Rare Witch Roundtable Podcast
Go Back   The Rare Witch Project Forums > Gaming > Rare & Playtonic > Homebrew Games and Tools

Homebrew Games and Tools If you've created a trainer, texture editor, or a full-blown fangame we'd like to see it here. Show off your mad programming skills.

Reply
 
Thread Tools
  #1  
Old 14th June 2014, 07:50 PM
Ty-chan's Avatar
Ty-chan Ty-chan is offline
Formerly GoldenJiggies
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Your kitchen, raiding your fridge
Total Awards: 1
INFECTED - B2K1 
FLAGMAN IS FINISHED!

Guys, I have finally finished Flagman and it is up and fully playable at http://www.betagames.biz/flagman.html! Please share it with any and everyone that might be interested, this is the biggest and most important event of my career as a game developer, EVER!

After you've played it, please give any and all feedback you'd like!
__________________
Tummy Rubbing Cuddler
Food Enthusiastic Bisexual
Also Video Games
Reply With Quote


  #2  
Old 14th June 2014, 08:09 PM
Ty-chan's Avatar
Ty-chan Ty-chan is offline
Formerly GoldenJiggies
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Your kitchen, raiding your fridge
Total Awards: 1
INFECTED - B2K1 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Siege View Post
How is this game half a gig?
Music and sound files. Take up a hell of a lot of space no matter what.
It's actually a good game this time, I swear.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Siege View Post
WHY IS NONE OF THIS MUSIC COMPRESSED
I DO NOT KNOW SIR
__________________
Tummy Rubbing Cuddler
Food Enthusiastic Bisexual
Also Video Games
Reply With Quote


  #3  
Old 14th June 2014, 09:10 PM
Ty-chan's Avatar
Ty-chan Ty-chan is offline
Formerly GoldenJiggies
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Your kitchen, raiding your fridge
Total Awards: 1
INFECTED - B2K1 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Siege View Post
http://throwaway.wut.boringtrousers....le-Flagman.zip

I assume your images are insanely large too but I can't do shit about that
most of the images should actually be pretty small, I'd like to say.

So how did you make the music smaller and how does that affect the music? I don't want composers to be upset about it.
__________________
Tummy Rubbing Cuddler
Food Enthusiastic Bisexual
Also Video Games
Reply With Quote


  #4  
Old 14th June 2014, 09:14 PM
Ty-chan's Avatar
Ty-chan Ty-chan is offline
Formerly GoldenJiggies
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Your kitchen, raiding your fridge
Total Awards: 1
INFECTED - B2K1 
How do you reduce the file size of the music tho?
__________________
Tummy Rubbing Cuddler
Food Enthusiastic Bisexual
Also Video Games
Reply With Quote


  #5  
Old 14th June 2014, 09:37 PM
SentientScarecrow420's Avatar
SentientScarecrow420 SentientScarecrow420 is offline
Formerly Frozyn
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Meditating through the Astral Plane
Total Awards: 2
INFECTED - B2K1 Reminiscence 
Using sequenced music will decrease the file size by a lot. I mean, A LOT. You'd have to write your own sequencing engine thing, though. You'd also have to be ok at writing music
__________________
"Good game." -Vinny
Reply With Quote


  #6  
Old 14th June 2014, 10:10 PM
The Colonel's Avatar
The Colonel The Colonel is offline
Formerly Jinjonator_Dude
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: this chair
Total Awards: 2
You're Appreciated! INFECTED - B2K1 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Siege View Post
WHY IS NONE OF THIS MUSIC COMPRESSED
This game is actually called Titanflag.
Reply With Quote


  #7  
Old 14th June 2014, 10:28 PM
Ty-chan's Avatar
Ty-chan Ty-chan is offline
Formerly GoldenJiggies
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Your kitchen, raiding your fridge
Total Awards: 1
INFECTED - B2K1 
Well, I've made the decision to not mess with the music files for the sake of the musicians and for the sake of Game Maker's pickiness with sound files. I'm lucky it loads all of the music properly as is, and you can call me paranoid but I think there may be some quality drop in the music.

However, for all of my future projects I am going to make space preservation a priority, because for all of my future games I have my own composers to make all of the music original and unique, rather than use a music resource such as IndieGameMusic.com where I have to follow the composers that they are more of a boss than I am. I'll make sure all of my composers keep space issues in mind during their writing and composing process.

Now... can we focus on something other than filesize? Like... actual game quality?
__________________
Tummy Rubbing Cuddler
Food Enthusiastic Bisexual
Also Video Games
Reply With Quote


  #8  
Old 14th June 2014, 10:40 PM
SentientScarecrow420's Avatar
SentientScarecrow420 SentientScarecrow420 is offline
Formerly Frozyn
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Meditating through the Astral Plane
Total Awards: 2
INFECTED - B2K1 Reminiscence 
Trying the game on Fedora using wine, will update on how it works (if it works at all)
__________________
"Good game." -Vinny
Reply With Quote


  #9  
Old 14th June 2014, 11:07 PM
Ty-chan's Avatar
Ty-chan Ty-chan is offline
Formerly GoldenJiggies
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Your kitchen, raiding your fridge
Total Awards: 1
INFECTED - B2K1 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Siege View Post
Inability to scale the window is awful. Jumping's way too floaty for me.
Options. I think that was the same complaint you said for the demo and I told you the same thing. Or maybe that was someone else. So you can resize the window... however because Game Maker is a proper bitch, resizing the window makes the game a bit blurry. I tried to do what I could but I couldn't find anything. So you can make it bigger at the cost of sprite quality.

As for jumping... it's been the same since the second demo, where people here told me I had fixed the jumping's floatiness from the first demo. Unfortunately the entire game has already been designed so making jumping heavier may break level design.
__________________
Tummy Rubbing Cuddler
Food Enthusiastic Bisexual
Also Video Games
Reply With Quote


  #10  
Old 14th June 2014, 11:20 PM
The Colonel's Avatar
The Colonel The Colonel is offline
Formerly Jinjonator_Dude
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: this chair
Total Awards: 2
You're Appreciated! INFECTED - B2K1 
Alright, so here's what I have to say judging from the first few levels. It's got the best level design and gameplay of any game you've made so far, but jumping feels weird. Aside from being really floaty, there's a little delay when hitting the ground where you just float for a second, and you can't jump during it which makes platforming a bit more needlessly difficult.

The art and animation is really bad, I'll just tell you right now. Everything looks really, really bad. You could benefit a lot from improving your ability to draw sprites, or even getting someone to draw sprites for you. I know that kind of stuff can be a pain in the ass, I suck at it too and I've been working on an adventure game.

Please test the higher resolution so that you can make sure it doesn't break the game. 640x480 makes the camera zoom into the upper left corner, making the game unplayable. I used Siege's smaller version to download the game, but I don't know if that could be what caused it.

Aside from the art, some of the music and sound effects are awful. Some of the music is decent, like the map theme, but it's still low-quality and could be a lot better. One of the best soundtracks in any gamemaker game I've played was the one in Iji. I think you should at least be shooting for that same level of quality if you can. It also proves you should totally compress the music, because Iji is only 60 megabytes and it's music is still great.

Overall, you're getting a lot better at making games, but you need to get someone to make higher-quality music rather than stock stuff for your games, and you need to get a good sprite artist, or just get better at drawing sprites. I'd also prefer having the standard resolution of the game be bigger, but that's just me. As for controls, you need to make jumping less floaty, give the main character more weight, and not make the primary attack be "unlimited death orb machine gun".

tl;dr You're better than most of the people making crappy game maker games, but you need better art, better audio, and better controls. Also don't be afraid to redo parts of a game, especially if it's really early stuff. You're going to have to change, redo or even scrap a lot of stuff when making a game if you want it to be really good. You're going to have to accept that, whether you like it or not.

Last edited by The Colonel; 14th June 2014 at 11:22 PM.
Reply With Quote


  #11  
Old 14th June 2014, 11:47 PM
SentientScarecrow420's Avatar
SentientScarecrow420 SentientScarecrow420 is offline
Formerly Frozyn
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Meditating through the Astral Plane
Total Awards: 2
INFECTED - B2K1 Reminiscence 
Alright. Since I have loads of time to spare, I'm writing a proper and large critique for the game, and intend on playing through as much of the game as I can, and critiquing it as I go along. I'll probably just post it in this thread once I'm done writing it, unless you'd rather me PM it to you, or something.
__________________
"Good game." -Vinny
Reply With Quote


  #12  
Old 15th June 2014, 12:44 AM
SentientScarecrow420's Avatar
SentientScarecrow420 SentientScarecrow420 is offline
Formerly Frozyn
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Meditating through the Astral Plane
Total Awards: 2
INFECTED - B2K1 Reminiscence 
This is mostly a critique, so I'm only going to point out things that I think matter, but I'll be sure to include things I like so it doesn't feel like one giant block of negative

Firstly, I'm looking at the Flagman MANUAL.pdf; I like the concept of that. Reminds me of those little manuals you'd get for like a gamecube game or something. There are typos on page 3 ("of you move off of the object"), on page 4 and other pages (lazer should be spelled "laser", but its a common enough misspelling that people might over look it, but a misspelling is still a misspelling.), on page 8, you have a wrong use of there ("there use is"). There might be more, but that's what I found while skimming it. Lovely note at the end, but I should probably start actually playing the game, now.

The game's loading screen is very Game Maker-y, and while that isn't neessarily a bad thing, for people who have played a lot of Game Maker games or are familiar with Game Maker, it might give out a bad starting image. You might want to consider, in the future, having a simple "[game] is loading", without a loading bar.

Loading took a bit of a while when I first loaded it up, but it was much faster the second time, so you might want to look into that. If you make a bigger game in the future with much more resources, you might want to consider dynamically loading assets rather than loading it all at the very beginning.

Beta games logo. Was kind of there for a long while, with no way to skip it. Ech.

The game freezes when it changes to the title screen. When it changes at all, actually. As someone who is familiar with Game Maker, that tells me that you're using the built-in room-changing effects, and I would recommend that you not use this, mainly because:
1. It freezes the game whenever the effect occurs, which looks bad
2. The effects seem to be slower than the rest of the game, and that makes it look even more out of place.

I would even recommend not having multiple rooms, but having one room and putting the resources in places through code, rather than using the room editor. That can be a lot of work, but can improve both the memory usage of your game, and the initial loading times.

An alternate solution is to keep rooms, but make room transition objects. That way, it doesn't freeze the game, and it plays at the same speed, and you still get to use the room editor.

The title screen feels kind of uninspired. The buttons for the options are larger than the actual "flagman" logo dealio, and the buttons themselves are kind of bland. They almost look like the ground in the background. Having the characters randomly running in the back and having it snow helps a bit, but its still kind of meh. The title screen should really be appealing, and give the player a reason for wanting to play your game. It should be attractive looking, and give the player incentive to want to play. What kind of incentive is up to you (you could, for example, having something kind of mysterious where the title screen doesn't show much of the game, such as minecraft's blurred image of a generated world, or something that shows a lot of the game being played, such as Super Mario World's title screen), but something should be there that should set the player's expectations for the game.

The option screen has a lot of good options, I think. You might want to consider:
>Having the volume for both the music and the sound to be changeable.

>Having the user pick a resolution for the game, rather than just having two options.

>The controls menu gives you limited options for the controls. While that's not a particularly uncommon thing, the fact that the game industry standard for controls is to either not let you change the controls at all, or give you limited control schemes as opposed to control mapping is absolutely toxic, and you should try to not follow that standard. Fight the power, man!

"full screen off" is, by default, unticked. I'm not sure if that means that the game should have started in full screen mode, but do not ever have the game be in fullscreen by default. That can be such an inconvenience for the user. Remember, you're trying to appeal to the people playing your game, and having something start in full screen mode is ridiculously annoying, and if the game somehow breaks because of it, the user is screwed.

The credits. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to deal with at least a paragraph of my foot up your ass. Firstly, why the hell is it at least a good solid 15 to 30 seconds of [some position]: Tyler Robinson? You should just have "Game made by Tyler Robinson", and then a text file with the music and special thanks credits. A credits screen was not warrented in any way, shape, or form. You can't even skip out of it, as far as I can tell. If you're going to have a credits thing like this, at least have something interesting happen in the background.

When I go to the unlockables, and click sound test, it tells me that I have to get all of the snowflake shards. That's fine and dandy, but in the game manual, there was an implied mystery as to what the snowflake shards do, and now I know just from navigating around. It's just a bit inconsistent, you might want to not tell you that, if you want to keep that incentive for collecting the snowflake shards.

Also, you might just want to have the buttons not be there until you unlock it. That would be more pleasing, designwise.

There seemed to be an actual bug regarding the "awards" area: when I clicked on the menu button, it took me to a place and then resized to ridiculously large, and I couldn't get out of the area, and had to quit the game. Kinda weird.

Alright, so I've reloaded the game; Lets get to actually playing.
Oh. It would seem that that same bug has happened that happened with the awards stuff. This might be a WINE error. Look into it regardless, though.

fourth time i've had to reload the game, gonna pick a smaller screensize and pray for the best.
Okay, so I've started, and now there is this cutscene dealio happening. Cool beans. Flagman comes in looking for his flags. Flagman seems to just phase through his door. There hasn't been any music so far, but I think that might be a WINE error.

Alright. The game has officially started. Movement in general seems fine, but you fall really heavily (i assume this is what everyone means by "floaty"), and you seem to hop a bit when you hit the ground, which looks weird.

The environment seems fine so far, apart from feeling a bit empty, but the control boxes (which don't seem to disappear like the text boxes) are really out of place, and you should consider maybe making tiles that fit into the background (like a sign or something), rather than just having boxes.

Pausing. Let me tell you about the pausing. Nothing is more obnoxious than Game Maker's built in stuff, and the pause system you have for your game is, for lack of better words, trash. It's not really a pause system, even; it's just Game Maker's built in message system, which you didnt' even customise.
Word of advice when making games with Game Maker: USE AS LITTLE OF GAME MAKER'S BUILT-IN THINGS AS POSSIBLE. I mean it. If I were to have started the game, and gone through everything as I have so far for this critique, and paused the game to see something like this, I would assume that the quality of the rest of the game isn't as good, and would be less inclined to play it.

Making a pause system is really easy. Have a variable "pause" (or something), and if it is 1, then don't have the player or other moving objects, or whatever else interactible in the game, move. Maybe give the screen a bit of a tint when it pauses, too. But, for the love of god, do not use Game Maker's messages at all.

The world map screen seems pretty okay. I like that you can go back and visit your house. I would recommend making a pause screen menu, and having options to 'quit the game' or do other things, rather than having individual keys. I'll try the minigames in the house later.

The first level seems okay so far. The design was better than in the flagman demo. Pressing x to dismount the ladder is really awkward, given the position it is in compared to the keys that you move with. I like that the shift button moves when you pressed shift, that is a nice touch, makes holding shift to run a bit more memorable.

Swimming seems ok, I suppose. It seems weird that there aren't any animations for going up or down, and it feels like there is no resistance in the water. The water's animations are also kind of meh, the character doesn't seem to go behind the water, but rather in front of the water (the water looks solid, actually). The lack of particles when you hit the water leaves a lot to be desired, as well.

I like the death animations for the enemies. They really remind me of some of the character death animations in the original Rayman. It's a nice touch, and gives a bit of feeling to the world. Cloudy-spike shooters are kind of cool, too. The flag at the end of the level doesn't seem to be as well animated as it could be. Seems off from the rest of the stuff.

To be honest, I feel like there isn't much incentive for the player to care, regarding the story. I mean, ok, flag man's flags are stolen, but what? What does that actually mean? Does that matter? Do the flags help guide cars away from running into and destroying an orphanage? Why should I care about flagman's flags?

The second cutscene is ok. I don't like the fourth wall being broken so blatantly, that's rarely ever done well, and usually just leads to the mood of the game being ruined. Some stuff doesn't quite make sense, either ("you're pretty cocky for a hero who doesn't wear pants." are pantsless people usually not cocky?)

I'll make a new post as I review more.
__________________
"Good game." -Vinny
Reply With Quote


  #13  
Old 15th June 2014, 12:46 AM
Ty-chan's Avatar
Ty-chan Ty-chan is offline
Formerly GoldenJiggies
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Your kitchen, raiding your fridge
Total Awards: 1
INFECTED - B2K1 
Damn, y'all are cynical and critical. I appreciate the honesty tho, I can't live in a fairytale with only praise.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
Alright, so here's what I have to say judging from the first few levels. It's got the best level design and gameplay of any game you've made so far, but jumping feels weird. Aside from being really floaty, there's a little delay when hitting the ground where you just float for a second, and you can't jump during it which makes platforming a bit more needlessly difficult.
I know exactly what you're talking about... and I tried so many times throughout development to fix it. One time I thought I actually fixed it and then I realized I didn't because you could jump in midair... so I had to "unfix" it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
The art and animation is really bad, I'll just tell you right now. Everything looks really, really bad. You could benefit a lot from improving your ability to draw sprites, or even getting someone to draw sprites for you. I know that kind of stuff can be a pain in the ass, I suck at it too and I've been working on an adventure game.
I would love to have someone else who is better than me do the artwork. You know anyone that does artwork for free and is good? And also, I thought I did a decent job to say the least, I've been told by plenty "Oh that's good artwork" and I'm like no shut the **** up it's not I have no idea what I'm doing. So I can absolutely see where you're coming from because I myself think I only did decent. I tried my absolute best and people have told me they like how it looks, but... I don't know, maybe they're just showing me sympathy. I'd like to think I'm getting better though because I've decided to do none of the pillow shading junk I've been doing. It might show towards the end of the game I started leaning away from the pillow shading, and it's definitely going to be absent entirely from future games, but I'm thinking about leaning towards more basic artwork that works because of its simplicity. I'm looking towards Knytt and Spelunk to get ideas how to properly do spritework.


Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
Please test the higher resolution so that you can make sure it doesn't break the game. 640x480 makes the camera zoom into the upper left corner, making the game unplayable. I used Siege's smaller version to download the game, but I don't know if that could be what caused it.
I've never had the game do that. I don't know if it's your computer or Seige's version or what, but this has never been a problem. :/

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
Aside from the art, some of the music and sound effects are awful. Some of the music is decent, like the map theme, but it's still low-quality and could be a lot better. One of the best soundtracks in any gamemaker game I've played was the one in Iji. I think you should at least be shooting for that same level of quality if you can. It also proves you should totally compress the music, because Iji is only 60 megabytes and it's music is still great.
Oh... well to be quite honest with you I am in love with Flagman's soundtrack. I mean you're probably right about the sound, I only had Freesound.org to work with. I tried my best, but the music... god damn do I love the music. I'd like to think I can not have bias in this scenario since I'm not the main composer for any of them. Maybe this all comes down to matter of opinion? Maybe I am biased? I don't know Colonel. I don't know.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
Overall, you're getting a lot better at making games, but you need to get someone to make higher-quality music rather than stock stuff for your games, and you need to get a good sprite artist, or just get better at drawing sprites. I'd also prefer having the standard resolution of the game be bigger, but that's just me. As for controls, you need to make jumping less floaty, give the main character more weight, and not make the primary attack be "unlimited death orb machine gun".
I'll keep all of this in mind. The next game should have a full soundtrack composed just for the game itself, not anything I pulled from a library (albeit I still love what I got ) and I'm trying to improve my artwork. I'll definitely make the default resolution bigger since and I'll make the controls less floaty. As for the lazer weapon... I don't really know what to say. I don't plan on giving any weapon style like that to any other game. I could say I like the lazer but I have no right to judge it's true unbiased quality.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
tl;dr You're better than most of the people making crappy game maker games, but you need better art, better audio, and better controls. Also don't be afraid to redo parts of a game, especially if it's really early stuff. You're going to have to change, redo or even scrap a lot of stuff when making a game if you want it to be really good. You're going to have to accept that, whether you like it or not.
I just redid a bit of Rebirth, I removed the silly password system and replaced it with an actual level select, and I improved how the game saved data. I have no problem with the idea of editting Flagman. Although I'm certainly not going to do it today because I kind of just released it.

And even mid development I'm still no stranger to editing things. At one point I implemented an element system where a characters fire power's didn't work underwater, along with various other things. I decided that realism wasn't important enough to this because that character would become very low of value compared to the other playable characters. So I programmed that system in, than completely unprogrammed it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by SentientScarecrow420 View Post
Alright. Since I have loads of time to spare, I'm writing a proper and large critique for the game, and intend on playing through as much of the game as I can, and critiquing it as I go along. I'll probably just post it in this thread once I'm done writing it, unless you'd rather me PM it to you, or something.
That's fine.

Also, Scarecrow I've read all of your second post, and I appreciate every word of it and only have three things to say. Fullscreen is off by default, the flags thing is supposed to be stupidly silly, and you just skipped over what is a hidden innuendo. Don't know if you like that humor either, but alas that's what it is.
__________________
Tummy Rubbing Cuddler
Food Enthusiastic Bisexual
Also Video Games

Last edited by Ty-chan; 15th June 2014 at 12:57 AM.
Reply With Quote


  #14  
Old 15th June 2014, 01:39 AM
SentientScarecrow420's Avatar
SentientScarecrow420 SentientScarecrow420 is offline
Formerly Frozyn
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Meditating through the Astral Plane
Total Awards: 2
INFECTED - B2K1 Reminiscence 
Personal complaint, but blue feels like a weird colour for the "completed level" thing.

1-2. There was no indication that those blocks would fall when I jumped on top of them, and now I can't get to the blue dangley. I can just restart the level, but it's still not very good design. Also, there wasn't any indication that the caveman was evil, and seeing as the caveman at your house wasn't evil, that was kind of a bad design choice. You might want to consider indicating somehow that the caveman there is evil. I also didn't even notice the checkpoint until I died. Occasionally, when holding a key, I won't jump, which is very irritating in this level.

Seeing how easy it has been so far to get a game over, the amount of time the game over screen takes is frustrating.

1-3. I am really digging that all enemies have their own death animations. There doesn't seem to be any way to stop this door from spawning cavemen, which is kind of frustrating. The difficulty differences between level 1, level 2, and level 3 are astounding. Level 1 was, obviously, not difficult at all. Level 2 was frustratingly difficult, and level 3 was not difficult relative to level 2.

I want to mention that there are no noticeable costs for firing your main weapon, which makes it easily abusable and makes the other weapons (so far) useless. Another design thing.

1-4. You have the shift button thing there, again. There was no indication that this red thing was moveable, I accidentally bumped into it and saw it move. You should indicate that it moves, somehow. There are no animations for climbing, and that seems kind of weird. You also sometimes seem to 'snap' up or down a ladder.
You keep on having pallet swapped versions of friendly characters at your house as enemies. That is starting to become annoying.

1-snowdome. It seems ok so far. The part with the alternating flames, it seemed, was impossible without getting harmed, which is meh. There is a point where there is blue water-like stuff, which apparently harms you. The warning sign wasn't really enough for that. I've reached a part that I can only assume is ice. You don't slide very much on it, though, and it doesn't really make any sort of difference. Check points are almost completely unnoticeable, i've noticed now, and you should change that. If I stand under a wall directly past the vanishing-snow part, the framerate drops something awful. I would look into it. The boss AI was kind of weird feeling. The fireballs should really sizzle out, after a time. I can't tell you how many cheap, unavoidable deaths I had because of them. If they are going to stay forever, they should at least be at a small number, i.e. 2.

1-B. I can only assume that the B stands for bonus. But I can't pass it. This means either:
1. The B doesn't stand for bonus.
2. 3.
4. You HAVE to play bonus levels, which is kind of weird.

Turns out B stands for Boss. Who ****in' knew?
This boss was much, MUCH better than the last one, which I assume was actually a mini-boss. You need to work on balancing. This boss was easier, less cheap, and also more interesting. One thing that I have consistently noticed with dialogue, is that any key will scroll the text, which makes me accidentally skip diologue boxes. Might want to consider having an action key, or advancing the text with left click.

I just noticed this, when the world map screen is fading it, the levels are red, and after the fade, they turn blue. I assume this has to do with the transition freezing the levels before they turn themselves blue.

Onto world 2! I sincerely hope that these critiques have been helpful.
__________________
"Good game." -Vinny
Reply With Quote


  #15  
Old 18th June 2014, 02:27 AM
SentientScarecrow420's Avatar
SentientScarecrow420 SentientScarecrow420 is offline
Formerly Frozyn
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Meditating through the Astral Plane
Total Awards: 2
INFECTED - B2K1 Reminiscence 
So, world 2 seems to be a woodland place, which is weird considering we were just in a snowy area. But, you know what, Rayman went from a gloomy forest, to a land made of instruments, to some mountains, to a land made of paintings, to an underwater cave, and finally to a land made of candies. So, I guess I can't really complain. It seems weird that there is a forestwoodland in a place called "frozonia", though.

2-1. I very much appreciate the less-blandness of the world, now. The sky is a great colour, the clouds are nice, the sun is unique in design and adds a good touch. The trees look out of place, and look lik ethey were made in MS Paint or summat.
The plants are weird; I would have assumed they were enemies, had I not watched the video preview of Flagman. After crossing the part with all of the fire-shooty-peeps, there is a bit of lag in the game, now.

2-2. Didn't quite know what to do at first. But, upon searching (which was kind of frustrating, given that I had to focus on all of the fire shooting things), I found the button, and then ran across. Some of the placed spikes look a bit weird floating. I'm now at the log area where it rains, nice atmosphere.Seeing some bridges that appear to be amde of wood, or logs, or so. I'm appreciating the more varied elements in the game, now. I hope the rest of the game continues like this, or improves on this aspect even more. At the end, there seems to be a part of the bridgey area that doesn't have darkness, and looks like a map error. You might want to consider looking into that.

2-3. Slow framerate from the start, which is kind of weird. You should look into it. I'm not sure how much of the framerate problems are from WINE or not. I was a bit apprehensive to get into the grey water, but it all worked out I guess.

2-4. Rainbows! No real complaints. I like the rainbows, and I like that the levels progressively got stormier, and then the storm cleared and rainbow!

2-(log?). The level was kind of frustrating, but I dunno, still not as frustrating as 1-2.

2-(log2). I was a bit confused with the barrel thing, and the only reason I know to push it was because it was the same size as the other stuff you've pushed so far. You should add some indication that you have to push it. I like the level, though, it's a nice refresher to the other levels, and offers something different. The boss was much less frustrating than on the last special level of the first world. I got ridiculous amounts of framerate drops, though, whenever it used its water attack. Is each individual particle an object? I'd suggest changing that.

2-Boss. Honestly, the AI was less interesting this time, but it was still fun trying to figure out what its pattern was.

3-1. Hmm. Jungle. Interesting, I suppose. Oh lordy, is that a...pinkbull? A pretty short and easy level.

3-2. This level had the same sort of frustrations as 1-2. But overall, it was ok.

3-3. I was kind of wandering what it was I was falling on at the start of the level, but it just appears to be a gate. Having to play in such a small resolution, I feel apprehensive as I continue walking through the stuff. The vines look a bit weird. The coin's animations sort of make it look like there are enemies hiding in the gates, which makes me more apprehensive. I don't understand the occasionally solid things around the Snow flake shard. I jumped into it once, and it destroyed them, but the second time that isn't happening? I guess it had to do with a certain amount of coins collected? The projectiles of the floaty thing is hard to see in the orange background.

3-Rumbleweed Lake. An interesting breather. the last three levels were mostly shortnd kind of melded into eachother, because a lot of them were sorta the same. I managed to get the shark lodged into one of those weird people blocks, and it couldn't come after me, which seemed like a glitch. (by the by, is that shark inspired by snacker? )

3-4. OH LORD WAVE OF DARKNE-I feel like it's not very good to instantly include something hard to avoid that counts as an instant death, or near death. It's good to have an interlude before hand, so the player can prepare themselves. In Rayman, for example, in one level, you have to plant seeds to get to the top of the level, but by planting seeds, you allow water to flood in. Its been made clear from the beginning of the game that water is bad. In super mario 3D land, you have the levels were shadow mario will come after you, and there is always a period where he doesn't come after you in the beginning, and also you get a couple of seconds before he comes after you. So I would suggest doing something like that in the future. Because it starts instantenously, this level is being really frustrating because of the awkward run controls, and because the darkness is faster than your walking speed.
That being said, I appreciate the change. It makes this level especially interesting. The rest of the level was fine.

3-Cave. I'm really appreciating that you're adding new and increasingly interesting things. I've noticed that your levels are getting better as time goes on. I hope that trend continues. It's been an interesting level so far. I am approaching the cave boss, so I hope that it won't be ridiculously hard or lag my game a tonne, heh.
It was pretty easy. Future note, though: You should make the AI more fluid. Having it go around randomly is ok, but it kind of takes away from immersion of the game if the boss is going in all directions, and then suddenly up and down and then suddenly in all directions. It looks way too mechanical.

3-boss. The boss suffered from the same problem, its AI looks really mechanical, but other than that, it was an interesting fight. Not as interesting as the second or first boss, but interesting enough. I had to go to a specifically location to initiate conversation with flapper, which also felt a bit off. I feel bad that I offended flapper.

I'm finding myself to enjoy the game more as time goes on. Onward to..
Spoiler: (highlight to view)
freaky factory?


Ended up including world three in this, too, since world two was kind of short. Doing world 4 right now.
__________________
"Good game." -Vinny
Reply With Quote


Reply


User Tag List

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT. The time now is 04:30 PM.


Forums powered by vBulletin® Copyright © Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Website © 2000-∞ The RWP