"texture"? Is that van a 3D model? My mind has been blown.

So, something seems to have happened with the game perspective on this page of the thread as compared to the last page; it seems to have gotten slightly tilted. I can't say I've seen that effect in any modern (read: not mode 7) 2D games. Looks nice.

Also, yeah, the game does look a lot more appealing with the new cartoon graphics. The style reminds me slightly of the Orisinal flash games, but more saturated.

[OS X compatible]

Do people like grappling hook games? I don't find them fun at all

I absolutely love them. The problem is that there aren't many good ones. Wire Hang Redux may be fun, but it's not great as a grappling hook game.

OS X compatible
The original Liero for DOS still holds the golden standard for a great 2D grappling hook game. Hunt down friend and play it in DosBox.

Ninjah was a one-screen-per-level ninja rope challenge game that had Windows, OS X, and Linux versions. It wasn't insanely amazing or anything, but it was one of the few games that had a nice Liero-like rope system which was pretty fun. Unfortunately the official site has gone down and I don't know where you can get it anymore. Google might turn up a mirror, maybe.

Not OS X compatible
Super Secret Ninja is another pretty great ninja rope game. (Alas, the chance of a Mac port is low, and you'll have to run it in compatibility mode under recent versions of Windows.)

You Found The Grappling Hook is quite decent. Messhof might be persuaded to release an OS X version when the Mac version of Game Maker comes out.

Been playing around with photographs lately...
http://i31.tinypic.com/1ttuhe.jpg

You seem to have a distinctive weird artistic style which persists through vastly different graphical genres.

As others have said, great music.

The game difficulty level is pretty high. I only got as far as the law shattering before getting stuck. But people can complete it in under five minutes, you say? That's somewhat depressing.

Just a random thought; I just played the demo, and it might be easier to avoid getting stuck if the blocks grew, rather than instantly flashing on/off or fading or whatever. Y'know, figure out the next grid state ahead of time, than have dead blocks shrink back into the nearest wall, and new blocks grow out of existing walls. Just an idea.

Super cute! I think Mode7 racing games should make a comeback- maybe a Mode 7 GTA...

The problem with Mode 7 is that anything not drawn on the flat ground layer has to be a sprite. This causes issues when you want to display buildings, such as in a city. It doesn't make much sense for buildings to be flat, but they won't rotate around smoothly if they're a sprite. Or, I'm pretty sure that's how it used to be. Maybe newer implementations of Mode 7 have improved?

Currently working on optimising the running through ALL the layers of tiles and checking are they in the "view frustum". Already done loads of work on it and been thinking of working on some sort of tile occlusion algorithm because there is just an INSANE amount of tiles even in the test map with the tiles being 16x16 and there being OVER 9000 layers(or atleast pretty close lol) of them.

This might be obvious advice, but can't you collapse all static tiles on the same depth together into big images, say half a screen wide? I can't imagine needing so many independently scrolling layers that occlusion testing becomes worthwhile in a 2d platformer. Drawing routines usually work much better drawing large images once rather than drawing many small images many times.
I'm no expert on creating platforming engines though, maybe someone else could give some advice on collating layers together in a tile engine to counter overdraw?

Sonic the Hedgehog did something like that; the programmers prerendered groups of smaller tiles to make much several larger tiles (something like 3x3 or 4x4 of the smaller tiles) which were then used all over the place.

 

I have no idea how much replay value the stuff in that trailer has, but the concept is amazing. Oh no! Ninjas!
Will each ingredient have separate ratings for crispness and freshness?

Wait, what is this? It can't just be a static image in an HTML page because that would be boring and lame. Have you made an Unity-like browser plugin for this LUA game engine you're working on?

Yeah, but after you get over the hump of one new language, others start coming faster.

Though I agree that there's a lot of merit to knowing one language very well. I can fake my way through Java, C, C++, LUA, and Python code, but I don't know the more advanced features of any of those languages. Also, functional languages still just kill me. >_<

How about a Genre VS. Genre competition? You'd choose two genres and have them battle it out, either one genre as the player and another as the NPCs or make it multiplayer.

Should result in some interesting combinations.

Kinda like ROM CHECK FAIL?

I'd dispute that. Sure, Shotgun Ninja gives you the option of not killing people, but it's way more fun to just run around recklessly and blast anyone who gets in your way.

I'm a little bit surprised at how many of those games are the result of just throwing a lot of random prototypes at the wall and seeing what stuck.

World of Goo, AudioSurf, Crayon Physics, and Clean Asia. Dang.

Apparently the prototyping method is a good way of making games. Who would have thought that making small concepts in a low risk simplified package would be a good way of assesing how good they would be for a full game 

Well, quick prototypes generally don't lend themselves to complicated, intricate systems; something many games I enjoy make extensive use of. You'll note that none of those games were multiplayer or strategy.

Cactus is making a sequel to it, too.

Oh, this isn't exactly run and gun as it involves a sword, but it's pretty close. It's also not free and I have no idea what it's called. The demo is pretty tight, though.

BUSTER体験版

I'm a little bit surprised at how many of those games are the result of just throwing a lot of random prototypes at the wall and seeing what stuck.

World of Goo, AudioSurf, Crayon Physics, and Clean Asia. Dang.

Shockingly: http://twitter.com/jamesgecko

I may or may not be a boring person who doesn't frequently post 140 character thoughts about video games.

I'm also working on a Sonic the Hedgehog fangame that premiered at Sonic Amateur Games Expo (SAGE) 14 this year, called "Sonic Gemini" - a classic 2D Sonic game with a twist: you play as a tag team of Sonic and his former rival Metal Sonic.  Yes it's a strange pairing.  But strange enough to work!  More info on that at http://clearimagery.net/sonicgemini/.

I know absolutely nothing about all that other stuff you did, but I saw Sonic Gemini a few days ago and eagerly await the final version. :-D

This one. http://indygamer.blogspot.com/2007/02/news_15.html

They say that it had 54 tracks in it.

Edit: Never mind, I think I've found it. http://files.myopera.com/White%20Knell/lamulana_music/index.html?1248808800

Maybe Theseus? It might not be quite what you want... It pretty much boils down to you vs. epic wave after wave of monsters, with survival only possible with the continual discovery of larger and more ridiculously devastating weaponry. It's not the best game I've played, but it can be fun for a while.

I used a mouse, but I think it supports gamepads.