Pascal's Challenge in Off Topic

ID:102040
 
Sep 17 2010, 10:18 pm
Having newfound time on my hands I managed to scrape together what MdNight and I had worked on and turned it into playable game. Though, I'm not entirely sure you could classify that as a game, it's probably more adequately described as a demo. There's only one level and the artwork isn't anywhere near finished. What the game lacks in content it hopefully makes up for with polished game mechanics and a decent feature set. If time permits I'll probably be spending most of tomorrow pumping out levels and adding a menu to house it all. If you find any bugs, please let me know.



During the first few weeks of the challenge Md and I were almost working on the game daily. We had ambitious plans featuring a small cast of characters, enemies, and three different locals with a light narrative sprinkled in to tie it all together. As time went on Md was encumbered with coursework and after conversing with Tiberath over what exactly "casual" was our motivation became crippled. You know, the usual development cycle of a BYOND game.

We still have all sorts of character sketches and technical drawings stored away. If you like the demo and would enjoy playing a fully developed version it wouldn't hurt to tell Tiberath how you feel. =)
#1 Sep 17 2010, 10:20 pm
Looks interesting.
#2 Sep 17 2010, 10:22 pm
Pretty cool demo. I could see this as a good game. Keep up the work SAx
#3 Sep 17 2010, 10:28 pm
Pretty fun, you should definitely continue it.
#4 Sep 17 2010, 10:35 pm
The game slows down dramatically when I jump. This isn't the first time I've seen that happen in some of the more recent side-scrolling pixel-movement demos either. I'm not sure what the problem is, since I can make jumping in side-scrollers just fine with no slow down. There must be -something- using up massive CPU when you jump. Side-to-side walking is fine with no speed loss. Frankly, I don't see why jumping would be any different than running side-to-side except that you only go a certain distance and then fall.
#5 Sep 17 2010, 10:39 pm
Haha, I got exactly a minute. Man, that one timed switch is a jerk.

Nice physics system :)
#6 Sep 17 2010, 10:41 pm
Fugsnarf wrote:
The game slows down dramatically when I jump.

It's your CPU. While making the parallax scrolling I ran into a few slowdowns, MdNight on the other hand never had performance drops with his beefier machine. I haven't experienced any performance drops since completing the scrolling and my computer is around six years old.
#7 Sep 17 2010, 10:44 pm
My computer isn't at all bad. I can't help but think that something else is at work here as I can make pixelized jumping with no slow-down issues. Like I said, this isn't the first time I've experienced this, and it's rather intriguing. It only happens when jumping or falling.
#8 Sep 17 2010, 10:54 pm
In the new update you can toggle parallax scrolling by pressing F2.
#9 Sep 17 2010, 11:00 pm
Didn't seem to make any difference, if that was the idea. It purely has to do with jumping and falling.
#10 Sep 17 2010, 11:07 pm
Fugsnarf wrote:
Didn't seem to make any difference, if that was the idea. It purely has to do with jumping and falling.

If that's the case then I have no idea what's causing the problem. As I mentioned before the only slowdowns I ever experienced were when I was making the parallax scrolling. Other than that the game has ran without any hiccups.

Any insight you could provide would be helpful. What are your specs?
#11 Sep 17 2010, 11:12 pm
woot woot beast got me a high score
#12 Sep 17 2010, 11:14 pm
SuperAntx wrote:
Any insight you could provide would be helpful. What are your specs?

XP Pro Service Pack 3 on a Dell Dimension 3000 with 1 GB RAM. And believe me, I can run a lot more taxing things on my computer than a BYOND game.

#13 Sep 18 2010, 1:46 am
31.0 seconds. :]
#14 Sep 18 2010, 2:32 am
Very nice, the movement is pretty fluid. Only thing that I might have a complaint about is the multicolored background at the beginning. My eyes were going @.3
But that's not really even important. This is a very nice demonstration. :)
#15 Sep 18 2010, 8:50 pm
I made a few slight changes. The multicolored background was replaced with one more easy on the eyes. The scoring should be more accurate now as well.

There's one bug I'm not entirely sure how to fix though. Normally you're supposed to be able to dash into or shoot crates in order to slide them around quicker. Darke discovered you can't actually shoot them while walking into them on your first playthrough. Apparently it only works after rebooting once.

Why it does this is beyond me, both instances of the game should be absolutely the same.
#16 Sep 18 2010, 8:52 pm
Mind telling what the tick_lag is?
#17 Sep 18 2010, 9:04 pm
I didn't change it, 0.25 suits forum's bounding box demo very well.
#18 Sep 18 2010, 9:07 pm
Interesting, because I thought it might be that you had tick_lag at 0 or something (that has caused major issues for me in the past with some pixel movement systems I've seen). If it's 1/4, though, I don't see a potential problem with that.