Yeah- the fall deaths are pretty terrible. I think the game would be better without them. Also, on many levels i ended up with extra pills when i reached the exit. (sometimes even like 3 extra pills!) It makes it feel like the level designers were not aware of the best way to get through the levels. If the extra pills are intentional, it would be cool to award a bonus for unused pills so it doesn't look like a mistake.

As mentioned above, you should just respawn after dying automagically. There is no good reason to make players click through the you are dead menu over and over and over.

I think that this is a good argument against auteur games, or more correctly against treating some games as inferior.

Wait? Huh? Isn't this arguing FOR auteur games? I listened to this talk awhile ago, so I may be mistaken, but wasn't the whole point that "this is why we have a million varieties of spaghetti sauce"? It seems like with auteur games, you would get many unique types of games - the larger the team is the more generic the games are going to end up. I think it just confirms that there is room for offbeat very precisely targeted games - exactly what auteurs tend to produce.

I do recall some point about how people actually liked chunky sauce, even though people were selling runny sauce in the stores. I'm not sure this works in a game sense? Maybe this is parallel to the rise of casual games? Where big companies thought people wanted more "hardcore" games, and what the majority of people want to play is non-aggressive casual games? (Majority of general population, not of the "gamer" crowd)

Mid September sounds awesome. I'm planning on making this my first jam! 

awesome... yeah my uncle said i could stay with him. so now it is just a matter of making time to make the trip.

Getting back to the original post, I think you are missing the "hidden content". Rogue-likes can ignore this for the most part, decidedly because of their low-tech approach to graphics.

Say you have a really fun game, and you decide to add fire as a new mechanic. It will be great. The water that is already in the game will put it out. It will light the oil that is already in the game on fire. You can burn wood too! You can cook the food in the game with it, or even light your enemies on fire... etc...

But let's even just take a look at ONE of those items: lighting dudes on fire. Ok, so now each enemy needs an "running around on fire" animation. Oh... for each direction. And a burned corpse graphic. They each need a sound clip screaming "Oh God! I'm on Fire!" They need some new behavior to a) avoid fire b) react to being lit on fire c) try to light you on fire. Now they might all need to store the nearest location of water, in case they get lit on fire. The list could keep going... and of course, this is for all 50 enemies in the game. (so far).

I'm not sure you are saving yourself work. Just shuffling it around. Agreed, inheritance can help you some here, but so many of the interactions need to be communicated visually. Just look at something like the Mantrap in Spelunky. It has eat animations for Spelunky Man, Damsel, Shopkeeper, Caveman, Tunnel Man (and probably more) Keep adding monsters and you keep needing to animate more and more of Mantrap. The genius of Rogue-likes is just to skip graphics entirely. Like telling a story instead of making a movie - much less time involved.

Looking pretty sexy  .  Keep up the good work! I'm excited to keep seeing more of Snapshot.

Also: the robot character is growing on me. I wasn't a big fan at first, but I just realized I didn't even think about that when I first saw this screen.

Cool Spot was a GREAT game. I was too young to be put off by product placement... it was really fun, and i remember thinking how great the art was. (I played it on Genesis). Didn't David Perry work on that game?

For anyone wondering about this still- I'm helping program on Spelunky XBLA right now, so Heat Line is on indefinite hiatus while I make sure I don't screw up Spelunky

Hey Arne-- thanks for the detailed feedback. I'm the guy doing all the graphics/shader programming etc on Spelunky XBLA...

A big problem with implementing the lighting over the painted art is that the art is already "lit" by Derek when he paints it. So by definition we are fudging the light pretty severely right from the get go. Much of the "metallic" highlights come from the existing lighter sections of the texture being brightened, but very dark pixels in that texture never becoming brighter. To completely avoid this, the art would need to be only surface color, with the normal map completely defining the texture of it. This really isn't practical for achieving the look we want though. Much of the problem occurs when a bomb is at full brightness exploding, which lasts only a few frames at most. That said though, I am trying to lessen the problem as much as I can.

Shadowed areas are just values of shadow and some colder temperature perhaps. Lit areas have both shadows and light, perhaps of a different temperature. If you just darken a lit area, it will not look like a shadowed area, since it has the wrong contrast and temperature. Also, I have the feeling that you probably wouldn't see any highlights in the shadows.

The temperature can already be altered between shadow and lit areas. We might just need to push the values more? The contrast thing for objects in shadow is something I can probably manage in the shader itself. As for the highlights that are already painted into the art though, there isn't a good way to eliminate them when the object falls into shadow without having a second "highlight free" version of every piece of artwork (which isn't trivial). 

My whole family is from Baltimore, so I may just have to head down for this. Sounds rad!

Uh... I watched that PLOK video, and it looks absolutely TERRIBLE. seriously. I mean.

Is the game actually fun to play? It looks, literally, like a cheesy old Klik gane.

Wait, no demo? I clicked here because the title said demo.. you dirty no good... 

I want this to be me: 

[PRO TIP:]

I also used overnight prints, and didn't run into any trouble. This is like my 6th or 7th time using them, and it has always been a breeze, for both flyers and business cards. But yeah-- I worked with printers a bunch at my old job, and it always sucked to get stuff back with some terrible mistake on it that they really should have caught.

That said, the card stock and printing is pretty great at Overnight Prints. I've gotten many compliments on all the stuff I have had them print.

Like my cards for GDC this year:



Voila!

PRO TIP: People will want to take notes on your card. Make sure to leave some white (or light colored) space on the back for this. Also-- don't make the back glossy or you can't write on it either!!!! I made this mistake at PAX and tons of people were hunting for scrap paper for extra info, which I am SURE got lost.

more raccoon. Back to work!

Would you mind if I tried pixeling this character. Love it so much. Raccoons are the best.

Go go go!!! I can't wait to see it

Indeed!  for everyone!

I must admit, I got to see the comic a bit early to do the cover, but I was still super excited for this day! It was hard not telling anyone how cool it was!!!! argh!

mjau - your page was extra awesome, and Konjak followed it up in EPIC fashion. I was worried about coming up with something for the cover, but when I saw your page I knew just what to do.

John Nesky - My favorite page by far. I would pay good money for a full length comic by you. It has such a magical feeling to it. Bravo! (I love how bird becomes old man... heh)

Derek- totally didn't realize that was Hitler! lolz. I thought that was a cast shadow from his nose when I read it the first time. I'm glad I didn't paint him incorrectly on the cover!

Renton and Theo- also special love for your pages. I lurv the art styles.

i ready... but link no ready.

i go crazy now!

poop:



Also- Theo: I  your art.

To light a fire under Xerus, and to add to the excitement, I'm going to reveal the compicompo 2 cover:




































One sliver at a time. 

Dooo eeet!

The spirit of the comic is collaboration anyway. It is long past the time where the original artist could complain. Procrastipanda would be proud.