Also, if you start phasing a brick, you can let go of the arrow keys and continue phasing. The problem though, is that you can do that with bricks that have already been phased through, too.

But I think it’s another pointless change…

In fact, since everything that was done by everyone who contributed to jetpack in the contest was done with the original game in mind, and all of the levels were made specifically to work flawlessly with the original jetpack exactly as the original game was…I think really ANY changes to ANY aspect of gameplay AT ALL should be reserved for jetpack 2 (because I think we were all just expecting a modern version of the original game that had new levels and graphics and sound, etc., but not anything that would actually affect gameplay). Something that DOESN’T affect gameplay (or, if it turns out that it does affect gameplay, then it should be changed), is like sinking into slime. It looks different, and it has a real effect, but it doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, affect how one has to play.

Changes like sinking into slime, if they can be integrated into the game well, which don’t affect gameplay, are perfectly fine. But it occurred to me just now that the original jetpack fans, if they actually ARE real original jetpack fans, simple wanted a technologically up-to-date version of jetpack with new levels (that’s what graphics and sound and themes, etc boiled down to).

The only change in gameplay that I can really accept as being okay is the concept of unlimited lives, although the whole idea of having lives is a pretty classic video/computer game concept that usually adds/added an/another fun aspect to the games that use/used “life” systems.

Just my two dollars, haha. I’ll stop clogging the blog with posts for a while, now.

And I think that it’s pretty pointless that you should have to press up/down to go up/down an up/down moving ladder, or that you can just fall down one. The whole point of moving ladders in the original game, it seemed, was (a) to make it more fun to go up and down ladders, (b) to allow/force certain monsters to go up or down when they go to a moving ladder, and (c) to “force” you to go up or down a ladder, and/or (d) to make it harder for you or a monster to go up/down (a ladder). The way the moving ladders are right now in the pre-alpha pretty much defeats all of these purposes, except (perhaps) (a), and it adds the purpose “to be lazy when climbing” to the list. You could just fall down an up ladder if the ladder was the only way to get down. Also, falling down ladders makes every down moving ladder pretty much pointless and obsolete, other than adding a little variety to what your ladder transportation looks like, and in the end, when something is meant to be used in a game, its use is far more important than its appearance (though I’m not saying that appearance isn’t still very important).

Always a pleasure,…hehe…
…………

Also, I can phase up, down, left, and right while stuck in that corner, in addition to facing left and right.

And I think you should be able to phase without having to press an arrow key (and you’ll just phase in the direction you’re facing or however it worked exactly in the original jetpack. I’m not on my own computer right now so I can’t check to see exactly how it worked in the original – I just know it’s not the same in the pre-alpha).

I encountered another bug that just seemed like a normal bug when I went to the bottom right corner of the level to pick up the gem…and then magically got stuck completely in that corner. The jetman is still in the level – he isn’t in a wall or anything – but I can only make him look left and right. I purposefully ran out of fuel before I got the gem, so I’m not sure yet if I could get out by flying, but I don’t think I could anyway (and it doesn’t seem like it matters much, anyway, if I can get out of the corner by flying or not).

That’s all for now, but I’m sure I’ll find more very soon. They whole thing just seems like one big insect right now :/

It is so Murphy’s Law that the first time Chrome crashed on me ever had to be when I was almost done assembling the information about keyboards from a number of sources. Well, here I go again.

1. The most widespread keyboard layout is the QWERTY standard, the basic layout of which is used with some variations in the US, Canada, many Western European countries and East Asian countries (in the latter case, QWERTY-based ‘hybrid’ keyboard sets are used that combine the use of the Latin alphabet with the native one). The basic layout for the set is:
QWERTY
ASDF
ZXCV
Note that almost every country differs in what is left of the number 1 in the top row. It may be a tilde, it may be a slash or backslash, it may be a 1/2 symbol, it’s one of the most replaced keys on the board, so it is not advised to map anything to it. There’s also a variation in whether there’s an extra key insterted between Z and Shift in the bottom left corner, and if so, what it is.

2. The second most widespread keyboard layout is the QWERTZ layout. It is German-based and was created to suit the many languages of the region that use umlauted characters like ä, ö, or ü. So QWERTZ keyboards are highly varied to fit the different umlauts of different languages, but are generally the same, covering most of the countries of Central Europe (excluding Poland which uses a QWERTY variation), Southeastern Europe and the Latin alphabet-based countries of Eastern Europe. The basic layout of the set is:
QWERTZ
ASDF
YXCV
Again, many variations in what is in the bottom left and top left corners (left of 1 and Y). Aside from that, most of the keys are the same in QWERTY and QWERTZ keyboard, with one notable area: the right hand side of the keyboard usually has all the umlauted characters you would use an AltGr combination to reach on a US keyboard, so things like – = [ ] ; ‘ and / are frequently moved around either within this area or elsewhere entirely. For example, on a Hungarian keyboard, which I think has the most umlauted characters out of any languages in the region (ö, ü, ó, ő, ú, í, é, á and ű), every character in this region on a QWERTY keyboard is moved to a Shift+ or an AltGr+ combination.
Fun fact: you can’t create a proper Hungarian ű or ő character with any AltGr code, so if you ever need to type the expression “árvíztűrő tükörfúrógép”, you can copy and paste it from here. (The expression is a made-up phrase used for displaying Hungarian fonts, with the meaning “mirror-drilling machine capable of withstanding floods”.)

3. The third place goes to the AZERTY keyboard which is used in France in Belgium, and has the most variation in the basic layout:
AZERTY
QSDFGHJKLM
WXCVBN
Again, the right side of the keyboard is different.

In essence, the most significant places where the most variations are on keyboards are:
- the top left key next to 1
- the position of Z/Y
- the entire right side of the keyboard, horizontally between 9 and Backspace, P and Enter, L and Enter, and M and Right Shift.
There are also certain regional variations to every standard based on language-specific criteria. For example, Q and W is removed from the Greek alphabet, and the Turkish layout modifies QWERTY in a number of ways. However, there are many little variations like this and they cannot all be accounted for in a keyboard map.

Possible solutions:
1. Assign keys that behave the same in all or most keyboard sets: arrow keys, Ctrl, Shift, Space, E R T O I P and possibly W in the top row, S D F G H J K L and possibly A in the middle row, and X C V B N and possibly M in the bottom row.
2. Customizable keyboard mapping.
3. Keyboard map selection based on the most used two or three options. A number of old DOS games have not included keyboard mapping but instead had a selection between QWERTY and QWERTZ keyboard maps, or (most often in French games) between QWERTY, QWERTZ and AZERTY sets.