It even weirds me out.

Had some minor charcode/keycode confusion, made worse by my library not having comprehensive keycode defines. The Unicode representation works neatly for some keys, but not for others, so I was wondering why it didn't work. Turns out you'll just have to look up magic numbers.

I got things to work without too much hassle, but it's definitely the least creative part of programming to memorize contracts that engineers have made. In general it's a pet peeve of mine to waste time on things like this.

Yup, that part was understandable. But the battle that came after was quite a mindfuck of jargon, surreal scenes with fast camera cuts, and things left open on purpose(?).

Otherwise, while the movie introduced a lot of new concepts, it actually explained a lot of them as well (compared to the usual pace of the franchise). Obviously it was an audiovisual spectacle too, as usual. I like where this Rebuild thing is going now that it's completely off the rails.

Huh. If the quote parameter is in quotes, it gets parsed.

All this open world stuff and we still haven't nailed one room yet.

Otherwise the quote tag's left bracket matches with the URL tag's right bracket.

Dean Evans[/url]]All this open world stuff and we still haven't nailed one room yet.

So you can have a quote by a quote if it's in quotes, making quotes in quotes in "quotes".

All this open world stuff and we still haven't nailed one room yet.

But it breaks on recursive attempts because the nested quote characters are matched.

https://twitter.com/SpleenZilla/status/350330305124634625]Dean Evans

"]All this open world stuff and we still haven't nailed one room yet.[/quote]

...This is mildly interesting.

I thought this was a remix compo based on the title, but I'm glad it wasn't. Think I'll go with Norfair and do a more straightforward "lava level" sounding track.

Ah yeah, thanks for reminding me to watch Rebuild 3.0. The previous one really made an impression on me, thought it was an interesting alternative retelling of the series' events. The more confusing Eva gets the better.

Technically yes, but I think people in this thread are talking about reading long posts regardless of how they're formatted.

Is three-quarters view isometric still a thing that people are doing? Or has it been defeated by the curse of "does pressing Up move me up-right or up-left"?

But that's not a curse at all, obviously it's supposed to be up-right.

It wouldn't be hilarious, actually. Just plain amusing with the right sense of humor. And to build a game around a gag like that discourages gameplay, I've noticed.

If it's by Eres or Graham I'll likely read it, because I know it'll be informative (or at least entertaining rambling). Detailed devlog updates are fascinating regardless of author, but unfortunately rare. I also appreciate Gimmy's walls of text on the level of abstract paintings.

I often feel like writing some myself, but don't do that so much these days, because I get that people don't care. I try to cut the meat instead, and seem to have settled into roughly two-paragraph posts with run-on sentences that might take a while to process but contain information distilled to the best of my abilities. Though I still get stuck editing them afterwards, hoping nobody quotes the slightly less expressive version.

A proper encyclopedia-like manual for AIME. Who said I don't care about usability? Only shows you info about thingsies you've seen, which makes much more sense than dumping it all in poor clueless newbies' faces. Especially since the levels aren't linear and players will encounter thingthangs in a different order.

Yes, I do realize I should add an image of the actual thinglydangly for each entry. And the part about "the bottom" is meant for a revised info bar, something like this.

The characters shading is mirrored (as it faces opposite directions) instead of remaining true to the "lighting".

Beware, for such questioning leads to the ugly path of having to make specific sprites for roughly specific types of lighting, or having to write code that lights the sprite in real-time based on the surrounding lighting. Truly, ignorance is bliss.

What bothers me more is the clash of art styles apparent even in that small image.

It would be hilarious if there was no jumping in that game and it'd only be called Jumper because the character's wearing one.

I decided to start making little propaganda posters for the background of human worlds in my game. It was fun to do, and maybe people will like little environmental things like this

Details like that are the spice of games.

[legit virtual reality]

IT'S HERE

THIS IS HAPPENING

Okay, I won't shout. But the experience of booting up the demo and moving around in the virtual apartment made me as excited as trying out Wolfenstein for the first time. Yes, the devkit res is low so you can kind of see the pixels, and I got motion sickness after two minutes, but it's legit virtual reality. I'll be glad I was riding the wave early on, can't wait to see what sort of things people will cook up.

Hell, I'll just go ahead and remix that LD26 Unity experiment of mine.

The level entrance font looks ugly. I'm going with something like this instead:



The bottom bar also looks ugly. It should have a different layout altogether:



It's the most important to indicate

• saved and spawned bunnies,
• which items you're carrying (left mouse for pickups, right mouse for special),
• the timer (unless there's a separate time attack mode).

As hinted there, right now I'm adding a feature that unlocks new manual pages as you encounter things worth explaining. That way the manual won't be a huge infodump but will help you when you need it.

Trying to make a proper font for level entrance signs. I think you can see where I'm going with this, but some of the numbers are a bit wonky. Wonder if anti-alias would help or just complicate things.

TrapThem feels like something I might catch a glimpse of in my dreams, forgetting the details come morning. Or like a lost DOS game that someone can vaguely remember playing and has spent a disproportionate amount of effort to recreate, though ending up with a whole different game. Indeed, perhaps TrapThem is ultimately more of an ideal than a destination that can be reached, unlike places such as:

• America
• Asia
• New Zealand
• And many more

Every level isn't the same, I like that you as a level designer have noticed this and sorted levels to shareware-esque episodes, so it feels like I'm playing many games instead of the same one. Clearly, you must have playtested EVERY LEVEL at least once. Their difficulty curve bounces around a lot, which is a refreshing change to well-designed games.

Some games treat you like a baby until level 15. Today, I come to you and say: Ich bin ein Big Boy!; big enough to play TrapThem. But not so big that I'd have to stand outside my house of dreams, because I wouldn't fit inside.

Yes sir, I would definitely watch Let's Plays of this.

Infodump tutorials are the worst. They kill the mood before the game's even started, and aren't all that helpful because they teach everything in a vacuum. I cringe whenever I see a main menu with separate "New Game" and "Tutorial" options.

Muscle memory and visual associations go a long way. Use narration or images depending on how much you have to explain, but try to introduce things gradually as the player goes on. Preferably, you'll want them to be able to map their experiences to situations they've been to ("oh yeah, this part is like that one level").

The Binding of Isaac was mentioned in this thread, but it's a bit of a special case, and I don't think the first screen is a good example of a tutorial. The controls are simple and you get to know them immediately, but that doesn't really teach you anything about the game. A big part of the game is discovering what all the items do, when they should be used, what are the enemies' weak points and so on. The way you learn happens with trial and error throughout your survival attempts. You couldn't have a tutorial for that.