58 replies to this topic

[Snail_Man]

I played this, and it's a nice game, but it does have a couple flaws. Here's a very quick review thing:



Graphics: Not so good. I don't like the gradients. Also, some of the graphics didn't fit with the others. (Eg- the missiles and the mines don't have gradients, while the backgrounds and character do) I always find it more pleasing to the eye for the graphics to be relatively consistent. Another small problem with the graphics, was that the lines aren't anti-aliased. You might want to do that at some point, as it would invariably look more pleasing. I did like the explosion graphic.
Sounds: The sound effects were crisp and clean. They didn't seem to loud, and I thought they fit the graphical style quite well.
Music: The music, having been made by one of the top composers on the GMC, was also very good. I especially liked the world two music. Not much else to say here, other than that.
Storyline: None to speak of... Yet.
Gameplay: The engine felt very clean. I liked the platforming, and the missiles seemed very well balanced. (Often, missiles are either vastly overpowered, or vastly underpowered. The amounts of health taken away were balanced and fair, and I don't think there were any major problems here.
Bosses: The only boss in the game was interesting. All he does is run back & forth, and shoot you with missiles. He isn't that hard to beat, and I did on my first try. Still, I didn't like him as much as the rest of the game's gameplay. I hope to see more innovative future bosses, as this one seemed a little overly simplified.
Bugs: Once when I was hit by a missile, it didn't hurt me.

[icymx]

@Snail_Man: thank you for the review. The bugs you mentioned have been fixed, and the sprites have been anti-aliased. In addition, the gradients are more consistent now.

[icymx]

Version 0.7 Released!!!

After weeks and weeks of discreetly using the computers at my school to work on this game without the library staff noticing, I've finished version 0.7!

Download it here!

Many, many things have changed, I'll post an update log soon. Comments are appreciated - if you liked (or didn't like) this game, be sure to let me know!

[Snail_Man]

Awesome! Downloading...

EDIT: Really nice! I love the new update. Everything is very good, and I especially like the snow-area music!
The game felt clean and fun as usual, and the new sector was great. Unfortunately, I got stuck on level 1 of the next one.
A couple of bad things\bugs I found.

The ducks can move through key blocks.

The sector 1 background could use some sprucing up. This especially bugged me.
Hills don't work like this

Spoiler

They overlap like this

Spoiler

Other than that, It's awesome as ever!

Edited by Snail_Man, 21 September 2012 - 02:36 PM.

[icymx]

@Snail_Man: thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed the game.
- The snow-area music isn't mine, it's Nijg's; it was originally just a placeholder for "until I make some music that fits", but I don't think I could do any better so I'll just leave it as is and put him in the credits.
- There are quite a few bugs like this - for example, rockets can shoot through disappearing blocks even when they're solid, and if you're standing on a vertically rising platform and a rocket hits the bottom of the platform, you get hurt. These can easily be fixed but I first need to identify them - thanks for reporting the bug.
- World 4 is currently extremely buggy, to the point of being almost impossible, so I'm not surprised
- I guess you're right about the hills - I'll see what I can do.

Thanks to everyone who has played or commented on this game - I value your support and try to incorporate suggestions into the game where I can.

Edit: I've uploaded a minor update with a new background and a slight modification to the ducks (they now turn around if they touch a lock). Rockets also explode upon impact with disappearing blocks if the block is less than 50% faded. Download it here: http://dl.dropbox.co... Earth 0.71.zip

Edit 2: For some reason, just changing the background has increased the filesize by more than a megabyte! Does anyone know how to compress backgrounds without losing too much quality?

Edited by icymx, 23 September 2012 - 06:57 AM.

[pupo]

Nice game you have so far.

[TheUltimate]

"Does anyone know how to compress backgrounds without losing too much quality?"
You don't need to compress them if you know a couple tricks:
- Use solid colours instead of gradients. The largest contributor to png filesize is the number of colours you have. You know the giant mountain backgrounds in L4 of my game? It's 25KB for the complete set.
- Backgrounds usually aren't as noticed as foregrounds, so don't be afraid to have some repetition. Most people won't notice or mind if you make the backgrounds 75-100% of the screen width and tile it.

Sorry I don't have any feedback on the game. I'll try the new version when I have time.

Edited by TheUltimate, 25 September 2012 - 02:47 AM.

[icymx]

@TheUltimate: thanks for the info

Version 0.75 is out!

Download it here!

Changes:

• A few new levels
• Saving and loading!

[Pixelade]

Welcome to Earth
Version 0.75

Alright, first off is the intro cutscene. The intro cutscene looks good but it doesn't feel complete because it just jumps right into the game after it's done.

The levels are currently designed well but there are some parts where in you can't avoid taking damage. I restarted the rooms where this is taking place over and over again but I still take damage no matter what.

There was an area in world 2, the room had two pathways. The upper leading to a key and some obstacles and the lower leading to a duck and a 2-block high yellow door. I was able to escape through the upper pathway by just running right but I took damage. :D You should block this path.

In the first level of world 3 (ice world), I made a run for it on the upper-most path with the spike road. I went there with full health and ran towards the right side of the screen and I was able to finish the room. :D You should block this path.

The white spikes can be hardly seen on the ice world causing me damage that I could've avoided.

You should play around with the disappearing blocks. (The black ones) They are VERY hard to use.

The game lagged A LOT preventing me from playing any further. The lag occurred after I finished the ice world. The theme was an underground world (I think) and it was the first level of the world when the lag occurred. I'm using Windows 7 by the way.

The checkpoints are a great addition especially to the longer levels.

The music. Is. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D :D :D

Anyway, I would have more feedback if it just didn't lag like that, forcing me to close the game. And just when I was having fun too.

Edited by Pixelade, 14 October 2012 - 09:09 PM.

[AJArmstron]

Hi - I played your game from start up to what I assume is a deliberate end point? I was at the top left of the picture and for some reason I was transported back inside this area (as shown in the screen shot). As the yellow key has been used at this point one cannot escape the box.



I think the game has come a long way since I played the original version! Well done.

I found the keys a bit confusing at the start (i.e. pressing space and down key) - but quickly got the idea and there were no obvious game play problems. In particular on the front menu to select something using space instead of enter is not that intuitive to me (not without any words saying so for the first time player.)

When I run a new game from the menu section sometimes the following error appears:

___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 2
of Step Event
for object obj_player:

Error in code at line 1:
if (not obj_textbox.visible) manage_player_movement();
^
at position 21: Unknown variable visible

Finally..
If one selects Key Configuration 2 - the program does not close! (Windows Task Manager is needed to close the window!)

Good luck with your game. It will give many people an enjoyable few minutes. Why does the window size have to be so small? Why not put it into HTML5 so it can be played online.

EDIT - unlike Pixelade I experienced no lag issues whatsoever. However, I am running the program on a good fast Windows 7 machine which from my own experience runs all GM stuff very fast.

Edited by AJArmstron, 14 October 2012 - 06:21 PM.

[orange08]

Pretty fun. Nicely made music. Some cons:
-One of the tracks ends abruptly.
-Pressing space on the "options" tab starts a new game.
-The snow particles start to really make the game lag on the tall rooms.

Very nice, anyway. This seems like the kind of game kids would enjoy. The cutscene at the beginning was very well done!
Keep it up!

-orange

[nujuat]

Just played version 0.75.

I think I said it before, but I LOVE the music! I would ask you for it, but I can just take it out of the folder

It has a good amount of levels. Also I like what you have done with the dark grey blocks; I am so used to those types of blocks falling, but making them disappear instead makes them a different (= more interesting) challenge.

As for things to improve:
*There was a jumping enemy stuck in the roof in one of the snow levels.
*The game actually glitched out for me in the first underground level
*I guess you could improve the graphics... But I don't think you NEED to. The style is consistent, and to me that is all that matters.
*It is hard to see the spikes in some snow levels.

[Pixelade]

Ok so I tried the game again but still, on the first underground level, the game lags up VERY badly. I don't know why.

[2d_games]

I'm getting a similar problem to Pixelade. Except the game just up and freezes at the first underground level.

Other than that it's a fun little game. There's no real consequence to dying, however, as it is just a free heal basically. Also I think you have too much health. It was very easy to run through obstacles that would otherwise be a challenge. Another complaint is that if some spikes in the ice world are in the white portion of the background they are hard to see. I've hit a couple because they were camouflaged. If you have blind jumps(And there was one in the ice world) can we please get an indicator of what kind of path we should take?

That's all I got. Good work so far. Graphics arn't the greatest but they don't hurt the eyes so that's a plus. Also the music is really good.

Edit: Does the load game button even work? I can't load my save at all. Could it be related to the freezing in the underground world?

Edited by 2d_games, 17 October 2012 - 03:04 PM.

[icymx]

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I would just like to let you know that the lag in world 4 is a mistake on my part, and it is caused by running a very inefficient loop to create a special lighting effect - however, since it's not working I guess I'll just have to remove the effect.

I'm working on 0.8 now, and almost all of your suggestions will be incorporated when it's done. Thanks for playing!

[icymx]

Version 0.8 released!

Dowload it here, or from the first post.

Updates:
- New graphics!
- Cave world!
- Bug fixes

Hope you enjoy
By the way, the options do not work as of yet and will throw an error. But everything else should be fine.

[MMEntertainment]

Loving it! This is going to be a great game! Great job so far! Keep it up.

[lemon405]

Hi, Long time no see lol.
Your game looks almost complete and it looks fine
I like your game at all
the graphics of the game are cute..XD
I like the snow effect
Await the new version of the game!
I'm making a RPG game now loll

Edited by lemon405, 11 February 2013 - 03:44 AM.

[nujuat]

Hi guys.

icymx said today that he deosn't want to keep making Welcome to Earth
However, because we know each other well (off the GMC) he has given me the files so I can finish it off !
I've got a project of my own right now but as soon as that's done, I'll work on Welcome to Earth! Maybe it'll work on all my extra Studio platforms :D

I'll tell you all when I do some work on it!