The Lost Frog

coderaurus 2020-10-05 11:42

I like the idea a lot where the map turns like in this game. The frog has character and the one sound fits a jumping frog very well. The level itself looks good too and I saw those arrows... You had interesting ideas coming up.

Some major downsides for me: - The controls were bit off. I'm not sure how I got past the first pillar once, but there was no second time. Also the running around was bit too slippery for my taste. - Probably the biggest thing: there is too much waiting. The death fading screen takes a long, long time. And when you have to wait after every jump. Oof.

lombax 2020-10-05 12:45

@coderaurus ty for your feedback.

yes, i didnt have time to finetune the movement, if i were to improve this game, the player movement is definetly something i need to take a look at. i put in the pillar at the beginning cuz i wanted the player to learn how to jump, but i literaly added it the last second, and i made i abit to big.

and ye, the death fading is way, way, way, way to long xDDD

elizir 2020-10-05 13:49

So .. the game concept is pretty cool - i like that.. BUT As @coderaurus said before the controls were a bit sloppy, didnt felt quite right.. would wish somewhat more like push -> action instead of push -> wait -> push -> maybe action.

But still: Graphics nice, good concept - overall good :v: would like to see an improved version :smile:

indiequest 2020-10-05 13:53

Intresting game, I tried for a lot of time get past the first jump but I failed due to a combination delay between input and movement and the fact that the death and reload animation are very long which made me give up. The art is very nice and the level layout intrigued me. maybe after the jam you can fx the controls and reupload because I would love to play your game.

voidsay 2020-10-05 13:58

Hey I wanted to rebuild your game from the provided source code to run on my Linux machine. Are there some scripts missing or are you using some special addons?

khaotom 2020-10-05 13:59

That first jump doesn't seem possible. Spent a few minutes trying.

lombax 2020-10-05 19:01

tyvm for the feedback.

@elizir tyty, yea, currently the flaw of my game is that slippery ground. i wanted it because of the slide animation that i made, and later on when i started testing/playing that just started to more and more annoying. so i need to look into that.

@indiequest heh, yea that first jump is quite a challenge xD, yea i made so much the last 3 hours, that the death animation was not something i could test and feel T_T.

@voidsay hmmm, there are no scripts missing from the git folder. if something is missing alot should be cuz i literaly made so so so much the last day. i checked git, and the final commit is on git. soooo i guess you just gotta look around in the folders.

@khaotom yea, its rough, but its possible.

voidsay 2020-10-05 19:53

@lombax I looked at a few other source codes. I think I now know why this happens. Are you using unity 2020 by any chance? (because I still use the 2019 one)

lombax 2020-10-05 20:39

@voidsay yes, i do. updated stuff right before ludum dare :-/

voidsay 2020-10-05 21:21

@lombax thank you. I should look into updating it myself. I was hesitant, since there is an issues when compiling for WebGl didn't want to risk anything. I'll ether update and recompile or just switch to my windows laptop, whichever comes first.

kirbloid 2020-10-05 22:14

I like how due to the loop nature of the stage, future hazards are teased beforehand. The sprites were great between the level itself and the character. My biggest feedback would be since the wind-up of the jump matters, some sort of indicator of maximum height or "best jump" would go a long way.

lombax 2020-10-05 22:18

@kirbloid

tyty for your feedback. oh never realy thought of it that way xD. but yea i had a thought of adding a jump meter of some kind, but never got to it.

ukulelefury 2020-10-06 05:31

There must be some bug with the walking speed; my little frog's legs are moving at 90-miles-a-minute, but he's actually moving at about 4-pixels-per-second. Jumping feels good otherwise though! I like the art!

endurion 2020-10-06 05:35

I can't vote fairly for most things, because I simply can't jump over the first obstacle.

lombax 2020-10-06 11:50

ty for your feedback.

@ukulelefury when i made the running animation i didnt realy know what i wanted with the game, so i just made the animation. when i started changing values and stuff i decided to give him a realy quick animation to try and give it a feeling of going fast, but still slow. :-/ abit weird but that was what i went for xD.

@endurion yes, i think i forgot to add some code that made jump be calculated each frame, and not a normalized frame count. i think thats the problem. so atm, the better computer you have the higher you jump.

toccio94 2020-10-06 22:52

The game is a bit too hard since the movement is out of control. I didn't even reach the end of the level. The death animation was also a bit too long. Nonetheless you get the work done, keep going!

griddolini 2020-10-06 22:57

Well I won't repeat what others have already said, I had the same thought as the first comment. I will say the frog sprite is great, the jump animation is smoooooth and very expressive. With some tightened up controls I could see a lot of unique ideas for this cool loop / platformer gameplay.

lombax 2020-10-07 01:00

ty for the feedback. @toccio94 @griddolini

now that i have time to tune stuff and realy code with good structure. im basicaly remaking the movement and makeing it abit more precision friendly, players supposedly dont like slippery ground xD. the controlers will be as smooth as a bald mans butt.

echo-gameworks 2020-10-07 01:09

As others have said - really hard to get the controls working the way I was expecting. The idea definitely had merit and I could see some interesting puzzles come out of it. Great job on pushing through even though you weren't wanting this theme!

lombax 2020-10-07 13:28

@echo-gameworks ty for the feedback.

yea, the theme wasnt realy to my liking. i was tempted to just not do it and work on another idea i got when going through the other themes. but i decided to just do it as i had alrdy set off time for it, so it was meh, why not. but on the positive side i think i managed to get a realy interesting idea out if it now that i iterated on the game, and seeing what ppl found "interesting", and realy hated.

szatku 2020-10-08 21:27

For me, controls are very non-intuitive. Frog slips too much. Waiting for jump with space is rather not good idea. First obstacle is creater in wrong place, so it makes hard to jump over it.

pee-thief 2020-10-08 21:31

I really like the frog animation

crazyrems 2020-10-08 21:51

I didn’t passed the first wall before the first 7 minutes. I didn’t know you could use momentum with just a bit of a jump. I was holding space bar for jumping, which cuts the momentum. It really needs some work on the controls. Else the graphics are ok and the gravity mechanic well done but a bit slow when rotating.

lombax 2020-10-08 22:04

ty for the feedback.

@szatku yea, i didnt realy knew what i wanted when i started with the game, and early on i made the slide animation. it wasnt before the end that i decided to make some jump "puzzles", and by the time i got to test and look at what needed a change time was up. T_T. but the slippery slide effect is totaly gone in my 2.0 version that im working on xD.

@pee-thief tyty xD

@crazyrems yea.... i forgot some lines of code and the result was that its based on framerate how high you jump..... so yea -_- srry about those 7min of torture T_T

samelgamedev 2020-10-09 07:30

i know plenty of people have already said this but i just couldn't get myself over the first obstacle. just couldn't play much of this because of that, sorry

krg 2020-10-09 07:46

want should i do no menu no tutorial no arrows no air control no continuous jumping kinda boring

needs more work (just a feedback)

fronwewq 2020-10-09 08:15

I really liked the idea of a rotating level! Very good application of theme. I just wish I could've made it past the first pillar to see the rest of the level... As others have said, the controls are pretty difficult. I also wonder why there is a resting animation after jumping where you cannot move? Haven't seen that in a platformer before, not sure what it adds to the game. I absolutely love the animations, there's a ton of character in how the frog moves, slides, and pants with his mouth open. They were the highlight for me.

gonzalol 2020-10-09 11:41

It has some good points. I like how the world rotates and the frog has some interesting animations. In the other hand, it's quite difficult to control the leaps.

lombax 2020-10-09 12:07

ty for the feedback

@samelgamedev yea srry, forgot to add a time.deltatime to normalize my jump height T_T srry about that

@krg yep, its in a realy rough state. im currently looking at the game and iterating on its problems, and continuing with what i like, and im fixing all the problems you mentioned in my second iteration, tyvm for making it a more directed feedback.

@fronwewq tyty. yea the game have some problems, they were easily solved, but i dont realy care that much about score for ludum dare, i just want feedback to what to improve and then expand on that later on if i decide that its worth it.

@gonzalol tyty. the controles and movement is tricky indeed.

guimoliveira 2020-10-09 17:12

I couldn't get past the first obstacle :cry:

kuro 2020-10-14 16:02

Pretty much what was said before. I managed to get over the first wall. I got glitched in the second one after jumping, so I had to shut down and restart the game. I managed to get there second time, but ended up with the same glitch. Since then I have no idea how I managed to jump onto the first obstacle. I have given up after about 30 times trying to jump onto the first obstacle from different positions and angles and with different keys,

The graphics are cute tho. Looks nice, and I was really in the mood for this type of a game. Too bad I wasn't able to figure out how to play it.

yoni 2020-10-16 19:34

Couldn't get past the 1st obstacle more than once. The graphics are really nice, and the rotating gravity got me by surprise - it was a very nice element!

tiffi 2020-10-21 07:30

I liked the idea, but after the floor was lava I couldn't progress further because of the controls..

vrerabek 2020-10-23 07:24

Couldnt get past the first obstacle like many are saying. I like the idea of level rotating though.

blacktarus 2020-10-25 13:48

The game concept is cool, controls are a littre problem but i like play it !

voidsay 2020-10-26 18:55

I finally got around playing, but boy did the controls do everything they could to make me regret it. Had my brother try it, but he only got as far as I did.

If the gmtk2020 gamejam thought me anything then it would be "don't mess up the controls". I read above that you made the jump height frame rate dependant, obviously a big blunder and I am sure that you already know how to fix it.

Another thing. I often mention that resets are too sudden. In your case it takes too long (and didn't help with te jump frustration). One or two seconds should be the ceiling for a game with rapid resets. Only games where you rarely die can have an elaborate death sequence.

At least I got to see the full picture in the engine.

Out of curiosity. Do you think that your disliking of the theme affect your games quality?