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Re: Lizard

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 1:30 pm
by tepples
Probably because there's not nearly the sort of qualitative difference between developing for modern Windows and 16-bit Windows, or even between modern Windows and a 3D console, that there is between Windows and a 2D console.

Re: Lizard

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 1:46 pm
by rainwarrior
calima wrote:Win 3.11 coding wouldn't be that different from NES actually, banked memory and all, just 16-bits. Everyone is doing things for old consoles, but old Windows is all forgotten :'(
I think there's been a lot of recent games with an "old Windows" aesthetic, at least. (e.g. Kingsway, Hypnospace Outlaw, Cibele)

Re: Lizard

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 2:22 pm
by Sumez
Wow!.... That is weird. Kingsway really makes me want to try it out. That last one though, is kinda disturbing.

Re: Lizard

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2017 2:34 pm
by Asaki
Retro City Rampage has an unfinished Win 3.x port.

Re: Lizard

Posted: Fri Nov 03, 2017 6:38 pm
by Erockbrox
Looking forward to seeing this game completed. Here is a quick playtest/review of the demo. Here are some things.

- There are some platform jumps which seem hard to judge whether you can make the jumps or not. It would be great if these jumps were more clear.

- The jump boots power up seems awkward to use. Why do you have to hold B to activate the power up then press A to use it? Why not just let B be the super jump power up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAyDFrP ... e=youtu.be

Re: Lizard

Posted: Fri Nov 03, 2017 8:12 pm
by rainwarrior
Thanks for the feedback. I very much appreciate anyone sharing what they felt in response to playing my game, good or bad.

I'll respond to a few of your points that interested me. I don't really want to debate what good design principles for games are, but I'd be happy to share what I think about some of the things I put in the game that you commented on:


1. Some jump distances/heights are very intentionally ambiguous to encourage you to try and fail. On the three specific instances you mentioned:
  • In the room where you get the Lizard of Bounce, I want you to try and jump for that coin, and you did.
  • On the right side of the bridge, you can make that jump, but it leads only to a non-essential secret. It's okay and normal/intended for you to fail here too. There's also a nearby hint to encourage the attempt.
  • In the room with the Lizard of Heat, the platforms have been moved around slightly to make getting through there smoother. That particular jump that you're calling misleading is a compromise with some other constraints, but in the final version its impact is mitigated a little bit by other changes around it.

2. The Lizard of Bounce's boots are not for jumping, they are for bouncing. Pressing A to jump is actually unrelated to the bounce; pressing them at the same time does nothing special.

There are probably a lot more places to play around with it in the full game than the demo, but I do hope you'd eventually be able to figure out how it works with some experimentation. ...and if not there's 5 other lizards you can play with. I don't expect people to figure out everything immediately, or in some specific linear order. You can get to almost all places in the world with any of the Lizards.


3. I'm surprised by your closing comment, because the demo actually has two bosses, and three ways to reach an end screen. I think this video covers only about 1/3 of the demo.

I was also surprised at the point where you declared yourself stuck and reset. You can get past that blue frog, but the easier way to escape was to go down in the next room over. I think resetting is a valid option for returning to the start, if you want to use it, but I've intentionally left an "easy" way to get back out of every area in the game, even if it's not immediately obvious.

In the final version there's also a map that might help you orient yourself.


4. You asked a lot of questions about things like what the coins do, or what does that text mean. I'm glad to have succeeded at raising that question in your mind.

The idea that the text is a password is an interesting thought, but it is not a password; also the passwords in the final version will be numbers rather than letters anyway.

The Lizard of Knowledge can do a lot more in the final version too. Many creatures (e.g. the Panda) can talk, that couldn't in the demo.


Edit: 5. You mentioned a password being a cost saving measure. In this case that is not why I chose this. This game does not have a significant amount of saved state, by design, and I think a battery backed save would actually be inappropriate. The password is only 5 digits long (3-bits each), and takes only seconds to enter. If I thought a battery would improve the game, I would add that cost.

Re: Lizard

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 4:47 pm
by Bavi_H
In a thread about the password system of Owlia and other games, rainwarrior described the basics of Lizard Demo's password system.

Here are my additional notes about Lizard Demo's password system:

Code: Select all

Lizard type:
L3 L2 L1 L0
[can have values 0 ~ 9. Omitted list of lizard types here for spoiler prevention. See zip file.]

Room:
R7 R6 R5 R4 R3 R2 R1 R0
(can have values 0 ~ 156)

Password Letters
(! means invert the bit)
1st letter:  L3 !R7  R3
2nd letter:  L2  R6 !R2
3rd letter:  (xor the other letters together)
4th letter: !L1 !R5  R1
5th letter: !L0  R4 !R0

Password Alphabet:
0 0 0  G
0 0 1  H
0 1 0  I
0 1 1  J
1 0 0  K
1 0 1  L
1 1 0  M
1 1 1  N

Normally the game only accepts the password if the room has a save point
in it (the little head statue that you touch to save your place).

You can force the password for other rooms to work by entering the
password, standing in front of the password door, then pressing
SELECT + A + up
See lizard-demo-notes.zip for the password encoding notes above, along with:
  • the Lizard Demo map with room numbers added to it
  • a list of all possible passwords
  • a FCEUX lua script I wrote to help explore the map
  • some other secret codes rainwarrior has mentioned in various posts

Re: Lizard

Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2017 6:09 pm
by rainwarrior
Thank you Bavi_H, this is a gift. :)

Re: Lizard

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 8:18 pm
by rainwarrior
The game is essentially finished. It's currently undergoing beta testing. Cartridges will be available after testing, but if anyone here wants to get in for the beta test, this is where it lives:
https://rainwarrior.itch.io/lizard

Re: Lizard

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 2:27 am
by team_disposable
Congratulations! I picked this up last night and my girlfriend and I have had a great time playing it so far!

It has a really interesting feel to the gameplay, the structure seems more like a computer adventure game from the 286/386 era, while the gameplay is definitely very nes. This goes withiut saying, but its really nice!

My single piece of criticism so far would be the nag screens. With the difficulty of the jumps and the die to reset after falling mechanic (Ive been throwing these lizard bones all over the place after a bad jump) its a little like a chiding. I think we went though 6 or 7 of them fighting the octopus.

Its a really charming piece of work, and I'm off to play some more now! Thanks!

Re: Lizard

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 3:42 am
by pubby
Congrats :beer: :beer:

Re: Lizard

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 5:27 pm
by rainwarrior
team_disposable wrote:My single piece of criticism so far would be the nag screens. With the difficulty of the jumps and the die to reset after falling mechanic (Ive been throwing these lizard bones all over the place after a bad jump) its a little like a chiding. I think we went though 6 or 7 of them fighting the octopus.
There are exactly 6 of them, then they stop appearing. If you reset, though, it'll start over, so you might start seeing the same ones again.

I do want to keep them in, and there's actually some "story" information in some of them, even though the 2nd and 3rd are more like tips for people who haven't read the manual. The later ones take longer (the 6th one should have taken another 43 consecutive deaths after the 5th one!).

It has been hard to tune how often they should appear. The first one comes up after 13 consecutive deaths from the same save point. Some people go a long time before that happens, but other people start hammering away at a particular challenge right away and hit it very quickly. Getting info about this is hard cause I basically need to watch someone play it for the first time to see. (Thankfully I've been able to do this several times since the beta began!) At this point I think I'll tweak them to be a little less frequent, I do think I agree that there's too much of them at once.


Anyhow, I'm actually in the middle of a few difficulty reduction tweaks in response to stuff I've learned in testing, trying to smooth out a few parts that have given people the most grief.

Re: Lizard

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 6:15 pm
by gauauu
rainwarrior wrote: Anyhow, I'm actually in the middle of a few difficulty reduction tweaks in response to stuff I've learned in testing, trying to smooth out a few parts that have given people the most grief.
That seems like a good idea. It's BRUTALLY hard right now.

Also a question: I started a new game, got lost in the void zone, finally got out and found the lizard of swim, then beat the octopus boss (after dying about 4 million times). Then it went to a screen saying the adventure was over, and it started over.

Was this supposed to be confusing by design? I was totally lost about what just happened. (Did I win? Did I lose? Did I just warp back to the beginning but still going?)

If it's supposed to be cryptic, I'm happy with that answer. But didn't know if that was the goal.

Re: Lizard

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 7:57 pm
by rainwarrior
gauauu wrote:Was this supposed to be confusing by design? I was totally lost about what just happened. (Did I win? Did I lose? Did I just warp back to the beginning but still going?)

If it's supposed to be cryptic, I'm happy with that answer. But didn't know if that was the goal.
Yes, you have the intended amount of information.

What would be useful to know, though, is whether you managed to answer those questions for yourself, and what actions did you take to learn?

Re: Lizard

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 9:21 pm
by gauauu
rainwarrior wrote:
gauauu wrote:Was this supposed to be confusing by design? I was totally lost about what just happened. (Did I win? Did I lose? Did I just warp back to the beginning but still going?)

If it's supposed to be cryptic, I'm happy with that answer. But didn't know if that was the goal.
Yes, you have the intended amount of information.

What would be useful to know, though, is whether you managed to answer those questions for yourself, and what actions did you take to learn?
I didn't manage to answer those questions. I started over and went a different direction, then got a little frustrated after dying a bunch more times without really understanding what I was trying to do or accomplish, and put the game down and went and did something else.

(I hope I don't sound too negative. You've made an impressive game!)