Interesting mechanics, although the lack of air control makes it grow old quickly. The "Grap" mechanic is tiresome, it should be a fire and forget thing instead of making you keep holding the Z key. Honestly I got frustrated in the 'travelator' part of the tutorial and dropped it.
I absolutely understand why you'd feel that way. The problem is with the assumption.
Most people see the videos to these, and see me playing with nice swift actions, and super-fast reflexes. Let me assure you, those kinds of control-acrobatics have taken years to perfect, and have evolved with each and every game.
At it's heart, JNKPlat is NOT a Platformer, and this is what appears to annoy most people.
JNKPlat is infact a Puzzle game. It's truer to Sokoban than it is Mario.
If you play Sokoban for a few hours, get to grips with the "Block/Grid" mechanic, and then try JNKPlat again, you might have a different outlook on the game.
It's not about leaping back and forth in a normal "Per Pixel" manner. It's all about the grid.
Grid is King, Puzzle is Queen, and Platdude's just along for the ride.
If you'd like something a little more Platformy, try href="http://jayenkai.socoder.net/GameList.php?ShowJust=200">Neo nPlat. That's just the trick!
Plat2kx is probably my favourite game, next to Blockman. Still, I have a little complaint - the Z button. It's really annoying to reserve one finger to press the Z key to drag the boxes or catch the wall - such things should be done automatically, and the whole controls should be reduced to movement + jumping left/right, imo. The Z key ruins the fluidity of the gameplay for me - too many times I die, because I haven't caught the ropes or something like that. Whole game is brilliant, there's something Manic Miner-esque in it, with all those hectic jumping puzzles and collecting items. But MM was perfect in it's fluid gameplay and easy to pick controls, something which could be easy done in JNKPlat, if the grab key would be ridden off.
Hope you'll undestand what I mean, beneath my not-exactly-perferct English :)
Yeah, I'll probably drop/rethink it for 2011. It's a little more awkward on a keyboard, but the Hold button was originally added to the DS08 edition.
On the DS one, your thumb rested on the hold button, (on the B button, the bottom of the 4 face buttons) and then rocked side to side to meet the two jump buttons (A and Y) when needed. It's much more natural, and totally doesn't feel out of place on there, which is odd, considering how quirky it is here.
If you've a control pad handy, give it a try. You can redefine the controls in the tab menu bar.
I'm not so sure... Bug report time! 1.The game will show the opening loading screen(taking much RAM in the process)and stays like that while it lags my whole computer,and does not continue from that point. 2.After I had to force quit(much to my dismay,I was on Windows.LLLLAAAAAGGGGGGGGG),the OS gave me a report saying one of my system files was corrupt(I belive it was a error reporter?lol irony).Sense then,I've been getting some error reports(mostly from various fangames) like:could not define external function blahblahblah... Because this happened right after I had to force the game off,I can only assume it did something to cause this.Yes,I know all the games are scanned for viruses before uploadtime,but,here it is...
I have Windows XP...any other system requirements?(I don't really wanna open the thing up for RAM checking...)
Well other than that,the screenshots were nice...and the '08DS version was good... Keep chugging out games!
1. The loading screen isn't actually loading. What it is, in fact, doing is blasting 1000s of (invisible) sprites all over your screen. It's stress testing what it can and can't do. What's meant to happen is that, as soon as the fps drop below 30, the game says "This is the number of sprites I could get away with", and never goes above that number when in the game.
Technically it should've quit once it hit either <30fps, or 5,000 sprites. Not sure why it wouldn't do that. Maybe it kept drawing more and more and more! *shrugs*
As for 2, there really isn't anything magical that the game does. 1. Loads sprites, 2. draws them. There shouldn't ever be any crazy file corruption from my games, mostly because I keep each to their own, I don't play with dlls, it's all a nice little sandbox-esque environment, and I dislike anything that requires anything more than that.
Having said that.. How old's your system? Minimum requirements shouldn't be an issue, but if you've a quite old system, it might be asking for help ;)
Hmm...the oldest program that was used was in 2005. My computer doesn't actually get internet,so I use another one(A mac) to download stuff,then transfer using a flash drive.It has 2 hard drives(C and D),C having all my system files,D having all my other stuff as C is cluttered.Each has 20 GB and D has 9 GB left(C has like,300 something MB).I don't have a anti-virus program as that took up TONS of space,and I didn't think i'd need it as the only things I download come from reliable sorces,as mainly I download lots of various fangames,oldies emulators,and level editors.I REALLY didn't want to open this thing up as it is a laptop whose screen got busted so it's connected to a external screen,with many cords to sort thru,soo...you get the idea.It was manufactured by Acer,and it sits right next to the Mac that DOES get internet.If I didn't mention it,it's a Windows XP.It can get slow if I have,maybe,3 programs on at once,which I didn't when I loaded it.If it doesn't work after a redownload,i'll try on the Mac...
Tryed again,played music perfectly,but still wouldn't escape from the opening screen.Heck,it wouldn't even respond to my "End now" requests!For some reason,the task manager showed that two JNKplat2010 windows were open,when I couldn't see any extra window!Strange...
Acckk...3 posts in a row...sorry!But maybe it could be the fullscreen mode...do you think you could include an update which gives you the option for fullscreen(Starting out in a window)?This might be helpful for people who have to quit suddenly if the game malfunctions so they don't have to go to the task manager or hard shut down their system(like me...). Anyhoo,on a semi-related note,JNKPlat 09 3D quits when the music stops.Is that normal? BTW,for saving space,can you combine the three posts I made today?
Wowie! A tiny amount of Hard Drive space! ok, open the Files folder, and in there is a "setup.ini" file. Open that file up using Notepad, and you'll find the top-ish line is "Fullscreen = True/False" Switch it back and forth, see if it makes a difference.
A nearby line should be.. "GFX Engine = OpenGL" Switch it to "GFX Engine = DX7"
I'm guessing your little Laptop can't quite handle OpenGL.
Let me know if either of those fix it up, or make it any crazier!
Hello! I just got done playing a few levels of this game in Linux and saw the screen that asks for feedback. It was so politely asked that I couldn't help but come and give you feedback. Here's mine:
I think the game is great! The controls are tight and extremely fluid. It has the fluid control of a modern game, with a perfect blend of delicious retro gameplay, graphics, and sound. I really like this game, I had a blast playing it. I only have small minor suggestions/criticisms:
1. Regarding the Z key that people are complaining about..I like it the way it is really, holding it to hold on, letting go of it to drop. Instead of making it one way or the other, why not have an options screen so people can customize controls to their liking, and add the option of enabling/disabling the "grab" button needing to be held or not? Then everyone's happy!
2. This goes along with the options menu thing, but the game appears to run in a set resolution in windowed mode with no option to change it to full screen, or stretch when maximized. That would be nice, as I have a widescreen laptop and the game doesn't quite fit right on the screen. Again, only a small nitpick.
3. Finally, navigating the level selection screen is pretty cool, but my only gripe (and maybe this is due to where I downloaded it from) is it's a bit confusing trying to figure out which levels I played already. Some say 10/10, yet I didn't play any levels in that level pack yet. However, that might just be due to the uploader playing it through and uploading a copy right from their hard drive.
Anyway, those are my only real gripes, but this game is awesome! I'm having a blast with it, and I'm a huge fan of those retro sounds, they're perfect! You are doing an amazing job on this. In fact, I am going to try to see if you have other games available as well.
1. Yeah, you're probably right. I have the same "Why would you..?" thoughts about Grab-Toggle as I do about One-Button-Jump, so probably best to optionise that, for the folk who can't quite manage to wrap their head around it. Silly peeples!
2. Open the Tab-Options, Click "Windowed" and it becomes "Fullscreen", then Apply. The resolution toggley switch thing 'should' fit somewhere along the way, but it depends entirely on the quirkyness of your resolution. I've accounted for 4:3 (Normal), 16:9 (Wide) and 16:10 (silly PC!!). If you want to let me know the exact resolution your lappy screen's natively running at, (ie, what's your desktop at?) I'll try to add that into the mix, too!
3. Um, yeah.. That sounds like that's happened. Silly uploaders ;) (and apologies if that was my fault!!)
I HATE doing level select screens, especially for something where you can easily add more and more to the game. You then have to decide whether the level select is trying to be about the gameplay you've set, or if it should be about "Hey, I made this level, try it out", and showing your mates and things..
I think this one's a nice mix of the two. You get your progression/unlock thing, but you can also send someone a pack and they at least get to play the first level ;)
Either that, or you get one of those crazy wild nutjob menus with hundreds of thousands of boxes all over the place, which you could never ever manage to navigate without needing to switch over to the mouse!
I'm getting there, though, but it's probably going to be JNKPlat 2087 before I find one that works right.
.. As for "if you have other games available", that's what this is! It's all me!
Just finished the game, so I'm here to say *Thank you* for some real good entertainment.
A couple of things I noticed:
Loved the game concept, and the visual design is spot on for that kind of game. Unfortunately, sound doesn't work on Ubuntu 11.10.
It's a shame that the progress isn't properly recorded: The game should automatically offer me to play at the 'highest' levelset and the highest starting point I reached in my last session. Having to write down level names feels so 1980s ;-)
Reaching a new starting point is sometimes not communicated to the player, and starting points don't seem to appear every X levels but at varying intervals? I spent too much time thinking about that, so obviously something's wrong here ;-)
I'd also like to be able to use more keys than "Y" to select a menu item in the main and exit menus. Space and Enter are natural candidates.
But don't get me wrong: it provided me with hours of good entertainment, I love it.
First of all I haven't gotten all that far in the game but I am very impressed so far! this game is absolutely phenomenal from the controls to the puzzles. I have managed to map the controls to an NES controller wich is a lot of fun and allows me to move about more fluidly even though I had to use start and select as gameplay buttons. I know I'm a bit late to the game here so most likely this game is a past project to stay as it is. however Kordny made some very good suggestions on saving the highest level set and the starting point for new levels is a bit confusing.
also I want to be a bit picky here (only because I think your game is AWESOME!) I think all the graphic elements that are simple pixel art (ei. Platdude, spikes, arrows...) are fantastic. and I wish the rest of the elements matched that style. I am a graphic designer and a big fan of pixel art. and I think pixel art shouldn't be used in all games but some games fit the bill. one last criticism is that the menu is a tad busy and could stand to be cleaned up and simplified.
oh and I think this is me being inept but I took a quick look at the editor and I couldn't seem to find a way to delete just one block without wiping the whole level.
all in all if I am playing an amazing game and having fun I find it easy to overlook the ocd designer in me and just play the game because it's awesome! I wanted to leave some feedback because this game I think could be expanded upon in a sequel (and im not usually a fan of sequels) or update or something because no matter how much criticism the controls might get it makes the game what it is and I wouldn't change a thing about them.
kuddos for making the game available on mac, windows, and linux! being a graphic designer my house is primarily mac & linux and when I'm out of the house I only have access to my macbook pro which I love to game on with my USB NES controller. Keep up the great work!!
