Nice... I played 16 and the difficulty seems about right. The framerate was around 30 in the cave areas toward the end of the second level, but overall it was pretty smooth.

The bonesaw is wicked.

15 got a little hard because I was expecting to get more life at the end of the stage. If I had known that I needed to conserve energy, I wouldn't have fought every enemy I came across. Haven't played 16 yet.

I can't comment on the framerate, except to say that I was surprised to get over 30. I'm sure a normal machine would handle it with ease.

I REALLY like the style you have going here. Actual parallax scrolling! In a click game! It's amazing. :)

Okay so ... for you guys getting subpar framerates, what are your specs? Smiley I know that you're probably running Wine, so thats understandable. But what about you, HARVY?!

I played it. Very nice. No complaints yet, other than the fact that I don't care for the movement on the map screen. If it were something more akin to Super Mario World I would have liked it better. You know, you push one direction and the character moves to the next stage.

The engine is pretty solid. It looks like you've ironed out most of the bugs. I didn't encounter any yet. The attack system takes some time to get used to, though. It's hard for me to position the character exactly right in order to score a punch on an enemy, while they're kicking my ass. That mostly goes for the fire-spitting enemies. The red ones were pretty much a pushover.

The graphics are nice. Quite a nice retro feel to it. My only complaint is that there's a lot of green and brown. I assume that that's only the color scheme for the first world?

No framerate issues for me. The counter doesn't display properly for me, though, so I don't know what the exact numbers are. My computer is only a few months old, though... the processor is some Celeron model at 3.2ghz and 384 MB of RAM.

Overall, I'm pleased. I'd like to see more, but... knowing how we are around here...

I spoke too soon. Noticed a bug.

My character must have been flashing, but the arrow indicates the route he took.

I've got 2.4 Ghz P4 with 760MB of RAM. There was only a small but discernable slowdown in the "cave" areas because of the large backgrounds getting piled on each other.

I didn't mind the movement on the map screen, except that I had to keep pushing arrows (holding "right" didn't always keep him moving right).

Alright, heres a new version. I may have forgot to mention this, but you can press Escape on a previously beaten level to exit it. You will lose any pucks you got in that run though, so to keep pucks you find you have to get to the green flag.

Bonesaw 19

Note that this one is set up differently. Within is bonesaw.exe and a bin folder. Bonesaw.exe is a seperate launch program. If you think your computer is lagging, then try it on 256 color mode.

Changes
-Fleshed out the world map a little
-Your total amount of golden pucks is now displayed on the world map.
-Made it so that you can continously walk in the main world
-Fixed backdrop that I forgot to set as an obstacle
-Golden Pucks now have an effect on your bonesaw meter. The more you have, the quicker the bonesaw meter will charge up, so now you should have some sort of incentive to get them.
-Added a cool cheat that I wont tell you yet.
-The game now saves your health, lives, bonesaw meter, current weapon, and last played level.
-Attempted to cut down on backdrops in the cave, hoping to reduce lag.
-Fixed a bug where you could exit a level after dying, causing a glitch in the lives count.

I know that overlapping an enemy while trying to attack it is kind of annoying, but initial playtests with having your attack hitbox overlap you as well as in front of you didnt really work well. Overlapping an enemy completely and attacking, and somehow hitting them, just looked and felt wierd.

A solid strategy for killing the red guys, and even the round fire guys (Tough Puckies) is to just do a running kick into them, and then immediately combo them before they land from the initial attack.

Level 3 will include a hockey stick so just wait for that. It makes fighting a lot easier.

My main concern is testing out the saving and loading of data for this version of the game. If anything strange happens to you as far as loading and saving data, please report it.

Found another bug.

I was playing the second level. I had used the Bonesaw item to obtain the second hockey puck. I flipped the switch, then enetered the room with no enemies and a lot of blocks to break. As I entered that door, the Bonesaw item wore off... and somehow I ended up in a completely black room. I could see the character, but the backdrops never reappeared. I guess the fade-in routine got messed up somehow. I haven't tried to replicate this yet, since it's kind of a pain in the ass to get kicked around enough to power up the bonesaw meter. But, yeh, it happened, and it's lame.

Okay well for sake of testing purposes...

Press Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right in the intro screen, before the charging sound plays. You should hear the golden puck sound. Use that cheat to test the bonesaw more.

who is wick? is that you?

Wick is a physics professor at my college.

All right, I was able to reproduce the same bug several times. If you enter a door just as the bonesaw power is ending, the screen stays black... save for the hero.

Alright.

I fixed that door bug. The bonesaw now only drains while that fader object isnt on screen, so it should never happen.

I'm starting work on level 3, I'm going to try to put some sort of mini boss at the end of it too so this might take me awhile.

up up left right left right is the old contra cheat less the "B, A" nice.

What, the Konami Code?

Bonesaw 20

Level 3 and the hockey stick is in. Theres no miniboss, I didnt really feel like it fit on that level. If you keep your data and save files, they transfer over... so if you dont want to keep playing levels 1 and 2 over again.

yeah i guess the old Konami Code

Imagine that...

Anyway, the new level is very nice. I like the greater variation of colors in this one. I presume a boss level is coming up soon?

This topic makes Smiley Pro feel more alive. It even inspired me to actually work on my game some last night.

The only criticism I have is that if you lose the slasher item before or during the next area, it is impossible to advance. You can't go back and get it again, even if you die... so the only option is to lose all of your lives and start the level again.

I thought that maybe there would be a more difficult way to advance by jumping up by the cannons and leaping across the gap, but I couldn't reach the upper platform.

I got past that part by jumping and getting hit by a cannon in mid-air for an extra boost.

But then I found out you can make it by long-jumping.

You can still get passed the level. You just all out jump for that single block, instead of enjoying the luxury of having that bomb block form a bridge for you.

Ah, ok. I guess I didn't try to jump really far.

I just finished level 4.. I plan on making level 5 the boss stage. I dont know if it should just be a straight up boss fight, or a small level followed by a boss. HM.

I say boss only.

Maybe a short walk and then the boss? If there are enemies, it should just be one small group of them. (Or maybe a miniboss who turns into the boss or calls him or whatever.)

as you know, in many great platformers (Mario 3, Super Mario World, Rayman) there is a level before a boss. It can be annoying to play through it again if you die on the boss, but it also makes the boss battle more significant.
I would vote for a boss level, but add some food right before the boss to refill 100% life.

True, Harv, but the Donkey Kong Country games had "boss only" levels. That's probably what I had in mind.

I myself was thinking of Kirby games, where there is occasionally a very short walk or lead-in to the boss battle (though usually without enemies... the tree is the best example). It adds to the tension, since it lets you know that you're about to fight. I guess the end of Mega Man stages are kind of like that too.

I like how we all have these different influences. :)

Right now its going to be a short walk in a silent level, maybe with a thing of health. I'm reluctant to put health in, since you can play any level you want over again, I just dont want players to just keep replaying the level that gets them health fast over and over again. Similar to the Mario levels where you could just get 11 1ups per playthrough...

I started drawing some rough sprites of ideas. I think I'm just going to go with a very basic boss here. He'll stand and throw pucks or something at you, then charge around the level at you. Hopefully I can complete this before Spring Break is over ;D

sounds good to me ;)

Whoops.

I got a little sidetracked... I'm currently finishing up my junior year at college, and I've been working on a new website so the bonesaw game had to take a back seat. I've been working on animations for the boss every once and awhile. Dont expect to hear from me a lot of for the next 3 weeks though. Finals are quickly approaching for me :I

Hey guys, just a quick update

I've been working on the animations of that boss that I thought I'd have done a million years ago. I'm home for a couple weeks, then going back to my college town to work for the summer... then going to Alaska, then home, then back to college. Hopefully somewhere in there I'll get something done. =P

Go kill some Eskimos. And eat them.

http://www.create-games.com/preview.asp?id=2877

I'm really working on the game now.

Hooray video! I am eagerly awaiting the next demo.

Demo may not come for awhile.

Heres a run down of the boss before I really get into him. I've been just tinkering around with him today, getting him to walk and jump and what not.

Phase I Pattern:
- Simply walks towards the player, slowly.
- If the player is in range, the boss will do a swift uppercut causing some massive damage and launch the player.
- If the player manages to jump over the boss, he will stop momentarily. For that moment the player can strike him from behind and start a combo or whatever, and from playing around with this it's going to be a lot of fun juggling the boss.
- After the player is finished attacking, or the boss isnt attacked for a certain amount of time, or the phase time expires go to phase II. If the boss is at low health, he will go to Phase III instead of II.

Phase II Pattern:
- The boss stops, and crouches down a little, followed by a leap into the air.
- The boss will try to land on the player, causing damage.
- If he misses, then he'll smash into the ground causing the player to be stunned if hes touching the ground at the time of impact.
- Maybe some shockwaves will come out to harm the player as well.
- While the player is stunned the boss will immediately shift back to Phase I attack mode, which is the walk toward + attack.

Phase III Pattern (Low Health):
- The boss will jump in the air straight up, as if he was in his phase II attack pattern. When he smacks the ground, there will be no stun or shockwaves. Instead, a 32x32 block will fall (the same ones in the background) above him.
- When the block reaches him, he'll punch it toward the player.
- The player can then either try to deflect it back at the boss for damage, or just avoid it.
- The boss will then revert to Phase I.

--

Thats what I have drawn and written on a little half sheet of paper in front of me right now. GOOD?

I like it. If it isn't hard enough, you could have the boss's phase I speed slowly increase as his life gets lower... or the phase I timer could be smaller, etc.

Arr well this block bouncing deal isnt really working out. It's hard for the player to actually be able to knock the block back at the boss without:
a) getting hit by the block and taking damage
b) keeping the block high enough so it doesnt hit the ground and blow up

So now I'm pondering another attack, and then I'll make some overly dramatic death sequence and he'll be done.

Since I have officially announced the Bonesaw game, with the video trailer, all discussion and beta downloads are moving to the Members Only forum. See you there ;O