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[nayon]

Hmm, that's a good idea, will get going.

[nayon]

Try this and tell me how dark it is for you.

The only thing I see is the character, the rest is solid black :D

I tend to have a dark monitor though; not sure why, I've already ramped up brightness as far as it can go. Maybe you can provide some sort of brightness control in the game? Many dark games do it.

EDIT: This might help: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=331624&mode=threaded

Whoa, just saw your edit, and it will probably be mighty helpful! Will get on that too.

[ElTipejoLoco]

Kirby's Adventure Butter Building 3-2 style Pseudo-3D?

Nostalgia! G'luck. Also, I can see the characters just fine, but I'm on my laptop. It's possible my old PC miiight need me to play with the contrast to view the screens fine.

[Johan Peitz]

Very cool! Really like the smoothness of the rotation. I had some slight collision problems when lading on the corners of tiles, might be worth looking into. Also, I'd suggest adding some inertia to the main character, should make movement a bit smoother and easier to control.

Oh, and Icy Tower doesn't do anything like this. It just scrolls, no rotating.

[deadeye]

Just tested it out, it runs nicely.  It's strange, there's been a sudden surge of GameMaker games that run smooth for me .  This, Schrodinger's Kitten, and one other one.  Hey, I don't mind, keep 'em coming

I do have a couple of crits though. The jumping feels a little odd.  I like the variable height, but maybe you could make his baseline jump a little higher?  Like perhaps 1/2 of his full jump instead of 1/4.  The disparity just seems a little extreme.  (Of course, I could be just nitpicking, it's hard to critique a game in it's early stages.)

As for the falling platforms, maybe make them not drop immediately, but give them a split-second wiggle before they go?  After stepping on the first one, I just bunny-hopped through the rest of the level to avoid them.  It makes it so you don't ever have to worry about the falling bricks, and as a result isn't a very satisfying experience.  In fact, for a game like this I would say that getting rid of bunny-hopping would make for a much more challenging and satisfying game all around.

Oh and I also experienced the "getting stuck on corners" thing a couple times.  It wasn't game-breaking though, just odd and jarring.  And if you are looking into a gamma correction option, that's awesome news because I had to sit with my face eight inches from the screen to see any detail

[nayon]

Here, have a version with brightness modification:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7ff5daf835ddfd71d2db6fb9a8902bda

@johanp:
By the way, those collision problem things are intended. It's a "pulling yourself up" mechanic.

I personally dislike inertia in platform games and there used to be a huge topic in the forums which debated endlessly about whether megaman had inertia (I think eventually it was decided that he had very little), and since inertia isn't a "strictly better" way of doing things I prefer my way tbh. Thanks for the feedback
though, now I'm gonna try implementing some different stuff!


@deadeye
I'll look into the baseline thing.
I fixed the falling platforms to indicate they fall, thus will remove the bunny hop in the next iteration.
And gamma is here.

[nayon]

And yeah, I spent the last 6 hours of my last night optimizing this game from 7 fps to 30 fps. Yeah I'm great. :D

EDIT: I found an even better way to do the falling platforms. Next iteration.

[Johan Peitz]

Yeah, inertia seems to divide gamers pretty much. Personally I like it but, each to his own! A pull-up mechanism sounds like a good thing, can't wait to see the animation so the confusion disappears.

[muku]

The gamma control is good, with gamma ramped all the way up I can make out the platforms well. Should the tower itself have any sort of texture on it? Because that's still uniformly black. But it doesn't matter so much, the game is playable.

The faux-3D effect is quite snazzy

It's already fun to hop from platform to platform, but the jump feels a bit off. I think it's too floaty, perhaps some acceleration (both up and down) would make it more satisfying?

[deadeye]

The gamma is much better in this version, but could use a little more brightness on the bright end .  And I guess you must have already been thinking of shaky platforms before I posted about it :D.

[Pishtaco]

Nice. Already has a good spooky - lonely feeling. The colour of the outline on the guy seems a bit weird.

It would be nice to have some walkable ramps as well, as a rest from the jumping. And maybe I saw a bug: I think at one point some blocks fell down and disappeared off the screen. I fell after them, and as it scrolled down I found the blocks had been lurking just off screen and only started to fall down again when they came into view.

[nayon]

Ahaha. That has to do with my snazzy optimization code. Will get to it.

EDIT: fix'd.

[nayon]

Alright, final prototype for tonight.

Jumping fixed. Needs a little bit better collision checking when wrapping the room around but other than that it's fine. I think. I've been working on it so hard that I can't tell anymore. So I need your opinion.

I also toned down the brightness of the character so he doesn't look too odd.

I brightened up the main tower a bit.

Changed the level, introduced some platforming concepts that I wanted to introduce. (No new coding, just level design style)

Falling blocks improved. Right now you should be able to walk over them but if you jump on them they fall. Or something like that. My foot hurts (it's been broken and healing) and my flu isn't getting any better thus my throat aches so I REALLY need some sleep :D But I coded valiantly :D

So, without further ado, behold the prototype:

http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=7ff5daf835ddfd71d2db6fb9a8902bda

Goodnight everyone! 

[deadeye]

Nice .  Looking a lot better.  The way the platforms fall now is pretty good, too.  Gives you more of a chance to get away from them, especially the stacked ones.  (Though it is little odd to see the top platform fall through the stack. It serves the gameplay well, it just looks strange.  I guess there's really no easy solution to that.)

Also, one more bug:  When you're holding the jump key and you hit a ceiling, the little dude still tries to move up, and jitters around a bit trying to push into the platform.  Perhaps you could cancel the jump when you bump into a ceiling.

[muku]

I just got stuck inside a platform, right after landing from a jump. Just wanted to mention it, though I can't provide much more detail.

[andy wolff]

This is so very sexcellent. Don't see alot of it.

Also your platforming engine seems a little glitchy. When hitting the bottom of a block it is rather unsmooth and I too managed to stick myself into the floor.

[Lurk]

Nice. You should think about adding something rising from the bottom, like water or deadly tentacles, to add some tension and incentive to go quickly.

[isaac]

Just played the prototype. It's working pretty well! The 2.5D effect looks real good, and I think with the texture on the tower, you can get rid of the bright outline.

I wish the jump was a little less slow. Are the bats just for decoration at the moment?

[Terry]

I have to agree with the rest of the thread: speed is definitely the issue here: the jumping feels slow, the character moves kinda slow... I hope you consider speeding it up a little!

This is taking really nice shape, though Can't wait to see it develop!

[Gainsworthy]

Mmm, feels like the little fellow's moving through treacle. Also, the spikes, they are buggy. I get killed even when jumping over them. Sometimes.

I'd agree with lurk if it's a game where one must reach the top, but if there's some exploration to be done, I'd say no pressure.

The Rotation is really quite nice. How'd you pull it off?