Mind Your Manors

I spent all month working on just this 1 level & still wasn’t sure I’d get it all done, including recording playthroughs o’ the level, by the end o’ October. But I did.

This level idea started out as just some kind o’ vague HalloweenMuertoween-style mansion with this basic wallpaper & floor graphics, but all the layouts I came up with seemed empty & boring. Originally, I had bottomless pits in the mansion, which made no sense.

So then I came up with the idea o’ giving the player a flashlight in this level & challenging them to defeat all the ghosts to beat the level, & the 1st thing I did was prototype the programming for this to see if I could implement it in a way that didn’t feel awful. ’Twas tedious tinkering with pixels to get the rotating flashbeam & flashlight arm to align with the collision lines, but it seems to work all right. Since I knew this gimmick would have a risk o’ being janky, I deliberately made this level laid back & easy ( this also made recording easy & fast ’nough to do in less than an hour, as opposed to, say, “Brier Flier”, which took multiple days ).

Unlike almost everything else in this game, the flashlight collision isn’t just a box, but is 3 lines tested gainst the ghosts’ hitboxes, using some algorithms I found online, as well as some extra algorithms I had to fudge up to handle rotating the lines.

I remember 1 decision I hedged o’er was whether to allow the player to duck & slide down slopes ( in this case, the stairs ). I felt that having the down input make the player both duck & lower the flashlight, making it impossible to do either by itself, would be annoying¹. Originally, I had the camera-up & camera-down imputs move your flashlight, which fixed this problem; but I found that too awkward & feared it might be hard for players to figure out or adjust to & thought adding a message box to mention it would be lame². On a keyboard a’least ( which I still use for testing, e’en though I added controller support probably a year ago ), you have to use the same fingers for jumping & running as changing the camera, which is fine for the camera, since you rarely need to move it, anyway — I considered it a bonus mo’ than anything else. But for moving your flashlight, it’s far more o’ a hassle. ’Ventually, I judged that ducking & sliding wouldn’t be all that useful in this level, so I just cut them out. This had the unfortunate, but not dire, downside that it made the Flashlight Player’s code less clean & concise as, rather than just calling the general player update function, I had to copy parts o’ it with the ducking & sliding code removed. The biggest annoyance for a programmer is code that is very similar, but slightly different, so you have to debate whether to have copypasta ( which can make changing this copied code harder or risk adding bugs if they diverge ) or complicating the code & making it run slower for all with conditions.

I’m embarrassed to say how much time it took just doing the graphics for this level — as is common. All the slight adjustments needed for the staircases transitioning into ceilings & walls bloated the tileset ( which is already rooming with the forest tileset ) so that it almost took up all the tiles I have reserved, when most tilesets take up less than 10% o’ that space. All the lines & ridged shading kept misaligning, so I had to readjust tiles, only for this misalignment to cascade down all the tiles next to that tile, & so on.

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$width_tag is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 36

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$absolute_filename is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 63

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$width_tag is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 36

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$absolute_filename is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 63

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$width_tag is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 36

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$absolute_filename is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 63

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$width_tag is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 36

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$absolute_filename is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 63

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$width_tag is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 36

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$absolute_filename is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 63

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$width_tag is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 36

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$absolute_filename is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 63

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$width_tag is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 36

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$absolute_filename is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 63

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$width_tag is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 36

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$absolute_filename is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 63

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$width_tag is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 36

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property Mezun\DasThema\SrcSetItem::$absolute_filename is deprecated in /var/www/public/wp-content/themes/dasthema/src/SrcSetItem.php on line 63

Stop & Go Space Station

I actually finished this before “Brier Flier”, but was much mo’ mixed on the quality o’ this 1 & wanted to improve it mo’, ’specially its graphics. However, since then I’ve been able to think o’ any way to improve it & wanted to get this out before October, when I’d rather focus on “Mind Your Manors”.

I almost rejected this level’s gimmick o’ having to stop when the screen turns red every 3 seconds for being annoying & slow-paced, & I still wonder if maybe I should’ve. My thought process, in addition to urging myself to get this game o’er with, was that ’twas an original & memorable ’nough gimmick to be worth not being particularly fun. I also didn’t think I’d be able to think o’ anything to make this gimmick meaningful without making it feel impossible, but I think I was able to avoid that.

I don’t remember why I made the level have branching paths, but it works surprisingly well. Just beating the level is a short path to the end, which is good, since having to stop every few seconds draws e’en a short path out. But if you want the gem score, — which, for once, is much harder than the time score — you need to go all round.

I don’t like the diamond’s placement, but couldn’t think o’ a different place that didn’t feel forced. You can easily see where the diamond is when going round the top without e’en needing to particularly look out for it.

For some reason, @ the last second I switched out the regular space music used in “Lunacy” for elevator music. ¿I guess for variety? I like this song, but not when it keeps getting cut off.

As you can see, I’m still not fond o’ this level. The next level should be much better.

Visit the official website @ boskeopolis-land.com

Read the unreadable source code

Brier Flier

Fun fact: when I 1st recorded this, this level’s name was spelled “Brier Flyer” ’cause I thought “flier” was 1 o’ those weird words that goes gainst the rules o’ English spelling just to mire me & for some reason didn’t look it up. I just found this out as I started typing this & saw my spellcheck yell @ me, just as how it yells @ me that “’nough” isn’t a true word, which is ridiculous. However, due to the way I recorded this video — I didn’t want to have to keep going through the motions @ the beginning, including waiting for long ’nough for viewers to be able to read the goal text, every attempt I made @ this level, so I just spliced 2 separate recordings together during the pause on the goal message screen, when everything’s silent — I was able to fix it in post.

I chose to just show this level off in 1 playthrough, getting just the gem score & the diamond, since the automoving nature o’ this level makes the time score as easy as beating the level normally. It is possible to take too long, since the angles you turn in can make you go faster or slower.

But don’t let the shortness o’ this video imply that it didn’t take me hundreds o’ tries before I could get that gem score. When I set the gem score, I expected it to be lenient, only to find, to my surprise, that the few times I did make it to the end without dying I’d be off by a few gems ( 1 time I was just 100 ₧ off ). This is entirely due to me being a shitty player, though: this level’s gimmick is so simple & fundamental that I don’t feel like there’s any unfairness; it’s just a case o’ are you good ’nough to time your turning or not.

Like “Petrol Pond Place”, I mired o’er this level for mo’ than a year. My original idea was that you’d control an owl; but I couldn’t think o’ anything to do with that that wasn’t a pointless ripoff o’ Donkey Kong Country 2. I then experimented with a normal level with enemies that chase & push you into bramble walls while having bouncy heads for reaching high places. However, for some reason, I was insistent on having this Kafka reference for the goal message, & didn’t find this gimmick much mo’ interesting. Then the idea struck to have a paper plane weaving through thin bramble passages like that minigame in WarioWare, inc., Mega Microgame$!, ’cept with simpler, mo’ straightforward controls ( the WarioWare minigame had mo’ realistic gravity physics that caused you to move mo’ quickly when pointing downward & had slippery turning; in this level, you always go forward the same speed & turning has a static acceleration rate ) & it all fit perfectly. & despite all my frustrating failures @ completing my own level, I still find this level fun.

I e’en like the diamond placement for once. After finding every attempt @ adding a secret branching path to a diamond too trite, I was surprised I’d ne’er tried the obvious trick before: having the level just straight-up continue past the keycane. This works particularly well for this level, since the keycane is in a tight passageway with harder-than-normal controls. I also liked being able to make the spaces within the bramble walls secretly a passage you will ’ventually move through later on. I didn’t like the idea o’ making the player turn back round & go back after getting the diamond or adding a circle back to the keycane ( which would either be too easy & would entice players to just go that path to the diamond or would require double the level design ), so I just added ’nother keycane right after the diamond. It’s not as if there’s any law gainst having multiple keycanes in a level.

Speaking o’ the bramble walls, I hope you like the look o’ all those extra bramble stalks ’hind the walls, ’cause they were tedious to tile together. E’en after all the times I’ve talked ’bout how it’s usually the case, you’d be surprised @ how much less time I spend coming up with the actual gameplay layout o’ the level compared to the time I spend on the aesthetics. & keep in mind, this game isn’t exactly gorgeous — there’s a reason a basic run & shoot action game like Cuphead took mo’ than 7 years to make, & it wasn’t the programming.

If I have any qualms ’bout this level, it’s that the Pufferbees don’t have as much a role as I feel like they should — just a small section where you weave through them. Part o’ me feels like I should’ve had moving Pufferbees to make them different from just functionally a different graphic from the walls, as I experimented earlier in the level; but I feel making the player dodge moving bees with li’l reaction time may be too unfair. Gameplaywise, how it is is best, with the focus being on dodging the brambles, & bee-dodging just a short refresher in the middle; it’s only thematically that I feel the bees should be mo’ present.

I have ’nother level I’m close to completing & I’ve also been ruminating o’er for a while, so hopefully there should be ’nother update soon.

Visit the official website @ boskeopolis-land.com

Read the unreadable source code