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Very nice!

Let me help you a bit - if you haven't figured it out yet... As you suggested, use the gloves first. The small key is for later use. Use them for something you don't want to touch with your bare hands...

Thanks for the compliment! :) The small key is for something else you probably have not found yet. Note that you can also enter certain buildings like you can enter and leave your car.

And I wish you good luck with your work on The Legend of Skye. :)

Hi Marco,

Thanks for the compliment. And yes I've used C#, own code. It was my first try to create a text parser so it should appear to be a bit messy. :) But no problem sharing it though, can I perhaps mail it to info @ marcogiorgini.com ?

Hi Marco, I've played some of your little ports (Cloak of Darkness and Accuse) and saw your blog. I've read you have a taste for text adventures so you might be interested in one of my own PC games: https://ededo.itch.io/calming-creek

(Besides, it is a pure coincidence that I picked the same title font as "The Curse of Rabenstein".)

Although I am currently busy in the process of making a new game, I was also wondering if I perhaps could port "The Dark Secret of Calming Creek" to the C64 using your engine, but if you really enjoy porting and you like to do it, be my guest. :)

The whole thing with the Anunnaki was pure gold! And also gave me Zak McKracken vibes. :)

I found another thing that may not be worth reporting, but anyway: Right mouse click is obviously used for short-cut actions, initiating the command that lights up when you point to an object. The thing is that when pointing to a playable character, the command "New Kid" lights up while the right click command clearly executes the "Look" command.

So far I've been creating my own SCUMMVM "engine" in Unity and so far it goes very well. I plan to make a game with it using voxel graphics to keep a sort of 'retro' look with characters that look like SCUMMVM 320x200 res character counterparts. (So it will not that blocky as Rush Troopers and most current voxel games.) My current idea is to make the game mysterious, intentionally vague, and a bit weird but interesting.

Ok, I finally did read your walkthrough for endings 4 and 5, and the solution to get "true midnight" kinda blew my mind. :D lol. I probably would never have guessed it because of the following confusion: I previously thought the pizza was being delivered at ten o'clock - so two hours before midnight - as the pizza girl literary said the delivery will be "in ten", guessing it was a translation error and had to be "at ten". So I tried to guess after how much time it would be midnight. However, now I realize her text should have been:  "in ten minutes"!

As for ending 5, I could have done it without the walkthrough if there was a seperate (object) text for the hands on the "object". (Trying to avoid spoilers here.) Then when I got the "thing" the cannon came to my mind, but did not fit in the slot. I did not knew that you could look outside the window in the cannon room, so unfortunately, as so often with these games, I resorted to the walkthrough again for the very last thing to do in the game. :-)

I also have a suggestion for the "ox room", for the hearing impaired and it also should clarify a bit more what happens: Maybe you should make it so that, when you stand on the trigger tile, you can show it being pressed down a bit. (With a different graphic.)

Hello again,

So far I completed ending 1,2 and 3 (in two different ways) and did not use your or any other walkthrough. Eager to complete the other two.

First some English mode spelling corrections:

If not already done, you should revise the text at the character select a bit more. For instance, Alice's description text: oportunity has to be opportunity, bitten "on" should be bitten "in".

"Salty rat" has to be: "salty bat".

Agent L is called "Agente L" (still Spanish) in ending 3.

When in your inventory, look at blue cup gives the Spanish description.

However, use blue cup with water gives the correct English description you would expect when looking at.

Maybe it is intended, but shouldn't "the real midnight" just be "midnight"? (But then again, I haven't solved this part of the puzzle yet.)

And maybe you could use some text or effects for the hearing impaired, as two puzzles give essential audio clues. (Octopus room, ox head room.) Speaking about the "ox head room", that took me quite a while to figure out and it was actually by accident when I did. Therefore I suggest to use a different sound as you leave (what I refer to as) the "trigger" tile.

Lastly, is it possible to disable the debug keys? I am not familiar with Adventure Game Studio but perhaps you forgot?

Thanks for the great game! Being a fan of Maniac Mansion I paid double and I love it so far. (I completed 1 of the 5 endings.) Only minor gripe is that I love mice and that... oh well, you understand... ;)

Besides that I found a few errors(?). I don't know what the proper way is for bug reporting, but I hope you consider it anyway. Feel free to delete this message afterwards.

1) in the English translation, Gogo is at first referred as "he" at the character select screen. Further on it is stated correctly. 2) The recipes in the game mention "seeds" (English) but this also appears a translation error, as it should be called: (rice) grains. 3) The young bluehaired 'vampess' can be encountered just outside the room with the 'maneating plant', but the problem I got is that she is not visible then. (Appears either to be stuck in her walking path at the unseen left side of the screen.) 4) This is very rare, but sometimes you click at the commands after loading a save the given commands do not show on the screen and no action is taken. Sometimes it returns to normal with some actions, but when I saved in the room with the phone I could not leave it at all because of this. 5) When repeatedly leaving the prison with the golden key and getting caught by the green guy, I managed to get him (funny enough) caught by the bluehaired vampess. I understand why, because as the player gets removed from the scene it takes the next character on the screen. Next I was playing the green guy in the spike room. :D Yes, really, as shown in the screenshot. By switching to another character I could see he was not in his own room anymore. I wonder what happens if he gets killed, but I didn't have the patience to wait for that. :p

If you want, please check out my own games. I always wanted to make a Maniac Mansion-esque game and perhaps I will do as I am surely inspired by your game. Oh, and also thanks for including a native Linux version; Very appreciated.

Kind regards, Ededo

Before the game was finished I had not seen too much of Ikari Warriors. My main inspirations were Land Sea Air Squad and Commando.

I don't think so, but I might be able to implement it. Why do you need it, if I may ask?

If you want to reset the video resolution you can delete the settings file in "users/(yourcomputername)/appdata/LocalLow/Ededo Entertainment". (The path given here is for Windows...)

Reminds me of my "Asteroids-with-a-twist" game Sector Squad: https://ededo.itch.io/sector-squad

First I did not understand your problem with the rockets but I found out that the heli does not climb to its supposed height after certain collisions. Therefore the rockets are colliding immediately to the ground and you also can't exit from that low position. In other cases you could also not get out.

Fixed it and thoroughly tested it. I will upload version 1.2.29 within an hour. Thank you very much for your help.

Version 1.2.25 released.

(Edited) Version 1.2.23 is now up.

Fixed the following things:

- Tweaked some things to keep the players better within the bounds of the playfield, hopefully fixing the "stuck" bug you mentioned before.

- Redefined keyboard keys were not saved in the previous version, and in the "player select screen" there was a problem where you could not start a mission with any other (custom) keyboard key press than "enter".

- Certain vehicles (tank and motor cycles) could move around a shot down player. This was not intentional.

- And a lot of other little things...

Ok, version 1.2.20 is up now, with points 1 and 2 fixed.

About point 2 again, I've given it another look and I believe I have solved the problem I was stuck with, so - like you requested - who opens the menu in the title screen is player 1 now.

Hi JMB9, thank you very much for your praise and ongoing help and interest!

About point 1: This seems to be because of the engine update. I changed a few offsets and it appears to be fixed now. Will upload a new version ASAP.

Point 2: Once before I succeeded in going this, but the problem here lies in that the defined "keysets" need to be swapped around for this to work and especially when using different controllers this appeared to be quite the problem as I could not get it right. I just *may* take another look at this.

Point 3: The areas are indeed quite different but I tried to balance them in a way so that one specific area would not give too much of an advantage - both in scoring and attack patterns - compared to the others.

Best wishes to you too!

I just uploaded the new version (1.2.17). Thanks again for reporting. :)

I may have found the problem now; Fixed by resetting the score at a later point. Doing some testing now... *edit: seems to be working fine now*

Hi JMB,

"I think we have noticed when the score sometimes resets to zero. If a player's bullet/rocket/etc. hits an opponent while the player is down, the score gets reset to this newly gained score (e.g. 100 points with message "hit chain +100" still displayed). Anything previously earned is lost."

Did you also experienced this in the current version? Thanks to your comment I also found that out in the previous version, but it should be fixed now in 1.2.15. Now you should not gain chain bonus scores  anymore if you are down with no lives left. (That gave you the new score after the score had been internally reset, because well, the game was over.)

Most stars do stack in fact, except that picking up a double weapon replaces the shield and vice versa. It is intended however that you lose everything if you lose one life. This way you would be on your toes, careful to not get hit.

Anyway, I made sure that each weapon is just as viable without the bonusses and weapons have unique characteristics. Weapons with shorter range usually do more damage or are able to destroy buildings and the like. The only exception is the combat knife, which is for melee fans but does moderate damage to the bosses and is also the cheapest to buy. ;)

The new release 1.2.12 had just been uploaded with all the fixes told in advance. (Plus some minor other fixes.) I've also updated the Android port in the Google Play Store.

Changing the controller mapping to player 1 - who pressed the button in the menu - was doable, but because of problems, (somehow the button configurations messes up if you have controllers with different button mappings and alternate between being player 1 and player 2) I decided to not include it.

Hi JMB,

The SMG thing was actually a timer related bug. :) Good thing you noticed the rocket launcher firing only up; It should be firing into the direction you shoot, but home in if close to the target. It seems to be a migration bug because of upgrading the editor to a newer one (from Unity 2019 to Unity 2020). I've discovered the error and I just fixed it now.

At that moment does the score reset? After dying, reviving? Edit: I just accidently found out that it also seems to happen with player 1, if you managed to still hit an enemy after you just died. I fixed it now by not getting that score when you are dead/out of lives.

Also fixed the crocs getting out of the water... Again! :P

I will look if I can make player 1 the one who pressed fire first in the menu, if it isn't too much of a hassle.

Thank you again for telling me of these bugs, I will add you to the credits if you don't mind. ;) I will tell you here when the fixed new version is up.

Best wishes also,

Ededo

I understand that Rush Troopers could be more popular if I (or others) did some marketing for it, especially in these current times where a zillions of games are released every day and good ones easily slip under the radar.

But marketing, and releasing the game on other platforms like Steam, PS Store - and probably also GOG - costs quite a bit of money. And as I wanted Rush Troopers to be a (completely) free game, this was not an option. It would be nice if some popular Youtube influencers would showcase it but I don't want to be a beggar. ;)

(There is however an, although now outdated, Android OS port on the Google Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ededo.rushtroopers&hl=nl&gl=US)

New version 1.2.8 is up. The bug should be fixed now. 

Also "fixed" it so that the enemies don't try to smack down things like street lanterns. :) And players now stay visible in Mission Mode's "game over" screen.

(ps: 8k will not give you a larger field of view either ;) )

Thanks for the clear bug report. Going to look into it. Best wishes from me also. :)

1.2.5 is now up. I couldn't reproduce the things you mentioned but I've made some changes that would likely fix these, but I am not 100% sure. 

I've also fixed/improved some other - mostly minor - things. (The crocs are now staying in the water again, I wonder how I managed to break that...)

Thanks again for reporting. Going to look into it.

I am not sure what you mean. When you are reviving your teammate you cannot shoot, that is intentional.

And ok, I gave in to your request. :) I've increased the fov now, feel free to test v1.2.2.

Thanks for letting me know, I just resolved the problem. ;)

I am not sure what you mean with team battle with 2 players... You can play a coop game with "mission mode" and friendly fire is off by default so you can not hit each other. (Although you can still crash into each other. :P)

I updated the game and made a quick change to the behaviour of the timer that activated the "victory message" - which should be more strict now. However, I am not completely certain that this fixed the bug, so I should test some more. I've also added an "announcer" voice.

As you can guess I also still like the old arcade-esque type of games that require you to gain some actual skill and hone your reflexes.

Hi there,

Thanks for your praise and comments. I will look into it fixing the things you mentioned.

Could you perhaps elaborate on the game getting stuck 2 times... Do you perhaps remember if that was due to asteroid hits or due to the bullets?

As for a coop mode, that already exists as you can play "arcade mode" with with up to 4 players.

Thanks for liking the game,

Ededo

Hello JMB9,

Great to hear you like the game! And also good to hear it works nicely in 4K, as I don't have a 4K monitor yet. The current size of the field of view in this game had been chosen for maintaining good enough visibility for the android port (on Google Play) and also for the fact that I don't like games with characters that are too small for my own taste. ;-) But good to hear your input and perhaps I will change it in a later version for the non-android versions, or maybe as an option.

Right now I think I am quite done with the game however, and I've already started working on other things that may or not see  the light of the day.  But if someone finds and reports any bugs I will still fix them. I was just about to release a "remastered" version of "Sector Squad" that you also may look into. It's actually my very first game made with Unity "ages" ago so just don't expect the same quality. ;-)

Greets,
Ededo

I now added mouse support, and WASD is now the default control scheme.

Thanks for your comment, I really appreciate it! The controls can take a little time to get used to, it is like Shock Troopers and similar games, but you can also aim and fire with the right thumbstick, like a twin shooter.