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[Miko Galvez]

MORE. I killed the boss while it was exactly on top of one of the platforms and I hopped on the platform and waited for the heli to come down. I did not get the power up and it seems that I have been reset to the first level of the game

[Sarge]

MORE. I killed the boss while it was exactly on top of one of the platforms and I hopped on the platform and waited for the heli to come down. I did not get the power up and it seems that I have been reset to the first level of the game

What an awkward way for you to find out that the boss does damage when he crashes on you.

What an awkward way for us to find out we forgot to update his collision code when we changed how the dead state works.

[Miko Galvez]

Oh so I died? Then that wasn't really a bug lol 

[Lizardheim]

If you polish this more and add more cool stuff, then this could easily become an awesome game.

Also, you should allow sequence breaking.


Oh and might wanna add a long jump before the double jump.


Controls for keyboard atleast: make double pressing down arrow toggle morph ball.

[Zack Bell]

@Lizardheim - Thanks! I'm currently coding up some more interesting baddies. I have 17 enemy designs on my to-do list for this weekend, as well as two more bosses to start.

Sequence breaking is something that we have talked about, but it is also something that we would need to be very careful about. Generating an area with a double jump obstacle that can be long jumped over by a tricky player will be neat (and we've run into this on accident before), but the trick is making it so that all of the following obstacles are also able to be broken (so that it isn't game-breaking). Now that you mention it though, there is a way that we could do this, so I'll keep it in mind.

About the controls: my original plan included down-down for the morphball-like powerup. However, we switched to a different button thinking that it would become the "action button" and that if we added other movement-based powerups like a grappling hook then we could just say "use the action key to grapple". (we plan on only giving the player one of the action key based powerups per play through).

EDIT: However, I do think that 'V' is a horrible action button. It will probably be 'A' or 'S' in the end if we don't fall back on down-down.

[st33d]

  

Nitpicks:

Noticed some vsynch issues and also encountered a floating spinning robot in the air as well.
The lateral physics are mighty stiff, you could add a little artificial skid to left and right motion to smooth that out. It would make it feel less like controlling a robot.
There is a shocking lack of traps. Mines, acid and turrets for example. None of the monsters are gunning for you either, which is why I think some players aren't engaging the enemy (unlike Spelunky where you kill the fuckers just in case they come to get you).
And lastly, take a long hard look at KOLM - it's a brilliant riff on Metroid and has tons of mechanics you could steal.

[Zack Bell]

Hey st33d, thanks for your input.

The vsynch issues are out of our hands, sadly. However, I will do what I can to minimize them. I will tinker with the acceleration and deceleration as well.

Hazard blocks are on the to-do list.

i.e. spikes, lava, turrets, etc.

And lastly, I'm coding enemies at the moments. These little dudes were just placeholders to show that enemies spawn correctly.

 

[Miko Galvez]

The lateral physics are mighty stiff, you could add a little artificial skid to left and right motion to smooth that out. It would make it feel less like controlling a robot.

I honestly dislike this idea. I prefer having spot on controls (i.e Megaman, Metroid) where you don't skid at all. Skidding just makes everything feel goofy for me and just makes it more inconvenient to explore around

[Sarge]

The lateral physics are mighty stiff, you could add a little artificial skid to left and right motion to smooth that out. It would make it feel less like controlling a robot.

I honestly dislike this idea. I prefer having spot on controls (i.e Megaman, Metroid) where you don't skid at all. Skidding just makes everything feel goofy for me and just makes it more inconvenient to explore around

Yeah I don't think we're going to fiddle with the controls all that much.  Zack here has the ultimate fan-boner for Super Meat Boy and was pretty insistent that the controls stay pretty crisp.

I'm pretty happy with how sharp they are myself, it has grown on me.

[st33d]

Can you at least not center lock the camera on the player then? It's extremely unpleasant with it jerking around and the same speed you are.

[Sarge]

Can you at least not center lock the <a class="inlineAdmedialink" href="#">camera</a> on the player then? It's extremely unpleasant with it jerking around and the same speed you are.

We are planning a "buffer" for the camera so you'd move a bit before the camera followed.  It can't be too large because of the firing ranges.

Anyway, we have been experimenting with it, but aren't happy with any of our results just yet.  Maybe we'll have something we're confident in by next build.

[Paul Jeffries]

Hi guys,

I enjoyed what you have so far.  Some comments and suggestions:

- I kept picking up the little red and blue (and maybe a green) tokens from the pedestals, but I have no idea what that did for me.  Are they weapon powerups?  It seemed like maybe my main weapon was a bit more powerful/faster-firing after a while so I'm guessing that was what they were doing but you should probably make it a bit clearer.

- You need to make backtracking a bit more interesting.  You spawn new enemy types after the boss fights, which helps, but ideally you should have it so that the new abilities you pick up give you more opportunities for taking shortcuts back through the levels.  I got as far as having the morph-ball, but then couldn't face trekking back all the way to the start where I needed to use it and so quit.  Alternatively some kind of warp-point network would be beneficial.

- A lot of the enemies (particularly the big yellow dudes) pose absolutely no threat whatsoever, meaning that fighting them is fairly dull.  Fewer, but much more deadly, enemies would be better I think.

- Also, generally I think it would be better to have smaller but more interesting levels.  The pacing seems a little off as well, in that it took me ages of wandering around to find the first boss fight/powerup but then I came across the others in relatively rapid succession.

- The boss fights begin and end incredibly abruptly - it's quite weird to walk through a door and then be teleported straight to the middle of the boss-arena desert.  The way that the bosses gain new powers is cool, but I still beat all of them the exact same way regardless: it would be nice if they gained new defensive powers that required a new approach rather than just new offensive ones.

[Miko Galvez]

- The boss fights begin and end incredibly abruptly - it's quite weird to walk through a door and then be teleported straight to the middle of the boss-arena desert.  The way that the bosses gain new powers is cool, but I still beat all of them the exact same way regardless: it would be nice if they gained new defensive powers that required a new approach rather than just new offensive ones.

Pretty sure the bosses won't be just helicopters. They're just probably programmed that way to make use of the placeholder art.

[herror]

lol, why i'm not following this.

That placeholder art is not that bad

Did you touched the controls since I played it? I find em a bit.. 'rough'? (not sure)

[Zack Bell]

Hey guys, thanks for keeping the comments coming.

Most of the comments and complaints have been things that we've already mentioned that we are working on and are planning on including. The camera is rather stiff, but I suppose we've just grown used to that. We will address this when we have time, but we're focussing on implementing more interesting enemies and adding text when you collect items (we've had more comments about these things).

@herror- Do you feel that the controls feel bad/sloppy or just that the keyboard layout is setup poorly? I agree with the latter.

EDIT: @Paul J- You are the first to mention the length of the game. Do you feel that it is too long overall or just that each room (door to door) is a bit large? Keep in mind that each play through can have varying map sizes and I'd like to know what you guys feel is best.

[herror]

Nah, the layout is ok. I don't know exactly why. Maybe it needs a bit of acceleration, or tween feel, or maybe the camera as you said. Right now the player doesn't have weight, if that makes sense.

I'll play more anyway, I'm just talking of a first impression here.

[Paul Jeffries]

Weeell... it's not really a problem with the length per se, and the size of the maps would be fine if it weren't for the need to backtrack.  The first time you go through an area you have the thrill of exploration to keep you interested, but then if you're traipsing back through that area - either because you've got to the end and found a powerup or, worse, you've reached a dead-end - you no longer have that 'I wonder what's around the next corner' thing going on and there's not enough to the rest of the gameplay to really keep things interesting.

So, making the levels shorter but more challenging was one suggestion for how to mitigate that, although by far a better option would be to make the level generation smart enough that it can keep throwing new and interesting stuff at the player.  If you look at other exploration-based games they can have quite massive levels but they keep them interesting through clever level design, which either eliminates backtracking by making the levels essentially a series of giant loops (see Skyrim's ubiquitous secret passages that lead directly from the boss chamber back to the surface for an obvious but fairly graceless example) or by providing a very different experience the second time around (the way Metroid, Zelda etc. tend to do things, because once you've picked up a new tool you then typically have a totally new way of navigating around the preceding rooms) - so that even if you've been in a particular area before you are still dealing with it in a new way.

The main problem I think you have at the moment is that the new items are essentially just glorified lock-and-key puzzles - you need them to get past specific obstacles to open up new areas but they don't significantly change the way you deal with areas you've already been through.  Hence the size of the levels becomes an issue because it's just delaying the player from getting to the next bit of content he actually cares about.

[Miko Galvez]

(outdated)

Hi guys so I'm doing the new art for the game! Here's a little sample of the game's graphics to be used soon

[DustyDrake]

is that co-op I see or am I dreaming?

[Sarge]

is that co-op I see or am I dreaming?

Dreaming.

It is a mock-up Med did for us showing off two different color palette options for the hero.

We have considered "couch co-op," but since the game is entirely procedurally generated from the word go it doesn't let us do Spelunky Coffins on the fly, so if a player dies that's it.

We've considered maybe letting the dead player resurrect when a boss is killed or making the players share hearts, but we go back to the core notion that the game isn't really properly built for co-op in the first place.

So we've considered it, and we're not entirely against the idea, it just presents an awful lot of challenges which we don't really have answers for right now.