Bitten by the sidescroller bug...

[Indigo]

Hey Howard.  This is looking great.  I have some critique which may be completely irrelevant, but maybe useful none the less.  I've been playing with some overall image processing of your game - much like one would for photography - and I've got some interesting results.

It seems like if you spend some time post-render to really process these assets, you may come up with a really unique and unified look.  Here was one of my tests for example:


(before processing)

[Conzeit]

Conceit: Thanks, man. For te record, I've always intended to program this sucker myself. I'm gonna use MMF2 since I'm a klick'nplay user from waay back when, and that cause/effect mentality is one I understand well.

=O hell yes  

PS: I LOVE that caterrpillar, the strangest of places is EXACTLY where to get your inspiration

PS2: (lulz) you're gonna regret not giving the gorilla moving shoulders I tell ya! :p

[Howard Day]

Super Awesome Update time! I've spent the weekend putting together the first run test of the game. And here it is!
http://www.hedfiles.net/AETest.zip (12MB) Unzips into a self-contained EXE.
Things you can do in this demo:
Run around (arrow keys)
Jump - Up arrow, no animation or behaviour for this as of yet, I am currently working on this.
Fire - left mouse button
Watch pretty explosions
Exit using Alt-F4!!

New things in this demo:
PlayApe's got an idle animation now
New animated cursor
New animated Flags
New animated foliage (foreground only, I'd appreciate some feedback on whether or not the background plates need it too)
Assorted other fixes and tweaks.

There's a whole lot missing from this - Enemies, Health, Menus, Save/Load, Dialogs of any sort, and any kinda of actual gameplay. This is only intended to show you that I am indeed working on this, and give a current state of my progress.
Not bad for a couple days in MMF2, huh?
Thoughts?

[Indigo]

holy crap - a way to close the fetching program would have been nice.  even when I alt-tabbed out of the application, my mouse wouldn't move from the center of the screen so I cound't control my task manager.  I tried every button I could imagine to close the program.

[Howard Day]

Alt-F4 should do the trick. The next version will have a menu. Apologies.

[9_6]

Make the next version either windowed or stretch proportionally for people without widescreens too.
Cause it looks terribly squashed over here.

[Konrad]

ALT-F4 works fine. Looks really promising .

[skeme_IN5]

all i can say is...WOW! absolutely amazing.
if this game gets finished it will be effing awesome!
theres a few bugs/glitches i found although i know the real purpose of this demo was just to show the graphics and animation etc.
1) i cant jump straight up in the air, only forwards or backwards(this maybe a problem with my keyboard though)
2) sometimes the animation on the foliage doesnt work.

[Howard Day]

Okay, NOW it's superduper update time.
http://www.hedfiles.net/AEwithmenu.zip 12MB Unzip into directory...
Changes:
Hitting "Esc" now pauses the game and brings up a menu. The options here control the display settings, resume the game, and quit. There's a fourth option for a help menu, but it's non-functional at this time. Click on the ViewMode selector to change your display setting - if it's different than what you already have, when you hit "resume" it will ask you to confirm.
When you're in the game itself I've also enabled a temp shortcut for this, should the menu not function properly (more leftover from my previous bugtesting, as is that little counter in the pause menu) Hitting 1,2,3 will switch between Normal, 2X Zoom, and Fullscreen options.
KNOWN BUGS!
The confirm dialog pop up will not scale properly to other display modes besides "Normal". I am working on this, and I think I have a solution - I just need to get home and try it out.

9_6: it shouldn't be squashed...I look into a proportional fullscreen option.
Konrad: Thanks. You now have a QUIT option as well!
skeme_IN5: Thanks! For the jumping, I'm currently using the out-of-the-box platformer movement that comes with MMF2. This is going to need to change. On the foliage side...out of curiosity, is it the plants on the extreme right of the level? If so, I've simply not gotten there with the plant animations yet. You might have noticed the lack of moving flags as well.

Still looking for feedback on the foliage - do the background plates also need animated foliage?

Alright guys, keep all the awesome feedback coming!

[skeme_IN5]

Okay, NOW it's superduper update time.
http://www.hedfiles.net/AEwithmenu.zip 12MB Unzip into directory...
Changes:
Hitting "Esc" now pauses the game and brings up a menu. The options here control the display settings, resume the game, and quit. There's a fourth option for a help menu, but it's non-functional at this time. Click on the ViewMode selector to change your display setting - if it's different than what you already have, when you hit "resume" it will ask you to confirm.
When you're in the game itself I've also enabled a temp shortcut for this, should the menu not function properly (more leftover from my previous bugtesting, as is that little counter in the pause menu) Hitting 1,2,3 will switch between Normal, 2X Zoom, and Fullscreen options.
KNOWN BUGS!
The confirm dialog pop up will not scale properly to other display modes besides "Normal". I am working on this, and I think I have a solution - I just need to get home and try it out.

9_6: it shouldn't be squashed...I look into a proportional fullscreen option.
Konrad: Thanks. You now have a QUIT option as well!
skeme_IN5: Thanks! For the jumping, I'm currently using the out-of-the-box platformer movement that comes with MMF2. This is going to need to change. On the foliage side...out of curiosity, is it the plants on the extreme right of the level? If so, I've simply not gotten there with the plant animations yet. You might have noticed the lack of moving flags as well.

Still looking for feedback on the foliage - do the background plates also need animated foliage?

Alright guys, keep all the awesome feedback coming!

yeah, its just at the end of the level.  i should have realized lol
about the background foliage - i thinks its ok as it is now as it kind of makes the background look farther back. i think adding animation may give an undesired illusion of the background looking closer.
its hard to tell really. it'd be better if you just did another demo WITH the animated background foliage just to be sure. it may end up looking better.
ok, im off to check the demo.