2020/04/17

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

2020/04/12

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.