The gallery, and other stories...

[Macbeth]

A wonderful game, and the entire editor melange is quite the icing on the cake. Was up until some obscene time this morning throwing together various enemies for a friend to have a go at defeating...

I do have a few suggestions - which is, frankly, why I am posting here - such as to increase the functionality of the gallery... It would be nice to select all from a specific user - I could just ctrl + f it all, but it shouldn't be too difficult to implement a way to show user-specific levels.

The new rating system is quite nice as well, I'd like to see how my levels are being seen, but it would be good also to expand this feedback system - perhaps some way of commenting on the level?

The game engine itself is very nicely put together. There are a few additional features that could be added in - someone mentioned using keyboard-controlled direction and mouse-aiming? - but overall, gameplay is smooth, not too complex to pick up, and broadly appealing - in a vector-graphic 'let's blow stuff up' sorta way.

It would be nice to introduce some part that temporarily deactivates the parts connected to it... Hit it with a couple of rounds and it and the parts connected to it go red and do not work, until it 'restarts' a few seconds later. It would open up a lot of new design possibilities, especially in conjunction with shields/invulnerable pieces: pinning open tracks to expose the core. I'm not sure if this would be logistically feasible - a lot of considerations to take into account: would the connected parts to be deactivated have to be set specifically? Otherwise in many cases it could well deactivate the entire structure - but I think it would be worth some thought.

Multiple-cores offer quite interesting possibilities - I note that when a duplicate is struck the source of its clone blinks also. Use of multiple cores via duplication is quite buggy, the jump around a lot, heh. I don't know whether you intend to remove duplication of cores or not, but it would be interesting to expand on this.

Oh, and perhaps the ability to add customised 'flight patterns', rather than just to follow the user?

And while I am here, what on earth do the switches do?

- Macbeth

[MD]

The gallery: Ok, I'll work more on the gallery. When I started there were only a handful of levels so there wasn't a point to having advanced functions. But now that it's growing fast, 621 levels currently, I can see the point. A comment system for levels is a good idea, a bit of work of course as I think some things would need to change. Perhaps clicking on a level would bring you to a statistics/comments page with the play button there and/or beside the link in the gallery.

Controls: seems to be a fair bit of demand for moving/aiming with mouse/keyboard so I'll work that into the control options.

Parts: I've always loved the idea of ai, triggers, dynamic things, etc (perhaps that's why i make games ) so I like the idea of a part which deactivates another, I'm thinking that such deactivation would stop invincibility and/or shooting if it's a gun. And once things settle down (or not) I'm certainly going to be dreaming up new pieces.

I note that when a duplicate is struck the source of its clone blinks also.

Just to summarize: every part you hit will flash and every part attached to it will also flash (which means you can find the true core by finding the one that makes every other part flash as well). The core is indeed interesting, it might be fun to require that all cores be destroyed in a level (as an option of course, decoys are fun as well). Custom "flight patterns" as you say will certainly be added to the AI window eventually, i don't know what that might look like but I'll be thinking about it.

Switches: I assume you're talking about the parts named "Switch", these were intended to have the "makeSwitch" function applied to them (from the "AI, lives" menu) but I didn't want to force them to be used that way. Anyway, there are 4 pairs, so that in theory, a level can colour code which "switch" will destroy which target (switch "b"). In the end all it is, is a unique name for the part so that I can save that information into the level

Thanks for taking the time to post!
~MD

[CitPrem]

This is an awesome game. But I was going to suggest the same thing about the gallery, as well.
Anyways, I still don't understand what the switch AI does. I usually use switches as "power generators" for shields, without the "switch" AI code.

[the_corruptor]

the switch AI command can make, basically, one part dependant on two parts, and will explode when either is destroyed.

This opens up the question, would it be possible to link one object to two such that they both need to be destroyed? two shield-generators for instance?