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TIGSource ForumsDeveloperPlaytestingVertex -- final public demo available!
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shojin
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« Reply #20 on: April 02, 2011, 09:33:37 AM »

I really, really like this game... you wouldn't happen to need music for it, would you?

http://artembank.bandcamp.com

Unless you've already got someone or yourself doing the soundtrack.
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« Reply #21 on: April 02, 2011, 12:51:42 PM »

Hey just played this, quite enjoyed it. Nice job so far, keep going!
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Benjamus_Prime
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« Reply #22 on: April 03, 2011, 11:15:24 AM »

I really, really like this game... you wouldn't happen to need music for it, would you?

http://artembank.bandcamp.com

Unless you've already got someone or yourself doing the soundtrack.
Thanks so much! I'm really impressed by those works--however, I'm working on my own soundtrack, being a musician myself. But keep up the good work!

Hey just played this, quite enjoyed it. Nice job so far, keep going!
Thank you! Progress has been coming in bursts, but there have been a lot of additions and refinements since the last demo. And after all this time, the game is almost half done, I'd say.

Thank you for your support!
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shojin
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« Reply #23 on: April 03, 2011, 11:16:42 AM »

Thanks so much! I'm really impressed by those works--however, I'm working on my own soundtrack, being a musician myself. But keep up the good work!

Ah well, keep going! :D
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MegaLeon
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« Reply #24 on: May 26, 2011, 05:07:42 AM »

Hope you didn't stop working on this! Love the feel of this game. Out of curiosity, are you using any custom made palette for your pixel art or you just throw colours the way your heart feel?  Smiley
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« Reply #25 on: May 27, 2011, 05:00:14 PM »

Hope you didn't stop working on this! Love the feel of this game. Out of curiosity, are you using any custom made palette for your pixel art or you just throw colours the way your heart feel?  Smiley
The latter. I try to conserve colors within sprites and tilesets themselves, but when I make a new sprite I just use whatever color I want. Kind of lazy, but it doesn't really make that big of a difference to me.

I actually did stop working on this... for a couple months. I'm just starting to work on it again, since my interest has started to return and I'm almost on summer break  Grin
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deadeye
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« Reply #26 on: May 27, 2011, 11:45:25 PM »

This is excellent stuff.  TIGS kind of has a reputation for being obsessed with low res metroidvanias, but in reality there aren't a whole lot of nicely polished ones like this that get finished all that often.  I'll be following this one for sure.

Keep up the awesome work Beer!
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ThemsAllTook
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« Reply #27 on: May 29, 2011, 07:40:23 AM »

Love the game! Here's some specific feedback:

  • Music would really add a lot to the mood, good to hear you're working on it
  • There was what appeared to be a word wrapping glitch when I was talking to Lira. Here's how it showed up:
Code:
I'll be able to aid you in battle! My bow may
not be as powerful as your
punching, but I have more ran
also have a double jump that
help us get around!
  • At the end of Lira's dialogue when she joins you, there's a LOUD audio glitch. It sounds like it's trying to play the same sound over and over.
  • The difficulty felt just right; not too easy, not too hard
  • Some sort of quit confirmation might be nice; I missed the instructions saying to use enter to pause, so I tried P which did nothing, then escape which quit the game instantly.
  • The way the screen scrolling is set up, it's a little bit hard to see ahead; maybe it's intentional, but I'd have liked it to keep the player centered a bit more...
  • The small gray insect enemies are really hard to see on a gray background. Here's a screenshot (it's much worse with the eyes and wings in motion):


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Benjamus_Prime
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« Reply #28 on: May 29, 2011, 10:29:58 AM »

Thanks for the feedback! Now to reply:

@deadeye:
Thanks for the support  Grin

I found the level design way too confusing. I don't really understand the purpose of using so many secret passages either - it just makes the levels harder to remember.

A lot of that level design (mainly in the garden) isn't planned out, and thus it's pretty unruly. I've already gone back into the Garden and edited the levels so that they look nicer and they're also easier to navigate (at least I think they are), which you will see next time I release a demo. I have yet to do the same for other areas, but I think the other areas are already easier to navigate than the Garden anyways.

@ThemsAllTook
  • Yes, the music is in progress (and it sounds purty dern good, what I have of it  Corny Laugh )
  • I've redone a lot of the dialogue in the game. Indeed, that is a text wrapping glitch; in fact I don't have a text wrapping mechanism in my code, so I do it manually and sometimes I miss something. Thanks for the report.
  • Yeah, I know. That wasn't there before I made a few minor tweaks to the game to upload it online, but somehow it popped up then. I've gotten rid of that too.
  • Good to hear about the difficulty. I often seem to have problems with making games way too hard...
  • Quit confirmation is an excellent idea, I'll look into that.
  • Agreed with the screen scrolling, I've also edited that so the view actually looks ahead of you a little ways rather than dragging behind you.
  • You're right about the insects. I'll take them out of the dark areas, there's no real need for them there anyways.

@All:
I'm curious, how far are all of you getting into the game? Has anyone reached the Master Tower?
« Last Edit: May 29, 2011, 01:04:53 PM by iMoose » Logged
Maunomau
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« Reply #29 on: June 01, 2011, 12:12:02 PM »

@All:
I'm curious, how far are all of you getting into the game? Has anyone reached the Master Tower?

I have but the boss is super hard compared to anything before it :/
Also there seems to be some bug with storing gold in bank(or something else) as I had only 1 gold despite being pretty sure I found more. I'll start a new game just to be sure(and get better equipment for the boss)
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Maunomau
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« Reply #30 on: June 02, 2011, 08:59:52 AM »

Okay it seems that I failed at losing my gold again so no idea how that happened before.
But I did manage to beat the boss, it wasn't that hard with two power upgrades and some practice. Nothing happened after I beat it I assume that's intentional.

Also I'm feeling lazy so I'll just paste here the stuff I wrote while playing.
Code:
Session1
Sound for dudes attack?
The first door in garden, I ignored it first and went past it and then after finding the other exit tried to return to it but couldn't :(
The sign that said you need phenomal jump confused me slightly since
it clearly was referring to the location with the door and checpoint guy instead of the small gap under
which gave absolutly no indication of being important,(and so I tried to return the way I came from after getting Lira)
it might be a good idea to make it clearer that there isn't just grass, perhaps make the beginning of passage to be just dirt without any grass or something,
but leaving it as is might be good in that it might help some people in finding the pearls in the area.
The fact that there were no other survivors and that some dude sent me were news to me and the whole there was battle thing was still kind of unclear to me,
of course some possible confusion isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Why can't I shoot up or down? :(
I'm lost in the garden, so far I've come across 5 paths that I've yet to explore, now I'm in some kind of water area.
Oh it seems water area isn't quite done yet(also I imagine you'll eventually be unable to breath in water)
I think I managed to exlore all of garden area but I'm not sure since there's no map and it was quite big.
I did sort of like the feeling of getting lost but overall the garden area(after the boss) lowered my expectations quite a bit.
:o people, I thought they were all dead or something.
The NPCs are very nice though.

Session2
I have 39 pearls and 1 gold
I think I've finally figured out the garden area!
It certainly is kind of confusing, especially since I didn't realise that the end of the "main" path lead back to the beginning,
I didn't recognise the place as it all looks pretty much the same
and there wasn't any other indication that I had come through and unlocked a previously locked door.
Vertex area is kind of boring, what is it even? why is it there?
In general the plot could be more immersive somehow. I have barely any idea who the people are besides that they have names.
Chests don't seem to be that worthwhile.
How are the door decorations decided? There seems to be no logic to whether there are bricks around one or not.
Oh Enter opens the menu :o I had no idea until I was trying to find the button to open map.
I had 1 gold in bank? :o I could have sworn I had found more.
The boss is hard, also it seems that you might be able to kill it without waking it up.
Got to the main part of the boss couple of times before I gave up.

Session3
the door in dungeon opens upon getting the weapon :o Switch or something could be better(I didn't really notice it the first time around so not that important)
Invisible wall :o you could make Hammond initiate conversation if you try to go past him, although in general I'm not a huge fan of making progress without meaning to.
I was confused last time but no more! I'm called Edgar! and the other guy is Hammond. Oris is the badguy.
There were two sets of soldiers and they fought before disappearing my side naturally lost.
Lira is the only other soldier we care about, and I presume the enemy does so too as she was taken as prisoner.
The fancier part of the master tower was a bit boring.
Nothing happens after the boss is defeated. Also the difficulty of the boss seems good but a little sudden.
Edgar shoots farther when running :o
This time bank had the right amount of gold, so no idea what happened before.
Some kind of (late-game) tracking item that tells me if an area has any pearls/gold would be nice.
I wish that the player was slightly smaller than a tile since as is trying to get in a 1 tile gap can be a bit too hard.



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Benjamus_Prime
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« Reply #31 on: June 02, 2011, 03:41:11 PM »

Oohh, lots of feedback. I like it!
@Endymion
It seems that one of the major problems you ran into was that I didn't make the main path very clear, especially in the Garden. I've been working a lot on that issue since the release of this last demo, and I'm pretty sure it's mostly taken care of (my first designs for these areas are very rough, as you've noticed). I was afraid that people would get lost in the Lake area like you did, so I've blocked it off and made it only accessible after the Gemsteel Mine area is finished. I've also kinda been working on the plot as I go along, so a lot of it is very rough and unclear at the moment.
About the difficulty of the boss in the Tower, I agree it is a very difficult boss. The entire Master Tower is actually quite difficult now that I've fleshed it out a lot more (it's definitely not so boring anymore), and it's possible that I'll have to tone it down some. I do want it to be pretty challenging, but of course I don't want to make it too hard.

Now for the littler things:
  • If I can manage to produce a good sound for Edgar's attack, I surely will include it. I haven't really thought it was necessary before, but it couldn't hurt.
  • Really not sure what's up with your loss of one gold, perhaps you thought you'd collected more but you didn't? I've never seen that problem myself but it is possible a bug occurred. I'll keep an eye out for it.
  • Yes, I'm aware that Edgar's attack ranges farther when he's in motion. I don't really remember if that was intentional in the first place or not... is it a bad thing? I find it useful, but maybe it doesn't really make much sense.
  • Nothing happens after the boss is defeated because that's the end of the demo that's online right now.
  • Agreed, the chests aren't that worthwhile. I'm not sure how to make them much more useful, perhaps I could put some upgrades in them? I don't want to throw the balance of the game much more off than it already is at the moment, though...
  • Originally, you couldn't shoot up or down because I was lazy when I started making this game and I didn't really expect it to become such a big project.
  • The Vertex area is indeed a little boring, that's something I plan on fixing.
  • Not really sure what you mean by this:
Quote
it might be a good idea to make it clearer that there isn't just grass, perhaps make the beginning of passage to be just dirt without any grass or something,
but leaving it as is might be good in that it might help some people in finding the pearls in the area.

I think that about covers it. Thanks for all the detailed feedback!
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Maunomau
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« Reply #32 on: June 02, 2011, 07:50:32 PM »

  • Yes, I'm aware that Edgar's attack ranges farther when he's in motion. I don't really remember if that was intentional in the first place or not... is it a bad thing? I find it useful, but maybe it doesn't really make much sense.
Only problem with it that I can think of is that the "optimal" way to use him is to run back and forth in place. Killing the projectile if it's too far away from player and is beyond normal range should prevent any weird use of it.

  • Not really sure what you mean by this:
Quote
it might be a good idea to make it clearer that there isn't just grass, perhaps make the beginning of passage to be just dirt without any grass or something,
but leaving it as is might be good in that it might help some people in finding the pearls in the area.
It's just minor nitpick about the hidden passage after the first boss, all I'm saying is that it could be clearer but it would reduce the chance of people backtracking to the beginning and thus discover the pearls in the 1 tile gap that usually takes couple of tries to enter.
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RichMakeGame!
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« Reply #33 on: June 03, 2011, 12:08:39 AM »

I gave up at the garden boss after a few gos, he was way too hard for a first boss (dodging the projectile is just too hard imo)

didn't really like the 'you fail' message either, I was like *no you do! quit*


but anyway I was enjoying it up to there, it's really promising Smiley
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Benjamus_Prime
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« Reply #34 on: June 03, 2011, 04:30:45 PM »

Hello, all! I've just finished making a short teaser video, including clips from all over the game (including some new areas) and some original music for the game! Check it out

.

And on another note:

@RichMakeGame!:
Most people have reported that the first boss is at a good difficulty level. It may be a good idea to make his attacks a little bit slower though, just to give the player some more time to think. Also, I've never gotten negative feedback about the dying message, most people have liked it. It's only a joke, not a taunt Tongue
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« Reply #35 on: June 03, 2011, 05:00:54 PM »

I beat the first boss after three tries or so, which is like the "magic number" as far as bosses go, in my opinion.  I didn't think it was too hard, and I kind of suck at platform game bosses.  At any rate, I think a good boss should kick your ass the first time or two, it makes beating it that much better.  And if you can beat the boss on the first or second try then it's too easy.

When it starts to become a problem is when it takes ten or twenty tries.
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« Reply #36 on: August 20, 2011, 02:48:36 PM »

So! It's been a long while since any updates for Vertex have been posted, so I'd like to let you all know now that another huge update is getting much closer! So stay tuned, the third public demo is coming soon.

In the mean time, here are a few screen shots of newly updated areas (please note that there are also quite a lot of new areas coming in the next demo) :






And lastly, I drew some concept art of Lira using Inkscape (her in-game idle sprite is shown in the bottom right corner for reference) :

Thank you all for your continued support!


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« Reply #37 on: March 25, 2012, 02:53:07 PM »

Ahoy! It's been a long time, but there's been a huge update: the final public demo is available!  Big Laff Check the opening post for details.
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« Reply #38 on: March 25, 2012, 08:35:22 PM »

Wow! This game is polished, I'm having a lot of fun! I'll post a follow up when I'm done with the demo.
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« Reply #39 on: March 25, 2012, 09:01:57 PM »

What a colourful looking gaem. :D
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