ya i actually don't like the tendency to puzzles for the newer/modern zelda games

the first game had "puzzles" in a sense, but they were all pretty simple: where is the wall to bomb? where is the block to push? what do i do to make this dungeon appear? how do i get across the water? what item harms that enemy? that kind of stuff, which was integrated with the world, and didn't feel contrived

newer zelda games have gone overboard, with huge complex things that look like they were designed by a mad scientist or that brain age guy. you might have to spend 5 minutes moving gears, hitting switches in order, pressing colored buttons, going through tubes, or whatever, just to get past a single room. even bosses have become similar puzzles, where you can't even hurt most of the bosses by attacking them, only by doing some weird sequence of events like getting a block to fall down and go through a conveyor belt and pick up a bomb and the bomb hits a spring and bounces off and hits the boss -- and then do that SEVEN MORE TIMES, each time it's faster than the last -- is that really fun for people?

that kinda thing is not all that fun for me, it feels like figuring out a series of steps to do and then doing them, rather than discovery and even perhaps figuring out new ways to do something that the game developer didn't anticipate. to me, if the game developer knows the only or the best way to beat a boss, or the best or only way to beat a room or a dungeon, that is not a good boss, room, or dungeon; the player should be able to figure something that works even better than what the game developer knows

Yes, big puzzles can feel contrived, it must be harder to make them feel natural as the scale goes up.

What do you guys think of "Items as keys?" In some sense, all items  ARE keys, but I think when they are blatantly shown as so it's sort of lame. Like, "here are three levels of bracelets...you can pick up heavier rocks" or something. But in some ways, it is necessary to pace progress through a semi-open world - like Metroid or whatever. I think item design is very difficult, mostly because I feel like items should have multiple uses, rather than be one-trick-ponies - i.e., spinny-wheel or the wrecking ball from TP, which were cool I guess, but at the same time not really used as much as possible...they felt very gimmick-like.

This is hard.


Some Link's awakening things I'm divided on as I play through:

1. Things like Magic Powder. I am slightly leaning towards it's a good addition, as lighting torches can be interesting (but as far as I remember, wasn't used in too meaningful of a way except "light the torches!" or "light up the room!" puzzles). What I'm more divided over is the ammo aspect - making you search for more if you run out. It does instill a sense of wanting to preserve the ammo, but at a slight cost of sanity of the player if you're deep in a dungeon and there is no extra readily available...but I guess that's the point? Tough thing.

2. Rupees. RUPEES. They seem like a strange add-on that wasn't executed very gracefully...they seem more of a mechanic to justify the existence of multiple treasure boxes. I don't know. I don't really see the cycle of running out and buying ammo of adding much meaning to the game. In some ways rupees could work, but not in this shop way. A slight plus is they give you a sense of progress as you work towards buying the shovel or bow...hm.

And some things I noticed were positive about Key Cavern from LA:

They really do well with giving you the sense of conquering the dungeon. By the time you get a few screens in, you've seen 3-4 things that you can't do yet - that you'll have to return to. And by the end, you've figured out, or you have the ability to, do all these things. It's a nice sense of completion.

kool dood 

http://indiegames.com/2012/06/limbo_and_fez_shaked_and_stirr.html

Update:

I am working on a version that will be demo-able and not something mostly broken like the one I have posted above.

In it will include:

-The tutorial dungeon
-Dungeon #1
-A handful of exploreable areas.
-Some subtle way of tracking progress that may or may not be obvious.
-UI with the save system (which is implemented but you can't access it yet)

In the past week, I've mostly accomplished:

-Finishing up the first boss. It was surprisingly more work than I had anticipated.
-Working on the first dungeon
   -Interactions with dust, which block lasers
   -Adding sound effects for various hits/what not
-Drawing more of a tileset for a beach area
-Polishing up songs, throwing away ones, working on new ones...furiously!
-Coding up some enemy behavior.

I hope to have something more playable to show soon! As well as some screenshots (there are no "new and interesting" screenshots, I'd say...most of it you have to play to experience)

it just sat at "Downloading now..."
even trying to pull the download link via the source code (like I did with kyoto) didn't work

Not sure what is up with your chrome, I guess there is some weird download protection. I will look into a bit more, so far you are the only person that has this case. But I fixed it such that if the download doesn't auto-start, there is a link for your silly buns to click on.

Mmmm...
nope. Still not downloading, and no link. (unless it takes a bit for the page to update to the latest version)

Oh well, that's why I never uninstalled IE

you can just clear the cache if you'd like and all will be good


the alpha is neat-o, even though my computer can't handle all of it.

How do you make that ripple effect? It's super cool, as well as the puzzle mechanic.

I know that place, it's uh... Del Taco! Yeah, that's it.

I never quite understood the name "del taco" - "from taco?" "of the taco?" I faintly recall that "taco" was vulgar in some variants of spanish

the rhythm aspect's odd.,

the awkward jumping of my fingers to bribe the cops is awkward but satisfying

it's pretty cute though.

and i like the song the background,

and the graphics, which are cute.

it is a cute game.

how much changes when i get all the upgrades?

[Please post if you think you may be entering - thanks!]

KomradeJack wins!

No other entries

I'll post my thoughts in a bit.


Please post if you think you may be entering - thanks!


Memories are often clouded, modified incorrectly due to person interpretation...perhaps only the negative is remembered, or only the positive, etc - be it someone's first time falling completely for another, a vacation to a distant land, a murder. They will be the subject of this Musical Challenge.

Your task is to..

Write a song that is of the form A-B, where A is  "The event happening in the past", and B is "The remembering of that event by someone in the future". The event need not be a personal one such as a marriage/death/etc., it could be some fake historical event where A is a person experiencing it and B is a person from the future interpreting it. Or, A could be a boy's first time burning his tongue on a beef taco hot pocket, and B is him as an adult remembering that moment while going to fetch a Meatball Marinara Hot Pocket from the microwave for his son. You get the idea!

(or, two songs, one being "A" , the other "B")

The catch is that I will not be judging at all on explanation, the musical themes should be, well, musically connected in a somewhat obvious way! i.e., no verbal explanation needed or wanted, although feel free to post one though I'll as much as I can not allow it to influence my decision. SO, GET TO IT!

As perhaps an example, checkout the songs "Memory" and "Majesty" from the Fez OST.

The contest ends 11:59 PM EST, 6/22/12.

----------


A bonus, "fun", prompt. For those who'd rather do something a little easier. If you win it, I'll uh, put any 16x16 sprite you want (within reason) in my new game, next to a bear named George. Somewhere. I think that's an okay unrelated prize.

THE ACTUAL CHALLENGE. MUSICALLY NARRATE THIS STORY THAT I WILL NOW TYPE UP RANDOMLY

George the bear was hungry one day, so he went to his local supermarket. He noticed that "Honey Oat Bunches" were on sale for 3.99/box. This excited him, so he tackled the little cereal rack and knocked down an entire aisle of the supermarket. His daughter was on the other side and was permanently crippled, so George the bear went on a rampage and destroyed the entire store, except for the melons. George was put down by the NYPD, and 10 years later there was a History Channel special on him.

ogm

https://steamcommunity.com/id/seagaia

Cool! I'm glad you liked it, ShuffleBitSound. (I'm planning to use some small iteration of it for my game over screen song in my current game, the timing of this competition was very convenient)

I'll work on the next prompt and hopefully have it up tomorrow night. dealing with offline life things, blah.

I also noticed that the numbering decreased from last time. I am tempted to make the next one IV and hopefully a trend continues and we hit negative numbers o_o

[Update!!!]

Update!!!

Music/sound
I slaved over a few sound effects, and have polished up a few of the tracks.

graphics
Not too much new here, just some more spritesheets and added/changed a tileset a bit.

game design/programming

Some new things that serve as elements of the first dungeon
1. "Shieldy" enemies. These only die from the back, but also die from the laser bullets (yellow squares here). You can push them up, left, or right by hitting them. They also activate switches when over them. Some of them move.

2. Dust. I have since changed the color of the tileset and the contrast of the dust so it is visible, but these gadgets interact with your broom - they're basically moveable. You hit them, they disappear and you can attack again to place them. Currently, their only function is to block laser bullets (yellow squares).

3. The "pew lasers" (as I call them), currently red squares, shoot bullets at a certain rate. These hurt you and hurt certain enemies, but are blocked by dust.


Those elements, I think, make for a few interesting and easy puzzles in the first dungeon, which a partial in-map-editor implementation is below:

DAME is awesome! Tile matrices are magical and awesome too!

Ha, interesting. I liked the gameplay, though the scanlines feel a bit awkward (makes me rethink using scanlines on one of my own projects, as well, heh). Maybe you could use a pixellation shader, or render it at 1x, then scale it up? I don't know, just some suggestions to get a 'retro' kind of feel.

The music was pretty good, though it didn't evoke a particularly 'scary' or 'weird' feeling.

I liked the combat pretty well - it was pretty similar to the GBC Zeldas. It felt nice and solid.

Also, I found the Flixel logo. Little guy was hanging out a couple screens up and one left.

there was a picture here

Thanks for the feedback.

What is pixellation shader in general and in the context of AS3? I only have a basic familiarity with vertex and fragment shaders in relation to opengl. I did make a more pixel-y overlay thing though. It might not be dark enough but the effect is subtle and not as awkward as those lines. You can kind of see it in an above picture.

Interesting how you found the logo. I'm fairly sure it's because you walked outside of where I've defined the map so there's some unknown behavior with loading things, and some sprite must have not loaded a graphic - an unexpected easter egg of sorts!. Which does bring into mind, I could make some weird/devious easter egg/puzzles if I took advantage of how the map loading changes when you go out of bounds o___o

As for music, I am working on it. I think it fits most of the areas, but it may not convey the mood yet. I think I need to work on other aspects to convey a scary/weird feeling. There are gameplay elements that are creepy that are not there yet that will hopefully help with that...soon!

Listening to the Earthbound ost and it's pretty amazing. I've never been a fan of the games but the art and music are sweet.

What are some of your favorites? I dig the name-entry song and the hospital jam one a lot. It's such a cool soundtrack.


----

I'm currently listening to the Fez OST. I like the section from Age to Reflection a lot...although all if it is very excellent.

I just committed the ultimate act of laziness; I ordered a pizza for delivery from Papa John's... which is literally directly across the street.

I'd like to tell that the reason is because I have a nasty migraine going on but really it is no excuse. I am ashamed.

Don't be ashamed! This is a monumental occasion for you, whether you realize it or not!

See, it's like the second citizenship test. You take the first one to prove you can live in America. But you take the second one to prove you're an American!

Congratulations!

Quick, now go to the mall and buy a big plate of food and throw most of it away to get bonus points!!!


I just got through my last lecture of complexity theory. Thank god.

Chicago, IL

Pretty crazy how much NATO transformed the Loop, from what I heard.

One of my favorite chicago places, The Metro:

That jacket one gives it some personality, it's cute.

The bottom-middle, though, looks like it fell onto a barbecue or something, and is now charred for life, the bottom-left looks like the same except it went through a few rounds of therapy at the local clinic and is now writing a series of blog posts on its experiences in life.

What are your plans for music/is there any yet?

It looks neat, I like the color scheme. Do you have a video or a demo?

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, by Pavement. Makes me want to not care about anything ever again, in the best possible way.

Unfair always takes me to driving down a coast in California, not caring about anything.

That whole album is really awesome.

ok!

so the only real problem I had was when I tried to go back from the road to the temple.  if you go back into the temple without keeping the down key held down, you get kicked back into the road area.

then I came across a few times where I was able to slip my way between blocks, the typical collision stuff which only happens at certain angles and situations.  kinda hard to describe, but this happened around the blocks which are placed on the road area straight after the entrance from the temple.

I still couldn't push any blocks or the traffic cone :/

good luck with this!

Ah, okay. I know the source of most of those (sloppy invisible door placement), hopefully i can pin down the others. The traffic cones act as gates that are triggered by certain events (blocks pushed, enemies dying) Will make those initial puzzles more obvious/responsive, thanks for the feedback.

@Señor
hey, thanks:

Glad you like the lack of introduction and the aesthetics. I don't have a story, and I don't plan to make one. I just want the player to explore...in some fashions, linearly (dungeons) and in others, more freely (the areas that aren't constrained by dungeon structure)

I didn't like:
-graphics in the road area after the temple look abit barren

Yes, that tileset is very weak and it's not polished yet. This is due to a rush job on my part to make something interactive people could look at/play. The game, as you probably noticed, is *completely* lacking in any tutorial whatsoever. Notably, the response time for pushing a block is a bit high and that map does not make it obvious you are supposed to push it. Even making it past that, the user would probably get stuck figuring out how to equip the thing they find in a treasure box - I intend to introduce the menu/equipping at that point.



there's quite a few bugs in the collision detection, would you like me to go through those? Absolutely, if you have the time. I can't catch all of them myself, and of course the earlier, the better.

all in all, it looks like it could become a pretty cool game but I'd be scared to even consider the sheer quantity of content needed for this kind of game!

Yes, a lot! But, it seemed like the next step after finishing my previous game, in terms of scale. When I break everything down into little modules, it's not as daunting. I'm trying to keep the game scale small though, just a few solid dungeons and a few exploratory areas.

check it out (not sure if this was posted here yet, did a search and couldn't find anything)

http://www.gamemusicbundle.com/

always a good deal, lots of neat music - dustforce, terraria, cardinal quest, bunch of konjak's stuff, some disasterpeace, etc - >= $10 for it all

wish I had a couple $100s on me so I could get those fancy vinyl thingers, but hey, can't break the bank right now.