A Hole In the Earth (Blaster Master type game)

hey

the camera move on the start is really cool

i mean there are 3 or 4 tiles in the cave graphics, sometimes it will be nice to see some unique elements, which will give more mood, in my opinion

paralaxe looks nice too

Thanks for the suggestion plemo! I was thinking of adding some water dripping down the walls and some boxes and stuff lying around, but got distracted with optimizations.

UI and AI are next on my plate, before I continue with the set dressing, but I will certainly run with your suggestion.

I appreciate you testing the game so far.

This new version looks a good deal better. My suggestion for the look would be that grass looks somewhat strange underground. It would probably make more sense to have rocks or some sort of debris there.

Controls are terrible.

Attention Z and Y. My keyboard has an other layout. Choose keycontrols which fits to every layout.

Gamepad controls you should overwork too.

Somebody

Thanks a bunch!

I had tried a few things like rocks instead of grass, but found that the whole thing looked very bland, having mostly brown colouring. Most of the grass is found under stalactites, which I tried to convince myself would have formed from water carrying minerals underground, and the seeds came off the feet of previous explorers.

Maybe I'll have to brainstorm a few more ideas.

JamesXXXYZ

I'm really sorry to have hard coded the z key to shoot. The plan was to be able to bind keys as you please, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I didn't know about the z and y being switched on German and Austrian keyboards.

Did you have similar issues with the gamepad? Would you mind telling me which one you were using?

I've only tested it with a 360 gamepad, as that's what everyone I know has.

ryanrybot

Gamepad is no problem, but your button layout is not good. I don't like 360 gamepad. I bought it for game development.

I think the game is very uinque in style and gameplay, that's very good. I think the enemy AI has potential. Just let them do damage and/or give the player a reward (score would be a most common solution) for killing them, then this behavior will make it very fun to hunt them down. Also, the game has a cool style!

I strongly recommend going for more common controls, though. I played with keyboard and yeah... Z is on the German keyboard layout in the upper row, not on the left bottom (I just noticed this has been mentioned above. I leave it here yet ). And all that confusion with S, X, and A... typical controls are E/F for enter vehicle, W,A,S,D or arrow keys and space/Ctrl/Alt for firing/jumping. Even when you can re-bind the keys as a player, I personally think it's important players can start withi intuitive controls right away.

It's just a suggestion, of course, it's up to you

Somebody

Thanks a bunch!

I had tried a few things like rocks instead of grass, but found that the whole thing looked very bland, having mostly brown colouring. Most of the grass is found under stalactites, which I tried to convince myself would have formed from water carrying minerals underground, and the seeds came off the feet of previous explorers.

Maybe I'll have to brainstorm a few more ideas.

I think you could have (upper) areas with vertical openings with shafts of light falling down through them and some water dripping down. That would explain the grass (since it needs light to grow) and also how there's some light in the caves. Besides looking cool, that is.

Thanks dhoeke for the advice! Coming from the days of using arrows to control the character (30+ years ago), I forget that a younger crowd might be more accustomed to FPS controls, which are closer to what you described.

I'll see what I can do about making it more intuitive.

That's a good idea Somebody! I was thinking of adding flood lights and other random things to show that the place was previously occupied, but light shafts through the ceiling is a good idea to add some more visual interest.

I can't say it will be implemented in the next build, as I need to get more of the mechanics down, but I'll try your idea when I get back to sprucing up the environment.

Thanks a bunch guys! You've been very helpful!

Gamepad: Vehicle

Right Shoulder button: Fire

Left shoulder button: drops bombs

Right Shoulder trigger: Jump

left shoulder trigger: cannon up.

exit: a

And thx that you have no description for Gamepad. Everything i have to find out.

Right and left Shoulder buttons are above the triggers

I don't know why you don't use these.

That's quite a unique setup there, —

I have never seen a control scheme like that in a platform game. When I get around to having customizable controls, you can happily set that up yourself.

As for the shoulder buttons, they were going to be for weapon selection, I just haven't gotten that far yet.

The game is still really early in development, so you'll need to be a little patient while I get around to adding all the features.

I'm sorry to say that I got NOTHING done that I said I would. Instead I tried to redo the aiming for the vehicle; specifically when using the analog sticks.

If someone with a 360 controller would be so kind as to test the new aiming controls, that would be awesome.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/305 ... index.html

The main gun should follow the thumbstick rotation. It's slightly glitchy, but thought I would get some feedback on how it feels before I committed to polishing it up.

The controls for the gamepad are currently,

Thumbstick: moves, aims cannon

X: shoot

A: jump

Y: enter/exit vehicle

B: bombs (that don't work)

Right Trigger: Locks vehicle in place

The vehicle lock is for when you want to aim, but not move.

Now, I'm not married to this control scheme yet, so please be as honest on how it feels. I'm kind of partial to old controls myself, so I may revert back to that. We'll see.

Anyway, let me know! <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

Terrible with gamepad. Left and right with one stick and with the other control the turret. right trigger shoot button and left trigger bomb = can activate both at the same time or

x=shoot a=bomb. trigger to jump

I think that you have to many things to control for a standart platform game.

if possible you can test my game too.

Thanks for the feedback JamesXXXYZ!

I really wanted to have 360 degree movement with the cannon, and the more I play with it, the more I think this is for the best. In my dev build, there's 8 direction aiming with the keyboard and d-pad now (plus full 360 with the analog stick), which makes it almost exactly like Super Metroid. The only difference being that in Super Metroid the shoulder buttons aim up/down, where in my control scheme it locks you in place to aim, which I feel gives you better control if you want to aim in any direction but not move from your position (which you could not do in Super Metroid).

I really wanted to shy away from having a dual analog stick control scheme, as I find that it makes the face buttons much less accessible, when I really needed all the buttons readily available.

The controls are slightly more complicated than a traditional platformer, but I'm hoping that the gameplay will necessitate it.

Granted, there are some kinks to work out, but I feel in my loins that this is the best control scheme for what I am trying to achieve.

When i control a character then it is ok. It isn't possible to drive left and shoot in the other direction. if you like this control then better do something like only when tank stops cannon can turn around. Left trigger is better to stop like handbrake.