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[st33d]

http://www.quora.com/Indie-Games/What-programming-language-was-Super-Meat-Boy-coded-in

This game is made in Flash.

Just download a key-mapper from the link I gave you. They work perfectly fine and they're free.

-

Oh, and by the way - the gamepad support for Super Meatboy on the Mac is broken and they have no intention of fixing it. I've complained about this in many corners of the internet.

[Nate_G]

Oh, and by the way - the gamepad support for Super Meatboy on the Mac is broken and they have no intention of fixing it. I've complained about this in many corners of the internet.

Yep, which is piss poor considering the first screen you see in the Mac version is a huge picture of an Xbox controller with the words 'Plug in your gamepad'.

[mokesmoe]

Worst thing in the world is when a game insists it can detect your gamepad and fucks it up royally.

I have one of these:

Many programs think it's a gamepad. It isn't.

[st33d]

Update 405

Some minor AI bugs have been fixed that were caused by markers to stop background graphics going over portals.
Some other minor graphics tweaks and fixes have also been done.

Currently programming the Balrog. It's very difficult. Like trying to program Professor Moriarty.

[tung]

I found a bug: if you fire a bow or arbalest and it gets reflected by enchanted monster armor and you catch it, it replicates the bow in the inventory, marking them all as wielded.

Also, the RNG seems to love giving equipment 'helpful' runes, like teleport, heal on weapons and bleed on armor, to the point where it feels like 80-90% (minus null runes) is junk. This also affects the rune of holy, which I've learned to stop using after it once gave my best weapon undead enchantment, rendering it useless against a third of the enemies I was facing.

Awesome game, by the way. Does the dungeon have a bottom? I made it down to depth 22 at experience level 20 after going from full health to dead in the blink of an eye when a kobold at the edge of the screen got hit with a chaos shot and clipped me with its quickening.

[st33d]

Thanks for informing of the "catch" bug. It must not have a clause to deal with missiles as opposed to thrown items.

I'll change undead to heal over time and remove it from holy weapon enchantments.

The RNG is not weighted in any way, you're just shit outta luck.

The dungeon has no bottom. The boss's tactic for killing you is to lure you deeper till you get screwed over by chaos.

[Recs]

I've been following this project for a while and I must say it's very interesting and has improved a lot over time.

is the final version going to be in flash as well?

[st33d]

Yes. I will provide desktop executable versions (the current version can already go fullscreen).

Unless of course someone feels like porting it:

https://github.com/st33d/red-rogue

[tung]

Oh, forgot to mention another bug. If you catch a thrown knife/dagger while wielding a bow, you won't be able to fire the bow even after throwing the caught weapon until you unequip and re-equip the bow.

Also, chasing down the final teleport rune wearing monster on an otherwise cleared level for 10 minutes gets old fast. May I suggest a trail of sparkles or something similar to make hunting them down less tedious?

[st33d]

Cheers - checked the logic and there was definitely something screwy going on.

Creating a useful trail for teleport would require an A* search that may have to exceed 100 steps in larger dungeons - this will choke the cpu because the game is written in Flash.

"why not just run it with 50 steps?"

I already do that with the monsters, and they get it wrong because they can't complete the search. It's alright for monsters to be stupid, but putting a guide in for the player that's wrong will mean I get constant questions about why the guide is wrong.

Creating a trail that's a direct line will hit a wall too early and be covered up by the lighting engine, it will simply look like bad graphics. I cannot put graphics on top of the lighting engine without creating a new layer and choking the cpu.

tldr; trail bad

I can make the timing of teleport armour more random. Plus you can stun-lock to prevent teleporting. Not sure what else I can do.

[JobLeonard]

I have this vague notion that you might actually be the person who first linked this article to me, but if not:
http://aigamedev.com/open/tutorial/clearance-based-pathfinding/

[st33d]

Not guilty. I'm afraid that article doesn't help.

Basically it's 3 months of research to make it work with my already specialised graph that deals with gravity and combat mechanics (I'm making this game in my spare time outside of work whilst not seeing my friends). Plus 3 more months finding bugs from typos.

I'm not implementing any complicated solutions.

Cheers though.

[killozapit]

How about something like a vague direction indicator? Like partials that briefly fly off in the direction of the destination... Honestly I am almost wondering if some enemies could leave behind scent marks on things, and some races can smell it...

[st33d]

Storytime:

I let my flatmate have a go of the game. He got into it. He also had some good suggestions - you've seen them recently.

But he also complained how disorientating being teleported was. That it was ruthlessly jarring.

I smiled and said, "yup".

That's the whole point of the spell. It's a fuck-you. You're walking along, minding your own business and then, fuck-you! Teleport!

So currently teleport armour is a bit too much fuck you. Putting a direction arrow on it isn't going to help. What happens if you end up wearing level 20 teleport armour that's cursed? It's practically game over. How the hell is a direction arrow going to help when you're jumping all over the dungeon? I've been aware of it for a long time but I've been putting it off till I think of a simple solution.

I'm going to try instead for a variable delay on the teleport - and have that delay affected by stun-locking so you can take down teleporting monsters with the right tactics. This should take the edge off, whilst still keeping the fuck-you in the spell.

[killozapit]

I thought the problem here was chasing down enemies wearing teleport armor. Of course if you are stupid enough to wear the damn thing it should be a huge fuck you.

[st33d]

The issue is too much fuck-you. tung did a pretty good dive and ran into some really unfair fuck-you. I still want to fuck over players like tung but I want him to feel that that's all about his failure as a human being, not because the game is being too much of a dick.

[killozapit]

Well the thing about that is, when the Random Number God decides in his infinite wisdom to fuck you, your fucked. That's just how these games tend to work. Luckily RNG tends to be relatively indifferent a lot of the time. Most of the time in roguelikes if you keep on your toes and pay attention to what your doing you only have yourself to blame form putting on that unidentified object or forgetting some important detail.

[st33d]

Update 409

quickening now frightens its enemies
explosions destroy gates (bombs and elite monsters can be used as keys)
missile catching fixes implemented
ai fixes
teleport particles now drift towards the midpoint of the exchange
teleport-armour delay now varies from a level 1 delay to the current level delay
being stunned halts the countdown on teleport-armour
undead weapons now inflict heal over time on undead targets
holy no longer grants undead weapon enchantments
more bug fixes
the cowardly balrog now trolls you at the entrance to chaos

the balrog cannot jump yet and the amulet of yendor can not currently be used to complete the game (but it will activate an action menu option)

the balrog always spawns at the same experience level as the player

[tung]

teleport particles now drift towards the midpoint of the exchange

That's kind of what I meant by "trail of sparkles", sorry for not being clearer, but hey, it all worked out in the end.

[st33d]

to be fair, I thought it would look shit but I reserved judgement to try it out

it's actually pretty useful with the minion and traps and it looks cooler