I'm not a professional composer, I just make songs for my own games, but I feel like I should add some contrast: I usually only spend around 4 hours on a track. I feel like the short time is a culmination of my use of a tracker (at least for me it's much faster than something like FL), my preference for simplistic chiptunes, and making short, looping songs in general.

For reference, here's my most recent track. It took around six hours.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/536gtig8aeb5vey/Galaxy%20Genesis.wav?dl=0

I agree with how exceptional bborne is in general, except maybe the start of Nightmare of Mensis and the Micolash fight. Very short parts altogether, though. It's hard to even say what my favorite area is since they're all very good and flow into each other well.

Thanks for answering my questions so quickly, Dacke & Prinsessa. I suppose GitHub's behavior is something I'll have to get used to, and we have been muddling through slowly anyway. I just feel like forking and merging the whole thing is more error-prone than singular locks. But hey, maybe I'll get used to it.

Is there a tutorial or other resource out there for putting all these types of files into a gitignore or something similar, so that when you change one file, GitHub only really sees one file?

I followed this when I set git up with Unity (and BitBucket rather than GitHub, tho) for the last Ludum Dare, if it helps: http://adamsingle.com/unitygitsourcetreebitbucketmactute/

Thanks for the link, I see now that it's not actually a very daunting procedure!

I started using GitHub for the first time for a team project in Unity, and I gotta say that I find it wildly inferior to other revision control systems I've used - unless I have some misconceptions. So if anyone wants to clear them or at least state good alternatives to these issues I see, I'm all ears:

GitHub seems to only allow you to fork an entire repository and merge the entire repository. This means, to me, that if one person forks and the area they're working on ends up having an unforeseen dependency (that requires some modification) on a file that another person also worked on in their (simultaneous) fork, you're going to have an ugly conflict down the road and potentially some redundant code. If one person could simply explicitly check out (lock) that one file for editing then it would be mutually exclusive and you'd be guaranteed to be always making progress. So, am I missing something?
GitHub also doesn't seem to play nice with Unity, with Unity updating some 10-20 non-integral files every time you modify any single thing. This obfuscates what was changed and really just makes it a mess. Is there a tutorial or other resource out there for putting all these types of files into a gitignore or something similar, so that when you change one file, GitHub only really sees one file?

My pvp saga:

In Demon's I hardly did much pvp, I played it after DkS and the pvp just seemed like a downgrade mechanically (too much grass!). Also when I played the same guy kept invading with an un-upgraded storm ruler and doing the knockdown attack on me over and over in a corner. I dunno if there's a way to get out of it but it was pretty lame regardless.

I was REALLY heavy into pvp for a long time in DkS1. My absolute favorite thing to do was end up in a 2v1 or 3v1 situation and somehow win. It's best when the guys are obviously deliberately in a gank setup and not just trying to run through (characterized by high quantities of glow stones on the ground and general waiting near the entrance). I'll admit that my victories were rare but nothing can quite beat the feeling + the subsequent hatemail from 2-3 guys. I used a lot of stuff but I think I was best at dead-angling with claymore and just parrying everything. Parrying two guys at the same time is really cool too (though you can only riposte one of them unless it glitches up). As a side note, I was not a giantdad since I thought all of those masks looked idiotic and the armor made you look humongous. In DkS3 I hope the best armor also looks cool too (or even better, several armors are tied for best depending on what you're going for)

Dark Souls 2 felt a little less 'tight' engine-wise, it was still fun but I'd been doing pvp for a while at that point and all the little annoyances of peer-to-peer started to add up. phantom hits, wonky backstabs, teleporting, and so on really took a lot of the strategy out of it. Happened in the original too, I had just grown tired of putting up with it by then. Once I figured out how mundane worked I immediately did some testing to find the weapon that had the most hits and started using Santier's Spear before that became a 'thing'. (I also tried mundane dagger and fists but they were meh) I was surprised several weeks in when it became commonplace and people would criticize me for having a generic build That weapon was a lot of fun though and I wish more weapons had crazy movesets like that (I thought it was relatively balanced too since like all of its attacks were parry fodder) I think mundane in general is a dumb mechanic though, it forces you to have a non-specialized build and with the soul memory system it just meant 'keep leveling up and get even more generic'. Later on I also had a greater magic shield + 2hand poison butterfly shield thing goin' on but again soul memory ruined it, there was a sweetspot where I was actually fighting people my level and then it got to where everyone had too much poison resistance for it to even matter. Sigh...

Bloodborne pvp is probably the worst for me because of the unpunishable speed at which you can pop a blood vial. BUT it does kind of evolve into a game of conserving your blood vials because unless someone lands a lucky hit someone's going to use all 20+ throughout the course of a duel. Because of that it feels a little slower and defensive, which is very weird considering bloodborne's design philosophy. I could be wrong about this though, this is just from the handful of matches I've played since I was more interested in the pve in bloodborne.

Nothing will be worse than fog ring in DkS 1.0...

Wow actually reading up on DkS 1.0 stuff was interesting. I remember having so much trouble my first time through and then steamrolling it thereafter, and while a lot of it may be attributable to skill there were some HUGE changes apparently:

Ways the patch makes the game harder: Nerfs on specific outlier gear and spells (most of which you wouldn't use first time through), nerfs on stability of smaller/medium shields (quite noticeable), nerfs on elemental weapon damage (not huge but noticeable), nerf on pyromancy (-20% damage).

Ways the patch made the game easier: Draw ranges massively lowered on most enemies (absolutely huge), soul drops increased (2-3x on regular enemies, ~10x on bosses), all non-elemental weapons have huge buffs to damage (larger than elemental was weakened), it's much harder to get cursed, curse no longer stacks (used to 4 times), most enemies have less shield stability/poise, some enemies do less damage/take more damage/have less health. Not really difficulty related so much as tedium related but merchants have larger inventories and more bonfires can be warped to. There are other very specific things (textures fixed = less falling deaths especially in CC/GH, can parry while blocking) but most had very small effects on difficulty.

Like the soul thing alone encourages you to play through the game at a lower level which has huge implications. And the draw range thing, I remember the area just after the bonfire in Undead Burg being much harder to get through since the guys in the room across the bridge would aggro soon enough to block you off. Some other interesting tidbits are that some enemies were weakened (no quantification though) and overall roll/parry frame data was supposedly buffed. Also I tend to remember bosses not giving humanity when killed before some patch, which isn't huge but made a difference.

I worked on a Pi 2 using the Windows IoT build this summer, but it turned out to not be what I needed. The version I tinkered with had no OS, it was just a loader that recognized and ran universal applications sent to it. It required Visual Studio to send, which was annoying. The real dealbreaker was that there wasn't even an audio driver yet, though. I didn't set up the Pi so I don't know if there is an actual Windows 10 OS or just what I dealt with. I sure hope so, though.

It was pretty short but it looked/felt good for the most part. There are only a few things I'd consider:

-I understand the desire to have the deliberate jump, but I think you could have it at least be somewhat controlled, maybe like the La Mulana remake handled it. Basically you are still locked on the ascent, but as soon as you start to fall you have some control: If you did a neutral jump you have mild left/right control, otherwise you can hit the opposite direction you were traveling to slow down your speed. It's a good compromise, I feel.

-The attack hitbox was smaller than it looked, I'd either make the animation match the hitbox or change the hitbox.

-Not being able to aerially attack is strange, as you could do that even in early Castlevanias. It could have a different animation, if necessary.

Keep up the good work!

Woah, I just took it for granted since it's so commonplace on other sites. It's about time!! 

As someone who plays almost exclusively DB and HH, here's some random advice:

-You can link HH's A attack's second swing into any other note. This makes getting X+A notes a lot faster.
-I don't think Maestro is very good, at least not with certain horns. Maestro actually makes Health Boost worse since the cooldown before you can heal with it again gets longer. If you don't have health boost then it's an overall gain though. But I also feel like, for most horns, the song selection is small enough that you can keep all the effects up all the time without Maestro.
-If you want to get into archdemon mode quick with DB, just spam the A attack in demon mode. It builds meter incredibly fast, has great vertical reach, and you can dodge out of it quickly. You can angle it left or right but the timing's a bit tricky.
-Stamina negation and other forms of stamina management are nice on DB, but though they may seem like it, they aren't a necessity. I generally opt for evasion skills since it makes you able to power-step through everything (note that the bonus is capped at evade+1 exclusively for db though)

I do like evasion on HH as well, and since all the KO-inducing skills are bad, HH is a pretty non-demanding weapon when it comes to skill selection. So I once had evasion and evade distance gemmed on, and that was a lot of fun.

Everyone here knows that the first thing that will happen is a bunch of levels where the checkpoint kills you when you reload from it.

Chainable items will be used to make puzzle levels where you have to hit the item blocks in the correct order to get the items you need to win.

You have to beat the level from the start and then from the checkpoint, as shown in the video. I'm sure a lot of people will make levels that make the checkpoint actively punish you for grabbing though (make beating the level become near-impossible or take longer, I mean)

Yes, I'm still working away silently. The game still feels fun to play, personally, so I can't see myself stopping. Some of the major issues like slow attack recovery and a few annoying enemies have been addressed to make things feel more fluid, as well.

Sorry if it's too hard - I've taken the difficulty concerns to heart and added a Practice mode where you take half damage and can pick up stray apples from enemies. That will come along with the next demo, once things are at a good point.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6wvzvd1m18iiqxi/transition.gmk?dl=0

Here's an example. If you set up your transitions on the room boundary then you can achieve something like this pretty easily. Since your rooms scroll, just maintain the xview/yview between rooms and everything should work out.

I would make sure that screen transitions occur in the midpoint between the rooms at the very least. This is in no way undoable, you can just have your transition objects only react when the player is in collision with them and they're touching the room's border. Speaking of the room's border, if you really want a MM or Zelda-like transition, you need the transitions to actually occur there - in your transition, the character is beginning in the middle of the screen. You shouldn't need to have overlap between area 1 and area 2 either.

So basically, when the player crosses the room boundary, you do what you said before. But when you copy the first room to the surface, it should catch the top half of the player. When you get the second room, it should have the bottom and they should hopefully align (you could do some fudging on the player's final y position to guarantee this is the case)

I find that it's especially hard to watch sugar intake living in America. Most people don't even know that there IS a recommended daily amount of sugar (due to lobbying, there is no %DV requirement on food labels for sugar.) One bottle of soda can have 2-3x the daily amount, and I know people who drink the stuff basically daily.

Hey, thanks

I'm still working on this game frequently, but I'm lazy when it comes to updates. Besides, there are a lot of things that I'd rather leave as surprises for the next demo too.

The level creator itself has a lot of potential, though some things are frustratingly missing (like blocks that give you the next level of powerup, e.g. a mushroom normally and a fire flower when you have a mushroom)

The online levels will suck your soul away though. I haven't found an even passable level yet...

Yeah the actual gameplay looks good, I assume most of the criticism is directed at the voice acting/graphics.

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I've looked into every one. Monaco looks like it's the most up my alley, but I'll suggest all of them to everyone else and see if we can come to an agreement.

So, I'm looking for a 4-player PC game to play with some friends. I mean the kind where each of us has it on our PC and we all join a lobby and play, not a local game. We contemplated the newest Gauntlet which looks good, but it had middling reviews so I was looking for something better. Any suggestions? Here are some key things we're looking for:

-Low cost/free, preferably <$15/person
-Not an FPS or MOBA
-Co-op
-Not super cutting-edge, as I have an older PC