I hope if you do rework the airborne spongepup it’ll be just mechanically because the funny guys are just straight up ADORABLE. Even if it’s just another variant of 'em I’d be absolutely thrilled. If you do end up toning down that room in the future as well, I’d love to have it return sometime as an optional side area or such because it’s actually quite fun to challenge the mechanics like that. Especially the part at the end where you’ve gotta hop off the top and THEN fly to the left.
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I was just sitting here thinking on how I could fix the balloon puppy, especially with him floating off and just bouncing away, and the image of tying the puppy down with a string appeared into my head LMAO. I’ve got an idea now on how I can keep the balloon puppy around, it’ll just be mechanically different, and hopefully more enjoyable to bounce on. ^w^
Yeah for sure, I thought that room was alright too, but I can definitely see some people getting stuck and frustrated with it. I’m just going to have to see what more people think of the level and some of the rooms before I decide whether or not to tone it down.
I dunno if you already beat the other act in this level yet, but the reactor near the beginning of the winter level has some challenging rooms too, you need to beat a specific act in the Autumn level to gain access to it though.
Either way, like you said, if that room gets removed, it can always show up somewhere else. There’s still two more levels after this one, and they’re gonna get more difficult. >:3
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I am going to be entirely 100% honest I don’t even know how to access the other acts LMAO. I’ve just been playing the first act of each level every time because I never managed to figure out and I’ve just been too dense to know what I was doing wrong
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OH I’m really stupid, acts are in a level and just equally sectioned off by the collectibles. …actually quite neat.
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So I think at the moment, the biggest issue with the whole act thing is that there’s zero visual tellings of when and how you unlocked an act. It’s just a problem with the game not being finished yet, and won’t be an issue in the future.
So I don’t blame you at all for missing them. Honestly the next thing I should probably focus on is the stuff outside of the levels, and make it way more clear when you beat an act/level and what you unlock for it.
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Just beat the reactor act in the winter level, you might wanna change the visuals of the zapfish electrifying the water? Flashing it between blue and yellow like that looks pretty bad and also might be a photosensitivity issue for some folks? (not sure on that, it might be fine but it’s one of the first things I thought of when I saw it)
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Yeah, I just made that effect super quick as a mockup so I knew it wasn’t pretty, but I never thought of it being a photosensitivity issue.
I’ll definitely take that into consideration and maybe alter it for the time being, thanks for the heads up.
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I must say, the feel for the controls definitely reminds me of a platformer game like OvO
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I’ve been having a problem with v1.5. Winter seems to suggest use of crouch jumping, but moving right doesn’t work while while both crouching and jumping. works moving left.
That’s really odd, I opened the game and tried it, and crouch jumping while moving right works fine. I used WASD and the arrow keys, are you using a controller? Where specifically were you trying todo this, is it a universal thing or does it only happen in that one spot?
I went back and got both stars in winter. I Tested it around entrance of all maps in windows download 1.5 and the first area of the web version. I use arrow keys and z and x to play, but i tested wasd and bug happened with those keys. If I’m holding down and right at same time, z(jump) doesn’t respond. If i hold z and down, i can’t move right. The eletrical zone second area of winter has three areas you have to jump while crouching and moving right. luckily, i can let go of jump and move right slightly while falling.
I discovered two more glitches when I double checked.
location: left route of winter second zone, area opened by the breaker box.
The right path requires a crouch jump to get through. The left path is intimidating, but is actually easier than it looks.
located immediately to the right in second winter zone.
If you uncrouch while hitting the ceiling while doing a crouch jump, you clip into the ceiling and get stuck. You escape if you do a air dive, but you are softlocked if you do a ground pound (it will be a permeant ground pound). The electrical zone in winter is the only part where the player is guided to jump into a ceiling while crouched in normal gameplay.
also, escape doesn’t work if you have most status effects. I didn’t check them all, but I don’t think you can get softlocked without being able to escape the status effect in normal gameplay, anyways.
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So first, the clipping in the ceiling, thank you so much for finding this because this is a huge oversight on my part. It was a problem in the past that I fixed, but because I messed with the crouch collision box without adjusting the clip check with it, this bug resurfaced. It was a super easy fix though and will be in the next update.
Also, exiting the level to the menu was just a temporary thing, so I never bothered to give the transformations that same input (probably should have though). I was planning on having an entire pause screen and all that, so I didn’t bother putting much effort into the temporary input.
So for not being able to crouch jump right, I’ve tried to recreate it playing on the web and Windows version, used arrow keys, tested it on my laptop keyboard, and external keyboard, and even a controller, and I cannot get it to behave like you’ve been describing.
My guess was that, either your keyboard or something in Windows, is preventing you from making more than two simultaneous inputs at a time. The only problem is that you said crouch jumping works fine when moving left, so that completely throws my theory out of the window(s).
I’m completely stumped on this, sorry I couldn’t find a fix for it. If more people start having the same issue then I’ll look more into it, but I’m just not sure if there’s much on my part I can do anyways.
0.1.51, a little patch fixing and tweaking a few things.
Summary
- Updated the old prototype to now work correctly again (It is still labeled as “broken” I just forgot to change the text sorry"
- Reworked the Balloon Puppy, and their areas. (More fine tuning will be done later on)
- Visually altered one of the respawn rooms in winter
- Made the zap fishes electric shock more photosensitive friendly
- Patched out a bug where you could clip into the ceiling while crouching
- Slightly adjusted jump hitbox
- Trees
It’s not a lot, but there were a few things that needed to get uploaded sooner than later.
I didn’t alter the winter level as much as I planned, because I figured that since I’m going to have to rework all of the levels a lot, I should just wait with that little stuff.
I’ve been wanting to begin slowly moving along on the visual stuff of the first level, but since I wanna make sure I’m not polishing a turd, I am going to be doing a lot of reworking on the current levels I have so far too. I am planning on making a new prototype level, just a mismatch of rooms to test out obstacles, puzzles and mechanics, and see what ends up being fun and what sucks. Then of course rework the current levels, remove anything that’s boring, try to find more fun ways to utilize what’s been implemented, improve existing and new mechanics the best I can, all that stuff.
Then of course I’ll be working on artsy stuff for the autumn level and whatever is ready for it, whenever I feel like doing something different. It’d be nice to start making the game look a little prettier, and I think I’m about to the point where I can begin doing that.
Regardless, I gave myself this entire month to get the 3rd level out, and I was able to do it in half that time, so I’m happy about that. Sure maybe it was a little rough and rushed, but I got a lot of feedback out of it and now have a much clearer idea of what I need to tackle next.
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You’ve got something really good going on here
I grew up with Warioland 3 on my Gameboy and so far the gameplay is fitting that mould perfectly. Not a furry myself but I like the character designs. You’re a talented artist and I think it’d be great to see your name on collaborative projects down the track (if you have worked on other stuff i’m not aware)
God speed and good luck with development, very excited to see where this goes
Edit: shout out to the map design too. I found the boss in the autumn level pretty quickly but there were enough obvious alternate paths I couldve gone that I felt compelled to go back and explore properly. This sort of stuff goes a long way
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A little progress report on the prototype level, and progress on the game in general. A lot of good stuff has been happening, but I haven’t been keeping track of it so I may not be able to recall everything.
Short and simple additions out of the way, I’ve been slowly working on the art for the autumn level, I picked out a better color pallet and all that. It’s not much but it’s good to chip away at that when I can.
Now the big thing, the prototype level, and a lot of reworks. I set up a prototype level and made a few puzzle rooms, before my attention shifted over to the player character and all her transformations. In general, just a place to experiment and test ideas, and to see if something is fun or not.
The base form had some tiny tweaks, and removed the backflip, but the base form was already pretty solid so there was not much change. I did notice that the whole pickup/throw mechanic was severely underused, so I tweaked the code a bit, and hope to come up with some puzzles and stuff to make more use out of this mechanic.
With the transformations, I felt kinda iffy about them. So I decided to rework them all a little, and I started by asking myself what were my issues with them, why were they not fun sometimes? Then I asked myself how I could fix these issues. I have finished reworking all transformations except for fat, I think they are all improvements so far. Slime is my favorite rework, and Blimp and Berry feel better now too. Only one I’m split on is the water balloon transformation, instead of a reverse Blimp transformation, you know just “swim” around freely in 8-directions. It’s definitely less frustrating to control, but it feels to simple, like it’s missing that “throttle” feel of the blimp transformation. I’m trying my best to think up of ways to make swimming through the water in this form more fun and interesting, but I’ve been having difficulty with that.
I would’ve gotten a little more done on the transformations today, but I was distracted chasing the squirrel that was the transformations clipping. The old clip check worked fine, but I thought that it was unfair getting your transformation cancel because the collision shape barely got stuck on the corners, I wanted to find a solution that would push the player out of the world collision if it was possible. It took a stupid amount of time trying to find a better solution, but I was finally able to stumble across something that worked, really well in fact.
This detour may have added some time to the development of this game, but I really do think it’s going to be better in the long run. Hopefully I can get an experiment build out in a reasonable amount of time, because there are gonna be a decent amount of changes and additions that I’d like to get peoples opinions on.
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It really is just cool seeing levels get fleshed out and more content added to this game as time goes on, appreciate the updates Jaco. :>
The roly-poly nature of the blueberry transformation is surprisingly fun, adds some speed to level segments if that makes sense. Game goes from platforming to paying attention and timing jumps, along with the unique challenge of ‘oh god I gotta get through this segment before Googal’s berried ass gets too fat to fit through the corridor.’
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Though it might be adding more dev time now, it’s WAY better to realize your gripes early and then get everything in order while still in early development. I mean it’d be really grating to have an amazing fix to make something feel even more fun to use but then have to rework every single puzzle using it in order to properly integrate it. Looking forward to seeing them all in action. Especially slime, I really already liked that one so that’s top on my bucket list.
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The art is great and really cute, and I like the concept, but the gameplay is pretty frustrating. Too many of the jumps feel like you either they need to be walking off the edge of the platform to make it, or need to be jumping from the back half of the platform because you slide too much while diving.
The movement while inflated is very unintuitive because your character doesn’t visibly turn until you start blowing, and you have to press the arrow key opposite of the direction you’re trying to go. Also I keep randomly expanding bigger in the underwater level and can’t progress through the tunnels cuz they’re too small now. I can’t comment on much else because it was too much trouble to go any further than the Winter level.
And I think the reworked blueberry transformation will be even more fun, it’s still the same transformation, but with a little more depth and less jank. I thought having a transformation that was essentially a ticking time bomb would be such a fun concept, and I don’t think anything fits it better than being a big, juicy blueberry. >w>
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Yeah definitely, I feel like having to trudge through a future mudpit would be a lot more of a pain than just ripping off the bandage right now, I learned that when making DoughMutts. I’ll definitely be a lot more motivated to continue working on the game for longer once I get these kinks out. I’m also excited to get to share the new changes eventually soon too! ^w^
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