Guestbook

@oliver-day Thanks for the feedback! You are the first player, I was pretty surprised when I opened the highscore table to erase my testresults and your name popped up (~15 minutes after submission). That was an awesome feeling

It's great that you liked the puzzles. It was a bit of an experiment to make them into the gameworld itself, which turned out pretty neat if you ask me :-) It's not really explained how to do the puzzles, I hope the yellow platforms will bring out the curiosity of the player, like it eventually did for you :-)

The colissions are a bit wonky, I made it myself 😁 I'm sorry you got stuck. In version 1.1 I made a reset key, so you can "unstuck" yourself. I also changed the introduction page above, to explain who to look out for. Is that more clear now? Future players will read that I hope :)

@mrs-wheelsx Great to see you again! Thanks for playing! And wouw, you played to level 4 😄 Could you find out where to stand to solve the puzzles at first? I got some feedback that it was not that clear so I was curious what your experience was.

The colissions are a bit wonky, I made it myself grin I’m sorry you got stuck. In version 1.1 I made a reset key, so you can “unstuck” yourself.

In October I should be here again indeed!

@wheelsx Welcome back! Great to see you here! The seahorses are very quick indeed. After your comment I tried to talk myself into believing those are fast little critters in real life. After googling a bit I realized those are acctually one of the slowest moving sea creatures imaginalble. As in: even slower than snails 😆

So I created a backstory to explain! Mr. Marmo not only blew up the moon back in his day, he also emptied all of the world-supply of caffeine-powdered-coffee into the ocean. So, those poor sea horses are drugged with a caffeine overdose 😀

@fupi ay Fupi! Really nice to see you here so early! I see that you are the first completing all seven levels 😄 Thanks for playing and your constructive feedback

It is indeed the mario underwater theme. During development I had a little orange mario character as a testing sprite. I also drew lots of inspiration from mario bros 1 for the swimming mechanics.

Great that you could instantly pick it up and play! Over the years I learned a bit what to explain and what to just leave up to the player to find out

The physics are a bit wonky indeed. I need to experiment for a bit to make sure the post-jam version won't have this problem. I suspect that this is going to annoy lots of players 😅

There are secret areas where you can enter to reach those marbles (I placed them by hand so I think you mean those). Those areas have a checked background

@lintfordpickle oh wouw you are quick! Thanks for playing! Glad the R-key worked as intended. Ofcource, it is not a real solution, I try to make a post jam version later where my home-made physics are a bit more ironed-out 😇

Its nice to know that the stonebricks are found out eventually. I tried to make level 1 soft of a tutorial level :)

The animation of the sea draining was a few hours of work to make perfect. I thought it would be a core gameplay element, so it had to be spot-on. I love your idea of starting at the same level as the previous level! Altough, now you can play the levels out of order 🤔 That could open up some cool oppotunities, where some levels are too dark at the bottom, so you need to comlete another first to reach even deeper 😍 (just thinking out loud here)

Ay @skvader-418! Thanks for playing and the feedback! I have identified the problem with the colission system and I will correct it tonight or tomorrow. Believe it or not: the pearls are the problem, even if no pearls are near you. Something with spagetti-code 😁

Did the outbound pearls appear in "hidden area's"? I made some hidden area's where the wall texture is checkered :) Thanks for the compliments! This was my first attempt of making some unique levels within a gamejam without using randomness. So it means a lot that you like the level designs!

Btw I watched your timelapse, I think it's awesome that you did that. I will try to do that too next time. How often did you take a screenshot?

@0x-void-x0, yeah it got's its classic wouter52 look all over it 😁 The 1:1 aspect ratio, the "enter your alias screen" the exessive use of noise textures 😇. Are there more things you can recognize my style by? I'd really like to know!

I'm glad you had fun! I'll be addressing the bug later today or tomorrow when I got time. I know hoe to fix it now after some sherlocking around. I'll update the code as v1.2, as I think this is important enough to fix without classifying it as a post-jam version. For transparancy I will do a deep dive-post about the inner workings of my home-made collision code and how I fixed it and why the pearls messed it up even if there are no pearls in the direct vicinity

As of the "art" haha, glad you had a good chuckle out of it 😁 I think it works like chocolate: a little bit and you want more, a whole chocolatebar and you'll regret it. Sometimes the art is that you crave for more without getting some

Don't feel obligated to play again @fupi @wheelsx @0x-void-x0 @oliver-day @mrs-wheelsx @skvader-418 and @lintfordpickle , but I wanted to let you know that I fixed the colission system. Thanks for all of your feedback, it means a lot to me. I marked this clearly with version 1.2

Here is a post explaining how it worked and what went wrong if you're curious: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/the-chronicles-of-mr-marmo/mom-weve-got-colission-system-at-home

@skvader-418 I think the darker areas are really well hidden maybe 😮, as the checkered pattern is black. A secret area looks like this in level one for instance :)

Screenshot (63).png

@kessel-nebula thanks for the big compliments! I think 16-bit is not a style that is often pursuit here. Although, I did not specificly design with that in mind The sink is sometimes pretty hidden indeed, Only consistancy: it's at the bottom of the level 😁 Self hosting I think is fun, it gives me full control over every pixel on the users screen if I want to 😀

P.s. I love the GIF you made!

Ayy @cataclysmicknight, great to see you back! 😃 I suppose I can start a solo acapella group 🤔😆 I'm glad that it made you happy! I almost scrapped it as it was meant to be for development, I wanted to exchange it for something more serious at the end. But then Javascript decsided to crap its pants and lay down for about 1,5 hours when I found out that the Highscoretable would randomly not load the correct data. Never had that issue, but then again, I never had multiple highscoretables in one game before. Fixing that took my time away to make some "real" music. I'm glad it is this way, lots of people get a kick of of it

Congratz on your highscore!!!

@deadbydeath Thank you! I had fun making that soundtrack 😁

@kr4ft3r my friend, thank you so much! I must say, I think this one is a masterpiece. PEPE we won't talk about, at least my friend and I had fun that weekend 😁 This one however, pfoeh. It was a lot of work indeed. The level design was somewhat of a easy job when all the systems were in place. When you go back in the nightlt builds in the link below, you can sorta see my workflow :) Each level was about 30 to 45 minutes of work I think. The first and the last being the most timeconsuming. As the first one functioned as a semi-tutorial style level.

I did not feel dead luckaly, I always take mondays and tuesdays off from work so I could sleep in :-) I'm glad you liked it! I was looking forward for your feedback! Its always so honest and I love that. You're not afraid to kick us in the butt for making a PEPE-game 😆

Between NIGHTLY_09 and NIGHTLY_10 I designed the levels. That is including cooking and eating lunch and dinner :-) https://wouter52.com/PROJECTS/LD57/NIGHTLY_BUILDS/

@busisen I think the crabs fled to your game haha Thanks for the big compliments! The as mentioned above, the levels where relatively easy to make. Although, my GF was like: whyyyyy are you making so many levels and I was like because there are seven seas! 😁

@crozzy Thanks for the big compliments! That makes my day!

@tiar thanks for the clear and honest feedback! I will try to tweak the controls a bit if/when the post-jam version will come out.

The second level has a bit of a designproblem I think, you're not the first one that mentiones that. Luckaly it won't affect the highscore btw. If you die, everything is reset. Jumping out of the water is not supported in this game, as I had to make walking animation sprites and I did not want to do that 😁

The stopping of time is a nice addition indeed, you can thank @lizz for that, she came with the suggestion. If you watch closely, the sea creatures make little Z-shaped bubbles when pausing, so signify that the're paused 😇

Thanks for the big compliment! I think it is awesome that this game gets some players from outside of the LD community!

@lisek-gagatek Thanks for your feedback! I will try to tweak the controls a bit when/if the post-jam version comes out. I think its really nice that you provide a suggestion on how to make it better <3

@7uc4s Thanks!! Luckaly dying will reset the level and also the score. It won't affect the highscore at the end :-)

@geckoo1337 I have been googling around a bit for the game you're referring to. I can see the resemblance indeed. I'm happy to hear that you got some fun childhood memories back because of it 😄 My inspiration was more the Super Mario Underwater levels. Hence the 'music', which is an enhanced version of the original 😆

This is one of my favorite entries for this 57th LudumDare session.

That is a big compliment, and I thank you for that! @lizz is a good influence indeed, she helped a lot researching some facts about the seven seas and she play tested a lot 😄

@wuppos Thank you! I must say: I never was really conscious about color-theory in this game. I only made critical object bright colors to make them stand out in the depths of the ocean 😁 I know what you mean about repetitiveness, especially as the levels go deeper and deeper. At the moment I don't really know how to fix that. Do you have suggestions?

@binaryprinciple Thank you so much! I was thinking about some expansions, but I don't want it to get stale. Also, I want to upgrade the underlaying code before I'll do that :)

@outstar thanks for playing! It was really interesting to actually see someone play the game. Putting the highscore somewhere visable instead of behind a button is a great idea. I'll try to do that next time

The puzzle is triggered by the yellow platforms that are in the area, maybe I should have made that clear in the first level. The plants are just there to be background graphics and to hide pearls and enemies sometimes :)

Thank you for playing and streaming!

@wuppos no worries, I love your idea's! I love it when people are honest and give feedback about how to do it better. I will use this in the post-jam version, or at least in the next LD I will try and incorperate it into the form the game will take shape in then :-)

Hi @adhvik! Thanks for your comment! What aspects did you find best? And are there things we could've done better to make it even more fun for you to play?

@dis0rder Thank you for your in depth performance testing! To be honest, I'm not sure what is causing those slowdowns. I have been poking through the leveldata to try and figure out what could cause this.

The code that determines the darkness of the rendering is calculated every gametick and is based on the diffrence between the water level and the Y position of the player. So that should be a constant between levels.

The amount of pearls, plants and enemies change each level, however: I can't find significant variations between the amounts. I have to debug myself on one of my potatoe pc's to find the root cause.

The idea of exploring after draining crossed my mind, it could be very interesting to try that in a post-jam version maybe 🤔 Although, now there is a clear finish, so I have to think about how that should work maybe. Someone else had another idea: start the next level at the drainlevel where the previous ended. That way one could play with diffrent play-orders :)

Thanks again! That was really interesting and I apreciate your time and effort.

@lereveur so great to see you here! Thank you for your kind and honest feedback! Indeed, programmer art can be so much more than only graphics 😁

@aweskybear Thanks for your feedback! I tried making clear that the mouse can be used to put a little indicator at the top left of the screen. Where would you expect such a thing? Above the player maybe?