Nixel's Forum Posts

  • AmpedRobot Thanks a ton! You must have dug this thread out from several pages in the forum, appreciate it.

    Glad you enjoyed some of the music, although I won't take credit for it -- also, just so I'm sure, what do you mean by the beginning? Is it the title screen and intro, or maybe the first half of the stage track? I'd be happy to know.

    Press C to shoot! This game is a Mega Man Classic homage, so I definitely didn't forget to include that -- and it's how you expend the energy you absorb, after all! You do make a valid point about difficulty though, especially because I recently made the change so that you can walk past enemies without getting damage. I'll see what I can do with that.

    As for the graphics upgrade, well -- I do genuinely enjoy pixel art, so I'm afraid that won't be too likely. But I'm also developing my interest in 3D, so who knows? Maybe Little Green Soldier will get a 3D revamp -- but that probably means migrating out of Construct 2 to, say, Unity3D.

    In any case, thanks again! Glad you played it.

  • — Whoa, that was fast. Nice one! The bug really is gone now.

    Forgot to mention that I really like the powerups! Very spammable, and it's cool that your character flies backwards or upwards a bit with each shot -- had fun wrecking the whole level with them.

    But! And I'm sorry to point out something else again -- but with this update the game seems to lag very heavily after a while. I'm not sure exactly when it starts happening -- for me it's usually after I use the powerup for a while, maybe half a minute. And I'm also not sure if it's just my laptop's problem, so don't worry about it first -- just putting it out there. If other people start saying the same thing maybe you can check it out!

    Wish the lag wasn't there so I could make it far enough to see the orange sky, from the thumbnail image it looks really great. I'll be back to play more!

  • Hoho, I love this. The game itself is fairly simple but it has so much detail. You didn't have to include brick breaking and wall jumping, but you did and it's awesome! The effects I think really stand out, the explosions and blood splatters make killing aliens really satisfying. I also enjoy the whole egg system, an interesting way to make a high score game out of a single-screen platform shooter. Music is nice too.

    One thing, I seem to be receiving damage in this particular random area (circled in yellow):

    I don't know why, but when I jump into that range I get hurt. Did you accidentally leave some sort of invisible block there for debugging? I died to it in every round. And as a side note, I think the game would be even cooler with an orange sky instead -- or some other color that feels more dangerous than blue.

    Besides that, I enjoyed myself. Great effort!

  • Dammit, I love steampunk and I love pixel art! Pretty excited to see this -- among other things, your first sprite (the huge flying warship) and the town/city background really stand out. That gameplay gif looks awesome, jaw dropped when the buildings came in and the warship floated up.

    Keep it up and keep going, I think this deserves hype!

  • For the typing effect I have all the text on a layout and each line is covered by a strip of black. Then each letter is revealed by moving the black strip right one letter. There are a few ways you can do this though, this was just the first thing that came to mind at the time.

    I made each screen on it's own layout, I found this easier to manage because it avoids mixing all the events and objects together.

    Ooh. Interesting solutions! This is what I was looking for. After I hit enter on my post I realized that it was most likely a single layout with different ScrollTo points, but I'm pleasantly surprised. That's a lot of event sheets!

    I'm gonna try and beat the game on the Arcade tonight. In the meantime -- good luck on any further development!

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  • Ooh -- stylish pixel art, vibrant colors, catchy retro tunes and tough platforming. Checks all my boxes. Voted! Best of luck, I'm really excited to see big retro platformer projects especially in C2.

  • Hey there! I'm a huge sucker for retro platforming games, and I'm enjoying this. Definitely deserves more recognition.

    Had a few runs on the Arcade, and I like most of everything -- perfect ZX spectrum graphics and UI, robust platforming/jetpack controls, and interesting level design.

    One thing though, I realize the game is intended to be difficult to resemble the older classics, but I think taking the player back to the home screen is just a bit too far back, even before the cutscenes. I'm not sure if the ZX spectrum games did this, but I find that it takes away from my (otherwise solid) experience.

    I wanna ask -- how did you achieve that text typing effect (as opposed to all the text showing itself at one go)? It's working beautifully in Prime Mover, and I've always wanted to have it in my game.

    I've also been wondering about the separate screen system you have -- is each screen on a different layout? Or do you just have every screen tiled out on one layout, then scroll to each screen according to player position?

  • Aaaaaand after 4 long years...

    LITTLE GREEN SOLDIER IS ON SCIRRA ARCADE!

    CLICK HERE TO PLAY NOW!

    Finally collected some appropriate free music. Here:

    "Epic Song", "Assignment", "Frantic", "Battle Normal", "B-3" by BoxCat Games is licensed under CC BY 3.0

    A massive thank you to all who have been posting on this thread, giving support or otherwise important feedback. It's been a great introduction to gamedev, and I hope to do much more in the field.

    And if you haven't clicked on that link, well, have a go! I promise it'll be worthwhile!

  • Hi all, Nixel here!

    It's been a full year since I posted here. I'd like to announce that:

    I'm going to upload Little Green Soldier onto the Arcade!

    I think it's time my game tried stepping into the limelight. That, and the fact that Dropbox and Google Drive have BOTH stopped free HTML hosting, yeesh -- the game's gotta be playable somewhere!

    HOWEVER! My one roadblock in posting to the Arcade is in getting my hands on music that I reserve the rights to use. I've been using OSTs from NES titles, but right now I think I'll have to scour all sorts of Royalty-Free whatevers to make this whole thing possible. If anyone knows about good sources of free 8-bit/chiptune/retro music, please share the knowledge, it'll be a massive help to me!

    After a full semester of proper computer science education, I came back for a brawl with the many bugs in my game. Everyone, if you think Construct 2 gets easier with programming knowledge -- I'm not sure I agree! Construct 2 may wipe out difficulties like learning language syntax and avoiding typos, but it does require you to employ the logic in programming, and for that reason alone I think scripting events in C2 stands as a challenge on its own.

    Anyway, I've only managed to pull off these fixes:

    • Fixed that ANNOYING graphical bug for the HP/energy bars, which at low values would have a random sliver of black on their left.
    • Enemy collision damage is no longer a thing! Everyone who has playtested the game found it frustrating and unnecessary. I agree, because I did make the gameplay to be timing-based -- it makes sense to let you also play with the timing to sneak past enemies.
    • Reduced the major bug on Bomber enemies -- where they would sometimes freeze up after throwing bombs -- to rare occurrences. Still trying to figure this out, and it's infuriating.

    I can't say for sure if this project is dead or alive. On one hand, I love everything I've done in it -- I love my character Green, I love the antagonist I've crafted, the backstory that's been swirling around my head all these years -- but I also want to pursue greater dreams in 3D animation. It's a struggle, but for now I'll put this game on pause. I definitely want to revisit this someday -- I have so many plans for it.

    Ratmaster mikewalton206 pabloukiyo CARO I don't know why I didn't reply to you guys all this while, but thank you -- sincerely! Receiving your comments during my long hiatus....it filled me with determination. (For those who catch the reference -- guess what game I just played!)

  • You know for such a simple concept -- essentially a chasing game -- it's....surprisingly addicting! Props to your good execution.

    The enemy chaser (what is that thing?) has just the right settings to be fair, I didn't find myself dying for other reasons than my own slip-ups. I like the progression from solid blocks to jump-thru to destroyed, and the random shifting of blocks into death blocks is a neat idea. All the expected powerups are there, which is nice.

    The whole experience could definitely be improved with some catchy 8-bit music though, if you're still planning to work on these non-performance areas of your game it would be great. On that note, I think that the player sprite could certainly afford to be....less simple. I mean, the enemy sprite is more detailed.

    Because I'm a technical dimwit I don't have much feedback on the performance, just that it works perfectly smooth on my Toshiba laptop (which lags even when running Cave Story) so it's all good over here.

    Overall, great gameplay design -- whether or not you continue to polish this game, I'll be on the lookout for whatever you develop after this!

    Oh and question -- how did you nab a website just for Super Nut Chase? Do you really have to pay for a web domain and all?

  • Hahah, here you are! So this is the next big project you mentioned?

    Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful - the winter stage looks like the stuff of my dreams. A few years back I tried to achieve that look and feel with my snowy village town, but I could never figure out what kind of graphic detail to put in. It looks incredibly rich - well done.

    Whether it's C2 or Unity, I'll be on the lookout for this one! I'm still having fun with IB by the way - university applications had me occupied (even up till this moment), and I've been playing it on and off.

    All the very best!

  • Wow, good lord....didn't expect this thread to be rescued after so long....

    —

    Ratmaster

    piszozo

    frcol

    (And Jessica Q - I have no idea how to quote names with spaces :< Appreciate the green letters if that was intentional )

    EDIT: oh and how could I forget, even though you guys commented a few months back --

    Borgi

    —

    janlindso

    Thanks a billion everyone!!

    And coincidentally, I've just finished my IB exams! I'm ready to get back on Little Green Soldier, 10 whole months to spare on this before college - but I'll still have to put this off a bit, gotta finish those admissions essays first.

    And haha I do understand the orange thing! Someone else mentioned it too - I'm wondering if I should reduce the amount of energy you receive per fireball absorbed.

  • Dang. Excellent boss design, the scrolling part looks incredible, lots of diverse gameplay going on, great everything, etc etc - but I think the music needs extra praise. That miniboss theme just flips all the megaman classic boss themes upside down. Just....wow. I'd rate that as a top 8-bit track any day.

    Level theme at the start sounds great too.

  • Dang, this just keeps getting better and better. I like that despite the clear Megaman influences, you developed a more artsy overall theme to give an original feel to the game.

  • Had to pop in and say this...

    Great game. Interesting gameplay, and the physics is very well adjusted to a good level of challenge. Just enough enemies to keep everything fun. Kudos! I enjoyed it.