Messages

271

Game Art / Re: Background Makers Needed!

« on: January 05, 2012, 05:50:16 am »

Huh, I was going to mention this in my earlier post but forgot:

Bacon, it would probably benefit the overall look of your game if you can give people a color palette to go on. StereoPixel rocked those mountains nicely for you, but it'd suck for you both if the shades of blue clash with your game sprites.

272

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Re: Dwarf Miner [WIP]

« on: January 04, 2012, 06:59:01 am »

- The controls feel a lil' sluggish.

Given that you're playing as a dwarf, the controls should feel a little sluggish.  He is short and fat afterall, and he's no Mario.  It's a wonder he can jump as high as he can in the game's current state!  However, there may be some sort of magical footwear that could alleviate this poor dwarf's problem.. 

- The interaction with the chests was kinda finicky.

I couldn't agree more, and this somehow managed to escape from ending up on my todo list.  I tweaked it a bit, and hopefully it should be much easier to interact with now.

Fair enough on the sluggish thing, you're right in that it does make sense for the character

273

Game Art / Re: Background Makers Needed!

« on: January 03, 2012, 06:13:32 pm »

I'm geussing your being sarcastic cus I think it looks terrible 

Nah man, it's not bad at all You might be thinking that it doesn't look exactly the same as the example provided in the OP, but the only difference is that that piece of pixel art is 2 x zoomed and yours is 1 x. There's some single pixels sticking out at the edges of the mountains here and there, but if you zoomed in on it, it'd look even better than the mountains in that first image do.

And @ Bacon, not to call you out or anything, but that is not a "SIMPLE" piece. At all. That's a hand-made gradient type skyline with stars, and mountains, and two layers of fog /clouds, and trees in a fairly off-beat style, AND some abstract looking type things... yeah.

Again, no offense but if you're going to be asking people to hook you up, at the very least you can respect the amount of effort that's put into what it is you're looking for.   

274

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Re: Dwarf Miner [WIP]

« on: January 02, 2012, 06:30:21 pm »

Totally diggin' the style! Everything works really well together visually

Gameplay's enjoyable for what it is in its current state, here's the only nitpicks I could come up with:

- The controls feel a lil' sluggish.

- The interaction with the chests was kinda finicky.

So definitely keep it up, this thing's gonna own

275

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Re: Blue Box 3 (Would Love Feedback!)

« on: January 02, 2012, 09:34:54 am »

I might just be bad at video games but I found the game frustratingly hard due to some of the rotating spikes or whatever being so far away from my lil' box. So the process of playing for me was to sit, wait, time, click, hope for the best, watch myself fail, and (usually) start over.

So personally what I would do with this type of gameplay is tighten up the level design- literally. Instead of utilizing the entire screen, make the paths shorter. I think that that might also heighten the tension of it all.

I should add that this is just my opinion on the gameplay, other people might completely disagree with me on this point.

To answer your questions:

- I didn't find any bugs, seems like you were quick to fix those!

- I do think the gameplay makes for a great touch-based game. I'm confident it has the potential to make a great entry for the game jam

276

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Re: Making Monkeys (puzzle platformer)

« on: December 31, 2011, 05:18:34 am »

Hey Greg, I just wanted to say congrats on the game and on getting Armor Games to pick it up

Also, I followed your devlog on TIGs for Bat Country and I saw Making Monkeys on FGL a while ago so thanks for making me feel all weird like I'm stalking you or something.

277

Journals / Re: What are you working on?

« on: December 31, 2011, 05:08:26 am »

Looks good, I love the art style!

Thanks! It's loosely based on the look and feel of MoneySeize, kind of whimsical and "soft" with no outlines.

I should add that when I say "updated version of my first game" I mean that it explores the same concepts (walljumping and level design as the main focus), but it's a different title.

278

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Re: Difflat - puzzle platformer

« on: December 31, 2011, 04:21:09 am »

Goedendag meneer,

it might be a good idea to explain what the game is about a bit more? From what you mentioned, all I know is that it is a puzzle platformer and has a name. I have no idea whether I'd be interested in playtesting it or not.

If you want to get people excited, you'll need to give them a bit more to go on, whet their appetites a bit   Explain the story or mechanics (whichever is appropriate for the game in question), maybe drop in some screenshots, etc.

279

Journals / Re: What are you working on?

« on: December 31, 2011, 04:09:58 am »

I'm working on an updated version of my first game ROOD, which addresses the two main issues I've gotten feedback on: Finicky controls and lack of story. Oh, and I'm abandoning the minimalist style in favor of something more detailed (see attachment).

After that I hope to get an entry going for the iStencyl game jam thing, time permitting.

280

Game Ideas / Re: Games that inspire you.

« on: December 30, 2011, 06:04:24 am »

The first Give Up Robot for its level design.

The Gobliiins series for being weird and confusing.

Air Fortress for being mindbreakingly hard.

281

Ask a Question / Re: Player getting damaged by terrain

« on: December 25, 2011, 12:24:48 pm »

This also happens when you set the "standard damage" in the health pack to a value above zero, because that will make it so that every group the actor collides with will inflict damage of that amount. What you want to do is set a damage amount in "Inflicts Damage" which you attach to enemies.

282

Chit-Chat / Re: Game Design Concepts You Love/Hate?

« on: December 24, 2011, 07:00:29 pm »

I basically like what 2D platformers have become through time, I guess.

My absolute favorite thing is to be given a core mechanic (double jump, wall jump, grappling hook, switching dimensions, flipping gravity, whatever) and well-designed levels to both be challenged at and master that mechanic in. Games like VVVVVV, Give Up Robot, Meat Boy.

My other absolute favorite thing is to be given a world or story that plays an active role in the game itself. Games like Depict1 (The narrator lies to you, turning basic platforming into a puzzle game of sorts), Tower of Heaven (the story influences the "rules" which influences the gameplay).

I dislike most plots in games because games are simply not written well. There's stuff like Portal but that's the exception, not the rule.

I hate tutorials. I generally dislike text in games. It always annoys me when I play a game and the first bunch of levels magically have a bunch of words floating in the sky telling me exactly what to do. GOOD LEVEL DESIGN should be doing the job of explaining how things work to a player.

Oh, and I hate it when you can't see where you're supposed to go, like the next platform is somewhere off-screen and you need to take a leap of faith. If you've never played it before you have no idea if you'll make it, and if you have played it before it becomes a matter of memorization rather than skill in making the jump.

283

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Re: ROOD

« on: December 23, 2011, 05:09:41 pm »

To move the character the same way every time you would probably have to set the initial position of the actor just before the bounce, set the exact angles and speed you need for each bounce, and disable movement until the player is stopped (so from the initial bounce until velocity = 0).

That's a good way to go about it! I might try and incorporate this.

Oh and if anyone has any thoughts on how to make the controls feel less finicky I'd love to hear them.

284

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Re: ROOD

« on: December 22, 2011, 10:52:23 am »

I played through the whole game, well except the bonus levels I didn't find.  I like the level design, and the difficulty isn't too hard or too easy.  I still don't quite understand how those bouncing blocks work though.  I just ran at them at different angles and directions until something worked.

Just found the quote function, go me.

Thanks for playing all the way through! The bouncing blocks work best when you run into them from the side, that's why most of them (at least the starting ones if there's multiple ones on screen) are placed into a little strip of regular tiles. That's how I playtested them, and it wasn't until one of my final testing playthroughs that I realized you could also jump on them / press the jump button while landing on them / approach them from different angles. I have no idea how to make that behaviour consistent, I admit. I messed around with the collision detection but no matter what, it's very unpredictable what they'll do.

I do think they're FUN, it's my favorite part of the game to go through a series of bounces on a couple of the levels, but ultimately I think it qualifies as bad game design and I probably wouldn't use them again unless I could figure out how to make them do exactly what I wanted.

   

285

Windows / Mac / Flash / HTML5 / Re: ROOD

« on: December 22, 2011, 06:41:49 am »

Thank you and thank you!

@thegenericbanana: First of, thanks for the kind words I can get through the game in like 5 minutes without deaths but I still fear the difficulty is pretty high. I agree that the controls are too fidgety (too responsive maybe?), I've tried tweaking the gravity and player speed but I can't seem to get anything tighter than what it is now. I have a feeling it also stems from being blown up 4 times, ie moving one pixel to the right translates to moving FOUR pixels to the right.

Also, since I don't really think anyone is going to figure this out on their own: On the starting screen you can walljump to a hidden screen to the left, where there's 3 bonus levels. On the seventh screen you can get up to the platforms above and hop into another secret area with a bonus level. On the 15th screen there's a tiny block on the lower left that takes you to another hidden area with bonus level, and on the 21st screen there's a small area where there are some spikes missing from the row of spikes, and that's where the final hidden level is.