Hey guys!
This is my first ever post… I just registered an hour ago.
Thought I’d upload a preview of the game I have been working on for a couple weeks now.
At the moment there are only 9 levels including the tutorials and I am currently working on others.
just a heads up… levels 7, 8 and 9 are pretty challenging.
have a go and any feedback would be awesome!
Download: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7u1ne9xqlcdc2l3/SunnyDay.zip?dl=0
Screen
The first thing I noticed when I opened the folder were sprites. I nearly thought I downloaded the wrong thing because I was immediately presented with images galore. I think you should bundle your resources in a separate folder away from the jar file. After finding the jar, I ran it by right clicking it and opening it with Java. A window opened up and it was just blue. I tried opening it with command prompt (java -jar SunnyDay.jar and it worked. I don’t know why it didn’t start properly without command prompt.
The levels are fairly simple and pretty enjoyable. The portals aren’t exactly obvious that one is “in” and the other is “out” just based on colour. Symbols on the portals would definitely help. I like the tutorial scheme where it’s displayed on the left-hand side with a little table (although I noticed it’s “hardcoded” into the level background). The controls are probably okay for a lot of people, but for me, I absolutely can’t play a platformer with WASD. It’s just so much easier if I play with the arrow keys and spacebar (I blame BattleBlock Theatre for making me play like that :P). The way the character bounces off the sides of the blocks is pretty interesting and makes for gameplay I’m not used to, which is good. The enemies are oddly adorable. Death isn’t that obvious for touching enemies (it’s good enough for water death) because all it does is reset the level if you touch an enemy.
This is pretty good for a game you’ve only been working on for a few weeks! The last few levels were definitely a good challenge. If you’re going to be actively working on this, I think you should ask the mods to move it to WIP Games because I wouldn’t say it’s ready enough for Showcase if it’s still a WIP.
Thanks for the detailed feedback Chris!
[quote]The first thing I noticed when I opened the folder were sprites. I nearly thought I downloaded the wrong thing because I was immediately presented with images galore. I think you should bundle your resources in a separate folder away from the jar file.
[/quote]
I’ve had a bit of trouble finding a way to pack the resources into the jar file. I can’t seem to find anything online that explains how to do it without using eclipse or something similar (I am just using notepad++ and cmd). Any suggestions would be great.
Otherwise I will just put the images into a separate folder like you said.
Thanks for the other suggestions as well, I’ll change the portal design as well as add the arrow keys/space as another set of controls.
[quote]If you’re going to be actively working on this, I think you should ask the mods to move it to WIP Games because I wouldn’t say it’s ready enough for Showcase if it’s still a WIP.
[/quote]
This is gonna sound dumb, but how would I go about getting it moved to the WIP Games?
From the WIP board rules post:
[quote]To request a migration to the Showcase board, it’s usually enough to send a PM to one of the League of Dukes or explicitly make the request in the game topic.
[/quote]
I guess you could request a migration to the WIP board instead of the Showcase board.
Nice little game here! I had fun playing it and getting frustrated xD
I also could not run the game without CMD.
My ideas for some improvements.
Seems your mobs (that suddenly start moving really fast) only do so in certain areas. I would advise maybe using a distance check on this as then you wouldn’t have to hard code this in.
I like the ideas of the portals but I feel they could be better labelled/distinguished? As Chrislo27 said. I got a little confused xD.
I also noticed that if I help the jump key down I could jump higher? I’m not sure if this is a feature but I don’t personally like it. Double jumps etc seem cool though :point:
I quite like this, it is creative and slightly infuriating when you die on the same platform for the 10th time. I can imagine getting extra bounce when jumping on enemies which you have to time right to reach higher platforms. Are you just using Java2D?
Another thing I’ve noticed is that jumping while holding the jump key isn’t very uniform. If you hold the jump key while falling you do a slow fall that’s erratic.
[quote]My ideas for some improvements.
Seems your mobs (that suddenly start moving really fast) only do so in certain areas. I would advise maybe using a distance check on this as then you wouldn’t have to hard code this in.
I like the ideas of the portals but I feel they could be better labelled/distinguished? As Chrislo27 said. I got a little confused xD.
I also noticed that if I help the jump key down I could jump higher? I’m not sure if this is a feature but I don’t personally like it. Double jumps etc seem cool though Pointing
[/quote]
Hey Sauron, thanks for the tips
Its probably not obvious but the follower mobs will only chase you if you get within the range in which they move (if that makes any sense).
And as for the jump key it does take a bit of getting used to. For some levels such as the last one you need to be able to make small jumps.
Adding a double jump to replace this is a good idea, ill implement it see how it goes. Thanks!
[quote]I quite like this, it is creative and slightly infuriating when you die on the same platform for the 10th time. I can imagine getting extra bounce when jumping on enemies which you have to time right to reach higher platforms. Are you just using Java2D?
[/quote]
Thanks unlight,
I also forgot to mention as its not obvious but if you pause the game your stats are displayed at the top of screen (kills, deaths, time played etc.)
and yeh I am just using java2D
I will play around with the jumping also to make it a little more natural
I don’t know what it is but you certainly did something right, I just had to finish it.
Apparently I got a score of -1625, nice. Took me 19 minutes and 217 deaths. That last level was a b*tch.
HAHA thats awesome to hear.
the scoring system is probably a little harsh. After playing/testing this game a million times I can complete it in under 3 minutes with a highscore of 950
but beating it the first time took a while.
+5p for crawlers(black enemies)
+10p for followers(light blue)
+15p for fast followers(dark blue)
+20p for super followers(purple)
+100p for completing a level
-20p for dying/restarting
It’s good that you’re having others play your game. As the developer, you’re bound to test the game millions and millions (okay maybe not that many) times and you eventually get extremely used to it, and you don’t have a feel of how people who have never played your game feel.
Also I’m now getting weird slowdowns every 2-3 seconds or so where it feels like the entire game world is running slower. Maybe you’re using framerate for update ticks instead of delta time?
I cannot run it…throwing exception.I am using JAVA 7.Please fix it 
It would be infinitely more helpful if you could copy/paste the entire error, preferably in [code ][/code ] (without the spaces!) tags.
You’ve made a pretty fun game! I +1 you to continue working on it, can I suggest that you implement a Camera so that you can have more diverse levels. Also I think there should be some levels where you do not have to eliminate all followers to open the exit. This would allow for levels filled with fast followers where the objective is to just get to the end.
Apart from that, great job. ;D
