I’m excited about this decision, and the logic behind it is simple:

• Get a product out the door asap.
• Take a few months to finish graphics and add some gameplay enhancements I’ve wanted, for episodes 2 & 3.
• Hopefully build up more loyal fans while each release is being worked on.
• Lower price barrier for a single product.
• Offer a discount for buying the whole trilogy in advance = advance funding.

 
Here’s the tenative description of each episode:

Episode 1: Our hero arrives at the entrance to the maze, where he becomes trapped. The themes are dark original brick/cave, and (easier) colorful outdoor nature. You choose a path to start – you can reach the end via either path but you can only unlock all the bonuses by completing both paths.

Episode 2: A time machine in the maze transports our hero to the distant past, where you can choose to follow the easier path into a castle fortress, or the dark path into the jungle with ancient tribes and ruins.

Episode 3: A time machine in the maze transports our hero to the future, where you can choose to battle through a high tech space station, or travel to an (easier) alien planet, with strange vegetation and structures. At the end our hero finally discovers the secret of the maze and who is behind it.

Each episode will have its own new gameplay additions, and bonus areas which contain specially themed levels. There should be about 50-70 levels per episode.

Pricing

There’s a big concern in the indie community about the $6.95 price point some big companies are offering. That’s a price point that makes it hard to compete if you’re an indie with relatively few sales (thousands, not hundreds of thousands). I’ve considered that pricing model, but from the very helpful comments from other indie authors on indiegamer.com, in our market that can greatly decrease the perceived value of your game. Several people have actually reported higher sales when they raised the price of their game. So setting a price that doesn’t undervalue the game but is fair for the value offered is a tricky thing.

I’m considering pricing around $12-$20 per episode, and $30-$50 to buy all 3 in advance. It’s a big range .. what do you think?

What’s Done

I’ve entered Jetpack into the 2010 IndieCade festival/contest! It’s not really one of those artsy games that seem to win much of the time, but hopefully gameplay will be a bigger factor in their decision making.

Getting ready for the contest got a lot of things done, but burned me out a bit.

What’s mostly done:

• Gameplay
• Steel ball / EyeBall / Peppermint
• Flitzer
• Spring
• Industrial/Cave theme (short on graphics for the nature theme)
• Candy world & devilish themes (for bonus levels)
• Main menu functionality

Coming Soonish

• Editor
• Achievements
• The rest of the enemies, and AI

Editor

I’m working on getting the editor done, it’s going to be really cool. I hope to release it in 2 weeks. If you have levels going in the final game, you’ll have access to them automatically, so you can add any of the new features to your levels, switch themes, and add scenery.

Here are some of the features of the editor so far:

• All levels are saved to your JetpackHQ account. In the future, your personal levels will show up on your profile page.
• Levels can be organized into folders. The last 100 revisions/deleted levels are kept in your ‘revisions’ folder.
• A screenshot & thumbnail are automatically generated on save.
• Undo/redo
• You can import old levels, however you might want to wait for the mass zip upload tool.

 
Since the response to the scrolling was good, I’m also considering allowing differently sized levels, like short but 2 screens wide, or narrow but 2 screens tall, or even double size (52×36 tiles).

If you don’t have an account, I highly recommend signing up now. Your JetpackHQ account will be how you access exclusive content and share your levels, among other things. Also, the sooner you sign up, the more likely your chosen username will be available – every user now has a profile at www.jetpackhq.com/YourName

By far the hardest part of this project was integrating with Facebook. It was a nightmare, since their API’s are full of bugs and hardly anything seems to do what the docs say it will do. If you have a separate Facebook login, you can merge it with your JetpackHQ account, or remove it – just go to /settings/facebook/

This system is designed to be pretty robust but there may still be some bugs. If you find any, please let me know!

What’s New

• Alas, nothing too exciting yet, unless you find SEO exciting. Most of the work is behind the scenes.
• Sweet new insta-signup system in header, and on comment post
• All blog comments now link to the author’s JetpackHQ profile, which doesn’t contain anything interesting (yet)
• The following features have been tested but could use some additional poking around: verifying email, forgot password, changing email address, Facebook accounts.

Question

Note – subscription management is currently down. I’m trying to decide whether to keep the blog subscription management, or put it into our account settings.
Is the ability to subscribe to certain types of blog posts useful to you? Would you rather get all blog posts via email, or none?

Update: You can now edit your blog subscription under settings.

A) How interested are you in seeing your friends’ level times, & high scores? [1=not, 10=very]

B) How would you feel about buying a game from the following services? [1=bad, 10=good]
        B1) Steam
        B2) An independent developer site
        B3) A game portal (eg: Arcade Town, Big Fish, GameHouse, Pogo, Yahoo Games)
        B4) Amazon

C) How many computer games (not console games) have you bought:
        C1) Online
        C2) In a retail store
        C3) Without playing first – based only on reviews, word-of-mouth, or screenshots

D) Would you ever buy add-ons to a game via micropayments? (eg: $2 for a mission pack)

E) What if you could make money by creating levels? [1=bad, 10=good]
Say you create a level pack in the game, you set a price for it (ie 100 credits), and when users buy it you get a percentage. Your income would be (rough guess) from $10 – $30 per 100 copies sold. Buying level packs would not require owning Jetpack – so if the free version becomes popular on Facebook for example, popular level packs might sell 1,000+ copies.
Possible side effects: better quality addon levels, but fewer free levels available.

F) How important is the level editor to you? [1=not, 10=very]

G) How important is the “retro mode” (web port of the DOS original) to you? [1=not, 10=very]

H) What are your favorite sites to download, play, or buy games?

Instructions:

• Move with ARROWS, fly with SHIFT / CTRL, use & phase with SPACE, jump with Z or SLASH (even when you have fuel)
• alternate keys: WASD to move, TAB to use, TILDE (~) to jump

What to look for:

• New effects when getting items
• New physics elements – slide off tiles, sink into sludge, and all motions now have acceleration
• You have to press up or down to “grab” ladders. It was a real pain to make walking on ladders still work with this!
• A running jump will go a little farther than a standing jump. And no more getting stuck on tiles!
• Trigger the spear by getting too close or phasing it
• New pushable solid object – for puzzles, blocking enemies
• All the new tiles are scattered along the very top of the level. The thin stone tiles may not be kept, I’m still evaluating their usefulness.
• Footsteps vary depending on the surface you’re walking on
• Jetman grunts and yells in pain – no death yet. I was hoping to make the voice gender neutral, but I just can’t find good neutral sounds.
• Environmental sound system adjusts volume & panning as you walk past the teleporter (this is limited to low volume because p.o.s. flash introduces a lot of pops and clicks when changing volume or pan)
• Automatic map enhancement level visuals, some examples: applies a 3d look to tiles, gives gems a stand when on solid ground, gives ice/sludge edges, turns stacked columns into a single column

What’s missing:

• Enemies, clearly
• Not all sounds are final
• A phasing tile effect, teleporting effect
• Graphics on the GUI
• Level transitions
• Achievements
• A few graphics are still missing, mainly the Jetman. Yeah that one’s important.
• We need a lot more level backgrounds, and tiles for jungle & outdoor themes
• A known bug in box2d causes the jetman to “trip” on tile edges, even though they are supposed to be flush. This one is really obnoxious.
• Intro & story – I’ve never seriously considered adding a story to Jetpack, but in the last few weeks I’ve been working on a great story idea (with some help from Adam Dobay) that really adds a lot to the game. And the ending(s) are really going to rock.
• THIRD PARTY API’s – ** Do you have any favorites, like Kongregate’s achievements, Mindjolt’s or Mochi’s high scores, or something on Facebook?

Also please note this level may appear a little too “busy” because it incorporates test elements for every tile.
Please let me know if you have any problems, criticisms, or suggestions!

Updated April 3rd – Release 2

I’ve applied the following changes to the demo:

• changed around the keys – see new instructions above
• experimenting with realistic leaning for horizontal flight, better hover, and super-lean when hovering
• down+jump while on a ladder releases the ladder
• you can now move while phasing
• removed the delay between phasing-complete and intangibility
• teleporter now freezes you (and breaks box2d occasionally)
• pushable blocks are now pushable on the moving floor, and via jetpack
• better balanced the sound volumes
• made it possible to stand still on the circle block – this required hacking box2d, as no amount of friction or damping completely stops motion!
• found a way to clear up the jitter from the physics engine

Tweaks:

• gems at the bottom have a stand
• darkened gem stands
• key down states cleared after pause
• reduced the amount of smoke
• sped up animations
• thickened up the ladders, and changed to 4 rungs – 30 is not divisible by 4, so it was tricky to make it look good (3 was odd looking)
• current teleporter flashes on contact
• darkened the spike-like look of the teleporter stand
• sludge is slower
• fixed the slow motion bug TimK found

Release 2

Release 1

• Move with ARROWS or W / A / S / D, Fly / Jump with SHIFT, Jump with SPACE
• Use switches & teleporters with CTRL, phase with CTRL, while pressing ARROWS

What’s Next

There’s a playable preview in our future! I hope to progress enough to release a demo with some fully playable levels soon. The main obstacles to tackle for that are: perfecting enemies, sound effects, and level intro/wrapup.

The contest was a great success, it was a lot of fun getting the fans involved and I think we got some great graphics, music, and levels out of it. I wish we had more of a budget for this project – hopefully for Jetpack 2 we can have a new contest with more and bigger prizes to better recognize the contribution of fans.

I’d like to mention a few people that made excellent contributions to Jetpack:

Saga Musix submitted some fantastic music, in addition to a zillion sound effects and several levels.
Eric F. submitted a ton of graphics, and some great levels.
Tim K. submitted several excellent graphics
Coda submitted some excellent music
Brien B. submitted several great tiles
Adam D. had a huge number of great levels, a lot of good ideas, and is helping to develop a storyline
Joseph S. submitted a great full replacement tileset. Although not quite the style I was looking for, I was able to bring over several of the concepts.
Jonas R, Alex W, Dan Kalne, Brien B, and Juan G submitted a great variety of excellent levels.

And the Winners Are…

$50 1st Prize: Saga Musix and Eric F.
$25 2nd Prize: Tim K., Coda, Brien B., and Adam D.
Honorable Mention: The following users had great contributions, and will receive a free copy of Jetpack: Collector’s Edition: Joseph S., Jonas R., Alex W., Dan K., Joe S., David M., Tuomas T., Joe C., Joseph C., Ben T., Wolfgang S., Steven M. Jonathon P., Axem, Ben S., David C., Doug H., Matt S., Rondo B., Ben J., Felipe A., and Robert R.
I’ll put these names in the game credits (with full last names instead of initials). If you want a different name used in the credits, please contact me.

We had many great submissions, so choosing the best contributors has been no easy task. Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone who participated!

A few more things…

Although the contest is over, we can still use some graphics, sounds, and music. As always, a free copy of Jetpack Collector’s Edition goes to anyone whose work is used in the game. Send any submissions to the business email here. Here’s what we still need:

Music
Some more songs to add variety to the game.

Sound Effects
If you happen to have a recording studio, we need more sounds that fit Jetpack!

Theme Tiles
outdoors
factory
space station
alien planet
jungle
devilish – bones, brimstone
A computer control panel
Alternate exit doors
Enemies – graphics that will replace other enemies while retaining the same behavior. I’d like to have at least one alternate enemy graphic per theme.

Release Status

Since I’ve expanded the scope of the retrofit we’re now looking at a release in early May. I plan to release a beta with an editor mid-April, so we’ll have about 3 weeks to update all the levels for the new game system. I’m hoping to release a semi-playable alpha in the coming week.

This week’s entries

March 13th

Some devilish tiles from Eric F.

March 14th

A perfect intro song by Saga Musix:

Saga: Entrance to the Cave

A wooden column from Brien B.

A space ball from Steven M.

New levels:

stevenm_1.zip

March 15th

Another work in progress by Saga Musix:

Saga: Jetfunk

A new trackbot from Eric F.

March 16th

Invincibility Suit, spikes, cave tiles from Brien B.

March 17th

A walking demon (devilish trackbot replacement) from Eric F.

March 17th

Brien B. adds fuel to his tileset:

March 18th

A cool pencil drawing of a Jetman by Silas C.

New levels:
dank_1.zip
rondob_1.zip

March 19th

Brien B. adds a Homer and new bricks to his tileset:

A conveyor belt, gold brick, and gold pile from Steven M.

New levels:
adamd_3.zip
tuomast_2.zip
josephc_3.zip
jonathonp_1.zip
davidc_1.zip

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!

Working hard this week and I got a few more great submissions. I’ve done some tweaking to the tileset and there’s finally a game preview below!

Note: I’ve extended the contest to March 20th to give people more time to submit themes.

Game Preview

A level with the new tileset

New v2 – Demonstrating the faux-3D effect, tile enhancements, background, and various tiles in action

Themes

It recently occurred to me that I could swap out a few tiles and give the game a totally different look without much more work. I generate the curved & stone-wrapped tiles in code, so with only 5 tile swaps most levels can be completely rethemed:

A rough example of a castle/outdoor theme

It gives a level a whole new feel, doesn’t it?

If you want to make a theme, just redo the following 5 tiles:
background tile, ladder, brick, hard brick, stone
And optionally these 5 tiles:
steel panel, gold panel, column, vines, & fence
A few things will stay the same: gems, treasure, switches, barriers, and items.

There’s a 90×90 repeating background that will apply to the whole level. Other backgrounds are the standard 30×30 tile size and can be placed behind any other tile.

The theme could be anything: candyland, nature, castle, etc. In the editor I’ll have an option to preview different themes. This won’t be like jswitch, the theme will stay with the level. Then in the game we can group levels into missions by theme.

A candy world!

This week’s entries

Feb 27th

Some more sounds by Saga Musix

bell-life.mp3

freezer.mp3

New levels:
saga_6.zip
axem_3.zip
brienb_3.zip
robertr_2.zip
wolfgangs_1.zip

Feb 28th

New levels:
dough_1.zip
robertr_3.zip
adamd_2.zip

Mar 1st

Slow day…

Mar 2nd

Some vines from Tim K.:

Mar 3rd

A cool Flitzer from Tim K.:

New levels:
davidm_1.zip – some great ones

Mar 4th

Slow day…

Mar 5th

Some robot concepts from Eric F.:

Some new sounds from Saga Musix:

buzz2.mp3

buzz-cancel.mp3

cool.mp3

death3.mp3

death4.mp3

laser.mp3

steel.mp3

teleport5.mp3

New levels:
robertr_4.zip

The contest is now over. See the winners here!

The contest is now over. See the winners here!

This week the contest is slowing down, but we’ve still gotten some great graphics, songs, and sounds. We’re also starting to get some good beginner levels, keep them coming! I posted a new level 1 & 2 that I made, which are good examples.

Level Changes

I’m considering breaking the levels into groups of 10-20 (a “mission” or “zone”), and giving those groups a common theme. This may mean restyling all the levels in a certain theme like jungle or city. This is a quick change that involves automatically replacing 10 or so tiles with new custom “theme” tiles. My first goal is getting this previewable to see how well it works, and so people can contribute to the themes.

I’m going to do away with the concept of “lives”, you will have infinite lives and the extra life statues will turn into achievements. One achievement will be getting the statue for each level, another will be getting all the treasure in each level. For the new achievements system most levels will need a few changes:

• Each level should have exactly ONE gold statue, which should be hard to get relative to the level difficulty
• Each level should have some treasure which is trickier to get than the gems
• All treasure in a level must be gettable – no more decorative treasure that can’t be reached

Don’t send in these changes yet, because there will probably be others coming up.

I’m keeping around 50 levels from the original Jetpack. These levels are the ones I put in the “maybe” category. Let me know if there are any in this group that you think should definitely make it to the final game.

Music Splashes

I think we could use some short 3-5 second music splashes for game events: a few for winning a level, possibly a few for dying, and 1 for during the level preview – a quiet song, little melody (maybe just percussion), so it doesn’t clash with the level music that will follow it. These types of things are pretty cheap to get online, but if anyone wants to try their hand at it, these are small enough to just be mp3.

Chosen Graphics

Here my working copy of the graphics I’ve chosen so far. All these are subject to change and tweaking!

This week’s entries

Feb 19th

More cool sounds from Saga Musix:

death2.mp3

brick.mp3

Feb 20th

A sweet tune from Syniphas:

Syniphas: DarkJet

And more levels:
alexw_2.zip
axem_1.zip
joes_2.zip
joec_6.zip
saga_4.zip
timb_1.zip

Feb 21st

Here’s a nice door concept by Juan G.


And some characters from Eric F.


And some levels:
juang_2.zip – perfect beginner levels!
ericf_4.zip

Feb 22nd

A jetman from Silas C.:

And another from Juan D.:

While these are cool, I’m looking for a different design for the new jetman. Either something metallic or something like this.

New levels:
jonasr_2.zip

Feb 23rd

More sounds from Saga Musix:

door.mp3

notice.mp3

monster-spawn.mp3

New levels:
brienb_2.zip
felipea_1.zip

Feb 24th

A new level 1 & 2 by me. We could use some more beginner levels after these. Try to make the learning quick & intuitive, and just a small part of the overall level: me_1.zip

Feb 25th

A work-in-progress song by Saga Musix:

Saga: Robot Hunt

A jetman from Joe C.:

New levels:
axem_2.zip
josephc_1.zip levels from the original jetpack alpha!
BTW the level “Wizard” was inspired by the game “Wizard” on the C64 – I highly recommend it.
josephc_2.zip some tutorial ideas
saga_5.zip great easy level!

Feb 26th

New levels:
robertr_1.zip

The contest is now over. See the winners here!

v2, better gems!

The contest is now over. See the winners here!

More excellent work this week, but entries are starting to slow down, so let me lay out our greatest needs:

• A jetman!
• Exit door
• More music
• New sound effect ideas

And here are some things which I have, but could use some better / more creative entries:

• Steel ball, homer, flitzer, any enemy improvements
• The blue/red/cyan barriers
• Invincible cloak, stunner
• Switches, spikes, gem in wall, column, foreground vines, steel, gold brick
• Easy / teaching levels

Levels

It’s slow work reviewing good quality levels, and there are a lot of great ones in here so reviewing them took many hours!
I reviewed 241 levels and put 69 in the final round. These include:

3 bonus levels
7 easy
22 moderate
24 hard
13 extreme

Here are my brief notes for each designer:

adamd – Good variety and great visuals (with the limited tile palette). Favorite: d-m-ship
alexw – Some great variety and ideas in these. Favorite: artee001
benj – Magnificently tricky riddle
bens – Some fun ideas here. Favorite: beehive
bent – There are some great levels here. I like the way you use enemies to reveal secrets, like the insubstantial tiles.
brienb – These are some sadistic levels! Favorite: lotto/ohoh
ericf – Some good hard levels and clever game mechanics. Favorite: E1
jasonw – A deceptively tricky level.
joec – Some wicked hard levels, but a couple good easy ones too. Favorite: Shrine
joes – These have great playability, and a perfect progression from easy to difficult. Favorite: ventuz05
jonasr – Some really cool ideas here. Favorite: wer12
juang – These have a few cool new ideas, and are a lot of fun. Favorite: bcmissil
nickr – Good level. Could be interesting to offer an extra life for an extra trip across.
saga – Great intricate designs, but most are way too hard. Favorite: where
sebm – All crazy hard, at least for me. Favorite: switches
sn – Some very hard levels. Favorite: easy7

Learning Curve Needed

We badly need easy levels, and easy means super easy. The casual game crowd needs a very gentle introduction. I tried to do this somewhat in the original first 5 levels but it wasn’t nearly enough. My wife can’t even beat my original level 0 – it failed to be a good introduction to the game, except to experienced gamers. People were just looking around and learning about jumping when the trackbot killed them. Then they were getting fuel and learning how to fly when the trackbot killed them. As soon as they learned how to fly to avoid the trackbot, the spikes killed them. We need a much more gradual learning curve, and we need to make the harder parts of a level optional (eg, containing treasure only). Don’t assume the person playing these levels has EVER played an action game.

If you think an easy level can’t be challenging, think about how you would teach all these things in one level:

• understanding the game goal
• becoming comfortable with basic movement
• sensing danger
• jumping small gaps, then large gaps
• flying, then flying with control, then flying level
• learning to conserve fuel, and to monitor your fuel level
• learning to read clues that there may be traps, and thinking before acting when there are traps
• learning that missiles move in a predictable pattern
• learning how smart the trackbot is
• learning each special tile function
• using teleporters, then being aware of and predicting enemy teleportation, then using invincibility while teleporting
• learning what switches do, then how to use them, and enemy-triggered switches
• learning that phasing is possible, then where and how to phase
• learning to move quickly through purple doors, then through multiple doors
• learning not to destroy crates you may need
• phasing up, then phasing while jumping, then phasing while flying up, then phasing while flying level
• learning how to use enemies to your advantage

These should be taught over 10-20 levels, with lots of fun stuff mixed in. I don’t like tutorials. The best way to teach these things it to show them in actual use, without the player being in danger.

Some examples:

* learning to move quickly through purple doors
On the first encounter with a purple door, put it on ice. The player will slide through before they know what happened.

* learning not to destroy crates you may need
Put gold above crates initially, not essential items like gems or switches.

Game Changes

Playing through all these levels has led me to some conclusions about changes that will affect gameplay. I can’t adjust difficulty by changing the monsters’ speed relative to the player because it screws up a lot of game mechanics. Maybe I’ll just leave in the game speed adjustment via +/-. How do you beat hard levels, do you find the slowdown useful?

Some of these may require tweaking your levels in the beta (don’t bother changing anything yet):

• faint outline where barriers will be
• smaller collision area for spikes & spear
• no getting stuck on corners when jumping
• jump or step close to a spear will set it off, then you can move past slowly
• make phasing while jumping easier – only phase when at the middle of a tile
• show a faint outline when jetman is behind bricks
• flitzer light shows future movement
• maybe a button which reveals hidden paths
• placeable invincibility cloak

There will be automatic visual enhancements to levels, including:

• replace repeating columns with a solid column
• replace stacked ice stone with icy stone wall
• automatic edge finding + enhancement
• sag physical floor of sludge pool

And I want to add these options when saving a level:

• frequency of bonus items
• longer description
• music selection
• par completion time

This week’s entries

Feb 12th

A full tileset replacement from Joseph S.:

Love that extra life! Anyone want to make a character out of that shape?

Feb 13th

We have some sound effects! These are by Saga Musix:

close.mp3

gem.mp3

gem2.mp3

open.mp3

select.mp3

teleport.mp3

teleport2.mp3

And several more levels. Ben J. has a great puzzle – maybe too hard!
benj_1.zip
bens_1.zip
joec_3.zip
alexw_1.zip

Feb 14th

Enjoy your VD everyone!
Today brings another sweet tune from Coda:

Coda: JetSkillz

Eric F. sends in a trophy graphic:

And here’s another batch of levels:
jasonw_1.zip
joec_4.zip
juang_1.zip

Feb 15th

Today Saga Musix offers more sounds:

death1.mp3

phaser.mp3

stuck.mp3

stuck2.mp3

teleport3.mp3

teleport4.mp3

weird_jewel.mp3

And we have some more great levels:
adamd_1.zip
joec_5.zip

Feb 16th

Here are the great graphics previously contributed by Tim K.:

And some creative new designs by Eric F.:

New level submissions:
brienb_1.zip
arthurm_2.zip

Feb 17th & 18th

Slow days…

The contest is now over. See the winners here!