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[QuadrupleA]

[NOTE: I revived this game in my new engine with a slightly different take, check out https://infinitroid.com/ ]


Hey tig humans,

This thread is a release log & feedback place for an as-yet untitled, Metroid/Contra-inspired procedurally generated platformer game I'm working on. Check the latest post to see what's new.

It's still early, but interested to hear any feedback - things that are cool, things that suck. Feel free to be blunt - I want to improve as a game designer, so honesty & constructive criticism is really helpful.


Overall status:

Random worlds can be played in about 5 minutes. Most basic systems are in place now (inventory, crafting, controls, lighting engine, physics, game statistics, etc.). But need to add a ton more room layouts, enemy types, and overall variety and challenge.


Controls:

Arrow keys / WASD: Move
Ctrl / Z: fire
Alt / X / Space: jump
Shift: use (for crates and doors)

Works with an xbox gamepad also (might need some tweaks after the latest updates).

Screenshots

[Forstride]

Looks pretty good so far.  Just gonna list off some thoughts I had on it:

Lighting - The flicker could be toned down a bit (As in, not as frequent or fast), but other than that, it was fine.

Movement - I think it'd be a lot nicer if the player didn't just stop abruptly after letting go of left/right.  Not a long slowdown, but just enough to make it feel smooth.

Player Texture - It's probably a placeholder for all I know, but the player's texture seemed a bit too cartoony and vibrant compared to the rest of the game.

Controls - Ctrl and Alt really aren't the best keys for shooting/jumping IMO.  Z and X, or even just swapping Alt for Space Bar would be a lot better.  I know you're still early in development, but it's still nice to have decent controls for testing.

[QuadrupleA]

@Forstride: Cool, thanks for the feedback. I reduced the lava flicker a bit. Also added Z and X as fire / jump options - had some trouble with certain key combinations not registering, but Z & X seem fine with the arrow keys.

Latest link also has automap, woohoo

Will play with the deceleration a bit, see if I find something where the controls still feel tight. And yeah, with the way the level art is coming together so far, it probably makes sense for the player model to be grittier.

If anyone else gets a chance to try it let me know.

[Quicksand-S]

Hey. It's nice to see you're still working on this. Thought maybe you'd moved on to other projects as so many of us tend to do.

I like this new version quite a bit. The weapon, in particular, feels surprisingly good. It's just right, not too weak or too overpowered.

Am I right in thinking that the rooms are always the same rooms but just connected differently each time? It seemed that way, but I could be wrong. I thought the areas seemed all right, but there were a lot of really short pathways with dead-ends. It'd be nice to be able to go in one direction a little longer before having to backtrack.

One "big" issue that I had was with the vertical chamber. I couldn't see the platforms that were below me, because they were off-screen. It'd be great if ducking moved the camera down a little.

The auto-map is a nice touch. I've always liked maps like that.

The controls felt really, really strange, but only because most games that use Z and X have them as jump and shoot, respectively. Yours is the opposite, which threw me off. Also, be aware that, as common as Z/X controls are, a lot of people dislike them. This is often because AZERTY keyboards make playing with those controls pretty much impossible. Configurable controls are pretty important, I think. Even if it's just a config file for now that you can manually edit, it'd be better than nothing.

I agree with LukeR about the player graphics. The light flickering is pretty extreme too.

Any plans to add diagonal shooting? It's not really necessary, but it'd be nice.

It's great to see actual level structures now. I finally have a better idea of how the platforming is supposed to feel, and the player's movement doesn't bug me as much as it did in the early test levels. It's really coming together. Nice work.

[QuadrupleA]

Hey Quicksand-S,

Good to see ya, thanks for taking a look again.

Glad the shooting felt good - I thought about diagonal support, but figured it'd get tricky with the same stick used for movement. My plan is to add a shitload of weird weapons and ammo types that you can switch between when you find them, some of which can hopefully play to some diagonal tactics.

Re: rooms, yeah, the map is built from a bunch of room "templates" (of which there are far too few at the moment ). I'm not super happy with the results as it stands, the levels all feel the same - planning to organize things into higher level "themes" for corridors and areas, so there's more of a sense of distinct zones. And progressive challenge increase / balance will be important too.

The actual map structure is a long "critical path" to the end with various short branches off the side (with item room at the end currently) - but since all corridors draw from the same pool it's hard to tell at the moment which is which. And backtracking kinda sucks, one of the things I disliked about NES Metroid, so hope to have some teleport options or other mechanics to eliminate most of that. I'm a little unsure if I should signal to the player explicitly what paths are side-paths - might kill some of the sense of exploration - but it'd cut down a lot of the backtracking when you realize you're well down the main path and there's some side branches behind you that you want to go back to

Ducking to scroll is an awesome idea - Sonic the hedgehog style - I'll definitely add that to the list.

And good to know about Z/X - was hoping to map enough alternate keys at the same time to avoid needing a keyboard config screen (or file), but that's probably the best approach in the end. For now I'll swap Z & X, I mostly play with Ctrl/Alt.

Re: the light flickering, is that on the lava mostly, or the lamps too? I think my monitor might dull down the contrast a bit.

[Quicksand-S]

Ammo types that shoot diagonally (or in a wave pattern or whatever) could be good.

Diagonal aiming can work with that gamepad setup, if you felt like putting "crouch" on a button instead of a stick or only allowing crouching when not already in motion. Then up and down on the stick could adjust aiming. Super Metroid had aiming and movement tied to the same controls and it worked fine.

Speaking of Metroid, I'm kinda disappointed that you're so against backtracking. I'm not sure I enjoy forced backtracking, but I do like gaining a new ability and going back to find all the new secret areas that I suddenly have access to. There can still be that "critical path", but I like to have a reason to explore old areas again.

Maybe instead of normal backtracking or fast-travel, you could unlock shortcuts to previous areas using newly-gained abilities. That way you're going back to an old area, but using a different path. It'd also make the game world more interesting, with all those connections, although it would be a bit harder to code.

Themed areas sound good.

The light flickering seems to be just about everywhere. It's not just lava.

[QuadrupleA]

Hmm - so yeah, I do like that aspect of passing an area you can't access yet, finding an item later that opens it up, and then going back - that's one of the classic mechanics of the old Metroid games - so I definitely want to do that on the ancillary paths (have a bomb-door, an unmakeable jump, a too-difficult miniboss etc. that you can't get to when you first encounter it).  

The backtracking I was thinking of was, as you're trying to get back to that place, sometimes you have to traverse the same territory all over again - e.g. the 1st NES metroid had those extremely long vertical shafts, with basically repeats of the same room over and over again, so once you got your bombs or your missiles or whatever, you had to tediously work your way back for 5 minutes of elevator shafts to get to the original area again.

I like the shortcut passage idea for that - might be tricky to get working with the layouts so random, but maybe where the maps have opportunities to cut a shorter passage to connect distant areas I can provide them, with one-way locks or an advanced item to open. Was also thinking of providing the player portable teleport destination beacons - so if you see something interesting you can't get to you can drop one there - and throughout the world you'd find occasional teleporter rooms that let you go to any beacons you've dropped, or other teleport rooms, or maybe occasionally to some random place on the map.

I'll try toning down the flicker - right now it sets a random brightness each frame, maybe an interpolation between values at a slower rate would be better.

Thanks for the ideas!

[QuadrupleA]

OK, got a new build up:

MetroidGame_03a.zip

Here's what changed:

* Toned down the flicker on lights and lava like Quicksand-S and Forstride were suggesting (if you guys see this let me know if it's better)
* Added a "look down" feature when ducking in vertical corridors, ala Sonic the hedgehog (thanks Quicksand-S for the suggestion) so you can see farther below
* Slowed player deceleration on the ground a bit (Forstride's suggestion) for smoothness
* Added new maps, and overhauled the map generation system quite a bit to make areas of the level more cohesive, improve level structure, etc.
* Added random tile tinting on the main "overworld" path each playthrough (interesting effect, not sure I'll use it long-term)

[Quicksand-S]

if you guys see this

If?   This is one of the few games I'm following right now, so I tend to check for updates pretty often.

Anyway, yeah, the flicker is better. I think it might still be too fast, but it's nice and subtle. I didn't even notice it at first.

The player movement feels really, really slippery to me, but maybe that's intentional. One thing I could suggest is making deceleration into a few different values:

-horizontal air resistance when you're in the air
-friction on the ground when you release a movement key
-deceleration when you're trying to start moving in the opposite direction

I would suggest making the last one a lot faster OR adding some sort of animation that makes the slipperiness look better. Some games, like the old Sonics (iirc), made the character switch to a sliding pose in those situations. Maybe the character could kick up some dust or something while they're sliding.

I found it hard to "rescue" myself from falls down that big vertical room. Not sure what it was that made it hard to control my descent, though.

The new map-generation system is pretty good so far. I liked most of what it generated. The only issue I ran into with the map generation was that one extra-wide room had two power-ups in it. I imagine those are supposed to be spread out more.

There's one room that's really ugly, in my opinion, though. It has far too many of those metal blocks and it really ends up looking bland. I only saw that room once, though. I think the tile tinting you mentioned may have made it look a strange color too, but maybe it was my imagination.

I think that's it. The game's getting better and better. Looking forward to the next version (hopefully one with health pick-ups).

[QuadrupleA]

Cool, thanks for taking another look.

Anyway, yeah, the flicker is better. I think it might still be too fast, but it's nice and subtle. I didn't even notice it at first.

Glad the flicker's less annoying - will maybe tweak it some more down the road.

The player movement feels really, really slippery to me, but maybe that's intentional. One thing I could suggest is making deceleration into a few different values:

Yeah, I agree something still doesn't feel right in the control scheme - it's a little squirrely - and with the slower ground-deceleration there's a slow-turnaround issue now too. I'll try splitting normal ground deceleartion and and opposite-direction deceleration like you mentioned and make the latter a bit more responsive. Will take another pass tuning all the parameters again too, try to find the right balance between feeling slow enough to give a sense of precision but not so slow that you get bored going from room to room.

The only issue I ran into with the map generation was that one extra-wide room had two power-ups in it. I imagine those are supposed to be spread out more.

Right now I have it so there's an 80 percent chance of an item room at the end of a side corridor, and 20% total that an item room appears along the way - so sometimes you'll strike out and not find anything, and sometimes you'll find 2 or even 3 items along the way - but an overall likelihood of 1 item per corridor. Hopefully will spice things up a bit, adds some variation to the playthroughs.

Haven't really thought about balance yet - need to figure out how I'm going to try and approach that - want to keep it challenging & interesting. Thinking of maybe balancing as I go, with each few additions. Health pickups are definitely on the list .

There's one room that's really ugly, in my opinion, though. It has far too many of those metal blocks and it really ends up looking bland. I only saw that room once, though.

Hmm - not sure which one - is it similar in style to the latest 3rd screenshot on the 1st post? I might add onscreen labels for the rooms to help with testing & feedback - maybe an ability to choose the random seed too.

Anyway thanks again - drop me an email if you ever need a tester for TWM or anything, would be glad to help.

[QuadrupleA]

New build with a bunch of little tweaks to the controls:

MetroidGame_03b.zip

[Quicksand-S]

Well, the running feels a LOT better. It feels almost perfect (for someone like me, anyway). If you want the suit to feel lighter, maybe acceleration could be bumped up a tiny bit, but it's pretty great as it is. I still don't like the air-control, but that's a fairly minor issue at this point.

One thing I noticed is that if I just tap the left/right key to turn around, my character takes a partial step in that direction. I generally set up my code so that a character won't move in a direction until they're facing that way, so a light tap will turn them around without them taking a step. Obviously, it isn't a big deal. I just feel like it makes things a bit "smoother" or something.

And yes, I think the ugly room may have been similar to screenshot 3, but I'm not sure.

While playing, I had a thought about the shooting animation. It looks a bit weird to have his arm flick up and then back down when firing single bullets. If you don't need the arm to return to neutral for any reason (ledge-grabbing or something), maybe there should be a delay before the arm goes back down. Also, a raising/lowering animation would be great, even if it's only two or three quick frames. Some sort of recoil from shooting might be good too, but whether or not that's feasible kinda depends on your animation setup.

You know, I never noticed that he aims upward with one arm when running and two when standing still. Nice touch.

[QuadrupleA]

Yeah, might play around with the turn-around logic; I was thinking it'd be nice to instantly turnaround for midair shots too, even if your momentum is still in the other direction.

I actually went through a few different approaches for what happens after shooting - I had an arm-lowering animation in for a while, but it looked kinda silly if you did it repeatedly. There is a small delay now before the arm drops, maybe increasing that would help. And yeah, recoil would be good - baking it into all the animation poses would be a pain, but maybe moving the whole sprite back a pixel or two would suffice.

Will probably work on the inventory system next - that should open up a lot of gameplay possibilities.

[Quicksand-S]

Turning around in mid-air could be good, except that it might look a bit weird when trying to land on a small platform.

As for the animation, I personally tend to keep limbs separate whenever possible. That way I can add something like recoil or raising/lowering arm animations without having to re-draw an entire sprite (I hate doing animation ). If you plan to give the player a lot more actions to perform in the future, maybe you should consider this setup. It might make it a bit harder to get the sprites looking right, but it makes it easier to set up a lot of different actions and subtle animations that only affect certain parts of the body.

Inventory system sounds good. I wasn't really expecting that in a Metroid-like game.

[QuadrupleA]

Yeah, maybe I'd only turn the sprite if they're firing - otherwise it'd look weird while jumping around.

In my case the sprites are all actually 3d models, baked out to color / normal / specular textures - so my animation rig is the usual 3d model with bones etc. Unfortunately it means each pose / animation has to be for the whole character, can't really separate stuff unless the pieces align uber-precisely.

Actually, doing just the player model as a 3d mesh in-engine is a possibility too - then new weapons could just be attached to a model bone, new armor might just be a texture or an accessory, I could blend between poses, etc. - that might be a good way to go.

[Quicksand-S]

Yeah, if you're already doing animation/poses in 3D, it might make sense to go farther and set it up in-game if you feel like doing all that work.

In addition to benefits like being able to adjust individual bones and smoothly transition between animations, you could use the same skeletons/animations for multiple entities (although tweaking the animations slightly for different characters might be a good idea), switch out heads/limbs/armor, etc.

Yep. Sounds good. Lookin' forward to the next version.

[QuadrupleA]

OK! It's been a while. For the zero or more people who have been waiting at the edge of their seats, got a lot of new stuff added in the latest build (04a - download link is in the first post):

 * A full inventory system
 * 14 items (for now, a lot more planned)
 * A crafting / recipe system
 * A stats screen with wins/deaths, and discovered items, that persists from game to game
 * A screen to view the full automap
 * Pausing (whoa!)
 * Random crates with loot
 * A bit of rebalancing (to the extent possible with one enemy type - more enemies / bosses are next on my list I think)

Interested to hear any feedback - a lot of UI stuff was added, let me know if anyone runs into trouble / confusion there. And also any thoughts on the items, art, sounds, controls, overall fun, etc.

Cheers -

-Luke

[Quicksand-S]

Hello again. I'm going to try for a less wordy approach this time.

Things I Liked:

-the crafting system UI is pretty good
-the ammo replicator is an idea I don't think I've seen before
-the pause before he lowers his arm after shooting is good now
-more interesting room designs - I especially liked one with a lava pool in the middle and pits on either side of it. Maybe you should add more connections like that, with multiple pits/doors/whatever leading to the same area
-crates are a good addition
-pressing Shift to open doors - when I saw the limited ammo, I thought for a while that you'd broken the game


Things I Disliked:

-limited ammo for the main gun - ammo replicator sounds great for "special" weapons, but I feel like in a game like this you always need to be able to attack somehow (so you can get health, or special ammo, or whatever).
-the fact that the HUD shows your ammo count twice. Why is the larger icon+ammo box there?
-not being able to use arrow keys to switch between inventory, map and option pages
-I think crates should be drawn behind the player
-I walked through a door and an enemy was on top of me when I reached the other side - their positions should probably reset or at least move away from doors slightly
-One room section that has platforms near the ceiling over lava. It's too easy to bump your head and fall into the lava, and you die almost instantly because of how little health you start with.


It's starting to feel like a real game now. I didn't expect you to add crafting. It's an intriguing addition. I'm really interested to see what sorts of enemies/bosses you come up with.

[QuadrupleA]

Hey Quicksand-S, thanks for the playthrough & suggestions. Just incorporated a few of them (latest build link has them):

 * Infinite starting ammo: I went back and forth on this while designing, but you're probably right that infinite ammo for the starting weapon is best, as a fallback. I was thinking of how I used to enjoy old Doom WADs where you had to be super miserly with ammo to make it through. Anyway I weakened the damage a bit to compensate.

 * Room debug info: I added some text at the bottom to show current room name (took me a bit of thinking to figure out which room it was you mentioned)

 * Enemy reset in doorways: had this on my list a while - didn't think of resetting them to starting position though, that's a nice solution - that's in now

 * Crates in background: I set crates to behind the player again - unfortunately the little blue light shines on sprites in front, giving a slightly weird effect - but it's not too bad. Right now lighting is all done in one pass so can't target/exclude specific objects; might add some flexibility later if it doesn't hurt performance too much.


RE: the larger icon, that's your currently armed weapon/item - a little redundant if the weapon's in your quickslots up top, but helpful if the active weapon's hidden in your inventory, which is likely later in the game. Does that make sense? I might try to clarify that in the UI somehow.

RE: arrow key tabs, that's an interesting idea - might help with gamepad control - were you thinking the cursor would move to the tabs as an intermediate step as you're moving to the quickslots up top, and allow changing tabs with right/left?

Will revisit the lava bridge map - the jumps are makeable, but might ease it up by moving the platform down 1 tile. The UI elements get in the way up there a bit too.

[QuadrupleA]

BTW, been having a lot of fun playing We Want You - unlocked the "hero's legacy" and "live" modes so far, haven't beat them yet (if they're even beatable?). Giant sky lasers and laser dudes keep kicking my ass.