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SlainteES2 years ago

Wow, that was a lenghty one :) Thank for playing the game and taking the time for such a big feedback post. In order:

  • Thanx for the comments on the art, this part ate a lot of my time for this entry
  • Mirrors: Agreed after all the comments… they are in the “to be fixed” list, and yes, you can finish the game on a single mirror time slot, so in order to make things challenging that needs to go dow, but with the actual number of mirrors it’s non-relevant.
  • Collisions: hitbox is 8px wide… probably should be trimmed to 6 to match more the actual “build” of the sprite… gave it some testing at the beginning of the development but some issues detecting collisions on ladders and having you “falling through” put that in the waiting list and honestly I never came back to it
  • Jump style: I wanted something that was closer to real jump physics and not to Mario the jumping wonder… this alings better with the dangerous exploration requiring you to stop and think how to go through a particular tight spot (or at least that was my hope)
  • Map/level design: The ideal end-goal is having a considerably bigger map with much more puzzling and backtracking… lever A frees object at X, or activates ladder at Y that you need to go back to pick key for door N the you need to locate and so on… Time and pico8 base constrains did not allow for this. Doors potentially are another good mechanic and can separate/extend the map greatly (going multicart)
  • The future: I need a big code clean-up and refactor… first solid platformer ever and a lot of rushed decisions due to jam time window limitations ruined a lot of things. With the platforming states solved, the ladders fixed and some of the fine tunning needed in other aspects I want to move to native pico resolution (128x128 and the game art really works great at the resolution but requires a tad bigger map for sure) I want to make it into a big / long game… including intro/outro animated seqquences and all.

Again, thnx for playing and the great feedback

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Dex Loves Games2 years ago

Mirrors: "you can finish the game on a single mirror time slot," Now this gave me the idea I shared in the Discord. I think you could make it so that there is a checkpoint at the skull bench and when you arrive, it's a checkpoint and then every time you drop off a skull it's a checkpoint. Then you could drastically reduce the time that the Mirrors will save you at death, and if the tie runs out before the player dies (hopefully it typically runs out on their way back through the challenge a second time to return to the mirror) then they'll die and lose any gems and such that they had acquired since the last skull was placed. You could expand this idea to a full game as well, but I'd have to see how the game is formatted to be able to give additional help for that.

Collisions:  "[...]  probably should be trimmed [...]   some issues detecting collisions on ladders" I think you should do a hidden player mask that is larger for the ladders as there was multiple times that I was unable to go up or go down them when I expected to grab them easily. Though I think it was you who was saying in the jam discord that the trouble with ladders is that everyone expects them to "just work" but everyone expects them to work differently.  I am definitely in agreement with that sentiment, even if it wasn't you that said that.  Then you could make the player hitbox smaller without issue.

Jump style:  "I wanted something that was closer to real jump physics" I figured this was the case, and I respect your decision to do it this way. that's absolutely a core part of the experience and if it was different, the jumps would've been designed differently. I'm partial to games like Hollow knight where i have a lot of control over the jumps, so that's part of what's going on here. It is a bit weird that my game is the opposite. you can move left and right while jumping with exact same speed and control as when you're on the ground BUT your jump height is fixed. isn't that funny? 

Map/level design: Loving this part of your response. "pico8 base constrains did not allow for this." It's interesting that in the next  section you say you're going to stay within pico 8 after reading this.  "going multicart" Do you mean like multiple different Pico 8 game carts?

The future: absolutely ambitious and I love it. Don't be afraid to put it down for later to go and work on other stuff. Coming back to an idea is always an option :)

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SlainteES2 years ago(+1)

Interesting ideas about the mirrors… will need to digest thigs a bit but adding those to the design bench, thnx!

Collisions need fine tuning, once they are fixed and I kind of make heas or tails on the ladders we’ll see :P

Curious how everyone makes their own ideas on how jumping should work, all them valid, all them different. I was aiming for this kind of jump and works for my expectations ;)

Multicarting allows you to separate things in up to 16 carts in different ways… transferring control from one to the other, using the secondary carts just as data stores… Actually the game is using 2 carts already as I pushed some compressed data initialization in a companion cart. So yes, for now it will be PICO-8… for now… If this goes too far out of what’s possible I might switch to maybe love2D as that’s a supossedly easy port from pico.

And for the future, I want to really nail this one :) I will move back to complete a few stray bits around XOR (completing the music and the level editor) and probably get back to this.

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