Post by FungalCactus in Super Skelemania comments

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I forgot about this demo! I've played Super Skeleman and Skelemania and I really enjoyed them. I used a controller to play. I like where this is going, but I also have some criticisms.

I had some trouble with lag and scrolling, even with a 2 GB graphics card. I like the art and music, but the mechanics and controls felt a bit off. Triggering backflips is a hair slower than I'd like, but I could get used to it again. I'm not a big fan of how the dive works. Conserving some momentum is cool, but this can also be abused to continually dive across long horizontal stretches. There is also no way to cancel or reduce the momentum of the dive. I don't remember if this was present in the previous games. The lack of a smooth transition between running and charging feels awkward, as I was expecting it to function like a regular run button. It's disappointing that it's impossible to dive after a running somersault jump and retain the running momentum. I figured out that you can get a huge damage boost from spikes if you jump at the right time. Is that intentional?

Ben Allen7 years ago

Hmm, lag is kind of scary because it's something that I see frequently in builds of the game, but I assume it has something to do with my computer or that I frequently run it out of dropbox. I also seem to be the only one who gets lag because everyone I've talked to that's played the game has had it run fine, until now. I really don't know what to do about it though because it should run fine, and more often than not it does run fine.

The problem people have always had in the past is pressing jump right before changing directions, which leads to it not going off. I think the fix for this will be to add a ghost frame or two to let you 'convert' a normal jump into a backflip if the get the timing slightly off.

A little confused at your reasoning for disliking the new dive with it letting you go very far with the same momentum. In the previous two games, jumping out of a dive kept your momentum *AND* took you out of dive. This made keeping your dive momentum extremely easy, because all you had to do was jump out of your dive as soon as you hit the ground, and then dive again. If you messed it up (assuming you're trying to play the game quickly) there's not much of a punishment, since you'll have complete control of the player. With the dive in its current state, if you don't time your dive-jumps well enough, you'll lose momentum very quickly, which I think makes it a bit more interesting and skillful. However, it can be frustrating for any player to have to wait for momentum to naturally slow down before you get control back, so I'm still not totally sure on whether I'll keep this version of dive or revert to the old one.

The reason why charge isn't a run button where you build up speed over time is because I wanted it to be somewhat different from the speed booster in super metroid. I also don't want it to just replace dive as the best way to get over gaps or the best way to move quickly. The only reason why I don't let you dive while charging is because I like the jump-charge somersault animation too much and want to force people to look at it. However, being able to dive into a charge to conserve momentum is a very cool idea that I hadn't considered previously. I'll definitely experiment with that and see if I like it.

As for the damage boost thing, yes I know about it. I isn't a feature but I'm probably not going to fix it because there isn't anything inherently bad about it being in the game, and maybe speedrunners will like it. There's another unintentional bug in the game that I also probably won't fix for the same reason.

FungalCactus7 years ago

Sorry, it's been a while since I played the predecessors, so I couldn't remember how dives worked with momentum. I think my main issue with it is that you have to wait before you can proceed with normal walking or a jump. I'm maybe being too picky about that.

I see why you would want to distinguish the charge from a normal run, and I think it should work. The thing I'm most concerned about with it is that you're not able to start charging while already walking. I feel like having to trigger it while standing still is unnecessary. Not being able to stop the charge instantaneously makes sense, though. I will say that the somersault is a pretty nice touch/reference. If you wanted to implement a charge jump to dive chain, you could limit spamming by only allowing the dive to happen once at the apex of the somersault. I didn't think of diving into a charge, but that could certainly be cool. That said, I'm not much of a game designer. I also noticed that you no longer gain height with the dive, which seems like a good change.

With the backfilip, I think the issue I have is that I press the direction and then immediately follow with the jump button instead of waiting for the direction change animation. I may just be too hasty about it.

I also kind of like the wicked damage boost jump. It's very difficult to pull off, so I don't think it should wreck the game.

While the game seemed to have low FPS, it didn't affect play very much. Probably just made things a bit more floaty, but it would certainly look better without the drops. The horizontal scrolling was not very smooth for me.

Ben Allen7 years ago

I'm a little confused by what you said about "not being able to charge while already walking", because you can only start charging while walking. If you press the button while standing still you just do a headbutt. Regardless, I've changed it so that charge has a bit more oomph to it. You build up speed slower than normal walking, but you have a significantly faster max speed (faster than dive). I also changed dive to work like it did in the previous games. So if you don't want to wait for the slide to finish, you can just jump.

One other fairly fundamental change I made, which should make the game more fun is I removed the top-speed limit and added a speed increase cap. By that I mean, speed can exceed any number, but you can't increase it further beyond what you would normally be able to. So when you jump out of dive, you'll keep your dive momentum even though you aren't diving anymore. This is a pretty standard thing in these kind of games, but it wasn't in place before now. I won't be changing the demo, but all of these changes will be present in the final release (unless I change stuff again).

Really appreciate the in-depth comments!

FungalCactus7 years ago

It seemed when I played that the demo required you to press the attack/charge button while at the same time requiring you to press a direction, either by letting go of the direction and pressing it again or by moving from a standstill. I thought of the run trigger in games like Super Mario Bros., where you can start running from a walk by simply holding the run button. I thought that would be much easier and more intuitive compared to the current trigger to start the charge in the demo. Stopping the charge doesn't have to be done this way if you want the charge to function as something other than a generic run.

I don't mind if you would lose momentum when you aren't actively increasing or maintaining it. (walk - maintain, dive - increase)

With regard to the speed cap, I'm not really sure what you mean, but I'm thinking you might mean something similar to high-level Super Mario 64 or Dustforce play (neither of which I can perform). Actually, this franchise(?) reminds me (favorably) a lot of Super Mario 64 in terms of movement.

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