I said I'd release it before my holidays ended, and here I am with 2 days to spare!

Download The Mighty Stoopid demo (1.3MB, Windows binary only)

Controls are simple; arrow keys to move, Right Ctrl to attack, Space Bar to jump and continue at dialog box prompts. P to pause. While paused, P again to unpause or Esc to quit.

You can change the screen update method in the main menu; using page flipping or triple buffering gives you hardware accelerated blits which keeps the game at 85 fps for me (screen refresh rate). Double buffering is a lot slower for me. If your computer is much worse than mine (600Mhz) then it may not work too good. Please let me know if there's any problems; my hardware accelerating setup is a little experimental (works fine for me though ).

I'm going to mention a few little points about the game, just to answer questions that will inevitably pop up. Very minor spoilers, but if you wish to keep yourself pure, go play the game first before reading on.

I guess that's it. I also guess I forgot some stuff, but that'll do for now Hit me with your comments; I am ravenous for constructive feedback. Frame rate and system specs would be nice too, btw ...</li>

Ugh... about 75 on my computer... must be the refresh rate

Somehow I slid under a dude when he pulled his gun out (he was running the wrong way...) and I went to duck, the bullet went the wrong way!

I'll play some more at home though.

[edit] Good thing there was no music, got some DDR music streaming, and right now a 74 minute song is playing.

Noooooo!

Is that a problem?

Could you clarify that? You can pass through most enemies without taking damage (unless they actively attack you), and I've never seen a bullet go the wrong way yet ...

I have a friend who's willing to mirror it, but I want to make sure it works first. Sounds like MB's having no problems, anyway. Well, any other volunteers are welcome.

EDIT: Well, ain't MB a mind reader

Here
Hopefully Chris don't mind I mirror his demo for him

[edit] Well, I passed through him and ducked just before that, so when I stopped, I was passed him and the dude was pointing his gun away from me, and the bullet still hit me.

[edit2] Heh, This is the next big free game, why not

Can you reproduce it? I assume you were very close to the point of touching ...

Well, the demo is free ...

I'll see if I can when I get home.

Maybe when I get home I can beat the first level with out losing all my men?

Can you use the jump kick on ground targets? or could my timing be off?

You can jumpkick the troopers (dudes with guns) and chargers (redheads). A jumpkick and combo will kill a trooper nicely. The guys hiding under the manhole covers (manhole sniper) need to be hit from behind with a trip when they pop up. Oh, and the dudes in the cars (donut drivers) are technically moving platforms; hop on for a ride and kick their heads in

We want punch combos!

You have a punch-kick-kick combo for now. Just to show it's working And because I'm lazy and recycled the trip

Nah, it should be punch-punch-punch-uppercut-fireball ... oooh, and then add a shoryuken move!

I had all sorts of cool combos planned, but no time. This engine lends itself well to the fighter I'm going to make though TMS won't get many combos at all, but Oblio in his game will be Bruce fscking Lee ...

It crashes!

Thanks Miquel!

200+ frames for some parts in Double Buffering!
Nice flexible map structure and smooth animations. But I think that his punch is not far enough away and I often ended up jumping on the trooper hitting him and ending up behind him because of momentum and then getting shot in the back.

Right control is a bit tricky on my keyboard though and it didn't see my joypad. :/

But it's got a lot of potential, really smooth scrolling and gameplay. Keep at it!

Matthew: Damn. There's a elusive bug in there I haven't been able to track down yet (this is why I was asking about debuggers). It's about as rare as Mew (I haven't seen it in three days), so just play again for now

RP: Yeah, the player's control needs tweaking a bit. It was one of the things I just left for now in favour of releasing a demo within your lifetime Sorry it missed your joypad; the game only has the loosest of support right now (doesn't work for the menu or dialogs right now either ).

Nice work Chris. But why does it stop after that space ship appears. And I cant even go back after that point.

FPS 64 on my system in all cases. My system much higher than 600Mhz its is 2400 MHz.

You can't keep going until you kill the ship. Watch for a gap in the grenade launching, run under (or just be there in the first place) and hit the red spot 10 times. Then you can keep going.

I get an illegal operation error!

What color depth do you set it to? For some reason, my comp can't handle 16bpp...:(

Oh yeah; I forgot about that. Hang on; I shall remedy ...

Just make an exe...I don't wanna spend 6min downloading...:P

Finally...a demo of this much anticipated game...(I've actually wanted to see this!)

I didn't get to play too much, I'm on lunch break. I just got to the big hill where the red-faced guys come to get you. I love how the attacks go - especially the jumping ones Yay!

I thought it was really cool - with the guy in the manhole; after you kill him. Very neato. Good way to keep the player surprised

I'd post a much longer review and all that, but it's off to work I go! Maybe when I get back. Good job.

[edited out because Chris was able to make a <500KB zip with just the exe]

I wonder how much this will affect my bandwidth? Maybe it will take a chunk out of it

[edit] my copy of the zip has the 15/16 bpp friendly exe now.

16bpp/15bpp friendly EXE attached. I'll update the zip now. Thanks for updating, MB

Anyone try it with a joystick yet?

EDIT: Attachment deleted; everyone who needs it has it or can get it from the main zip.

K3WL!!!1
18%...25%...30%...34%...40%...52%...58%...64%...
70%...77%...79%...83%...89%...95%...98%...Done!
tries it

Cool! Pretty neat...
Um...I only get 9fps, though?

Just one thing: If you jump over a guy, and they shoot, the bullet goes up, but the gun is still horizontal...I'm sure you've seen this, but I just wanted to make sure!

Otherwise, with some better artwork (:P) it'll be good!

I know; I'm not sure I care to change it yet. If it gets too annoying with the final artwork, I'll do something about it.

Try a better computer? One of the other screen update methods may help, but if your system sucks (and IIRC, it does) then, uh, sorry

Anyone beat the boss yet? The bonus level is where things get really interesting

You know what I would like? Better gamepad layout, or customizable controls.

Right now, "punch" is on buttons 2 and 4 - my gamepad looks like this:

. 6_____|______5
. (/ |      4 \)
. | -+-    3 2 | 
. |  |.----.1  |
. |  /      \  |
.  /        /

Note how the buttons are laid out. This makes control really crappy, since I can't hover my thumb over the jump button and have punch at the tip of my thumb.

Yeah, like I said, the joypad support is pretty crappy. It's in there for the sake of being in there right now, really Unless the joypad works really well for you, I recommend the keyboard for now (it's what I'm using )

Damn homing bullets! Shooting at me in the sewer! >_<

23: Just up an exe where buttons 2 and 3 map to punch, and buttons 1 and 4 map to jump and all will be swell.

Just to understand you, button 1 would be joy[0].button[0], button 2 is joy[0].button[1], etc?

Yes
[edit] If not, X-G has a messed up controller

If X-G says otherwise, I'll change this EXE; otherwise, here ya go. Good now?

Everyone with a joystick is going to get their own custom EXE at this rate

EDIT: removed attachment; I keep adding new ones

Control is great, but I found a bug!

See attached screenshots. It appears that after video memory is lost after a switchout, the current tileset is not restored properly.

A "switchout"? Want to clarify? Because I haven't seen any bugs that scary yet O_O ...

Alt-tab. Video memory is lost when you do that, remember? And since your tilesets are stored in vmem for accelerated blitting ...

Oh.

...

Don't do that Or use double buffering.

... or you store a copy in system memory of anything stored in vmem, use the switch hooks and re-create the video memory when someone switches in.

I'm sure I can figure out a way to fix it later, but is it really so hard not to push those buttons while you're playing?

You can also play windowed if you open up config.txt ...

Just saying it would be extremely ugly to have in there once this gets more complete ... besides, the solution is easy. See my previous post.

I know; I'm looking at the docs now. Suggestion written down.

Ø(._.)o

Back to the game!!1

BTW, has anyone noticed there's several ways to get hit? If fire hits you, you char (I'm adding smoke later); if a car hits you, you go flying. In the bonus level you can get frozen. It's a little crude right now, but the final game will have a lot of ways to take hits and several death animations.

(hmmm ... I should make a list of cool stop animations ...)

BTW, not sure why, and can't reproduce it because I die too much on the first level and can't get to the spot it happened... but in the second part, if you die in this area where the road suddenly becomes side view instead of overhead view, you just stand there stuck in a frame of animation.

Heh, the bandwitdh damage is minimal on my site Only 9 megs

[edit] What the..? It jumped 9 megs? Odd... so the count is about 19 megs now.

Odd ... I'll see if I can reproduce that (your description of the area is a bit vague though )

Actually, the tilemap seems incomplete in that area (no top to the street, confused the hell out of when trying to walk on it because I needed to jump to the area, plus I was hit by two bullets at once I believe)

Oh, by the way - those guys with red heads that run at you at the slopey bit - are they supposed to come at you from the left?

MF: You can't be hit by two bullets at once. I found a bug kind of like you describe if you're killed by a car hitting you and I fixed it. Was that it?

X-G: They come from whatever direction you're facing.

I died from either bullets or being punched. Haven't been killed by a car yet (plus the area is too slopy for a car anyway)

/*
    --
   /  \
  -    --
 /       \
-          
*/

Something like that

The only thing that annoys me about the demo is the SLOW acceleration - feels like the little guy is being very unresponsive. Same thing with punching right after landing - makes timing your hits a real b*tch.

Yes, timing is a bit tricky, but it's no worse than old school Castlevania, Mario, etc. Not that hard.

MB: It's a hill It looks like a road because I didn't do the tiles yet; it'll be a car pileup. Anyway, I don't think I can reproduce it ...

Castlevania/Mario were MUCH easier than this. If you pressed B, you could be damn sure Simon would whip, right there and then. Oblio some times decides to wait upwards 200 msecs before punching when landing, and during that time you might have decided to change your mind. Very annoying.

Never had that problem. Simon's whip moves much slower than Oblio's punch, and Mario accelerates slower too. I can land on an enemy with a jumpkick and then punch with no time for them to recover from the first hit, easy ... maybe you're just not timing it well?

How long it takes for them to do the attack is not a problem - that can be timed. It's the inconsistent delay between pushing the button and him actually performing the attack that's annoying.

ESC doesn't work. I always have to shut it off manually. The problems seem to happen randomly...one time I died and I couldn't do anything, but the action was still going on in the background. Then sometimes it just crashes.

Again, see Simon's whip. It's not that bad; I actually sped it up from the first demo The only time it really pisses you off is the bats in the bonus level (you'll see) but it's just a matter of timing. I kind of like the wind-up

Me: P to pause, then press Esc.

Once AGAIN, wind-up is not a problem; it's the inconsistency depending on whether you're standing still, jumping or just landing after a jump.

Damn, I was hoping you could ride in the cars, and then just ride around and run everyone over. That would be sweet.

X-G: I guess I still don't get what you mean then; seems nice and responsive to me ...

Scenario A: Standing still. I press Attack. Latency between me pushing button and attack commencing: 0 msecs.

Scenario B: In the air. I press Attack. Latency between me pushing button and attack commencing: 0 msecs.

Scenario C: Just landing from a jump. I press Attack. Latency between me pushing button and attack commencing: 200 msecs.

That's what I mean. Completely throws off your timing.

Tried it again; I guess you mean if you push the punch button just a hair before you land? Otherwise I don't see any latency. Like I said, I can combo a jumpkick into a punch, no sweat. I can probably compensate for that though, so if your timing's a bit off it doesn't get wasted on an aborted jumpkick

adds to to-do list

Yes.

There is never an excuse for aborting an attack short of being attacked yourself.

Yay! I just finished beating the boss. Not that hard. The bonus level is insanly hard though. How are you supposed to avoid those green floating things?

Well, the first two green floating things ("gampops") can be destroyed with 5 hits each. The rest are to be avoided.

X-G: New EXE, now with better landing and punching! What's the verdict? (PS: the main zip has now been updated with this binary)

Finally: The mighty chris barry does something other than spam.

Seriuosly,. i skimmed the other posts but here are my comments. They are only to help, remember, i would not insult a fellow programmer.

a) I never once punched an enemy without him first punching me. Maybe I suck at it, but i couldnt quite time it right so that i hit him first.

b) the jump kick was pretty useless for as far as I could get. Im sure its useful later though.

c) Why cant we move up and down in the road like river city ransom? Is this in the works?

d) The punch-kick combo is actually quite cool, but gets old quite fast. Hopefully there will be more moves later, i think i read that somewhere in a previuos post.

12) make a better menu system.

IVVXXIL) i got 60 fps

Har har

I know, I mentioned this. TMS will have a longer range with his springs and the enemy sprites will be totally redone, so it's a non-issue for now. Jumping in with a kick first makes it easier.

Because this isn't River City Ransom?

Well, TMS doesn't get much in the way of combos; I just threw that in for fun The final moves will be pretty simple. I'm still open to suggestions in this area though ...

Hell yes.

Um... Site Bandwidth exceeded.

Use MB's mirror (fifth post). The binary 4 posts up is optional.

C'mon; I want to know if anyone's beaten it yet

Well, I have (if you don't count the bonus level). It's much easier just to jump over all the enemies and not even fight them. That's how I did it.

You should also add a slide, and being able to ride in the cars!

I know. Can't do that in the bonus level, can you?

No...:'(

WOOHOO!!! At long last a new Demo! You Rock Chris!

On the first level I found it easiest to just jump over the enemies too. The charring effect is cool. Jump kicks are cool. Only one dislike, right ctrl and space bar? That is VERY awkward.

Never the less, GREAT JOB! This game is hard! Well worth the wait!

very good 23.

I didn't like the messages.
Because they are very long and they said nothing.

The mosters are very good.
In 15 min I reach the second monster.
Your game, make me remember shinobi or shandow dancer

But you game did't had scripting ?

Thanks

Now just add some cool moves that are in things like Streets of Rage... Like the ability to pick people up and throw them, pick up their guns and shoot them/bash them with them... That would be fun!

For the record, I've been coming up with some level and enemy setups that won't allow you to do that anymore Or at least give you some incentive to deal with enemies rather than have them shoot you in the back I'll probably give them less life too ...

Really? I thought it was the standard for these things You want the other Ctrl button or something?

Well, they said a little ...

Wow, it took you 14 minutes to beat the first monster?!

It had some scripting using Lua; you can see that just from the datafile The enemy AI was hardcoded; I tried going the script-everything route and found it too cumbersome. This works good

Yes, but it wouldn't be true to the nature of the game. TMS is a very simple character with a very simple moveset; the trick for me is to make the enemies as imaginative as possible so you can get a lot of mileage out of those moves

BTW, does anyone notice a big frame drop in the bonus level? For some reason, my system chokes on it, cutting the FPS down to 30. Just did that today, and it's annoying the crap out of me

PS: Has anyone beaten the bonus level? Have you even reached the boss?

No.

Left CTRL and ALT is usally the standard, innit?

Which is jump and which is punch?

I'm making a new binary now (turned out the reason I lost my speed might be because I may have fubared my makefile flags) so I'll add them in ...

EDIT: I was right; it was my flags I'm going to keep the most recent build in the first post, so go there if you want the latest. Especially if you got the last binary I posted, which should run really slow in the bonus level.

(btw, I just beat the whole thing on one man with half a health bar to spare, so no one tell me it isn't possible )

Hmmm... I wonder why my home computer is running at less than 70 fps where's your computer can run in the 80's...

Um, Use left ctrl instead of right ctrl, then you'll be set.

Refresh rate?

Try the latest EXE (attachment in the first post) for new controls and possibly more speed ...

Before I found where to change here at home, the refresh rate is 60... but I changed it to 120. Now to see if ATI gives me that option if I decide to play it at work.

(My home monitor only supports 60 Hz for the screen res I want... I need a new one... but I need a TV more since my only TV is going out )

[edit] When's the new update coming?

Are you going to port it to linux? If you would like to but dont have the resources yourself, ill do it for you. Dont tell me its closed source!

If you mean "next demo", when the whole shebang is finished I'll probably post some IotD teasers ...

Okay ... I won't

If someone wants to make an argument for me releasing the source, go ahead, but keep in mind this is a commercial project (where's Spellcaster to roast me? ) ...

I meant this:

Then the answer is "now"; go get it It's just minor bugfixes; I think I'm done (until the next bug report ) ...

Simple moves! That is why you allow for the Mighty Stupid moves that may or may not have any value... Maybe you could add pointless easter-egg moves that have him sit down and sleep or something... That would be funny! Just make sure that you use the most random moves possible that could go underneath the 'Mighty Stupid' title, and that would be fun... Such thinks as picking up a gun and smacking people in the head with it instead of shooting them with it, or getting the super-hero ray from the boss guy and start shooting the enemies with it so they become harder to kill (which would be pointless, but funny nonetheless), or just start beating people over the head with it!

I'm dumb!! You could even have an alternate weapon like an algebra book that you start with that you can through at people, because, after all, you are the Mighty Stupid, what use do you have for books?

Actually, his moves are more along the "incompetent" line. I thought of making random moves (various running animations, for example) and yes, he'll have stop animations (I've already planned a few; sleeping isn't one of them though).

I didn't read all of the posts (barely any, just the main one).

I'll start with the two things I don't like.
I really don't like how he slides on the gound after you stop running. He does this even if you crouch The other thing is that I don't like how you cannot turn around if you continually punch.. If you've got a guy on either side of you, you've gotta kill one, pause, turn, kill the other.. instead of commense button mashing, kill, turn, kill, stop button mashing.

Other than those small points, I thought it was very good. I couldn't make it all that far, because I sorta suck at platformers, but what I saw was awesome. I like the AI of the enemies, too. All the animation - even with the 'crappy' programmers art (which I thought wasn't half bad), looked very good and was very smooth.

Great Jeorb! Can't wait to see it when it's released. I'm guessing you'll go shareware with it? Perhaps you already mentioned that above.

[edit]
Started reading from bottom to top, and saw this.

Hmm... Incompetent. Random moves would be funny...

Maybe he could have a toliet paper whip or something... Comeon!!! Think along the increadably random, probably wouldn't work in reality line!

So everyone prefers the Megaman approach to running; no setting between dead stop and full throttle? Because I should warn you, there are enemies in the bonus level that track you by sound; if you move too fast, they'll rush you

Anyway, it's not something I thought was so bad. Anyone else really bothered by this?

Oh, absolutely true; it's something I'm fixing up right now. I haven't touched the player code in a while, so I'm cleaning it up right now (its crappiness kind of stung me when I added X-G's suggestion for punching when landing). But yes, I noticed this and it actually is already partly solved if you didn't notice

BTW, should I tell everyone the level select codes?

Actually, one of his old moves was using his cape as a "rat tail whip" I had a lot of moves and capes that gave you different abilities, but it's still not in character. He's supposed to be an idiot, and his moves are designed to look like he's just getting lucky hits I still haven't modeled a decent punch that fulfills that vision ...

One more thing.. Perhaps more realistic projectile handling? It gets annoying when you jump right above an enemy and they shoot straight up without even aiming or anything...

Already mentioned. I could make them get confused if you jump over them ("what the heck?! I had him in my sights ...")

I think an easy way to fix that would be to set the position half a second before actually firing.

Right now it looks like they get into an 'aiming' position, wait a moment, calculate direction and shoot immediately. It would be a bit better if there was a slight delay between the calculation and the actual firing. Then if you jump over them, they wont have a 100% chance of hitting you

Just a thought.. but you'd probably want to actually make the gun move or whatever later on, I would assume.

It's up in the air for now. I actually take back what I said about confusing them by jumping over them; got too many people bunny-hopping to the end of the level already And they already don't have a 100% chance of hitting you (very slow bullets) ...

Not sure if this is supposed to happen ... note bounding box on Oblio. A red one appears when you punch as well.

By the way, PLEASE make a way to skip the cutscenes, especially the one at the boss - it's annoying to die, only to have to watch the entire bloody cutscene again.

Trueley awesome 23!
Very professional demo, I loved the polished platformer physics and fluid animation. I can see a lot of work was put into this.
Keep up the excellent work man.

I WANT YOUR DRAWING CODE!!!

No, I'm really impressed. I never get 75 FPS, but I did with your app.

I tried once, didn't get past the first level.

You tapped 'R', didn't you?

Press Esc. The boss cutscene is the only one that can be skipped, actually ...

Is the land-and-punch timing better now, X-G?

Gnatinator & CGP: Thanks

Commercial game!? Damn. I'm too cheap to buy games.:P I want to make a commercial game, to...maybe my FPS...

Yeah, good stuff! Get crackin' on those 'good' sprites...the ones you have border on suck-tastic.

What's the next feature you're putting in? More moves would be nice, I always like moves where you flop down on the enemy with a sword facing down or something...but there's no swords in TMS! Maybe a twig or something...

Is TMS a robot?

Hey...you should make a lot of your sprites in that POV-Ray thing! You know...that'd look sooooooper kewl...that TMS avatar you have looks neat-o!

Again, is TMS a robot? I mean, his limbs are springs...;)

downthrust.GIF?

Too hard. I'm going handdrawn

He won't have that many moves. Right now all I know for sure is the trip, punch (which will hit in both directions at once, because a spin is involved), and some sort of air attack. Basically, what's there now but without the combo Oh, and a straight-up headbutt attack (picture TMS doing a jack-in-the-box impression). Haven't thought of too many more yet ...

Nope, he's an idiot

Then WTF are the springs! Is he a living thing!?

Yup Revealing his backstory would be major plot spoilage though ...

Damn.

(Well, I had an idea, but now I don't want to post it...ha!)

who will publish it anyway?

FPS: Constant 60. Sometimes it jumped a whole frame per second, but that's about it.

I got to the desert stage, and got pretty far; to the place after those stupid guysers. After a few attempts at getting that far I just decided I didn't feel like trying anymore because it was too annoying. Those bats are extremely a pain in the butt, and the guysers only give you about half a second to pass through before they start gushing stuff. It's also really hard to judge when you can go through, because smoke and stuff is always spewing through. Good effects and everything; I love it; just a little hard to discern what's going on the first few times through.

I did happen to find a bug, that is quite easily reproducible as well. It can be done anywhere. I call it the moonwalk. Jump up in the air, and just before you reach the ground again, hit the opposite direction, make the guy do the air-kick, then change direction to the direction you were walking in. This results in the character moving in one direction, but facing the other. Moonwalk It was quite funny the first time it happened. I sat around trying to reproduce it a bunch of times, then finally I did. While moonwalking, if you jump; the effect is remedied.

It's a little hard to pull off, but I think you'll be able to do it.

Yeah; the smoke, fire and ice all use the same sprites I could probably stand to make the delay longer; it's just that there's a pattern to them that makes it really easy to breeze through if you know what volcanos can hit you and when. So I just skedaddle to the top (the bats won't hit you if you keep moving) and then deal with the bats there. It's tricky gauging the difficulty when you're the one who wrote the game But yeah, I'll make the pauses between fire and ice longer.

The bit after that is tricky because the bumbs (the burrowing brown moles) track you by sound. If you stay still and don't jump around or punch anything then they just leave, but then you're open to the skerows (black spinies) attacking. That's the only part of the level that groups them together. They can be dealt with, but you have to go slowly and deal with each enemy as it comes If it's worth anything, you almost reached the end ...

Since the difficulty seems higher than I thought, I'll give you guys the "secret keys". F2, F3 and F4 will take you to 1-2, 1-3, and 4-1 respectively if you hit the key at the title screen. And the H key is a life refill.

I was aware of the moonwalk. It's one of the things I'm getting rid of now as I muck with the player's code

I remember I did the moonwalk

I should use the level skip code next time I play... that first level is not too easy... actually, the whole damn game is hard as hell!

Oh come on; the first level is a cakewalk! I was afraid everyone would complain it's too short. The bonus level; now that's hard (until you understand the enemies better) ...

Can you kill the flying bat guys? I wasn't able to hit them; but then again maybe I was too late pulling off the jumping kick.

Anyways, to address some more of the cool features of the game; the desert level is really nice. The first two levels kind of left me hoping for more. I mean, the enemies were really reactive and all, but it seemed a little repetitive. The desert level changed all that.

I love how those plants shoot out the big spheres that explode if you touch them. I love seeing them produce the things and then watching those guys have a life of their own. It's like one of those enemies that's a single enemy, but then it spores off into more than one. Really cool. You should make the "hive" destroyable though; so you don't have to keep killing the big round things. Either way, I found it impressive. I made an enemy like that in my sidescroller, although it was a little different

The mole guys are asbolutely cool. I like how they jump up at you and then look around, and if they don't see anything, they just go back in the ground. What would be cool is to see them walk around a little, and then burrow into a new spot

Another thing that would be cool is enemies that take damage from the surrounding landscape; ie the skerows get damaged when they walk into the spines coming out of the ground. That would be nice: those things are so annoying; but I finally got the knack of how to kill them.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention how it is very cool that the ice just freezes you and drops you really fast. What would be cooler is that if you get frozen from a high level, and drop too far; the ice should shatter when you hit the ground, dealing even more damage than just being frozen. Probably something that would make the players get rather aggrivated, but it seems like fun

Definitely try to model most of your levels after the desert one. That one requires much more concentration than just running and jumping over everything in order to beat it.

Oh; I thought of a cool idea for the skerows, too (the little black guys.) I noticed there's some up-sidedown ones that shoot spines at you. Any chance of making a type that shoots spines, and once you walk over it; it will fall and try and land on you, then it will turn to one of the ground skerows. That would be neato. Or maybe even skerows that just jump to a ceiling fixture and turn into the spine shooting ones. Maybe it's just too much work; but I'm just throwing ideas around.

I'm just downloading now - the latest version is still called TMS_aug042003?
You said earlier you were looking for a comedy punch - how about if he starts leaning right back with his fist wavering about knee-level, then really lets fly. If he misses the punch, he does a forward roll.

Pete

Only when they charge. I find the punch easier since they fly straight at you The timing is tricky, but they have an extra-large bounding box for detecting the punch (otherwise it's nearly impossible) so you'll get it

Yeah, that's why I wanted it in there

Not really an issue in the current level. And I dislike the idea of the player clearing a level of enemies; makes life too easy if they plan on backtracking

Hmmm. Not bad BTW, when they run, they're supposed to be blindly swinging their claws. But I got lazy with the art

There are a lot of ideas I've had for the engine which I've had to drop if I have any hope of ever finishing it. And that's one of them. I may allow the odd case of this (maybe you'll have to lure otherwise indestructible enemies into something that can kill it to get past them) but no plans right now.

Yup, and the idea that you can keep taking damage from enemies (the bats beat you senseless while your frozen) and button-mashing gets you out quicker, and a shower of cool particles. It would be nice; just couldn't do it for this demo. The charred damage will also make your character smoke a bit

Yes, the first level is a bit dry, just because Suburbia is like that Later levels give me lots of freedom terrain-wise, so you get your wish.

Cool ideas with the skerows, btw. Jumping back up to the roof; I'll think about that

Yeah; just like them

BTW, thoughts on any of the bosses/minibosses? I assume everyone can finish the thing with the health cheat now.

PH: Yeah, I just keep updating that zip.

I'm dumb!... Maybe you could add the moonwalk move as one of the pointless moves that he does, just for halarity sake (and to annoy the player if he accidently does it).

And one more thing... Every time you die you have to start at the beginning of the level... That can be quite annoying, but it is ok if that is the behavior you want.

I have plans for checkpoints. If there were one in Level 4-1, it would be just before the waterfall. Of course, then you can't get the extra man anymore ...

Well, I got to the boss (of the first level), then died. Whah. Ok, I'm waiting until I can play it.

Hmm... 110 replies, and it's still on-topic, you musta done something good.

F2/F3/F4 for level select, H for health refill. Go play the bonus level; it's more fun

Why, tha ... HEY!

Excellent, and awe inspiring (specially to a noob!)

I find it runs quite well on my comp, averaging about 40~50 fps.

MY COMP SPECIFICATIONS:

AMD K6 II 500mghz with 3DNOW!
98MB of SDRAM
32MB 3D PHANTOM Video Card Accelerator thingy (
(SiS 305 Chipset)
Win98SE

In short, very nice. I rate 4.5 stars out 5. (No one is perfect sept for the man upstairs.)

tried it, works fine for me. I like your attention to detail, all the animations with lots of frames. I can see in the dat file that you have 4 frames for jumping up and 4 for falling down, wow!

The game currently has 6 frames for running. The current artwork uses 8 The final animations will blow the current crap out of the water.

23yrold3yrold:
few minutes ago,your Game(1.24MB) hang my computer..no response..have to reboot..

I know how big my game is More info? It hung right off the bat? During a level? Between levels? Worked before?

Razza Razza: Already fixed; thanks

This might have been said already, but the two enemies gaurding the first extra life pickup you see, I jumped into them, then died, and it showed a VERY slow animation of my falling over dead while they kept running around punching me, and I just kept falling through the floor a few pixels till I left the game. Other than that, pretty good.

Kewl game (except gfx), but can you make keys customizable so I can play it? I don't use such sick key layout like directions controlled with right hand, I'm used to gamepads.

The game supports gamepads now. There's no customization at the moment, but of course there will be in the final game.

X-G: Picture the 'now' in italics Yes, it always did ...

"Supports gamepads now" ? It did with the first release, didn't it?

It doesn't like my gravis elimantor shock joypad..

Do Allegro games normally notice it? Like the example proggie? I haven't the foggiest clue how to fix that (not owning that joypad as I am ).

Anyway, just so you know, the joypad can't be used to skip dialogs (and I don't think I added support for it in the menu yet either), so if didn't try it during the actual game, that could be it

exjoy.c (in the allegro examples folder) correctly detects it and shows the analogue X & Y values after I press A for analogue mode..

(Cut & Paste time Chris!!)

I thought I did cut and paste
Again, for the record: the gamepad fails during the actual game?

The whole game crashes for me.

That's really odd, since you got to Level 1-2 earlier (and since I don't think it's crashed for anyone else). Is this a repeat of last post, or did you try again and it still crashes?

I mean, it has crashed during the game every time I've played it. Usually around the same spot.

I really wish I knew what was causing that; I've had it crash there twice, but a long time ago. I need to look into debuggers again, but I'm not sure they'll help if I can't reproduce it (and I can't)

I'm going to have to make a note to look over any possible problem areas in the code ...