itch.io

Very cool demo! It totally sold me on the game. Loving the MDK of it all. 

Story detail I didn't quite pick up on: Was Val'ty in the prison with her daughter? Or did she come in with the invading fleet? Loving the madness of the world you've built here. The intro character with the stat building and background story is so funny, clever, and really hits home the concept.

One (sorta) problem I ran into is the checkpoint system. I seemed to always hit them  with like 5 health. So I'd try to recover from nothing a few times, then realize I needed to restart the level from the start and do better. So I got thru it, but required a couple restarts after I improved and figured out the combat. 

thanks! Cool playthru!

It's here! Congrats all on the release...and Season's Greason's!

thanks so much for playing!

Thanks! Always cribbing from the classics haha!

Fantastic so far! I can't wait for the full release!

here's Fennec!

Sorry for making a fuss about it. The game overall is great!

So:

1) it sends you to a random stage from the gather well (or maybe random within a set 5 or so).

2) there's a consistent numerical order for the stages.

3} the glyphs above the wells (are not representative of the stages themselves, but) do some math to send you to a new stage (such as rise is +1).

I'm unsure how players could ever figure this out if they don't know the above by some means communicated in the game. Except maybe extreme trial & error, but even then they haven't deciphered the meanings of the glyphs, they are brute-forcing it. It's kinda like saying, solve: x + y = z . We've got nothing but unknowns to work with.

The main thing making it a big ask is the forcing of the time-consuming puzzle stages (2 so far I mentioned where you can't die) over and over.

I really think this is a case of the dev being unable to put themselves in players' shoes. You designed it so you have all the answers (plus you know all the good routes and safe spots).

I think the game is super rad. But yeah, this is a tad much.

wow that is tough. So you'll have to keep playing all the stages over and over by design? 

I sorta wish I didn't have to keep solving them if I've done it once before. Could the wells be pre-opened if you've beaten it already? It might make the math of what to do easier to figure out.

Has anyone beaten all this?

I'm able to get 5 different stages. I love the puzzley ones: one where you trace the lines (weave?), and the one where you build stuff with the lighter. But I'm unclear on what the point is in clearing them, they never seem to have skulls in them. I got thru the "jump down as the tower comes after you" one and I like that one once I figured out the jumpspark thing.  The other two: sword the vines as light guy comes, and the rotating orbs over acid, are way too tough for me. 

And I'm just finding no skulls in these (I've found one) and it's constantly repeating the same stages I've already completed. I've just been spamming restart to get new stages. What am I supposed to be doing here? What am I missing? I think there needs to be a way to set where you are going from the "gather" room.

wow I'm dumb that makes total sense. I'm in world 2 now, recognizing these areas!

I've explored the Cistern and the friendly town. I'm down here now! Any clues on where to go?

I think my key hoarding has benefited me. I still had the ruins key and found a vault room in the town with tons of gold. Plus I noticed your gold survives a save data wipe which you may wanna fix! I'm loaded now.

I'm unsure what the flowers (plants in inventory you pick up) do yet? Something with the save system? Also: getting thru the iron bars to the cave area I'm in now was such an "aha!" moment. So good! I sorta thought I was meant to find a different route in until it dawned on me.

I think these dudes are invincible? I kinda thought you had to destroy those rotating vines (can you burn them? hmm, gonna go get a lighter haha), but not sure what I'm meant to do down here. I've accessed both the shafts with the beak and ruins key.

I'm sneaking thru the first enemy fort. I love that it has retained the mystery of figuring out what to do. I have yet to see any of the areas I played before past the opening zone.

This is like a whole game of Constantine's mansion. Clued in by the upside down room at the very start!

My "omg that's a save point?" realization was so liberating. Those...weren't in the demo were they? I totally missed them if so! I'm not sure if you can save at the same point twice in a row? It doesn't seem to process the new save if I come back and save again.

Shops are really cool! Already been using them. Is it OK to drop keys after you've used them once? They are clogging up inventory haha

I'll keep you posted as I keep playing. Congrats on the release!

I love this game! I'm so glad to see it on itch!

This game is great!

wow great experiment!

Jumping on this late, but I was happy to see you devlogging this on itch after following you on the bird app saying you are "making a mega-dungeon." Plus, cool Arx inspo!

I'm really into your content! I'm hoping to run this as the start of a campaign soon (sorta a beach/tide pool world). 

Anywhere I can hit you up online? I think you deleted your twitter (I don't blame you hah).

Fantastic! Great feel (Thief-like?) and atmosphere. I liked puzzling out the world.

I can't wait to see how this develops (probably obvious, but a save game is needed)! Keep up the awesomeness!

the game's code is inside various objects/instances in (a version I don't have anymore of) gamemaker's script editor. If there's some way to get a different version...like, whatever re-ordered code GMS converts it to to run the game off of (if that's how it actually works? dunno) I have no idea how that is done/acquired at all. Maybe look into how people mod old GMS games like Hotline Miami? 

Sorry about those soft locks! Yeah my platformers did that a lot I remember.

haha I checked your WR speedrun video. That's very cool! I'm glad to know this exists. And happy you were able to find an exploit that didn't make the whole game hard crash! Doesn't that happen, like, a whole bunch when you try to find skips/etc for speedrunning?

Gamemaker's scripting language: GML. It was created with GMS1 (I forget the exact version)

game looks exciting!

Even if it's overhead you could always zoom the camera down and around for cutscenes!

Happy Madvent to one & all!

That was it! (I wasn't even looking in preferences!) Thanks so so much for dealing with my issue!

just noticed on your screenshot it has something mine does not: under meshes window "Type: Standard/Terrain." Not present for me in the program.

I've been toggling that, yes. I even went thru Appdata and deleted all folders/files with "ddd" (in case it was grabbing old customization info from there somehow) before I installed the version you just put up (no crash in viewer settings thanks!). Could it be my video card somehow?

downloaded and unzipped again and still not showing! I'm toggling everything in "more" and "vertex format" and "viewer settings" to no avail haha (btw "reset" in "viewer settings" crashes the prog every time for me). I'm baffled why it's not working.

sure. Just a 12 tri mound with some colors on it I was using to test

dropbox link

yes. Tho they are weird long decimals on the colored vertexes I think.

o Default
v 0 4.75 3.125 1 1 1
v 5 9.75 0 1 1 1
v 0 9.75 3.125 0.32156863808631897 0.5686274766921997 0.7607843279838562
v 5 4.75 0 0.7019608020782471 0.10196078568696976 0.03921568766236305
v -5 4.75 0 0.7019608020782471 0.10196078568696976 0.03921568766236305
v 0 4.75 3.125 1 1 1
v -5 9.75 0 1 1 1
v 0 9.75 3.125 0.32156863808631897 0.5686274766921997 0.7607843279838562
v 0 9.75 3.125 1 0.8509804010391235 0.4588235318660736

etc...

(and yes, I made sure to get the beta version)

whoa it's so cool you are helping me (and other croc users) out on this! I tried the beta version, but may be doing something wrong tho. If I export to .obj from Crocotile (a model with vertex colors obviously, and checkmark "Vertex Colors") then add mesh into Penguin they should be showing up, right? It's still blank for me. The creator of Crocotile told me this when I asked, dunno if it helps: 

"crocotile adds the vertex r g b values to the end of the vertex x y z data in the .obj, if vertex colors is checked on export.. it's not a standard of obj, but some programs might read the vertex data such as MeshLab."

That would be very appreciated! Thank you!

just learned simply exporting to obj is wiping the vertex color info. I didn't know that. Any tips for doing what I'm trying ? (get vertex colors working in gamemaker?)

Hello! Just downloaded a newer version than I had and seems like a lot of new features! Thanks!

Any hints on why I can't seem to get vertex color from obj files exported from Crocotile working? (I've figured out the alpha inverting bit)

Thanks! Yeah the Dread X community are pals!

The demo for this was on The Haunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021. Go check those out (if you haven't already!) and want a similar anthology to the Dread collections. The third one is on its way soon!

good stuff!

This is really cool! I kept getting viscously killed however, gonna dive back in soon! I feel like there's some cool stuff hidden...

The swap to the mundane other world was mind-blowing really, I totally did not expect that! It's like I chose an entirely different game right at the very beginning and it was like "ok, here you go!" and it really existed. Very cool, I'll keep looking out for your stuff!

yes! Make this please!