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[kkairos]

did you run into ones where it was impossible, like enemies stuck in a wall or unreachable loot?

Apologies--I ran into rooms where it was impossible or seemed virtually impossible without getting hit. So maybe fair, depending on your definition of fairness and cleara...bility? I dunno, I'm not sure what to call that in PCG games...? I'll give it a couple more go's and try and get a screenshot for you.

Sent the video in PM. Should be unlisted YT.

[QuadrupleA]

Hey, sorry for the slow reply - thanks for the vid, very helpful - that's definitely a bug of some kind. Almost seems like a key is stuck pulling right or something but it looks like it only happens during a jump. Or maybe a physics bug? I'll dig around and see if I can reproduce it, that's a weird one.

And yeah, some rooms are pretty tricky to get out of unscathed - usually you can duck back into a door and come back in and take advantage of the delay before enemies start seeking you, and using a missile in those situations can help. Also, taking advantage of everything in the shops / item rooms usually leaves you with a powerful weapon config as the game progresses. I'm actually worried the game is a little too easy right now, usually roguelikes shine when you die a lot but can learn strategies to overcome each obstacle, and eventually breeze through.

[kkairos]

Yeah. And I've done PGC before so I wouldn't expect every room or every universe it creates to be equally fair--that is, despite what I said, I think the fairness case can be overstated. I'll give it a few more plays and see, but I definitely caught myself improving a little, which is definitely a good sign if you want this to be a 'learn-by-dying' kind of game.

[QuadrupleA]

OK, new version (0018) is up!

Here's what's new:

* In-room secrets - I set up a tile substitution system that looks for places it can insert certain kinds of hidden items / secrets etc. I've only got a handful of patterns created & applied so far but it's already adding some interest / variation to the levels. Patterns can vary depending on available upgrades (e.g. some 1-block tunnel patterns require the grub suit). I'm hoping to add a lot more of these to exponentially increase the amount of room variation.

* Secret shootable blocks now have faint cracks, and secret false-solid blocks now fade and shrink a tiny bit when something passes through them (player, projectile, enemy etc.). Hopefully not too obvious.

* I fixed the map flickering bug that Enrik mentioned, turned out to be a pretty serious off-by-1 quad drawing error from some recent optimizations. Also added item dots to the map, to serve as a reminder to backtrack for previously inaccessible secrets etc.

* Map & compass items pop up the map screen 1 sec after picking up, to hopefully make their purpose more clear.

* Most items don't jump around to stay reachable anymore (buto and I think others mentioned this, it was weirdly implemented). So you have to be careful where you kill the last enemy.

* Made the lava-dropper enemies take only 1-2 hits - I liked the challenge of triggering them, dodging and then shooting them before they close, but with the 3-4 normal hits they took you had to repeat it and it got tedious. Should be doable in 1 attempt now.

* The death screen now shows the enemy not the projectiles that killed you, as Enrik suggested (also lava doesn't look all glitchy)

That's about it - here are some screenshots of the secrets / dynamic tile patterns in action:

[kkairos]

Was able to fire through two walls arranged checkerboard-style. Have video again if you want it. Also, this game has a great sense of discovery and the new secrets you added only enhanced the feel.

I'm going to Greenlight the crap out of this when it hits Steam Greenlight and am basically already planning on giving it financial support when it passes that point.

[QuadrupleA]

Thanks man! You're right, looks like it's possible to fire through two checkerboard diagonally-arranged tiles, I'll add that to the bug list.

[QuadrupleA]

Hey all - latest version is up:

  http://infinitroid.com/

Here's what's new:

 - Fixed the diagonal tile shot bug kkairos mentioned
 - Detritus: all enemies now have improved particle effects on damage/destroy. Enemy blood is now purple, and coats the scenery slightly with a shiny film (specular channel tricks). Missile kills produce a lot of splatter (maybe too much). Chunks of enemies stay lying around in the rooms when backtracking.
 - I refined the in-room secrets quite a bit, the types of tile substitutions that appear are more evenly distributed now (before if there was a grub suit available the world gen leaned on floor tunnels too heavily, etc.). Lots of little bug fixes with this. Also added some new types - ceiling item holes, high jump challenges etc. More to come.
 - Reduced health drop odds, to add a bit more challenge
 - Changed lava suit to lava shield - a sort of energy bubble that activates whenever you stand in lava. It's tricky at the moment to apply decals and stuff to the player, I need to sort that out, so this eliminiates the perennial question of why the suit doesn't turn red.
 - Made spread-fire a bit less common, damage/repeaters a little more
 - Tried to make missiles look a little less like dildos

[Enrik]

Hi QuarupleA. I’m a bit late with my feedback because I played a veeeery long game with the previous version. I completed the game twice and then I quit it because it was too much for me to play another one.

My thought about the long gameplay. I think that there is clearly some player improvement with each game (I could barely pass the firs part on my first gameplay) but I think that after a few games it becomes too easy and the difficulty should increase more as the game advances.

Some strange things I found in my gameplay:

The final boss got stuck in a horizontal platform and I just kept shooting until I killed it. I was in the same horizontal line as the boss and when it approached it touched a platform with its lower part and just keep stuck there. It still launched the little enemies but it couldn’t move forward. Adding just a little of random movement would have solved it.

The circular saw can kill enemies that are behind the character through a floor block if the saw if looking down. I’m not sure if that only when a fire mod is added to the saw but I’m sure I did it several times. Anyway, I still think this weapon is too good and the game is much easier when you get this weapon.

I like the new way the hidden objects are shown but I find some strange behavior here. For example, when I break a floor tile and pass under a low block (with the grub ability) then the tile appears again and I get stuck there being small. So to get out I just press up over the breakable tile and the character appears up there again. But sometimes the breakable block is not at the same deep as the surface so it looks like a teleportation. Not sure if this point is clear.

I found some unreachable hidden objects. For example, one behind a wall with a low passage and the only way to get to that place is jumping but I can’t turn small and jump or jump and turn small.

I never updated the missile launcher weapon. Only updated it to kill the hundreds of enemies in the last room. I don’t feel the necessity to upgrade it, and the missiles are always needed to open doors and that stuff so I don’t use them against the enemies.

As usually the game is fun and enjoyable. Good job!

[QuadrupleA]

Cool, thanks Enrik for giving it another couple playthrus. I agree on the difficulty - the latest version is more stingy with health items, and I want to look into other changes too for difficulty. Would be nice to make the difficulty a little more randomized too, where you have easier runs and harder runs.

I fixed that boss problem in the latest version actually by adjusting its physics shapes. So the boss shouldn't get stuck on platforms anymore.

For the light saw, I actually wanted it to be able to kill enemies behind blocks - its odds of appearing are fairly small so I thought the advantage it brings will be balanced out by that (also the risk that you have to get close). But I'll keep an eye on it, maybe it needs to be nerfed a little.

Most of the hidden object behavior you mentioned is fixed now in the current version that's online, I had a number of bugs and odd situations like a floor tunnel being attached underneath another one leading to the situation you mentioned where you need to jump out but you can't because you're in grub mode. I'm not sure about the unreachable objects one though, the items in the walls should always have 4 shootable blocks that you can clear to allow you to jump get to them.

And yeah, upgrading the missile weapon isn't very important, especially since missiles are scarce. You wouldn't generally want spread-shot etc. on them. The game does support custom weapon presets for the normal weapons right now though - so you could have a fire weapon, a laser weapon, a bouncing weapon etc. and switch between them. It's a little buried in the weapon screen right now, I think I'm going to make the UI simpler there, where you can rotate through your presets on the weapon config screen with a single key and if you add parts to an empty one it creates a new preset (or vise versa, if you remove all parts it deletes the preset). Then when you're in-game you can switch between them. I want to try simplifying weapon switches into a single key too, rather than popping up the weapons with one key and then switching with the arrow keys.

Anyway thanks again for playing and for the feedback, very helpful!

[QuadrupleA]

One thing I wanted to ask, for anyone still following this post - what do you think of the working title of the game, "Infinitroid"? I'm a little on the fence about it. It seems memorable enough and google-able and I own the domain for it which is nice. But maybe too derivative of Metroid (maybe the game itself is too at this stage?) and perhaps a little silly-sounding. Not sure. Curious what other people think.

[kkairos]

Checked up on this, noticed a new version. Might be late for tonight but I'll give it a run soon.

I like the name Infinitroid, honestly. It's different enough visually that I don't know how much I'd worry about being derivative, especially because (don't shoot me, but I haven't played actual Metroid) it appears to do some different things mechanically from, say, Super Metroid.

I did find an unreachable boss key once. That was on 3rd quest, though, so all it did was thwart me from getting to 4th quest. Maybe the boss key should be an exception to the change in drop placement?

[buto]

I finally found the time to play a bit (just a bit). I think having music is a huge improvement. The scull replacement works great and the sound they are making is really chilling. I loved when the music changed (some kind of gregorian choral) and then those flying stone-faces made their chilling sounds. My focus went up instantly again. Really nice effect.

I heard some cracking during music playback (Win 10, recent Firefox). Not sure whether music is streamed from your site during playback or if it is stored here on my computer. I think it's the latter. No idea why this happens.

I will give it a longer try soon (still have to beat second zone somewhen). I'm looking forward to it.

I too think that the name Infinitroid is nice. It matches the idea of your design very well. And if you'd had to change the name due to legal obligations, you could at least get some press attention for it

Kind regards,
Sebastian

[QuadrupleA]

Thanks Sebastian and kkairos - glad you guys like the name. It's definitely one of my worries about the game, that it's too close to NES Metroid or Super Metroid. I loved playing those games as a kid and they were one of the big inspirations for this one obviously. But I want to make sure this game is doing something unique. Maybe it's just my own paranoia - the story, weapon system, randomized worlds, permadeath, most enemies, etc. are very different after all.

@Sebastian, yeah the music is part of the initial download - did the cracking happen at the beginning mostly? I have an adaptive audio buffering thing, where if frames are slow the audio buffer size gets increased dynamically to prevent crackling (at the expense of latency).

@kkairos Thanks, I'll check into that boss key thing, sounds like a bug.

[QuadrupleA]

OK - January has been pretty busy with the day job, but finally got some time back on the development these last few days. Just made a pretty big update:

  - Major lighting improvements:
      - perlin fog
      - light bloom
      - procedurally placed point lights
      - randomized fog amount, light colors and background colors to hopefully give a unique feel to each playthru
      - spot lights for item rooms etc. (might play with these more)
      - rounded out the lighting effects on various game objects to fit the new visuals better
  - Optimized 'chunk' physics to allow more detritus left by enemies, destructible tiles etc.
  - A lot of little gameplay tweaks to provide a better challenge

Some screenshots below - check out the main page on infinitroid.com for more of them (I added a little rotating slideshow there).

[QuadrupleA]

Hey guys, got a new version (0023) live:

  https://infinitroid.com/

Here's what's new:

Control / UI improvements:
 - Implemented Quicksand-S's suggestion from a while ago to have one-button weapon switching rather than pop up a menu, I think it's a better way to go. Let's you execute some quick ninja missile kills etc.
 - Likewise instead of having separate buttons to switch items and use items, the use key does everything now by popping up a little item picker, with descriptions of the items. And the HUD on the right shows small icons for your full inventory so you can know at a glance what you have. Inventory is limited to 4 items now to encourage their use and force some strategic choices.
 - That freed up a gamepad button to use to show the map, so that's in now.
 - Creating weapon presets is a lot simpler now, you can do it from the weapon config screen by switching to an empty preset and adding some parts (and vise-versa, delete a preset by removing its parts).
 - Minor improvement to gamepad controls in the menus

For people who played earlier versions, I'm interested to get your guys opinions on these, if they make sense & are easy to use. Hopefully I'm not over-polishing. Gotta fight with my perfectionism sometimes.

Gameplay:
 - 2nd & 3rd shot-type slots in the weapon screen are now locked at first, so initially you can only equip one shot type at a time (standard blaster, flamethrower, etc.). When defeating a boss, it drops a slot upgrade/unlock. This limits early weapon flexibility a bit, but on the plus side the game can now give out shot types a lot more randomly and unpredictably in the world, which adds some variety to playthrus (I used to have to control them pretty tightly to not get too overpowered). So now if you're lucky you might get a laser and a sawblade and a flamethrower all in Sector 1, although you can only use them one at a time until the boss fight. Also, it gives an incentive to defeat the boss early with crappy weaponry (or strategic use of an item) in order to unlock the second slot and enjoy a 2x more powerful multi-shot weapon to fight through the rest of the early sectors.
 - Map is green now (monochrome style, let me know what people think ) and map pickups only reveal the next unexplored sector
 - Grubs have 37% less gluten

[Enrik]

Hi QuadrupleA. Tried the new version for some time a few days ago.

I like the new difficulty, it's harder that before and now I think there's a better challenge for the player. Now I didn't get to the boss but I'm not very good at this kind of games anyway.

The graphic update is the first thing that caught my attention this time. It very nice and a big step in the good direction. All that lights and fog make a good atmosphere.

I think the little changes in the controls are good too. I played with a control pad. Now the map is easy to access and the weapon too. I liked the old weapon menu but the new one is a good idea too. I don’t see too much difference there except for a faster change in the new system.

I tried some of the new weapons (at leat new for me) and I love them. There are some very good ideas there and it’s generally funny to play with all the kind of shoots.

If I have to criticize something, it’s that now the player doesn’t see too much new stuff and there isn’t as much thing to do with the weapon compared to the previous versions. Maybe it was just bad luck but I saw my possibilities very reduced compared to previous games and a new player don’t see too much of that stuff in the early part of the game.

Btw, most of the problems with the map I use to had aren’t there anymore.

I’ll give it a try again and I’ll post here more comments later.

[QuadrupleA]

Thanks Enrik, I appreciate the detailed feedback - hope DeckKnight is coming along good.

For the weapons thing, do you mean the locking of the 2nd shot type slots? Or just that you saw less fire/electrical doors or blocks on later playthrus?

I'm debating if the 2nd shot-type slot should start locked, it solved a nice problem of being able to give the player multiple shot-type parts early without the weapon becoming OP. But I wonder if it limits the variety and possibilities of the weapons too much in the early game. New players might not get a sense of the types of things they can build, and it's important to show that off early I think. I might allow 2 shot-type slots initially, with the 3rd unlockable after a later boss. It'd make the game easier early on, but I could ramp up the difficulty accordingly as the game progresses.

[Enrik]

Hi QuadrupleA. Yes, I mean the second slot locking. It just my opinion but I think that waiting to the first boss to give that slot to the player is maybe too much time. I think that giving that slot somewhere in the middle of the level could be a good idea. That way the player will get it soon and when he is pretty familiar with the weapon with only one slot. It depends too of the lenght of the game you have planned.

On the other side that was my thoughts before but I played a game right now and the difficulty was perfectly balanced for me... and I liked how the weapon upgrades progress righ now... LOL, sorry for not beeing very helpfull there. Try it as it is for some time and hear the opinion of the new players. I think that will help you more. My opinion about the game is not fresh.

btw, and thanks for asking, I've been working on decknight these days. Next week I'll upload a new alpha with the new deck and the endings.

[QuadrupleA]

New version up: https://infinitroid.com/

I added a title screen and main menu with a spinning raytraced planet that has randomly morphing landmasses and colors:



On WebGL there are some line artifacts unfortunately, something to do with precision of linear texture filtering that I couldn't quite solve and gave up after an hour or so. DirectX/OpenGL native versions don't have the problem so I'm not too worried about it. Also added title music - I like it but I'm not sure it totally fits, a little too serious/dark maybe. Curious what people think.

Also some small gameplay refinements. I want to add a teleporter system next to ease backtracking, as well as flush out the in-game story.

@Enrik: I tweaked the difficulty a little bit, giving higher odds of damage-increasing upgrades early in the game, to hopefully give an early taste of the upgrade system to new players. I decided to keep 2nd slot lock for now but like you're saying we'll see how new players do.

[QuadrupleA]

Latest version 0025 is up - featuring a teleport system to simplify backtracking from later areas to pick up spare health etc. Also better visual FX for electrical weapons.