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[rayteoactive]

Hey, I saw this game with similar concept. Thought you might wanna check it out too.
http://mggameserver6.funorb.com/torchallenge/8005/game.ws?js=1

[AaronG]

Nice work with the ropes.  I'm starting to understand what you meant about being able to "explore" the towers.  My only complaint is that the "snap" onto the ropes is so sudden.  You probably already plan to refine it but I feel compelled to share anyway.

[J. R. Hill]

I made it to the top!

And... there were two suns.

[tim-bo-jay]

Hey, I saw this game with similar concept. Thought you might wanna check it out too.
http://mggameserver6.funorb.com/torchallenge/8005/game.ws?js=1

Wow, that is pretty much the same basic mechanic, although without sounding bitchy to competition I hope our game will be more fun than that one (I got bored by level 2) Thanks for the heads up though, it's good to know that there are others and what we have to compete with (luckily at this point we are the ONLY people releasing a game on Xbox Indie which uses this mechanic so at least in that market we are 1 of a kind)

I made it to the top!

And... there were two suns.

Yeah this is my bad, I made the sky the same size as the background to loop, at the time it seemed like the correct way to do it but I soon realized it meant the second something went out one side of the screen it came in the other, by final release the backdrops will be twice as wide to fix this issue

[Zachary Lewis]

Nice work with the ropes.  I'm starting to understand what you meant about being able to "explore" the towers.  My only complaint is that the "snap" onto the ropes is so sudden.  You probably already plan to refine it but I feel compelled to share anyway.

I'm not sure how to fix the snap, unless I just don't let the player get on the rope unless he is exactly on it. That would stop the snap. I can do that, actually. I'll see how it plays out. The only problem is, we always keep the player in the center of the screen (to make it look right), so there's going to be a bit of a pop. How much is up to the code, I suppose.

[aeiowu]

looking cool, but has it been mentioned that the monolith in the logo is very phallic? I think it's mostly because of the clouds, i'm not sure they are necessary. also the lines circling the monolith are borderline vein-like at a distance.

Our gamma entry was originally called monolith, i did some logos for it, maybe this would help:


not great, but maybe it'll spark some ideas...

[tim-bo-jay]

Awesome design mate and it may have been mentioned once or twice about the wangyness of our logo

I think I may draw some ideas from your logo design if you don't mind :D

I'm putting the logo on the back burner for now though while I make some bad guys (proving more tricky than I thought to keep them varied) but expect Logo Version 3 before the end of the month I hope (and if you guys find something in the shape of this one...I'll kill this adorable panda...)

[tim-bo-jay]

Hey guys and gals, it's 3:44am so this will probably make little seance so I'll keep it short, just wanted to announce that we will be working with the handsome duo Dan and Chris from Hyper Duck for the audio side of Monolith. We have a mutual love for each others work which is always a bonus and have come to an agreement over who gets to keep the kids in the future...we get to keep Superfly but only because he was deprived of oxygen at birth and they get to keep Nathanial...I'm sorry what the hell am I talking about? (although kudos if you get the reference)

*ahem*

So yes, all music and sound effects for Monolith will be handled by Hyper Duck :D I'm excited to see how this goes!

[mokesmoe]

This game just got quite a bit better with this last update.

[Zachary Lewis]

Hey guys and gals, it's 3:44am so this will probably make little seance so I'll keep it short, just wanted to announce that we will be working with the handsome duo Dan and Chris from Hyper Duck for the audio side of Monolith. We have a mutual love for each others work which is always a bonus and have come to an agreement over who gets to keep the kids in the future...we get to keep Superfly but only because he was deprived of oxygen at birth and they get to keep Nathanial...I'm sorry what the hell am I talking about? (although kudos if you get the reference)

Albuquerque is a fun place to visit, but I don't think I'd want to live there.

Hyper Duck is win. I hope to have a simple music track in the next release.

[AaronG]

Nice work with the ropes.  I'm starting to understand what you meant about being able to "explore" the towers.  My only complaint is that the "snap" onto the ropes is so sudden.  You probably already plan to refine it but I feel compelled to share anyway.

I'm not sure how to fix the snap, unless I just don't let the player get on the rope unless he is exactly on it. That would stop the snap. I can do that, actually. I'll see how it plays out. The only problem is, we always keep the player in the center of the screen (to make it look right), so there's going to be a bit of a pop. How much is up to the code, I suppose.

I would definitely keep the snap.  Rope climbing can be frustratingly clumsy in platformers and the snap really streamlines the process for a player.  It is visually jarring, though.  I see two potential options.  I'll admit I'm not much of a programmer and you may not be able to implement either of these with the system you've got setup but ignorance has never stopped me giving advice in the past!

After the player enters the "climb rope" state instantly snap their actual position to the rope and slide the character's sprite closer to the player's actual position (along the X axis) a little bit at a time per frame until it's aligned.  The sprite's Y position would likely stay equal to the actual Y position.  I can picture this in my mind and I think it would look very smooth, though you'd probably have to disable the ability to drop off the rope until the X positions were equal so the sprite didn't get "stuck" trailing the actual position off the rope.

The other option (and you may want to consider both) is to "loosen the camera".  Basically just have the view centered on a hidden actor that's always moving towards the character actor at a speed (pixels/frame) just slightly faster than the player's top speed.  You could accomplish the same thing by just using some clever math to update the camera's position, too.  It's usually pretty simple to implement and gives everything a more natural feel.

I don't know if either of those are feasible or how they'll look with your production style but hope that helps at least a bit.  If you wanted some legitimately informed advice you could always hit up the technical forum, too.

[tim-bo-jay]

Albuquerque is a fun place to visit, but I don't think I'd want to live there.

<3

[Tycho Brahe]

aw man, this game gets better and better each time I visit the thread. You guys are putting my productivity to shame!

(also, timbo, what's up with the constantly changing sigs?)

[tim-bo-jay]

aw man, this game gets better and better each time I visit the thread. You guys are putting my productivity to shame!

Thanks dude :D and in truth Zach needs most of this credit, I just keep making the job harder with silly mistakes lol Blame him for putting you to shame! *runs away*

(also, timbo, what's up with the constantly changing sigs?)

I dunno, I get fidgety and procrastinate a lot, you should see my MSN pic, it's different every day, my blog has been redesigned about 10 times in it's life and this is the 3ed version of the blocks in Monolith, I'm awful for changing stuff

[aeiowu]

I dunno, I get fidgety and procrastinate a lot, you should see my MSN pic, it's different every day, my blog has been redesigned about 10 times in it's life and this is the 3ed version of the blocks in Monolith, I'm awful for changing stuff

that's a very good thing. keep changing/experimenting until it's the best it can be. (except for the procrastination part)

BTW, I had a thought about the logo... what if you did this with the type, or rather just this idea...


You could make the letterforms 3D (like the blocks) as well. This is a real rough job done in literally 1 minute, but I think the idea could go somewhere...  

[J. R. Hill]

The same thing with the letters vertical could look pretty cool I think.

[Zachary Lewis]

@jump: I could try the eased snap like you mentioned. I don't really like the idea of allowing the player to get away from the center of the tower, because I'm afraid it would throw the visual effect of scrolling around the tower off. I'll give the eased snap a try and see how that turns out.

@aeiowu: I like that idea. Especially with our blocks making up the words. That would look cool.

[Zachary Lewis]

I'm just going to leave this link to the Monolith development weblog here.

[tim-bo-jay]

I gotta say coming up with a new logo isn't going swimmingly. I've loved the ideas on here but remaking them with the Monolith Blocks is proving far from easy (and raises questions over how it will look when re-sized smaller). I'll focus on getting the logo finished tomorrow then it's back to making oodles of monsters (and some GUI graphics) so if you have any ideas let me know :D

Some mobs I've knocked up so far (names and explanations will appear in the official Dev.Log in an article once I've confirmed some stuff with Zach)

[J. R. Hill]

I'm trying to think of what the actual opposite of a janitor is.

Or maybe enemies that are based on trash...