Twinsen - Pilot Episode Demo

[Evil-Ville]

I thought the controls were quite sloppy and not responsive enough. Also I don't like how the running key is shift, it's too far away from the other keys.

[Xion]

Agreed on the shift to run point.
But I see in the options menu nonfunctional Key configure option?

I must admit, I did find the part with the world splitting pretty awesome. But the TV thing is kinda cheese. How about a big bad boss guy just came along and used his big bad boss weapon to split the world up (into the different worlds/levels)? Each time you change levels you could go from one plane to another. Something simple. Something that fits in with the rest of the game's atmosphere. It should all take place in one world, methinks, rather than the god-pawn relationship you've got going now.

[Lackey]

The planet Twinsun in the LBA games has a huge mountain range around the equator, or is the planet split going along the other way?

The game is really solid so far, although the short jumps are extremely punishing.  Maybe just lighten the gravity a little?  Also the knife seemed completely ineffectual compared to the ball but maybe I wasn't using it right.

Twinsen never had a sword, did he?  I have to hop on the "drop the intellectual property" bandwagon as well, but only because the connection already seems so tenuous.  I didn't even realize the character was meant to look like Twinsen the first time I saw it because there's a vast stylistic difference and the characters aren't even identical.  Twinsen has brown hair, no earings and no eyebrows to start; I thought yours was a generic Asian fighting monk!

[Xion]

Oh, wow. I'm late, but still, congrats on the 4cr featurization.

[JWW]

god the graphics are great .takam.  All the little animation effects give it so much life.  I loove his combo technique with a passion and look forward to seeing more of this game.

[Evil-Ville]

Agreed on the shift to run point.
But I see in the options menu nonfunctional Key configure option?

Didn't even check the options, maybe I am too used to games that have good key configurations by default. :)

[Akira]

shift to run doesn't bother me any. but yeah customizable keys are always immmportant and add to the polish of the game. awesome graphics. i feel that the character moves too slowly when walking/running though.

[Dusty]

Hmm. The way you have the water lighter under the platform tiles, and darker where there are no platforms really confuses me, as I'd expect the water to get darker where the platform enters the water and goes in.

EDIT: After actually playing the demo, having in action does clear up some confusion, but I still think it looks out of place a bit.
Ya, the controls being all on one line of keys makes it hard to work with things. Very hard to run, jump and slash at the same time.
On a technical note, for some reason or another it seems to run very sluggish for me when there's a shadow displaying. I'm assuming this has something to do with the way the shadows crop themselves while only half-over a platform.

[AlexHW]

there are also a few secrets in the demo, if you don't figure them out after a few days, I'll tell you them

me wants to know.. cant seem to figure them out..

[.TakaM]

thanks everyone for taking the time.
a few things I need to address:
the controls - some of you don't like the buttons, some do - no need to worry about this because they will be customizable in the future. in the mean time I suggest downloading joy2key (mentioned in the first post) not only so you can change the keys as you please, but it works great for any game that you just don't want to use the keyboard for.
as for sloppy and unresponsive, I haven't really noticed anything I'd consider this except for the running button, but this was kinda intentional, I liked the idea of having to build up speed and have to plan your steps if you want to maintain a sprint throughout the level (one of my favourite parts of super metroid), if the sword or jump etc felt unresponsive please clarify

gravity - I think it will be better so Twinsen falls at a constant speed instead of accelerating, which will add a bit of that floaty feeling from most popular platformers, i should mention I plan on re-doing the jump anim and the jumping will be altered also

the story - I still quite like the idea of his planet being turned into an ant farm, but I agree I need to either implement the TV aspect a lot better or come up with a different reason behind it

lackey, the split down the planet isn't on the equator, so he'll get parts of all the islands in the official games, and yah he did have a sword in the LBA games, a saber it was called, had some crazy guitar sounding effects when he used it lol

me wants to know.. cant seem to figure them out..

the secrets, well, the first is the bush behind Twinsen's house contains ten points, so if you die and lose ten points you can easily get them back
the other secret is if you kill the enemies in reverse order of appearance, you get 999 points, which unlocks all the health units (an extra unit is obtained at intervals of 100 up until 700, 800 and 900 give you two extra spin slashes when you are run jumping- which acts as a quadruple jump.
also I should mention that the number of health you have obtained dictates the number of bounces the magic ball has before returning




so yeah, thanks again everyone for taking the time, any more suggestions are greatly appreciated.