The order of controls in the rebind menu is random right now as they're in an unsorted list and I didn't get around to sorting them yet.
You mentioned you played 0.4.3, that version has a small issue with the sign telling you about momentum lying as I changed that but didn't adjust the sign. 0.4.4 fixed that.
As you and many others have noticed, the counter not going up and you having to get to the exit for that is just extremely confusing, pair that with the respawn bug placing you at the beginning of the hub level and you have a real shit sandwich.
I feel the collectathon style could work if I just fixed those two, but the overhead of creating these large open levels, and the added difficulty of making them good just doesn't seem worth it. That and at that point I feel like I'd deviate too much from the original idea of the game. It's still called Chasm Climb after all. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'll go back to the linear levels. Maybe one day I'll do a 2D collectathon but Chasm Climb won't be it.
Funnily enough I thought this might be my easiest demo yet, turns out no one completed it because if that nonsense.
I noticed you struggling with those alternating metal blocks in the vertical shaft, I actually have a little collision tweak planned that's gonna make those a lot more forgiving.
Hooking onto the thin one-way platforms as you need to do at the end of that water section feels questionable but I'll probably keep it in for end-game levels.
Using a Steam Controller is extremely based of course (been using one myself since 2016) but you should really have it act as a gamepad not as a keyboard. The game supports it just fine. Btw, you can map it without Steam using SC-Controller.
That whole section in the bottom middle of the levels with lots of spikes is terribly designed, yeah. Didn't know what I was thinking with jumping up that tower and the helmet actually can't be collected without taking a hit.
Robo Templar dev is probably right that I should just take a lot more time for level design.
I never had the game freeze on exit. Might be a thing with the appimage, which I didn't test much.
Watching you grind your teeth on the spiky shaft next to the lava area was painful. It was meant to be a more difficult shortcut to get to the higher areas of the level.
You asked how long it takes me to clear the demo, I timed myself and it took about 8 minutes. Pretty much explains why it's so hard for me to make easy levels.
I'm really glad this game doesn't have fall damage
yet :^)
jk
The fan pushing you over the lava pit is not a trap. You're supposed to use the momentum it gives you to jump further. In general the use of momentum is something not a single player seemed to get. You need it as well for the pillars in the lava area. Gotta communicate that better.
I do know about the memory leak but I haven't quite nailed down what it is yet. As you figured out it definitely has something to do with things not being deallocated on death though. Thankfully it's reasonably slow leakage considering the size of the demo.
Thanks for playing man, you're an absolute paragon of this community.
Considering how much I learned from making an actually bad demo I feel pretty confident the next one is gonna be a lot better though.
I think it was worth for you to experiment like that with the game. If anything now you really know what you need for your vision to come true.
SC-Controller
I never heard of that, thanks for letting me know (I hope it works on linux)
You asked how long it takes me to clear the demo, I timed myself and it took about 8 minutes. Pretty much explains why it's so hard for me to make easy levels.
I can relate to that in a way. Devs tend to be really good at their own games
I do know about the memory leak but I haven't quite nailed down what it is yet. As you figured out it definitely has something to do with things not being deallocated on death though. Thankfully it's reasonably slow leakage considering the size of the demo.
Yes, it shouldn't be something most players will experience unless they keep the game open for a long time. You still need to fix it eventually.
Considering how much I learned from making an actually bad demo I feel pretty confident the next one is gonna be a lot better though.
I look forward to that. It's great to see a fellow dev level up
Good basic tutorial; you just miss a box and enemies tutorial. Good progression system with the missing blocks.
Bugs:
On death there is random % to respawn at the begin of the tutorial. After it happens, on death you will forever respawn at the beginning of the tutorial.
I had strange pixelation on top of the screen.
Design problems:
when you rescue a buddy doesn't update the buddy counter, only when you finish the level. I can understand that, but make a player know how many buddies he has already saved in a level.
A general problem of health pickups balance. We are in level 1, and you put an helm pickup only on the most stupid challenge.
More on health: An open level to explore collides with your old design to have a 2hp system. If this is a collectaton you can't make the player die and restart the whole thing after 2 mistakes (1 for lava). Add this to the respawn bug and the game becomes almost unplayable.
Your demo made me realize how important common coins are into a level. Just imagine a mario level and remove all coins and most of the enemies. You need some short term goals that moves you through the level and make the journey interesting: coins, enemies, powerups etc
In a more general sense, you need to make your levels fun to explore.
Final thoughts, I'm always blunt:
A 2d semiopen world collectaton is a great idea, but I dunno if your game can translate into it. You will need a ton of work to make it viable. Can you really think 3-4 powerups that change the way you interact with a level in a meaningful way? (see mario sunshine/odyseey).
But here comes my bluntness: In my opinion this change is pure scope creep. This to me doesn't seem a genuine attempt to make your game better. Your systems are there, they are basic, but it's not a fault to have a simple game. You need content. You should make levels for your game for a month. A whole month making levels.
Then, if you want, mix them into 3-4 big levels.
If you wanna really try the collectaton route, (re)play the masterpieces of the genre, and then see why copycats like yooka laylee failed.
I still don't know why that bug with the respawning happens.
The pixelation is some weirdness with the cutoff value of the shader I use for the screen transitions. It's always there so those pixels just stay somehow.
I agree that this open level design was just a really bad idea. Sometimes you get one of those and just go for it with blinders on. Initially I thought few, large levels would be just as easy to design as many small levels, not the case.
I'm going back to the earlier design. It just worked better. Plus, this was originally meant to be a small learning project. Even at this point I'm well beyond that lol.
Talking about some minor collectible like coins, I've been meaning to add that for ages but I just can't come up with anything that isn't super generic, like coins.
The graphics are much, much better than what I remembered from last time. The game is still incredibly hard, both in controls and level design. Each time after dying I was kicked back to the tutorial and my collectables were whiped out. I believe this must be a bug. At first I thought I was picking a more difficult path since there was an arrow pointing in the opposite direction, but then that part of the cave was short and I had to go back. The right side of the cave could be expanded a lot.
Now this is something I cannot really put into words why, but the character movement feels awkward. This is both on the floor and in the air. I believe that playing with the acceleration, friction and speed values could improve how everything feels.
I stopped playing because it was not saving my progress and getting kicked back to the start is a bit too punishing. I have no way to win hardcore run.
The way collectibles are only counted if you get to the exit will definitely be changed if I stick with the collectathon style. It's that way because the game is currently in a weird sort of transition state between the linear level and collectathon. Previously getting to the exit was the main goal, now it collecting so I just combined the two. Doesn't really make sense and is frustrating, yeah.
Considering the weird movement, Have you played the 0.4.4 version? I've tweaked air momentum after submitting to this Demo day.
I'm personally really happy with the basic movement otherwise so it likely won't change much. It does take quite a lot of getting used to if you're coming from platformers with little or no momentum like what is popular right now.
I don't remember the last version I played. Maybe it was the gameboy version?
The thing about the movement is that it feels like it takes time for my inputs to register and the time frame I have for pressing the correct button is too short. There is also a lot of changing directions in mid-air which is not easy to do. You as a dev are very used to the controls and mastered them, which means people can get to that level too. The question is how quickly can they do that.
Turning down the music volume glitches out once it is at 0.
I last played this when it had Gameboy graphics and though it looks better now, the gameplay has taken a step backwards. This new level design with open structure currently does nothing to make the game better with the tight platforming mechanics as they currently are. You spend a bunch of time backtracking, repeating more content and making your way back to places without any positives to show for it. Moreover, I feel as if zooming back the camera without meaningfully readjusting the control scheme has resulted in slow gameplay and enabled a lax and empty style of level design.
2hard4me, only got around 4 collectables, though only one counted when I finished the stage. New sprite animations and stuff looks nice. Being sent back to tutorial land was just annoying. New level design is ok I guess, think I enjoyed the levels from last demo day more. I believe that's mostly due to the larger level meaning more time to die on the way to the exit. Otherwise, the level design seems just as good to me. I never really got used to the momentum of the character, but it's kind of set in stone I imagine.
I actually just changed the momentum physics. Should be more intuitive now. You keep momentum by holding forward instead of letting go of directions.
I agree that if I want to keep the larger levels I need to fix the amount of backtracking you need to do if you die. Definitely on my to-do list.
Collectibles not counting seems worrying. It worked perfectly fine during testing. Did you die after collecting the other three? They only get counted if you survive until the exit currently, once again, bit of a bad system.
By "only one counted" I meant as in getting that collectible and heading to the exit in the same life. I got the other 3 in attempts that I died. I worded it like that since it didn't increment the collectable counter until I exited with one of them. As I said it was a bit difficult for me, so it felt too annoying to redo several challenges while I still didn't know where the exit was. When I did get to the exit I decided to redo one of the challenges then exit so I could say I actually collected one of the objectives.
Also, interesting to hear you change some of the mid air control. May check that out, if I get an itch for this game again.
You know it's funny, that kind of loading screen has been there since the first demo and no one ever had that idea, now there's two people mentioning it at once.
Got three of the collectibles but going back to the tutorial after dying slows things down a lot for a demo. I like floaty jumps like in Cave Story a lot, but I think it would be good to move faster sideways so you could change direction mid-air and use the floatiness more.
The art is good, especially this early. Some of the blue terrain looked like backgrounds at first though.
Comments
I recorded playing games with commentary, and your game is one of them.
Here's the link to the whole DD50 folder:
https://mega.nz/folder/GclCXISL#gwE9S1kRTbe6amYLH2RiYA
Might not be what you expected of a video feedback, but I hope you are going to find it useful.
Well I just watched all of it.
I'm so sorry.
The order of controls in the rebind menu is random right now as they're in an unsorted list and I didn't get around to sorting them yet.
You mentioned you played 0.4.3, that version has a small issue with the sign telling you about momentum lying as I changed that but didn't adjust the sign. 0.4.4 fixed that.
As you and many others have noticed, the counter not going up and you having to get to the exit for that is just extremely confusing, pair that with the respawn bug placing you at the beginning of the hub level and you have a real shit sandwich.
I feel the collectathon style could work if I just fixed those two, but the overhead of creating these large open levels, and the added difficulty of making them good just doesn't seem worth it. That and at that point I feel like I'd deviate too much from the original idea of the game. It's still called Chasm Climb after all. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I'll go back to the linear levels. Maybe one day I'll do a 2D collectathon but Chasm Climb won't be it.
Funnily enough I thought this might be my easiest demo yet, turns out no one completed it because if that nonsense.
I noticed you struggling with those alternating metal blocks in the vertical shaft, I actually have a little collision tweak planned that's gonna make those a lot more forgiving.
Hooking onto the thin one-way platforms as you need to do at the end of that water section feels questionable but I'll probably keep it in for end-game levels.
Using a Steam Controller is extremely based of course (been using one myself since 2016) but you should really have it act as a gamepad not as a keyboard. The game supports it just fine. Btw, you can map it without Steam using SC-Controller.
That whole section in the bottom middle of the levels with lots of spikes is terribly designed, yeah. Didn't know what I was thinking with jumping up that tower and the helmet actually can't be collected without taking a hit.
Robo Templar dev is probably right that I should just take a lot more time for level design.
I never had the game freeze on exit. Might be a thing with the appimage, which I didn't test much.
Watching you grind your teeth on the spiky shaft next to the lava area was painful. It was meant to be a more difficult shortcut to get to the higher areas of the level.
You asked how long it takes me to clear the demo, I timed myself and it took about 8 minutes. Pretty much explains why it's so hard for me to make easy levels.
yet :^)
jk
The fan pushing you over the lava pit is not a trap. You're supposed to use the momentum it gives you to jump further. In general the use of momentum is something not a single player seemed to get. You need it as well for the pillars in the lava area. Gotta communicate that better.
I do know about the memory leak but I haven't quite nailed down what it is yet. As you figured out it definitely has something to do with things not being deallocated on death though. Thankfully it's reasonably slow leakage considering the size of the demo.
Thanks for playing man, you're an absolute paragon of this community.
Considering how much I learned from making an actually bad demo I feel pretty confident the next one is gonna be a lot better though.
I think it was worth for you to experiment like that with the game. If anything now you really know what you need for your vision to come true.
I never heard of that, thanks for letting me know (I hope it works on linux)
I can relate to that in a way. Devs tend to be really good at their own games
Yes, it shouldn't be something most players will experience unless they keep the game open for a long time. You still need to fix it eventually.I look forward to that. It's great to see a fellow dev level upIt's made predominately for Linux. I believe the dev tried a Windows port at some point.
Fair warning, the UI to make configurations is kinda jank and buggy but once you set those up it just werks.
where did you get it? The package links on github have no data?
There's an appimage on Github https://github.com/kozec/sc-controller/releases
But I just get it from the AUR myself.
nice, I will give it a go over at some point next week
Good basic tutorial; you just miss a box and enemies tutorial. Good progression system with the missing blocks.
Bugs:
On death there is random % to respawn at the begin of the tutorial. After it happens, on death you will forever respawn at the beginning of the tutorial.
I had strange pixelation on top of the screen.
Design problems:
when you rescue a buddy doesn't update the buddy counter, only when you finish the level. I can understand that, but make a player know how many buddies he has already saved in a level.
A general problem of health pickups balance. We are in level 1, and you put an helm pickup only on the most stupid challenge.
More on health: An open level to explore collides with your old design to have a 2hp system. If this is a collectaton you can't make the player die and restart the whole thing after 2 mistakes (1 for lava). Add this to the respawn bug and the game becomes almost unplayable.
Your demo made me realize how important common coins are into a level. Just imagine a mario level and remove all coins and most of the enemies. You need some short term goals that moves you through the level and make the journey interesting: coins, enemies, powerups etc
In a more general sense, you need to make your levels fun to explore.
Final thoughts, I'm always blunt:
A 2d semiopen world collectaton is a great idea, but I dunno if your game can translate into it. You will need a ton of work to make it viable. Can you really think 3-4 powerups that change the way you interact with a level in a meaningful way? (see mario sunshine/odyseey).
But here comes my bluntness: In my opinion this change is pure scope creep. This to me doesn't seem a genuine attempt to make your game better. Your systems are there, they are basic, but it's not a fault to have a simple game. You need content. You should make levels for your game for a month. A whole month making levels.
Then, if you want, mix them into 3-4 big levels.
If you wanna really try the collectaton route, (re)play the masterpieces of the genre, and then see why copycats like yooka laylee failed.
GL buddy.
I still don't know why that bug with the respawning happens.
The pixelation is some weirdness with the cutoff value of the shader I use for the screen transitions. It's always there so those pixels just stay somehow.
I agree that this open level design was just a really bad idea. Sometimes you get one of those and just go for it with blinders on. Initially I thought few, large levels would be just as easy to design as many small levels, not the case.
I'm going back to the earlier design. It just worked better. Plus, this was originally meant to be a small learning project. Even at this point I'm well beyond that lol.
Talking about some minor collectible like coins, I've been meaning to add that for ages but I just can't come up with anything that isn't super generic, like coins.
Thanks for playing man.
Played for a bit. Video:
The graphics are much, much better than what I remembered from last time. The game is still incredibly hard, both in controls and level design. Each time after dying I was kicked back to the tutorial and my collectables were whiped out. I believe this must be a bug. At first I thought I was picking a more difficult path since there was an arrow pointing in the opposite direction, but then that part of the cave was short and I had to go back. The right side of the cave could be expanded a lot.
Now this is something I cannot really put into words why, but the character movement feels awkward. This is both on the floor and in the air. I believe that playing with the acceleration, friction and speed values could improve how everything feels.
I stopped playing because it was not saving my progress and getting kicked back to the start is a bit too punishing. I have no way to win hardcore run.
The way collectibles are only counted if you get to the exit will definitely be changed if I stick with the collectathon style. It's that way because the game is currently in a weird sort of transition state between the linear level and collectathon. Previously getting to the exit was the main goal, now it collecting so I just combined the two. Doesn't really make sense and is frustrating, yeah.
Considering the weird movement, Have you played the 0.4.4 version? I've tweaked air momentum after submitting to this Demo day.
I'm personally really happy with the basic movement otherwise so it likely won't change much. It does take quite a lot of getting used to if you're coming from platformers with little or no momentum like what is popular right now.
I don't remember the last version I played. Maybe it was the gameboy version?
The thing about the movement is that it feels like it takes time for my inputs to register and the time frame I have for pressing the correct button is too short. There is also a lot of changing directions in mid-air which is not easy to do. You as a dev are very used to the controls and mastered them, which means people can get to that level too. The question is how quickly can they do that.
Turning down the music volume glitches out once it is at 0.
I last played this when it had Gameboy graphics and though it looks better now, the gameplay has taken a step backwards. This new level design with open structure currently does nothing to make the game better with the tight platforming mechanics as they currently are. You spend a bunch of time backtracking, repeating more content and making your way back to places without any positives to show for it. Moreover, I feel as if zooming back the camera without meaningfully readjusting the control scheme has resulted in slow gameplay and enabled a lax and empty style of level design.
I went back and played my older demos and I gotta agree, my level design got incredibly sloppy. The DD47 one was pretty tight.
I'll go back to the drawing board.
2hard4me, only got around 4 collectables, though only one counted when I finished the stage. New sprite animations and stuff looks nice. Being sent back to tutorial land was just annoying. New level design is ok I guess, think I enjoyed the levels from last demo day more. I believe that's mostly due to the larger level meaning more time to die on the way to the exit. Otherwise, the level design seems just as good to me. I never really got used to the momentum of the character, but it's kind of set in stone I imagine.
I actually just changed the momentum physics. Should be more intuitive now. You keep momentum by holding forward instead of letting go of directions.
I agree that if I want to keep the larger levels I need to fix the amount of backtracking you need to do if you die. Definitely on my to-do list.
Collectibles not counting seems worrying. It worked perfectly fine during testing. Did you die after collecting the other three? They only get counted if you survive until the exit currently, once again, bit of a bad system.
By "only one counted" I meant as in getting that collectible and heading to the exit in the same life. I got the other 3 in attempts that I died. I worded it like that since it didn't increment the collectable counter until I exited with one of them. As I said it was a bit difficult for me, so it felt too annoying to redo several challenges while I still didn't know where the exit was. When I did get to the exit I decided to redo one of the challenges then exit so I could say I actually collected one of the objectives.
Also, interesting to hear you change some of the mid air control. May check that out, if I get an itch for this game again.
Challenging! I like the art. I like the mechanics. I also would like to be able to move around a bit on the “loading screen”.
You know it's funny, that kind of loading screen has been there since the first demo and no one ever had that idea, now there's two people mentioning it at once.
I like it though, gonna add.
Got three of the collectibles but going back to the tutorial after dying slows things down a lot for a demo. I like floaty jumps like in Cave Story a lot, but I think it would be good to move faster sideways so you could change direction mid-air and use the floatiness more.
The art is good, especially this early. Some of the blue terrain looked like backgrounds at first though.
Couldn't reach any of the lanterns except the one directly to the right.