I want to preserve the graphics of this mod and I won't do changes, except for fixing bugs. So the admittedly odd 2D style will remain for the time being.
But at least the lantern sounds are now fixed in version 'libre3'.
Heh. The game is actually supposed to be more, but right now it's still very sandbox-y.
If I ever get this game actually finished, it will be full-blown terraforming game with many powerful machines and tools to transform the world rapidly, a large set of plants to grow (and unlock as you progress).
Thank you. I mostly agree with your criticisms. Yes, the early plants are weirdly balanced. Apple tree comes way too early. I already planned to make moss the first base plant, but algae is also a nice idea. The idea I have is that you will use some kind of research station which you need to feed with materias to unlock more and more plants over time, but first you start with the small plants.
I agree the lack of help for the node conversions (marble, etc.) isn't great. Technically, a tooltip exists in the nodes you need to convert but first you have to find that node. That's not ideal. Some kind of more sohpisticated help system is probably planned. I could use the Help modpack I wrote a long time ago, although its usability is not great; having a full-blown help page for every node is kinda overkill. Could use a more simplified version of the help maybe.
Yes, the huge number of crafting recipes is another problem. Procedural unlocking should be done instead.
As for the death: Yeah, I think I'll add a better messaging system to give you advice about various things, like messages from a mission control, idk.
Anyway, I'm glad you like this early unfinished version. As you can see, there are still many rough edges. But I have BIG plans with this game (but I am currently busy with other stuff).
I agree. The game is still in an early stage and many of the ideas I have for it aren't there yet.
The readme currently provides a rough "getting started" guide but it's not perfect either.
I do plan to massively extend this game later tho. And yes, the plant balancing will be reworked as well; I agree the overemphasis on cotton isn't good.
I have used this mod countless times, especially in game development. It has sped up tasks considerably and helped me a ton. I used it to create various structures and trees in MineClone 2, Lazarr! Glitch and Repixture.
During the development of Glitch, I have felt one of its biggest shortcomings is usability. Typing in chat commands all the time gets tedious and time-comsuming very quickly, especially if you want to do many complex operations in row. The worst part is setting pos1 and pos2 because you have first fly to these places (using mouse and keyboard) and then type in the commands. This part is always the most time-consuming.
Unfortunately, WorldEdit GUI only works in combination with selected games/mods for now.
I wish one day WorldEdit usability gets seriously improved because that area still needs work IMHO.
That having said, it's still a recommendation because it's still a big improvement over having nothing at all. Without WorldEdit, productivity would slow down to a crawl, so that cannot be understated as well. Still a good mod/modpack overall.
The mod does not work. I have tried it in a local server with 2 test players and when I block a player, I can still see their messages. Also, this mod seems to bypass the "shout" privilege. If a player tries to chat without the shout privilege, the message still appears?!
Yeah sorry this mod needs some testing first. (Maybe my review was too early?)
For some reason the entire mod is in French only. The translation system is not used. Sorry, I have to give a thumbs down just for that.
EDIT: The language problem has been resolved but the mod does not work at all right now (see below). I will update my review when it actually does what it promises.
This mod allows a lot of new decoration things and looks very cool. It is easy to use, however, the selectionbox is annoyingly big in 5.6.1. (I know this mod is built for the upcoming version, tho.)
A small thing that annoys me is the giant smoke puff in Minetest Game when a lead "dies". Another small thing is the chat message. I would remove it because it quickly fills the entire chat if you misclick.
The only thing I’m missing is some subtle sound effect for attaching/detaching/etc.
The bucket does literally the same as if you just do "/giveme mcl_portals:portal_end". It just places a single end portal node. Apart from the new texture, there is no innovation. It is now easy to add "invalid" end portals everywhere but it is not trivially possible to remove them.
The only thing I would like to be changed is add a setting for 'default' mods
This goes against the design philosophy of DevTest and is not going to happen. DevTest is meant to change default behavior of Minetest as little as possible, in order to make testing the engine features as simple as possible. Including the default mod would do the exact opposite and cause massive problems.
The Backrooms are an Internet meme at this point, it's a classic, and I love that has arrived to Minetest. As soon as I saw this entry, I instantly downloaded it.
It does not disappoint:
The "classic" backrooms level captures the spirit of the Internet meme well. It's how I would have expected it: A yellow infinite chaotic mess of walls. The ceiling lamps hum terrifyingly. The game does not seem to care too much about "conforming" to SCP lore.
It is not just the backrooms, but there are several levels that look very different, some with some really complex design like the infinte bath (?) and overall it's just fun exploring. There is not really much else you can do nor is there a challenge but that's the point. It's also good if you're listening to a podcast.
Exploring the levels for the first time is fun. For the future, I would suggest to add more variety to each level so that you don't figure out the level's pattern completely after a few minutes.
Graphically, it is also well done. The low-res textures look nice and I like this game actually makes use or scaled textures that span over multiple nodes (a feature which many games do not use yet). This is great to make the tiles not look too repetitive. There are still a few graphical bugs (see issue tracker on Codeberg), but it's OK. The teleport effect is a bit too instant for my taste.
The sound ambience is pretty good but could be improved, especially the footstep. Some areas have no ambience which is a little disappointing, but I hope future versions will improve.
Apart from a few minor bugs and UX complaints I had, I think this game is already in a healthy state and the promise of it being fully playable to the end is true. All the major bugs of Piranesi appear to be fixed.
The game stays mostly faithful to the original, especially, although some UX changes/improvements were made. The game allows you to pick up clues (paper, book) but it restricts where you can place items now. Which is fine, I guess? The compass now works smoothly and is part of the HUD, although the arrows are not labelled (where is North?). Additionally, background music plays from time to time and several sound effects were added. This game clearly has seen major polishing, which is exactly what Piranesi neede.
Although it seems the project is not finished yet and still has many minor bugs, it's in a OK state already IMHO.
As for the gameplay, the puzzles are as difficult as in the original. My opinion on them is the same as for Piranesi (see the review there).
Unlike the original, this game still relies on color for some on its puzzles but it will now display the color of some blocks if you point to it for a few seconds. However, this still isn't perfect as some colored nodes in some rooms are too far away to be pointable. So for colorblind people this game is still not fully accessible. Hopefully this will get fixed later.
Overall, I give a recommedation, except when you're colorblind.
Collecting electrons while power-sliding is a bit finnicky, I found, but this is really the only complaint I have for the Jam version.
This turned out to be two bugs in one: First, you sometimes failed to collect electrons if you went too fast (even the powerslide speed was enough sometimes). Second, powerslide itself failed to register. Both problems should be fixed now in 1.1.0.
Please check out version 1.1.0, which fixes most, if not all, powerslide issues and to make things more usable, an ability status indicator is shown so you always know when you can powerslide.
Background information: I figured that even if you followed my instructions from the comment above, it was indeed still buggy. Powerslide was sometimes broken on slopes (both if you wanted to powerslide upwards, or away from the slope). And there were also some random brief moments in time in which powersliding just randomly "deactivates"; that one was a "fun" bug to fix. XD Also, I am pretty sure these problems had nothing to do with lag or how long your game was active or with the launchpads.
Version 1.1.0 is here, and an ability status indicator now shows when you can powerslide (or launch), this hopefully should it make easier to understand.
The stopping distance thing is a trickier business but I decided to leave it at that for now as I don't really have an idea how to improve it without redoing all the sectors.
I also updated the instructions from Powerslide Master.
If that still doesn't help, at least there is now a ch(e)at command "/unlock_gateways" in case you're really desperate to see the end. :D (only use this if you have completely given up, lol)
Yeah, I gave plenty of leeway for being able to complete the game with many, but not all electrons. I think in a future version something special will happen if you have everything, but it will still be optional.
Somehow your little joke game still did better than TWO submissions. :D
Occupy Moon got last place, probably because people didn't like it was basically just a Minetest Game + Technic ripoff (+ other old mods), which was missing the point of the game jam.
And there was also Making Space, basically a non-game which just generates cardboard boxes everywhere, that's it. It wasn't even ranked at all, this one is already deleted from ContentDB.
Yes, I did finish the game, but the ending struck me as unremarkable. But that's not really the problem; the real problem is the whole game just does not offer a lot of things to do. :-(
OK, the solar panel does not work below Y=0 but it does work above. Weird.
And yeah, I absolutely thing that if this is meant as a standlone, you can't expect players to know the ins and outs of Technic. Complete newcomers might not even know what Technic is. Servers are different.
You don't have to collect ALL electrons to win, only 512, which I think is a generous leeway. If an electron is to difficult to you, skip it. If a sector is too difficult, try a different sector. Repeat until you unlock new sectors. If you try to 100% this game, that's a much different challenge, but nothing special happens if you do that (YET). Backtracking to sectors you already visited is intended and an important part of the level design. In the Void Pipe, there is a launchpad that you can't use immediately. Other players appreciated the backtracking, so I guess you can't make everyone happy. :-) There is a secret sector with lots of electrons in it (within your reach).
Yeah, the Hub was probably the best and most important idea of the whole level design. When I completed that, my motivation got BOOSTED, trust me. I added the decorations of each gateway (in the Hub) because even I could not remember where these gateways would lead to otherwise, so I needed that myself to make playtesting easier. :-) Thanks for appreciating that.
Indeed, the powersliding ability has bad controls. The way it is supposed to work is you hold down Aux1 pressed and THEN press forwards. And yes, powerslide is bugged at slopes, until you got the "Super Slope Sliding" ability. Yes, Minetest is not good with reading inputs. :-( I will try to work on that (and other stuff) post-jam. Stay tuned, and check the forum thread for updates! :-)
It's true, the whole "collect lots of stuff and unlock levels doing so" thing was directly inspired from Spyro games, although the idea that the game will have collectibles at all came surprisingly late in development (I will post a full post-portem in the forum thread). The Hub itself is not inspired by any game tho, I just wanted to make sure the basic shape is not yet another cuboid. I settled on using an octagon as the base instead, and it turned out to be great! :)
I feel FLATTERED you're already requesting a Glitch 2. :D The ending wasn't really meant as a cliffhanger, just a quick joke (and the game had to end somewhere), but I can see how this can be a very easy spot to continue the story. I have no idea if I will ever start that. Polishing and fixing up Glitch (esp. the controls) will have priority.
I deliberately decided to not add multi-electrons (like 5 electrons in one) to keep it simple. It's easier for the player to count (like, when you still need 10 electrons for the next sector, you actually need to collect 10 things), and also easier for me for level design. If there ever will be a Glitch 2, I think I'll stick to the 1-electron-is-always-worth-1-electron concept.
As I already said, all electrons are reachable, but nothing special happens if you find them all (YET!). You only need 512 electrons to complete the game, not all of them.
I will not add more abilities in this game, those would only make sense if I add even more levels but I don't plan to add a ton of levels in Glitch. Also, the way the levels are connected, and how you progress through them is closely linked to the way how you receive abilities. The abilities are supposed to be gotten in a certain order (roughly). Adding only one more ability would mean I might have to redesign the whole level structure, which isn't fun. There will be no 5th ability in Glitch.
What I DO plan is add a few more characters to talk to, and a FEW more levels, fix bugs, polish the weird controls, add more secrets, and call it a day.
Any idea beyond that is best reserved for Glitch 2. :D
Yeah, having a real intro and ending sequence was very important to me to make sure the game feels "complete". Different than many sandbox games that just throw you in with ZERO explanation. The soundtrack was created by Visager, and I chose it on the very last day. I initially planned to do even the music myself, but then I remembered I had near-zero experience lol. Thankfully, using external resources is allowed (and many entries did). But everything else was my own work.
You may or may not play in 3rd person, I personally felt like playing in 3rd person MAY a little bit easier, but once you got used to the physics, playing in 1st person can be just as easy. The choice is up to you.
Maybe it would be better if the game started in 3rd person by default, but that's a missing feature in Minetest. :(
Thank you. Yes, this is the point of this game jam, to create something new and standalone. :-) I am working on a few other standalone games as well, but they are more close to the sandbox genre.
The powerslide controls clearly are the most common complaint, I really need to make this more reliable (and understandable). Sadly not as easy as it sounds ... Hint for now: Hold down Aux1 pressed BEFORE pressing forwards (but even this does not work 100%).
As for the story ... Yes, I do plan to improve it a bit post-jam. Because I did plan to add even more characters, but time was running out. I do plan to refine the story post-jam, but no radical changes. The emotes idea is nice, I also had a similar one (by animating the faces directly or something). And yes, more secrets, I wanted to add more secrets to the levels, but again, time. :D
Check out the forum thread for updates.
Indeed, the powerslide controls need work. The trick is that you hold down Aux1 pressed BEFORE pressing forwards, but even that is not 100% reliable. The reason why the powerslide does not work on slopes sometimes is also weird. It's probably related to how stepheight in Minetest works. Once you got the ability to slide on tall slopes, you can powerslide on slopes just fine. That's not really intended, I wanted to make powerslide work on all slopes, always. Will try to fix this in the next version.
Edit: Pressing Shift doesn't affect the powerslide at all tho. Just to clarify.
Yeah, the powerslide control has issues. "Reading input" is not very well done in Minetest, I wonder if I can find a more reliable method ...
I do plan an update with a FEW more additions, especially figuring out a better control scheme will have top priority.
So the correct way to powerslide is to FIRST hold Aux1 pressed, and while it is pressed, press Up. If you press both at the same time briefly, it might not register. This is not made clear enough in the game yet. Sadly, Minetest is not that great with reading player input, but I try to improve that in an update.
Hint: Hold down Aux1 pressed BEFORE pressing forwards, then it should be more reliable. I did not make it clear in the game.
I agree, the powerslide control has issues. "Reading input" doesn't work that well in Minetest, I wonder if I can find a more reliable method ...
I do plan to release an update to Glitch to fix this (hopefully) and other stuff.
I want to preserve the graphics of this mod and I won't do changes, except for fixing bugs. So the admittedly odd 2D style will remain for the time being. But at least the lantern sounds are now fixed in version 'libre3'.
This sounds awfully redundant to the
playerphysicsmod:https://content.minetest.net/packages/Wuzzy/playerphysics/
I'm not happy with API mods proliferatng if they do the exact same thing. Just creates dependency hell. :-(
sus.
(In seriousness tho: It's cute, although I wish there were more colors.)
(EDIT: There are multiple colors now, cool.)
This is intentional, the item was meant to be found in lootboxes by games.
The latest release is broken. It seems the import went wrong. Please try again. See also the bot messages from before.
Heh. The game is actually supposed to be more, but right now it's still very sandbox-y.
If I ever get this game actually finished, it will be full-blown terraforming game with many powerful machines and tools to transform the world rapidly, a large set of plants to grow (and unlock as you progress).
Thank you. I mostly agree with your criticisms. Yes, the early plants are weirdly balanced. Apple tree comes way too early. I already planned to make moss the first base plant, but algae is also a nice idea. The idea I have is that you will use some kind of research station which you need to feed with materias to unlock more and more plants over time, but first you start with the small plants.
I agree the lack of help for the node conversions (marble, etc.) isn't great. Technically, a tooltip exists in the nodes you need to convert but first you have to find that node. That's not ideal. Some kind of more sohpisticated help system is probably planned. I could use the Help modpack I wrote a long time ago, although its usability is not great; having a full-blown help page for every node is kinda overkill. Could use a more simplified version of the help maybe.
Yes, the huge number of crafting recipes is another problem. Procedural unlocking should be done instead.
As for the death: Yeah, I think I'll add a better messaging system to give you advice about various things, like messages from a mission control, idk.
Anyway, I'm glad you like this early unfinished version. As you can see, there are still many rough edges. But I have BIG plans with this game (but I am currently busy with other stuff).
I haven't thought much about mobs yet but I think it'll be more about alien creatures that fit the theme. So no, bats will not be added.
I agree. The game is still in an early stage and many of the ideas I have for it aren't there yet. The readme currently provides a rough "getting started" guide but it's not perfect either.
I do plan to massively extend this game later tho. And yes, the plant balancing will be reworked as well; I agree the overemphasis on cotton isn't good.
I have used this mod countless times, especially in game development. It has sped up tasks considerably and helped me a ton. I used it to create various structures and trees in MineClone 2, Lazarr! Glitch and Repixture.
During the development of Glitch, I have felt one of its biggest shortcomings is usability. Typing in chat commands all the time gets tedious and time-comsuming very quickly, especially if you want to do many complex operations in row. The worst part is setting pos1 and pos2 because you have first fly to these places (using mouse and keyboard) and then type in the commands. This part is always the most time-consuming. Unfortunately, WorldEdit GUI only works in combination with selected games/mods for now.
I wish one day WorldEdit usability gets seriously improved because that area still needs work IMHO.
That having said, it's still a recommendation because it's still a big improvement over having nothing at all. Without WorldEdit, productivity would slow down to a crawl, so that cannot be understated as well. Still a good mod/modpack overall.
The mod does not work. I have tried it in a local server with 2 test players and when I block a player, I can still see their messages. Also, this mod seems to bypass the "shout" privilege. If a player tries to chat without the shout privilege, the message still appears?!
Yeah sorry this mod needs some testing first. (Maybe my review was too early?)
For some reason the entire mod is in French only. The translation system is not used. Sorry, I have to give a thumbs down just for that.
EDIT: The language problem has been resolved but the mod does not work at all right now (see below). I will update my review when it actually does what it promises.
This mod allows a lot of new decoration things and looks very cool. It is easy to use, however, the selectionbox is annoyingly big in 5.6.1. (I know this mod is built for the upcoming version, tho.)
A small thing that annoys me is the giant smoke puff in Minetest Game when a lead "dies". Another small thing is the chat message. I would remove it because it quickly fills the entire chat if you misclick.
The only thing I’m missing is some subtle sound effect for attaching/detaching/etc.
I don’t know what else to suggest, so, good work!
The bucket does literally the same as if you just do "/giveme mcl_portals:portal_end". It just places a single end portal node. Apart from the new texture, there is no innovation. It is now easy to add "invalid" end portals everywhere but it is not trivially possible to remove them.
FYI: This package cannot be released and/or downloaded right now. Have you seen the bot messages? Clean up your config file, it's broken. Thanks.
This goes against the design philosophy of DevTest and is not going to happen. DevTest is meant to change default behavior of Minetest as little as possible, in order to make testing the engine features as simple as possible. Including the
defaultmod would do the exact opposite and cause massive problems.The Backrooms are an Internet meme at this point, it's a classic, and I love that has arrived to Minetest. As soon as I saw this entry, I instantly downloaded it.
It does not disappoint:
The "classic" backrooms level captures the spirit of the Internet meme well. It's how I would have expected it: A yellow infinite chaotic mess of walls. The ceiling lamps hum terrifyingly. The game does not seem to care too much about "conforming" to SCP lore.
It is not just the backrooms, but there are several levels that look very different, some with some really complex design like the infinte bath (?) and overall it's just fun exploring. There is not really much else you can do nor is there a challenge but that's the point. It's also good if you're listening to a podcast.
Exploring the levels for the first time is fun. For the future, I would suggest to add more variety to each level so that you don't figure out the level's pattern completely after a few minutes.
Graphically, it is also well done. The low-res textures look nice and I like this game actually makes use or scaled textures that span over multiple nodes (a feature which many games do not use yet). This is great to make the tiles not look too repetitive. There are still a few graphical bugs (see issue tracker on Codeberg), but it's OK. The teleport effect is a bit too instant for my taste.
The sound ambience is pretty good but could be improved, especially the footstep. Some areas have no ambience which is a little disappointing, but I hope future versions will improve.
Apart from a few minor bugs and UX complaints I had, I think this game is already in a healthy state and the promise of it being fully playable to the end is true. All the major bugs of Piranesi appear to be fixed.
The game stays mostly faithful to the original, especially, although some UX changes/improvements were made. The game allows you to pick up clues (paper, book) but it restricts where you can place items now. Which is fine, I guess? The compass now works smoothly and is part of the HUD, although the arrows are not labelled (where is North?). Additionally, background music plays from time to time and several sound effects were added. This game clearly has seen major polishing, which is exactly what Piranesi neede.
Although it seems the project is not finished yet and still has many minor bugs, it's in a OK state already IMHO.
As for the gameplay, the puzzles are as difficult as in the original. My opinion on them is the same as for Piranesi (see the review there).
Unlike the original, this game still relies on color for some on its puzzles but it will now display the color of some blocks if you point to it for a few seconds. However, this still isn't perfect as some colored nodes in some rooms are too far away to be pointable. So for colorblind people this game is still not fully accessible. Hopefully this will get fixed later.
Overall, I give a recommedation, except when you're colorblind.
This turned out to be two bugs in one: First, you sometimes failed to collect electrons if you went too fast (even the powerslide speed was enough sometimes). Second, powerslide itself failed to register. Both problems should be fixed now in 1.1.0.
Please check out version 1.1.0, which fixes most, if not all, powerslide issues and to make things more usable, an ability status indicator is shown so you always know when you can powerslide.
Background information: I figured that even if you followed my instructions from the comment above, it was indeed still buggy. Powerslide was sometimes broken on slopes (both if you wanted to powerslide upwards, or away from the slope). And there were also some random brief moments in time in which powersliding just randomly "deactivates"; that one was a "fun" bug to fix. XD Also, I am pretty sure these problems had nothing to do with lag or how long your game was active or with the launchpads.
Update: Version 1.1.0 fixes most, if not all, powerslide issues and adds an ability status indicator (and more). I hope this problem is now solved.
Update: Version 1.1.0 (hopefully) fixes the powerslide confusion with bugfixes and an ability status indicator.
Version 1.1.0 is here, and an ability status indicator now shows when you can powerslide (or launch), this hopefully should it make easier to understand.
The stopping distance thing is a trickier business but I decided to leave it at that for now as I don't really have an idea how to improve it without redoing all the sectors.
The new version 1.1.0 is here and I think I fixed the biggest powersliding issues (if not all). Please give feedback about what you think and if it works better. https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?p=418738#p418738
I also updated the instructions from Powerslide Master.
If that still doesn't help, at least there is now a ch(e)at command "
/unlock_gateways" in case you're really desperate to see the end. :D (only use this if you have completely given up, lol)Thank you!
Yeah, I gave plenty of leeway for being able to complete the game with many, but not all electrons. I think in a future version something special will happen if you have everything, but it will still be optional.
Interesting. I'll keep this game on my watch list then.
Somehow your little joke game still did better than TWO submissions. :D Occupy Moon got last place, probably because people didn't like it was basically just a Minetest Game + Technic ripoff (+ other old mods), which was missing the point of the game jam. And there was also Making Space, basically a non-game which just generates cardboard boxes everywhere, that's it. It wasn't even ranked at all, this one is already deleted from ContentDB.
Yes, I did finish the game, but the ending struck me as unremarkable. But that's not really the problem; the real problem is the whole game just does not offer a lot of things to do. :-(
OK, the solar panel does not work below Y=0 but it does work above. Weird.
And yeah, I absolutely thing that if this is meant as a standlone, you can't expect players to know the ins and outs of Technic. Complete newcomers might not even know what Technic is. Servers are different.
Thing is, I still found all 5 meterorites LONG before nightfall, kind of defeats the whole purpose.
I wonder if this will be developed further.
Unfortunately, this game includes non-free media from X-Decor.
This can be fixed easily by replacing X-Decor with X-Decor-libre. https://content.minetest.net/packages/Wuzzy/xdecor/
You don't have to collect ALL electrons to win, only 512, which I think is a generous leeway. If an electron is to difficult to you, skip it. If a sector is too difficult, try a different sector. Repeat until you unlock new sectors. If you try to 100% this game, that's a much different challenge, but nothing special happens if you do that (YET). Backtracking to sectors you already visited is intended and an important part of the level design. In the Void Pipe, there is a launchpad that you can't use immediately. Other players appreciated the backtracking, so I guess you can't make everyone happy. :-) There is a secret sector with lots of electrons in it (within your reach).
Yeah, the Hub was probably the best and most important idea of the whole level design. When I completed that, my motivation got BOOSTED, trust me. I added the decorations of each gateway (in the Hub) because even I could not remember where these gateways would lead to otherwise, so I needed that myself to make playtesting easier. :-) Thanks for appreciating that.
Indeed, the powersliding ability has bad controls. The way it is supposed to work is you hold down Aux1 pressed and THEN press forwards. And yes, powerslide is bugged at slopes, until you got the "Super Slope Sliding" ability. Yes, Minetest is not good with reading inputs. :-( I will try to work on that (and other stuff) post-jam. Stay tuned, and check the forum thread for updates! :-)
It's true, the whole "collect lots of stuff and unlock levels doing so" thing was directly inspired from Spyro games, although the idea that the game will have collectibles at all came surprisingly late in development (I will post a full post-portem in the forum thread). The Hub itself is not inspired by any game tho, I just wanted to make sure the basic shape is not yet another cuboid. I settled on using an octagon as the base instead, and it turned out to be great! :)
Now here’s my real response:
I feel FLATTERED you're already requesting a Glitch 2. :D The ending wasn't really meant as a cliffhanger, just a quick joke (and the game had to end somewhere), but I can see how this can be a very easy spot to continue the story. I have no idea if I will ever start that. Polishing and fixing up Glitch (esp. the controls) will have priority.
I deliberately decided to not add multi-electrons (like 5 electrons in one) to keep it simple. It's easier for the player to count (like, when you still need 10 electrons for the next sector, you actually need to collect 10 things), and also easier for me for level design. If there ever will be a Glitch 2, I think I'll stick to the 1-electron-is-always-worth-1-electron concept.
As I already said, all electrons are reachable, but nothing special happens if you find them all (YET!). You only need 512 electrons to complete the game, not all of them.
I will not add more abilities in this game, those would only make sense if I add even more levels but I don't plan to add a ton of levels in Glitch. Also, the way the levels are connected, and how you progress through them is closely linked to the way how you receive abilities. The abilities are supposed to be gotten in a certain order (roughly). Adding only one more ability would mean I might have to redesign the whole level structure, which isn't fun. There will be no 5th ability in Glitch.
What I DO plan is add a few more characters to talk to, and a FEW more levels, fix bugs, polish the weird controls, add more secrets, and call it a day.
Any idea beyond that is best reserved for Glitch 2. :D
Thank you. I hope to hear from you again when you completed the game. :D Check out the forum thread for updates.
Yeah, having a real intro and ending sequence was very important to me to make sure the game feels "complete". Different than many sandbox games that just throw you in with ZERO explanation. The soundtrack was created by Visager, and I chose it on the very last day. I initially planned to do even the music myself, but then I remembered I had near-zero experience lol. Thankfully, using external resources is allowed (and many entries did). But everything else was my own work.
You may or may not play in 3rd person, I personally felt like playing in 3rd person MAY a little bit easier, but once you got used to the physics, playing in 1st person can be just as easy. The choice is up to you.
Maybe it would be better if the game started in 3rd person by default, but that's a missing feature in Minetest. :(
Here's my long response:
Thank you. Yes, this is the point of this game jam, to create something new and standalone. :-) I am working on a few other standalone games as well, but they are more close to the sandbox genre.
The powerslide controls clearly are the most common complaint, I really need to make this more reliable (and understandable). Sadly not as easy as it sounds ... Hint for now: Hold down Aux1 pressed BEFORE pressing forwards (but even this does not work 100%).
As for the story ... Yes, I do plan to improve it a bit post-jam. Because I did plan to add even more characters, but time was running out. I do plan to refine the story post-jam, but no radical changes. The emotes idea is nice, I also had a similar one (by animating the faces directly or something). And yes, more secrets, I wanted to add more secrets to the levels, but again, time. :D Check out the forum thread for updates.
Again, thank you for playing.
Thank you!
Indeed, the powerslide controls need work. The trick is that you hold down Aux1 pressed BEFORE pressing forwards, but even that is not 100% reliable. The reason why the powerslide does not work on slopes sometimes is also weird. It's probably related to how stepheight in Minetest works. Once you got the ability to slide on tall slopes, you can powerslide on slopes just fine. That's not really intended, I wanted to make powerslide work on all slopes, always. Will try to fix this in the next version.
Edit: Pressing Shift doesn't affect the powerslide at all tho. Just to clarify.
Yeah, the powerslide control has issues. "Reading input" is not very well done in Minetest, I wonder if I can find a more reliable method ... I do plan an update with a FEW more additions, especially figuring out a better control scheme will have top priority.
So the correct way to powerslide is to FIRST hold Aux1 pressed, and while it is pressed, press Up. If you press both at the same time briefly, it might not register. This is not made clear enough in the game yet. Sadly, Minetest is not that great with reading player input, but I try to improve that in an update.
Hint: Hold down Aux1 pressed BEFORE pressing forwards, then it should be more reliable. I did not make it clear in the game.
I agree, the powerslide control has issues. "Reading input" doesn't work that well in Minetest, I wonder if I can find a more reliable method ... I do plan to release an update to Glitch to fix this (hopefully) and other stuff.