You have no phase shifter.

This is how it feels when I sit down to work most of the time. Usually I give up. Sometimes I’ll work all day, only to look at my work the next day and realize that instead of removing bricks I’ve just been rearranging them. Occasionally I sit down and plow straight through the wall, getting more done in a day than I have in the last month.

There’s been very little progress lately, because besides emptying a hoarder house, running an estate sale, selling the house, selling a car, buying a car, renting a house, and preparing to move — breathe — I now have nearly daily headaches from my neck, along with the lack of sleep, constant fatigue, and depression caused by this situation. I’ve been through physical therapy, 5 chiropractors, & therapeutic massage – all seem to help only temporarily.

When I was seven, I fell 6 feet out of a tree and landed on my back. My memories are blurry, but I remember struggling to breathe all night. I was never taken to a doctor. Was that the beginning of all this?

Two months ago, I got a new symptom: tingling & numbness shoot down my left arm several times a day, and I now have constant numbness in my left thumb. Finally, after many delays caused by waiting for doctor appointments, X-rays, and MRI, I got in to see an orthopedic surgeon yesterday. This is 2 months after the latest symptoms started, and quicker than usual since my wife works in a doctor’s office.

I need neck surgery. Soon.

 
I have degenerative disc disease, and unlike the image on that page, my disks are bulging on the spinal cord side of the spine. They are pressing into my spinal cord in several areas. I also have bone spurs and narrowing of the neural pathways. I was surprised to learn that I have no reflexes in my left arm and very little in my right. My reflexes are zero on this scale

This brings up many emotions, and questions:

• #1: A hearty F*# You to the orthopedic specialists at Stanford Hospital, who gave me the classic “its all in your head” line
• I wonder if my sleep problems and fatigue were caused by my neck all along, and not my gut issues?
• Did I do this to myself, by sitting with bad posture for the last 20 years? I’ve sat in kneeling chairs and on exercise balls, in expensive ergo chairs and on the side of a bed. My last job had 2-4 hour chairs instead of 10 hour chairs.
• Will the surgery be a success? Will I finally get back to full productivity after this?

I’ll see you next month, and to steal a line from Pink Floyd,

Tear down the wall.

Update

I’m scheduled for a fusion of C5-C6 on Aug 5th. The Orthopedic Surgeon said that without surgery, I could eventually end up with no feeling in my hands. Here’a pic from the MRI of the disc impinging on the spinal column. I have compression of the spinal column on the right, and compression of the nerve root on the left.

Update 2

The surgery was a success, I should be back at work soon!

In the post 15 Years I went into the 15 years (now 17) of gut problems and chronic fatigue I’ve been through after the initial release of Jetpack. I’m happy to say now, most of that is finally behind me. I am finally, after 17 years of 2am pain, absolutely pain free! I still have some fatigue and – spoiler alert – still going to the bathroom too often (I was hoping these would go away with the pain), but my situation is much better than it was 2 years ago. I give about 10% credit to the 10 doctor’s I’ve had over the last 17 years – most of my success has come from internet research and other people with similar problems. I thank the doctors only for filling the prescriptions for things I wanted to try. I credit 3 things about equally to solving my gut problems:

• A Sucralfate/Carafate regimen
• Removal of my gall bladder
• 4X dose broad-spectrum probiotics

Sleeping Disorder

The gut pain would wake me at 2am every night, and after 17 years of that I was left with a sleeping disorder. No matter what I did, I could not get more than 4-5 hours of sleep per day – I would always wake up early. Finally I found that low dose Amitriptyline would help me stay asleep, but it gave me awful dry mouth (that alone wakes me up 4 times a night) and if I stopped taking it the sleep problem returned. I decided to experiment by gradually tapering the dose over 3 months, and it worked! I am now getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night and only taking 1/4 of a pill. I’m pretty confident that I’ll be completely off of it soon.

Here’s my theory about what my problem was/is:

I developed stomach ulcers from a high stress situation (involving a girl!), possibly complicated by a bacterial infection. Since I had no health insurance I was relying on OTC antacids to combat the pain, and the condition went on longer than it should have. The acid damage extended into my small intestine and damaged my gall bladder. Multiple conditions made the case very difficult for doctors to solve – their skill seems to lie mainly in matching multiple symptoms to a single cause. Reducing acid didn’t help because my gall bladder would still cause pain and the ulceration was extensive. Sucralfate finally helped with 50% of the pain, because it combines with hydrochloric acid to form a paste that adheres to damaged tissue. The gall bladder removal didn’t seem to help much because ulceration or infection continued in the lower small intestine. Somehow high dose probiotics were able to finish off the rest of the pain.

 
It’s amazing how after 17 years of pain every night, you don’t even seem to notice when it goes away. But I do notice that I’m feeling better, and hopefully the progress will continue. I hope my story helps someone else who has these problems!

The game is up to 755 tiles, compared to 120 in the original. The source is currently 1.8mb (1mb for the project and 800k of library code) of Actionscript, compared to 270k of C for the original Jetpack. The full package is about 10mb uncompressed, compared to 1.5mb for the original.

So tiles, source, and build size are all roughly 7x larger than the original, but what about the time invested? The original took me about 4-5 months of 72 hour weeks to complete (est 1400 man hours). If this project has taken 7x that effort, that would be 9800 hours, or 5 years of full time work. Fortunately for my family and my sanity, this one has taken only 3 years of part time work that I’d estimate to average 30 hours a week, minus several blank periods (est 4000 man hours). Although this seems like an endless project, judging on code size per hour I’m coding 2.2x more efficiently than 18 years ago, and creating code that is 45% reusable for future projects.

The big question remains: Is this game 7x better than the original? Although there are some big improvements (my favorite is the automatic level sharing), I would have to say no, at this point. However, the project is positioned well and I believe that much more can be added in sequels, and without too much extra effort. In the future, it may meet that potential. And I now have an excellent Actionscript game engine for future projects, as long as Flash remains a viable platform.

Attention Level Contributors

You can now design levels with a pretty good feel for how they will work in the release. If you have levels going in the final game please update them now! There is now a tag called “finished”, set that when a level is ready for release. This will probably be the final editor-focused blog post.

Don’t forget these level design rules:

• Need exactly 1 idol per level
• Need some treasure, all gettable (this will be an achievement)
• Use the extra 2 rows
• Don’t mix themes (much)
• For performance, minimize the number of moving objects simultaneously colliding
• Please set Theme, Difficulty, & Tags to aid in my sorting & ordering (these are informational only)
• Par times should always include getting all treasure + the idol
• Set 1-3 custom achievements for your level
• Set “finished” tag when complete

Controls

Usage Notes

• Tiles can overlap – if they are on different grids. You can place any tile off-grid by holding SHIFT
• Level settings: choose a background & music for your level, and set par times
• All levels are saved to jetpackhq.com, with automatic revisioning.
• Some folders are shared, but you can only edit your own levels.
• IE doesn’t support CTRL shortcuts – use SHIFT instead.
• Block cut/paste is coming soon. Soon is a relative term…

News

What’s New

I’ve had to redesign several internals recently, so there may be some new bugs and repeat bugs in this version. Let me know if you spot anything.

I’ve revamped the state system to handle multiple simultaneous effects & effect priority. Now visual effects can now be combined, ie shield + fuel sapper, and states (like shielded, immobilized, opacity) won’t be forgotten. This of course caused a bunch of existing stuff to break. Hopefully I’ve caught it all. This feature was blocking the invincibility suit & stunner tile, so those are both available now.

Marble worms now stay together pretty well without breaking apart. In the original, this took no effort because everything used exact settings. Since I’m using a real physics engine now, all sorts of miscellaneous things cause the balls to get out of alignment. The fix was to add a type of flocking: each ball looks for another ball to track and keep itself aligned with. This has to work through teleporters, and also if a marble worm gets split. This was a real pain and took 5x longer than I thought it would – but its finally out of the way. A ball will track another ball up to 2 spaces away.

Changes

• Trackbot! New abilities: can drift L/R when falling, can drop through ladder cover
• Suit of Armor (Castle theme) Half the speed of the trackbot, small tracking range
• You can now set initial facing/motion for enemies & Jetman. For enemies with AI, this is only a visual effect.
• Placeable invincibility suit – 10 second shield
• Stunner works – 10 second stun
• Greatly improved spring behavior
• Balls now auto-align
• Heavy movable objects now kill jetman – only on high velocity head impact, ie falling from above
• Fixed sludge & ice again
• Phase effect now continues while bricks are phased
• You can now view level properties on read-only levels
• Fixed many bugs, probably created many new bugs

 
The only gameplay element missing that I can think of at the moment is editable text for info tiles. Let me know you think there are any other gameplay elements this release really needs.

Weights & Measures

I’ve realized we need some sort of rules defined, so editors can rely on their levels working correctly. We also need a test level to quickly verify these. I’ve come up with a few; do you have any to add?

• jetman: can push 3 steel boxes
• spring: 1 can lift 5+ styrofoam
• spring: 2 can lift 1 steel box+jetman

What’s Coming

Since Jetpack will be my first web integrated release, I’m looking into doing a small game as a trial run, to avoid making business mistakes with Jetpack. Many of the elements for this new project are things that Jetpack still needs, so work on it will not significantly take away time from Jetpack. In short, I estimate it will take about 4-6 weeks but only 2 of those will be subtracted from Jetpack.

The tasks shared with Jetpack will include:

• 3rd party api integration – high scores/achievements/ads/social networking
• Code improvements & optimization
• More UI features
• Downloadable build & installer for Win/Mac/Linux
• Business operations: distribution & marketing

 
More info on this small project coming soon.

Features reserved for sequels

I’m saving many new feature ideas for sequels, to avoid slowing down the initial release any more. If you have a level that could really use one of the following features, please go ahead and update it, but don’t mark it “finished” and I’ll save it for a sequel. If you have specific plans or suggestions for a level you can put them in “Editor Notes” (notes are visible to other editors, but not to the player).

• Oversized levels + scrolling, parallax
• Themes: space/future, alien planet, jungle
• Concealed areas – parts of a level that are blacked out, fade in/out via switch
• Light which reveals hidden passages in a radius around jetman
• More physics elements, like trampoline, fan
• More enemies

Questions

Q1: When the stunner is activated, should enemies be intangible, pushable, or complete immobile? Should they still hurt you? (original = intangible+harmless, current = same)

Q2: When an enemy is trapped in a wall but sticking out, should it be intangible or solid? Should it still hurt you? (original = not sure, current = intangible+harmless)

Q3: When shielded, should jetman be intangible or solid to enemies? to movable blocks? (current = intangible to enemies, solid to blocks)

Q4: Should trackbots push movable blocks? Currently they are viewed as obstacles.

Q5: Should trackbots choose whether to use teleporters or not?

Q6: Editors, which of these features would you like to see next?
#1: info tile with editable text
#2: block copy
#3: gameplay tweaks & fixes
#4: add missing sounds, death sequences, etc

Controls

Usage Notes

• Tiles can overlap – if they are on different grids. You can place any tile off-grid by holding SHIFT
• Level settings: choose a background & music for your level, and set par times
• All levels are saved to jetpackhq.com, with automatic revisioning. You can import and retheme old levels.
• Some folders are shared, but you can only edit your own levels.
• Full undo capability! ctrl-z to undo, ctrl-shift-z to redo (note this does not undo level settings). If you’re on IE, only shift-Z will work.
• Some enemies are just placeholders for now.
• Block cut/paste is coming soon.

News

Big changes

• Ladder covers: all enemies now ignore ladders
• Many optimizations to reduce slowdowns and increase framerate
• Adjusted all physics
• Switched to faster Alchemy version of Box2D, rather than the AS3 port
• Default game speed “5″ is now 8% slower, to be more beginner-friendly. Original speed is now speed “6″.
• I’ve decided to reverse the contrast for the nature & candy themes – backgrounds are light and bricks are dark

New features

• New enemy motion: Spike Wheel (graphics unfinished)
• New enemy motion: Homer. Behaves more organically (graphics unfinished)
• New enemy motion: Bat. I didn’t think the original behavior was that useful, so bat now has an AI and completely new motion. He sees you only when you are nearby and moving. Let me know how it works out.
• New enemy motion: Missile. Turning is a little abrupt for now.
• Live editing. Press F2 or shift+E to playtest. Press again to enable live editing. Escape returns to the regular editor.
• Beta testers, you can now view the physics with HOME+P, and slow-motion with HOME+S
• Press shift+number to lock the active grid
• You can now jump horizontally by pressing down while jumping
• Teleporters now choose a random order each time you touch one

Fixes

• Jetman now passes through enemies (but not moving blocks) while shielded
• Tweaked the sound volumes – please report any that still seem off
• Tweaked the backgrounds – please report any that still have issues
• Level list scrolling speed now takes framerate into account – I didn’t realize scrolling was so slow for some!
• Many many bug fixes

Still coming

Hopefully most of the bugs are now ironed out and I’ll be able to get to new features soon:

• spring fixes
• initial facing for enemies
• enemies stuck in bricks [done]
• block copy
• moving blocks hurting jetman
• trackbot A.I.

Details

It’s been 2 months since the last release, for several reasons: we moved across the country, sold and bought a car, and I’ve been sick _4_ separate times, apart from my usual gut and neck issues. The neck is improving thanks to an expensive massage chair I got for my birthday, and the gut seems to be slowly improving with probiotics. I’m trying energy drinks every day to try and push through the brain fog caused by chronic fatigue and get this project done.

I just spent 3 full days pulling my hair out trying to track down a strange issue I’ve had for a long time – after 1-2 minutes, the game would suddenly drop to 1/2 frame rate. The physics engine was showing increased usage in the profiler, so I practically pulled the whole thing apart trying to find the problem. I finally got the idea to try it on my laptop, and the problem was gone. As it turns out… I’m running a program called SpeedSwitchXP which cuts the processor rate when the system is idle to save energy and keep the room cool since my CPU is like a space heater. I disable it when I get cold. Little did I know, the threshold was set at 50% – and this is a dual core machine. When 1 core was running at 99% capacity, speedswitch would see < 50% usage and cut the processor speed by 2/3. It's hard to see much good in 3 wasted days, but it did push me to upgrade Box2D to the new Alchemy port, make several optimizations that I had (correctly) been putting off, and weed out several memory leaks that were causing slowness after playing a while. I'm seeing ZERO memory creep or slowdown after playing through several levels now. The new flash player caps frame rate at 60fps, so I can't be sure of the speed increase - but Pit of Chaos was maxing out so I had to add more balls - a lot more balls.

The physics engine continues to be the biggest pain. I've tweaked and fixed several physics settings again and I think it's in a good spot now. I've been struggling with a way to enhance ladder functionality while keeping behavior compatible with the old game. Finally I have a solution: a new tile, “ladder cover” placed on the top of a ladder, makes the top of the ladder tile a one-way platform (solid for downward motion only). This tile may also be a conveyor belt, which allows upward moving ladders to transfer passengers to moving platforms, so we finally can have a continuous loop of motion. Ground-based entities, EXCLUDING balls, will automatically latch on to and ride moving ladders. They will only latch on to ladders when they are moving slowly or stopped. Without the ladder cover, Jetman no longer runs on ladders – he always climbs when there’s no solid tile beneath. I think it looks much better this way. Please let me know if there are any problems with this system – I’ve spent so much time in the guts of it that’s all I see when I test, so I’m not sure how this works for playability right now. You’ll probably want to put ladder covers on most of your ladders.

World Map Preview

This is a low res preview of the freeware edition Zone Map. The icons will not appear until you complete the previous level. The nature & castle levels are the beginner path. There are 2 bonus levels: 1 candy & 1 devilish.

Q & A

> when I try to phase blocks off center nothing happens…it can become kind of annoying if you want to phase through the styrofoam blocks, as they can fall oddly.

Center is required for crates & styrofoam intentionally, to avoid accidentally phasing of puzzle elements which could make a level unsolvable.

Question: Mirage bricks don’t obscure enemies any more. Is that a big problem?

The editor is now in pretty good shape and just missing a few features.
Feel free to start making levels, you have a headstart on everyone else!

This will be the last public release without limitations. As the game nears completion, I need to start limiting the content that is released. Future public releases will have full editing capability, but there will be graphical limits, and playtesting other people’s levels will be limited. If you have levels going in the game, you have beta tester abilities with access to all the features as they are developed. If you write on a blog or gaming site and would like to be a beta tester, contact me here.

[this version of the editor is now out of date]

Level Changes Required

Many of your levels will need minor changes to work properly in the new Jetpack:

• 2 new empty rows have been added to the top of all levels. Suggestions:
  • Ideally, add content matching the level: to the top, or shift the level up (shift+arrows) and add content to the bottom
  • Otherwise, you can either leave the empty space, or wrap the level in stone
• Ladders are no longer sticky – jetman & trackbot can choose whether or not to grab a ladder. Steel ball will roll on top of ladders, but when falling will fall THROUGH them.
• Barriers now have a small delay before changing state, to serve as a warning. This may affect your timing if you’re using balls to hit touch switches. Also, barriers are no longer invisible.
• Some speeds and timings have changed.
• Level Title can now be longer, and is only 1 line not 2

Achievement Concepts:

• Treasure Achievement: exit with all treasure
• Idol Achievement: exit with the idol
• Time Achievement: exit in par time / expert time
• Life Achievement: exit without dying

Level Rankings:

• Apprentice: exit with all treasure + idol
• Journeyman: exit with all treasure + idol in par time
• Master: exit with all treasure + idol in expert time
• Adept (ultimate ranking): exit with all treasure + idol in expert time, without dying

Level-Specific Achievements (maybe):

• beat level X without fuel
• beat level X without phasing

 
Bonus levels or zones will be unlocked based on getting a certain achievement in all levels in a zone.

Let me know if you have other ideas for achievements.

Editor

I’m going to do 1 or 2 more editor updates, then move on to gameplay issues. We won’t be able to fully fix timing issues until we have all entities moving, so that will be first.

Please rate or comment on the following ideas. I don’t have time to do them all right away. Which is most important?

• undo/redo
• Saved clips. When you drag a rectangle to select tiles, you can save the selection as a “clip”. You can select clips to draw with just like tiles in the tile picker.
• Moving tiles. You select a bunch of tiles as a group, then assign motion from a list of preset motions.
• Variable level sizes. This would allow scrolling horizonally, vertically, or both.
• Level packs. Put some of your levels in a named pack. People must play the pack in order.

Since this is my first AS3 project and I have no library built up, I always end up missing parts and underestimating the time to complete a task. If I have future projects, they should go much faster and smoother. Anyway, after what seems like an eternity to me, the editor is finally in good enough shape for release! I didn’t get the time to polish features as I would have liked, but they will be coming in a future release. I hope you find editing as fun as (or more than) the original.

For now, the basics should work:

• Basic editing of all grid layers
• New UI: Editor Main Menu, Level Browser, Level Settings, Tile Picker, & Help
• Loading & saving to jetpackhq, as well as deleting, moving, & folder management
• Automatic thumbnail generation on save. The server doesn’t have the tools to generate a screenshot, so the app sends it along with the level data on save.
• I’ve introduced basic organization, you can now organize levels into folders. You can move levels via “save here” currently. The interface does not allow folders to be nested.
• Retheming
• Automatic revision tracking via the “Revisions” folder – also holds deleted levels
• JET File Import/Export (exports are not backwards-compatible)

What’s missing

• Some entities are just placeholders
• Missing a lot of scenery & backgrounds
• Undo/Redo
• Cut & Paste, clip management
• Login – for now, just login via the web interface
• Some gameplay issues still exist – entities stuck in bricks, & walking on rounded edges

 
I’ve also improved the jetman motion, so previously tricky maneuvers are much easier now. Frustrating interface is a big pet peeve of mine.
If some of your levels were selected to go into the final game, you’ll find them in a special purple folder. You can pick music/enhance/retheme in whatever way you feel is appropriate. Don’t forget we have 2 extra rows now – ctrl+arrows is a big help.

Behold the Editor

[this version of the editor is now out of date]

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).

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

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.