Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 08 Jun 2011, 15:02

Hello,

Nikki and the Robots is a cute physics platformer. It is in development and mostly open source. Alpha versions are available for public consumption.

Currently the game is LGPL code, CC- :by: - :sa: assets. There will be a for-pay story mode that will contain proprietary assets and data.

----

Recently it was bumped to version 0.3 and a level contest was started (win full version once it's finished + one t-shirt, ends 7. July 2011).

Image

0.3 Changes include:

  • Battery counter and timer inside levels
  • High-score display in level selection and level-end screens.
  • Bugfixes! One of the most horrible ones prevented linking robots to terminals in the editor.
  • Player-configurable controls
  • Death zone (lower limit for levels)

Please test-ride this release [get it here] as hard as you can and make awesome levels for the contest! (Or spread the word if you know somebody who makes awesome levels.) Bugs are kindly asked to go to Launchpad or our IndieDB forum.
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby Sauer2 » 09 Jun 2011, 19:09

I run a small test without sound (so i can not say for sure if it works). On Xubuntu it runs all fine, but it was pretty slow on Windows 7 64 bit. Not that it was like poor performing, since it still felt pretty smooth but it was like the time was stopped.
Maybe this is some kind of bug with the systems timer.
Somebody else got this problem?
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 09 Jun 2011, 19:11

That's our top-priority bug and yeah, it's a timer bug. We're on it and it will be fixed soon I hope. :)
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby Sauer2 » 09 Jun 2011, 19:38

Oh, another one:
It seems, I can't escape from the editor's help menu. Is there a way to fix this via key binding?

Edit: It seems to be a general problem that I can't use this mysterious back key. Could this be some kind of focussing problem, maybe with the window manager to be involved? Or can this be fixed with some kind of key binding?
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 09 Jun 2011, 20:53

Perhaps your key refresh rate is so insanely high that when pressing a key, the next key puts you into help mode again? Try LeftArrow.

You mean the screen that appears in the editor, when you press a key that is not assigned or F1? Or a help screen that appears during editing a terminal or robot or selection mode?

Version 0.3, right?
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby Sauer2 » 09 Jun 2011, 21:45

qubodup {l Wrote}:Perhaps your key refresh rate is so insanely high that when pressing a key, the next key puts you into help mode again? Try LeftArrow.
I did.

You mean the screen that appears in the editor, when you press a key that is not assigned or F1? Or a help screen that appears during editing a terminal or robot or selection mode?

Yes, it's the help screen.

Version 0.3, right?

Yes.

I'm curious about Haskell. How is it even possible to have a gameloop in a strict functional programming language? Isn't that rather like formulas?
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 09 Jun 2011, 22:21

Please start nikki from the command line and use it in windowed mode. Then reproduce the bug you described. Is there no way for you to leave the help screen? Do mouse movements and presses and key presses do nothing?
I'm curious about Haskell. How is it even possible to have a gameloop in a strict functional programming language? Isn't that rather like formulas?

No idea. Our programmer should be able to answer that question. There might be a blog post there. :)
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby oberhamsi » 10 Jun 2011, 15:24

Sauer2 {l Wrote}:I'm curious about Haskell. How is it even possible to have a gameloop in a strict functional programming language? Isn't that rather like formulas?


it's brain bending for us 'normal programmers' but there's plenty of people writings games in haskell :) i've even seen a quake3 clone.
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby Sauer2 » 10 Jun 2011, 17:52

For some reasons now it works. Mysterious. :)
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby oberhamsi » 10 Jun 2011, 18:09

I tried it in windowed mode on win7 64bit: it was in some kind of of 'slow mo' mode most of the time - i guess this is the timer bug already described.

the robots controls are fun but deadly when it suddenly goes out of 'slow mo' mode. the robots instructions didn't make it clear to me how to control the robot - i pressed left,right,up,down... nothing happens at all, then finally tried CTRL.
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby sireus » 10 Jun 2011, 20:46

What can I say... for a platformer, it's quite nice ;) I mean, I usually don't like them, but this looks quite promising.
(And ofc kudos for making this available for Linux)

Now for the nitpicking:
1) I think CTRL is a bad default choice for jumping (Space is kind of a tradition)
2) related to that, you should really make the instructions in the tutorial fit the actual key bindings
3) The menu controls should be more consistent, e.g. ESC should always go to the parent menu etc.

Strange, looks like I have the most problems with keys :D

Ah, and something else. You should probably fix this fatal error (crash?), for people like me who are just too dumb to read the instructions :P
{l Code}: {l Select All Code}
core: no Nikki found
error message:

no Nikki found
aborted due to an error
Last edited by sireus on 10 Jun 2011, 20:51, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby Sauer2 » 10 Jun 2011, 20:49

I have a feature request for the level editor:
If not already implemented and me not having a clue, please create a possibility to delete the lower limit in the editor.

Apart from that, it's a pretty platformer. :heart:
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 11 Jun 2011, 03:03

@Sauer2:
you can. you have to hover the coordinates where you placed the lower limit and press shift. Just like any other object.

best to use x coordinate 0 to know where you placed it.

if you can't remember, perhaps you could delete manually in the level file source code..
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby Sauer2 » 11 Jun 2011, 11:14

I deleted it in the file, since i accidently placed more than one.
I know it's just a small detail, but wouldn't it be better to handle the lower limit as option instead as an object?
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 11 Jun 2011, 14:59

Image

For people who were having extremely slow motion during gameplay: update the game and it should run smoothly from now on!

Please let us know if there are any problems. (apparently this might cause slowdown on 32bit Linux O_o)
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 15 Jun 2011, 19:55

On June 6th we started a level design contest. It runs until July 7th and everybody is welcome to submit as many levels as they like. Text and video tutorials are available.

We received ten levels so far via email, webchat and forum:

Image[full size]

To test them, you have to unzip the archive [mirror 1 | mirror 2] to the following directory:

WINDOWS: %APPDATA%\nikki-free-levels\userLevels\

LINUX/MAC OS X: ~/.nikki-free-levels/userLevels/

Just copy the path into Explorer's (CTRL + L) or Filer's (CMD + SHIFT + G) location bar to enter that directory.

Read the full announcement here.

Looking forward to more submissions!
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 24 Jun 2011, 18:02

On June 6th we started a level design contest. July 7th is the deadline and everybody is welcome to submit as many levels as they like via email, webchat or forum. Text and video tutorials are available.

Since releasing the first batch, we received nine levels (one of them in two versions):

Image

To test them, you have to unzip the archive [mirror 1 | mirror 2] to the following directory:

WINDOWS: %APPDATA%\nikki-free-levels\userLevels\

LINUX/MAC OS X: ~/.nikki-free-levels/userLevels/

Just copy the path into Explorer's (CTRL + L) or Filer's (CMD + SHIFT + G) location bar to enter that directory.

You're welcome to submit levels here in this forum as well!
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 03 Jul 2011, 18:22

The levels we received so far made us want to give a little more in return, so we'll throw in two more shirts for the best level designers.

Image
So submit cool levels before July 7th is over and win one of three shirts and one of ten pre-order copies of Nikki and the Robots. :) Check out the previous entries hereand here.

For rules, check out this announcement.

We only have two shirt styles, so if anybody has ideas for new stuff to print, let us know.
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Nikki and the Robots 0.3.2

Postby qubodup » 12 Jul 2011, 00:46

Soon after the end of the first level contest we released Nikki and the Robots 0.3.2, which you can download here or via the update menu option of your copy.

[video links: Vimeo | YouTube]

The new features are:

  • New Patrol Robots, which will make Nikki fail the level when touched
  • Jetpack Robots are more forgiving and easier to control
  • No more editor crashes when Nikki has not been added
  • Signature checks for updates (heightened updater security - not gameplay-relevant)

A few words about the contest judging: we will announce the winners in approximately ten days. We received some last-minute levels and are very thankful to all level builders who shared their works.

Image

Patrol Robot

We hope that the Patrol Robot is fun to work with. You can get in touch with players and builders on IRC and the forums.
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 25 Jul 2011, 21:43

The contest results are in! And a new update, which you can download or get using the in-game updater.

ImageImageImage
[video links: Vimeo | YouTube]

The winners are
* Julian (for Greed) [Shirt + Game]
* sauer2/C. Hackenberg (for lootninja, hanoi, powergrid and obstacles [Shirt + 4xGame]
* Jukkeri (for Trick Series 02) [Shirt + Game]
* pixma (for robopractice) [Game]
* 2048 Terrabit (for Robot Race) [Game]
* Marius Ghita/mhitza (for stairway to heaven)[Game]
* 3sdras (for Geronimo) [Game]
Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all who submitted levels!

New in 0.3.3:
* Added 30 levels from the first level design contest (in standard levels/03-contest1)
* Jetpack robot physics tweaked again
* Level names are now sorted correctly
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby farcodev » 20 Aug 2011, 17:34

It's a great work you put in this project and the video w/ the levels is cool :cool:

keep it up :)
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby mbue » 08 Sep 2011, 22:58

Very nice game and fun to play :-)

I'm too late for the contest (started level-editing after it was already done), but I've got a small level to share:
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B4n-s9 ... Mzdh&hl=en
Try to find and collect all the batteries, the level is designed around that. Finishing the level without the batteries is kinda easy. ;)
Playing time is roughly 2 min if you know what you are doing.
Screenshot_1st_try_01.jpg
Level: 1st try


EDIT: Also a second level with some patrol robots (and no jetpack ones) and slightly raised difficulty level.
Collecting all the batteries doesn't really make this one any harder.
Also: Less signs/backgrounds this time - I was lazy. :oops:
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B4n-s9 ... NTE4&hl=en
Playing time is roughly 1 min (collecting everything).
Screenshot_2nd_try_01.jpg
Level: 2nd try


Cheers,
Martin

PS: Damn 08-GREENLAND is hard for me, and I really don't understand what I need to do in Platforms Want To Eat Your Soul.
My Levels for Nikki and the Robots
RACR, a Micro Machines-like car racing game (early WIP!)
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Nikki 0.4: cannons, sounds, sharing and downloading levels

Postby qubodup » 20 Sep 2011, 23:35

Image
Video: 0.4 changes [Vimeo | YouTube]

We released Nikki and the Robots 0.4.0 (0.4.1.1 actually), which you can download here or via in-game updater.

The new features are:

  • New robot: Cannon! It shoots cannon balls that disappear after 10 seconds
  • Players can download and upload levels in the main/editor menus
  • Author name and license agreement added for saving/uploading levels
  • Sounds added for menu, jumping, buttons and batteries
  • Last level switch to be pressed now blinks green
  • Added "transient" switches (won't stay pressed)

Some news not directly related to the release:
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby qubodup » 20 Sep 2011, 23:36

mblue: thanks for the levels! I haven't tried them all yet.

I did not reply yet because I wanted to surprise you with the level server :) Will you upload your levels?

PS: Agreed, Greenland is evil.......
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Re: Nikki and the Robots - Cute Physics Platformer

Postby mbue » 21 Sep 2011, 10:41

qubodup {l Wrote}:mblue: thanks for the levels! I haven't tried them all yet.

I did not reply yet because I wanted to surprise you with the level server :) Will you upload your levels?

Sure, I'll upload them as soon as I have a few minutes to download the new release and finish wasting time with it. :heart:

I'll just have to think up better names for them :D

Is there a way to comment on uploaded levels as well?
My Levels for Nikki and the Robots
RACR, a Micro Machines-like car racing game (early WIP!)
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