Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD26 → Cloaked
By deammer
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Graphics | 39 | 4.26 | ||
| Mood | 89 | 3.58 | ||
| Audio | 126 | 3.42 | ||
| Overall | 261 | 3.16 | ||
| Fun | 332 | 2.74 | ||
| Innovation | 478 | 2.22 | ||
| Theme | 531 | 2.26 | ||
| Coolness | 2059 |
A frustrating experience with great graphics, Cloaked ultimately suffers from poor level design; the exits are hard to spot and a failed jump spells almost certain failure, which wouldn't be a big problem except that the game implements permadeath. The behavior of the gems and glowing light orbs seemed inconsistent. I played Cloaked 10 times and got midway through the third room before giving up.
A really great looking game. I've messed with dynamic tile based lighting before, so I'm impressed you've manage to implement it so smoothly in a Flash game.
It felt good, and the graphics are nice to look at, but in a web browser it ran terribly (on my machine at least).
This is an excellent time for some optimization tips! I ran it through TheMiner (an excellent profiler you should use), and ShadowMask.update is the culprit. A few key reasons:
- You're generating tons of new BitmapData per frame (via flashpunk Image::createBuffer), which could be solved by just re-using objects instead of making new ones.
- A big issue is the use of getter functions - you're spending about 10% of your time calling a function to get something you already have access to. Instead of using 'baseAlpha', just use '_baseAlpha' directly. Using the property introduces 4 million function calls you don't need.
- Inlining RGBHEXtoARGBHEX would be a fantastic idea too, you're spending 5% of your time doing some simple bit twiddling, because you have the overhead of 2.5 million function calls to deal with.
I hope that helps!
@GertJohnny wow, that profiler is amazing. We're improving the performance quite a bit thanks to your advice. Thanks! By the way, your game is quite amazing as well. Nice use of Box2D :)
@Julian we're thinking of improving our levels, they do feel cramped and are sometimes frustrating to go through. Thanks for the feedback!
Awesome - huge improvement! There's one other big thing i'd recommend - the way you're updating the mask now requires you to do a really expensive copyPixels inside updateBuffer. If you just draw to the Image's buffer directly, you could skip that expensive copyPixels and save another 15%. I can run the game at maybe 55ish fps, but with that last tweak I could hit 60fps no problem.
a great graphic, but there's a let down on level design, because it feel to cramped
Abrupt as fuck...
Was a pretty nice platformer. Really atmospheric until I realised I was timed, and if I died I went to the start. Other than that, that was a cool game.
It felt like a lot of good artists/programmers didn't really have a creative idea and didn't like the theme. You guys are talented but I don't know why you focused your efforts on making this game and not one more fitting with the theme.
Beautiful and absorbing game. Keep up the great work.
Beautiful design work and love the main character. Gameplay hurt it though...I found myself getting stuck in places, and even started one level off the screen. May be more playable if you expand the light a bit to compensate.
Loved the mood and look but controls were awkward felt like the character was a car since he kept going after i stopped moving him. Also frustrating to have a high jump but always hitting things