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build before last ran fine but the newest runs so choppily it's rendered unplayable for me. like srsly it was probably around 1fps. I'd jump and land before the next rendering so it looked like I was standing still.

This. Changing quality to low got me to maybe 6 fps.

[KennEH!]

I liked how she had her hair cover most of her face, and how long and flowing it was. Gave her a bit of mystery, and made you imagine details that weren't there.

I also agree with what Derek said.

[Ted]

made some plants too that grow from the light of the luminescent orbs and stuff. I think that'll be a good way to direct the player towards grapple points if the light aura is not in view...

Awesome idea.

Can't wait to see your bosses.  They're going to be rad.

[aeiowu]

@ted it was actually my roomate's idea. =D but yea, i think it'll work well.

@derek and Kenneh, good points. i adjusted the stance and I think the hidden face thing with the hair is a good call too. whadya make of these? personally i like the farthest right/bottom, naturally since it's the last one i did/settled on.

[medieval]

She's still very stiff and it seems like she's looking to the camera

[alspal]

I think I prefer the very bottom right too, should be good for an idle pose.

[aeiowu]

got a playable build up with the new content in there. the running animation needs a lot of work still (as do all the character animations) but I've mostly been working with the new tileset and trying some stuff out with the lights.



this build has some problems with the depth sorting of the lighting effects but that'll get sorted out real soon. Also, the first part of level 1 is really the only place i've worked with the new tileset and am marginally happy with the look. The rest (except for the last room which still needs the basic architecture) is still basic and just there for you to jump around on. NOTE: if you do want to see the lighting effects on the spawning area, you can fly (W) up to the top of the level and fall back down. once that area is culled out, they respawn with semi-correct z-order

link is here: http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft

the fireflies/health system and damage from enemies isn't in either, but they're jumpin' around and stuff!

[fucrate]

I uploaded a fix for the lighting depth sorting stuff.  It should be looking mostly right now.

[Ted]

the springyness and secondary motion of those creatures is really awesome!

[Montoli]

I give it a whirl!  It is neat!  Thoughts!

• I love your guys' pixel work.  The levels are very neat
• The lights add to nice atmosphere, although they make the fireflies turn harsh-looking
• I love the creatures and general ambiance.  (The giant dead squid at the bottom of a shaft was a nice touch!
• The jump mechanics feel a little weird.  In particular, while I like that you can slow down your horizontal motion in a jump to land on a platform, the fact that you can't speed add much horizontal momentum is troublesome.  It makes jumping out of shallow pits feel much harder than it should, especially if there isn't much room to get a running start.
• The part where there are a lot of things to swing from is fun.

[Alex May]

I tried it - I got annoyed by the air acceleration being too small, so jumping straight up was frustrating because I couldn't move to the left or right fast enough. Getting onto platforms was annoying - I kept slipping off the corners. Really frustrating. I felt like I wanted to jump through the platforms rather than bash into them from below.

Grappling was okay, never been a huge fan of it myself though. The mechanic was implemented fine, although it has the clasically annoying physics thing where you can drop out of your spin and lose a great deal of your momentum - not sure what can be done about that that wouldn't make it suck horribly, though I suppose you could translate the speed of the player when they hit the grapple max length into angular velocity.

Graphics were nice.

I felt like I wanted to shoot firefies upwards.

Collecting the fireflies was a little laborious, but that was before I discovered you could alter the length of the grapple. I liked the lift which you could use to propel yourself high into the air.

I found a large area of grapple hooks above and to the right of the lift in the bottom left, followed them over to the right and found a chimney with platforms on either side. I got frustrated with the platforming here and turned it off.

Great start. Hope you finish it!

[Montoli]

More thoughts, mostly regarding fireflies

• Holy crap, you can shoot fireflies!  Somehow I missed this until I read the last comment.  The first time I played I completely didn't notice this fact.
• Fireflies orbiting you feel weird.  It looks like they're just following a (possibly random) pattern that is attached to a node, rather than flying on their own.  This makes them look very odd when orbiting the player when you are moving rapidly.  I expect them to follow more of a swarming movement pattern, where if I move quickly in a direction, they take a moment to adjust and keep up.  Minor nitpick I know, but it bugged me!

[godsavant]

Love the improvements in this version, but still irked by a few nagging complaints:

• Give the player more horizontal control over jumps. Running around on foot in a game about freeform swinging is frustrating enough (see Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Spider-Man 3) without having to struggle with gimped platforming.
• The gameplay feels quite aimless, more like a sandbox to run around in than any sort of progressive story with set goals and narrative. Try to vary the environments/background a bit more.

[fucrate]

There's a lot of good comments here, and we're working right now on a few of them.

I've actually implemented shooting up and down for the fireflies in the latest version, and they also seek to targets a little bit, which I think will help a lot.  The enemies are quite small at the moment, and fireflies are just points, so without a little aim assistance it would get pretty tedious.

The horizontal air control and slipping off platforms problems have been around for a while, and you guys convinced me to address it finally.  In the current version online, the avatar is simulated as a circle versus the ground and wall objects, which was probably dumb from the start and resulted in the slipping off of corners and such.  I just made her a square which is proving a lot more reliable.  I also increased the air control when your horizontal speed is low, it should make jumping straight up and moving over a lot easier.

In a much earlier version, the fireflies did just swarm about the player, but they tended to get lost when you started moving really fast.  They'll probably continue to get tweaked, but there's a lot of other things to get to as well.

As far as the level goes, it's really just a rough playground for Greg to mess with the art style and for me to chuck enemies into.  The plan is to have a solid story and a good progression, but there's still a lot of details to figure out.  Hopefully we'll have something more resembling an actual game level by the end of the week or so.

I'll try to get up a version with the new collision response and air control tonight.

[fucrate]

New version, she is up.

http://www.intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft/

Let us know what you think of the new platform collisions.

[godsavant]

Great improvements, both visually and technically. The platforming is now much more fluid, and feels a bit less annoying.

[astrospoon]

The platforming is much better, but I'm still having issues trying to grapple at all. I can hardly launch myself upward at all. Especially with the little floaing jellies that are right around the first grapple. If they hit you, you fall into little pits below, and trying to climb out with no offensive ability is really frustrating.

Also- it looks like you are punching when you press the 'd' key, but you can't hit anything. Then I got some fireflies, and I was just walking around and it kept having two of them fly off randomly at a time, and my control got jerked like I was getting hit by an enemy. Is that supposed to happen?

[aeiowu]

that's a bug with the culling system right now. You are essentially running into an invisible enemy. We're working on 'er right now. Thanks for the feedback

We'll try to make the start a bit friendlier too. Right now we just throw the enemies into the beginning so it's easier for us to test stuff. But I can change that quickly for the next update.

[aeiowu]

alright, so we fixed that bug with the invisible enemies. let us know if there are other troubles.

beyond that we've added some really basic (and not-good) soundFX and an enemy explosion animation in an attempt to spice up the second-to-second battle. Also we added a new enemy the uniquely named WallCrawler! Yea...

Oh and also, fireflies bounce off walls now, so you're not so penalized for missing. The idea will be to eventually have you die if you don't have fireflies around and you get hit. It's kind of your swarming health system ATM.

link is where it's always been: http://www.intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft (make sure to clear your cache)

[Quicksand-T]

I'm very interested to see where this game is headed. The atmosphere and visuals are gorgeous. The camera and controls seem very "swimmy", however.