I'll start by saying that this is both nice and curated. I'd make dialogues shorter here and there, but overall they're entertaining and you can see the effort the author put in the opening with the cutscene. Collecting electrons has reminded me a bit the first Spyro, where gems where scattered all around the maps, sometimes just to annoy the player, and... well, with the way MT detects keys such as AUX1, trust me it was indeed annoying when 1/3 of the time it didn't read the input in time, making me fall down (nice death transition!)
I like how the author has structured the game, with this hub concept reminding of games like Crash 2. It's easy to navigate and environment elements near teleports help the player surely improves this aspect. My main critique is, the way you have to backtrack basically every level in order to collect all the electrons. I've personally quit after having unlocked the jump ability, all those jumps in that room were overwhelming (after having fought with MT limitations with me falling down several times in the 16 electrons level to gather enough electrons for the 128 one). Which is a pity, I kind of wanted to see the end!
You don't have to collect ALL electrons to win, only 512, which I think is a generous leeway. If an electron is to difficult to you, skip it. If a sector is too difficult, try a different sector. Repeat until you unlock new sectors. If you try to 100% this game, that's a much different challenge, but nothing special happens if you do that (YET). Backtracking to sectors you already visited is intended and an important part of the level design. In the Void Pipe, there is a launchpad that you can't use immediately. Other players appreciated the backtracking, so I guess you can't make everyone happy. :-) There is a secret sector with lots of electrons in it (within your reach).
Yeah, the Hub was probably the best and most important idea of the whole level design. When I completed that, my motivation got BOOSTED, trust me. I added the decorations of each gateway (in the Hub) because even I could not remember where these gateways would lead to otherwise, so I needed that myself to make playtesting easier. :-) Thanks for appreciating that.
Indeed, the powersliding ability has bad controls. The way it is supposed to work is you hold down Aux1 pressed and THEN press forwards. And yes, powerslide is bugged at slopes, until you got the "Super Slope Sliding" ability. Yes, Minetest is not good with reading inputs. :-( I will try to work on that (and other stuff) post-jam. Stay tuned, and check the forum thread for updates! :-)
It's true, the whole "collect lots of stuff and unlock levels doing so" thing was directly inspired from Spyro games, although the idea that the game will have collectibles at all came surprisingly late in development (I will post a full post-portem in the forum thread). The Hub itself is not inspired by any game tho, I just wanted to make sure the basic shape is not yet another cuboid. I settled on using an octagon as the base instead, and it turned out to be great! :)
I also updated the instructions from Powerslide Master.
If that still doesn't help, at least there is now a ch(e)at command "/unlock_gateways" in case you're really desperate to see the end. :D (only use this if you have completely given up, lol)
I'll start by saying that this is both nice and curated. I'd make dialogues shorter here and there, but overall they're entertaining and you can see the effort the author put in the opening with the cutscene. Collecting electrons has reminded me a bit the first Spyro, where gems where scattered all around the maps, sometimes just to annoy the player, and... well, with the way MT detects keys such as AUX1, trust me it was indeed annoying when 1/3 of the time it didn't read the input in time, making me fall down (nice death transition!)
I like how the author has structured the game, with this hub concept reminding of games like Crash 2. It's easy to navigate and environment elements near teleports help the player surely improves this aspect. My main critique is, the way you have to backtrack basically every level in order to collect all the electrons. I've personally quit after having unlocked the jump ability, all those jumps in that room were overwhelming (after having fought with MT limitations with me falling down several times in the 16 electrons level to gather enough electrons for the 128 one). Which is a pity, I kind of wanted to see the end!
You don't have to collect ALL electrons to win, only 512, which I think is a generous leeway. If an electron is to difficult to you, skip it. If a sector is too difficult, try a different sector. Repeat until you unlock new sectors. If you try to 100% this game, that's a much different challenge, but nothing special happens if you do that (YET). Backtracking to sectors you already visited is intended and an important part of the level design. In the Void Pipe, there is a launchpad that you can't use immediately. Other players appreciated the backtracking, so I guess you can't make everyone happy. :-) There is a secret sector with lots of electrons in it (within your reach).
Yeah, the Hub was probably the best and most important idea of the whole level design. When I completed that, my motivation got BOOSTED, trust me. I added the decorations of each gateway (in the Hub) because even I could not remember where these gateways would lead to otherwise, so I needed that myself to make playtesting easier. :-) Thanks for appreciating that.
Indeed, the powersliding ability has bad controls. The way it is supposed to work is you hold down Aux1 pressed and THEN press forwards. And yes, powerslide is bugged at slopes, until you got the "Super Slope Sliding" ability. Yes, Minetest is not good with reading inputs. :-( I will try to work on that (and other stuff) post-jam. Stay tuned, and check the forum thread for updates! :-)
It's true, the whole "collect lots of stuff and unlock levels doing so" thing was directly inspired from Spyro games, although the idea that the game will have collectibles at all came surprisingly late in development (I will post a full post-portem in the forum thread). The Hub itself is not inspired by any game tho, I just wanted to make sure the basic shape is not yet another cuboid. I settled on using an octagon as the base instead, and it turned out to be great! :)
The new version 1.1.0 is here and I think I fixed the biggest powersliding issues (if not all). Please give feedback about what you think and if it works better. https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?p=418738#p418738
I also updated the instructions from Powerslide Master.
If that still doesn't help, at least there is now a ch(e)at command "
/unlock_gateways" in case you're really desperate to see the end. :D (only use this if you have completely given up, lol)definitely better, thanks :)
I was thinking, it could be nice to see how many electrons lie in every level and how many the player currently has (like Spyro did)