Spacethumper 2

Excited to see how the platforms and elevators open things up. Are there going to be structures that need vertical alignment? Or might it be possible to transfer power vertically?

Adding a tool tip that you can’t stack the basic or fortified platforms would be nice.

I only ended up really tinkering with the elevators to see the whole map. Excited to see what the freight elevator’s uses are, but it was a bit too bulky and expensive to do much with at the moment. Going to the right I found building the elevator seemed to spawn a half dozen slimes at once. I keep accidentally going up on the elevator instead of repairing structures next to it when that happened, a dedicated repair key might be useful for cases like that.

I built a generator in the cave to see if it could charge inactivate characters, which it doesn’t. I would probably make it a no build area.

For upgrades, I think movement efficiency should be a lot cheaper. Maybe switch speed and efficiency costs? It’s fun clomping around at big sizes and you can just vent energy if you’re too slowed down.

Solar mk3 seems to be the best generator, I would like more of an incentive to use the other generators. I built the Fusion Reactor Mk3 and only used it to quickly charge up characters for the upgrade table (auto-miners make it fairly easy to stay on top of the crystal cost).

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the game is good and it’s nice to see a continuation of the first game, so far the only problem I have is the fact that you need to build a solar panel or something to make the machines work, and the best ones need more than one solar panel

this makes it almost impossible to build defenses against enemies, and the fact if you put 2 solar panels and say a turret the two solar panels don’t stack power meaning the turret will only use 1 of the solar panels which are directly close to it. other than that, I really liked this demo and I’m super curious to see the rest

(honestly, I like this cave, and I hope this isn’t a bug or something because it’s funny)

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i’ve played it myself, and it’s not impossible to build defenses, i’ve built good defenses myself, well, in a previous build of the game, also, @Chubberdy do you mind if i share a tip for building defenses?

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I’m having a bit of trouble what is the purpose of the teleporter?

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Well, that’s a first for me. Game threw an Error. All i was doing was building on top of a platform.


############################################################################################
ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object mng_structure:

Unable to find instance for object index -4
at gml_Script_check_support
############################################################################################
gml_Script_check_support (line -1)
gml_Object_mng_structure_Step_0

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I didn’t even realized we could build in the cave.

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Likely not implemented yet.

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In the first game it was the objective: Build, resource, and upgrade enough to be able to hold the energy necessary to research and build the teleporter, then use it to end the level.

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I love it when the main character spacethumpher goes “It’s spacethumpin time” 10/10 truly one of the games of all time.

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Softlock found: being on an elevator which gets destroyed by slimes freezes the character in place.

So accumulators are pretty nifty! I had the fancy idea of making a “solar arcade”. A covered promenade of reinforced platforms with solar panelling on top and accumulators powering everything underneath, with “service elevators” at each end. Before the soft lock, it was looking pretty good. I was a little confused by how accumulators worked at first before realising that they only receive power and don’t actually transmit power within the same range - only to adjacent objects. Future upgrade perhaps?


I also note those visual bugs from Spacethumper 1 are back. It resets the order of the layers when you refresh the screen upon returning from the cave.

Pesky steam vents!

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Damn that’s a lot of feedback, excellent! I’ll hold off on talking about specific balance changes for now and try to address the other questions/issues for the time being. Balance is being worked on though!

That’s been solved for the next update, turned out to be some weird shenanigans when it was trying to find the height at where to float based on the player’s size. It’ll just float around a constant height now.

No idea why that’s happening, that’ll be an interesting one to solve.

Probably not at this point, it took a while to get the horizontal connections working as it is and figuring out how to deal with multiple buildings overlapping each other in different ways has proved… difficult. It was in my plans originally though.

That’s weird, buildings should always be drawing energy from any generators that are right next to them.

Go right ahead, people talking strats only helps me balance stuff more!

Nothing right now, but it will be an endgame building eventually.

I’m going to address all the game crashing from buildings getting deleted/replaced here since they all probably stem from the same issue. I think I know what the problem for that is, hopefully I’ll resolve all that in the next build. I do have to investigate the elevator softlock though.

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As from what I was trying before work (Will play more when back home) I already see this being Bigger then Spacethumper 1 so keep up the amazing work @Chubberdy Cant wait to see more come from this game ^^

As for questions and possible additions late for this game (Some are dumb but only because didn’t have time to play it right away)

  1. Can’t Destroy Old Buildings, When doing the Research do you destroy the old buildings to be replace with the new ones? or Are the Upgraded like on Space 1? (Dumb Question xp)

  2. Easy to Tell who is who, Besides the Color Drone and the Space of the Characters I feel like there Should be more Detail or Something added on to make them Stand out more, Something as Simple as Text telling you what they are or Specialize in

  3. Besides Basic Slimes have you though of add something bigger? Like are more Creature-Looking Slime or Alien Lifeforms?

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My internet was out for all of yesterday, so I was basically stuck with this as 1/4th of my entertainment.

[ + ] Good things to say:

  • Character switching is a neat mechanic
  • Animations look great
  • There’s more than one steam vent this time around
  • Reactors aren’t overpowered
  • Weight interaction with elevator
  • Slime assaults are generous in timing
  • “Under Attack” notification is a good QoL addition
  • Engineer

[ - ] Bad things to say:

  • Hitting the weight limit on the elevator as it’s moving locks you in place
  • Both ARCs are completely useless. Sorry.
  • Energy Accumulator becomes useful far too late, since you need platforms to really use them - and platforms themselves are fun, but still not useful, progression-wise
  • Reactors require manual refilling
  • Engineer’s butt is one pixel too wide for one of her mid-late sprites
  • Pilot has fewer weight stages - which is explainable, and they still end up the “same” size as the rest of the crew at the end, but…

[ = ] Suggestions/Requests:

  • Crystal drills should auto-deposit a portion of their crystals/second into adjacent reactors
  • Some interaction with tier 1 platforms and “high-energy” crewmates?
  • Resource refunds on destroying buildings, or no resource consumption until it’s actually built
  • Map expansion, like an underground tunnel to make more use of the elevators?
  • If this game will have custom sprites, can they also have custom dimensions?
  • On the topic of customization… Mod support? Or open-source for potential modders?
Hidden because I don't know how this one will be received...

I would pay money for bigger weight stages and higher… “energy” capacities.

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about the accumulators: I would remake accumulators in the sense that they actually save energy and add some energy redistrubution buildings like electric poles, substations or something like that.

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I enjoyed the first one, so I am very much looking forward to seeing where this one grows… I mean goes.

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I have enjoyed the start of this sequel very much and there isnt much that others havent said yet, so my post will be a suggestion for character swapping, as i barely know anything of coding, this might be easier said than done but if they all have their situation that they excel at, i think swapping them on the go would be the best. Hoping to see more of it soon.

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I thought the mechanic reminded me of someone! Is she supposed to be reminiscent of your cute angelshark character, @Chubberdy ?

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I wasn’t planning on posting because this topic’s quite hot at the moment and the game’s in quite an early state; most of my gripes and satisfactions with the game have already been elaborated on countless times before. After playing it for a bit however I was able to find stuff people didn’t mention here and a couple new takes on some of the game’s mechanics.

Some general comments on feedback that’s been posted here before:

  • Is the Solar Reactor Mk. III the best generator? Not really. It’s certainly the most resource-efficient, but there are other metrics to optimize here, namely space and time. It generates energy for free and can be placed pretty much anywhere (provided you don’t use platforms), but takes up two spaces. The Fusion Reactors, meanwhile, are quite resource-inefficient, but as a tradeoff they’re the most time-efficient energy generators you have available… or at least in theory. More on that later.
  • I wouldn’t say the ARCs are useless, just needless. I used them for my endgame defenses and they did their job quite nicely (the fact they only take up one space also helps a lot) but I don’t think they would’ve done any better than just a turret. The Gauss Cannon, on the other hand…

Features I found lacking and how I’d improve them:

  • I like the character switch mechanic just as much as the other guy, but at the state it’s in right now it’s in the player’s benefit to avoid using it on most cases. Having to go back to the cave to switch means time and energy lost, offsetting the benefit you’d get from a character’s abilities, but everyone knows that and I don’t think you’re planning on leaving it like this, so I’ll keep it at that.
    Instead, I think it’s important to highlight that the Miner kinda got the short end of the stick when it comes to usefulness. Both of his advantages are only relevant very early on in the game; once you have a proper defense and automining setup built and functioning he’s pretty much as generic as it gets. The other characters have advantages that last up until you get bored and decide to stop playing: you’ll be building things almost all the time, justifying using the Mechanic, and the Pilot is pretty much required to get the last movement speed research, as well as being faster - you see what I’m getting at?
    Admittedly, I don’t really know how I would make him relevant throughout the game. Ideas I have include making his drone mine much faster than it does now, or get a very small amount of metal/crystals for each X energy obtained. Although I feel the other characters could also use some more love, to make their identities stand out more. For example, the Mechanic could also use up less energy to build/repair buildings as well as doing it faster, and the Pilot could also have extra metal/crystal carrying capacity.

With enough time and effort, I could see a point in time where you’d be able to have all three characters doing things at the same time, and command the ones you’re not controlling around. For example, you could have the Mechanic build the hundreds of platform/wall blueprints you placed around, the Miner contributing to your metal/crystal generation or helping out your defenses, or the Pilot acting as a sort of mobile energy storage (if you could transfer energy/resources between characters). Just a bit of food for thought here.

  • It was quite a surprise to me that seldom anything was said about the Wind Generator and the Gauss Cannon - but that’s probably because there’s much better and easier to use alternatives around. Surprisingly I was able to find a good use case for the wind generators, as they at least FUNCTION when there’s something above them (although solar generators work below natural terrain for some reason), so I could put them on my really sick energy accumulator setup (managed to get 391.25 energy/s, could do slightly better but then I wouldn’t be able to refuel the fusion reactors at the top), but the Gauss Cannon is just a massive pain in the ass to use since it requires metal. There’s no reward for killing slimes quickly as long as they don’t get through your defenses and even the Mk. I Laser Turret does just fine, so why even bother?
    This is also another issue I’m stumped on ways to solve. The Wind generator made more sense on the first game because you could gamble for the weather to be right (and thus higher energy generation than if you went for a Solar instead) if you wanted to get a faster completion time, but here they’re pretty much always worse, unless you’re like me and used platforms (which are also pretty inconsequential, but more on that later). Meanwhile I don’t think there’s any salvation for the Gauss Cannon unless the slime threat were to be reworked (once again, more on that later).

I believe features like the Gauss Cannon, the Wind Turbine and the Freight Elevator are quite emblematic of the fact people won’t really complain about things that they don’t have to engage with and don’t get rewarded for doing so in any way. The Gauss Cannon suffers the most from this because dealing with slimes is pretty much an afterthought past the very early game.

  • The limit on how much control the player has over their resource generation, what goes where and just general quality-of-life results in quite a lot of wasted resources and needless walking around. Once again, I believe this issue is going to be remedied with time - this is just an alpha after all, but I’d still like to share my ideas:

    Being able to link up energy generators/miners to other buildings which need those to function remotely, through wires/pipes/what-have you. Something like this could easily break game balance (imagine linking up your entire power grid to a single accumulator) so I feel like care would need to be exercised in how it would work but it would certainly make people use Fusion Reactors a lot more. I personally still found the Mk. III reactor useful (the other ones gave less power than the Steam generators so at least this one gave me energy quicker), but I have to agree that it’s not all that worth the hassle compared to other choices.
    Being able to decide just how much power/resources a generator gives to surrounding buildings or nearby accumulators. You could add a space on the stats screen for each generator where you could type in the exact amount for each building which wants to take away power - that way you don’t get weird cases where you have a building on either side of a generator and one of them gets too much power while the other doesn’t get enough, forcing you to build more/costlier generators.
    Deactivating buildings that use crystals/metals, so they don’t waste resources when you don’t need them working. Looking at you, Fusion Reactors.
    If you were to implement those changes, I’d wager Energy Accumulators would become extremely easy to use for massive profits, so to solve that issue I’d make generators give less power to accumulators the farther away they are from them while still spending the normal amount (basically, reduce their efficiency the farther away they are from the accumulator).

  • As stated before, the slimes are a really weird game mechanic in that they can easily wipe out your entire base on the first minutes if you’re not careful and force you to start again, but if you set up your defenses properly you can just forget about them for the rest of the game (or at least until you need to repair your barriers, but even then once you get the energy shield that’s not an issue anymore). It was like this in the original too and the main focus is on automating things for maximum efficiency anyways, so it’s not much of an issue, but as a tool for adding tension I feel like it was always a bit half-baked.
    You could try scaling up waves in difficulty depending on the player’s resource/energy generation, so that way you don’t have to deal with 8-10 slimes per wave if you make a mistake and get half your base wiped out but will be forced to keep upgrading your defenses as you start to accumulate surpluses (maybe the Gauss Cannon could even see some use!)

Concepts I found interesting and would like to see more of:

  • The two extra characters leave me quite intrigued, to say the least. Who are they and what’s their relationship with the Pilot? What’s their goal in having returned to this backwater planet (well probably has something to do with the crystals but I digress). Gotta love the possibilities for storytelling here.

  • Overall I appreciate the ambition going into this project. The only way this could get any more interesting, in my opinion, is if this game became 3D (let’s not get ahead of ourselves though). The fact we don’t just get a single strip of land to build on opens up quite a lot of possibilities, and although they’re not developed yet (not much reason to build platforms other than accumulator setups) it’s obvious there’s quite a bit of potential here.
    Even with the state the game is in now I spent a few hours having fun trying to find ways to optimize my resource collection and energy generation, which is definitely a good sign. Can’t wait for more toys to play with as the game improves down the line!

  • People have mentioned this before but I’ll say it again just cause I haven’t had the opportunity to properly commend you on a job well done yet. I quite admire the love and thought that went into the machine designs. I do a bit of pixel art myself and I just thought the streamlined, sci-fi look the buildings have was executed beautifully and I have used them as inspiration once in the past. The animations in special are smooth as butter and I can tell you’ve spent a lot of time working on them. I hope I can improve and reach a similar skill level one day!

Overall this game is indeed in quite a presentable state and you’ve got a solid foundation to expand on. Other than the elevator teleporting you upwards (and it also broke and would just have a seizure if I tried going down instead) bug - which just randomly fixed itself eventually mind you - I haven’t really encountered any noteworthy glitches either. Excited to see what will come from this eventually!

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Alrighty, time to address some of the balance issues that have been floating around.

  • Reactors
    The efficiency of them definitely needs to be tweaked, and I am doing so. I might overshoot it a bit in the next update and see if most of the complaints stick around and it’s not working at a fundamental level or if it really is just a numbers issue

  • Character switching
    I don’t like the idea of letting people place the characters around the map themselves due to some narrative beats I’d like to hit, but the walk back is tedious. I think I might end up adding a new building in the form of a short range teleporter might be in order to help with stuff like that, though it would probably be limited to one or two (or maybe just one per “area” to fast travel between them). I do like the idea of adding something that describes them somewhere.

  • Wind turbines
    I can believe I just totally forgot to implement this, I had always planned for them to get a higher output the farther away from the ground they are just… didn’t.

  • Platforms
    They get expensive real fast, I think I’m going to buff them all by reducing costs a bit, as well as the aforementioned indirect buff by making wind turbines much more useful when combined with them.

  • Enemies
    Right now I just have slimes spawning in increasing amounts (up to 5 per nest) every wave, it’s definitely the weakest gameplay aspect at the moment but it’s also an extreme placeholder. I mostly put it in at all to make sure that damage/healing and defensive structures were functional. Trust me though, I’ve got a lot of plans for enemies, and each weapon will become useful in time.

  • Mod support
    Spritepacks are definitely going to be supported, with the same freedoms as last time in terms of character size (though you will have to make your own collision masks if you want to deviate too far from what I’ve got in the game already). I do have plans once the full game is out of being able to add in a full character with modifiable stats as well. As for full mod support, there’s a lot more I have to learn about modular design to be able to do that properly. I can already think of like three things off the top of my head that would have to be rebuilt just to add a new building.

Oh man I didn’t even realize this! The mechanic originally going to be heavily based on a character I used for a weight gain sequence I drew a while back, but I ended up scrapping pretty early due to difficulties in making running sprites for this body shape at higher weights. You can even tell how old these are since they use the old color palette.

Mold Idle
Mold Run

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It’s a shame it was too difficult to implement, but that’s how the game design cookie crumbles sometimes. :sweat_smile: For what it’s worth this design and its motions are A+ bangers. Solid work.

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