[KKairos]

Yep yep.





RUIN DIVER III

A three and a half day KKairos project. Started nearly on a whim. Definitely an impulse game-making sprint. Not perfect by any means but not so bad if I do say so myself.

I would have submitted this to the archive first but I would love to get peoples' high scores for said archive version first. And achievement suggestions if you have any. See included .txt file for my advice, any glitches I think might be left, etc.

Enjoy. God bless.

EDIT 2: Main file and patch .mzx files can now be found here. Will re-upload the whole thing for people who don't yet have it as well as single .mzx file for convenience-patching. Do NOT attempt to play the game with just the .MZX file, however. I think the pipe bug asgromo mentioned stemmed from my efforts to make the pipe-age more merciful in combination with some weird sprite collision stuff, but I'm not sure. Hopefully it's fixed. At least it's been worked-around, I think.

Attached File(s)

•  rd3.mzx (72.84K)
  Number of downloads: 103
•  rd3.zip (2.22MB)
  Number of downloads: 185

[Dr Lancer-X]

Quote

I would have submitted this to the archive first but I would love to get peoples' high scores for said archive version first.

Well, that's all very well and good, but how are we supposed to play it if you don't upload it SOMEWHERE?

[Maxim]

Yeah, where is it?

It's definitely VERY good that you completed a three day project though. Bloodlands was going to be a week-long project and now look. Six months of work, three month break, and development is FINALLY starting to pick up again..

[RyanThunder]

Ryan Thunder was just going to be a quick project that was supposed to only take less than a year. So much for that.

Yea KKairos where is yer game?

This post has been edited by RyanThunder: 30 September 2010 - 05:24 PM

[asgromo]

Ruin Diver III is a myth

[KKairos]

Well frick

I hit "choose file" but I never actually hit the upload button. Silly me!

[asgromo]

This is a good game, but I die a lot. Make it marginally less frustrating for me to die by sending the player back to the main menu after the game over screen. You could just, you know, load a save file.

also just now this happened when i used the first teleporter:

[KKairos]

I'll do that! Thanks for the suggestion! I dunno why that didn't occur to me.

(Also, all suggestions will be credited.)

Also, would love to know if you've:

Spoiler

Retrieved book of the Meaning of Life or found Jeanine

And if anyone manages to

Spoiler

complete the game while tied up

and can get me a screen I'm giving them an honorable mention in the vault release.

Latest update (in .zip and in just an .mzx patch) now available in the first post of this thread.

[KKairos]

Well frick.

I'll get on that then. I knew about the teleporter glitch but I don't think I'd ever had it put me somewhere irreedeemable, but one fuzzy example comes to mind.

I'll check that out.

Thankfully your screenshot gives me some clue where my code is going wrong except Fdhasklfjhdalsjrfhsljdfhasl;df

I have some stuff that needs doing (and some stuff that doesn't, that's going to happen anyway) but when I get back I'll check on this problem. For now I think I can treat it as mostly silly rather than malevolent. If I manage to fix it in the next 30 minutes I'll upload the fix but otherwise it'll have to wait till later today.

EDIT: See first post for what is hopefully a workaround of that bug. Frick.

[Seventh Shade]

So by "I'm getting close to getting this thing done" you meant last night. Whoops. Sorry I left instead of beta testing it. It's a good game, though!

This post has been edited by Seventh Shade: 30 September 2010 - 11:41 PM

[Dr Lancer-X]

Props for the random level generation; it's one of the better ones I've seen and manages to create interesting and unique things to work around quite often.

I don't think much at all about how you muck with the game speed all the time, though. Having a consistently slow-paced game that gets randomly sped up can be quite annoying. I feel it would have been better to just speed up things like the particles rather than the whole game. I also think I would prefer it if the view scrolled down slowly as you move down rather than jumping down a whole lot at a time, because the view scrolling doesn't always match the architecture of the level and can make things quite difficult to navigate.

[Maxim]

This is great. I like the idea of a sidescroller where you die in one hit. One hell of a hard game, I can barely make it past the first 25 rows, but it's totally awesome.

[Dr Lancer-X]

i managed to get to the bottom and get the thingy, but died on the way back :oops:

[KKairos]

I'm working on a shortlist and a longlist of feature improvements; I have a question for Lancer:

when you said

Quote

Having a consistently slow-paced game that gets randomly sped up can be quite annoying.

what parts were you thinking of as being randomly sped up? I'd noticed some slowdown but I'm thinking maybe you meant certain enemies/items being faster, judging from the rest of your paragraph.

Special props also go to the first person to actually complete the game proper (probably annoyingly enough, Lancer might beat me to it. I've so far only done technical completeness to ensure the possibility. I'll probably try a few times tonight.)

[Dr Lancer-X]

I mean how when things die, or when things like the arrows/ECMA blocks fall, the rest of the game (including the player) suddenly starts moving much faster for that duration. It's very distracting.

EDIT: kkairos why does your game have busy loops in it? why do you like them so much?

EDIT 2: Game runs fine after the busyloop is fixed. It's a little harder now, but overall more enjoyable

(the busyloop is in the fx robot)

[Dr Lancer-X]

I've died on the way back from getting the book 4 times so far. I don't get why I have so much difficulty getting back compared to going forward!

[asgromo]

One more suggestion re. me always dying: your intro card, like the Spelunky opening, should probably precede the main menu.

[KKairos]

You know the pipe on the bottom takes you all the way back to the top right? I didn't design it well for going upward without piping.

I mean I know in the version that's there right now you can glitch your way back up, but in the new version I'm probably going to have to make an 'escape' shaft (there's three shafts to use right now) for people who want to be PIPE HATERS.

New version will be in speed 4, have fewer bugs (let's hope) and have some extra stuff you can do.

[RyanThunder]

Thanks for putting me in the credits, KKairos! Though next time you can probably put RyanThunder.

[KKairos]

Yeah...lots more people are going to need to go in credits this time...well at least two or three more

[Dr Lancer-X]

There's a line between 'challengingly difficult' and 'frustratingly/unfairly difficult' and I think this game manages to straddle it better than any other MZX game in the past; better than Maxim games do, in fact. It's so close to being unfair but isn't QUITE there. Very good. It's notable that I'm still playing it, for one, even after being killed by an out-of-sight falling spear for what feels like the hundredth time =P

[KKairos]

Lancer, awesome. So uh, are you forcing yourself to walljump up to the top and that's why you've not beaten it yet? Or did I inadvertently design a really frustrating *spoiler* right before the book?

[Dr Lancer-X]

It's the stuff before the book. I don't know, it seems easy and it's easy to go forward but I have a lot of trouble getting back. Part of it's the pressure in that I only get down the bottom every 1 in 5 or so attempts (which is an improvement on what I had before).

EDIT: okay it's not 1 in 5 at all, probably more like 1 in 15 >_>

[Lachesis]

"Greg" Janson

[Maxim]

Lancer-X, on 04 October 2010 - 12:45 PM, said:

There's a line between 'challengingly difficult' and 'frustratingly/unfairly difficult' and I think this game manages to straddle it better than any other MZX game in the past; better than Maxim games do, in fact. It's so close to being unfair but isn't QUITE there. Very good. It's notable that I'm still playing it, for one, even after being killed by an out-of-sight falling spear for what feels like the hundredth time =P

This is what happens when I become inactive for several months--I get beaten at my own niche

Well, it beats the hell out of no one here trying to top me!

[CJA]

when I actually listed the results of 20 games of Ruin Diver 3 to KKairos last night, I realized that this has a lot of ways to die in it, so dying a lot doesn't seem so bad. However, I do think that it's Too Hard, and perhaps should be a longer game, but less dense (with the enemies especially).

[Dr Lancer-X]

Maxim, on 06 October 2010 - 12:36 AM, said:

This is what happens when I become inactive for several months--I get beaten at my own niche

Well, it beats the hell out of no one here trying to top me!

blooooooooooooooodlaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaands
bloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooodlaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaands

Quote

when I actually listed the results of 20 games of Ruin Diver 3 to KKairos last night, I realized that this has a lot of ways to die in it, so dying a lot doesn't seem so bad

my favourite one is falling onto one of those chain traps and having it drag you upwards where you get immediately snagged by a rope. i actually just sat there, staring at the screen and laughing for about thirty seconds

[KKairos]

This thread is making my day so much. You guys have no idea.

Also, CJA, you totally made my day with that list. Can you (or can I) post it here? (Have the log.)

Lach, good catch. TBH I was doing the oldschool thing of crediting Greg and spaced on that. You should play the game anyway, at least when it comes out.

Next version will not really be longer in terms of the main hallway. It'll still be possible to get in, get book, get out. But there'll be some...replay value, hopefully. I think enemies are going to have to be less dense just to be spread across the board somewhat evenly.

[Old-Sckool]

You always beat 5th place in the high scores even with an inferior score.

[KKairos]

Still? In the recent .mzx? Gah.

I'll check it again but I thought I had fixed that bug with the recent patch.