deletedTAMyStudios 2014-03-01 01:48:38

Honestly, the new art style for graphics was unexpected, but I'm pleasantly surprised. I'll have to see it in action to think about how "business" can be reduced. One of any number of ideas is similar to sound suggestions - the "current" event is the "loudest" or busiest visually. I honestly think that's more difficult to do with visuals than sounds, though.

The top and middle screen shots... say light and dark levels, anyone? It looks like an arcade. One is the full arcade, the other is the set of darker, 'broken' levels that are only beatable by meeting specific requirements. (Super Meat Boy kind of did that.) Just my imagination running wild :)

Music? Honestly... I need to check out any changes you guys make down the line, but does this game really need music right now? What's it like without it? Some of the music I heard was cool, but none of it really matched the game, and definitely not the art style I'm seeing in this blog post... The creator of Fez let his game go in silence for a while and eventually found a musician who was able to "create the songs [he'd been] hearing in [his] head the whole time".

"However, it will involve a refactor of code that will take some time." - To add support for WASD? Oh my goodness.

Numeris1672 2014-03-01 04:55:54

Well here's a reply:
1. If WASD being close to R is your only concern then I suggest you pay no mind to it. A TON of game have WASD controls with R being restart and there's no problem.
It would ONLY be a problem if the player would need to press something different than WASD which he so far doesn't. There isn't really a need for re-mapping the controls. MAYBE adding 2 buttons in a "Choose your controls" screen where they either click a picture of function keys with WASD or the Arrows. Then they could change it in the options menu under controls if they wanted.

2. From the 3 visuals screenshots I think the first one works best but I since the game seems rather futuristic I'd erase all the brown (earthy) parts and replace them with metal like parts. So it fits with the theme more.

2.1 You COULD also add a version of 3 where you'd have enough light sources to light the entire room nicely but they would all be breakable so if you break them it's your fault. Since I KNOW someone would cry about the game being too dark.

3. Keep in mind that it's Visuals < Playability. If you introduce new visuals which would make the game lag in response then I suggest not adding it. A fully responsive game with a little worse graphics is far better in my book than a game with tons of eye candy that needs half a second to respond to my button press. Especially in Twitch hard and so on where your survival relies on quick movement at times.

I'll get back to you on the music after I play the game again.

-Numeris1672

deletedTAMyStudios 2014-03-01 19:26:23

Is that kind of microoptimization really necessary? I can almost guarantee that if you profiled your app, checking one or two-length strings wouldn't be the bottleneck for responsiveness :)

Constant-length arrays or objects shouldn't be a problem, if there's any way to get those optimized.

How often are you getting input? Is it an event-based handler, or are you checking key presses at the beginning of each frame?

Either way, it should be possible for you to do something like the following (Pseudocode):

// Event handler for key presses
handle_key_press_event( e ) {

// Set this or next frame's global values for whether or not jumping is pressed
if( e.keyValue == Jump1 || e.keyValue == Jump2 )
global.isJumpPressed = true;

// Set this or next frame's global values for whether or not moving left is pressed
if( e.keyValue == Left2 || e.keyValue == Left2 )
global.isLeftPressed = true;

// etc.

}

// Process the current frame based on previously populated key values
process_frame( timeStep ) {

// Better start jumpin'!
if( global.isJumpPressed )
....

}

The use of short-circuit evaluation (and the fact that these types of comparisons are fast anyways) should mean this takes a very, very short amount of time per frame.

deletedTAMyStudios 2014-03-02 10:31:27

An alternative:

foreach( var keyValue in jumpButtons ) {
// Same as previous example, except with an early-exit case handler if jump is already registered
}

foreach( var keyValue in leftButtons ) {
// etc. of course, a foreach isn't your only option here...
}

This makes it easy to map multiple keys to the same behavior, and if it's only a few, it should be fast.

deletedTAMyStudios 2014-03-02 10:36:14

Even more alternatives:

Map a hashtable to closures/functions/methods and have those set the global key values. So the event handler wouldn't even have to check all possible combinations:

Initialization:

keyHandler[ Constants.JUMP_BUTTON ] = handleJumpButtonPressed;
keyHandler[ Constants.LEFT_BUTTON ] = handleLeftButtonPressed;

Event handler:

handleKeyPressEvent( e ) {

// May throw an exception in practice, so keyHandler.Contains( e.keyValue ) may need to be called first...
object targetHandler = keyHandler( e.keyValue );

if( targetHandler != null ) targetHandler(); // or targetHander.invoke();
}

deletedTAMyStudios 2014-03-02 10:42:12

And please excuse the comment-spam, but if ActionScript handles objects the same way JavaScript/ECMAScript does, then objects are already hash tables.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2370123/is-actionscript-3-dictionary-a-hashmap

Anyways, I'm sure you'll figure it out :)

LachieD 2014-03-02 16:35:51

I like the change in the gfx as well, although the original "monochromatic" color tone was interesting to me. I just felt the environment lacked dynamic and life (small animated sparkles, glittering, stuff like that).

Personally, what I find problematic with the the new look of the game, which was present in the original too, is the overuse of lighting effects. I find them distracting and deconcetrating, especially combined with zooming effects when dying. I just feel the gameplay could be enjoyed much more if the action was more graphically coherent and "clean". If you insist on your gfx style and find it difficult to change, at least add an option do disable zoom when dying, because with that zoom it's often too difficult for me to see what I did wrong, to evaluate the sizes of hit boxes and similar.

Also, and this is my personal taste completely, I would appreciate if the main character had more life, interacted with the player on some way (with sounds, waving, or just contain more wacky animation), and for the whole gameplay to be supported with some interesting and motivating story.

I do hope you plan to change the look of the game as the player progresses, as well.

Regarding gameplay, I don't have much to contribute. I think level design and difficulty is well balanced. Perhaps the very game physics could use some tuning. It all feels a bit "stiff"

swooboo 2014-03-03 17:12:14

LachieD voiced what I couldn't, about the lighting. There was something
off-putting about the darker lighting, but also in the lighter one, but I did
not know what exactly. Also, about WASD - as people already told, both
is fine, no need to over-complicate. Lots of games have WASD and R for
restart, I did not see a problem there.

-swooboo

Gretgor 2014-03-04 16:56:01

Looking pretty good. I like how the graphics are more colorful now, the darkness in the original scheme was a bit annoying to look at after a while.