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[cystem glitch]

Many, many thanks. I have added a feature where some levels will have specialized game over screens with a hint displayed - level1's now says (hint:arrows are the movement keys). I think this will instantly click for people while still letting them see that they are just another instruction and what a death looks like / what causes it.

I have edited level1's layout so it very clearly tells the player to step on the first note, I've been testing the levels so long I didn't even consider a player might not try touching those things and thus would never read ANY of the game's notes and hints. Oops

As for the wording when the game loses focus or had never been given focus, yet again I didn't take the time to think that this was a technical term and that it could be unfamiliar to people. I have changed it to "the game is currently paused".

I am sorry that you only got as far as level 3, but thank you very much for the notes! Hopefully with these changes every future player will get started much faster and not waste valuable patience on the piddly uninteresting stuff.

[eyedrop]

Cool, I think those changes will help out a lot. So you know though, the reason that initial "focus" message was weird for me wasn't because I had trouble understanding what it meant, but just because I didn't expect to see something that looked like an error message as soon as I started the game. It only took me a second or two to read it and click past, but it was a slightly jarring. Not a big deal.

[edit: accidentally a word]

[cystem glitch]

I have made an update to the key press code that may have fixed the issue with UK keyboards not putting a '#' when that key is pressed, it might not have worked though I don't have a UK layout keyboard available to check myself. If this didn't work then the way flash is handling the key press codes is kind of buggered and I will either have to make a really hacky work around and/or allow the player to map certain keys if they have an alternate layout. 

Also added death hints to two other hard levels.

[daveasaurus]

I thought it was boring at first, but once I got the hang of it it really got interesting. I think the moment everything clicked for me was the level where you have to make the cursor jump 42 times and getting the hang of using reverse Polish notation to build math. Also for what it's worth, I didn't have any trouble with the 65536 lock.

But I did give up on the pacman level, the damn ghosts move way too fast. It wouldn't have been as bad if it didn't knock me back to the 65536 level every time a ghost hit you. Again the 65536 level isn't difficult, but is just annoying to have to redo time and time again. I stopped playing after collecting all the little pellets and trying to set up a wall or something to block the ghosts, but getting knocked back I just decided I don't want to have to keep redoing the 65536 level just to get back to the pacman level.

Have you considered making it such that being hit by a ghost doesn't knock you back? Really unique concept, I love it

[Quicksand-S]

Have you considered making it such that being hit by a ghost doesn't knock you back? Really unique concept, I love it

I was really annoyed by the ghosts too, until I realized that there is a very, very good reason for them acting that way. There is so much more to this game than you've seen so far. It's kinda non-linear and as you gain access to new commands, it really opens up.

To Cystem Glitch:

Have you considered letting people know that reaching a new level often gives them access to new commands? It took me a long time to realize I could use "G".

[cystem glitch]

you're right, when you kill something it says "unlocked new instruction: X" but in all the commotion it's impossible to see, and then it get's buried in the console by subsequent messages. Instead, if a player get's knocked back and if they have already killed one I will push that message again instead of the level 5 greeting.

Next I need to fudge the footnotes some more so people can actually beat level 6



Edit: Ok, I removed the 2nd footnote entirely because it means nothing till after the player has already beat level 6 and is coming back to it, and it was cluttering the console. I then rewrote note  1:

"try out Every new instruction,↴     ↳Even what's harmful could have uses"

I think this, combined with normal experimentation by the player and better pushing of the "Unlocked new instruction:" messages makes everything clearer and more coherent.

[Quicksand-S]

Ok, I removed the 2nd footnote entirely because it means nothing till after the player has already beat level 6 and is coming back to it, and it was cluttering the console. I then rewrote note  1:

"try out Every new instruction,↴     ↳Even what's harmful could have uses"

I think this, combined with normal experimentation by the player and better pushing of the "Unlocked new instruction:" messages makes everything clearer and more coherent.

I kept seeing those when I was going through the log to find that "key", but I was never sure what was causing those messages. I think I got other two-part messages as well, but didn't always realize that they had two parts to them.

Is there any chance of a key to "expand" the log, so you can see the last ten messages at once or something? I think that would be really helpful because these things often get pushed away before you can see them.

I like the adjustments you've made to levels 1 and 6. Still not sure how to "beat" level 6, though. I took out all the enemies before, and stopped them from spawning. Still couldn't do anything to end it, though.

Oh, wow. I just found what I'm pretty sure is a big bug, although it doesn't really alter the gameplay:

I pressed Del instead of Space by accident to remove a command. I've done this before without issue, but in this new version, it actually deleted something. After that, the rows were misaligned (ie. if I moved down, I also moved sideways). Anyway, to reproduce it, press Del and then try to move right.

[cystem glitch]

oops, yeah I know what causes that - I must have re-introduced it when I was trying to fix the UK keyboard issue. At work and I don't have access to my stuff right now but I will correct it tonight. You are right about level 6 though it can be a real pane in the glass

[dormir]

Cool and fascinating game, though it could be a bit friendlier on the player.

So. I went into the game "dry" and got as far as level 6. Being sent back a level is pretty harsh and I almost gave up there, but I persevered and got to the level-warp level only to find I was missing an necessary item. Again I almost gave up at the prospect of having to restart from level 1. I explored a bit more to little avail and then actually did give up. It's an interesting and appealing game, which makes me want to keep trying at it, but it is also pretty tedious repeatedly typing in code to advance levels that have already been 'beaten'.

I generally agree with the impressions other people have given here and think that if I hadn't gone into this game with extra patience, I might not have stuck with it very long which would've been a shame. The issues eyedrop describes with the first level is a good example of this. I think the main problem is that things often happen too fast to even work out what is going on. Controls to pause or change the speed of the game (or at least the IP) would be a great help, or failing that just make it a bit slower. If the IP was really slow it would be tedious of course, but it's a long way from that at the moment. Being able to slow the game right down would be great for following what is going on with the stack as the IP whizzes around the level.

Kind of hoping for some spoilers about what to do next. I suspect I may need to use the ghosts to access a place on a previous level but the game is quite punishing towards this kind of experimentation. Would it be conceptually incompatible to have a level-advance option for levels already beaten? That would really help...

Oh yeah, nerdiness level is probably medium (some c++ programming).

[cystem glitch]

the warp level was intended as a way to advance to any level that had been previously reached, but I had to go back and change it so it required the bow to operate because a crafty player could 'cheat' and get to even unvisited levels and the bow was the only reliable way I had to lock that down. This is not ideal though because the bow is hard to get, and I wanted the player to be able to use the warp level right after they figure out how to get there. As a temporary measure I have fixed it so if you use what you used to get to the warp level on the warp level you get to the furthest level you have reached so far - I think this will help a lot, but I'll keep thinking to see if I can come up with a better way to handle it. I think I have an idea.

You were on the right track by the way, you can position yourself to reach previously unreachable places. That's one path, if you want to beat level 6 I used a really bad pun in my last post that is a crude hint.


Edit: ok, nevermind. I properly fixed the warp zone so it now doesn't require a bow to use. It looks a little garish, and somebody fluent in befunge could skip a few levels if they were really motivated, but ultimately this will make the experience better for 99% of people. Thanks for the feedback! sometimes I know something isn't the best it could be but it helps hearing it from someone else to get me to actually fix it

[dormir]

The new level-warp level is fine. Looks more comprehensible than the old one even. I didn't find that it helped me progress in the game much though.

Spoilers... I tried to follow your hint and discovered the 'E' that charges for you. After quite a while of trying to lure it to smash the glass on the copyright box, I eventually realised I could spawn my own. It was still a little tricky but I eventually collected the copyright, although that on its own doesn't enable anything as far as I can see.
On level 6 I used the E to destroy the ghost spawn and release the IP. I get roughly that I need to jump the insertion point into the assault course on the borders that I can't get to, but I don't even know what all the symbols do. There's one in the top right that I've never seen before. I loaded the stack with '11' and sent the IP vertically up the right hand column. The program ended and I didn't see at all what happened. In theory, I could study the other IPs moving around that area but they are about 30x too fast. I don't see how I'm able to experiment or learn here because it is too fast to see.

Being able to slow things down would be really nice...

[otosama]

I really like the idea of the game, it definitely deserves someone's attention, I ask permission to refer the game on my blog. I also like how you give instruction in level 2(the "#" sign). But I lost interest after seeing a bunch of characters in level 3. Level 3 is like a hard landing to me, maybe you can put it in later stage.

[cystem glitch]

feel free to refer to the game, please note though that it is an early and incomplete version.