechanics+aesthetics into a still open-to-interpretation, but more concrete form of text. Combined with the more "game-y" Gauntlet levels, and then "Even", I think those are a nice combination.

However NPCs as they usually exist only represent a small slice of time: The NPCs' present thoughts.

Memories are nice in letting you both see characters from who they were in the past, or characters that are not alive anymore, interpreting or experiencing something in a particular area as it was in years past - I'm sure we can all relate to how any sort of space in life has more meaning than just what we experience in it in the current frame of time (nostalgia for old homes, etc.). So I think by adding these memories we can tap into that a bit, and give players a richer framework in which to interpret the rest of the game.

[MallowyGoodness]

Yeah that sounds like a super neat idea I like it

[melos]

post 1000 get

[MallowyGoodness]

You made me check the thread for nothing now I'm forced to make "are you related to Hulk Hogan" jokes to punish you

or start calling you Sean Hoagie

[Fervir]

We're now thinking of placing "Memories" throughout the world where you can go to various places (some secret and some not) and find icons that allow you to witness a scene that happened in that spot in the past. This would allow us to delve into some of the more interesting characters a little bit more. They would be just for the player, i.e. not affect Aliph's knowledge of the world.

So it would be like secrets but not a checklist. The checklist is your mind and how your perception of the characters is changed. (or the wiki. ha)

Also I'm pretty sure Kiri was in a dream I had last night which is bizarre because I have no idea what she looks like

I think this would be really awesome.
It would make exploration more rewarding.
I hope you guys can come up with some great stories, going from memory to memory.

[AD1337]

I hope you guys can come up with some great stories, going from memory to memory.

Deep.

One can live by this phrase.