Retrofit Contest – Week 5
March 13th, 2010 - filed under Input RequestedThe contest is now over. See the winners here!
Here’s what we still need:
Music
Suspenseful, somewhat quiet music for the first part of the intro (30-60 seconds), which will be followed by Saga Musix’ “Step Into the Cave”
Enemies
Spinning spikes, homer, bat
Theme Tiles
outdoors
factory
space station
alien planet
jungle
devilish – bones, brimstone
A computer control panel
Alternate exit doors
Invincibility suit
conveyor belt to replace the moving platform in the factory theme
Theme Enemies
Graphics that will replace other enemies while retaining the same behavior – for themed levels. I’d like to have at least one alternate enemy graphic per theme.
And last but certainly not least…
A jetman! I’m resigned to paying for this, so if you know any good character artists have them contact me.
This week’s entries
March 6th
New levels:
dough_2.zip
juang_3.zip
andrewb_1.zip
March 7th
Slow day…
March 8th
A door concept by Adam D.
New levels:
jonasr_3.zip
March 9th
Better bricks by Brien B.
New levels:
brienb_4.zip
March 10th
A cool music splash for a level preview by Saga Musix:
Splash-LevelPreview.mp3
A cool bony ladder and updated trackbot by Eric F.:
An industrial background by Brien B.:
New levels:
dough_3.zip
saga_7.zip
March 11th
A nice fence & tile from Brien B.:
New levels:
matts_1.zip – crazy hard!
March 12th
New levels:
tuomast_1.zip
The contest is now over. See the winners here!
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March 13th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
So at this resolution, there’s room for 2 extra rows in each level. I’m facing the uncomfortable decision of stretching out the game panels to fill the space (makes them too big), or spending eons to add 2 rows to all 150 levels. Alternately, there could just be some extra space at the top of each level. It would be going from 26×16 to 26×18.
March 13th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
Maybe the level sizes could simply be adjustable in the editor? Levels larger than the screen would scroll. A few of the contest entries could be edited to showcase exceptionally large and small sizes, while most of them retained the original Jetpack’s dimensions.
March 13th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
There won’t be any scrolling in this version…
March 14th, 2010 at 3:57 am
Stretching tiles in any way shape or form is a terrible option. With such small tiles, any resizing (except for 2x 3x etc.) will result in a considerable quality loss, not to metion visual problems if they cease to be square.
Well I suppose you could add a row of solid bricks at the top and bottom of every level (choosing which brick depending on the level style), but I find this option rather undesireable.
This leaves you with the option of just filling the space. This could allow you to put a cool logo at the top and a really nice HUD at the bottom. This is definately the way to go.
BTW, what resolution are we talking about? 26×18 with 30×30 tiles is 780×540, so I’m guessing 800×600. That would leave only 9 pixels to waste on each side (no problem) and a total of 160 rows to fill up with logos and the HUD. That might be a little much, but it’s not TOO bad.
Anyway, I hope you come up with a good solution.
March 14th, 2010 at 7:53 am
Adam, I don’t see how the game screen looks like so this is just a thought, what about filling a top and a bottom row with black by default to create a sort of a widescreen effect? Does it look very bad that way? InsaneJetman’s idea of a HUD also seems like a good idea, although I definitely wouldn’t burn a logo into the top of the game at all times.
Either way, perhaps it would be best if you could post an image of what it looks like now so we could see what the problem is and give ideas based on that.
March 14th, 2010 at 8:20 am
I wouldn’t stretch the tiles, just the “panels” – ui at the top and bottom. The problem is, with large panels or black bands, the game area looks a little too small this way. At 26×16 there’s an extra 120 pixels of height – 25% of the game area. Expanding it to 26×18 seems like the only good option.
March 14th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Ouch. That does break a lot of my level designs.
March 14th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Well Adam just say the word and I’d be willing to go back over all my levels for a redesign. I was looking at my levels and the redesign for some are very simple while others would be a bit more…..*ahem*…challenging!
But it’s all doable for me. Of course I can’t speak for others.
March 14th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
To me, if you change the size of the game area, the game simply does not qualify as a “retrofit”. It’s a new game. For me, that very much decreases the appeal of the game
.
Looking at my levels, on less than one in five would I consider modifying them in any fashion other than adding two token rows to fill in space. Furthermore, those that I consider adaptable, are the really simple levels which leaves the intricate and well-designed levels being considerably less intricate and well-designed.
March 14th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
I guess there will be the option of wrapping a level in black or stone tiles at the top and bottom. That should be the exception though.
OK, big post. Here’s the current list of changes that will affect gameplay. Most levels will need review/tweaking when the new editor is ready:
levels
Slightly longer level titles are now allowed. Also, title is only 1 line now, not 2.
2 empty rows added to the top of all levels
Player & enemies now sink into sludge (slime)
The game has slightly more realistic physics
No more invisible barriers – there will be a faint visual when barriers are down
No more invisible jetman – there will be a faint visual when jetman is behind bricks
Smaller collision area for spikes & spear
Spear fires when you get close. If you are moving slowly, it will not kill you but still serves as a barrier.
new tiles
icy crate, icy steel panel, icy gold panel
mirage crate, mirage gold panel
brick & hard brick fully encircled with stone
(maybe) thin stone wall/floor – helps when putting spikes in midair
(maybe) pushable solid object – for puzzles, blocking enemies
player
Jetpack – hovering uses less fuel than flying up
Less getting stuck on corners when jumping
Phase shifter only works when aligned with the middle of a tile – to prevent accidental destruction of crates.
(maybe) Phasing on crates and phase doors (purple) now has a slight delay instead of being instantaneous
Phase doors (purple) stay open just a bit longer
enemies
Flitzer moves faster and less randomly. light shows future motion instead of current motion
(maybe) The Jetman can now walk on TOP of the ball. If he falls in front of it, things will go badly. Will have to run backwards to stay on.
(maybe) The ball now falls through ladders instead of going over them (might not do this – will break several levels, will have to test how this works)
visual enhancements
All levels have various enhancements applied automatically.
You can change the default background for each level – this can be a full screen image or extra-large tiles
You can place background tiles independent of regular tiles
You can place foreground tiles independent of regular tiles. This is for doing things like putting gems behind a fence.
Some background tiles are larger than standard tiles, and may include tranparency to reveal the default background
March 14th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Interesting stuff to say the least Adam. Hopefully the new editor is available soon. I can’t wait to see how some of this works in action. OMG I hope you implement pushable solid objects. That would be huge for expanding some puzzles similar to God of Thunder!
March 14th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Crap, I just realized that since the original Jetpack was made with non-square pixels, the retro mode will have to be letterboxed unless I make the tiles 30×36.
Anyway, here’s how this will go. At some happy point in the future there will be a new editor ready, and I will email everyone who has levels going into Jetpack, with a code to access their levels on JetpackHQ. Since Flash can’t save local files, all load/save operations happen from/to JetpackHQ. You will be able to edit and test your levels from your browser, and I’ll automatically have access to them and probably be able to backup each revision too. There will be some nice features like UNDO, music picker, and the ability to automatically convert themes, and of course editing via mouse. At some point I’ll freeze them to prevent further changes, so I can make final tweaks in preparation for launch.
There may also be a way for you to record a demo of the solution to each level, but that may take too much time.
March 14th, 2010 at 2:49 pm
“the original Jetpack was made with non-square pixels”
wat
“There may also be a way for you to record a demo of the solution to each level, but that may take too much time.”
There’s already the Tab+2+D cheat in Jetpack which does this, remember? Or is supposed to, but it only works randomly for me, and is a bit of a hassle since you can only have one jetdemo.dat.
March 14th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
I played around in photoshop to show that it doesn’t look bad with the original size level and a box around everything:
http://i43.tinypic.com/2jfhylg.jpg
If we re-worked the textures to 30×36, that too would fix your problems, since you would be left with only 18 rows to fill in with the HUD. I find this a much more desireable solution than having two rows added to the game board.
March 14th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
Most of the other modifications you have listed sound good. I’m not sure about the “Phase shifter only works when aligned with the middle of a tile.” It might be okay if it only applies to crates, but that might be a bit odd. I never really considered accidently phasing crates when not lined up with them to be a problem. My concern would be regarding phasing of bricks. The following sequence used to be possible (without fuel), but I’m afraid that this change would break it.
http://i43.tinypic.com/a5i4bn.jpg
I may come up with some other examples of situations which should probably be checked for gameplay consistancy.
March 14th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Amorphous: As you might or might not know, standard monitors were 4:3 back then. Resolutions like 320×240, 640×480 or 1024×768 are 4:3. However, most games back then used the 320×200 screenmode due to various reasons. Unfortunately, 320×200 is 16:10 and not 4:3, resulting in non-square pixels on a 4:3 monitor.
March 14th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
> There’s already the Tab+2+D cheat in Jetpack
I’m talking about having a solution to each level stored in the game. Also useful for grabbing expert times.
> I played around in photoshop to show that it doesn’t look bad with the original size level
Well that’s not bad, but it seems like too much UI area to me. The large fonts serve to emphasize how small the game scale is, but if you use small fonts you’ve got too much space to fill. Also, 2 more rows means more maze which isn’t a bad thing, just more work.
> The following sequence used to be possible (without fuel), but I’m afraid that this change would break it.
That would have to still work, it might take longer though.
> most games back then used the 320×200 screenmode
Yes, I think I discovered “mode x” after I made this one
March 14th, 2010 at 6:15 pm
I agree, there’s too much UI in that mockup. It screams like “hey, I’m here to waste space” at the user IMO.
March 14th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
“Flitzer moves faster and less randomly. light shows future motion instead of current motion”
This doesn’t sound like a real problem…maybe…but how much faster and less randomly are we talking about, here?
“Spear fires when you get close. If you are moving slowly, it will not kill you but still serves as a barrier.”
Do they ever go down? And then is there any way to get past them? If you’re moving fast can you jump over them before they stab you? If the answer to any of these questions is “no”…then this would break a couple of my favorite levels that I submitted… :O
“No more invisible barriers – there will be a faint visual when barriers are down”
Well the only thing I don’t like about this is that it kills the surprise in BGSCORE3 when you first activate the teal barrier. …actually…that might be a (tiny) bit of a problem… :/
“Phase doors (purple) stay open just a bit longer”
like 0.2 seconds-ish, I hope?
Sounds like I might have some work to do (assuming that I’m lucky enough to have one of my levels selected).
The two extra rows sounds like good news for expanding some levels that I thought would do well to have just one more level of tiles for jetman to walk on.
And so I’m not completely negative, I think everything else sounds great! Except maybe the sinking into slime part – not sure exactly what that might do.
March 14th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
> Spear fires when you get close. If you are moving slowly, it will not kill you but still serves as a barrier
I think having it serve as a barrier is the best way to go – since spears serve as permanent barriers if there is a brick over them, it would break that construct if you could trigger it then sneak past. You would still be able to jump over them if there’s no brick above.
> Except maybe the sinking into slime part – not sure exactly what that might do.
It’s really cool
I’ve got the Jetman working in the new world now, and picking up gems & treasure. It’s looking really good. I might be able to get a new demo up Wednesday… maybe I should save it for the contest end Saturday.
I thought of another change that affects gameplay:
Curved tiles are actually curved – get too close to the edge and you slip off
March 14th, 2010 at 10:14 pm
What about Retro Mode, how is that going to work when all of the game mechanics are now completely different?
Also, won’t these changes mean that many potential levels will need significant reworking? Some levels seem like they won’t even work under these new conditions. How long will people have to rework their levels in order to get them to comply with the new rules?
Anyway, I look forward to seeing what the demo is like.
March 14th, 2010 at 11:31 pm
so what you’re saying is that it’s still going to be possible to jump over spears (even if they go up, which it sounds like they’ll do if you try to jump over one, since you’ll be close to it), and once they fire, they never go back down?
March 15th, 2010 at 9:23 am
Guys, I think the concept HUD concept is good, the only thing bad with the actual picture sent in by InsaneJetman is that there are not many elements in the bottom row. But that’s not the problem of the HUD itself. Only more things need to be added. And there are a lot of things you can have down there and which have significance in the game, in two rows:
Column 1:
- Fuel
- Time spent on the level
Column 2:
- Gems collected / # of gems in the level
- Treasure collected in the level / # of treasure in the level
Column 3:
- Level score
- Total score
You can even have three rows and have the top row dedicated to the level title.
“Curved tiles are actually curved – get too close to the edge and you slip off”
I think that may make the game very hard. Many times you can avoid bumping into monsters by standing on edges, and I use curved edges on my levels a lot.
March 15th, 2010 at 10:05 am
The maybe levels:
I realized that I have written down my thoughts on the Adam posted in the “maybe” zip file but forgot to put them up, so here they are now.
- Level10 (Ice Cavern) has a certain charm. I would keep it with
- Level03 (Ride the Snake) should be upgraded because the basic design is exciting. Perhaps it would be a good level to introduce springs in some places.
- Level14 (Conundrum) needs a bit of a touch-up perhaps, but the basic design is good.
- Level21 (Underground) bottom part is great & challenging, but the top part could use a little work. I actually did the bottom part without a Jetpack.
- Level25 is challenging, I kind of like it.
- Level31: For some reason, one of the marbles got separated from the others and went a separate route… and it was much more exciting this way.
- Level74: I couldn’t get the jetpack because of the trackbot in the beginning so I just went on without it, and it turned out to be a real fun & challenging level.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Alright, just played this week’s levels and I have to say Flippin Switches! by Doug Howell would be my favourite out of the lot. A nice, not-too-hard, well designed level
March 15th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
I’m still quite leery of expanding the game area. Since the bulk of this game’s material will be coming from original Jetpack, if it’s modified, it will seem very haphazard. Having a ‘retro’ mode also seems like a haphazard solution. To me, this game is ‘retro’ mode. Non-retro mode would be Jetpack 2 (which I also look forward to
).
I tried adding some things to the mock-up HUD like Adam mentioned. I also tried darkening it to make it less obtrusive.
http://i41.tinypic.com/34ryvza.jpg
To me, this would look great inside a browser. In full screen it still looks decent. Of course a lot more could be done to make it just right, but this is just a mock-up. My point, however, is that it’s not at all bad, and in my opinion, not worth sacrificing the any compatibility with the original Jetpack (given that’s the source of all our levels).
March 15th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Retro mode will use the original rules and the original levels. The only change I’ll make will probably be, making you less likely to get stuck on corners.
> spears: and once they fire, they never go back down?
That’s right.
Have faith, nothing is going in haphazardly! Well actually it may go in that way, but it won’t come out that way, so to speak.
March 15th, 2010 at 9:27 pm
“Retro mode will use the original rules and the original levels.”
That’s nice to hear.
Maybe these changes won’t be so bad after all…I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out!
March 16th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Hi, I am an Illustrator. My brother told me about this game and said that you were trying to find some character designers. I played the game and did a few quick sketches and am working on doing a finished colored piece of Jetman. I would like to show them to you but don’t know how. I will put them up on my blog for a while so that you can look at them. If you are interested please e-mail me. pearsonillustration.blogspot.com my blog is http://pearsonillustration.blogspot.com
March 16th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
Hi Veronica,
That’s some cool stuff! However the style doesn’t really match everything else we have for the game. Also I’m working with someone right now on a Jetman, but thanks for the offer!
March 17th, 2010 at 2:45 am
I looked over my levels and several others’ and I don’t think that slipping off rounded bricks will much of a problem, even in retro mode. I wouldn’t make it a difference unless someone can point out situations where it causes a problem (and where a small design change can’t fix the problem).
Actually I think that truly rounded corners might help in places. For example if you’re trying to fly/jump into a 1 square gap. The gap would be a little wider if the corners were rounded. So not being dead on might work. This might not be the case depending on how they’re implemented tho.
I’d work on a jetman too, but it would take me a little to long