Updated build can be accessed here:

http://threesevenhosting.com/builds/11-23-2014/

A couple of notable updates

1. New enemies

2. New terrain elements

3. Gravity and Physics modifying zones

4. Some map UI updates

5. New mission objective (Search and Destroy)

Be sure to check the map for your objectives. Also, ryanrybot, I fixed that bug you pointed out!

Thanks everyone for all the encouraging feedback! Getting to a point where I can start fleshing out some of the other aspects of the game (the level select screen, title screen, mission summary / ranking).

ryanrybot I noticed that too at times, it has to do with switching the animation from the standard running animation to running + shooting. Gonna definitely put a fix to that along with some other bugs. thanks homie.

TKesse - yeah man, I've found that having booleans triggered when a detector picks up an object, and then working out the possible outcomes of the flag combinations (front is yes, bottom is no -> turn right, etc.) is more efficient than working out all the possibilities of detector combinations. you'll probably be detecting more than just a tilemap object, for example, but if all you have to do is activate a flag, it becomes more simple.

— - that's got a real blaster-master vibe to it. did you create those graphics?

ryanrybot - Thanks so much man. Can I see your project somewhere?

Nesteris - I have their behaviors in a larger "Enemies" group and then smaller, enemy specific subgroups, and I just disabled the group(s) as needed. The only thing that I have right now that disables the object time scale is the on screen message function.

looks great man

Nesteris - zone based camera movement was tricky! I found a way to make sure all the enemies are disabled when it's scrolling so that nothing breaks. Eventually I'm going to add crawling (similar to the morph ball in that sense), so I needed crouching to be a little more static as a transitionary state.

Thanks for finding that bug, I'll work on it!

regisRquoi I'd love to drop some music in, haven't found a good resource yet for some free music (even just for testing).

So what I'm trying to accomplish is boiling down the metroid formula into more of a casual kind of game. Lots of small loops, exploring and problem solving. I'll keep that in mind about enemy placement. I've played too much metroid... so sometimes I don't think about that kind of stuff.

Also, regisRquoi, what you mentioned about looping through the level - I felt like that was some of the fun of the original Metroid games. I'm glad you picked up on that! That's sort of the idea behind the 'Metroidvania' genre.

TKesse —

First of all... thanks for saying Geemer. I was starting to wonder if anyone out here was a former 80's gamer or not.

Honestly, for how simple of an enemy that guy was, he was pretty difficult to figure out. Essentially though I have it move 16 pixels in it's current direction, trigger a check which looks for barriers in front and below him using overlapping at offset, which will set the flags for 'front' and 'below' either on or off. at that point, depending on which flags are on or off (a combination of them), they will move in the appropriate direction. I also have them averaging out to the nearest 16x16 grid so that they never really move out of bounds.

I originally had separate objects for checking those collisions, but when I converted this guy over to the crawler family (so I could reproduce the behaviors more efficiently) I ran into problems. checking at offset made things much smoother, and it also cut down on some processing power since each Geemer didn't have it's own forward and bottom checker following them around all the time.

Also I really appreciate the interest you guys have in this project. Here's a new build with some new simple features:

1. Some simple 8bit sounds I made

2. 4 directional aiming

3. A new enemy

4. Teleporters

5. Super basic level select, mostly for my own debugging at this point

6. Addressed the level design issue mentioned by regisRquoi by making it more obvious where jump points were

Everything is still way rough and I haven't spent much time on sprucing up the third level, (I took out level 2 because it was really rough) but enjoy!

http://threesevenhosting.com/builds/11-19-2014/

Just played your demo,

The main problem I noticed would be when I played is that when you pass from a screen to another by jumping, you have no idea where you're going.

I know it might be because it's a 80's style game but, this mechanic was really a thing that annoying and that still is.

(I attached a screen if you don't understand what I mean)

Maybe you could add a plateform that makes the player not falling when he's in the next screen?

I don't know if it's supposed to be a real feature in the full game, but I kinda like the fact that the lvl design makes a loop (you're just doing the level again and again until you find the artefact, in that way you don't have to go back like in some games.)

Not so much other things to say, it runs fine, the art is already fine too by the way (the decor feels a bit uniformly blue though^^)

Keep working on this

Good call man - that's something I've been thinking about addressing. It could come down to something as simple as better level design, but it also could come down to some more complicated level scrolling engine.

And thanks so much - art and everything was built by myself. The blue is sort of my test pallette - maybe I should try some more metal looking colors?

alvarop thanks for the feedback! Definitely trying to take some notes from that late 80's aesthetic.

http://threesevenhosting.com/builds/11-17-2014/

here's a simple demo build... see if you can find all the artifacts! Try out the map too from the pause menu.

arrows keys and zx. some basic and ugly touch controls should show up on tablets/mobiles too, and some hotspots and keyframes will need to be reworked for the running animation.