Baxter demo is LIVE!

Thats right ladies and gentlemen, check it out here:

Baxter - the demo!

This is after many months of hard work, asking LOTS of questions, and deciding the right plan of action. I also want to give a big thank you to Austin Hollock of clay.io for helping me getting this game live! Also thanks to the good folks from the Construct 2 community for every helpful response to the numerous amount of questions I've asked.

Now, to explain a few things. There are a few bugs that I need to fix, some graphical snafus, and any small tweaks before I continue the rest of the game. Only Acts One and Two are playable, everything else is locked until full release. Unfortunately, the demo doesn't seem to save progress of completed levels when you exit the browser. That is something I know I need to fix before the final release because I don't expect ANYONE to go for all gold doors, let alone beating the game and unlock the special acts in one sitting.

Oh! Don't forget to toggle touch controls for desktops. My original intention was to upload this somewhere else but they're still there if someone's tablet or phone can run this.

One more thing, feedback is very important. Let me know what you think and if there is anything I can improve on. I have some setbacks on the title screen music because of the familiarity, but what do you think?

Well, I wont keep you waiting, go play!

Well done!

Here's what I recommend:

-When a player goes to instructions, the menu music keeps playing as it should, but when I go back to the main menu, the music stops and starts over, which feels awkward.

-The animation feels slightly off when gliding and landing on a pad. The sprite's feet go 'into' the floating block and then the character stabilizes on the block. I would recommend increasing the collision box or accounting for this in some other way so landing on a block looks smoother.

Great job so far, by the way!

Wall of feedback incoming:

• I like the main character. It's well animated and looks cool. Very Pokemon-like - possibly too much, but that's just a matter of taste.
• That little intro/story screen is perfect. I can tell right away what's going on from a single image.
• Those backgrounds animations in the first level make my eyes hurt. Ow. I struggle to focus on the game at all.
• Animated things in the HUD are very distracting.
• I feel that the gliding should stop when the player lets go of the up arrow, rather than requiring a separate button.
• The instructions that popped up for wall jumping didn't seem to ever go away. They also only popped up when I jumped and pressed spacebar on the (!) sign. I'd expect it to pop up automatically (and disappear shortly after). I had to refresh the page to get rid of it.
• Baxter gets stuck in the mid-run pose when walking against a wall.
• The gliding rotating thing looks funny. Does he need to tip and turn like that?
• I don't know if this is intentional or not, because it looks kind of funny, but if I hold a directional key while falling, Baxter makes his running animation instead of his falling one.
• There are loads of weird collisions and occurrences of the sprite and platforms not lining up properly.
• Why are there two kinds of things to collect?

Thanks for the feedback! Where to start...:

Ah, starting with the gliding, that was an oversight on the collisions. Also I've had problems just having it where you just need to hold the "Up" key down but it always stayed in gliding so as a last ditch effort I used the whiplash move to turn it off. I was on the fence on the animation as well, as a still animation to me didn't look right.

Collectables: The white/blue poker chips, if you look at the HUD where you select the acts, there is an arrow on the lower right hand corner by "Go To Special Act" it takes you to the Special Act HUD. You gather these to unlock the acts which are just a small amount of harder levels and a slightly unusual platform mechanic already implemented in Construct 2 *heh heh heh.

The gold coins with Baxter's face on them, that is my idea of replay value for completionists. Every level, including bosses, have 20 coins. You know when you gather all 20 a sign pops above you with a cheering sound, as you finish the level the door will turn gold instead of red.

Info bubble: Those were meant to pop up when you hit them, and the red "x" you click on to close (or just click the image) Maybe I should put a "click to close" message on there.

Other thingsWhen I added wall kicking, that started the whole "Baxter still in running pose" when I messed with that, Baxter wouldn't wall jump.

Also, I found some collision issues with the green slime and a section on A2-5 where you slide down a wall but for some reason you cannot glide.

On top of the not saving issue I think I'll get on a revision of the demo rather than continue knowing these things are prevalent.

Thanks for the feedback!

Remember me <img src="http://199.101.98.242/media/shots/93734-Jazz_Jackrabbit_CD_%281995%29%28Epic_Megagames%29%28M4%29-2.jpg" border="0" /> ^^

Nice job, awesome game play!

UPDATE!!

Thanks for the feedback, I've made some improvements to the demo and it's reuploaded on clay.io.

http://baxterdemo.clay.io/

Patch notes:

*Glide - make it to where you can glide and fall by holding and letting go of the "UP" key respectively.

*Glide collision issue

*Touch control toggle doesn't work on Act 1 HUD

*Issue in Act2-5 where you're unable to glide from walls

*Collision issues with Green Slimes

*Several platform collision issues in few levels(hopefully)

*Music stopping when leaving Control, Credit, HUD layouts

*Issue where the info bubble in Act1-1 wouldn't disappear after clicking the "X"

*Issue where Act1-Boss doesn't respawn after completion

*Issue in various levels in Act 2 where crates were unbreakable due to green slime placement.

*New Save/Load feature added

As for my first game, this might be a bit of an undertaking than I've expected it to be but I have it down to a science on how I will finish this game.

Question - does anyone experience slowdown at certain points? I recall reading that too many event sheets will do this as each level has an event sheet for unique things like death/respawn, level end, and other gimmicks.

Also, testing it on two different browsers. Seem to have slowdown on Firefox, but runs way better on Google Chrome even though the music overpower most of the sound effects. Had a friend try it on IE9 and the sound was completely muted... not sure what to make of that.

Anywho, I hope this makes the game much more enjoyable now!

Update on the demo. As this will be my final revision so I can move on to completing the game... some gameplay mechanics and graphics have changed.

Demo V3

For starters, new title screen:

<img src="http://clay.io/games/baxterdemo/claymedia/1044.jpg" border="0">

And some additional screenshots:

<img src="http://clay.io/games/baxterdemo/claymedia/998.png" border="0">

<img src="http://clay.io/games/baxterdemo/claymedia/999.png" border="0">

<img src="http://clay.io/games/baxterdemo/claymedia/1001.png" border="0">

You'll also notice few levels have changed, as I've added the switch family and some wind machines that only work when you glide on them.

I'm also proud that I've figured out how to apply mock physics to the platformer! A couple levels have what I've dubbed "Weight Cube" you can push, bounce, or "trick jump" (Might remove it on final).

I think for those using IE or Safari I'll upload a straight EXE demo so you can at least hear the audio.

This is a nice game so far, I didn't play it extensively but I like the way it's heading, the movement is smooth and the art is nice. I like the Jazz Jackrabbit post! That brought back some memories :P