34 Responses to “Retrofit Updates”

1. Jojo Says:
   February 8th, 2010 at 1:37 pm

   That level by Nick R. looks dangerous at first, but I beated it on the first try.
2. Jojo Says:
   February 8th, 2010 at 1:40 pm

   Those levels by Joe C. are also pretty mean, haha, not that easy to beat!
3. Adam Says:
   February 8th, 2010 at 1:49 pm

   These are all pretty tough. Don’t forget people, we need to appeal to a casual gamers too. Appeal to style & clever solutions not just reflexes. Remember there will be a difficulty setting that will probably speed up/slow down the monsters relative to you among other things. Also later levels will probably be locked until earlier levels are beaten, so they all must be beatable by a casual gamer at the easy difficulty. I’m not saying that these are – I haven’t had time to play them yet – but I will be testing them on casual gamers and if they can’t make it through on the easy difficulty in under 5 tries they probably won’t make it in the game.
4. Joe C. Says:
   February 8th, 2010 at 11:41 pm

   Hope you guys like the levels. I have in fact beaten them too! If you make an unlockable Master’s Challenge mode then you could put some of my levels in there. Also, I sent you some more levels Adam, they await your inbox!
5. Adam Says:
   February 9th, 2010 at 10:47 am

   On the graphics, I want this to look somewhat somewhat different from the original, not just high res versions of the same stuff. Also, it’s probably best to remove any gray/black background behind each object and make the background transparent – I can add the backgrounds in later easily enough.
6. Joe C. Says:
   February 9th, 2010 at 5:00 pm

   Hey Adam, I’m working on some graphics for the game but it may take a while. First I’m going to try and see if I can make Jetpack man to look good. Also, Are you gonna make a name for him? It seems like it would be harder to explain the game if he didn’t have a name.
7. Joe C. Says:
   February 9th, 2010 at 5:02 pm

   Also, if you need backrounds, I can help you with that *wink wink*
8. Adam Says:
   February 9th, 2010 at 6:25 pm

   I’m not planning on giving it a plot, internally I just call him Jetman. I won’t need backgrounds for this project but I will for Jetpack 2, send me some samples!
9. Joe C. Says:
   February 9th, 2010 at 8:24 pm

   Ok, just wondering. I might work on some backrounds but I need to know what kind of atmosphere they should represent first (you don’t have to tell me right away).
10. Theta Says:
    February 9th, 2010 at 11:05 pm

    “Note the exact format we can support is still up in the air.”

    Really? It would be really nice if FastTracker XM support made it in, but I’m not going to count on it.
11. Adam Says:
    February 10th, 2010 at 8:59 am

    There are 2 MOD players for Flash, both are under active development, and both have issues with different songs. If you want to get involved determining which is best, they are FMP and Flod.

    Joe: Thanks, I wrote you privately.
12. Nick Reymann Says:
    February 10th, 2010 at 12:49 pm

    I designed my level so that it takes a couple tries to get the hang of it, and then it can be finished pretty consistently after that (I have a success rate of a little over 80%). The difficulty could always be lowered by raising the celling/lowering the floor, giving more space to maneuver, or reducing the number of enemies. I will email an alternate one too.
13. Jojo Says:
    February 10th, 2010 at 1:54 pm

    Theta, I don’t think that there is actually any Flash MOD player that supports XM, but FLOD is *maybe* going to support some PC formats soon. So I’d just try to write a generic MOD.
14. Theta Says:
    February 10th, 2010 at 11:32 pm

    @Jojo: PC formats? Might have to expand on that as I’m not too sure what you mean by that (Then again it is late )

    I have done generic mods, but the thing is not all my work is mods (4 that I can think of off the top of my head), but I have lots of unfinished S3M’s XM’s etc, and some just don’t convert well to mod, even with a rewrite.

    FMP does looks though that it will support XMs, but probably not in the time frame of the contest, which isn’t a big deal, it’s just another challenge to go up against.

    @Adam: If I had to determine which is the best, I’d say FLOD because it seems really solid, and their demo of the software was pretty good, unfortunately I have no knowledge with AS3 so I can’t really test them.
15. Jojo Says:
    February 12th, 2010 at 7:52 am

    Theta:
    Amiga formats = MOD, MED, OKT, DBM, …
    PC formats = S3M, XM, IT, …
    Simple as that. ;P
16. Jojo Says:
    February 12th, 2010 at 7:53 am

    Oh and yes, FLOD is pretty good, since it supports MOD really well, including some less common effect commands and especially looping.
17. Theta Says:
    February 12th, 2010 at 9:09 pm

    @Jojo: Oh okay, I see. S3M would be pretty nice, I used to absolutely love ScreamTracker3 when I was younger. And yeah, I did notice FLOD supported looping.

    Still it’s quite interesting, before this I hadn’t heard of any online programs play mods aside from the Java player over at Modarchive.
18. Jojo Says:
    February 13th, 2010 at 7:46 am

    Yeah, but then again, the Java player we (yes, we) use over there is really not the best, so I hope it can be replaced by a more accurate player with less limits at some time… S3M is not too different from MOD (at least when you consider extended MODs with more than 4 channels). I normally track in IT format, so this is quite a difference for me, but it’s doable. The MOD limit really shouldn’t be a barrier for anyone NOT to do any tracks for Jetpack!
19. Eric Frederick Says:
    February 13th, 2010 at 3:34 pm

    Hi All,

    I enjoyed the levels from sn easy 1. These levels are fun: Easy1, Easy2, Easy3, and Easy9. My favorite level from the pack is Easy7. I’m really looking forward to more levels from sn. They are very clever and fun.

    I would like to hear what people thought of my levels. I think most of them meet Adam’s criteria.

    EricF
20. Joseph Collins Says:
    February 13th, 2010 at 7:26 pm

    I’ll tell ya one thing… If Saga Musix’s tune somehow doesn’t make it into Jetpack, it’ll always have a place in my WinAMP! (And possibly my MP3 player. )

    As for the levels, I think I’ll take some time to do a review of the ones I can actually finish in under 100 lives. D: Some of those levels are just stupid-hard! But some are fun without being ridiculous, so…
21. Adam Says:
    February 13th, 2010 at 8:15 pm

    OK, we’re going with Flod! The latest update is sounding really good.

    I’m thinking maybe the final 10 levels of the game should be some of these really hard ones. You won’t be able to play them unless you make it all the way through the rest of the game.
22. Jojo Says:
    February 14th, 2010 at 7:34 am

    Wow. That riddle is really mean.
23. SN Says:
    February 14th, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    Thanks Eric, glad you enjoyed my levels! I’d have to say that out of the “easy” levels I created Easy7 was my favorite too, also, I hope you’ll try the hard ones, those were the levels I had the most fun making (some of the “chase” levels took me forever to get timing right, but it was fun).

    I would also like to add that I tested all of the levels (both hard and easy) extensively, and they’re defiantly beatable, but they do make use of many small tricks in Jetpack that may or may not be known to many, such as the ability to jump on the edge of a brick that has ice on top, and still survive.

    I hope these more “advanced” techniques will be able to be carried over with the remake.
24. Eric Frederick Says:
    February 15th, 2010 at 12:50 am

    Hey SN,

    I tried some of your hard levels and couldn’t beat them. Some of those levels looked very intimidating and I wouldn’t dare attempt them. My reflexes are to slow for some of those levels. I enjoyed the concepts for your hard levels and they show a lot of time and thought went into them. Keep up the great work!!!!!!
25. Adam Dobay Says:
    February 16th, 2010 at 3:54 am

    Hi everyone, I really hope you’ll enjoy my levels. I’m very eager for some feedback.
    I have also been taking notes for the other level submissions, I just want to have tested all before posting the list of my favourites.
26. Eric Frederick Says:
    February 16th, 2010 at 4:41 pm

    Hi AdamDobay,

    Your levels are great! Very fun and clever. They are hard but work more on problem solving than twitch reflexes. Levels are open and feel professionally designed. Fantastic work!!
27. Eric Frederick Says:
    February 16th, 2010 at 4:55 pm

    Wow, that tile set from Joseph S is perfect. I think I’ll stop making graphics now. Trying to make low resolution art drives me crazy. Joseph S has great talent.
28. Alex W. Says:
    February 17th, 2010 at 2:48 am

    Adam D, all I have to say is that your levels are fantastic. I wouldn’t even dare call myself a better level designer.

    Also, I had some fun in Rocket Camp: http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/1112/jetpackrockets.png
29. Adam Says:
    February 19th, 2010 at 11:40 am

    I’ve been very sick for the last week, just starting to get better so I think I’ll look through some of these levels. I don’t know when I’ll be up to real work but the release may slip to April.

    I wanted to mention, there has been some talk elsewhere that fans couldn’t make good quality work for a game. I think you’ve proved them wrong, everyone’s submissions have been fantastic!

    I was thinking the gems might look better in the level if they were embedded in the wall instead of on a pedestal. Anyone want to give that a shot?

    Also what’s your opinion of giving each gem a random color? It would give levels a lot more color, which might be better for the casual market, but would it detract from our industrial brick theme?
30. Adam Dobay Says:
    February 19th, 2010 at 4:30 pm

    Adam,

    I think the gems should stay green. On complicated levels where there is much going on the player needs to be able to assess where he needs to go upon the first viewing. In fast-paced levels there is no time to look around, and colouring gems entirely differently could mess that up.
    But I love your other ideas and I think it would be great if there were tiles which have gems in the walls and also the original tiles where the gems are on a pedestal. For colour variation, I think you could give gems variety by colouring them different shades of the same green. Either case, I know I design my levels to look nice, and colour randomization could hurt that, so I would advise to give the level maker the ability to choose the type of gem to put in the level.
31. Adam Dobay Says:
    February 19th, 2010 at 5:13 pm

    Hey everyone,

    I’ve been swamped with work so I’m behind on reviewing all the level submissions, but there are some very good ones so I’ll be sure to list my favourites when I get through everything.

    On the other hand, I must say that I absolutely love the music submitted by Coda so far and let me address for a moment why I think this style of music should feature in the game, if not exclusively, then at least somewhat. I’ll keep the music tech talk out of what I say below but I do have more than ten years of formal training in classical and some jazz music and what I write is based on that.
    First, as Adam said the aim of this Jetpack release is for a retro feel. When I think of the times I originally played Jetpack in, aside from the games that were great but didn’t have particularly good music (like the Commander Keen series), there were a number of games that were especially memorable because of the atmosphere created by their music, like Fury of the Furries, Death Rally, or to a lesser extent Prehistorik 2 and some levels of Aladdin. Playing Coda’s music immediately launched me back into the Fury of the Furries atmosphere, and made me quite nostalgic.
    Second, Coda’s tracks really are game music in terms of how sections of music are formulated and built up. I didn’t find the techno tracks bad per se, but I felt they were a bit of a disconnect from the game. Some very good Flash freeware games on the ‘net feature really good music of a similar atmosphere, and I think this kind of music is a very good selling point in the casual retro area.
    I must add that in their current state, the Coda tracks do need some work especially in terms of length. If only some music tracks are featured in the game (although I do hope that the three types of music described by Adam can include more than one music piece), they can get repetitive if they are too short. Furthermore, while “Phenomenon” and “JetSkillz” are consistent throughout, “Rad” and “Puzzling” have a feel that they switch into entirely different tracks mid-way. I think that can be compensated with minimal adjustments, I just wanted to add this as analysis.
    Finally, on a personal note, I know I hear good music when it inspires me in a way that writing or, in this case, level design appears in my head instantly. This was the case in every piece of music so far submitted by Coda, as can bee seen from the dedications in my level designs, so I’m looking forward to new tracks and/or longer versions of the current tracks.

    That’s it for today, I’ll be back with reviews of levels and graphics as soon as I have some free time again.
32. Adam Dobay Says:
    February 19th, 2010 at 5:25 pm

    I just have to add that based on my post and out of curiosity my wife, not a gamer herself, gave a listen to all of the Coda tracks. She said she loved them all, and, also with about ten years of classical music study behind her, found Rad and Puzzling perfectly consistent with their musical premises. So I’ll take that part of my review back, I guess I overanalysed.
33. Adam Says:
    February 19th, 2010 at 5:47 pm

    I don’t recall writing that the game would have a retro feel – the retro mode of the game certainly will, but the main game should feel like any top shelf casual game out right now – except of course, much better

    I do love Coda’s music but there’s some other great stuff and I am a glutton for variety. I’ll order something new on the menu all the time even though I already have a favorite. There is already a chaotic variety to the levels, and I think radical music changes wouldn’t necessarily detract from that, especially with firm level transitions. I’m thinking of each level as its own little microcosm. Within each level though, the art needs to be consistent, and that will be a challenge.
34. Adam Dobay Says:
    February 20th, 2010 at 2:09 am

    Sorry, I must have misinterpreted what you have said. What if, then, if a lot of music come in, there would be a change in music depending on the mode? The retro-type music variations for the retro mode, and others for the normal mode.

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