Salom Adventure V2 - Released!

[Flasher the hedgehog]

Amazing gameplay, effects and sounds very cool, can not wait to play the new demo!

[Nefault1st]

Thanks mate!

Alright the demo is complete, but I have to upload it first thing tomorrow morning since I don't have time to post everything right now.

[InfinityAlex]

I can't wait to play this.

EDIT:

DEMO INCOMING! DEMO INCOMING!

Yeah, basically Nefault had to fix some errors, so yeah...

[Mr. Potatobadger]

Am I the only one who keeps getting this glitch?

When you move you just fall to your death.

[J-MaxVG]

I'm getting the black screen of doom... it's stuck on the loading screen.

I'm an idiot lol... it wont run under Windows XP... so I dual booted to 7 and it runs flawlessly!

It's super responsive, the game plays wonderfully.. And I gotta say.. it is quite difficult too... (Or I just flat out suck at it.)

Keep up the great work Nefault1st!

[StealthyMC]

For me I didn't experience any glitches. Alright with that out of the way, Nefault that was a pretty amazing demo! The gameplay was smooth and responsive and it felt really fun to play. Although I kinda suck at some parts lol, like in Salom's level when I get chased by the ball and I had to jump over obstacles I kept dying over and over xD

Although I have one small complaint:

In my honest opinion, I don't think you should use these signs in pit areas. Why? Because this prevents the player from learning that there's a pit there, and this basically warns the player of death without the learning experience. It's basically holding the player's hand as they play the game. However, this is just a small nitpick mine, my opinion (I'm saying it's an opinion before someone blatantly bashes me for some stupid reason)

Also, I think some of the graphics in the stages loop over and over too much:

I'm not sure how noticeable it is though when I'm blasting through the stage at several hundred miles per hour! xD

Stupid complaints and nitpicks aside, I really enjoyed this demo. Each character has their own stage that tests their abilities. Each stage was really fun (aside from Salom's, I kept dying too much lol) and Radical Highway's chase scene with the jet and helicopter WAS PRETTY DAMN COOL.

Alright, I think I'm done here. Good luck on your building your game, Nefault.

[ZigZaX]

I actually think he should keep the pit-warnings there. Why? because the worst way of having a player die is by something he had no idea would be there.

Trial/error and muscle memory are the worst types of difficulty that the players can possibly have to encounter, it might even make some players rage-quit.

A game should have the player feel it was their own fault they lost, so throwing a bottomless pit in, without the players knowing its a horrible way of challenging the player, and its especially noticeable in games like these, where you don't know if there will be a platform down to catch you, or if you'll just die. and that's not really fun, if half of your moves rely on guessing, memorizing and trying again. Games like battletoads suffer this problem heavily.it reppetit

I agree on the tile-set being quite a bit repetitive though.

[InfinityAlex]

@Poe

I've already told Nef about that, I get it too.

@Zig

Muscle memory for a fucking bottomless pit?

What the fucking muscle memory required for the fucking Neg ball sections?! Sheesh...

[StealthyMC]

I actually think he should keep the pit-warnings there. Why? because the worst way of having a player die is by something he had no idea would be there.

Trial/error and muscle memory are the worst types of difficulty that the players can possibly have to encounter, it might even make some players rage-quit.

A game should have the player feel it was their own fault they lost, so throwing a bottomless pit in, without the players knowing its a horrible way of challenging the player, and its especially noticeable in games like these, where you don't know if there will be a platform down to catch you, or if you'll just die. and that's not really fun, if half of your moves rely on guessing, memorizing and trying again. Games like battletoads suffer this problem heavily.it reppetit

I agree on the tile-set being quite a bit repetitive though.

I feel that if a player is in a level where there is a sense of being at a high altitude the player should expect there to be bottomless pits i.e. Radical Highway. It really takes the sense of danger and anticipation away from the player to be honest...

And to add on from my first post, you seem to have a memory leak in your game, Nefault. You should consider looking into it:

It's not too much of a problem for me, but there are probably other people on the forums who can't afford to sacrifice that much memory. (x

[Mr. Potatobadger]

Oops, I totally forget to mention this game is not good. Not great. Not awesome. Not outstanding...

IT'S AMAZING!!!

[Nefault1st]

Thanks for the posts guys!

@Mr. Potatobadger

I'm aware of all glitches found so far but that glitch is something I did not ever encounter lol

The most difficult glitch I was not able to get rid of (I had honestly assumed it was gone before the release) is the spawn kill glitch when entering certain buildings of the HUB world. It happens at random times and in random buildings do it's not easy to debug. I will make a fix for this as soon as I can though!

@SuperBliz

My knowledge for computer memory and CPU isn't big but for a pc game isn't that a normal amount of memory being used? I do know the cause for it is the graphics being loaded into the system though.

As for the repetitive tiles, I apologize for that, these tiles were provided to me by Jotex when I couldn't find anything to use.

I also apologize for making some of the levels difficult, usually when I test a level a lot it just becomes too damn easy causing me to feel the need to spice it up more.

BTW I find the death-pit sign quite useful, it prevents the player from being over-explorative if you know what I mean.

[StealthyMC]

My knowledge for computer memory and CPU isn't big but for a pc game isn't that a normal amount of memory being used? I do know the cause for it is the graphics being loaded into the system though.

It could also be the fact you're loading music and lots of graphics at one time. Do you deactivate objects when they're out of view? It's a very useful memory saver. And games are normally supposed to be under 100K, because 170K is a bit too much.

And I wanted you to address this because this is only a demo and it's already consuming a lot of memory. I could direct you to a topic on the GM forums so that you can make the game not take up a lot of CPU power. And if you don't deactivate objects that are out of view, I think you should use GSI, short for Grid Spatial Indexing, to make the game run a lot smoother for people with less powerful systems. The GSI extension was posted by Overbound on this page. Don't worry though, aside from these technical things, your game is really impressive. Keep up the good work!

[Serephim]

Some things that stuck out to me:

1) the QTE is...its a terrible idea. I think a much better alternative is the Tricking mechanic Sonic Rush added. It keeps you in control and does the exact same thing, without the annoying factor. Or better yet...just remove them, there are a few ramp jumps that don't have QTE and they just feel so much better.

2) Related to #1 :: Ultimatum sections get dreadfully annoying very fast. I noticed you stuck 1ups infront of the worst offenders, but it really doesn't make them any less infuriating. The rolling deathball section early in the first stage killed me so many times i almost wanted to stop playing. I dont think you should ever kill someone for failing a QTE. No matter how it happens, it almost never feels fair or justified.

** 3**)You've put way too much "stuff" in the moving path of the character that will damage you regardless if you're boosting or not. This is something i enjoyed about your first demo that I couldn't really enjoy at all in this version -- your levels tease me with speed, and then relentlessly punish me at random for using it. I can't really enjoy using the boost because there's always something that's gonna trip me, something i need to slide under, some air ring im going to miss, some low wall thats going to murder me for not sliding...

I'm basically playing the speed parts and literally waiting for the stage to kill me so I can checkpoint and do it again with some hindsight.

***** 4 *****) The half-second warning you give the player to jump/slide (Yes, literally a half-second) is not nearly enough time to respond on reaction unless you've already been wrecked by it before multiple times already. In Sonic Unleashed the warning signs generally gave you at least 2 full seconds to react to sudden hazards at full speed, and that was in 3D so you could easily see yourself approaching what the game was warning you about. But your game is 2D, so even if you extended the warning time to 5 seconds it would still be ambushing the player. If you provided a way to actually give reference to what you were approaching before being told to jump/slide, this wouldn't be such an issue. Think Smash Brothers' off-screen indicators, or maybe an arrow with a distance meter on it. But I really don't think Unleashed even used this sort of warning during the 2D sections. It just found a way to stop you before letting you proceed.

5) Covered this in #2 sort of, but bottomless pits are also tiring. This is probably why they were virtually non-existent in Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Probably the best thing that Sonic Generations ever did was cut back on the amount of deaths the game gives you for failing a specific path. The first checkpoint in Sonic's level has a booster ramp that instantly killed me like 4 times until I realized i couldn't make the jump because it kept respawning with no boost, and I needed it to not be killed.

6) Are those loading screens needed? If not, I really wish they didn't exist. As neat of a touch as they are...nobody likes loading screens.

tl;dr

- Your warning signs aren't very helpful when it comes to the slide/jump sections. But even if they worked, those elements are just really annoying by nature.

- QTE sucks. In fact, any reflex failure that results in death is probably a bad idea. I wouldn't mind them if failure didn't kill me, but that's almost never the case.

- "Stylish-and-Fast or Dead" gets old and repetitive really fast, and ultimately discourages stylish and fast gameplay altogether. You should provide an alternate path or at least a second chance for failing a section.

Anything I didnt mention, i thought was great. Everything else was amazing to look at. The engine is solid, the effects are wonderful and I enjoyed the selection of characters.

[Nefault1st]

@SuperBliz

I see what you mean, I spent many months just optimizing the speed the best I could possibly do, deactivating regions, cleaning the memory with a dll, loading resources when needed. I'll check out your link though, sounds promising

Thanks!

@Serephim

Thanks for the critique! I noticed you talked mostly about my level designing. I have to admit level design is the worst part of making this game and it's definitely not my cup of tea, so I don't have much disagree with you on. However in my opinion I always thought the QTE in Sonic Unleashed was more enjoyable than the trick system in Generations. Though after some thinking I can understand why death as a result in failing is a bad idea. Just a heads up, don't play the Grinding Challenge

Also the loading screens are needed, but the length of it not necessarily.

Seriously thanks again I love detailed feedback!

[Guest Mr Lange]

Very much enjoyed the demo. I loved the ways you managed to take all the modern styles, abilities and gimmicks and apply them to a working Sonic engine. So many things are appealing about this being such a well done fusion of classic and modern, such as being able to use boost on the roundabout circles from the classic games. The wealth of abilities and gimmicks along with large stages and excellent presentation are making for a great game so far.

The only thing that I found significantly upsetting was the level design, which ranged from balanced and fun to downright evil. There were checkpoints placed in sections that left you with few rings nearby when respawning, and combined with an emptied boost meter, made getting past sections of obstacles very aggravating, such as a chain of spike balls on a bridge below the view which itself is over a bottomless pit that can easily be fallen into if you try to avoid the spike balls. With the extremely loose friction and tightly placed hazards, this makes for some pretty bad experiences with repeated deaths.

I also found the controls to be unresponsive sometimes. Homing attacks randomly (or seemingly randomly) not triggering, as well as boost and even jumps. I must also ask you to include an input mapper. I'm using a PC gamepad that isn't a 360 controller, and while the controls are close, the jump button is separated from the boost button by the meteor attack, which made gameplay a lot less intuitive. Not to mention none of the buttons had the bumpers mapped to them, so doing quicktime events requiring the bumpers was impossible.

I also had that spawning under the floor glitch when entering the adventure field a couple times.

[thevaleev]

I'm very enjoying demo. Game have a lot of new and interesting things than first demo.

New levels, new sprites, pretty good controller support (with the rumble!), new zones in HUB,

mini-games, new awesome music, very cool and extreme gameplay and level design, and much more!

And most importantly - game goes smoothly, it is a VERY big plus for computers like mine lol

I wish to the game be better and better!

[Nefault1st]

@ Mr Lange

I completely understand the frustration, I do apologize for the poor level designing again. Though I'm not really sure about the controls issue, but since you are using a PC gamepad, it makes sense lol. I'll see if I can make a fix for it.

@ TheValeev

Thanks!

-EDIT-

An updated version has been uploaded!

[Shinbaloonba]

I've been playing with this a bit yesterday.There were things I loved,and things I despised.

The presentation for starters,is very nice and well made,and the whole game have a charismatic feeling.The gameplay is very nice aswell,and while all characters have similiar gameplay,the small differences there are are actually cool.

For the things I dislike though,I personally think the fancharacters look terrible,not just because they're fancharacters,but vecause their design is boring,generic,and unnapealing.I find Vermin in particular downright cringeworthy,specially his character select artwork,which while is drawn and shaded pretty damn well,his design that I already dislike,combined with the extremely silly "super radical awesome" pose that reminds me back of the worst from the early SA artwork,made me literally cringe,HARD.

I'm not trying to get into a "fancharacters are bad" type argument,what I'm saying is that this game's particular fancharcters are poorly designed.

Aside from that,the level design is great at times,and extremely frustating at others.Apart fro the thing Lange mentioned,there's also the fact that the level design encourages you to use the boost,but also punishes you severely for doing so,with several dick placed chainsaws and pits.There's also the ramps,I beleive it's actually a glitch or unintentional,but on many of the ramps that come before bottomless pits,somitimes I can't get past them either because I'm boosting,which sends me too far from where I'm supposed to land,or because I wasn't boosting and wasn't fast enough to even cross the pit at all.

There's also the places where you must react REAL quickly,like the part on Radical Highway,after a checkpoint there's a ramp that sends you to an helicopter,but you gotta H.A. it or else you'll fall to your death.I honestly don't think a person would even be able to react so quickly on their first playthrough,without dying there first to get aware of it.

I also think the keyboard controls are all over the place.You mainly use ASD,which is fine,but then there's the X button for sliding,which is awkward,and the upper QWE mixed with ASD for the Q.T.E's which I can actually react quickly and press them,but feels really odd when they appear on the qtes,as you realy don't use those buttons anywhere else on the game,so they come outta nowhere if you know what I'm saying.

Using backspace to go back between menus is annoying too.

Granted,I love many things about the game,but there are many frustrating things about it too.I'm going to play it some more right now and give a deeper playthrough.

[TailsSena]

Okay, so I've had this sitting in my downloads for a few days and I finally buckled down and played it... Bear in mind that I didn't get very far, but here are my thoughts...

- First off, there was this... It's not an issue, but I thought I'd let you know. (Fairly large image.)

- Vermin is adorable. As cool as he tries to look, he's just too cute.

- The controls are somehow both slippery and stiff. What I mean by that is that on land, your acceleration in pretty high, but you can't stop for shit unless you can jump and ground-dive instantaneously- an art I had to master. Meanwhile your jump has a similar problem, you cannot affect your momentum in any way while jumping unless you hit something or somehow trigger another action, all of which will send you careening off in a direction you didn't want to go.

- Getting that token in town was a pain. It was doable, but ohmygodfuckyougame.

- While the overall presentation was nice, I have to say it was inconsistent. Very seldom did the art styles of two assets match each other or flow together cohesively.

- I would like to be able to configure the control mapping, but I'm fine adapting to this layout, since it's not too odd. (I'm using a laptop keyboard.)

...I think that's it. Overall, very nice, but like all things it could be a little better.

[thevaleev]

-First off, there was this... It's not an issue, but I thought I'd let you know. (Fairly large image.)

It's normal. Windows says like that when you run applications from internet for the first time.

Windows thinks that internet have viruses only (trying to joke)

[Guest Mr Lange]

There's also the places where you must react REAL quickly,like the part on Radical Highway,after a checkpoint there's a ramp that sends you to an helicopter,but you gotta H.A. it or else you'll fall to your death.I honestly don't think a person would even be able to react so quickly on their first playthrough,without dying there first to get aware of it.

This. That specific part drove me crazy. I died the first time and felt a bit cheated. Then several more attempts had me trying to nail helicopter and missing, so I would homing attack my way back to the platform, miss, have to jump off, homing attack back again in the other direction, and repeat until I missed a jump and died, because the homing reticle was unresponsive. The extremely loose friction makes it impossible to actually stay on the platform when you land on it, so I had no choice but to keep jumping and homing attacking backwards. Eventually I finally did manage to get on the helicopter but it cost me a few lives.

Also, what the hell am I supposed to do here:

The spring just leads into spikes. I can't go back down where I came because of the launchers, although I did manage to force myself back down and there's no alternate route, so I'm trapped in that area. The spring is on a floating thing, which suggests I'm supposed to... move it so it points to the open area above that I can't reach? Nothing I do causes the spring to move, and I just take damage when touching the bottom half. I tried every move I could think of and interacted with the object in various ways. That floating spring will not budge. So if you were trying to make a new, more evil version of the Carnival Night barrel, I think you succeeded.

[TailsSena]

...Glad I never made it that far.

I confess, I walked left and wound up in Act 5 of a Zone I don't remember the name of. Or at least, it looked like a "5."

@Valeev: Yeah, I figured... And ohgod... That sounded like my dad on one of his web-safety rants.

[Faseeh]

Also, what the hell am I supposed to do here:

[qimg]http://s22.postimg.org/5zo5zqphd/36977837.png[/qimg]

The spring just leads into spikes. I can't go back down where I came because of the launchers, although I did manage to force myself back down and there's no alternate route, so I'm trapped in that area. The spring is on a floating thing, which suggests I'm supposed to... move it so it points to the open area above that I can't reach? Nothing I do causes the spring to move, and I just take damage when touching the bottom half. I tried every move I could think of and interacted with the object in various ways. That floating spring will not budge. So if you were trying to make a new, more evil version of the Carnival Night barrel, I think you succeeded.

There is an alternate route... it's hidden though but oh well. It's on the right, just keep walking towards the wall on the right, and there's actually a path.

I remember that's how I got through.

[thevaleev]

...I walked left and wound up in Act 5 of a Zone I don't remember the name of. Or at least, it looked like a "5."

That's an "S" and it's the initial of each player's name; like in Vermin's gameplay it said act V.

[TailsSena]

That's an "S" and it's the initial of each player's name; like in Vermin's gameplay it said act V.

Oh, then it might have been a "V," because I played as Vermin. I just remember it as "5" because I read it as a roman numeral.