One Final Pre-Alpha
May 27th, 2010 - filed under MiscellaneousHere is the final pre-alpha release!
It’s very late and I have work in the morning, so I’m going to keep this short and sweet. Please let me know your thoughts on:
Feedback & Testing
- playability on a real level – this is a real game level with no enemies, so gameplay should be mostly representative of the final game.
- bottom panel events & sample achievements: getting all treasure, & artifact
- bg staining – when you use your jetpack it burns the background
- minor scrolling – this is a test of scrolling in a narrow game window, which will be required on a few websites.
- The new jetman, thanks to Eric F!
Updates
- Shiny new UI panels
- Death & level completion
- Misc physics improvements – tripping is still an issue, but it’s been reduced
- The industrial graphics theme now closely matches the original Jetpack graphics
- The 3d effect has been refined – much less bevel, a bit more shadow
- New sound effects
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May 27th, 2010 at 12:53 am
Well I’ll have to play it some more to really get a feel for it, but the first few minutes of playing it were pretty good, I must say. Definitely an improvement, and the new jetman is pretty cool.
The phasing is bitchin, man! Great job, eric.
May 27th, 2010 at 1:30 am
Some thoughts:
*I can’t exit the level…I assume this is intentional at the moment, but I was expecting something to happen when I got to the exit.
*Maybe list how to use the switch in the controls section
*The background music is far better than what it was last time (except the “door to heaven” part).
*Should be a reset button; I got stuck in an area without any fuel
*What happens when you die is a bit lengthy; if I die, I’d like to get up and have another go as quickly as possible and not have to wait for more than 5 seconds to get back into it.
*I think the messages you get when you die could be a bit less negative.
*I think a more suitable sound effect could be used when you die.
*The background music drowns out the other sound effects.
*The background staining is a bit weird, but staining all visible parts of the background could possibly be an idea for an achievement.
*I like the little map in the corner.
*The message screen on the bottom is a nice touch, but maybe there should be a way of displaying more than one message at a time (or make it possible to look through the message history).
*The music toggle button seems a bit large. Also, why not have some kind of volume slider?
*When you turn the barrier off it looks like it just shrinks rather than actually turning off.
*Perhaps a faster wall disappearing animation when you phase. It’s not immediately obvious when the wall has finished being phased.
*The vases seem slightly too big (bigger than every other item!)
*What happened to spear traps becoming solid once they were triggered?
*If you die inside a wall you can still move around
*I think it would be nice if the gem counter at the bottom also indicated how many gems you have left to collect. This would be especially handy in larger levels where you can’t actually see the whole level from the get go.
*Perhaps some way of manually scrolling around the level. For example, maybe the player could click and drag the level around in order to see everything.
*If you jump at a wall from the bottom or the corners your head goes behind the wall for a few frames.
*The game froze for me once. I wish I could give you more details, but that’s pretty much it, I was just in the middle of jetpacking in the air and then I couldn’t move anymore. The game still paused when I clicked out of the game.
May 27th, 2010 at 5:40 am
Looking good so far! I wish the jetpack indicator was a lot bigger, because it was very hard to keep track of the fuel state.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Hey, wow. This looks really cool now.
Compliments on:
- The new GFX. The tileset is great and much more streamlined. The fumes coming out of the Jetpack are very nice now. I really love the “less bevel more shadow” effect on the tiles.
- The new music, the style of which is very much like the Egyptian level theme on the C64 game P. P. Hammer, an old favourite. (I must say however that I also don’t like the “heaven” sample.)
- The Jetpack on SFX. It’s the best of the effects.
- The interface as a whole.
- The scrolling, it’s really smooth.
- The new Jetman frames, they look really cool, the movement is smooth altogether. However. I strongly dislike the colours the Jetman is currently wearing. The original Jetpack had a very good colour coordination for the whole game, with the in-game Jetman having a very unique colour combination that worked very well, as he stood out from the background and all other gameplay elements with the purple trousers, the blue top and what was either a yellow helmet or blonde hair. Now the Jetman looks more like an exterminator, a ghostbuster, or a guy in a Hazmat suit. The graphic detail is very good, the art is professional, but the colours don’t add up, they’re much more dull which is not good for the main graphic for the game. I commend the artist for his work but I also think the colour tweak would create a much better protagonist.
Problems:
- Not knowing exactly how much fuel I have left was a problem for me too. (Proposal below.)
- I couldn’t determine which type of bricks were these. They really looked like the old normal bricks, but they kind of behaved like the harder-to-phase ones? Enlighten me on this please.
- When I collected everything, I kept jumping and jumping into the door and couldn’t exit. I don’t know how I could eventually, I might have pushed the down arrow at one time and miraculously disappeared then.
Suggestions (mostly the same as before but these are the ones important for me)
- Total gem count
- Total treasure count
- Smaller chalice
- Stronger sound effects. I can’t determine whether I like them or not because the volume is too low.
- Different death sound. The original Jetpack had these really good nondescript death sounds (not the screams) that were much better. I don’t like growls and screams and the sort in any game.
- Faster switchblock reaction. The change should be much more visible, perhaps the colour should be more definitive when it’s turned on.
- Different switch sprite that looks more a part of the wall than a collectible.
- Different fuel tank sprite. To me it looks very similar to the switch.
- Faster regeneration after death. There will be a lot of death in this game, and it now stops for too long.
- I don’t know if this is intentional, but the Jetman should not fall out of the game world when dying. It looks really odd, like the whole game was stuck up on a wall and the Jetman fell off of that wall.
- BG stain either shouldn’t stay there forever, or it should be much weaker. It makes the otherwise pretty level littered and unattractive by the time I’ve moved around.
- A solution for the Jetpack tank meter: the left and right gradients should both mark 50-50% of the tank. When you get a half tank, the left gradient fills. When you get a full tank, both fill. This way you don’t have to change the otherwise cool graphic, and you’ll more accurately know how much fuel you have left.
Questions:
- What’s the level height & width now? Is this the new setting or the old?
Problems not related to the release:
- My username in the top right corner reads User1141362 for some reason.
Again, congratulations to everyone involved with the release for their work. This new Jetpack project is really shaping up.
May 27th, 2010 at 11:51 am
Thats a totally big improvement nice work guys im loveing all the changes to jetpack already better sound music has been added thats totally kick ass also the graphics are going smoothly XD
May 27th, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Awesome!
- I don’t like when the wall is phased, it disappears so slowly and doesnt look realistic. In the old jetpack it was so awesome, now it just is to smooth!
- When you enter the door, you also disappear so unrealistic, it just changes the opacity => not good!
the Rest is awesome, wow!
May 27th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
I’ve read all of the comments and I basically agree with all of them.
The fuel meter is way too small… but another idea, rather than just making it bigger, is to add a flashing light to the jetman’s jetpack (like in the original game)… a green light means you’re good on fuel, a yellow blinking light if you are almost out of fuel, and a faster blinking red light if you are really close to having no fuel. Solid red light when there is no fuel at all. Perhaps even a dull-yet-noticeable beeping sound effect when the fuel is blinking red.
When I was first trying to play this this morning, I couldn’t get the game to load. When I clicked on the game, the doors opened to blackness and there was no music or anything. It’s working now though, so I’m not sure if you updated it or not since then.
Question… if the game was embedded or played in a larger window… would the level center itself and stop scrolling? Or does the game scale when the embed window is resized?
May 27th, 2010 at 10:13 pm
I have to disagree with the other comments regarding the death timings. The first time I died, I did think it was a second too long, but then I realised its BETTER NOT TO DIE! And in fact, I believe the “not quick, yet not too long delay” made me be a little more careful while playing. I think if I re-spawned too quickly I would just continue to play sloppy, (like in some other games).
Also, I had an issue with the shift key in Windows 7; if you press the shift key repeatedly Windows will ask you if you want to turn-on sticky keys, and there’s no obvious option to turn it off. Are there any alternative keys?
Cheers, really loving the update.
Daniel.
May 27th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Thanks for the feedback, it’s very helpful!
The interest in a volume slider – would this be to adjust total volume or just the music relative to the fx? Would a slider under options be enough?
“When you enter the door, you also disappear so unrealistic, it just changes the opacity”
On level win the jetman will enter the doorway, that’s just not done yet.
“I don’t know if this is intentional, but the Jetman should not fall out of the game world when dying.”
There will be several death sequences, being tossed into the foreground is just a quick one I threw together for the demo. I’m planning a foreground effect like this for 2 types of death though – when the trackbot tosses you out, or for your bits when you explode via missile.
“I couldn’t determine which type of bricks were these”
Ahh this level is made up of all hard bricks – I’ll release an update which has some regular bricks in it so you can see the new look of those.
“What’s the level height & width now? Is this the new setting or the old?”
“if the game was embedded or played in a larger window… would the level center itself and stop scrolling”
The level hasn’t changed size, just the window. The window size will be flexible, and the level will scroll only if it doesn’t fit in the window.
“My username in the top right corner reads User1141362 for some reason”
I changed the website to show your username instead of your display name there, since display names can be longer. Also it’s a good reminder to set your username.
“I had an issue with the shift key in Windows 7; Are there any alternative keys?”
Yes you can also use CTRL.
May 28th, 2010 at 9:50 am
Alright, you’re making good progress. I like how the art style is moving towards consistency. The last few updates had seemed like a clash of varying colours and shapes. Thanks for reducing the bevel too. I think the rocks, bricks and the door still look plastic though, like something out of a stock graphics pack from Win98. But sweet job with the jetman. Now, the music is still a bit distracting, although an improvement to the previous one. It might work as a separate piece, but Jetpack needs something less expressive. The lead melody is too prominent and a bit cheesy. Also, scrap the vocal samples.
The controls are coming close to what I’d call responsive. It’s just that with the “sliding” effect, the player and item masks should closely correspond with their depictions for greater responsivity. For example, the spears sometimes spring out without killing you. Particularly catching the goblets feels unnatural, either shrink the goblet image or expand its mask (rather the former).
I like the lower panel and its death messages, but one little thing bothers me. The fadeout before the sound starts playing is unnecessary, I prefer immediate feedback when killed. Starting it earlier would also cut the unresponsive death scene by a second or two, which doesn’t seem like much but would noticeably decrease intrusiveness on harder levels. Actually the jingle isn’t necessary at all, a “painful” sound effect would do the trick. Another small complaint is that when you fly up, you should automatically phase upwards like in the original.
The applet also crashed unexplainably while flying.
May 28th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
I collected all gems and go to the exit. I’m at the door as it’s opening and try to exit while the animation is playing. Everything gets really slow and the frame rate become horrible. I can’t exit through the door. I’ve beat the level about 5 times before with no trouble. I don’t know if it occurred because I tried to activate as the animation was playing?
May 29th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Just had the same problem like EricF!
Exactly the same circumstances.
May 30th, 2010 at 12:04 am
I’ve put up a new version which addresses most of the issues raised, and also:
* Got rid of space as use, so you don’t have to push a direction to phase
* No longer have to use the door to exit
* Normalized and adjusted all sound volumes
* Added a cool new phasing effect
* I think the lockups and other anomalies were caused by my source code security software. I’ve tried tweaking it, hopefully that will help.
May 30th, 2010 at 12:06 am
Also you can now play Jetpack on Facebook
May 30th, 2010 at 1:44 am
Much better now – I love the new phase effect.
One more thing though, now that I can actually finish the level, having the death sound effect the same as the winning sound effect seems very strange.
Anyway, can’t wait to see more.
May 30th, 2010 at 4:50 am
That was exactly the “something” that was missing from phasing but which I couldn’t put a finger on.
May 30th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Thanks! Oh yeah, I’m waiting for a few more music splashes like that – currently that’s the only one I have.
That phase effect took a while to get set up but now that I have an fx system I can start adding more, like on teleportation and death. If you have any ideas for fx let me know.
I agree the fuel indicator should be bigger, but I can’t find a way to do that that looks good.. will keep working on it. I also can’t come up with a switch I like.
Next up: basic editor to enhance level backgrounds, creatures, and a playable 3-level “sneak preview” that can be embedded on other websites. I’ve estimated 2 weeks of work for that, so it will probably turn into 4!
May 30th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
I’m thinking of entering Jetpack in the IndieCade festival (http://www.indiecade.com/) – deadline June 20th
Work-in-progress is allowed, as long as there is 1 playable level. What should I focus on improving for the next 3 weeks? (besides enemies obviously)
May 30th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Haven’t read all the comments, but here are my suggestions:
* At the start of the level, highlight the player position. The classic JetPack had pixels coming from all directions to make the player sprite. It grabs the user attention and let the user know right away where to start.
* The death sequence is a bit too long. It takes too long to retry the level, up to the point the user will quit playing (tired of waiting). Take a look at this interesting article: http://supermeatboy.com/13/Why_am_i_so____hard_/
* The list of controls disappear too fast. Maybe they should be always visible (until the player clicks “X” to hide them).
* If the jetman is half-below a ceiling block and half-below an empty space, and then he jumps, the jump movement is a bit weird. It hits the corner and then rebounds, a very unnatural movement. (try it around 3~4 tiles to the right of the starting position)
* While falling and touching the wall (keep pressing left/right), the movement slows down sometimes. Also, sometimes it is possible to jump from the wall.
Ah, and those spikes are too annoying (or the movement is not precise enough to avoid them)…
May 30th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
>What should I focus on improving for the next 3 weeks? (besides enemies obviously)
The level editor!
You wouldn’t even need to have many levels, just let the attendees create theirs from scratch and share/play them. After the festival, you could post the results on the blog. Possibly include the cream of the crop from Retrofit to give them some instantly playable material and design templates.
Surely a quick rework of the original editor would suffice for a preview. My suggestion is that the core design would stay the same, as in everything could be dynamically accessed via one menu. But there wouldn’t be one slot for each combination of tiles, rather a small bunch of “master tiles” with changeable attributes. For example, there’d be just one red brick in the Enter menu, but after selecting it, you could choose to round some of its corners and/or harden some of its edges and/or add ice and grass on it. I’m thinking of using F1-F12 to cycle through the attributes. In the red brick example, that’s F1-F4 to round or unround their respective corners, F5-F8 to harden or unharden their respective sides, F9 and F10 for adding or removing grass and ice. No need to treat the dozens of possible combinations as individual tiles.
May 30th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
That’s already a good game!
The only thing I didn’t like is the scrolling for narrow windows. It’s very well-done, but I like to see the whole level to make decisions about where to go…
I think Dave’s suggestion of manual scrolling would be very good in this case.
May 30th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Love the phasing effect !
The game is now always freezing on me when I’m phasing and using the jetpack.
May 30th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Hey, I only just noticed that the jetpack leaves burn marks on the background. That’s cool, was it added in the most recent update?
Collision detection on the edges still seems iffy. Standing on the corners makes you slide off, but I guess this is intentional and might simply take some time being used to. What’s clearly a bug is that there appear to be invisible corners between connected tiles. You can see how walls feel like there were mattresses laid on them while flying up and hugging them. It’s even possible to walljump from those invisible corners.
May 31st, 2010 at 2:27 pm
- It is not possible anymore to use the teleporter while phasing downwards. I think in the old Jetpack, when using the phaser on a teleporter field, you both phased and teleported.
- The new phase effect is great, however after the new effect, the blocks fade out and THEN you can walk through them. My experience was that I expect to be able to walk through the phased block instantly after the wobbly effect ended – so I guess you should already be able to walk through the block while it’s still fading out.
June 1st, 2010 at 9:15 am
Some more testing.
- First off, a bug. I got my first game freeze. I went to the top teleporter, and phased the top two bricks to see how falling when teleporting went. As I came out the other teleport, I ignited the Jetpack, and the game was stuck there. I’m playing in Google Chrome, the Flash driver of which does tend to break, but this is not the case here, as I could still pause and unpause the game and turn the music on and off. Odd. I can send you a screenshot if you’d like, Adam.
Then.
- I found myself wanting to use CTRL for phasing all the time. It’s more convenient as I found the space bar to be too far. (I use Windows 7, pressing Shift + Ctrl for a prolonged time does not induce any system-related function.)
- There’s something odd with the physics of falling. In the old game, there would be no problem in the left part of the screen, falling down 7 blocks, maneuvering right and landing on the rock surface. Now with the new engine, I find I fail this drop seven out of ten tries.
- In a game where you have to collect a lot of stuff, it’s rewarding to see as your counters increment. So for me the gem/treasure countdown is pretty underwhelming now. If you cant fit a “xxx/xxx” type counter in there, what if both the gem and treasure field had a gradient like the fuel gradient filling up as you went along? Then you can switch back to the number of gems/treasures collected because the player will be able to see their progress in the underlying gradient.
- I really agree with what’s been said before about the death time. The current death sequence is 4 seconds long, which is way too long for an online Flash game with so many deaths. But, it can be kept if you also give the option to skip the death sequence and start again immediately — like in the old level editor, you die, you can press Q to get back to the editor and start a new game test immediately.
June 2nd, 2010 at 12:07 am
This is very very awesome.. everything great as far as I see.. only one thing I think is awkward is when Jetman jump up, one of his shoe bigger than his other shoe.
June 2nd, 2010 at 12:16 am
1 more thing, I think it’s weird physic bug. Jetman gets a little bouncy and jumpy when walking sometime in small tunnel space. Good place to notice that is go right down to get jetpack then turn left and down for the gem. Start walking left and right.
June 2nd, 2010 at 4:02 am
The game crashes/freezes unreproducable.
Please concentrate on that.
A freezing game is ashaming at the festival.
June 2nd, 2010 at 8:58 pm
I love it so far. Looks great. One problem I encountered was flying and phasing at the same time. It was difficult to use phasing left or right while flying. Also I suggest we have another key/button that lets us jump even when we have fuel so that it’s possible to conserve fuel.
June 3rd, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Things are looking pretty good. The feel of the game seems better overall. I like the controls. The new jetman looks great. The smaller trophie graphic is an improvement. The wall phasing animation looks cool.
I don’t like the new bricks (of course I’m biased since I made the old ones). The reason is that they’re too small (at least the light red ones) leaving little room for any detail in the actual brick graphic. I suspect some of your positive feedback regarding the new graphics is more to do with the removal of the lighting effect you had before.
I don’t like the death sequence. It seems like physics just go out the window. Also, several levels I’ve made (others’ too) rely on getting to the door dead. Now if you die while a conveyer leading to an open door, you’re out of luck.
The treasure count is wrong! I still had one left when I finished the level 100%. You’re probably counting the statue.
The game froze on me a few of times. I can’t put my finger on exactly what caused it and it’s not easy to reproduce. It always happened while flying tho.
Anyway, keep up the good work, and I’m looking forward to new releases.
June 3rd, 2010 at 11:29 pm
I’m working on another update to this, but its not quite ready yet.
“I think in the old Jetpack, when using the phaser on a teleporter field, you both phased and teleported”
Yeah but that wasn’t a feature!
“The only thing I didn’t like is the scrolling for narrow windows”
This is a low use case, for certain websites like Facebook. In most cases you will be playing full screen.
“Surely a quick rework of the original editor would suffice for a preview”
I’d love to have the editor ready for the festival, but there’s no time for that plus all the fixes I need to make.
“I found myself wanting to use CTRL for phasing all the time”
I wish we could use ALT, but its a reserved key in Flash
“I don’t like the new bricks (of course I’m biased since I made the old ones)”
The other bricks will still be used, but in a different theme. This is the “industrial” theme which is meant to be a direct upgrade of the original graphics.
“several levels I’ve made (others’ too) rely on getting to the door dead”
While that’s a cool gimmick, I don’t think it’s going to work now. Especially since some of the deaths will have you exploding into bits.
“The treasure count is wrong!”
Doh! Will be fixed.
June 5th, 2010 at 7:00 pm
I didn’t check to see if this has already been mentioned, but the physics just seem whacked out. I jumped over that spear to the left of where you start, and then I jumped up onto the ledge to get the gem. First, getting up there just looked weird. Try it. It can’t look too different from what it looked like for me. I think I was fairly close to the tile with the gem on it when I jumped. Anyway, after I successfully jumped safely onto the ledge, I pressed the right arrow key to get back down, so that I could take another look at the weirdness of jumping up to the ledge, and then…man the acceleration is insane. I pressed the right arrow key and that was enough to turn around and get down. The only problem was that it was TOO much. I flew off the stone right into the spear. I think jetman’s entire body just hit it dead on. Needless to say I died in-game, and then I went into shock in real life. The physics really need to be toned down a bit.
Other, er…”problems:”
I still haven’t had much time to experiment with the level (I’m just busy watching TV and doing other mindless tasks), but every time I play this there are a couple of things that bug me more and more, and I think that they are in fact related:
The first thing that begins to irk me when I start the game is, take a guess, the controls! If it is possible in ANY WAY (the game won’t ONLY be playable online, right?), then, at least in the final release, you HAVE TO make the control keys changeable! I’ve used space for every computer game that I can ever remember playing that controlled the character with the keyboard (or that allowed either the keyboard or the mouse to control the character) to jump, if the game had jumping in it. I can’t get used to the current controls, and I think customizable control keys is a must-have for the final version of jetpack.
The second thing that I really can’t stand can actually be broadened to include the first thing that I don’t like. I call it, “Lack of Freedom.” Everyone likes freedom, right? Well they had better. Anyway, I was really put out when I realized that I can’t phase when there’s nothing to phase. What if you want to phase nothing (or something that can’t be phased) just for fun? You can’t phase something until you’re right next to it? Why not (these are all rhetorical questions)? Then I just got angry when I found out that I can’t jump (or even attempt to jump) when there isn’t room above my head. You know that first brick you start the level standing under? I want to be able to jump while standing underneath it, even if I only go up a little bit. A big problem with the lack of freedom is that it just doesn’t feel natural, in many respects. These things are just a few examples of things that I would like to be able to do, and although some of them might seem a little ridiculous, they are nevertheless very important to making a game fun. Games should be designed for people to do things that are (somewhat) pointless, and I hope that subsequent releases give players more freedom.
In fact, the things that I mentioned are NOT entirely pointless. Not in the least. Being able to phase whenever will encourage players to experiment and, among other things, make the game more enjoyable. I know that I, for one, would hate to have to wait to activate the phaser until I’m right up on a phasable tile, especially when I’m running from homer and the steel balls of doom. Phasing’s cool to do, anyway. And a cool game is an enjoyable game. All of the freedom is reassuring, too. Let me explain. If you want to jump, but nothing happens at all when you do, because you are below some tile, wouldn’t you rather the jetman jump up just that tiny bit instead, to assure you that you’re jumping correctly, and that the game isn’t messed up or buggy? With phasing, though, it’s even more important to have freedom. If someone tries to phase something, but the jetman just stands there like a ghostbuster, that would be more annoying than if he started phasing but the tile didn’t get phased through. In fact, being able to phase whenever you want to preserves part of the puzzle aspect of the game. There’s nothing to figure out if you are restricted to what you can even attempt to phase.
What’s going to happen if you try to phase a brick that turns out to be a fake one (one that doesn’t need to be phased to go through)? Dead giveaway! And it sounds like more work to allow restricted phasing than to just let the player phase (or jump) whenever they want to.
One final thing; centering while phasing is still annoying me, and I’d like to be able to phase without being centered. That takes away the freedom of phasing to the side, and it’s another case of it just being unnatural. I would have to test it, but centering while phasing could have some adverse side-effects like accidentally setting off spears when you would rather have just stayed away from them and phased in peace.
I hope I didn’t accidentally emphasize one thing too much and not elaborate on another, but here’s what I think needs to be fixed:
1. The physics
2. The lack of freedom
Freedom is fun, and restricting freedoms is more work than it’s worth, in my experience with programming.
Forgive my bluntness.
June 6th, 2010 at 6:54 am
I see where you’re coming from Robert, hand-holding in modern games often underestimates the player’s intelligence. If there’s no punishment in the game for doing something, there’s no need to artificially limit them from doing so. Might be nitpicking, but sometimes it’s the details that can make or break a game.
June 7th, 2010 at 8:20 pm
I haven’t been to this site in a while, so when I came back I was quite surprised to see a very playable pre-alpha of the game. Now that I’ve gotten a chance to play it, I’ve gotta say I loved every bit of the new style! The new hires graphics are really cool, and I love the new Jetman design. The music was also nice, except for the “door to heaven” part… Sorry, the guy who said that just sounded really dweebish.
Despite these good things, there are some things that I think need to be added or corrected:
-It would be nice if I could scroll the camera around the level without moving Jetman to see other hidden parts of the level.
-A larger or more informative fuel gauge icon would be good too. Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m out of fuel or not.
-Maybe a reserved jumping key so that I can move over small walls without expending fuel?
-At first, I didn’t know what the controls were since I didn’t notice them at the bottom of the screen. A large window that opens when the game starts would be more helpful.
-The death sequences are cool, but way too slow. You should probably speed them up a bit.
All in all though, I was very impressed with this last release. Keep up the excellent work!
June 8th, 2010 at 10:54 am
>-Maybe a reserved jumping key so that I can move over small walls without expending fuel?
The timing for picking up fuel is part of the challenge. Limited fuel makes players have to collect as much as they can on foot before filling up the jetpack, making fuel more valuable.
Although I wouldn’t mind if there was a way to alter those mechanics in Jetpack 2, especially if there were loveable side effects. Like walking with fuel would slow you down. Or you could drop your fuel tank and trackbots/batbots could steal it. Getting them stuck inside a wall would have them drop it. Or there was a different sort of fuel which you could “bank” by instantly emptying the jetpack, but with the fuel you had left appearing in the place you got it from. That’d be silly but awesome if levels used that concept right.
June 9th, 2010 at 6:53 am
There is a key for jumping. It’s “x”
June 9th, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Wow, just played this again Adam and it really looks amazing, I love the phaser effect with the warping tiles. One and only request from me: please don’t make the phaser impossible to use against solid bricks, it seems the phaser only works if you’re using it against something that can be phased. This feels to me like I am being patronised, that the developer doesn’t want to give me proper control of the character because I will be too stupid to use it correctly. I actually feel like it’s more confusing this way, eg. the user can easily be lead to think that the phase key is not working, or that they’ve forgotten the correct key if it doesn’t work when they expected it to.
June 9th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
=== The demo has been updated! ===
* Fixed the freezing problem, I hope. I traced it to box2d involving smoke particles colliding. I couldn’t figure out the exact problem so I hacked it to just discard the invalid contact when it’s encountered.
* Reworked the “door to heaven” sample – let me know if you like it now
* Added blood stains
* The level now retains its state after you die – gems & treasure stay gone, and stains remain until you finish the level. Fuel & crates come back, to ensure the level is still solvable.
* You can now skip the death sequence with space.
* Tweaked the phase effect so you walk through while its happening, and fixed the timings to match the original.
* New effects on start & teleport
* More death messages
* New spear behavior & death sequence
* Spear can now face left, right, or down
* Fixed the drift speed when falling
* Fixed some jitter, and introduced other jitter, by making the physics cycle by the same amount every tick.
* Made the fuel display larger, with greater contrast
* I preferred the counters going up also, having the numbers going down feels like work. A progress bar wouldn’t show clearly when you had just 1-2 left though, and I don’t want to clutter up the panel with a lot of text. Not sure what to do here.
The game is now using its own level file format, instead of just importing the old. This lets us do some new things, like overlap tiles and depart from the grid. Examples in this demo:
* Triple spears w/stunner
* Items hidden in bricks – phase beneath the teleporter
* gem behind fence
* gem on ladder
* gem on teleporter
* treasure on door
Good points on restricting actions, preventing a jump while under a brick was meant to make it easier to time a jump when there’s something above you, since that was way too tricky in the original. However, that’s already been solved in another way, by letting the jump start even shortly after you’ve left the ground. So I’ve gotten rid of that limitation, and also added back the visual for the phase shifter when there’s nothing to phase.
June 10th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Cheers for the regular updates. The level format change is probably the best news. Kinda hoping we’d get to try out an early version of the new editor in the near future.
Will spears really behave that way or is it just a placeholder effect? I think they should stay down after having sprung up and withered as long as you don’t leave their vicinity, which would make them reset. They’d effectively slow only the player down during chases rather than sludge bricks which affect both you and enemies. For a reverse effect, there could be a small airlock door which only lets the player through, without requiring phasing.
I also liked how spears activated only when you touched both a floor and a hidden spear in Jetpack. Probably the most exploited gimmick in my levels. I’d like to see a mine which works like that, it’d make the effect more logical anyway and utilize the grid update (round mines could now be halfway inside a floor or floating next to a cliff, both harmful in different conditions).
June 10th, 2010 at 9:53 am
Ooh I like that idea. I’ll make the spear trigger lower, so you could have a top spear and bottom spear facing eachother, the only way through would be via hover.
The idea on the trigger is that it is triggered by motion, but they have to block a 1-tile tunnel to have the same blocking effect as the original.
There’s no editor yet, no time. I’m doing all tile placements directly in code.
June 10th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Nice new release, there is a new bug:
You cannot climb down the ladder from top!
Try it on the right side.
June 10th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
I absolutely love the mine idea! Concepts like that from the original game should definitely be preserved in the, er…remake thing. Things like mines that basically act like the old spears, and barriers that are invisible while down would definitely be something great for the editor, and adding those as tiles would also prevent breaking people’s levels, which I know was a big problem when those kinds of changes were first announced! Brilliant idea, amorphous!
Now to check out the new demo…
June 10th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Sorry about the terrible grammar in my comment above.
The changes are looking pretty good. I think there are still some persisting problems:
1. Since you have to press space to avoid the extremely long time between death and resurrection, pressing space should be expected to happen often after having just died. Anyway, there’s a problem where if you press space after you die but before you restart or w/e, you start phasing, or at least it starts the phasing animation. Basically you can phase while dead.
2. Jumping at the exact moment after running out from under a brick that’s right above your head is a big part of jetpack. Jumping needs to be tweaked a bit, though. I don’t think you should be bouncing off of the corner of a brick if the back of your head or your jetpack touches the tile when you jump out from underneath it. I’m not exactly sure how to describe what’s wrong here, but I shouldn’t be jumping straight forward if I jump the tiniest bit too early, either. Not sure what to say, but there are some little adjustments that need to be made here.
3. The physics are still somewhat off. Jetman doesn’t “jog” that fast, so I shouldn’t have to let go of the arrow key at just the right moment to prevent myself from going flying more than a tile length forward when I fall down a single level. Basically, it looks like the magnitude of the horizontal motion while falling (even if it’s just falling down from a ledge 1 brick high) is too great. I’ll take a look at the original jetpack to try to get a more exact feel for the problem, but the physics right now just don’t feel right (and they’ve gotten me killed a few times too many). This problem also results in slowing down the action (which as you know, is a particular solution to the differential equation of the fun) of the game, since you would have to constantly press and stop pressing the arrow keys to make sure you don’t accidentally, well, you get the point. I’ll look at the original but I don’t think you should be falling that far. Could you tone it down just a little?
I’m also not a fan of hitting a wall every time I move down a level. If you’re not sure what I mean, just go to any of the places that look like stairs made out of tiles and go down them. You should end up hitting the wall opposite you before falling to the lower level.
But other than those big minor problems, the new demo looks pretty slick!
June 10th, 2010 at 8:55 pm
Great points, Robert, I put them in my list!
It is tricky because the original was unrealistic here – when running full speed off an edge, you shouldn’t just drop straight down. I’m trying to find a balance. Also the buggy physics engine forces me to add all these hacks, like not recognizing when the ground is gone right away.
June 10th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
“You cannot climb down the ladder from top!”
I saw that a couple times, it’s in the list!
June 11th, 2010 at 4:53 am
Looks better.
Two new bugs I found in the new demo:
- After going through the door, I can still move around, the Jetman is invisible but if I use the jetpack the fumes still come out.
- After dying and skipping the death sequence, I can’t collect gems before they stop blinking. It seems the gem blink process is not reset when you start over.
Gameplay elements:
- When phasing a wall it is really hard to determine when you can actually pass through. The point when the wall is passable needs to be more clear, both in the animation and the sound effect — with the old Jetpack sound effect, the short burst of sound clearly indicated the swith in the wall’s status. The new sound effect is blurry, and the animation of the wall being phased isn’t that different from the actual disappearing event. So there’s no way to tell when you can go.
- Instantly being able to resume the game after death is a good function, suited for the speed of today’s flash games. It is very good that the level music does not start over when you die and restart, because that way the game would quickly become repetitive. But because of this I wonder if there should be a separate death music at all.
Messages:
- When the death message is a one-liner, it should still push off any other messages before it. It’s odd dying and seeing the death message with “fuel collected” still underneath.
- When you get all gems, the message would be better off if it had “get to the exit” instead of “find the exit”, for the simple reason of the exit being clearly marked, so there is nothing for the player to actually find. When that message popped up, I always thought “Find the exit? But it’s right there!”
Counters:
- The gem and treasure counter is good now that it is incrementing. Here’s an idea: why not colour-code these counters? Introduce a slight change in the colour of the counter, when you have 50% of the gems, then change it again when you have 75%, and when you have 100%, the counter turns to gold. Same goes for the treasure counter.
- I think the little marked lines in the fuel meter don’t really work, they look cheap, unfortunately, especially when I get a half tank. I still think you should try filling up the left tank when you get a half tank and both tanks when you have full, that would more clearly mark the amount of fuel you have. Or have you discarded that idea entirely?
June 11th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
“- When phasing a wall it is really hard to determine when you can actually pass through. The point when the wall is passable needs to be more clear, both in the animation and the sound effect — with the old Jetpack sound effect, the short burst of sound clearly indicated the swith in the wall’s status. The new sound effect is blurry, and the animation of the wall being phased isn’t that different from the actual disappearing event. So there’s no way to tell when you can go.”
On a similar note, it is also very difficult to know when you can actually NOT pass through a wall. The sound of the wall…”unphasing” seems to happen both too slowly, and too early. It can become confusing and even exasperating when you hear this long sound effect, since it doesn’t instantly tell you when the brick or whatever is still phased through. In addition, the sound seems to end before you can actually not pass through, and that can seriously raise the mortality rate of the jetman. The end of the sound effect seems to indicate the moment just before the brick becomes no longer phased. That’s a big problem. The sound should be quick, and the distinction between passable and impassable tiles should be much clearer (that is, between phased tiles and tiles that are no longer phased). The transition between phased and not phased should be EXTREMELY clear.
And not to be a hater or anything, but I thought that the original jetpack was perfect with the tile effects during and after phasing. In my opinion, the visual transition from unphased to phased should NOT be smooth, and the transition back to unphased should be rough, as it was in the original. The transition to phased should be near instantaneous (VISUALLY), and the transition back should VERY clearly indicate the possibility of passing through the tile or not. The sound effects of the transitions should exactly match the visual ones. In short, the transitions should be much more like the original, and, frankly, I’m not a fan of the “phasing out.”
In the original game, things were not meant to be “phased out,” but rather, to be “phased THROUGH.” I think you understand what I mean by that.
Besides, bricks “phasing out” doesn’t really make much sense.
Finally, the “boom” sound of phasing through something was very comforting and, believe it or not, pleasing to the ear. Much more so than the sfx in the demo. It was also a big trademark or calling card of the original, and, to be honest, I really miss it.
I don’t think people would really miss the current phase effects on the tiles if they went away and were replaced by ones similar to the original.
Some food for thought.
Oh, and an idea! Different themes could have different phase effects for the tiles, if you want to go that far. Whatever you decide to do, there are some changes to the current effects of phasing and unphasing of the tiles that definitely need to be made.
June 11th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Great that you added a death animation skip button
Love the blood splatter, it gives you warning that you might soon be making the same mistake twice.
Not really sure if I like the resuming after dying thing; it can act as an exploit and might encourage people to suicide through the level. For example; getting the statue, beforehand I would have to have good control of my jetpack in order to get it, but now I can just jump down the hole and kill myself and I get rewarded with a statue.
If you move whilst jumping (jump animation with hands above head) under a wall you can slide all over the place. It’s hard to replicate all the time, but I did manage a couple of huge slides.
When you finish, the music should stop and the winning sound should play, at the moment it’s a bit weird having them overlap.
The fuel reduction tiles should probably have a louder more warning-ish sound; a sound that makes the player think – “Oh ****! I should stop touching these tiles!”
About the death messages: “Try again jet man” should be capitalised as “Jet Man”. One message cuts off – “…ave misunderstood, there is no prize for…”. And “I love to watch you suffer” is probably going a bit too far =/
The coin spinning animation is probably a tad too long.
Exciting seeing all the improvements with every update
June 11th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
I found another problem with phasing. You don’t phase something if you’re too far off center (and you don’t get centered if that happens, either – not that I like forcibly being centered while phasing). If you go to the left or right a tiny bit at the beginning of the level and start phasing upward, you should see that your phaser can actually appear to be in contact with a pretty large area of the brick; but it won’t phase it. If you turn the jetman in different directions and go to both sides and try to see how far away you can be from directly below the center of the brick before your phaser won’t work on it, you’ll find that your phaser still comes into a considerable amount of contact with the brick if you phase up from those locations. Depending on which way jetman is turned, you might also see that you can still be under the brick but not be able to phase it. You’ll also find that the brick will still interfere with jumping at those distances. So, basically, uh…yea. That’s a problem.
The effects of the phaser, or the relative location of the jetman to a phaseable tile at which you can phase that tile, or whatever controls what I’m talking about, needs to be adjusted. The phaser should be able to phase what it’s clearly in contact with, and it should be able to phase whatever you are clearly within phasing range of. This problem is probably most apparent when phasing tiles above your head. I don’t think this would be too tricky to fix without creating more phasing problems when there are multiple phaseable objects that the phaser is “touching,” but it might require a little work to do. It looks like the problem is only with INDIVIDUAL tiles, since you either phase one way or another when the tiles are in a row. You probably phase whichever tile has more than half of your phaser touching it, or that was the impression that I got. The problem, though, is that the game should probably be letting you phase whatever your phaser has the most contact with (so it would have the most contact with a lone phaseable tile, since there would be no other phaseable tile that the phaser would be touching)!
If the phaser isn’t already its own object, maybe it should be (that might make it easier to fix…maybe)? I’m not sure. To prevent accidentally phasing a box (or anything), I don’t think that your phaser should work on something if it’s barely touching it at all, but you should be able to phase just a LITTLE BIT more off to the side of a lone tile and still actually phase it. But it must be fixed!
Also I just noticed that the phaser seems to have a light side and a dark side. That is, the electricity stuff does. It looks a little odd.
And the phaser looks a little too static (not enough easily perceivable real animations for the electricity stuff while phasing). The original game definitely clearly showed that there was this electricity thing going on with the phaser. I’m not even sure that the current phaser animation clearly shows the player what the phaser is doing. I think it needs a better light/dark distribution, and better animation. It almost looks like nothing’s happening when you use it. The better animation might solve the light/dark problem, if it varies the concentration/position of the electricity.
The phaser just looks a little retarded up close. From a distance it looks okay, at first, but the ends/sides of the phaser are still going to need better distribution of electricity, and there should be a little more easily visible action occurring with the electricity. It kind of looks like it’s just vibrating a little big right now, and sometimes when I’m phasing it’s hard to see the dark side of the phaser at all. If the “action” is already there, which it looks like it MIGHT be, then it just isn’t visible enough right now (so that should be fixed).
I know it’s still very early in the development process, but that’s just something to put on the list to make the game seem more dynamic and interactive.
June 11th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
“Not really sure if I like the resuming after dying thing; it can act as an exploit and might encourage people to suicide through the level.”
Good point, I’m now taking away your statue if you die. You’ll get to keep the treasure though. But an achievement will be to get all treasure without dying.
I’m working on most of the other items mentioned.
BTW how do you like the “door to heaven” sample now?
June 11th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Oh, I thought you didn’t reset the game state just for this demo. In that case, Adam, it should also be an achievement (or be worth something) to get all the gems without dying. Although I’m not sure, I mean the whole original game was about getting everything without dying, and levels are built and difficulties are determined with this in mind. I think dying should reset the whole level. This would put levels like this into the harder category of course, but resetting only the Jetman is a very different game.
OR this is your easy mode: gems & treasure stays collected when you die, everything else (collectibles, barrier state, monster placement, etc.) resets. Normal mode: everything resets, including gems & treasure, like the original game.
June 11th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
I really like those ideas for easy and normal mode, assuming that statues are “collectibles,” since statues should always reset when you die. Normal mode should be the default mode of difficulty in the game, though.
And there should definitely be a hard mode! I’m just not sure what hard mode might be.
June 11th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
I just had an idea. Maybe hard mode could be exactly like the original, where you have limited lives (and statues count as extra lives in this mode, in addition to being an achievement or whatever)! The life count should obviously be the same as in the original. That would definitely be hard mode, since you’d have to progress through the levels like in the original game without dying too many times!
It would also be great for more hardcore and/or oldschool players!
June 11th, 2010 at 11:41 pm
Oh I forgot to mention that in hard mode the things will reset when you die.
And maybe there could be a “survival mode” that is like easy mode but with limited lives like in hard mode – so you have limited lives but the stuff doesn’t reset so it’s easier and basically you see how long you can survive.
Or you could just call hard mode “survival mode” and the survival mode “survival mode – easy,” or maybe the hard mode could be called “survival mode – hard” and the survival mode could just be called “survival mode.”
I guess it isn’t that important, but these different modes of play should undoubtedly be in the game!
That’s all the ideas I have for today! Maybe I’ll come up with a hard mode that doesn’t involve limited lives, and if I do, then that new hard mode could be the hard survival mode and the current hard mode could be normal survival mode and there could be that easy survival mode which is my current idea for survival mode. And now I’ve probably confused a lot of people reading this. Hopefully you aren’t confused, Adam.
So far I’ve only suggested a hard mode that involves limited lives and resetting things when you die, and a survival mode that involves limited lives but that doesn’t reset things when you die. And I said I loved the easy and normal mode ideas by adam D.
June 12th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
A big bug:
If you phase upward (at any time at all), you can hold the up arrow key and use the right arrow key to move to the right while still phasing. If you do this, you start phasing to the right while you move to the right, and when you let go of the right arrow key, since you are still holding the up arrow key, you resume phasing upward. HOWEVER, you can’t do this with the left arrow key. You can’t move to the left while phasing up. There are other similar problems with changing directions while phasing and holding multiple keys, but the underlying thing that should be done to get rid of this bug is:
While phasing, successive arrow key presses should completely override arrow keys being held, unless the new arrow key being pressed directly opposes the current arrow key being held. The original jetpack works like this, except it seems to have the exact same bug as the demo does, but it’s restricted to phasing while flying. That bug should also be taken care of, since the demo’s bug occurs no matter what.
An example of what I should be able to do when this bug is fixed: If I press and hold UP and SPACE, and then, while holding UP and SPACE, press and hold the LEFT arrow key, I should move (and phase) to the LEFT. If I continue holding UP and SPACE, and I release the LEFT arrow key and press and hold the RIGHT arrow key, I should begin to move and phase to the RIGHT. If I then press and hold the LEFT arrow key again, I should stop moving but continue phasing to the RIGHT. If I then release the LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys, I should resume phasing UP. You get the idea. Make sure that you can do this while flying, too. The original game seemed to have this problem solved except for the flying part.
AND one other thing. I looked at the original jetpack and for the first time I noticed that…You are automatically centered while phasing! But here’s why I never noticed it before: Because it’s so fast, and because I’m usually not off center, and because it seems to only center you when you would not be able to fall straight down or go straight up through the tile immediately after phasing it without moving to the left or the right first. I don’t know if that last part is correct, and I don’t know if it only centered you enough for you to just be able to fit through or not. BUT, I think the problem with centering while phasing in the pre-alpha is that it is so slow an obvious that it’s annoying!
In the original jetpack, phasing seemed flawless and second nature. It should be the same in the new version. My advice would be to make centering exactly the same as it was in the original. Sorry about all that hating on centering before, but to quote futurama, “If you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.” If there’s going to be any hand-holding in the game, don’t let the players know it’s even there! I never knew that you were centered while phasing up or down in the original game. Make it thus in the re-release.
June 12th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
oops. It should be “WHEN you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all,” haha.
And maybe there could be a mode where you have to beat the level in a certain amount of time (or you die or something)? Like a time trial mode. I’m just throwing these things out there.
June 12th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
WHOA. Yea I’m just clogging up this place with my comments. I accidentally pressed ALT at the beginning of the level to try to jump (I wonder why, lol), and I pressed the right arrow key at the same time to jump forward (well in the direction I wanted to go), and i just began running into the stone wall tile thing to your right and when I let go of the keys the jetman just kept running and I couldn’t stop him or do anything about it pretty much. Anyway, haha, the game shouldn’t have a complete meltdown if someone accidentally presses the wrong key like that.
And the “low on fuel” message doesn’t go away after you run out of fuel.
June 13th, 2010 at 2:23 am
I really love the song but still don’t like the “door to heaven” sample. It’s an improvement but sounds weird.
June 13th, 2010 at 9:30 am
the song itself is cool, but i don’t think there should be any voice samples at all in the game’s music. a human voice will always distract your attention from the gameplay.
June 13th, 2010 at 11:53 am
Hmm… I think those new gold coins look a bit too bright in comparison to the rest of the gold items. Maybe make them look a bit darker like those goblets.
June 13th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Dunno if this is entirely intentional, but pressing jump+jetpack at the same time gives an amazing fast start upwards, a lot faster than just using the jetpack!
June 13th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
>Dunno if this is entirely intentional, but pressing jump+jetpack at the same time gives an amazing fast start upwards, a lot faster than just using the jetpack!
If that’s unintentional, I say keep it anyway. Undocumented tricks like that add their own spice to a game.
Then again, I think there’s potential for more interesting fuel conservation mechanics than just having a separate jump key. I’m going to repeat my earlier suggestion about being able to drop your fuel tank and retrieve it later. To make this useful in more than one situation, there should be another incentive to drop the jetpack than just being low on fuel.
The jetpack’s primary function is obviously to allow access to places you can’t reach by jumping. Now, to expand the fuel tank dropping idea, I’m thinking of a reverse mechanic, places that can only be reached without fuel. This can actually already be done in Jetpack by using narrow tunnels to limit jetpack acceleration (http://i.imgur.com/JBQaa.png), but is an obscure trick and not fitting for every type of map. An alternative in Jetpack 2 could be a barrel which explodes when touched by the jetpack’s hot smoke (or the phaser, for suicidal players): http://i.imgur.com/D5YkJ.png. It would also serve as a hazard in those tricky flying scenes.
Also there’d be the extra danger of when to drop your tank, as a dropped tank could be stolen by trackbots or batbots. I think those two would be good choices as they have unique movement patterns and their intelligence would also justify their ability to steal tanks. The only way to make a thief hand back your tank would be to trap it inside a wall, sort of turning an escape scene into a chase scene.
Even an idea as simple as this would help add the new gameplay depth I think a sequel deserves. Hope it will be considered at least.
June 13th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Okay here’s what it looks like ALT is doing:
ALT + LEFT/RIGHT makes you run left or right forever and there’s nothing you can do to stop it (supposedly)
ALT + SPACE makes you continuously phase, but you can’t stop phasing (supposedly)
ALT + SHIFT (when you have fuel) makes you fly nonstop (supposedly)
The only way to stop these things, it seems, is to press ALT AGAIN and THEN to press whatever button you pressed with ALT to make it happen. It looks like a bug, because the game shouldn’t have something that you can press and it automatically does things for the player, and because it really does more harm than good, since it’s so annoying to stop, and because ALT was both the original jump/fly key and is right next to the spacebar, so it could end up being pressed a lot.
And amorphous, I think those ideas are pretty good, though I’m not sure why you would have to drop your fuel if there’s a reserved jump key. But those would be for jetpack 2 like you said and that’s a long way off. I do agree that getting something like that to work would be really cool, though.
June 13th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
>And amorphous, I think those ideas are pretty good, though I’m not sure why you would have to drop your fuel if there’s a reserved jump key.
I guess I didn’t make myself clear, I meant that the drop key would replace the special jump key.
June 13th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Bugs:
* The ASDW controls cannot be used to teleport or press the blue button.
* After completing the level Jetman can fly around still (while invisible). If jetman dies in this short period then the level is stuck with no gems and no way to finish.
* It is possible to use the jetpack and phaser while dead.
June 14th, 2010 at 7:39 am
Robert: I guess the ALT key thing is rather a browser issue, as it is an accelerator key for accessing menus (you can see this when pressing ALT, then down, as the window menu will pop up). I would guess that nothing can be done about this while flash is running in a browser window, as the browser simply steals the focus (or rather, Windows / your window manager does).
June 14th, 2010 at 9:02 am
Yeah I don’t know if I can fix the alt issue, hopefully there’s at least a way to detect it so I can pause the game.
June 14th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I think there’s still an issue with the music system… Especially when switchin to a different task (and thus pausing the game), it sometimes happens that in following death sequences, the music will not be muted anymore (so the death jingle and the music are playing at the same time). One time I even managed to “disable” the music completely this way!
June 17th, 2010 at 3:38 am
Is it possible to record a demo in the future?
This would be awesome, everybody can show others
their levels and you can watch them play very good.
Can anybody finish the level under 55 Seconds like me?
June 18th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
55 seconds? Pfft, try 45 (no treasure of course)
For the record, I also prefer resetting gems (treasure isn’t so critical) because the current behavior reduces level design space for “there and back” -kind of rooms that would just become trivial with the player suiciding intentionally. Also not resetting doors can potentially lead into some impossible situations if a door closes behind the player and he dies.
June 20th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
After beating the level I (as an invisible Jet Man) fell into the spike pit, which killed me. The game restarted with the door closed and no gems to collect.
June 27th, 2010 at 5:58 am
Great level! Being a big fan of the original game, I have one important comment though: in the gameplay of the original game, you could phase, fly and choose a direction at the same time. When you do this, the jetman flies in a straight line in the direction you chose. This possibility is helpful at tricky parts where you have to fly between spikes or when you want to phase a wall while flying. When you phase, fly and choose a direction at the same time in the new game, you always fly upwards as well. I found this to be annoying, because flying in a straight line can be a necessary part in levels with much spikes and death traps. You had much more control over the jetman in the original game because of this.
Other than this physics issue, I love the new design, the sound & especially the message box at the bottom of the screen. Well done! I’m curious about the final game. Good luck!