2nd alpha test - the Underground

It's been a while, but here we are again, time to do another round of testing. What's been added to the game is another core area which players will potentially visit during their gameplay. Unlike the tutorial/intro level, the map and the store, which are all core elements that exist independent of the real levels, this one is optional...sort of. 

Remember the old arcade games where when you lose all lives you have that "Continue?" screen and you have to insert a coin? Well no coins here (how ironic) but every time you lose all lives you'll get a "Game over. Continue?" popup, and number of available continues goes down. You start with 5. When you get to 0 it's a game over for real... 

Actually not, you go to the Underground, which is a sort of difficult level where you need to collect 5 golden leaves to assembly a golden branch, which will resurrect you back to the map with 10 new continues. 

There's no boss in this level, only traps and some rare lost souls as enemies. I might add more later, based on the test feedback. Goblin will be in it's ghost form (not even breathing while in idle state) and the environment is cold, washed out of color and sprinkled with some old bones and spiderwebs. 

In theory, an amazing player who never loses initial 5 continues will never see the Underground. And someone who dies a lot will see it a lot... which will prompt them to buy a 99 continues upgrade from the clerk at the store (for in-game virtual coins that goblin collects). 

What is also new in this build is option to turn on hints, which will show you exclamation marks where there's some action to be done, or question marks where you should look around to find out more. This will also cover existing color-coded halos for keys and chests. Default is turned on, for now. 

I've also added an option in the settings/gameplay menu to skip all the popups (level end screen, continue? screen and so on) for potential speed runners, but it's not fully implemented yet and will be tested later. This will basically provide GnC1 atmosphere, where you just glide through without selecting options in in-game menus. 

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The Underground

What happens when you lose everything. All the lives gone, no more continues... Well, it used to be "insert another coin" back in the 80's, and more recently, it was "game over, load?" There's no real game over in Goblin and Coins 2... Instead, when you lose all lives and all continues... you end up in the Underground. It's a cold place void of life. 

And yet, it's possible to leave it by collecting golden leaves to form a Golden branch and find your path to the world of the living, and add 10 continues to your save. But, it won't be easy at all... maybe you'd rather start a new game instead?

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Initial alpha test build and bug fixes

Yesterday I've compiled an initial alpha test build and send it to some good people for an early testing and to gather some feedback.

Sales person in the in-game shop (for virtual coins, no mtx here!)

In less than 24 hrs amazing people testing the it managed to find several bugs ranging from one moderate to a few less important and I've fixed them all so far. It's really a wonderful time in a game development cycle when you start getting first feedback and realize all your testing means nothing because one person on one computer can't cover everything, and even more importantly, some testers will try stuff you never thought of doing in a million of years. And it will break things. Ok, let's see.

Moderate

• Flying enemy type had a weird glitch where touching a slope would freeze the game completely. Fixed.

Medium

• The difference between how VM (debugging) and YYC (compiled) version of the game works when using GMS2 made it so stats saving after finishing a level bugged out, so map would not be showing off your previous score, coins, time... This also caused that you would not enter the shop directly after finishing the tutorial for the first time but instead went to the map. Fixed.

Low

• Bullets didn't freeze on pause. Fixed.
• You could double-jump once on a game start even if double-jump was not purchased as an upgrade yet. Fixed.

So happy these were found so fast, and specially with the fact there were not more (well, at least not those that were found so far, hehe). All in all impressions seem positive, people like the art and layout... This is a good start in my opinion

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World map

Before we see the world map (well, part of it) as it will appear in Goblin and Coins 2, let's first talk quickly of the "level end" screen. One of the most criticized things in the first game was that there were no level end screen with a feedback on how well a player did. My idea was to avoid cutting the flow of the game and to focus on the levels, story panels, the experience... Making the coins, time and all of the other "gamey" things sort of unimportant in the process.

But most experienced gamers hated it, couldn't cope with not knowing if they did well or not. So, one of the most wanted features for GnC2:

Now you will know that you have indeed finished a level in a video game, what your time was, how many coins you've collected... It will also calculate and auto-save your level score, and some other things. Mostly because we need to show them later in the map screen. Oh yes, the map!

Here it is! On the left side you can see a selected level's name, relative size, if you've finished it already, how many coins you've potentially missed to collect, and what was your best time. On the right side of the screen you'll see the visual representation of the world map, with a pointer in the shape of goblin's head, and levels represented by... kidney beans, of course.

All you see should be considered work in progress and not the final look of the game. 

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