Thanks for all the feedback.
rainwarrior wrote:The blue enemies that throw water bottles are very tough, especially because there is no pattern to their throws. The stun attack does not stop the bottles (shouldn't it?), and the fire attack falls too quickly to effectively hit them (the water bottles have a lot more range). The only effective attack seems to be using their own weapon against them.
(I later noticed your GIF where you were throwing the fire upwards and realized the fire can be thrown up too. That kinda changes everything, but at the same time it makes the water bottle ability redundant to the fire, since the fire can now do everything it does.)
Yeah, I'm changing the blue volcanoes to be less random (always one bottle every 64 frames) and I'm added some information in the tutorial level that has the player throw a fireball upwards to hit an enemy. Them continuing to throw when stunned is a bug. Later on in the game there will be things like using fire to melt ice and using water to put out fire.
There's going to be a big emphasis on using abilities to interact with the level, like Kirby letting you cut ropes or light fuses, but on a bigger scale. I really need to brainstorm what ways I can make abilities stand out from each other though.
Collision detection with blocks and handling for being off the top of the screen are both pretty iffy overall and need fixed.
rainwarrior wrote:Might be good if instead of PLZ WAIT you showed the level's number so I know how far I've gone. Might also be nice if there was some way to return to the level select screen other than resetting the NES (maybe an "exit level" option from the pause menu? What is the "inventory" for anyway?).
I actually should probably have some sort of animation before a level starts that shows off the current level number, and covers up that it's even loading at all during that time.
Right now start+select (in that order. yeah, not intuitive) exits levels, but yeah, I should just explicitly add an option to the menu. I should try to minimize the number of button combinations in general.
The will hold health recovery items, items that change the current ability, and things like keys in later levels that introduce those. I haven't really implemented those yet though. Buying these kinds of items will also give coins a use.
rainwarrior wrote:Why can't I stop the king? (Throwing water bottles at him does not stop him!)
I had him unkillable because I figured the level would be too easy if you could just kill him and move on with the level. I made him killable but lowered the level so it wasn't so high.
Ronald is in the ROM but he isn't in any levels yet. Usually when testing out new stuff I just throw it on the intro level and take it out when it's done.
I think I'm just going to take out jumping on enemies altogether to help distance my game from Mario.
rainwarrior wrote:It seems strange that current weapon gets saved at checkpoints, so if you die you have to recollect it ONLY if you're still on the same level. Kind of unintuitive that you retain your weapon after dying only in some cases, especially since I don't really know what level I'm on while playing (the transitions are kind of immediate, and there's not level indicator). Per my earlier confusion about how to discard a weapon, it might be best if you just lose it when you die or reset the game.
Speaking of reset, shouldn't there be some option to clear the saved game?
I've now hit a level where all I can do is jump into a pit. I presume we can't go further here? (I guess this is level 5? The level menu says ! for 5 and 6-8 are still locked.)
Abilities save because I wanted it to be where you could have another shot at the level with the same chances rather than being disadvantaged by losing your weapon. It probably doesn't matter though since it's so easy to just copy another enemy.
Clearing the savegame will come when I add a screen between the title and the level select.
And yeah, the last level is just a platform as a placeholder so that it doesn't go off the end of the selectable level list.