It is time for a new level.
Open endedThis level makes use of the new bombs. It reminds me of oldie Kye in which there are many puzzles, you have to decide the order in which you solve them and a couple of them are more interconnected that it seems.
Xye level - Open Ended.zip
Looks like an interesting level. Though off-topic; I don't really favor you using disqus's commenting system instead of the default Google one; it just looks awful in comparison, and half the time it won't allow me to use my Google account, and when it does, it doesn't use my profile image. Not to mention when you post as a guest you are required to add an e-mail, whereas before with google guests could just post away with no extra rules.
ReplyDeleteBack onto the subject at hand, since there are your Xye levels, I still think it'd benefit more to contain all the levels you designed up to this point with no worry on a limit. I've also tweaked a few of my own levels in my level set, I'll work on getting ver 1.1 over to you shortly.
One mappack you left out though was a second set to a level set that had really difficult levels that used multiple wall colors per level, which this one had a Breakout minigame as its final level.
To wrap it up, I updated the Christmas/Jr skins to add a proper color for purple objects and fix a few other things. If you ever plan on making any more skins, you could try some other fan-clones of Kye (with their permission) and also a "Classic Xye" based on much earlier versions of Xye.
The disqus used in Xye allows your google account. The advantage of disqus is that it battles spam better. And also, since it is not locked to blogger, it is specifically good for Xye because I can use disqus in the sourceforge.net pages too. This will be useful once I get the level sharing place up...
ReplyDeleteEven if there wasn't a limit, I would still not include all my levels, because some levels are terrible. But I like things the way they are right now. My current focus is not on levels. With recent versions and the colder and colder reception they got it has become clear that adding new skins, objects or new levels is not the way to improve the game's popularity. I will instead focus on the interface, user profiles and juiceness. In fact, I am constantly dealing with the idea of scrapping the whole source code and start over again from zero. With better perspective of what the game has become, I would know better what to add and what not to add when starting from 0.
I won't make skins for other fan clones. I have no nostalgia towards them and therefore no interest in spending time on that. As usual, other people are free to do it, but please use the game's sprites format in that case, because making me convert things manually is as much work as converting the sprites from the fan clone's directly....
oh, and if you switch to the blog's mobile mode, you can use blogger to comment. Like this: http://xyegame.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-level-open-ended.html?m=1
ReplyDeleteAlright you win. I guess I'll have to wait until I get older to program a Xye Plus. :/
ReplyDeleteMore features= (IMO) more challenging puzzles and higher replay value.
I'd do the skins myself though I don't know how to specify the size of each sprite, so everything isn't a 16x16 bounding box, and I'm also a little confused about the rounded edges' graphics.
The xml file, some part near the top has size=16.
ReplyDeleteYou don't need to get older before programming...
Why is it that the most popular puzzle games do not have thousands of different objects? Adding new features with the objective of adding new features leads to feature creep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep . Xye already suffers this a bit, because when I was young , I really thought that more objects would make it better. At this point I sort of learned that each new feature can have the opposite effect as well.
If a game then decided to include all the ideas from other Kye fan games, it risks becoming a case of design by committee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee
I see.
ReplyDeleteToday I wanted to play Xye, but whenever I double click the game's icon, for the first time ever, the game will not launch. Even after I tried shutting down and re-booting the system. All I did to the game was insert a work-in-progress graphic mod; and I didn't touch anything else; but after re-downloading the game and porting in all my downloaded mappacks and skins excluding the new skin, it began to work again. Would there be any bug(s) in Xye that would link to this occurring?
ReplyDeleteWhen there is a mistake with the skin that is selected, the game does not start.
ReplyDeleteI think that on windows there should be files called stdout.txt and/or stderr.txt that let you see the console errors that happened during game loading.
Dear Vexorian, I didn't find a place to report bugs, so i will reported here: when I installed the game through ubuntu software center (link from playdeb) the xye didn't appeared on the dashboard, so I had to enter manually on /usr/games that I think is not a good thing for non IT ubuntu users. Despite of it, the game is really awsome.
ReplyDeleteThere is a bug tracker in the sourceforge project page. But this specific issue comes from ubuntu's packagers.
ReplyDeleteAnother annoying thing with the software center is that they swapped description and name. The game source code even includes a good icon that combines with tango-like themes, but they didn't include it. This is something up to the Ubuntu packagers, I tried to look for ways to report this Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about it. I tried asking where to report these things, and got no reply.
thanks I will post the bug there. As you said there are some bug's with Ubuntu software center. that's why I always use synaptic when its posible. Did you tried asking on AskUbuntu, I guess that some developers moved there since they are promoting the web page.
ReplyDeleteI think that the popularity problem of the Xye comes from 2 factors:
ReplyDelete1.- the lack of history through the game, in the actual version you can play the most difficult levels from the beginning.
2.- a interactive guide of how to play on the tutorial
the non IT non technological friendly users that are the big slice of the pie, needs easy levels to get engaged to the game first. they need almost everything done. Also, some of the levels are really challenging, to be available before the tutorial.
My advice is to use a db or a plain text to save the progress and unlock levels and packs. And also make a scene with an animated sprite that shows the function of each type of object while you go through the tutorial
Tutorials come with solutions that can be played as movies. Most of the tutorials are very small. The whole thing about movies is that maybe it is not obvious enough that they should be playing them in case they are stuck.
ReplyDeleteI do want to make the interface easier and was actually thinking of those animation things. But I can't seem to get any motivation to start updating again. Chicken and egg issue. Without updates I won't get more players. But without more players I don't feel the need to update it.
I will not really add a story. I pondered on the thing about making unlock-able levels. But I like that you can just skip whatever level you are stuck with. It makes it less of an issue to sort the levels by difficulty, and gives the players more freedom (all five of them).
I WILL eventually make tracking progress easier though. That is my next priority if I even start updating the game again.
If you want more players, one way would be to make it available for mobile devices. I can imagine that it would bring a very large amount of players.
ReplyDelete