Half-baked submission.

Cosmologicon on 2009/11/29 01:21 of Flight Crew
— edited on 2009/11/29 04:41

I probably should not have submitted this game, but it's so hard to let go, you know? It's wildly unfinished, full of horrendous bugs, and probably close to unplayable. Even so, I still think it's neat. I tried to make it clear in-game when a feature was missing, so you don't get confused, but a lot of things still need an explanation. These will probably make more sense after you've played for a few minutes:

• Sorry about the huge file size. I was literally zipping it at the last second and I think I accidentally put the whole repository in there.
• Command-line options include -r1024x768 (or similar) to set the resolution, -f for fullscreen, -w for windowed, -u to disable fps limit (which defaults to 25).
• Don't choose the Realistic flight mechanics on the title screen, only Arcade works.
• I get an ODE bug every now and then and collisions fail. The game doesn't crash, but none of the objects interact. If you get an ODE error message, or you go through a portal but just come out the back side instead of traveling to a different world, try restarting.
• There is no way to save. Just do your best, there's not much progress you can make, so starting over isn't that bad. Having said that, press F3 to give yourself a boost whenever you feel like it. There was supposed to be a spell that does the same thing, but it didn't get implemented. So it's not really cheating.
• There are several quests in the nexus world (Aeron) that say they give you spells when they don't. It might still be fun to complete them.
• If you complete the quest of the estranged brothers, it will give you a Radar spell. If you equip it by pressing 6 and then cast it, the game will crash.
• There's a bug with the enemy crosshairs, in that two sets of crosshairs appear in your field of vision, opposite each other. Just keep in mind that if you don't see an enemy in the crosshairs, you're probably firing at one in the opposite direction.
• There's instructions for the crystal that imprisons the elder at the end of the dimension of pestilence, but I think they got cut off. You have to run into it repeatedly to knock it down through the layers. Just hold Ctrl the whole time and stay locked on it.
• After you've beaten the dimensions of fire, thunder, and pestilence, there's a final level, the dimension of darkness. The portal is supposed to open automatically when you beat the first three, but it doesn't. Press F6 whenever you're ready for it, and it'll appear in the middle of town.
• There's no game over screen after you beat the final boss. Whatcha gonna do?
• I'll probably think of some more soon. I'll be happy to post bugfixes or cheats if it crashes for you, provided I can figure it out.
• I never got anyone to playtest any of the quests. If you're having trouble figuring any out, I'll be happy to give hints.

Here are the controls that were supposed to go in the README but I didn't get around to. I suggest reading it after you've tried the tutorial once:

• Esc = pause/quit
• W/A/S/D (or ,/A/O/E on Dvorak) moves you.
• Holding shift makes you move faster.
• Caps Lock swaps the behavior of shift.
• Tab switches between first and third-person view
• Mouse or arrow keys moves the camera in third-person view.
• Backspace swaps the behavior of W/A/S/D and the arrows.
• Scroll wheel: move the camera in and out
• Holding Ctrl turns you toward an NPC (shown with green crosshairs). You have to be close enough for this to work.
• Number 1 equips the shooting spell when you get it. Number 5 equips the compass spell.
• Left-click or space: fire
• Right-click or Enter: compass

And now the important cheats:

• F3: boost
• F5: stop
• F6: spawn portal to the dimension of darkness
• F2: Toggle bounding boxes for collision detection. That's just kind of fun sometimes.
• F4: Draw worldmap. Warning: this will freeze the game for a few seconds at least.

Okay, I'll stop there. I've got a lot to say about the process, but I'll make that a separate postmortem post!

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Comments

Cosmologicon on 2009/11/29 01:23:

Aaaaand now I just realized I had the timezone wrong, so the submission was an hour late. Feel free to DQ. :(

Zahmekoses on 2009/11/30 10:52:

nah, you had months for programming, one hour more should not make any difference and DQ you :) (in my humble opinion)

jerith on 2009/11/30 11:43:

Likewise. Timezones are fickle things and have bitten me more than once.