View Full Version : Nebraska Newton - The world's most mild-manner adventurer
F1ak3r
27-04-2008, 01:35 PM
Name: Nebraska Newton
Genre: Action/Adventure Platformer
Story:
Nebraska Newton is a terribly boring fellow. His life-long dream was to become an accountant, but he failed out of university.
Needing something to do with his life, he became an adventurer and explorer of ancient ruins. I'm not sure why, but just believe, k?
SO, he went to the Kalaharian desert, and found an ancient Amaghulean (made-up civilization) tomb. And then the game starts. Yay!
Download From Box.Net (http://www.box.net/shared/h3pi2n8084)
Download From 64Digits (http://www.64digits.com/games/index.php?cmd=view_game&id=4778&download=1)
2.4MB
Version 2.0
Screens
http://64digits.com/users/F1ak3r/NN1.JPG
http://64digits.com/users/F1ak3r/NN2.JPG
http://64digits.com/users/F1ak3r/NN3.JPG
Tr00jg
28-04-2008, 01:31 PM
Awesome name! Love it!
Gazza_N
28-04-2008, 06:13 PM
I'm with Tr00jg - kudos on the name and the concept. Very cool :D
I gave it a quick playthrough, and while it's solid on most aspects, I encountered a couple of niggles:
> If I release the crouch key while in a crouch, then allow Nebraska to pop up by himself, he gets stuck in the floor. As it is now, you need to hold down the crouch key continually and manually release the crouch when he's clear of low areas for him to pop up properly.
> The ability to turn off speech bubbles is a good bit of foresight, but sometimes I'd love to be able to skip text, or keep the longer messages on-screen so that I can read them properly. Any way you can allow the player to advance through speech bubbles manually?
> I like the fact that you only have limited revolver ammo (especially given Nebraska's pacifist tendencies ;)), but I ran out of ammo before reaching the block puzzles that actually require you to use the revolver to continue. This was a bit of a letdown, because I couldn't continue. Having a secondary weapon with infinite ammo, or perhaps some other non-aggressive block-breaking tool (*cough* Whip *cough*) would be a huge help to us more aggressive players.
Otherwise, I love it. Really. Given what I've played so far, I think it'll be an awesome game when it grows up. :)
F1ak3r
28-04-2008, 07:32 PM
Thanks guys! The name was an obvious rip on Indiana Jones, but I'm sure you figured that out.
Hmm, manual skipping is something I really should do. Especially since different people read at different rates.
I could've sworn I fixed that crouching bug, but I guess it's back to haunt me. I'll really hammer it out this time.
I was worried about a lack of ammo. On my playthrough, I had enough ammo, but then again, I played the game non-aggressively, and did a lot to conserve ammo. I think your idea of an infinite ammo weapon like a whip is a good one, but I'm not sure my graphics artist'll have time, so I guess I'll just modify that right-click attack to be less powerful, seeing as you only HAVE to use it once or twice in the game, and it should therefore be a powerup instead.
dislekcia
28-04-2008, 08:49 PM
Or you could give players a bit of ammo right before the block puzzles... Like a skeleton of a previous accountant lying there, so you fashion a few bullets from his pocket calculator ;)
-D
Darcnyss
29-04-2008, 10:51 AM
Pretty cool!
I enjoyed playing this pre-release, and I think with the few things Gazza_N mentioned this could turn out to be a good one.
Would love to play the final version.
Dipso
29-04-2008, 07:28 PM
I enjoyed playing the game. Also ran out of bullets when I got to the breakable blocks, and tried punching it.
A few suggestions
- Make the player's bullets move slightly faster. At the moment the enemies move quite fast and its difficult to aim. Lost a few bullets trying to shoot at enemies.
- Maybe also make the player move slightly faster. He felt slow, especially when jumping over a gap to another platform.
- Make the enemies drop a bullet when they die.
I also like the comments Newton makes :)
FuzzYspo0N
30-04-2008, 10:43 PM
- Make the player's bullets move slightly faster. At the moment the enemies move quite fast and its difficult to aim. Lost a few bullets trying to shoot at enemies.
haha "hey make this game easier :D". but i agree the player should move faster
F1ak3r
01-05-2008, 10:45 PM
Thanks for the input! I've made the player and the bullets move a little faster, but I'm only putting up the new version of the game on Saturday, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait.
I've opted out of an infinite ammo melee-weapon, for various reasons (okay, okay, I'm lazy :D), so I've just put some ammo before the block-breaking puzzles. Even so, you'll want to be sparing with your ammo. Use as little as you can - it'll help later on.
I've also made the speech bubbles stay on the screen until space is pressed. It's a lot nicer. THANKS GAZZA!
If I made the enemies drop bullets when they died, it'd render one of this game's best features obsolete. I'm not saying what this feature is though, but I'll tell you that you see it shortly after the block puzzles. >_>
Once again, thanks all! You've been invaluable, and this forum remains the place where I get the best feedback. I should really hang around more...
F1ak3r
03-05-2008, 04:39 PM
Okay, I've uploaded the new version. Enjoy!
Chuluka
26-05-2008, 04:12 PM
I'm going to try out the new version sometime I hope, its not a bad little game.
F1ak3r
06-07-2008, 12:41 PM
New version 2.0! Lots of bug fixes, smoother motion, and the ability to carry healthpacks. Enjoy!
CorDa
06-07-2008, 01:14 PM
That looks neat :D i like.
Thaumaturge
06-07-2008, 11:49 PM
So far so good, I believe. ^_^
Nebraska's walking animation looks strange, but in this case the effect is positive, I believe - the animation suits both the game and the character, I think.
I did encounter a few (generally fairly minor) issues, however: (When referring to level numbers I do not count the tutorial level; that is, by "the first level" I mean the first level after the tutorial level.)
On two occasions when exiting the crouch-height passage in the first level Nabraska popped up into his standing sprite and got stuck in the floor. I managed to escape the first time (by jumping, I think), but failed to do so the second time.
In the tutorial level, the final message doesn't seem to disappear when I press space (or perhaps it does, but is immediately replaced?).
Shooting down onto creatures sometimes seems to "miss". My guess would be that the bullet is "jumping" past the creature as it moves, ending up colliding with the floor instead of the creature. I've only noticed this with the snakes, but, given that the scorpions are less common and easier to bypass, I think, I don't think that I've tried to shoot the scorpions as often.
In some cases attempting to climb a ladder results in the character just slipping down (moving more slowly than falling, as I recall). I think that this happens when the character falls to the ladder (such as in jumping from a wall), instead of jumping up to it.
Climbing seems to sometimes fail on left side of obstacles. I noticed this first on the second level. It's my guess that the character sometimes activates the collision detection a little further out than the distance at which the climbing ability activates.
I found that I once briefly confused the "health pack available" icon for an actual health pack. Perhaps it would help to either move the icon or, perhaps better, change it a little to differentiate the two.
Finally, "quarter" is mis-spelled in second level. ;P
It would also be nice to have melee attack and climbing animations, of course.
F1ak3r
08-07-2008, 07:23 PM
@CorDa: =D
@Thaumaturge:
Glad you like the walking animation :).
* Grr, that one keeps coming back. I don't know how many times I've thought I'd fixed it, only to have it reappear. Maybe I should make crouching a toggle thing, instead of this Half-Life-esque thing I've got.
* Mm, yes, the bullets do move a little fast. I think I can remedy this problem by making the bullet move through every pixel very fast, instead of having it jump. Something like repeat (myspeed) { move 1 pixel }, rather than speed = myspeed.
* Yeah, the ladder code is a bit messy, and woven into the climbing code. Gotta fix that.
* I see what you mean. You're probably right about the cause. There's always an irritating little glitch with that, no matter what I do. But I'll try to remedy that, even if it involves writing my own collision system.
* I think I'll stick an "F" on it, so you can remember what to press in order to activate it. Better put a Q on the poison antidote too.
* You know those words you're always mispelling? Quarter is one of mine.
That would be nice, and I'll talk to my artist about it. He's a bit apprehensive about animations though, but I'm sure I can get him to do SOMETHING.
Thank you both for posting (especially Thaumaturge ;)). I really appreciate it. With your help, this game may just become playable :P.
Thaumaturge
10-07-2008, 01:13 AM
My pleasure. ^_^
Most of your suggested solutions sound fine to me. ^_^
However, with reference to the crouch bug, how would toggled crouching help, unless the mechanism of having the character exiting crouch were changed (as opposed to a change in control mechanism, which is what you seem to be suggesting)? It could reduce instances of the bug popping up by taking advantage of presume probable user behaviour, but I doubt that it would eliminate it...
Perhaps you should check that the problem isn't related to ending up colliding with the ceiling, and so being "driven down" into the floor. I would specifically suggest checking the collision that may occur when exiting from the left passage, which seems to be the one that causes the problem for me, and it looks as though he might be popping up too early.
If that is the case, then it may be a collision mask issue, or may perhaps call for an additional test for the problem case.
I've managed to reproduce the bug fairly consistently, it seems, by exiting the left-hand low passage slowly and carefully, with the crouch button unheld.
Finally, I'm afraid that I also just found a new bug, I think. ^^;
I somehow managed to slip down the right-hand side of the lava-fall in the first level, which prompted to appear the text regarding the switch having disabled the lava-fall. In fact, having now tested it, I managed to slip down the left-hand side too, once taking no damage damage, and have also found that simply walking through it wasn't necessarily a death sentence, although it did hurt the character, taking about 40 health points. (Poor fellow, being the guinea-pig of a game tester. ;)) Surely the lava-fall should be deadly?
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