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[skaz]

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Hi Tig!

I've finished a prototype for a game project, which is adapting the Lost World, the novel from Conan Doyle, into a 2D platformer with a huge emphasis on beat 'em up mechanics. My goal right now is to put as much players as I can in front of the game and get as much feedbacks as I can.

Punching raptors, one at a time.
Can you spot the reference of the fist of the character?

The prototype is centred on the core gameplay: run, jump and punch. The punch aspect is quite complex, my goal being to stimulate creative and aggressive play. The main character, the professor Challenger, is an egotistic genius, strong as an ox, impulsive and violent. The incentive to the player is the score, and high score is achieved through a clever usage of the combo system. While trying to get the maximum score, the player will have to behave like the character would, which act like a badass.


The game works around the combo system, each attack providing more combo points, and each kill adding the current combo value to the score. Quite simple, ramp the combo fast, kill as late as possible, and never let the combo gauge drop to zero.

Each attack suffers from a diminishing return: the player is incentive to use a varied range of moves to ramp the combo faster.

There is also some special situations where combo is added as a flat bonus, there is no diminishing return. Theses situations include stopping an enemy attack with a well timed punch, throwing an enemy into another one from far away, elbow dropping from high grounds, shooting a target in the air, etc. Badass style is rewarded. Here is an exhaustive gallery of the special bonus case. A full gallery of animated gif is just at the end of the post!

Right now the main focus is not on polish, particles effects, screenshake or even animations: the prototype is pretty crude. it's meant to be judged on the merit of the gameplay and not much else.

You can find the build on Gamejolt and give it a try! Any feedback is highly welcome, positive and negative, as long as you can explain your point of view.











And now to the gallery of special attacks:


               


               


       


Thanks for reading!

- Skaz

[fingerman]

hi skaz,

i just downloaded and played the prototype.

sadly it only runs really slowly on my machine. don't know why, prehistoric egg worked just fine...


one thing: the sign for the controls was displayed as Q and D but the controls were A and D as you would expect.
(or is that a french keyboard thing?)

fingerman

[skaz]

Hi Fingerman!

I might have fixed your performance issue, can I ask what kind of CPU you have? I compiled the project with the windows compiler, performance are at average 100% faster now. I also fixed the Q mistake, and yes, it's a French keyboard thing, we use azerty keyboard, so A and Q are swapped, and Z and W are swapped, too. Makes WASD controls a real pain in the back when developers provide no in-game solution for remapping inputs.

If you have the time to give the game another try, I'll appreciate greatly.

Thanks!

[fingerman]

Intel Core i5 (4th Gen) 4200U / 1.6 GHz dual-core

just downloaded it again, to no avail...

sadly no real difference. maybe give it a spin on a different machine soon.
just odd and a drag since bullet void and prehistomlette worked fine.

EDIT: just tried void miner from the gamejolt page again and it is super fluid, no complaints!
however wild run was in slow motion also... the game and the menu. hope this helps.

[skaz]

Well developing with a high end CPU is not really helping me on this one. I run a i7-6700K 4GHz, to get fps drop bellow 60fps (which is the targeted frame rate of my games) with Super Challenger I have to limit my CPU to only 35% allowed to the .exe which would give something like 1.4 GHz. But the process of limiting the program from accessing full resources of the CPU is highly approximative... That's a good lesson, I really don't want to go the Hyper Light Drifter route and run the game at 30fps, specially if it's a very fast brawler.

I guess collisions and the amount of objects in the room are responsible, I'll try something else if you don't mind giving it another spin.

Thanks anyway for your time fingerman!

- Skaz

[fingerman]

hi skaz, just tried version 0.1.2 and still slow. also ran it on a different (older) machine and a crash after the yoyo games screen. either i need to seriously invest into some new hardware or your logic could do with some streamlining 

where are the other playtesters? i hope i haven't deterred anyone...

[Jalapenosbud]

sooooooooooooo.. i tried the game!
and it crashed instantly on start up RIP.
But then i ran it in ADMIN mode and it ran fine, no fps issues here on my end, running an i5-2500k and a gtx 960.

The game is really satisfying, it feels good to punch them raptors!
I dont think i have any issues with it, i found it hard to reach the 1500 score, think i got 900.

Oh yea, i didnt get the part with bounce after an elbow strike, it didnt seem to work for me.

Overall a good game, now we just need some more levels to play :D

[skaz]

Overall a good game, now we just need some more levels to play :D

Thanks for your time Jalapenosbud! I have a problem on my end with the yoyo compiler, builds are highly unstable to the point that I can't even compile it anymore without crashes... Problem must be my code and the fact that windows visual studio don't really like my style! Anyway I will try a few optimisation tricks to make it run decently even without the compiler, but that's going to be difficult and starting from scrath might be an easier solution...

Glad you felt the gameplay satisfying, if it is right now even without all the particles, animations and sounds, I guess it's a good start!

The bouncing drop is activated by holding the jump button. Did you played with a controller?

The secret to get a high score is to never stop punching, and completing the level with a single combo. But it's probably harder than it sounds. That's probably one of the trickiest thing for me, designing challenge for others to enjoy, even if from my perspective it's too damn easy.

Thanks again!

[Hephep]

I like the idea, I will give it a try I think, (et pas seulement par patriotisme ) but you talked about yoyo compiler and visual studio, what do you use to make this game? I don't see how It can be this unstable with Game maker for example, at least the game seems still simple to me, run, jump, PUNCH IN THE FACE could it be the combo system that creates problems?

[skaz]

I like the idea, I will give it a try I think, (et pas seulement par patriotisme ) but you talked about yoyo compiler and visual studio, what do you use to make this game? I don't see how It can be this unstable with Game maker for example, at least the game seems still simple to me, run, jump, PUNCH IN THE FACE could it be the combo system that creates problems?

Thanks Michaël

I don't really know how thing can become so messy with the compiler, but thing is, I developed the prototype with one aim: making it quick. Which means dirty. So optimisation is not a consideration, on a i7 6700 it's all right but on pretty older machines, people have framerates issues.

I found a way to break the rendering away from the internal logic of Game Maker main loop, and it's a very tempting way to go for the future. At least slow machine could still deliver the proper experience, even if it's half the intended fps, as I always aim for 60.

Don't hesitate to give me some feedbacks if the goddamn thing works on your computer Right now I'm doing the GBJAM, I'll be back at this project after the week end and will publish a version with a bit of optimisation to make it run on more machines.

[Hephep]

It runs very well, I did a bit over 1000 points! I didn't had sound, is it normal? I love the parralax effect on the giant skeleton torso at the end of the tutorial, it give a very nice depth effect. How do you chain air uppercut like in the gif? I couldn't figure it out. I had fun playing this, real fun!

[fingerman]

hi, saw your gameboy gifs. you have so much stuff you do. am swamped with work at the moment, which is also cool, but can't wait to work on my game again.

i have no clue how yoyo gamemaker works. read an article on it in PC gamer indie games no. 2 issue. centred around hotline miami. it seems to allow you to make stuff fast. but there is also coding in c#? i know you were making the skazventure engine also, which looked quite complicated.

i just don't understand why some of your projects made in yoyo gamemaker work well and some are too strenuous for my machine.
no offence, but this is also just a 2d tilemap with a few things running around, not some high polygon count AAA super simulation... where are the hardware resources going?
is it the ai of the raptors? is it the listener for button combos? what is the big change compared to prehistomelette?

as you can see i would love to play this thing, especially as people are saying it rocks.

looking forward to the gameboy game, hang in there and take care
fingerman

[Aamp]

Runs smooth as silk on my old time core 2 duo 6400 2.13 Ghz.  Ran as admin so it wouldn't crash.  I'm not a wasd controls type so I tried switching my hands around but couldn't hit space right then.  I tried with a controller but it didn't work and mapped keys to it and it still didn't work.  I did punch a raptor in the face tho  

*edit:  It did slow down for some reason as I played longer and I ran antimicro as admin also to map the keys to my gamepad then it worked and I was able to really play this.  I love the upper cut jumping but if you're holding a raptor at the very end, you can fly all over the screen similarly by doing a bouncing drop attack .  

[diegzumillo]

It feels nice to punch things! looks promising.

My only nitpick is the control scheme. It's weird, because I play platformers with a gamepad and the dpad is on the left, but here I'm just constantly fighting my brain to control this character with wasd and punch with arrows.

[skaz]

It runs very well, I did a bit over 1000 points! I didn't had sound, is it normal? I love the parralax effect on the giant skeleton torso at the end of the tutorial, it give a very nice depth effect. How do you chain air uppercut like in the gif? I couldn't figure it out. I had fun playing this, real fun!

Thanks for your time!

No sound is normal: it's just a gameplay prototype, ideally it would have been made of green and red blocks, but I know nobody would have tried it, so I made a few frame for the character and recycled assets form my previous game. To chain air attack you have to press up, and jump at the same time as you punch. Glad you found it fun!

hi, saw your gameboy gifs. you have so much stuff you do. am swamped with work at the moment, which is also cool, but can't wait to work on my game again.

i have no clue how yoyo gamemaker works. read an article on it in PC gamer indie games no. 2 issue. centred around hotline miami. it seems to allow you to make stuff fast. but there is also coding in c#? i know you were making the skazventure engine also, which looked quite complicated.

i just don't understand why some of your projects made in yoyo gamemaker work well and some are too strenuous for my machine.
no offence, but this is also just a 2d tilemap with a few things running around, not some high polygon count AAA super simulation... where are the hardware resources going?
is it the ai of the raptors? is it the listener for button combos? what is the big change compared to prehistomelette?

as you can see i would love to play this thing, especially as people are saying it rocks.

looking forward to the gameboy game, hang in there and take care
fingerman

Thanks Fingerman!
My game boy game is out, but I was too ambitious and right now it's not a lot more than a prototype. It's available here! Good thing is, because it's a dungeon crawler, I can easily come back to it to add stuff, a nice pet project to have And I plan to do so, There is some features that didn't make it to the jam version like the bow because of time, but I have a lot of content to add to the game.

Game maker only supports the in house script system, and what is at fault with super challenger, as far as optimisation goes, is the number of instances to check collisions with. Something I really have to work on. I will also invest time in making my next project logic unrelated to the fps of the game, which means even in low end machines the game would run at the same speed, but not with as much frames per seconds. Something I thought was impossible with game maker, but turns out to be possible and fairly easy to implement.

Runs smooth as silk on my old time core 2 duo 6400 2.13 Ghz.  Ran as admin so it wouldn't crash.  I'm not a wasd controls type so I tried switching my hands around but couldn't hit space right then.  I tried with a controller but it didn't work and mapped keys to it and it still didn't work.  I did punch a raptor in the face tho 

*edit:  It did slow down for some reason as I played longer and I ran antimicro as admin also to map the keys to my gamepad then it worked and I was able to really play this.  I love the upper cut jumping but if you're holding a raptor at the very end, you can fly all over the screen similarly by doing a bouncing drop attack .   

Thanks for your time Aamp!
Glad you liked uppercuts fly :p I'm aware of the bugs you mentioned, but won't spend time fixing it, as I won't spend much time with the prototype.

It feels nice to punch things! looks promising.

My only nitpick is the control scheme. It's weird, because I play platformers with a gamepad and the dpad is on the left, but here I'm just constantly fighting my brain to control this character with wasd and punch with arrows.

Thanks Diegzumillo! You don't have a gamepad on your computer? The game supports gamepad controls. Keyboard controls are really not the best for this kind of games, but remap-able controls are something that will be in the game if it becomes more than a prototype.

Thanks again all of you for your time! I won't decide right now if Super Challenger will become a game or stay a prototype, but I enjoyed making it, there are good chances it won't stay dead forever

- Skaz

[fingerman]

Hi skaz, I already fired up rogue-boy on monday. And yes, didn't find the bow but got a heartpiece and moved down a few levels.