Another week and another insight of DungeonQuest development. Last week I looked at game design. This week it's time for debugging. Ha! Let's enter the dangerous realm of Builds & Bugs!
The story starts with a pretty charming intention: I wanted to say thank you to all 24 game followers. Of course, I could have sent twenty-four "thank you" messages. That would have been easy. However, I wanted something unique and more interactive: a playable super-early alpha version of the level editor.
I worked hard to reach the deadline with as much functionality as possible. Spiked doors and moving tiles were working great in multiplayer, lights added a bit of color, saving and loading levels ... everything was so perfect! And then it came time to build and let the players playtest... and bugs started crawling in!
[Note: the download is currently under revision and will be hopefully published shortly, so you can playtest the game and send me more bugs!]
Bug#1: Sometimes you jump so high your hero touches the ceiling. After this "head-to-ceiling" moment, platforms cease to work well. The hero falls through platforms.
Bug#2: Sometimes you fall off a platform and platforms cease to work well. Results are the same as Bug#1 which may indicate that the errors share some bugged code.
Bug#3: When your hero is on the ground and a tile moves up behind his feet, sometimes the hero is correctly lifted. Most of the times, the hero is pushed either to left or right.
Bug#4: When your hero is damaged the throw back damage animation goes totally wrong.
Bug#5: When your hero dies, there is no rest-time applied after die animation which makes your hero instantly alive after death.
Bug#6: Stairs and blocks don't work well together. The adjacent blocks prevent the hero movement after crossing the stairs. Quick solution: use adjacent platforms instead of blocks. Since platform do not prevent horizontal movement, the problem is solved while I think of a better solution.
These are the first bugs of the game. Please, send me your bug reports and I'll try to fix every one of these in the following weeks.
As a conclusion, the story is simple: the closer to your deadline, the more bugs you will find. Given this situation you can only surrender to the evidence. The game is buggy and really work-in-progress. Have patience and enjoy the things that are working well ;)
Oh! Another interesting side-note. Every playtester (from your mom to your most hardcore friend) will tell you something brilliant about your game that you've never realized before. I'm trying to integrate these insightful thoughts into the game. Sometimes this means re-designing the entire combat system, removing a core mechanic, or even adding something new to the project to-do list. In all cases, thanks for your support and your comments!
Cheers!
Emanuel
Looks cool :]
Thanks! I really appreciate the feedback :)
hmn...
Thanks for the hum! Negative feedback is also very welcomed, so don't hesitate to speak your mind ;)