How the Vorticon Stole Christmas

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levellord
Crazy pAtChEr
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Post by levellord »

1.) Strengths: It has a nice christmassy theme.
Its a single full and active level
Its challenging, especially that last part.

Weaknesses: Um, some people don't llike big levels.

2.) It needs more secret places, but I always say that.

3.) Your graphics are coming along nicely. More pastel than I'd like and a bit bright, but I'm a dark pixel girl myself.

4.) T3h 1337 stories, ironic a sopmoric.

5.) I loved the brown bristly thing.You continue to improve!
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XkyRauh
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Location: San Diego, California

hum

Post by XkyRauh »

Alright, I made it through, but I have to admit, it took me way too long to figure out to AVOID the chimneys at first. Once I found that first door, though, things started to come together a bit better. I don't think I did everything quite right--I didn't get that "Ah, that's it" feeling I usually get once I figure something out. But if we're going to follow your theme:

1) Overall Strengths and Weaknesses
The strength of this mod is the familiar premise and cute names for everything--with a mod title so close to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," it's sure to evoke memories of childhood.
The weakness of this mod was the overall level of chaos involved in surviving within the house. Vrinch is a much larger character than Keen is--his hitbox is pretty ruthless, and the enemies are larger as well. It's easier to get hit without realizing it, and it's harder to make certain kinds of jumps.

2) level design/difficulty- was it too difficult in terms of playing, or were the puzzles too difficult?
Like I said earlier, once I figured out where to go first, the rest sort of came together. But I wasn't sure what the "pogo" would look like, or even what the keys were... Playing with sound off was a bad idea. ;-) Maybe include pictures in your "Help!" file next time?

3) graphics- Personally, I think these are my best graphics yet, and not too gridlike either, but i want to see what you think.
Agreed--you stayed away from Grid-like whenever possible, and it shows. Many of your designs tile well, and you had plenty of detail tiles and miscellany to keep the house vibrant. But it was almost TOO vibrant. I think I second LevelLord's sentiment--tone down the bright a little! :-)

4) Story- Did you guys get my jokes? Did it all make sense? Did I somehow create some sort of paradox in my game?
I think your ending could have used a bit more work. A mod author really has to pick and choose their words carefully, given the size, pacing, and length of each message box. I've always been rather disappointed when I get to the end of a mod, and the text either contains multiple spelling and sentence-structure errors, or just plain fucls up. The ending sequence is the REWARD the players are looking forward to after fighting through your levels... the least you could do is add a bit of shading to that giant blob of grey on the right half of the screen. ;-)


5) Sprites- If you guys had a chance to see my first sprites in Pyramid, you would know why I'm asking you about them. Did you have a favorite sprite? Or thought one was made really badly?
I really liked your huge candles, and I think you did a good job with the fires. The key designs were adorable (crowbar for the wooden door!) and the enemies, though bizarre looking, were well constructed. That said, they were very large, compared to average Keen enemies. If I ran out of ammo, I'd often just have to kill myself, because there would be so many enemies in a little 2-tile passage way. That's irresponsible. Or I just suck. Or both! :-)

I enjoyed this mod, and I look forward to seeing darker, more carefully texted mods from you in the future. :-) Good work, Stealthy!
Stealthy71088
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Post by Stealthy71088 »

Thank you very much.

Darker hmm? I'll have to see if i can figure out how to work the color patch for Dragon Days.

That ending was the first time I ever drew a big picture like that in computer art. I noticed later that I made a mistake, and forgot the buttons on Vrinch. I'm thinking about something more complicated for Universe's end screen and title screen, but I'm not exactly sure what yet.

Speaking of which, I'm almost halfway through the editing. Things are much easier than before, and on average you can only get one life per level, instead of 3 or 4. Graphics will still be mostly gridlike in that one, but, I have done a few things in the NASA levels to make them easier to see. I'm changed the background to black for points, which makes those levels much clearer. I'm going to make the background blocks smaller, or patterned more like bricks too.

I try to keep ammo tight; I've played mods where I managed to get over 100 ammo very easily, with precious little aliens to show for it. But I didnt think it was that bad- I'll try to be more generous next time.

Sprites too big? In general that was deliberate, but I didnt think it was much of a problem. The keen sprite for the next game will be a cyborg, which i was planning on being big- but It wont be now. The other sprites wont be as big as the brown rat, but they'll probably be a little big, within reason.

I'll see what i can do about the help file too.


Thanks again,
Stealthy71088
Kdash
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Post by Kdash »

Playing with sound off was a bad idea.
I can't even use sound, my PC speaker doesn't like being played X(
And, yeah a different pogo sprite would have been better. Even if it just had little stars coming out of his feet or something.
Stealthy71088
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Location: NY

Stealthy's late xmas present (as usual ;) )

Post by Stealthy71088 »

I made a special edition for Christmas. Two new levels (it was all I could fit in the short time I had) with new graphics. One's a puzzle level, the other has puzzles, but more of a "survive this." sort of thing. I'm going to test and revise the second one first a little more- shouldn't take too long hopefully.

Here's the deal though. I tried to fix some of the bugs present in the last version, particularily the ending. Some of them I fixed. But in the process, I created a new one, and the ending looks worse. The new bug is that whenever someone opens the menu, the game crashes. I didn't add any new patches to the menu, but experimentation has proven that it has to do with my patchfile. No one patch that I've added seems to cause it though- it's weird.

Aside from that, it looks pretty good. Should I release what I have, with some more work done on the second level now, or try and fix some of the bugs (be aware I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to fix the menu, or the reindeer disapeering at the end of the ending.) and then release it? The bugs do not interfere with the new levels.

I hope to make more levels later, but we'll see.
levellass
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Post by levellass »

If you mail me your patchfile I can try and see what is wrong. (I ruined my ending by overwriting the FINALE.CK1 filename once, took me ages to find out.)
Stealthy71088
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Post by Stealthy71088 »

I'll see what I can do. Are you still using LL's email?
levellass
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Post by levellass »

Yes, indeed I am, sadly I am now sans computer (And house) so can't really do anything, sorry.
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