Improvement Suggestions
1 year ago
Toronto, ON, Canada

As the developer of this game, I’m looking out for feedback that will help improve the game, not just for speed-running, but in general! Please get in touch, either here or on my Discord to suggest ways I can improve the game. Here are some ideas I already plan on implementing;

  • In-Game Timer (be able to see the in-game time in a corner of the screen)
  • Speedrun Mode: Disables the fire in Level 1-1 which makes it easier to clear without the Butterfly AND shows your Personal Best for each Level on the Overworld

Aside from that, I’ll also consider shifting enemy placement, (like that one Mandiburn in 5-3 who is such a jerk), if there are enough requests for it.

pro_janus, Naegi, and hahhah42 like this

I've only played through the game a couple of times, but I don't think enemy placement needs adjustment at all. It's all really fair, and gives some interesting options in terms of how to go about completing the levels quickly.

The one thing I don't care for is having to press two keys to drop down through the permeable platforms. The only reason I could see for requiring that over just letting us press down is that you worried about checkpoint/level entrances overlapping with them, but that doesn't really happen outside of the upper right checkpoint in 1-3, which could just be moved over a bit.

BluishGreenPro likes this
Georgia, USA

The only thing I would add (aside from what you've mentioned) would be a best time over each level.

BluishGreenPro likes this

Ok, I don't know if this only applies to the web version, but when a player restarts the game, either by selecting that option or the erase saved data option, it shouldn't reset the other options the player's selected to the default. Having to redo those each time is annoying.

Speaking of which, for the speedrun mode, it'd be nice if there were a quick option/hotkey to do a full reset.

Toronto, ON, Canada

@hahhah42, the game is supposed to save your settings after a reset, at least, it does for me in both Chrome and FireFox. Having a hotkey for a full-reset is a good idea, do you have a suggestion for what that could be? I could simply make it pressing "R" while paused.

hahhah42 and BazookaGoBoom like this

Ah, I use Firefox, so it's probably something to do with me being on incognito mode then. Oh, well.

For the hotkey, another game I've run, Deepest Sword, uses 0 for its default full reset, which makes sense as a key you generally won't hit accidentally. (Although I usually changed it to o myself.) Like WWW, it has some spots where resetting to a checkpoint can make sense to help align your path properly.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
GUSE0 likes this
Toronto, ON, Canada

@hahhah42 Ah yes, I remember seeing that game come out of Ludum Dare. Thanks for suggesting "0" as the reset key! I can probably make it the default and at least allow the user to remap it by editing an INI file. I just tested WWW in FireFox private mode, and the game does still remember the settings if you "Erase Save Data"; however, if you close the browser and re-open, then it will delete the entire save-file (along with preferences).

Georgia, USA

Are you on the Armor Games or itch.io? The itch.io version resets the settings upon entering again independent of the browser(as far as I know). Although I wouldn't change the itch.io version to save data, if it is possible in the first place.

@BluishGreenPro Here is a sample of what prompted my post above, playing on the itch version. It's possible that there's some other setting on my browser causing this, but it isn't generally an issue I've encountered in other games.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Toronto, ON, Canada

@hahhah42 Sorry for the misunderstanding, as @GUSE0 has identified, the issue is that the Itch.io version does not save data while the Armor Games build does. Armor Games paid me a licensing fee to get a version of the game which has “premium” features; access to Infinite Descent and Saving / Loading. Otherwise, these features are part of the paid version of the game. I can understand that this isn’t a very graceful way to separate paid / unpaid versions of the game, but my core goal was to keep the core game (and all of its levels) free, which didn’t leave many options to create a value proposition for the paid version. Please understand, it is something I have put a lot of thought into, and while I’d love to make it free, the fact is I still need this to earn money for me somehow if I am going to have any chance to work on this (and other games) full time. But, it’s also a fact that only 3 people out of the thousands that played it paid for the game, so perhaps I could start a different thread asking players what would be a better value proposition for the paid version.

I see. No worries, but the armor version should probably be highlighted as the preferred web version in that case.

Some other small issues I noticed while playing on the armor games version:

  • If you haven't sent away the butterfly before erasing save data, your cursor isn't visible on the title screen. You can see an example of this in the reset for the run I've just submitted.

  • It seems like mouse inputs often get eaten? I often have to click 2-3 times to engage/disengage the butterfly (playing with trackpad on a laptop).

  • In addition to mouse inputs, holding down to enter the level doesn't always engage when I expect it to. In particular, when dropping through a platform directly onto a level entry spot, continuing to hold down sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't.

  • The in-game timer doesn't seem to track milliseconds accurately. At least, every time I've seen, and every time on the leaderboard, has a ms value that's well below .1. This is unlikely to be happening naturally.

Edited by the author 1 year ago
Toronto, ON, Canada

@hahhah42 The cursor visibility is absolutely a bug; easy fix, thanks for noticing! Mouse inputs getting eaten is a bit trickier; I’ll have to investigate this since it hasn’t been reported before. Another QOL change I’m going to make; a single button to enter / exit levels rather than one you have to hold. The in-game timer is a count of frames, which is subject to lag and hence causes the discrepancy. I can make this more accurate on desktop, but the timer fixes I tried don’t work on web unfortunately.

I found a bug with the speedrun timer in the preview version, see this video and its description for details. It's similar to the cursor issue from before, so hopefully it'll also be an easy fix.

Also, would it be possible to generate a sum of best tracker for IL times when a player's completed all the levels? Some other leaderboards have that as a category when the game tracks it for the player, so this would be an option for a new category.

Toronto, ON, Canada

@hahhah42 I'm not sure about the aspect of this that involves completing the game, I can't seem to replicate that on my end. Though I can say that this is intentional behaviour, but I understand why it is confusing. You can enable the Timer without being in Speedrun Mode. The Timer will measure your overall game time as if it were in Speedrun mode because Speedrun mode only disables the 1-1 fire and shows personal best times above levels. To clear up the confusion, I can probably make it so that the Timer is only visible if Speedrun or IL mode is active

Toronto, ON, Canada

@hahhah42 Regarding the "sum of best tracker for IL times", what exactly do you mean? Is this a functionality of SRC, or is it something I would implement in the game itself?

Georgia, USA

It is a functionality of SRC and can easily be done, but it would make it easier to track if we have the feature to add it up in the end.

@BluishGreenPro Oh, I was getting at two things, one being the timer on with speedrun mode off (which I didn't realize was intentional), the other that the timer doesn't reappear upon reset until after you've beaten the full game at least once. That's why I brought up the cursor bug.

Note in the vid linked above, the timer wasn't on the title screen until I'd pressed 9 (but it was in speedrun mode, which is why it brought up the IL timer), whereas in the recent run I submitted, it was there from the start, as I'd played through the game a few times by that point.

I was suggesting adding a sum of best tracker within the game. For examples of games with this feature, check out Foxbot and CircloO 2.

Toronto, ON, Canada

Well, I certainly can add this as an in-game feature, the main reason I didn’t was because of how easy it is to edit the save file, so we just have to be aware that we can’t trust a screenshot of the end screen without a video to verify the IL times

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