TIGSource Forums

JULES THE EXPLORER
You are Jules, a strapping young lass leading a crack team of spelunkers, ready to make history by being the first explorer to reach the center of the Earth. Way to go!

:gentleman:

VERNE THE WORTHLESS JERK
BUT WAIT. Verne, your dick of an ex-boyfriend, is leading his own crack team of spelunkers to the center of the Earth, too. WHO WILL MAKE IT INTO THE HISTORY BOOKS?


FEATURES

• Guns
• Treasure
• Shovels
• Dinosaurs
• Asshole ex-boyfriends

(http://electricpipedreams.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/credits.png) (http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1298870944)
PLAY IT NOW (http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1298870944)
(Hey, and for some reason the preloader lies about how fully loaded it is, and says it's at 0% even when it's at, say, 87%. Just hang out there, and don't worry. The game'll still start once it's done loading.)

CONTROLS

• MOVING: use WASD if you're JULES, use ARROWS if you SHOOT PEOPLE THROUGH THE HEART.
• JUMPING: press V if you're JULES, press J if you're a JERK.
• SHOOTING: press B if you're JULES, press K if you're a KNOW-IT-ALL. Hold onto your DOWN key at the same time to shoot down, or your UP key to shoot up -- keep them released to shoot in the direction you're facing.
• DIGGING: press N if you're JULES, press L if you're that LAME NO-GOODNIK. Hold onto your DOWN key at the same time to dig down, or your UP key to dig up -- keep them released to dig in the direction you're facing.

If any of the above controls don't work, it's probably because your keyboard can't handle certain keys being pressed at the same time. If you find that's the case, go to "Keyboard Settings" and remap the keys to something that works.

Oh yeah, and hit ESCAPE while in the game to head back to the title screen. In case your keys aren't working, and you don't want to finish the entire game that way or wait and reload it in your browser, you can use that to get to the Keyboard Settings screen.

BUT SERIOUSLY
Split-screen, and netplay via Player.IO and Kongregate logins if I can figure it out (ran out of time -- saved for post compo build). Flash+FlashPunk. You and Verne are starting from different locations (obv, you can't stand to be nearer than ten miles to him), so your explorations don't overlap.

Play sessions will be short-- tuned to between five and ten minutes.

CREDITS
Ive and I made it. Cheapshot made the soundtrack, accidentally -- I snagged it from Assemblee. Thanks cheapshot!

I do like this idea.

I concur.  :gentleman:

I do love myself some digging/exploration games. Good luck Reiss!

Love the idea and the names. Look forward to playing it.

Jules Verne is awesome, Jules and Verne sounds doubly so!

I think I found love...

Whoa, thanks for the love, guys. Inanimate -- I think I'm gonna steal the title you just gave it, "Jules and Verne" sounds more appealing than just "Race to the Center of the Earth."

Been working on a prototype, hope to have something to show soon. And Sos has generously agreed to help out with the music!

Far superior in every way. Change it! :)

Sweet new art courtesy of Ive:

JULES
(http://electricpipedreams.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/jules.gif)
VERNE
(http://electricpipedreams.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/verne.gif)

ANIMATION (Jules only)
Link (http://megaswf.com/serve/103854/)

Work on the prototype's been coming alright: so far, shooting, digging, a rarely-used jump, and a super-speed ability are all in, and it's running local splitscreen multiplayer. I'm thinking that the main resource will be the gold that you get for finding underground treasure: whichever player has the most will face the least thugs. Dealing with thugs takes time, and will lose you the race -- but as a countermeasure, killing thugs will also get you gold, meaning that it'll be hard to keep your opponent completely swamped with enemies for too long without them coming back and overtaking you in the cash count.

Ive's working on Verne's animations tonight, and once both players are done I'll start posting some early builds.

Why am I thinking Spelunky?

Becauuuuse you're supposed to! Sort of. Think hi-res Spelunky mashed up with Super Crate Box. It'll be good, I promise (I hope). Ive's been doing a great job, really love the new dinosaur designs.

AND THAT SAID.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

IT IS TIME TO UNVEIL

...A really, really early playable build, with more placeholder art than Courtney Love's got track marks. Local multiplayer only; WASD for Jules, arrows for Verne.
DIGGING: press N if you're JULES, press L if you're that LAME NO-GOODNIK. Hold your DOWN key to dig down, either way; letting go digs to the side.
SHOOTING: press B if you're JULES, press K if you're a KNOW-IT-ALL. Hold your DOWN key to shoot down, either way; letting go shoots to the side.
JUMPING: press V if you're JULES, press J if you're a JERK.


Play it here!
(http://electricpipedreams.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/ss1.jpg) (http://www.swfupload.com/view/152660.htm)

A couple things have changed from the initial design I posted:

• NUMBER ONE: no more thugs.  :'(, I know. But there wasn't enough time for players to react to them falling down from the top of the screen, so they had to go.
• NUMBER TWO: attack chains. This is what's replacing the paying-off-thugs mechanic: instead of having your way paved by removing enemies, you get your way paved by impressing the Queen's Armory and having them give you higher-damage bullets. Or... you will, but right now I still haven't programmed that in due to extreme laziness / extreme business / that's what I tell myself at least. But one way you impress them, YOU MAY NOTICE, is through attack chains, which I have programmed in. The longer the chain (right now, it'll be hard to get a chain longer than two, because dinos die after two hits), the more impressed they'll be. The player who impresses them the most will get better ammo, at the expense of the other player, who'll get whatever dregs the Armory's got left in the back room. Hopefully this'll be somewhat self-balancing -- if you do more damage, you'll kill enemies with fewer hits, meaning your attack chains will necessarily be shorter and less-impressive to the Armory; sort of a blue-shell mechanic without the awful frustration of getting hit with an actual blue shell in Mario Kart.
  

So, tell me what you think!

I played it by myself because the roommates are asleep.

First, after about 200 ft I realized it was waaaay faster just to dig right past the enemies. I basically just held down and spammed dug, though I did have to do some manervering to keep myself from getting stuck between rocks.

Are you going to implement health/damage? Because my ability to fall on enemies was key to my spam-dig strategy. If I took damage from touching enemies, I'd probably have to go slower.

Also, if you make it so that the enemies walk off the edges instead of turning around, that would also make it a lot harder to just dig past them without a second thought, since they may then fall on you.

I got to -8 feet before realizing you probably hadn't programmed an end. Are you going to add different kinds of enemies or obstacles as the player gets deeper into the earth?

EDIT: Just played a 2-player game with my friend. The Verne controls aren't working. Most of the time I hold down and dig, nothing happens. Both of us attested to this. Jules was working fine.

EDIT again: Okay, just tried Verne by myself. Controls were working fine. I don't know what happened. We tried playing 2 games, and it didn't work.

Okay so, it looks like when Jules is digging, Verne can't. That is my hypothesis after a very brief amount of testing.

Oof. That's unfortunately a problem Flash has with certain kinds of keyboards. It has to do with key rollover -- many keyboards (especially laptop keyboards) can only register a certain number of keys being pressed at the same time, and certain keys share their wiring. Apparently it's common for them to be pretty dodgy with the arrow keys, which would make sense considering that it's Verne's controls that are being overridden by Jules's. Every keyboard's different though, and there's no way to compensate for it, aside from allowing the player to remap all keys and find by trial and error which ones are able to interact without overriding all the other ones. Hopefully I'll get netplay working, and then you can play against people using only one set of controls.

Is anyone else having this problem? Anyone figured out any workarounds, aside from implementing a full key mapping system? I might end up doing that in the end, if it's the only way...

Re: health+damage -- yup, technically there are health bars in game now (the red bars at the side of the screen). When they run out, nothing happens, cause I haven't implemented respawns yet due to the game discarding basically everything offscreen, which means you'd lose even the parts that you previously dug out. Might not matter, maybe that's just the way the game will go -- gonna try to not have that, though, so that at least you can run through areas you've already dug out.

I'm hoping that the attack-chain system means eventually you'll really have to fight the enemies. Although them just falling through after you is a pretty good idea.


Yes! Ive's working on some new enemy types now, and when he sends them to me I'll start throwing them in. The level's gonna be divided into zones, where certain types of enemies only appear as you dig deeper and deeper into the earth.

I had the same issue with my entry. Solution? Full key mapping system. Doesn't take too long, maybe only 30 minutes. If that doesn't work for the player, then their only other solution is to find another keyboard or invest in a joystick.

Aw mannnnnnnnnn. Alright, guess that's the only way.

Some of this has already been shared but here's a few posts about my art side of the game.
Jules & Verne:
http://sirive.livejournal.com/267689.html (http://sirive.livejournal.com/267689.html)
Dino and Caveman:
http://sirive.livejournal.com/268496.html (http://sirive.livejournal.com/268496.html)

Today is also the birthday of the actual Jules Verne, so there you go.

JUUUUUUUUUULEEEEEEEEES VEEEEEEEEERNEEEEEEEEEE

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 :handshakeL::tearsofjoy::handshakeR:

Works nicely here, I didn't manage to get stuck which is a good thing :) The character art is really cute, although Verne's grimace sort of turns into a smile when he digs - I don't know if that's what you want, but it's quite cute.

I think some kind of graphical depth indicator between the two playfields would be a really good idea - the numbers don't generate enough tension since you can't see where you are in relation to your opponent easily.

Will there be any player interaction? Monsters you kill go and bother your opponent, that kind of thing?

Will

(http://electricpipedreams.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/credits.png)

We're not dead // neither is this. DONEZO: link city. (http://www.swfcabin.com/open/1298870944) Sorry for the SwfCabin link -- I know they're ultra-slow -- but nothing else could deal with the fact that the SWF is hella wide.

Re:the music -- after a couple of messages, Sos disappeared, so it's all from cheapshot's Assemblee Part One submissions. Thanks, cheapshot. And the sound effects are all in as3sfxr.

Ive and I both were pretty busy this past month, so a couple of things got cut. Namely, the whole "Queen's Armory" thing, and netplay via Player.IO. We're hoping to get to those with a post-compo build.

Hope you enjoy!

EDIT: Heyyyy and for some reason the preloader only has two states: 0% and fully-loaded. So just hang out there while it loads, and trust that it's more loaded than it claims. It'll still run once it's all done loading.

I played this solo.

Art was good, music seemed a bit unfitting.

Game was fun, even solo, but it seemed a bit long until you reach the end. Might get boring if one player is ahead, without any interaction between the players possible.

Still, I liked it quite a bit. Fun little game :)




Is it just me or do the checkpoints get spaced out more towards the end? Also, at first I tried to replenish my health by interacting with the doctor. Maybe Refill health when you reach a checkpoint? Right now, it's better to die right after a checkpoint than running on with low health, hoping to reach the next. Making it so that a doc refills your hp when you reach him would fix both my confusion and that weird strategy.
After realizing it's a checkpoint I still didn't know if you just need to get on a doc's level or if you need to touch him to activate the checkpoint, so I suggest putting in a HEAL SOUND and refilling HP if you reach a doc to fix all these issues :)

Nice graphics!

I played this alone, and during the digging I had increasing amounts of occasions where
A) A stone block turned to dirt when I dug there and disappeared
B) A dirt block turned out to be indestructible
C) A dirt block changed to a stone block, with similar results as in B.

In the end this prevented me from moving downwards. Also after the first few stages, I didn't get any monsters anymore, making the checkpoints obsolete.

I hope you keep working on this!

Re:bugs -- that's really weird. That literally has never happened to me, at any point in the development process, and Ive's never mentioned anything like that happening either. Has this happened to anyone else? Anyone know how to reproduce it? We are planning on continuing working on this, so hopefully that would be something I could get fixed...


Yeah, good point. The Queen's Armory thing would've been a good way to solve it, but the deadline hit us pretty hard... I've got an idea for a fear mechanic that could help post-competition builds with that, where if you kill bunches more enemies than your opponent, you'll "scare" the enemies into your opponent's excavation shaft. Hopefully a little self-balancing, because your opponent will then necessarily start killing more enemies than you and scare them right back.


Good point! I'll try to get that in -- it does right now make more sense to purposefully commit suicide if you're low on health and just passed a checkpoint than to keep soldiering on to the next one. By the way, the checkpoints actually appear approx. every 300 feet down -- but the enemies get tougher the deeper you go, so it takes more time and is more dangerous to move between checkpoints in the lower levels.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! Glad you guys are liking it, even in it's rough state.

Just played with my friend. Love the music and art! I got stuck on my way down though and couldn't progress so my friend ended up getting the furthest.

I didn't like that the characters couldn't fit down a single-tile space. It felt like I should have been able to. Also, maybe highlighting the tiles you would destroy with Dig might be a nice addition.. not sure.

Anyway, nice work! We had fun. :D

The title screen got a big reaction. "Ok. This one is my favorite," someone said when the title came up. However, we ran into some bugs and overall the gameplay left us disappointed.

We only played once and quickly found ourselves in an unwinnable situation. One of the players got stuck by evenly spaced rocks across the whole screen, and they couldn't proceed.

We also ran into similar problems as Hempuli:
Dirt turning into stone.
Stone turning into dirt.
Dirt appearing where there was nothing.
Dirt being indestructible.

A few things we found odd or against expectation:
You couldn't fit into a one-square wide slot.
You could dig out 3+ blocks at a time.
You could dig non-adjacent blocks.

Some minor animation issues you're probably aware of:
If you walk into a wall, the character starts twitching.
Walking animation and walking speed aren't synced, leading to the subtle "foot sliding" problem.

Other thoughts:
Monsters did not present a challenge. We just ran past monsters without trouble. Maybe the gun is unnecessary? Without the gun, I think UP becomes unused and could be converted to JUMP. That would reduce the controls to just movement+1. (I'm always trying to reduce the number of inputs for some reason ;D).

Respawning at the top of the screen after dying felt unsatisfying. "You mean I have fall through all the holes I just dug?" I'm trying to think of alternatives, but I can't come up with anything.

The background could be used as an indicator for how deep you are. Things could gradually get more dark and scary.

Unfortunately we didn't play long enough to get a feel for what the gameplay was supposed to be like, but I hope to see some more from you guys!

Play links seem to be broken. Am I missing something?

just got around to playing this, and I really enjoyed it.

Thanks for including my music. :D  :coffee: