Early Beta trailer up. Game is still coming along, but its slow going what with the job and other such projects a goin on.

youtube.com/watch

dl.dropbox.com/u/41449088/index.html

I've had these two niggling issues with some pinned behavior so I kinda wonder what I'm doing wrong or what else I should try to alleviate. Here's a gameplay video with most of the problems I'm talking about here:

I'm the crazy bee game guy. Pegs are spawned at beginning of match and each peg is assigned a random health value that I store in the peg. I then shoot that value to a text field and the text is spawned to each peg. So when the peg dies, the text box dies with it. My problem is (and it happens randomly...grr) the LAST peg to be knocked off the board will go away but its text box is left behind for a while then "may" disappear. The part in the video is at ~1:30. The Peg gets slowly sapped of HP and goes to zero(which usually you don't even see since the peg is told do destroy itself at 0) and the "0" remains to the very end.

Secondly, when a peg goes to zero, it spawns pollen. Pollen accrues a multiplier and has a quota to be captured, so I slap a multiplier count in a pinned text box and a flashing arrow pointing at each pollen to help distinguish importance.

When Pollen is on-screen > Spawn PollenMultiplier Text

Trigger Once             > Spawn Looky Arrow

But not every Pollen spawns with these two, some come out with nothing while one right next to it has both tags. This happens quite frequently throughout the video, just look for a naked pollen ball! You'll also notice that the pollen might randomly spawn the two assets somewhere on its journey downward. Lower right hand on this clip, the peg spawns naked, but right before it is harvested it acquires the text and arrow:

Hesitant to post a capx but if anyone thinks they can sort it out PM me and I can share. Or throw ideas at me to try. Oh the current game is here:

The Wrong Sort Of Bees v.80

Still cranking away. Changed Bee pic, added pollen marker to see better, decreased bounce on attract, added temporary push back for bees when they run into puff, added physics to shooter so you can kinda push some bees around, as well as flick dead ants, etc.

Play current version here:

dl.dropbox.com/u/41449088/The%20Wrong%20Sort%20of%20Bees/index.html

Have you experimented with collide at offset? You might be able to give some leeway with that.

The spikes are weirdy lookin and acting. There are a number of ways you can show 'do not touch this surface" that doesn't have to be spikes, especially since you aren't doing any death anims. Maybe since the blocks have a lightning symbol on them they are electrified intermittently?

Beyond that, fun little platformer.

Ha, interesting. Would love to see some more interaction. Something that invites you to experiment. but nice distraction.

Played it and beat it! Good challenge, ramped up nicer. its ok to frustrate the player as long as you show them there is a way of doing it if they try harder.

The umbrella and the jetpack are super cute additions. At first the jetpack was a bit overkill (made the spikes TOo easy) but other obstacles you couldn't rely on it as much so it kinda evened out. May want to consider having a finite thrust instead of a?

i like the fact that you can either pick the umbrella or the jetpack so you can either focus on dodging the rain or on missing the spikes. But I did notice you can jump with the jetpack turned on and quickly switch to theumbrella and you would float down with the speed of the jetpack but the protection of the umbrella. But again, these new things really only helped the first few obstacles, once you got to the teleportals it was all on memory, and then a final fling with frustration with the lasers at the end but even that was overcome with enough patience.

Good job!

Just played it for first time and I got that tutorial bug. at first i thought it was reminding me to build a defense (which I hadn't at the time) but it wouldn't go away.

Went to save after adjusting defense and got kicked from server. which is fine, i was going to stop.

I like it so far. It's a fun enough take on the idea and could get a lot of people playing. I thought the sounds were good, but the music was a bit of a strange hybrid. I'd probably go more orchestral and perhaps a wee bit more inviting in the beginning. You use music to create mood, evoke an atmosphere, or provide feedback to the player as to whats going on. yet the artwork seems to say fun, light, romp in a middle earth forest but the music is end of the world, percolating fever. Maybe that plays more into yet unrevealed story? its a quality track just not one I'd put up front, maybe as the player progresses (every set of levels or so) they hear different music tracks.

I eh... it doesn't seem to be much beyond a concept that's for sure. Are you looking for suggestions as to what to do next?

Well, it seems to be a missile command game on its side,yeah? i don't know what advice to give. I'm sure you are gonna add, statistics, goals, maybe a score, some audio, updated graphics and some fun surprises here and there?

The word "Defense" in a game title these days leads people to believe its a "tower defense" type game where you set up turrets, etc. No reason that can't work but there doesn't seem to be a hint of it in your game, so consider revising, maybe once more mechanics are stabilized.

and wouldn't it be neat if this had something to do with DNA even if completely fictional? Maybe some kind of bizarre protein that is trying to destroy the DNA or alter the makeup to create something else. At least there you have a win/fail state.

Cool, looking forward to try it again. And I'd vote for original Arabic text with english translations however you see fit.

why not WASD or arrow keys to move? Why Rts style movement for what appears to be a survival action game. And the only way to mitigate an attack is to flee from the vicinity? And when you attack the player stops moving? never seemed like a time when you should attack since you are WAY to vulnerable while doing so. No defense? No shield?

How about WASD or arrow to navigate, left mouse to swing sword (which I couldnt' really see), right click shield, middle arrows. At least that way i feel empowered even if the odds are against me.

Yeah, dig the presentation and most of the mechanics. But i too was stuck at a specific spot for what seemed like hundreds of times trying to figure out a pattern, but sometimes there wasn't. Give the player little bits of platforms to land on? Ok, cool. Throw acid rain on the player to get them on their toes so people aren't just jumping willy-nilly. Except...

Except the fact that there ISN'T a pattern to the acid rain makes it not a question of timing and dexterity but patience and luck. I think the balance of those things are off here because there wasn't much I could do to stop, learn, improve my understanding or my skills and move on now armed with that knowledge. Just felt like waiting for a well timed move was just as valid a tactic as hurtling forward hoping you get lucky. Didn't findt that part fun. Maybe some of the writing on the wall put it into context but as a skill game I got frustrated way earlier than I should have, IMO.

Alright, gave it another shot. I think I was just pressing the jump button too early or not long enough or something because I'm able to clear stuff now easier. Though it took a few tries to realize how important the jump angle is at the very end.

Actually, it feels kind of counter-intuitive now that I think about it. You have the player pressing left and right to adjust speed. And after a few runs you realize you probably need some good speed to make it off the ramp properly so your instinct is to hold down right as much as you can and even moreso when you hit the ramp, when actually you have to pick some time kinda before or during the ramp to switch that up in favor of picking a launch angle.

The presentation is pretty rough but I can see you thought out a lot of how one screen, menu, help window goes into another so thats good. I would however remove mouse control entirely. You have the player using the arrow keys to adjust speed but you have the space bar for jump. Well that ensures that your player is using both hands really. To have to pick up your hand to move the mouse a smidge or click on its button broke the flow, especially with a game like this that seems to feed on constant retries until you "nail it". I would let the player navigate using the left/right/space config for the menus as well. Its awkward to jump back and forth.

Back to the theme then. So first, yeah it would look weird just a static baby image flying so ragdoll fits. It's not done gratuitously such as a lifeless body flung around bending and twisting limbs, etc. Ok, the point is to not throw your baby from a pram by hitting those obstacles, then you are supposed to throw your baby from the pram by hitting a final obstacle which results in the baby hitting multiple obstacles. I think there could be a market for this game but you have to choose whether its "that crazy game where you are supposed to throw your baby from a pram" or "that crazy game where you are not supposed to throw your baby from a pram". I think it may be hard to find an audience who is fine with both, even done up right. Some ideas I had to mitigate this:

-Have the Pram launch with the baby and then the baby jumps out with a parachute hitting the tower?

-A superhero or armor costume might help with letting the player know the baby is safe.

-Make the tower at the end like a pillow fort, or a blanket fort. The whole game is kind of a strange scenario. This could be a series of dreams the baby has so even transitioning the art to a bedroom/crib area at the end could help sell this or other scenarios.

-Play a sound of an adult gasping when the baby launches, but then have the baby giggle as it flies, accompanied by a sigh of relief from the adult.

You don't have to water down your concept to make it more appealing, just have to pitch it the right way. Good luck. I'm also learning a lot about construct and HTML 5 by making my first game and of course playing everyone else's here.