Panjoust - A New Simple Platformer

[MarkoeZ]

hahaha, sorry i thought that was obvious.

About the turnaround graphics, i never thought that it needed one, seems to play fine for me. But i'm very curious if more people find that disturbing.
The bottom bar: was allready gone when you typed that post

Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming!

Cheers

 

[fusion_power]

hahaha, sorry i thought that was obvious.

About the turnaround graphics, i never thought that it needed one, seems to play fine for me. But i'm very curious if more people find that disturbing.
The bottom bar: was allready gone when you typed that post

Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming!

Cheers

No, I don't find the animation disturbing, I just wanted to make a suggestion. It's up to the graphic/Animation artist to decide what he want to do.

 

[Xenu]

I know it's just an early demo but after playing it for a few hours I thought I give some feedback.

Overall the gameplay is really great, there are some thing that i think possibly could make it better. As it is now you can only control the birds flight upwards. And since you attack from above it makes it sometimes hard to make the attack. What if you could descend more rapidly by pressing down. That would give you better control when attacking an enemy or hitting platforms. However that would also dramaticly change the gameplay so I don't know if that is what you would want. It's just a thought. You could also make the descend cost "flight-energy" so that it would be something you had to plan carefully.

You pick up stones just by passing them which makes it a bit annoying when you don't want a stone. You need to drop it and then move quickly away so you don't accidently pick it up again. I think it would be better if you pick up a stone by pressing a button.

Flying with a stone is very hard. I would suggest making the stones just a bit lighter.

Some random things:
On the first level you can just pass the ice-column. So why do you want to break it?
You also get a point just by passing the seesaw, shouldn't you get a point by breaking the ice-column?

Suggested features:
Bombs, we gotta have bombs, that when you pick them up a timer starts and if you don't drop it at the right time you blow up (with a nice animated explosion)

Bonus stages were you can't die but collect extra point by showing of your amazing flying skills.

Well that was some suggestions, great game so far and I look forward to seing a new tech demo soon.

 

[Masterfurbix]

The icicle will collide eventually, so no worries there.

Flight downwards... meh, I don't like the way it would probably work, you would end up wasting 3-4 strokes just to keep yourself from flying into the abyss after the initial downward thrust.

Bombs would be easy on MY end of this deal, but I'd rather wait until we have everything SOLID before we add more gimmicks to the gameplay.

 

[PokeParadox]

Bonus stages were you can't die but collect extra point by showing of your amazing flying skills.

This suggestion I like! ^__^

 

[Xenu]

Flight downwards... meh, I don't like the way it would probably work, you would end up wasting 3-4 strokes just to keep yourself from flying into the abyss after the initial downward thrust.

Well the downward thrust would only effeciently be used when attacking an enemy from above or making a swift landing on a plattform. So therefore you wouldn't waste any upstrokes unless you miss your target.

Also found a bug:

On the first level if you pick up a rock and fly to the left and drop it onto the "Porcupine" and then land on the platform the rock will be somewhat still attached to you but hang in the air below you. After a few upstrokes the stone will automaticly fall of.

 

[MarkoeZ]

I know it's just an early demo but after playing it for a few hours I thought I give some feedback.

Overall the gameplay is really great, there are some thing that i think possibly could make it better. As it is now you can only control the birds flight upwards. And since you attack from above it makes it sometimes hard to make the attack. What if you could descend more rapidly by pressing down.

You pick up stones just by passing them which makes it a bit annoying when you don't want a stone. You need to drop it and then move quickly away so you don't accidently pick it up again. I think it would be better if you pick up a stone by pressing a button.

Flying with a stone is very hard. I would suggest making the stones just a bit lighter.

Some random things:
On the first level you can just pass the ice-column. So why do you want to break it?
You also get a point just by passing the seesaw, shouldn't you get a point by breaking the ice-column?

Suggested features:
Bombs, we gotta have bombs, that when you pick them up a timer starts and if you don't drop it at the right time you blow up (with a nice animated explosion)

Bonus stages were you can't die but collect extra point by showing of your amazing flying skills.

Well that was some suggestions, great game so far and I look forward to seing a new tech demo soon.

Hmm, i don't see the advantage of downward thrust. As you said, it changes gameplay quite a lot. But i'll give it a try anyway.
I made picking up stones automatically on purpose, it's another obstacle to avoid if you don't want it. But once again: curious about other opinions.
The ice column will hold you back, i just turned it off so i can playtest without breaking the thing every time
And the seesaw, what's that?? (not native english remember? ; )

Bonus point collecting levels: really like that too!! will be implemented

Bombs: was allready suggested, and might make it into the final game. But like Amigo said, need to get the stuff we have working solid first.

Also found a bug:

On the first level if you pick up a rock and fly to the left and drop it onto the "Porcupine" and then land on the platform the rock will be somewhat still attached to you but hang in the air below you. After a few upstrokes the stone will automaticly fall of.

Not sure. I'll look into it once i get home. Seems like a simple bug to fix.

Thanks for al the playtesting, comments and thinking along!

Cheers!

 

[Xenu]

The seesaw is the catapult thing where you put the stone in. You get a point when you just walk past it.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Ah! i noticed that i sometimes had a point too much, must be that little bug. Should be easy enough to fix when i get home.

Thanks again!

 

[Xenu]

Another little weird thing I noticed was that the stone is not really attached to the bird it just floats really close to it so when you fly really fast the stone acts like a rubberband and it looks like it floats in mid air. It's nothing major and it doesn't effect the gameplay it just looks a little weird if you fly fast.

 

[Jourdy288]

Hey guys, are we going to have a pterodactyl fly in like the original version? I think we should have that (a defeatable enemy) but after comes perhaps an invincible dragon, like Evil Otto.
I'm sorry, BTW, for not producing an egg yet, I need to keep reminding myself to get around to it.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Can't thank you enough for the extensive playtesting. This is a small issue i was going to resolve, forgot about, and currently just don't notice anymore

I recently started to actually use my ToDo list so hopefully glitches like this won't stay around that long anymore.

Oh and does someone know about a decent free svn server that allows the contents to be private? just about anyone who asks me will get access, but i don't like the complete openness of google. At least not at this stage of the project.

 

[foxblock]

You could create a project repository on google and tell nobody about it
but I think github may have the features you are looking for

foxblock out

Edit: http://github.com/

 

[Xenu]

I'm really trying to break your game

On the first level it is possible to fly straight through the ice-spikes from the left to right. On some occasions I even found myself on top of the spikes - gliding over the top of the screen.

 

[MarkoeZ]

I'm really trying to break your game

On the first level it is possible to fly straight through the ice-spikes from the left to right. On some occasions I even found myself on top of the spikes - gliding over the top of the screen.

Hmm that's a new one. The gliding on top is probably an easy fix, i just have to position the spikes a bit higher (edit: nah, fixed it the proper way). Going to look into the flying through, never encountered that bug.

Thanks!

Edit: Are you talking about the first 2 spikes? or the ones next to the big icicle? I can't replicate the bug here with the first spikes, and the ones next to the big icicolumn are part of the column and not active yet. You have the windows version i suppose?

Edit 2: oh you mean right to left I'm on it!

Edit 3: Fixed, both.

Hey guys, are we going to have a pterodactyl fly in like the original version? I think we should have that (a defeatable enemy) but after comes perhaps an invincible dragon, like Evil Otto.

If someone draws a good pterodactyl or dragon that is of the same style as the current graphics, most definately. I allready wanted a larger flying creature. But Dragons_Slayer is currently busy with school and other projects. And drawing a flying animated character, properly, is very very hard.
So if anyone is interested?

Cheers!

 

[MarkoeZ]

You also get a point just by passing the seesaw, shouldn't you get a point by breaking the ice-column?

It appeared not to be a bug, but simply an egg placed behind the seesaw :rolleyes:

 

[MarkoeZ]

New video. 2 minutes of the latest build after some improvements, with music.

Panjoust march youtube

Enjoy!

 

[Masterfurbix]

Holy shit that music, Getting to work on a jungle level ASAP

EDIT: okay, I got a little sidetracked, but this is JUST as necessary

I'm redoing the complete menu to fit the hand-drawn feel of the rest of the game.

 

[marshal]

Love the video. The music is great, it really ads something to it.

 

[bzar]

Wow. The music and graphics are great, and the gameplay seems solid. Very nice!

I was thinking about the egg indicator in the lower left corner. Could it be replaced with an icon-based approach? Maybe show the missing eggs in order (by X-coordinate)? That would create a limit for the number of eggs in a level though. Another possibility would be to only show the number of eggs remaining in a level. It's not really necessary to know the number of eggs already collected, is it? The most common reason to look at the egg-indicator would be to know how many eggs are remaining.

On the same topic, are the fonts used in the timer and egg indicator monospace? If not, I'd recommend using monospace fonts or manually rendering the letters at even distances, if the text changes often, like in the case of the timer or egg indicator. If the letter positions change with content, you have variable-sized UI elements that change their size on their own without user interaction or other functional reason. This draws the player's attention to those parts of the screen, which can hinder gameplay.

Just some thoughts