[beta] Ninjaman! Action platformer, take a look! :)

[Hornet]

Ninjaman - preview release

Ninjaman has been my project the past few months, along with two other guys at uni who have been working on the graphics. The purpose behind it was for a uni project, but we decided to take it a lot futher, and an enourmous amount of time later spent coding, here I am, with a fairly far along ninjaman

Ninjaman could best be described as an action platformer. 2d side scroller. You control a ninja, who operates in a 'stealth' mode as well as an 'attack' mode. Sneak up behind enemies in stealth mode and kill them in a single hit, whilst avoiding detection - or 'run and gun' with your sword and ninjastars in attack mode!

In terms of its current status, there are quite a few bugs in it, mainly dealing with enemies... there is still a fair bit of work left here (hit detection issues, AI issues etc), which will be addressed later on, but for the mean time we're looking for feedback, suggestions, where to take it, how to make it more fun, etc I think the other guys did a pretty kickass job on the level graphics and animations, and it only gets better from here heh. >1ghz should be fine to play it, etc.

Finally, an important shout out to those who have helped a LOT along the way! Tonypa, your tutorials were awesome for getting an understanding of how the tile based system works Strille your stuff has been inspirational too, and I'm really tempted to try out your object based game engine soon hahaha. And to the community of FK, its been a fun place to visit



As ninjaman has been developed (thus far) for offline play, here's a link to the mac and pc projectors with their external files (xml documents, mp3s etc). All this stuff will be optimised for web usage later on, but for the moment and as our assignment specified its for offline usage.



Last but not least - enjoy! All feedback welcome. Cheers


Ninjaman - PC

Ninjaman - Mac Zip
Edit: if you have problems with the above zip archive not working on a mac, try the stuffit version below, please post if that then works for you
Ninjaman - Mac Stuffit


Ninjaman - SWF (no projector - run it with SAPlayer)

[Ironclaw]

I want to try it, but don't like downloading zip files. And I speak for most people here.

[deamothul]

I didnt like to download it either, especially not an .exe, but i did download the swf version.

Cool art and cool game... im currently at 21000 points in level 3 or something but it is a very good game, respect for that buddy

[JBS103]

did you mean to have unlimited ninja stars? Cuz u do.

[Kakihara]

really nice game, good graphics and animations and i loved the music, gameplay seemed good although my bloody keyboard ruined it for me (i press the right arrow key and it also works the space bar so it constantly bloody paused the game), one thing i did notice though apart from the unlimited starts was the fact that they dont seem to do any damage, oh and sometimes i found i was standing way above an enemy and still hitting him with ninja stars, but then you did mention hit testing.

really cool game.

[tomsamson]

i experienced one flaw in the ai,where when you stand somewhere and there´s a wall to your left and one to your right,an enemy might jump on the left one,then again to the right one and the other way round again and again instead of coming down to you.
Then again,you said you´re working on the AI and i guess i actually only noticed it because i was focussing on the AI (because its already quite nice,in most other such game enemies can´t even jump from one platform to the other for example ).
A bigger flaw was that at one moment there was a wall in front of me,then an enemy jumped on the platform where i was standing,i smashed him and somehow he got stuck between me and the wall,then he didn´t die and i could beat him endlessly increasing my score.
anyway,nice work up to now,besides those two things,its really cool =)

[Son of Bryce]

This is pretty awesome. I played till the 4th level so far. I thought that I'd have more complaints, but it's pretty damned good so far.

Small issues...
-The title screen. I think the options should be spaced out better, looks like one large word almost (maybe just a dash in between will do). As well as the options need to be highlighted when you mouse over.

-The music. I think it's great that the music switches, but I think you should look into having the music fade in and out smoothly. It's kind of annoying when it instantly switches back and forth between the songs.

-The AI. I think the AI should generally be a bit more aggressive. It's really easy to just run by or just kill the karate guy. Maybe you should make the enemy 'flash' for a bit between hits so he'll be invincible for a while. So you have to space out attacks a bit and you can't trap him in a corner so easily.

-The control. The control is perfect. I didn't have any probs with the jumping in the second level so I guess that proves how smooth it is. I'd think some kind of mid-air attack would improve the game a lot, as well as the ability to throw shurukens in mid-air.

-If the 2nd level is going to be how it is in this beta, I think it feels out of place. I think it might be too dramatic of a change to go directly into a fully platform level after the first. It might not be a real problem, but it stood out to me.

But as I said, this looks great. How many levels are there so far? I can't wait to play through the whole thing.

[strille]

Really nice game you have there. It feels pretty complete. I actually liked the music changing abruptly when engaging an enemy. Also, the level with the moving platforms was pretty fun. I agree with Son of Bryce about the title screen and the AI though. Another minor complaint is that pause with space feels a bit odd. I would rather jump with space, and pause with 'P'.

Again, good work, and I'm honored you feel my work is inspirational :-)

[Son of Bryce]

That reminds me, I think you need a more apparent pause screen. I thought the game had froze when I accidentally pressed it.

[Hornet]

Thanks for the comments guys, keep them coming Some of what you have mentioned are bugs, other stuff relates to unfinished or just things we hadn't ever thought about heh, so anyhow its all helpful.

Ironclaw: Yeah sorry about the zip, I can understand yours (and others) concern about that. Its just that at the moment its built for offline play, and doesnt preload things etc, so just putting up the swf wouldn't work that great. Next time I post a beta it should just be a conventional swf that preloads all its stuff appropriately

deamothul: Cheers yes you can build points up a bit quick heh

tonypa: Thanks! hahaha. Your tutorials helped a lot! We plan to have an interactive tutorial later on, which will explain more clearly the concept of stealth/stealth kills. Also hopefully there will be some... graphical indication of the range of vision etc in stealth and non stealth modes (think metal gear solid with its radar... the usefulness that conveys, we'd like to find something to give a similar effect)

JBS103 & Kakihara: Yeah, unlimited, but you have to reload (just a time delay) when it ticks down to 0 stars left (you have.. 10 or so). Do you think it should work on a limited stars basis? I was thinking this might be a little... mean. At the moment stars are more to 'stun' enemies and to get them off you, they dont really hurt, so you can spam them. They just push the enemy back to give you space. So its a matter of either low attack/unlimited-ish, vs higher attack/limited nature. Cheers for the comments

tomsamson: Yeah, that sounds familiar heh. Enemies that get bashed into a wall or something and get stuck there. Currently the hit detection for the ninja in terms of... the ground, moving stuff etc, is pretty solid. The enemies have a really lite version of that, which doesnt take into account lots of things (moving platforms etc) and generally needs to be made a lot more solid. I'm tempted to rewrite the whole collision detection thing so they share the same system and both get treated accurately... at the cost of processor time. What to do hmmm

Son of Bryce: 4th level? cool There are... 5 in total (last one is an 'end boss' kinda thing)
-Title screen. Yeah, more spacing, and feedback on roll over. I'll pass that on to the ppl doing art heh
-Music. Hmmm ok. What are other peoples feelings on this? I was thinking of a smooth fade from alert to normal, but I think it should be kinda jarring going from normal to alert.
-AI. yeah, at the moment ai difficulty just determines strength and the 'delay until rethinking what to do', and no so much how well they do it etc, or how aggressive they are in it. More to look at
-Control: good to hear its working well You can mid air kick (jump in the air, tap attack, its not very obvious or effective though heh). And yeah ninja stars in the air would be cool...
-2nd level: ok what we were going to do with this was originally have 3 main levels (like the first and third and fourth), and in between them have a 'random map' kinda thing, like the second is now (moving platforms), and in between the third and fourth there was going to me a rapid pace conveyor belt one. Feels out of place? yeah.. hmm.

strille: Thanks man Yeah we want feedback (like a 'paused' on screen) for when you press pause. What do you feel about making jump the space press, and leaving up for just moving up ladders? So then you'd have.... all arrow keys for movement left/right/down and up ladders, space to jump, shift to change modes (stealth/attack), a for ninjastars, s for defend, d for attack, p for pause. Quite a bit heh. Though if it would make more sense.... seperating jump and climb up ladders... hmm. Thanks

Thanks again for the feedback all

[astrocalder]

i couldn't download the mac file properly, it was a dreamweaver document that only displayed code, labelled "forest," "ship" etc. i'll try the PC one anyway.

astrocalder

[slight]

great game overall, nice looking and very smooth.

Couple of bugs:
Sometimes the next life would start in some mode where i could move left and right, but none of the animations played, there was no jump or attack etc. (I only ever died by jumping, walking or climbing a ladder (!) off the bottom of the screen, if thats any help to you.) Pause and unpause would fix this though.

Try this: Jump, double jump, tap forward twice.. land.. whoops, you just rolled right off that bamboo you were aiming for. One spot in particular on level 4 where you jump from a moving platform to a thin bamboo near the bottom of the screen, it happened to me 3 times in a row, so never I saw level 5. That was before I knew why the forward roll was happening after I landed.

Gameplay:
Enemies should do a LOT more damage, it's way too easy as is, or maybe its just my slow (1GHz) PC.
A couple of mid level checkpoints would be nice so that when you do die you're not right back at the start of the level.

[Hornet]

astrocalder: Interesting, yeah I've had another mac user say there was a problem with it, but for me (a mac user), and all the macs at uni seem to have no beef with it. Are you running 10.2 by any chance? Maybe unzipping it in 10.2 has issues with not keeping it a .app or something. Anyhow I've made a .sit version of it avaliable as well, check my first post, this really should work fine for you. Sorry about that!

slight: Cheers buddy. The 'getting stuck not being able to jump or attack' thing we're aware of and should be ok to fix. Damn annoying tho huh heh. As for the 'you roll when you hit the ground', the reason we added this ability to hit jump or roll in the air, and have it take effect when you land, was cos people instinctively hit jump or roll a frame or two before touching the ground, so the command was ignored, and hence when they landed they didnt jump or roll again. We'll tone this down then... currently I think it 'remembers' your key press for far too long.. cheers for the feedback on that tho. Smarter/more aggressive AI is something we'll look at, and the need for checkpoints is a definite must.


Just a note on performance, hows it running for everyone? For people with slower pc's, does it run ok? Would you say >1ghz is a realistic 'this game will run fine on your machine' requirement? From what we've seen you'll want a little over 1ghz on the mac side for it to run ok, but I'm sure a 1ghz or lower pc should be fine..... *grumble towards macromedia's mac flash player*

In terms of engine improvements, is there a substancially faster gotoandstop tile engine out there in comparison to tonypa's tutorials? Also, would strilles object method be of any use for this kind of game? (im really wondering how collision detection would work for that, other than... testing to see if a point of the character is within the xmin/max/ymin/max range of each object on screen..). Way down the track we'd like to make a 640x480 version of this game (maybe with flashplayer8 haha), but I think it'd need a large boost in engine performance to be able to take that. The engine we use now for tiles is pretty much tonypas one, and objects/enemies are aggressively deactivated in ai and have their mc removed from the stage when they are off screen (and not in 'alert mode'). Just wondering how we can make it faster.. hmm

Thanks again all

[astrocalder]

(re mac problem) yeah i'm a 10.2.8 mac... so maybe that's why. i'll try the .sit.

astrocalder

[astrocalder]

yeah the .sit works fine, nice game. i like the enemy's animation, and how they spurt out a mouthful of blood when they die. nice touch. i'd like to see a bigger version so you can see them more clearly. i like the simple bg too.

astrocalder

[nuclearPenut]

i downloaded the mac version, and completed it.
very nice, the only 'bug' i found was that on the later levels (outside) tou can bypass some of the 'required' levers simply by double-jumping over the poles. this significantly decreases difficulty.

but other than that i found nothing other than the limitless shurikens.

*p.s. - whats the point to stealth mode? its uselessly slow, and the attack does nothing
[edit]
i now know hot to use stealth mode, so ignore that last comment. i still think its too slow though.

[rabbitkiller]

Love it!
Wish I could draw...
Double jump is awesome! How about jumping mega sword-slash-attack
Bug: I got stuck between two trees on the third level: can go left and right, but can't jump/attack/defend/throw star....
Cheers!

[Hornet]

tonypa: hmmm ok. So do you think if we just doubled the game width/height all would be ok? I'd kinda be in favour of adding more tiles... as much as it would be a pain to the graphics ppl, to redraw a lot of it to fit more tiles etc heh. Ah well. A 640x480 version with 20x20 tiles would be pretty sweet imo if it ran well heh. Do you think having the tiles as png's vs not-overly-complex vectors would speed things up?

astrocalder: thanks buddy. Me too, on the wanting to see a bigger version heh. The blood sprays are kinda sweet hey

nuclearPenut: heh well re: stealth mode, it was meant to be... a more rewarding way of playing the game, like you'd use stealth, sneak up behind enemies, and have a higher survivability chance by not having extra enemies spawned/alerted to deal with. The attack itself only works when the enemy hasnt been alerted and you sneak up from behind, the ninja guy slices their neck kinda thing. Its satisfying in terms of the gore? heh. At the moment its just an optional kind of thing. We really need to make it 'worth the players while' right now. You do get 1000 points for killing in stealth vs like... a couple of hundred in attack, but hmmm. What would make a stealth mode worthwhile for you, what would motivate you to use it? Also, are you in the 'make ninjastars not unlimited' camp?

rabbitkiller: cheers buddy. yeah a mid air sword attack is now in the works, what did you envisage? Some crazy multiple combo hit mid air sword attack... hahaha. As for the bug yeah, that one, when you get locked to the ground or something only able to move. We know of it.. heh

Cheers all

[GingaNinja]

I noticed a bug in it, when you are standing on say a box with an enemy next to you but on a lower platform, throuwing a shuriken will still make him react even though it doesnt hit him.

Otherwise an excellent game, im always looking for platform games that other people have made so i can play them. And wish i could do my own of that quality.

Keep it up!

[nuclearPenut]

Originally posted by Hornet
nuclearPenut: heh well re: stealth mode, it was meant to be... a more rewarding way of playing the game, like you'd use stealth, sneak up behind enemies, and have a higher survivability chance by not having extra enemies spawned/alerted to deal with. The attack itself only works when the enemy hasnt been alerted and you sneak up from behind, the ninja guy slices their neck kinda thing. Its satisfying in terms of the gore? heh. At the moment its just an optional kind of thing. We really need to make it 'worth the players while' right now. You do get 1000 points for killing in stealth vs like... a couple of hundred in attack, but hmmm. What would make a stealth mode worthwhile for you, what would motivate you to use it? Also, are you in the 'make ninjastars not unlimited' camp?

to improve stealth mode, i would say:
Make you move fater! stealth mode is waaaay too slow, youre a ninja, you should be sneaky and fast!

on the shurikens:
if you plan to have different difficulty levels, then maybe as the difficulty gets higher, they do more damage, but you have less? so, easy would be 'stun' with unlimited, and hard would be, high damage, 5/level or something.

other add-ins:
highscores
show enemy 'vision'
more enemies
health meters on enemies?