itch.io

Sure!

First: a bugfix update, focusing on the most pressing stuff like the save data problems

Then: improvements to the room and script editor + better documentation

Also (relevant for the game that I'm making): Better text rendering support, probably as an html overlay over the canvas or a text box next to it.

I also want to make some public facing project documentation, like a Trello board / google spreadsheet / roadmap / github wiki / github issue tracker. (Not all of these, but at least something for tracking bugs and something for upcoming features)

apology accepted :) and I want to repeat that I appreciate your genuine interest in the engine and feedback!

I will look into highlight.js and similar libraries, but to elaborate a little bit: One point against it is that right now trash engine itself is quite lightweight and any extra library would significantly increase the file size - and the smaller libraries I tried were somewhat buggy. I was also considering replacing the code editor with a text/visual scripting hybrid solution. So spending time on a syntax highlighting when I might scrap it anyways seemed a bit pointless.

Thank you! Yes it's something I really appreciate about bitsy specifically, so I needed to also do it that way. Even though it works slightly differently there (no remix functionality, but more readable source).

It's a feature that I'm definitely keeping, but I'm also playing with the idea of having an "offline version" that runs on your computer. It would have folders for script, image and sound files and exports as a zip archive. But maybe that's also not really in the spirit of the engine.

Aww thanks so much :>

Thanks for the suggestions. Syntax highlighting would be nice, even though there are more important qol features in the code editor, like tab-to-indent. It's unfortunatly not as easy as grabbing a library off google, for a variety of reasons, some to do with design decisions concerning the engine, and other plans I have (code editor might change completely).

Same goes for the level editor, I have plans for a "proper" user interface, the current one is the bare minimum really.

And thanks for the bug reports! I am aware of many bugs in the engine right now actually :p But somehow these two I haven't encountered myself.

Also I hope this doesn't come across as overly harsh, but saying things like "just grab a library of google lol" and "disable that stupid thing", makes me not exactly feel appreciated in the 100s of hours of work I've put into this. Having the remix functionality, while also not requiring a server connection for saves, while being to export as a single html file, is a really tricky problem to solve. And then you run into complicated things like origin based safety/security guidelines for browsers and the way itch hosts it's games on a separate domain. So what the save system needs is just more work being put into ironing out the cracks, adding the unique game id feature. It's not about removing a thing, it's about putting in more work to fix and improve it. And since I'm doing this in my limited free time, it might take a while for me to get around to doing these things!
Anyways.. what I'm saying is would feel a bit better to hear "hey maybe work on this" than "just fix it lol".

Thank you so much! I have not been working on trash engine at all for a few months I think, and little in 2023. Mostly because other things were going on in my life.
I'm picking it back up now, though, both because I'm making a game it it myself, and people have shown some interest recently! :)

yes, generally this should only happen on your machine + browser. Other people will just see what's uploaded on itch (or with this bug theoretically maybe also a different game that they've been working on)

Sorry it took me a while to respond. It turns out the game id is a feature that I only experimentally tested out on my machine, but never fully implemented, sorry >.< The "different games sharing the same save data" is a problem I have been aware of, but my brain remembered me fixing it, when in reality the version on itch still has this problem. So the save data problem is 100% a bug, I will try to fix it soon!

The upgrade coming from gameName.html makes sense, this file contains a lot of generated code (I'm using a web framework called svelte), and the upgrade funtion comes from the framework, not from me. The exported file is really not meant to be edited directly. If you really need to change things there, the section of the html within the <script type="gamedata>..</script> tag contains the entire game, the rest is just the engine.

That being said, there should be a place in the html thats says:

const NAME = "trash_engine";
const STORE_NAME_RESOURCES = "game_data";

Changing any of these strings to something else might work, but I haven't really tested it.

Hey hey :) Ok I see you've been messing around a bunch ^-^ and it actually fills me with joy someone is using the engine to make something!

I will try to go through the things in order as I understand them:

Global variable: you can put the variable on the window like "window.something = 2;". But putting in on a persistent object is also not a bad idea.

I never realized goToRoom is not in the reference, I think I simply forgot. You use it like this: "goToRoom(room0)", room0 being the name of the room (trash engine creates a global variable for every room/sprite/etc pointing to an internal room id). For trashovania I do some funny hacking to make the rooms work, I think, something like window["room_"+x+"_"+y], to access those global variables.

On findClosest: Calling this function on creation might not work, since the instances are created in a certain order, so it might not exist yet. Also for findClosest you need to provide x,y coordinates, if you just want to find any object use find(gamemode).

On the versions issue: Not at all sure what's going on. But relevant information is that trash engine stores game data in your browser. So if you make changes to, for example, trashovania, using the remix functionality, those changes will stay until you clear the indexeddb storage in your browser or use the "delete data" button in the settings. This is tied to the domain (like itch.io) and the game id (which you can change in the settings), so there can be some problems where different games access the same save data. If you go to the settings in your mod and change the id to something else that might fix it, but just a guess. The browser save data system was quite complicated to implement, and I'm not confident that there aren't any bugs in it. Also not exactly sure what kind of "upgrade()" you are referring to, kind of blanking on this one.

I don't think there really is a good way to use trash engine with version control. There is the save/load system, or you just export the game regularly and keep those as backups. The project on github is really just for developing the engine itself but the game is still stored in the browser (in the localhost domain).

I know this whole storage situation might be confusing it's not a very obvious system :d

Anyways, I hope I have answered your questions to your satisfaction! Unfortunately I am not developing trash engine very actively right now for lack-of-time reasons, but seeing the issues you run into gives me a good idea on which parts of the engine to improve when I get around to it! :>

(Also I'm on on my phone right now, but I will check out the mod, when I'm back on a computer)

it indeed is :D

Hey there! Thanks for testing it. I hear you a lot about the docs/presets/examples, those are sorely missing! Thanks for the feedback :)
Also nice name, I am a big fan of sourdough, I just baked a sourdough bread this morning (it rose over night) :D

I think I fixed the game preview bug! Could you maybe check if it works for you now? :)

Thanks a lot! :) 

Hm I hoped I had fixed that kind of bug in this version.. A combination of hitting the save button and reloading the browser tab might fix it though? I'll look into it some more! 

The stacking to the right is definitely something that is unintuitive to many people, I am considering other solutions at the moment... Though I personally think it's nice once you get used to it and have a convenient way to scroll horizontally (middle mouse button, trackpad,..) 

Thanks for the feedback! 

1) that is a good idea and easy to implement, will add it in the next version :) 

2) I will overhaul the room editor soon, I think, I have some ideas how to make it more intuitive. Hopefully then it won't need a tutorial! 

Thanks for the feedback! :)
Yeah that enemy is the first thing I'd change, everyone is commenting on it ,:D

I don't have much to add, except that it feels like some of the gameboy games I played as a kid, and that it's absolutely amazing that you managed to make this in Scratch!

Thanks for the feedback!

Thanks for the compliments and detailed feedback! :)

Thanks! Do you mean the game would've been easier witha gamepad? I could see that being the case...

Thanks! Yes the first boss seems to be way too hard, the game suffers from difficulty problems in general, is what I learned from the reviews ':D

Props for actually doing a novel game mechanic and not the same "gun, dash, double jump" that every metroidvania has!

I think the beam was a pretty clever idea. Though the puzzles designed around it sometimes required very quick and precise mouse movements, that were a bit too finicky for me to perform.  You have to click pretty small rectangles (the blocks you can turn on), while the camera is moving, while also keeping your beam pointed a specific way, and I just couldn't do that in some instances.

For this the game could have also really used some "player forgiveness" mechanics (good blog post on this -> https://maddythorson.medium.com/celeste-forgiveness-31e4a40399f1), because often I tried to jump (while focusing on other things like mouse movement), and I would just jump a bit to early or too late and it wouldn't register and I'd fall off.

So I really like the overall idea, and mechanics and just the idea of a stealth metroidvania, but I just couldn't get very far into game, unfortunately.

Unfortunately in the web build the mouse aiming seems to be broken (either way to sensitive or not sensitive enough, and kind of erratic, and I think the cursor might not be locked to the window?), I worry that this has discouraged people from playing it, because in the .exe it works perfectly fine!

And the game is actually really good, I had a blast! The movement feels good, the visuals and music are really nice (I love this specific style of retro fps), and it did metroidvania progression well with two movement upgrades, gun, etc.

There are not a lot of levels, and it feels more like a demo, I suspect that was due to time constraints, but the foundation is really good!

Thanks!

And thanks for the QA testing ':D I was aware of the respawn bug, but forgot that it would hard-lock the player on the first boss, or else it would have been much higher priority for me to fix. 

It's intentional that you die when you go out of bounds (go to a room coordinate that doesn't exist), you are just not supposed to be able to climb that wall, good find! I think the reason you are able to do that is that the black walls lack a script for collision at the room edges that other walls have, I just forgot to add it for them.

I played the newest version and saw you improved it quite a bit. I played it all the way through, and it's definitely one of the highlights of this jam! 

thanks! yeah i contemplated about maybe adding another grabbable block there, well maybe in the next version.
It's hard to balance giving players a challenge with not making it too frustrating.

Thanks, and thanks for playing!

I love this a lot actually! The music slaps, the art slaps, I don't care that this is not a finished game, I had fun taking a look around and taking in the sights and sounds!

I think the movement is really solid, and the crawling was fun (great sprite & animation, too), and has potential as a game mechanic! I was messing around with going out of crawl, jumping to another wall, then back into crawl and that kind of stuff. Of course there would also need to be limits on it, because right now you can just crawl everywhere :D But what those limits are could be an interesting design space to explore!

The camera seems to be a bit too zoomed in so I can't always tell where I'm going and the jump was a bit fast (high jump + strong gravity), maybe less gravity would feel better? Or zoomed out + faster move speed with the current settings? not sure, depends on the kind of game you are going for of course...

But overall a good start if you want to build on this further!

I really liked that you did something creative with the theme, and I really liked the entire vibe of the game, the dances were really fun to watch everytime there was a new one! I got a bit confused how to dodge the bouncers and how to get downstairs, but figured it out eventually both times.

In general it became a little repetetive, going over the entire house after every dance, just checking off all the people, I would'be preferred a smaller house or faster move speed, I think.

Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback!
Yeah I definitely should have done a bit less of the "enemy that you can just barely dodge" type rooms. And having one of those before the first boss when most players will only have 4 hp, was a bad idea in hindsight

Thanks!

Thank you so much for the detailed feedback!
I think the hardest part was probably judging difficulty, I got pretty good at controlling the player during development, so I had no idea where the game was difficulty wise. I think that's also what made me underestimate the enemy placement, for me it was a fun challenge, for others probably a bit frustrating.
This could have been solved by getting some people to playtest it, but I guess you other jammers are the playtesters in this case ^^

I looks and plays very nicely! I kind of got stuck after finding the thingy after you jump over a bunch of spikes. I liked the relaxed tone and athmosphere (and the music)! My constructive feedback would be that the relatively empty rooms and slow movement speed make it a bit hard to stay motivated to search for the next place to go.

suggestion: serpent
bonus: this little puzzle game I quite enjoyed: https://marcosd.itch.io/platformerly

Ah thanks for the tip, I might do that :)

Hi there, I thought I would mention that I have been sharing my progress over on mastodon, where I seem to be the only person using the hashtag :p , so if you go, for example, here -> https://peoplemaking.games/tags/MetroidvaniaMonthJam you can check out what I have been up to! :)
Edit: Also, I forgot to say that this game is made in a custom engine, and I'm using this game project to develop and test the engine further!

Thanks a lot, glad you enjoyed it!! :)
You wouldn't believe how much trouble it was to get the chain animation working, since it's more than two frames I had to do it directly in the game data, and I just kept messing it up ':D

Haha, thanks for playing :) , I am so glad that people seem to actually find all the story beats!

Thank you so much!