I'm not quite sure why I won again.
Oranjuice wrote:The only negative here I can think of is the slight lag I experienced while playing. I don't know if this is because of the wide distances between splitters and the amount of enemies, but it was enough to cause some extra deaths.
I don't recall noticing any lag. The only reason I can think of is because of the large green filter in the 'future' zones.
Harmless wrote:The monsters have pretty high HP, too. Those wolves would always take away a good chunk of my HP even if I tried to avoid them, then I might get killed by a Grock or by falling off in the time warp area. But I had fun nonetheless, it was a good amount of fun for that level. Maybe one or two more HP on the player would do even if you didn't feel like adjusting the monsters's HP.
From what I can tell, you cannot actually adjust the monsters' HP values in this version (altering the value doesn't seem to do anything). I would have if I could have.
It gets much easier once you get the throwing axes, for what it matters.
You provided a good amount of dialogue concerning the people's concern about the rain, but then where does this time travel thing fit in? Why would they send someone with experience on time travel to go investigate? Are you part of some royal blood or something that has special powers of time travel? I feel like a lot of details were missing as to why 'time travel' fits in with the level of all things.
I thought it was explained in the dialogue, but you are meant to look into the future to see the results of said unnatural rain storm. Likewise, the land erodes in the future, but the shrines do not, which allows the player to pass areas that are not otherwise possible in the present time (such as large pits of soft quicksand).
As for why you can interact with them, probably just due to being the 'hero' of the story.
+ Finally, some NPC's that said more than just 'Hello World!'. I'm interested in how you got those NPC's to fit inside mage and armored knight costumes though. There was also some really good dialogue. (+1)
I just put the normal NPCs behind the knight/mages in the back layer. Making the dummy NPCs transparent also works, but the terrain made the back layer convenient.
+ Liked the time warp mechanic, but what I don't get is why there's increased gravity in the time warp. You'd think that there'd be lower gravity of all things because you're manipulating something that runs fairly parallel with space. (+0.25)
It has nothing to do with time manipulation, but the state of the world in the future, which is evidently toxic enough to increase one's weight.
Interestingly, the original concept DID call for decreased gravity (or more specifically, everything to be permanently submerged underwater). However, thanks to a severe flaw regarding the interaction between triggers and delta, lowered gravity basically allows for extreme cheating via delta usage, and unlike the previous version, there is no way (to my knowledge) to disable it. I posted the problem in the bug report section, but basically, triggers do not slow down while delta mode is activated (yet everything else does), and if triggers are meant to give the player a slight push upward, it just results in skyrocketing into the stratosphere if you enter delta for more than a couple seconds, which essentially breaks just about any level design that isn't completely horizontal.
Increased gravity was the next best thing (since you can't use Delta to cheat around it), but not my first choice by a long shot. By the time I noticed its problems, however, it was too late to change it.
I might remake it in the previous version, where I would have proper freedom with triggering as well as enemy HP manipulating.
- Those red switches. Good concept, oh my GOD the placement for those things were annoying. Especially around that one part where you had to jump on three in a row in the toxic time warp, with heavy gravity affecting you and all. (-0.75)
Odd, the red switches seemed like the easiest for me. I had far more trouble in several other areas of the level.
- I feel like it was a waste to introduce Delta and purple switches late in the level. I know you said it wasn't as complete you'd like it to be and you probably had more after them, but I felt you should've introduced them way earlier, like before the red switches. There could've been so much you could've made for the player with them, especially regarding the level layout in the earlier parts (for example, a hidden delta-exclusive passage that required you to sink into quicksand a little bit to get into) Tutorials first, action later, y'know.
? What happened to the Blue switches? You've only used them once for demonstration purposes, similar to the Purple switch. Although the difference is that the Purple switch you probably had more uses for it (even though I preferred it earlier in the level), but the Blue switch you introduced before the red switch and yet you only did one thing with it. Did you plan on using them in conjunction with the purple and red switches or something? I'm actually quite curious to hear you out on this one. (0)
I would think that gameplay elements are better introduced gradually, not all at once. You have to learn to walk before you can run, after all.
Besides, it would have been fleshed out further in future levels, had I made them (time constraints resulted in sticking with just the one level).