ducko game

[hubol]

i pushed enter while in may's house:

Code: [Select]

java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: -4
java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: -4
at b.global.GSessionData$.hasGem(GSessionData.scala:14)
at b.sys.PauseScreen$$anonfun$scene$1.apply$mcVI$sp(PauseScreen.scala:85)
at scala.collection.immutable.Range.foreach$mVc$sp(Range.scala:160)
at b.sys.PauseScreen.scene(PauseScreen.scala:81)
at b.sys.Kernel$$anonfun$scene$1.apply$mcVI$sp(Kernel.scala:60)
at scala.collection.immutable.Range.foreach$mVc$sp(Range.scala:160)
at b.sys.Kernel.scene(Kernel.scala:58)
at b.sys.System.scene(System.scala:42)
at a.Shell$$anonfun$_main$2.apply$mcV$sp(Shell.scala:98)
at z.main.Main$.until(Main.scala:42)
at a.Shell$._main(Shell.scala:80)
at a.Shell$.main(Shell.scala:29)
at a.Shell.main(Shell.scala)


[hubol]

i finished level 2! i found 1 secret gem in the first level and 2 in the second. i thought the first boss was fun. i like the dash mechanic. i really love the cutscenes and music and the cute little npcs as they waddle around. i'm interested to do the monster sealing. my strategy is probably going to be to spam X on them.

i'll play some more tomorrow!

[dcco]

Bloody Oracle wanting me to create an account for legacy Java releases.

I'll just grab OpenJDK.

RIP im sorry im making you mess around with oracle

i finished level 2! i found 1 secret gem in the first level and 2 in the second. i thought the first boss was fun. i like the dash mechanic. i really love the cutscenes and music and the cute little npcs as they waddle around. i'm interested to do the monster sealing. my strategy is probably going to be to spam X on them.

i'll play some more tomorrow!

thanks    ill look into those errors :U. also yeah i think just spamming was basically what i did when testing. i might end up replacing the mechanic completely at some point because i think the current one is kind of tedious.

whoa is this music original? It's so cuteyness!!!!!!!!

lol i wish :U, i cant make music to save my life. i used the classic technique of downloading midis from vgmusic.com and then changing the instruments. altho actually i think the level 1 song + may's house are random jazz songs.

haha i hit enter on load game and it works

is that a runtime error for an unmatched case? why didn't they make that a cool compile error...

it's because im matching on string constants lol. it's jank af but i use strings in a lot of places so that the dialogue system can hook into them.

[SquareWheel]

So I didn't bother installing Java.  Just had it loosely downloaded to the desktop.  First I tried running the game via absolute file paths.

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C:\Users\Wes\Desktop\openjdk-18.0.1.1_windows-x64_bin\jdk-18.0.1.1\bin\java.exe -jar "C:\Users\Wes\Desktop\MaysQuest\mays_quest.jar"That threw an error.

Code: [Select]

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Can't load library: C:\Users\Wes\Desktop\lib\lwjgl64.dll
But then I ran it directly from the game's folder and it worked.  So I guess the loader/classpath stuff makes assumptions about the working directory.  Not sure if that can be improved or even matters.  Java's loading mechanisms confuse and scare me.

Anyway, the game launched.  Like Hubs said it crashes when you hit New Game, but Load Game works.  Unfortunately I have to go to bed now though so I'll try to share some proper thoughts soon.

[dcco]

there's a classpath env variable that has to be set properly to load the libraries. normally they would be arguments passed when you call java, but i couldnt figure out how to make a jar file that automatically does that. so the classpath vars are set in the actual code at the very beginning :U  it's super jank, but honestly i cant find good documentation about how to build jars anymore. basically everything just says to use maven/ant/other build tool. (actually scala has a build tool ive been learning because it makes compilation significantly faster).

but i hate messing around with deployment in general - all of this stuff i did like a couple years ago and havent touched since. but i guess it's probably about the time to look at it again.

[hubol]

i also h8 dealing with deployment. i can take a look at how we created the jar file for bogus. we both were able to do it from our IDEs after adding our jar dependencies to some window.

[hubol]

Hey ducko, I was easily able to make a .exe for your game. Use the launch4j tool I linked before https://sourceforge.net/projects/launch4j/

You will probably want to bundle a JRE. You can bundle one from OpenJDK https://adoptopenjdk.net/

Here's what I made http://hubolhubolhubol.com/Public/MaysQuestBundled.zip my host sucks so it will take a while to download haha

[hubol]

level 3 was really spammy... i wasted all my missiles trying to destroy a fiery bumble bee that was in my way. their hitbox seems really small. the insta-kill lava is pretty cruel especially with the flames that shoot you directly up. i like meeting the npcs in levels. i thought it was funny that

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

you get the missile upgrade and can kinda just obliterate the boss with that?

[hubol]

hmmm i dont think i like the 6th level haha

[hubol]

that "the watchtower" checkpoint is really brutal. everything after that was pretty smooth haha. i liked the ending :-) cuteyness

[dcco]

im glad you liked the ending the whole story was kind of random. thank you so much for to playing my game 

i will check out launch4j when i got time, just gotta check what version of java im using, and ill probably try to fix the other bugs along with it.

[SquareWheel]

Man, I just don't have the platforming chops anymore.  Can't do the side path up the rockets at Sexton Villa.

So the game is really cool, ducko!  Sorry I haven't played very far - I'm dealing with some renos and insurance nonsense that is taking up a lot of my time.  But I like what I've played so far.  It immediately reminded me of Cave Story which is a very good thing.  I like the dashing mechanic a lot.  It felt good to discover I could go through walls and find a secret GER* that way, before the game actually explains the mechanic.

*Yes the 3x3 pixel font is a little hard to read.

The running to get more jump height thing confused me as well.  Figured it out just after the froggo, which was the first jump to require it.  I was curious why when I jumped against the wall, I seemed to gain less height.  Practiced it and realized I only needed a very short runway to get more height.

At first the camera shifting when turning left and right made me a little dizzy.  I got used to it before too long though.  I think it's required to see further in front of you due to how quickly some enemies can move.

Regarding inputs, I kind of felt X should be used for accept, and Z for back.  At least that feels most normal to me.  When I got the second gun I tried using number keys to swap between them like hint said, but that didn't seem to work.

Is there any way to go fullscreen?  Or even a 2x/3x mode would be cool.

You can kind of get stuck in these little holes.  With enough jump spamming you can escape though.

Spoiler: Mistakes were made (click to show/hide)

I feel like the mechanics you've implemented really lend themselves well to finding secrets, so it should be a lot of fun to explore levels.

Also the music is jammin'.  Had to turn down my sfx a little bit just so I could turn up the music.

[dcco]

Thanks! Glad you're liking it so far. Yeah I'm happy with how the teleport dashing works with secrets. The way I approached hiding things how sometimes you see parts of levels that are inaccessible and wonder what's over there, and then figuring out how you could using the wall-dash mechanic to actually get there.

Man, I just don't have the platforming chops anymore.  Can't do the side path up the rockets at Sexton Villa.

That's ok, the difficulty of the secret gems is not really calibrated at all, that one is pretty hard to get.

At first the camera shifting when turning left and right made me a little dizzy.  I got used to it before too long though.  I think it's required to see further in front of you due to how quickly some enemies can move.

This is actually interesting feedback. The dynamic camera is inspired by Cave Story, but it moves more slowly when you switch sides I think the correct answer to this is to just make the screen bigger, although idk if I'll do that here because I would have to change a bunch of other stuff (backgrounds, cutscene art, textboxes, etc). I will look into including some kind of magnification / fullscreen setting. (Actually: technically it's already magnified x3 just to make all the pixel art visible.)

At controller input - the buttons can be remapped with config.jar (which gets saved into a config file). I'll have to make it more clear how to use it though (and also make it executable :U) I'll probably have some time next week to finally make a second beta build so I can share with my normie friends lol