Still Alive

So uh, delays, anyone? Yeah, as you might have guessed, the game tests didn't go as well as we had hoped. BUT, we still got some pretty neat feedback!

We have to get those graphics ready pronto, and the physics are more than just a tad broken at the moment. The player keeps sliding around and there's way too much momentum, giving it a reverse Action 52 feeling in all the wrong way (if you don't know what Action 52 is then I'm sorely disappointed in you). We also had OneHand redo the tutorial stage in the last minute so it would match the (scrapped) motherboard backdrop, but because of the lack of proper visual cues most people got disoriented.
Needless to say, we're going back to using the old design. From this, we learned that changing the layout of a stage for the sake of potential aesthetics is a VERY BAD idea, and from now on I'll be fully in charge of designing the stages while OneHand puts them together.

The wall jumping and sliding don't work as they should, and switching weapons with 1, 2 and 3 is very cumbersome with the current controls. The main purpose of dashing is to slide over gaps that have obstacles blocking Polyboy from jumping over them, or to have as a substitute for crawling under tight spaces, but since the player moves like Sonic the Hedgehog it renders dashing obsolete.

We also got a suggestion claiming that we should (I'm not even joking) add a Portal gun for puzzle elements. After we were done marveling over our classmates's remarkable (in)ability to spell, our one week school break started which explains our inactivity. During this time period, we continued to tinker with ideas for the game and decided to add a new element to flesh out the stages a bit: collectibles.



Collectibles will, aside from providing guidance for the player also change the way the game is played to somewhat relate to the story. The objective is to collect Cookies containing information that the fake Polyboy drops to prove the innocense of the real Polyboy so he can regain his reputation.

You can complete a stage without collecting all the Cookies, but similar to the Special Hearts in Yoshi's Story played in Story Mode, you won't be able to open new worlds without collecting a set amount. This will require more exploration but will also allow the stages to be a little shorter as I don't think that either of us will have the time to design and build stages of the Super Mario World calibre.

There will also be a sub-collectible that mostly serves as bait or a sort of subconscious guide to the player, much like the bananas in Donkey Kong Country. Their exact role in the game is uncertain at the moment, they could be used as currency in a shop where you can purchase temporary boosts and upgrades to your health and equipment, but can also be used like coins in Super Mario where you gain an extra life for every X amount of coin.
Regardless of their role, a platformer NEEDS collectibles, because if there's something I learned from playing that abomination known as Metroid: Other M, a game becomes boring and monotone very fast if you don't have some kind of object to casually collect or pick up at regular intervals, even if it's just health packs or ammo.

Right now we're thinking of having Microchips as sub-collectibles, small sparkling potato chips. It would go with the food theme. Now we just need a terrible pun for the health and ammo items and we're all set.


Oh right, and before I forget! We had a bunch of photos taken during the game test, but a lot of people didn't want their faces to be seen on the blog (I don't blame them) and since it already took me half an eternity to convert the 75 pictures to JPEG from NEF one by one I don't feel like spending the other half on coming up with a clever way to censor every single one.
None of the pictures show anything from the game itself anyway (don't look at me, I'm not the photographer) and the quality is really meh. You'd think that a camera that saves all the pictures as NEF-files would at least have the courtesy to make them look halfway decent to spare us the trouble. The nerve of technology these days.


Alright, that's it from us for now. We've sparked some fresh ideas so if everything goes right we should have a new update in a few days covering other topics (looking back at our records I wouldn't count on it though).

/Wasp