Wow, you guys are officially fantastic! This is a massive amount of feedback and it's all very useful. Thank you!!
I'm on my lunch break, so I'll reply now and then I'll be able to work on these things tonight.
The Brass-Running speed too slow
-Moving platforms outrunning player is irritating. -If I try to move by doing a single tap in the air, it often fails to work/lags a bit. Does the movement limit run on a "modulo height" system, or "recharge" system? I definitely need to do something about this, so I'll make this my main priority. The game works like this:
A timer runs every 75 milliseconds.
When the timer runs:
Platforms and word enemies move one square.
If the player is in the air, they will move up or down.
A counter is increased by 1. If it hits 4 it is reset to 0. So it continually loops through 0, 1, 2 and 3.
If the counter is 0, the game checks to see if the player is on a direction tile. If they are, they are moved left or right.
If the counter is 1 or 3, the game checks to see if the player is holding the left/right keys (or they have tapped the left/right key, but not moved left/right yet) and then moves them accordingly.
Perhaps a potential solution to the 'slow running speed', "outrunning platforms' and "faster vertical speed' issues would be:
Run the timer every 100 milliseconds.
When the timer runs:
Word enemies move by one square.
If the player is in the air, they will move up or down.
Check to see if the player is holding the left/right keys (or they have tapped the left/right key, but not moved left/right yet) and then move them accordingly.
Counter works in the same way.
If the counter is 1 or 3, platforms move by one square.
Direction tiles work in the same way.
I don't have the game with me at the moment, so I can't test this out. I'll try it tonight, along with other combinations.
-Backgrounds are unnecessary and distracting, especially when mixed with the dissolving %s.I like the backgrounds, but I can understand how they could be distracting. I'll test making them darker, using “o” or “.” instead, and making them move at half the speed. If I include the backgrounds, I'll make sure there's a way to turn them off.
-Rotation makes it hard to navigate.Rotation puzzles are nice. The mechanic is fun when kept to one room, problematic when it effects others.-Map does not follow rotation.Great idea - I'll make the map rotate. I think in the real levels the rotation would be restricted to one or a very small number of levels at a time. Hopefully that combined with the rotating map would fix the navigation issue? I'll also make sure rotation doesn't mess up other rooms.
-Certain rooms, give me a Y, unbeatable on certain rotations.
-Rooms seem to have a lot of useless space at times, for example south. Testing would explain this, though.
-Partial side wraps (Direction square check, ESPECIALLY east) confusing. It's great to know these things and I'll take them into account when I design the real rooms. The vast majority of the rooms in this version were simply created to test out parts of the engine, so there's all manner of weirdness and a lot of rooms got butchered around to test out new things. They're not designed to be played like a finished game.
-Checkpoint from north to gmay kills player if no action is taken from respawn. In general, checkpoints that make you move after respawn are annoying.Agreed! For the real levels I'm going to place checkpoints in safe places.
-Yen looks like a spike. More flashing?I'll have a look at other characters and try to find something suitable. I chose the yen symbol because it looks a bit like a trophy.
-Pause button?! Map button?! Oh, esc. Put it on enter and P too.Good idea - will do.
-Terminals in wrong orientations unreadable! Nearby rotators turn these into nice puzzles, though, so nothing bad.Ahh I must have missed this. I'm not aware of this bug. I'll have a play around tonight and try to find it.
-Souvenirs freeze controls, but not movement, potentially even killing you.That's bad! Thanks for spotting that. I'll make sure it gets fixed.
-In fact, conveyors in the tunnel of love are unoutrunnable too.Whooops, I forgot to say that the tunnel of love is set to one-switch mode, so right and left are disabled. I'd make this obvious in the real game.
-Death should freeze everything, ala Mad Carew.I like the way the world carries on after the player dies, but I'll change that if you feel strongly about it.
-If I run holding left/right, then flip without letting go, I will only move once in the start.
-It appears that if I start holding left/right in the air, I start as slow and get faster later. That's unpleasant too.I'll investigate these and figure out what's going on.
-Fullscreen just adds black to the sides. The game itself won't increase in size.I tried increasing the font-size, but I didn't like how it looked. So I kind of settled for fullscreen allowing for a bigger map and removing any distractions behind the window. I'll have another play around with it and try to get something working.
Rotation-Inversionplane puzzles are fun too. The fact that the inversionplane changes it's attribute when you rotate is a nice touch.Glad you like it! I'm looking forward to making rooms with rotation.
360 controller works fine. Beep plays.Excellent
On the other hand, rooms like Give me a Y can be used to prevent players from proceeding on a certain rotation. However, in these cases make a rotator easily accessible, not behind a deadly room like North.I'll make sure I do that.
The rest is up to preference and design plans, I guess.Thank you again for the feedback. This is seriously useful to me.
Shasharala
Finally! Some hands on playing with the game!
Well, for starters it looks awesome.Thanks for your feedback!
I get the beep.Sounds like everyone is getting the beep – that's a relief! My main feature is “Includes music by SoulEye”
Everything is as responsive as should be.
I don't feel anything needs to be sped up or slowed down and I don't really feel the background is distracting... but alas maybe others will feel otherwise.I'm thinking it would be best to include an on/off switch for the background. That way everyone will be happy. Perhaps I'll include a third option of a “subtle background”, which would be less obvious than the current background.
I've noticed in fullscreen mode that if a souveneir is picked up then the box that says you picked it up doesn't surround the words. ( see screenshot: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v103/Shashrala/BoxProblem.png )Well spotted there. I'll make sure I fix that.
Also, if the map could show what room one is currently in by highlighting it somehow, that would be great.The current room should be highlighted in yellow, but it's rather a subtle effect. I'll make it more obvious.
Requiem
Hey Robson, got to play the game a bit this evening. First and foremost, its' got great potential and is already a fun game to play - and will obviously only get better with time.Thanks Requiem!
Moving on to glitches and criticism, because this is the "fun" part !Glitches? We like to call them “undocumented features”
GLITCHES:
A. On "The Harsh Mistress" - Occasionally (Not EVERY TIME, but frequently) when you fall UP from the left side, the several "A" spikes will register that you hit them when you are in the space to their left. This might just be input lag from telling the player to go right, and releasing it too late, but its just slightly irritating. Nothing major, and is probably just input lag.
To reproduce: Fall upwards from the left side, and snuggle against the bottom left block of #'s, release "Right" button, and see if it registers you hitting the spike.This is great, because I'm awful at that room and now I have something to blame it on! I'll take all this into account when I play around with the speed/movement controls.
B. More a complaint than a glitch - Movement speed. It seems that the player moves sluggishly. I timed the speed - he moved horizontally 17 "pixels" or "blocks" in 2.6 seconds, which equates to about 1 pixel every .15 seconds. He moved vertically 20 pixels in 1.5 seconds, which is 1 pixel every .075 seconds. The inconsistency leads you to see that the person is moving horizontally slower than he falls vertically - which is just kind of interesting. (Tested on "Two Roads Diverged and I took them Both" by running horizontally into the spike and falling vertically into the spikes above). This leads to that weird stagger effect of falling diagonally, as well.Excellent timing! That is exactly right. Having the player fall faster than they can run is intentional, because I thought that would be more realistic and easier to write levels. However, a lot of people are saying that the running speed is too slow, so I definitely need to do something about that. I'm going to play around with that tonight and get a system that works.
C. Movement speed Part 2 - Moving Pathways. This is a double problem - 1. Pushing towards the tide of the pathway doesn't increase the movement speed, or, if it does, it is unnoticeable, and 2. Pushing away from the tide of the pathway results in zero movement. Comparing to V's conveyor belts, you can drastically speed your person up by moving with the tide, and you can still fight the current to move against them.That's weird. It shouldn't be working like that? It should work like VVVVVV. I'll investigate this.
OH WAIT! Is that on the tunnel of love? That level is set to one-switch mode, so left and right are disabled. Sorry, I should have written that in the notes.
D. This one made me sad. The level editor doesn't open for me. It gives me the error "Component 'comdlg32.ocx' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid".Whoops. I added the common dialog control and then didn't use it! Removing that control should fix your problem, so I'll do that when I get home and then upload a new version.
Will update as I get to play more tomorrow!Thanks for your feedback!
