Gem Rush

fireslash 2017-12-05 05:58

"down to shoot" is a really strange control choice. Can't say I'm a fan, as it's just a bit awkward to do.

It seems the player can easily stick/get stuck to walls. This looks like a friction/force issue with your physics setup.

The basic idea is nice. I feel like I probably didn't give it a fair shake since I could only play in single player. It looks like it could be a lot of fun with friends!

joe-sycalik 2017-12-05 07:09

Thank you for the feedback! Pushing out a patch that changes those shoot controls. I agree that it was a bit awkward and admittedly not tested thoroughly enough before being pushed today.

Yes, the player is currently able to essentially ground himself on the wall. Though initially a bug, we decided to keep it due to the belief that it made the game more interesting (it does need to be tuned for consistency in regards to registering the player as grounded and resetting their jump). I didn't do any work myself on the physics end, but it would be a good opportunity for me to experiment with it.

I personally found that we were having a blast with the local multiplayer in our playtests. Much of the weekend was spent echoing the mantra "It's a feature, not a bug." I do wish we had implemented some basic AI to give players the chance to experience multiplayer play when nobody else is around. I'm glad that you like the concept behind the game, though I'm sorry we didn't have more implemented for solo players in time!

drazil100 2017-12-07 03:30

I had more fun than I was expecting to have with this. The ability to ride bats is dumb and I love it! xD

For future games it is well worth it to figure out how to use your own custom physics rather than using built in physics. More often than not especially with a platformer real world physics will open up a lot of unintended side effects like getting stuck against a wall by pushing into it etc. It's definitely trickier to set up custom physics but the level of control it offers you when you know *exactly* how different objects interact with eachother is amazing to work with.

Overall I had fun with this game and I can't think of too many issues I really had with this. Good job!

elfcirynn 2017-12-08 01:28

Definitely shines when you have multiple people playing, the sounds are satisfying and I like the acceleration of the walking and the bit of air you get when you run up a ramp!

manbeardgames 2017-12-08 02:18

Had an absolute blast playing this in two player with my son on stream last night. It was a really cool aha moment when we realized you could ride the bats. Controls really well, but does suffer from some issue with getting stuck on the side of the wall when it looks like you shouldn't. You can still jump up/off at that point, just seemed odd.

Also +1 for adding a multiplayer game for the Ludum Dare but also giving it a single player option. Too many games now I was not able to experience because it was multiplayer only and had no one at the time to play it with.

banan 2017-12-08 02:43

Since I haven't had anyone to play this with I can't really comment on a lot of the gameplay, but I can say that the physics are really wonky, and more importantly you can't affect the height of your jump, which in a game that is largely about jumping isn't really ideal. I'd recommend taking 12 minutes to learn how to make a better jump. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KiK0Aqtmzc

Apart from that, the sounds are nice, the fact that it has local multiplayer is great (though I haven't been able to try it out) and the bat-riding really takes the game to new heights.

joe-sycalik 2017-12-08 03:06

Thank you for the feedback @banan! I admittedly hadn't even thought about the jump; however, I did run across that video earlier today while starting preliminary research into fixing the physics! So implementing new physics will be my top priority as I begin to work on expanding the game, and I'll be pushing a patch out for the jump while I take the time to dig into sections of those sections of the code that I didn't write and see what I can cook up =)