Earth looks awesome! I love what you did with the fishing village. Who lives in the luxurious manor, may I ask? I enjoyed the backstory as well. It's so sweet that Rachel is based on your friend. Does she often carry around mallets?
I'm really sorry; I may have misspoke when I said I have attribution information. I don't have all the attributions. I only made them for things that I had downloaded, which at the time did not include the entire contest entry pack. I'll upload what attribution info I have. https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8YnlyelVNVzVXSkE
A few more notes:
I made a mistake in the general store. Only the top ends of the counters in the store should be in the overlay layer; otherwise Rachel gets covered up when walking in front of them. I also drew the collision boxes for the counters too small. She walks over them slightly when coming from the left or right.
The fellow fenced in next to the general store is rather confused, walking over fence in front of him and under fence behind. Rachel has that trouble with the fence around her house, too. Fences will be difficult to use without implementing some sort of Z-sorter. Edit: I take that back. You apparently do have code that allows Z-ordering. I guess you just haven't added that to the fences yet.
If you have time you might want to add special Z-ordering rules for the Mallet. It regularly has clipping issues because it stretches so far outside her collision box.
The upper left corner of Earth is missing a collision shape, as is the top middle of the bridge. That entertained me for a few minutes.
Collecting coins is problematic at times. You sometimes end up pushing them before collecting them. One time the coins wouldn't collect, and Rachel just kept pushing them until I walked away and came back.
Adding simple dialog would go a long way: What's up, Rachel? How are you doing today? Why are you carrying that enormous mallet? Have you seen Carl? Last I saw him, he was playing with a snake.
If you're not going to make any other major changes before entry, you may want to point the player in the direction of the shed, so they can find the Mallet, and the book in the general store. She NEEDS it!
On the topic of the book, the buying of it worked flawlessly. I like Shakespeare, too. And all had to do to get it was continually hit my friends with an oversized hammer!
Yes, "misc.png" is by Matthew Nash. It can be found at this location: http://opengameart.org/content/misc-32x32-tiles. I have a series of text files with attribution information (file names, creator, source, collaborators, etc.) if you would like them or an aggregate file of the information.
It's unlikely that I'll be able to help today, but is there anything in particular that you would want done just in case? I'd like to know a little about the storyline and Rachel, both out of curiousity and the fact that it may aid my efforts (help me help you, ha ha).
Now for notes on the game.
Picking up the Mighty Mallet (excellent name) from the chest on Test Island seems to stop the physics. I guess that because Rachel no longer responds to commands and Jessica and the snake stop moving. There is no error message.
Those snakes are vicious. They show off the AI well, but should probably be less hard for the final product. I had trouble getting to the Mallet with those numerous assassins around. They could be slower or maybe less aggressive, for example only attacking things closer to themselves. I suggest moving the window of awareness so it stretches three tiles ahead, one behind, and two on each side.
The snakes seem to move slower the farther away you are. I'm not sure if this is a bug because it isn't consistent, but I like it, especially when the snakes eventually give up as you slide out of their awareness. I suggest having one or both of these behaviors in the final product.
NPCs start fighting back when the player attacks, but not when snakes attack. Of course, for NPCs to defend themselves they'll need to be able to differenciate between friends and enemies. ;-)
It's funny; despite all of the excellent updates, that chest in her room still doesn't remember to stay open.
I like the addition of new sound effects, but they fall a little flat compared to the excellent background music. Maybe, if there's time, you could look around for other sound effects with compatible licenses. I think I might go ahead and do that.
Speaking of sound effects, a sound for when Rachel gets hurt would be nice.
As much as I love the color effect of the title screen, the timeout before you can leave it gets a little tedious. Of course, now I'm just getting nit-picky.
You may have noticed that the door on the shed isn't large enough to fit those boats through. I noticed that, but didn't have the time to add an opposite door. You may want to do that for logic's sake.
I happened upon the website of Radomir Dopieralski ( aka Sheep ) - who is the person that made your sprites, right? - and it mentioned it contained other works of his. I didn't look through them, but I was wondering if you had. It might yield a useful sprite or two.
Edit: I just made a very quick sound effect for the Mallet. I also have it in WAV format if you would prefer that.
Because I'm failing miserably at using Git and bitbucket, I think I'll just upload files to Google Drive. (Which, itself, I started using today.)
I'm not sure where the roads will go, but I know where the doors will. I made a little shed and I'll add the general store later. Could the little house be Rachel's? I also uploaded a slightly better (and smaller) village. Edit: The village now has a general store. Why yes, that is an anvil on the table. Why do you ask?
Love the giant hammer, by the way. I also like that Jessica attacks you in retaliation. It always confused me that NPCs so rarely respond to the players' actions in games.
I'm still learning automapping, collision mapping, and getting my pipeline to match yours, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to upload a finished map. I've uploaded the fishing village that to my Google Drive in case it might still be of use. The fishing village map should go in your "lpcgame\resources\map" folder. I also uploaded an "img" folder that contains the extra tilemaps needed. Better file handling in Tiled would be very useful.
Edit: I had uploaded another Fishing village.tmx, but this one is much easier to deal with.
Also, I'll upload an image if that would be easier. The road is still straight, but I would have to modify Matthew Nash's tiles for it to be otherwise. Plus, villages are regularly linear in real life.
I thought I'd make a fishing village, following the island theme. I put an example below.
Are you using any tilesets in particular? In the map below I used the base assets, daneeklu's farming and fishing tileset, and Guido Bos's houses. Also, will the whole outside area be on a single map? That will be important to know if I continue to aid you.
Removing requestAnimationFrame seems to have fixed the problem with animation speed and skipping increasing. Unfortunately skipping does still occur "semi-frequently" on Firefox, but what's programming without a good memory leak here and there? Pausing still works flawlessly on both browsers.
I hate to say this, but I'm still seeing a color difference in the water on Firefox. Chrome looks good, though. The water color in Chrome matches the background in Firefox, but not the tiles. What a strange compatibility issue to have.
I also tried Neverwell Moor on Internet Explorer 8 and 9. I feel all dirty now. It doesn't load on IE 8 and has minor errors on IE 9 - specifically a lack of sound and the coin HUD background not rendering correctly. Of course, trying to coerce IE to run this game would probably double your production time anyway.
If you are having trouble making maps, I might be able to help. I'm not the most dependable person, but if you give me a description of what each map requires, I might be able to make a few for you.
I am playing it with Firefox 13.0.1 on Windows 7 x64. I'm surprised I forgot to put that.
Changing Rachel's collision box to a circle is a good idea, better than my idea of beveling the edges of all square collision boxes. Though, if you change Rachel's, leave the NPCs' square. That should make them easy enough to push around. ;-)
I like Jessica's new AI; she seems very lively. My only suggestion is that she turn to look at you when you speak to her.
As for animation speed, I have to disagree with you that the changes are due to map size. Upon entering Rachel's ground floor for the first time the coin spins faster than in her room although it is larger and similarly complex. Likewise, if you return to her room the coin begins spinning even faster.
Strangely, I just noticed that leaving the Neverwell window slows the animation back down and reduces skipping. Leaving and returning twice decreased the animation speed and occurrence of skipping back down to original levels. Unfortunately, it did not entirely get rid of the skipping which does occur rarely even before changing maps.
Edit: Could you also tell me the name and composer of the song you used for Rachel's house? I just love it.
The game looks excellent so far. So much done in so little time! The art is great; as is the physics and interaction in general. I'd love to see a quest or activity that involves pushing people around.
I noticed a few things while playing that might help:
There is a bug that causes the player's character to periodically skip forward when moving which gets worse every time the player changes locations (the island, her room, downstairs). Also animations increase in speed every change in location (as seen in the spinning coin and Rachel's blinking) which may be related.
Bumping against tiles with square collision shapes feels funny because a slight difference in position can be the difference between passing beside the object and not passing by it. This is especially noticable with trees which at least should probably not have square collision bodies.
The color of plain water tiles seems to be slightly different than that of other tiles with water.
I have to agree: the polygons seem a little confusing. Another graphic representation might be better, for example a shape that is made up of as many pieces as it must be landed on. I'm imagining a series of concentric rings like a bull's eye.
However, I think the numbers would be fine with a different look. Maybe if they looked technological or spacey or even earthy to represent planets.
Also, the Help page could be a little more thorough. I'm not sure I could have figured out how to play without the explanation in your post.
Here are more Mallet sound effects: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B3DZsRNd7EM8MHNZMC00alo1OWs/edit. You already have mallet_swing1 and mallet_whomp1. The swishes are by artisticdude and can be found here: http://opengameart.org/content/swishes-sound-pack.
On one of the pages in the prologue the word " inhabitant's " should be " inhabitants' ". Once again, nit-picky.
Anything I can do in the dwindling time left?
Earth looks awesome! I love what you did with the fishing village. Who lives in the luxurious manor, may I ask? I enjoyed the backstory as well. It's so sweet that Rachel is based on your friend. Does she often carry around mallets?
I'm really sorry; I may have misspoke when I said I have attribution information. I don't have all the attributions. I only made them for things that I had downloaded, which at the time did not include the entire contest entry pack. I'll upload what attribution info I have.
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8YnlyelVNVzVXSkE
A few more notes:
On the topic of the book, the buying of it worked flawlessly. I like Shakespeare, too. And all had to do to get it was continually hit my friends with an oversized hammer!
Yes, "misc.png" is by Matthew Nash. It can be found at this location: http://opengameart.org/content/misc-32x32-tiles. I have a series of text files with attribution information (file names, creator, source, collaborators, etc.) if you would like them or an aggregate file of the information.
It's unlikely that I'll be able to help today, but is there anything in particular that you would want done just in case? I'd like to know a little about the storyline and Rachel, both out of curiousity and the fact that it may aid my efforts (help me help you, ha ha).
Now for notes on the game.
I happened upon the website of Radomir Dopieralski ( aka Sheep ) - who is the person that made your sprites, right? - and it mentioned it contained other works of his. I didn't look through them, but I was wondering if you had. It might yield a useful sprite or two.
Edit: I just made a very quick sound effect for the Mallet. I also have it in WAV format if you would prefer that.
Because I'm failing miserably at using Git and bitbucket, I think I'll just upload files to Google Drive. (Which, itself, I started using today.)
I'm not sure where the roads will go, but I know where the doors will. I made a little shed and I'll add the general store later. Could the little house be Rachel's? I also uploaded a slightly better (and smaller) village.
Edit: The village now has a general store. Why yes, that is an anvil on the table. Why do you ask?
Village: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8eDlfaURmaHd1T0U
Shed: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8dXNWYmRRN3l5amc
Store: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8cnd3UUN4ZVF1aDA
Love the giant hammer, by the way. I also like that Jessica attacks you in retaliation. It always confused me that NPCs so rarely respond to the players' actions in games.
Danger, Will Robinson! Both Firefox and Chrome won't move past the MelonJS loading page. Both say your new baddies are undefined.
Firefox:
game.BaddieEntities is undefined @ http://parasyte.kodewerx.org/projects/lpcgame/js/game.js:116
Chrome:
Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 (Not Found) http://parasyte.kodewerx.org/projects/lpcgame/js/entities/baddies.js
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'Snake' of undefined game.js:116
I'm still learning automapping, collision mapping, and getting my pipeline to match yours, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to upload a finished map. I've uploaded the fishing village that to my Google Drive in case it might still be of use. The fishing village map should go in your "lpcgame\resources\map" folder. I also uploaded an "img" folder that contains the extra tilemaps needed. Better file handling in Tiled would be very useful.
TMX: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3DZsRNd7EM8N2FLUi1LLUZ3S0U
img folder: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B3DZsRNd7EM8ZXJ6R1lDYzc5N3M/edit
Edit: I had uploaded another Fishing village.tmx, but this one is much easier to deal with.
Also, I'll upload an image if that would be easier. The road is still straight, but I would have to modify Matthew Nash's tiles for it to be otherwise. Plus, villages are regularly linear in real life.
I thought I'd make a fishing village, following the island theme. I put an example below.
Are you using any tilesets in particular? In the map below I used the base assets, daneeklu's farming and fishing tileset, and Guido Bos's houses. Also, will the whole outside area be on a single map? That will be important to know if I continue to aid you.
Removing requestAnimationFrame seems to have fixed the problem with animation speed and skipping increasing. Unfortunately skipping does still occur "semi-frequently" on Firefox, but what's programming without a good memory leak here and there? Pausing still works flawlessly on both browsers.
I hate to say this, but I'm still seeing a color difference in the water on Firefox. Chrome looks good, though. The water color in Chrome matches the background in Firefox, but not the tiles. What a strange compatibility issue to have.
I also tried Neverwell Moor on Internet Explorer 8 and 9. I feel all dirty now. It doesn't load on IE 8 and has minor errors on IE 9 - specifically a lack of sound and the coin HUD background not rendering correctly. Of course, trying to coerce IE to run this game would probably double your production time anyway.
If you are having trouble making maps, I might be able to help. I'm not the most dependable person, but if you give me a description of what each map requires, I might be able to make a few for you.
I am playing it with Firefox 13.0.1 on Windows 7 x64. I'm surprised I forgot to put that.
Changing Rachel's collision box to a circle is a good idea, better than my idea of beveling the edges of all square collision boxes. Though, if you change Rachel's, leave the NPCs' square. That should make them easy enough to push around. ;-)
I like Jessica's new AI; she seems very lively. My only suggestion is that she turn to look at you when you speak to her.
As for animation speed, I have to disagree with you that the changes are due to map size. Upon entering Rachel's ground floor for the first time the coin spins faster than in her room although it is larger and similarly complex. Likewise, if you return to her room the coin begins spinning even faster.
Strangely, I just noticed that leaving the Neverwell window slows the animation back down and reduces skipping. Leaving and returning twice decreased the animation speed and occurrence of skipping back down to original levels. Unfortunately, it did not entirely get rid of the skipping which does occur rarely even before changing maps.
Edit: Could you also tell me the name and composer of the song you used for Rachel's house? I just love it.
The game looks excellent so far. So much done in so little time! The art is great; as is the physics and interaction in general. I'd love to see a quest or activity that involves pushing people around.
I noticed a few things while playing that might help:
I have to agree: the polygons seem a little confusing. Another graphic representation
might be better, for example a shape that is made up of as many pieces as it must be landed on. I'm imagining a series of concentric rings like a bull's eye.
However, I think the numbers would be fine with a different look. Maybe if they looked technological or spacey or even earthy to represent planets.
Also, the Help page could be a little more thorough. I'm not sure I could have figured out how to play without the explanation in your post.
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