Keen 64 Beta (Map, Level 1, Level 2, Pogo Level)

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Levellass
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Post by Levellass »

You never know, you may well have the chance to 'extend' this past Keen 1 in certain respects. More power to your elbow says I!
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Bernie
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Post by Bernie »

Lava89 wrote:Thanks! :) (hopefully I can deliver!)
in the least, just add some sound effects, music, a rush job on the levels and i think it'll be fun.
i can always help you out with music if you want (then again i think a few people around here can).
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Lava89
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Post by Lava89 »

Levellass wrote:You never know, you may well have the chance to 'extend' this past Keen 1 in certain respects. More power to your elbow says I!
Oh definitely. I already have a few easter eggs planned. ;)

Plus, if all goes well, and people make mods, there's definitely potential to see cool stuff come out of this. Really, Keen64 is just a tech demo.
Bernie wrote:i can always help you out with music if you want (then again i think a few people around here can).
Ok, thanks for the offer! I'll definitely keep it in mind.
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Post by Gridlock »

Something about the gameplay still doesn't feel quite right to me. I almost think the third person view is zoomed in too close to Keen. I'm not sure if you can change this, but having it zoomed out a bit more might improve the feel of the controls. Jumping and collision detection for platforms still needs some refinement I think. Would it be possible to add a shadow underneath Keen when he's slightly above a surface to indicate the 3-D position to the player? This might work as a subtle way of helping the player.

Still, I'm super excited about this project. I think you should focus on refining the gameplay for now. Once it's nearly perfect, I suspect it'll be much easier to dive into a full game. And it would be awesome if someday people could make their own games with this engine. Good luck!
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MoffD
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Post by MoffD »

Also don't forget to make the Yorps an annoyance, so people will be torn between shooting them and letting them go (or stepping on their heads)
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Post by Levellass »

Or making them fall off the map.
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Lava89
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Post by Lava89 »

Gridlock wrote:Something about the gameplay still doesn't feel quite right to me. I almost think the third person view is zoomed in too close to Keen. I'm not sure if you can change this, but having it zoomed out a bit more might improve the feel of the controls.
This is definitely doable. In fact, I'll have the game zoom out when you're walking and then zoom back in when you're standing, like alot of games do these days.
Gridlock wrote:Jumping and collision detection for platforms still needs some refinement I think.


Ok, this will be a priority for the next update.
Gridlock wrote:Would it be possible to add a shadow underneath Keen when he's slightly above a surface to indicate the 3-D position to the player? This might work as a subtle way of helping the player.
So let it be written, so let it be done.

After you mentioned this I got a shadow to finally work right ( I could never get the shadow to work in the old pogo demo ), its not perfect but it does the job.
Gridlock wrote:Once it's nearly perfect, I suspect it'll be much easier to dive into a full game.
Kind of, I'd say my biggest hurdle in doing the full game is just programming each of the different elements, like gargs, yorps and then building the geometry of the levels. After that's all said and done, I can just plop the spawn points where I want to.

And it helps doing things in order of complexity. So once I've introduced the gargs in say the pogo level (level 5), which is one of the simpler levels, I can combine all of my efforts into a level like 3 or 4, which involve vorticons and keycards. But by then, I will be building off my work I did with the yorps, gargs and other gameplay elements.

But yeah, now that you mention it, I should focus more on the gameplay, at least for this next update, because it will make it easier for potential play-testers to evaluate the rest of the game.

Thanks for your honest and helpful feedback.
MoffD wrote:Also don't forget to make the Yorps an annoyance, so people will be torn between shooting them and letting them go (or stepping on their heads)
Glad you pointed this out, in my next update I was in the process of only making them follow you 50% of the game (in earlier versions they follow 100%) so I think I'll make them follow you 5 / 6ths of the time, so they're not as predictable but still annoying. Plus enabling them to physically push you around will add to that annoying aspect. So thanks!
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New Update v0.1.5

Post by Lava89 »

Its been a while since I've worked on this, but I did make some significant progress, so I decided to just slap everything together and put it out there. So here's a new update (0.1.5):

- Yorps can die now (sick, I know)
- New Shadow for easier platforming
- Camera is further away from Keen
- Pogo Level (very much a WIP and no pogo yet)

There's also some Pat Pat plants in the map level, which was left over from me experimenting with their animation. But I thought I would leave it in there so people can see what they'll look like in-level.

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Here's a refresher of how the control schemes work:

Keyboard scheme using Keen 4-6 \ Galaxy Series controls (CLASSIC)
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Mouse & Keyboard control scheme (FPS)
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Eventually I would like to put in a dedicated options menu, to enable crosshairs, change control scheme, change volume, etc.

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Levellass
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Post by Levellass »

And the new years starts off with a bang!
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Lava89
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Post by Lava89 »

Haha, thanks!
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Post by troublesomekeen »

This is great! One might even describe it as "nifty", to borrow a phrase from levellass. What I find most interesting is the potential of the Overworld being just as much a level as all the others.

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Last edited by troublesomekeen on Tue Jul 11, 2017 7:12, edited 1 time in total.
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Keening_Product
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Post by Keening_Product »

Pleased to report it works in Linux under WINE.
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Nice work, but I find it frustrating because of how fast movement is. Is this just a side effect of me not running it in Windows or is it too fast for everyone else too?

Also the first level's entrance point is after you walk past that level.
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Levellass
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Post by Levellass »

Movement is tricky, I find it faster than the original game, but I feel that slower would give it too much of a 'moonwalk' kind of feel. So no problems with me on this end.
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MoffD
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Post by MoffD »

I'll just shuffle this in here:

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Keep up the great work Lava!
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