next »

[Flimgoblin]

* woot, thanks to SFXR some new sounds (not sure it's an improvement, but it means it's MY sounds now rather than someone else's free piano sample)
* fiddled with the "next note" effect, I think it's improved.

and woot I killed twinkle twinkle :p should be back next update

[Flimgoblin]

and it's back, plus it brought a friend (Moonlight Sonata)

[Flimgoblin]

New stuff!

* lives (5!)
* sounds for hitting the water
* evil orbs of darkness (with sound effects)
* beginnings of the flight of the bumblebee (different style of level this one - flattened notes and faster)

[oyog]

What did you mean by atmospheric effects?

Atmospheric background noise.  Like rain, frogs, crickets, stuff like that.

The jumping is much better.  I don't plummet off the flower occasionally now.  I'm still a little frustrated with the feel of jumping.  It feels like the gravity's really low.  It's a bit frustrating to hold  jump for just a little too long and then wait those couple extra milliseconds to hit the next note.  Especially in a game based on the timing of notes to make songs recognizable.

I also noticed a bug in Flight of the bumblebee.  As I'm speeding along the flowers occasionally I respawn randomly between (and even occasionally on) flowers.

[moonmagic]

I enjoy this jumping much more as well. I agree that it would be nice to have a little more control of the drift coming back down.

[Flimgoblin]

OK, will play with the drop speed, see if I can improve the feel.

The "random respawns" - if they were accompanied by a crashing sound it means you got hit by a ball of darkness... which are nice and visible on my high contrast monitor, all but invisible on my low contrast macbook screen... still some work to do on those (plus they're too frequent at the moment when there's lots of short notes)

Hmm, crickets and rain. I like - if I can get something that sounds not completely awful I'll try and get that in.

Thanks for the feedback! much appreciated (especially as I'm now at the stage of not really knowing what is fun or not still - can't see the forest for the trees)

[santaragione]

jump is better, but I think it still need some tweek, afterall, the jump control really drives the player through the rhyhtm of the game, waiting too much/less it's gonna kill the music...btw, reminded me a bit of rhythm tengoku nightwalk minigame.

you could take away the jump button, and make an automatic bounce on flowers each time you touch them  

[Flimgoblin]

jump is better, but I think it still need some tweek, afterall, the jump control really drives the player through the rhyhtm of the game, waiting too much/less it's gonna kill the music...btw, reminded me a bit of rhythm tengoku nightwalk minigame.

you could take away the jump button, and make an automatic bounce on flowers each time you touch them  

The auto bounce is there for the really short notes - think it'd take too much away if it was there for all the notes - though the "speed run" level (flight of the bumblebee) effectively stops you from having to jump for most of it

(apart from the enemies, who ruin the pace of the tune but make it challenging - need to decide on that one - could make the timing harsher and remove the enemies from that level...)

[Flimgoblin]

ok, have doubled gravity, increased the time you can jump for a little and the speed of the trampolines to compensate.

Plus we have shiny water (and hopefully the enemies are visible if you're not runnign high brightness/contrast! )

[Flimgoblin]

Final versions posted up (barring any crash bugs which I'll fix over the next week).

Am going to try and model a firefly and something for the evil darkness enemies using the extra time but I'm not sure if I'll have anything decent within the 7 days, so calling this final for now (no plans to change anything else about the game apart from those models).

[oyog]

I've just now noticed you can save yourself from plummeting by landing on the leaves of flowers.  That said it's a little odd that if you're on the leaves and you jump straight up you can hover under the flower instead of hitting it and falling back down.  I've gotten much better about moon jumping but it still happens if there's a large distance between flowers and I have noticed that it's sometimes necessary between low notes and high notes.

I had some trouble with the distance I fell to some of the low notes in Clair De Lune.  It seems those bounce flowers are a an awfully small target for such a long way to fall and how fast you're going by the time you get to them.  Perhaps you could make low-note bounce-flowers slightly bigger?  Otherwise it is really satisfying to jump from flower to flower with the right timing to make the songs recognizable between moon jumping.

EDIT:  Ok.  Just discovered those little green down arrows that shoot me to the bounce flowers.  That definitely helps though the resultant Doppler effect is a little strange.  Also after playing Moonlight Sonata pt. 1 the jumping mechanics are starting to grow on me.  I find that I try to use double jump as much as possible because it doesn't shoot me into the air.  Perhaps if you make it clear that you can double jump you could cap the jump height at half what it is now?  I dunno.

[Flimgoblin]

The "stick to underside of flower" is a bit odd (I've just not got any collision response for top collisions, should really put that in might try to put that in this week)

There should be a little arrow icon on the side of the screen when you're way above the next note (plus there's the speed-up-down-arrows that you've found).

I'm still undecided if I like the doppler or hate it it's funny when you fall off a note but it means if you're doing everything right the song sounds odd. I may experiment with it switched off.

Technically it's a "jump as much as you want within 0.8 seconds" (give or take a bit depending on the level) rather than just the doublejump it was, I figure letting go of the spacebar at the right time is part of mastering it, hopefully that's a fun thing and not an unfun thing...

Thanks for the feedback, glad to hear that it's enjoyable too - always hard to tell when I've been playing it for so long - also my estimation of the difficulty levels is totally skewed by having played it so much.

I'm hoping the Twinkle Twinkle -> Clair de lune difficulty cliff isn't so bad that it puts people off. Ideally I'd put another tune in there but it's a real slog to get them encoded - which is why I've not fixed all the duff notes in the existing tunes lazy Flimgoblin! improve your editor!

[Flimgoblin]

updated some textures, slightly less rubbish (but only slightly)

[ThetaGames]

It feels a bit floaty now, but this is okay, since it gives the player a lot of control over where he/she lands.

The new sample is quite subdued, but it might almost be too quiet.  I almost liked the old one better, even if it was a bit grating.  Maybe you could give the player a choice?

I just noticed that the leaves of the flowers correspond to the other notes of the chord.  Nice touch!

[Flimgoblin]

Hmm, choice of samples I like but I can't use that sample for the competition (afaik) as it's a royalty free downloaded sample rather than anything produced for the competition.


Thanks the leaves also act as emergency landing points/getting stranded points for when you miss the main note.

[belbeeno]

I really like the direction this game is going.  From what I can gather, the better you are at a particular song the longer you should just be holding the right button without readjusting your landing, like the little ball that jumps on top of letters in those children sing-along shows.  I triple like how, at the end of a level, it plays the song to see how close you are to the real thing.  I would even go as far as to say a score is unnecessary at this point, as I can tell how well I did by how closely my playthrough sounds like the song.

One thing, I think that the big black ball thing could either be nixed or not be guided to the player.  As you noted earlier, it ruins the pacing which is counter to how one shoud play to do well.  Maybe have it travel on a straight path across a particular y where the player shouldn't be at time t when the x position of the player == the x position of the black ball?

Example:

Code:

o = Player
M = Monster
 o--
-m-  \ <-----M
 |    ->
 |    -m-
 |     |

 [--x--|--x--]

[Flimgoblin]

 good suggestion re: the shadows. On flight of the bumblebee there's a few place where perfect timing let's you jump it and stay on target for the song but only if it comes in at a particular angle. Ideally it should force you to adjust your course but not so much that you can't keep the timing on track. Will play with that - might just reduce the amount it homes in by rather than completely fixing it's y position. Shall see. Thanks

[Soulliard]

The jumping physics are incredibly strange. The highest upward velocity of a jump should occur immediately after leaving the ground. In this game, holding the jump button results in a slow but constant upward acceleration. The physics more closely resemble a rocket launch than a jump.

When you jump to the side, you path follows an bell curve instead of a parabola. This makes it very easy to undershoot or overshoot your jumps, and generally makes the platforming unnatural and clunky.

If you want variable jumping that feels more natural, do it like this. Immediately after leaving the ground, the character should be at its highest upward velocity. For the next few frames, for as long as the jump key is held, the character will maintain this same velocity, ignoring gravity. Afterwards, gravity will work as normal.

Alternately, you could make jumps work like in Megaman. You leave ground at your highest upward velocity, and follow a natural parabolic arc, until you release the jump button. At that point, the character loses all upward velocity. This is much less natural, but gives more precise control, and it still feels pretty good.

I'll post again with more detailed feedback after playing a few more levels.

[Soulliard]

All right, I'm back.

The 'sticking to the bottom of platforms' bug is caused by the jumping mechanics as well. Since you continue to accelerate upward while the jump button is held, you do not fall even after hitting the ceiling, and can even continue to accelerate upwards by moving out from under the platform.

Besides the jumping issues (which are huge), there's not a much criticism I have for this game. It has a simple concept, but meets it quite well. Overall, it just works.

I have to agree with some earlier posters that the black balls disrupt the flow a bit. They're not terrible, but I'd consider removing them, as they don't really add much.

Auto-scrolling could make rhythm play more of a role. It could also destroy the relaxing feel, though, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend this change. Just something to think about.

I noticed one bug. Those green arrows pointing downward that indicate where hidden flowers are? They seem to collide with the player. Several times, I've been bounced upward only to have my path redirected back downwards by these arrows, before plummeting to an inglorious death.

[Flimgoblin]

Thanks for the feedback Soulliard - will take another look at the jumping, it's more of a badly fueled jetpack than a jump at the moment... it was previously more of a standard jump (with a double jump) but always room to tinker

Game felt a bit predictable on the longer songs without something to inject a little drama but as you say it's got a relaxing feel so perhaps they're just at odds with the rest of the game. Plus they're hard to see half the time = unexplained random death = not exactly ideal.

The green arrows actually are accelerators - they help you catch a note quickly if it's way below the previous note, if you miss them on the way down though you get fired back again... I may add a glow to them that vanishes when you hit them first time - just to make it a bit more obvious. That or have them only work if you're already going down?  

Not keen on autoscrolling - it would as you say remove the relaxing feel, plus it means people would have to play it at that pace, rather than the current one which allows for different skill levels: 1. getting through it vs getting through it with all the bonuses (and making the song sound nice)