Build 31: Custom Controls & Wall Climb

[weasel]

As promised, builds are coming faster and faster now!

Build 31 is a bit.. rickety. There's a few features that don't have menus so you have to really dive in to find them (details below in the Changelog).

Here's the main rundown:

- Customizable Controls. You can now pick what key controls what!
- Updated Protonaut Graphics to make the little guy look nicer.
- New "Wall-Climb" ability (a bit of an alteration on wall-jump)
- Slightly updated control scheme.

Make sure you have the latest version (bottom right corner of the main menu), and if not, clear your browser cache.

Details to follow...

[weasel]

** Note: I made some datafile changes for your things like key controls. Let me know if you run into any freezing errors or popup messages when starting this one out.

EDITOR CHANGES:

- Clicking on the icon for the currently open tool will now close it and switch to the "Move" command.
- Test mode now leaves the edit panel open, to make it more obvious as to what mode you are in. Switching away from the "test tool" restores you to editing mode.
- The 0-9 shortcut keys are now removed for gravity selection, as are the < and > shortcuts. You can now just type the value you are aiming for directly into the X and Y boxes.

ART CHANGES:

- Finished off the set of animations and graphics for the Protonaut character, including a very nice looking (and less jittery) jump animation.
- Changed the overlay filters to make the game look less washed out.
- Added a "thankyou" graphic for when you've voted (placeholder).
- Made Nitrogen "Jitter" a bit to indicate how dangerous it is (placeholder).
- The depth-of-field bits have been halved for performance reasons. Let me know if the game runs slow!

GAMEPLAY CHANGES:

- There is now a distinct "Wall-Climb" action. It only works once, so you can't climb a wall indefinitely, but it is useful for getting to ledges just a bit too high. While in the air and pressed against a wall, tap Jump again to boost yourself up. You can use this in the middle of a Wall-jump chain if you are supar talented. I'll have to add a tutorial for this.
- You can now wall-climb and wall-jump if you start on the ground while pressed up against a wall (this was disabled in previous builds due to a bug).
- When in the air and not pressing a direction, your lateral speed dampens faster now. Should make landing on tiny platforms a bit easier.
- In-air lateral acceleration increased a bit. This change unfortunately ruins the previously recorded replays, but shouldn't affect level difficulty much (if at all).

GENERAL CHANGES:

- You can now create custom controls! Almost any key on your keyboard is game. For now it's hidden in the options menu, until we can get some art assets in place. Click on the "Medium Graphics" button for a debug prompt. It immediately saves to your cookies!
- The "Low Graphics" button will reset the keyboard controls back to the standards (arrow keys, Z, and X).
- "Switch controls" no longer does anything. It will be switching to a mouse control option in the future.
- The Tutorial text can now display what your key controls are, not what the defaults are. This is done by putting variables into the level description text: %RESET%, %JUMP%, %LEFT%, %RIGHT%, %AIMUP%, %AIMDOWN%, and %FIRE% (anybody can use these).
- Fixed the mulitple-audio-tracks-at-once bug (Woops! Artifact of me rewriting the sound engine).
- Changed the pipe-cursor to the arrow cursor on the level select fields.
- Made a cached-data catch that checks for a current version and resets the data if necessary (to solve the freezing errors when starting a level, due to the new method of storing control keys).
- Viewing a replay no longer marks a level as beaten for you.
- You can no longer re-save a replay after watching one.
- Replays now have an introduction and closing notification box to let people know what's going on. After watching the replay the level in question then loads for you to play afterwards.

NEW TUTORIALS:

This will be the beginner tutorial set (work in progress of course):

Tutorial 1: 492
Tutorial 2: 494
Tutorial 3: 496
Tutorial 4: 504
Tutorial 5: 498
Tutorial 6: 505
Tutorial 7: 500
Tutorial 8: 502
Tutorial 9: 503

The "secrets" are a lot easier to get (in most cases) and some of them require some new types of thinking. I'm pretty excited about it. The secrets are also no longer visible from the "main area" and you can't stumble upon anything by accident (except maybe in the last one).

This removes the final exam, the "falling" tutorial, and the 3-bonds level. Replacing them are a trio of levels designed to show the differences between all the different bonds.

I'm working on some ideas for advanced tutorials - they'll be like the final exam in the old one.

NOTE: The new tutorials aren't in place yet. You'll have to enter the Level IDs manually.

[meteoro]

There should be some sort of tick count like in FC, and then we will be able to make challenges and stuff

[weasel]

There is a tick count being recorded when you save a replay - I just don't have a place to show it onscreen yet. :)

[Nikola Tesla]

You know, I never thought how long how long it would take to write these info's, even less program it into the game.

[Haredeenee]

and the guy dost roll, we....has square feet, hard to make ramps :(

[weasel]

He can use shallow ramps :) Too steep? Make stairs!

[JayJSE2]

how long will it be until we have a page for our own levels?

[weasel]

What, you mean something like this?

http://www.protonaut.net/browser.php?view=user&id=20&extra=levels

:3

[JayJSE2]

yeah, but a direct link from the main page like FC.

[weasel]

It's the "Levels" button at the top of the main page. :P

It's obviously under construction right now, too.

[JayJSE2]

a direct link just to your levels, not everyone else's

[weasel]

I don't think people are going to be logging in just to look at their own levels every day. I think the most common task is going to be looking at the most recent list of top levels. Maybe someday I'll make customizable views though, so you can pick what you want. that'll be down the road.