FreeGameDev

Alzter grumbles:

• Most of the issues from 0.3.0 persist into 0.6.0 which was released TWELVE YEARS later.

• Most of the art created past Milestone 1 is inconsistent quality wise. The forest world is an ugly repetitive mess and all the new enemies are either edits of the Milestone 1 ones or ugly new ones. Some of the new art is messy, it looks blurry and doesn’t have strong shapes or shading. The rotation and scale tools are used way too heavily to look good, and don’t qualify as proper animation. A lot of it looks ugly and all of it needs replacing. Unfortunately, nobody will get around to doing that, so we’re just stuck with rushed, ugly art for a lot of the game’s art assets. Zeekling and ghost tree are literally taken from draft sketches and look horrible. This is what happens when you want to make something but don’t have the skills or time necessary, resulting in what we have now, and since we don’t have anyone to fix it we’re stuck with it.

• The forest world is also a mess. It feels rushed and scrappy and doesn’t match the quality of Icyisland. A lot of the gimmicks weren’t properly implemented and recently have either been scrapped or kept but continue to be unpolished (keys, wind, carriables, climbables). The forest world is repetitive and the tileset looks the same throughout nearly every level. Cave and ghost forest tiles are edits of the normal ones and most of the forest tiles look blurry and muddy. Overall very unappealing. The new forest worldmap is a good start, hopefully the level tiles are updated too but I’m not counting on it since it could mean having to fix every forest level to accommodate and we’re short of willing devs/artists.

• Physics are also a mess. Carriable blocks randomly unstack and clip through the floor on occasion. (Hopefully fixed in latest version, finally!) Climbing is difficult because you fall of the climbable if you touch the edge of it and jumping off the climbable gives you barely any upward momentum. (They fixed ladder jump height in latest nightly, also finally!) I would rather we copy NSMB’s climbing physics as opposed to making our own only for it to fall flat on its face. Practically all the M2 gimmicks (wind, climbing, switches, carriables) are terribly implemented, aren’t fun and don’t work well with the already bad physics engine.

• Swimming and sliding have been constantly suggested to be added and concepted for SuperTux throughout the years and yet absolutely nothing has been implemented and likely never will. Water does absolutely nothing and it doesn’t make sense that it doesn’t affect Tux.

• The time it takes to walk between No More Mr Ice Guy and The Crystal Mine is too long, same applying with walk between The Crystal Mine and A new Location, and there’s no worldmap or way to travel between worlds quickly.

• Level names misuse capital letters at the start of words. (Unless that’s intentional?)

Yikes (lol). There's so much more *I* could go off about.

My main complaint with SuperTux is confusion. SuperTux is good people, unlike SuperTuxKart, but I find it difficult to keep track of what SuperTux is anyways. I am aware of a SuperTux package, a SuperTux 2 package, and a ReTux package, not to mention the Java ME version that was recently brought to our attention. You list version numbers, but I'm not exactly sure which version of SuperTux these are versions of. It's like a big hazy cloud of content that I wouldn't know where to start with.

Numbered versions are official SuperTux. Milestone 1 is versions up to 0.1.4, Milestone 2 starts at 0.3.0

Gotcha, it's just the one SuperTux. Funny how it says "development version" right across the logo despite how many years it's been in development.

Pure opinion time. Nintendo or Sony gets a system that's locked-in and unchanging from the beginning, so they can make a Mario and it will be the same Mario up until the end of the console's lifetime, but a Linux (or Windows or Mac) game has to evolve with the operating system for it to still be playable, so if it takes longer than a year or two to make, it's in perpetual development because time has to be spent adapting the game to new technological standards and best practices.

Was there ever versions such as: 0.2.0?

ProTux {l Wrote}:Was there ever versions such as: 0.2.0?

From what I can find, apparently not. If 0.2.0 did exist I'd assume it would just be a prototype of the engine under construction, although this is just my speculation.

oh.

Alzter, can you show me how to get to the no path levels in humes islands? here is the art:

i dont know how to get to the no path levels in hume's islands

here is something i don't wanna see again. you can redraw this to make it have a walking animation and implement if you wish.

If SuperTux would

- Remove carriable blocks
- Remove wind
- Don't let Tux walk off climbable surfaces (require a jump instead)
- Fix bouncing on buttons

Then it will already help a lot.

Why remove carriable blocks? Because they suck. Even when all their bugs would be fixed, I think they are generally just annoying to deal with. Stacking them is painful because you have to drop them into tiny spaces. There's also oh-so-many possible ways to do puzzles with them

Why remove wind? Well, I don't see what it adds, really. Windy pipes are especially nasty to deal with because you can't really predict if Tux can "make" the jump.

What about buttons? Well I think switches are mostly fine as-is, but the buttons have stupid physics behavior in that Tux continues to bounce on them once they have been pressed. It's a very old bug as well. So, Tux shouldn't bounce on buttons, that's all.

What about climbable surfaces? Well, the problem is basically that Tux can “overshoot” with walking, causing him to fall off. If you press up too long, you fall off. VERY annoying. So my idea is to make it impossible to fall off climbables. If you "walk" too far on a climbable, Tux should just refuse to move further. Instead, require the Jump key to be pressed.

I am puzzled as to why you think the tilemaps are “blurry”. I don't see it. I agree that some of the badguys look bad. Some of them look kinda like sketches, I agree. But overall, I don't think the forest as a whole is ugly, but maybe I have just been brainwashed, who knows? But my actual problem with the forest is … that there is a forest world. I like Tux to live and run in the antarctic. To me, that's one of the appeals of the game, that it's about Tux in the antarctic. I don't like the idea of creating all these non-snowy tilesets for biomes that are far out of reach for penguins like forests or even jungles. SuperTux would be better of by staying in the antarctic or generally cold and snowy regions.
I'm not saying, use the same icy tilemaps over and over again. Instead, make more icy/snowy/mountainy tilesets so there can still be diverse levels. For example, how about an iceberg tileset?

Yeah, many of the forest badguys are basically just reskins. I don't think this alone is a bad thing. Unique forest badguys are basically required because you couldn't really use the snow badguys. But this again begs the question why having a forest in the first place.

I still like the forest levels, well, except those with the block stackings. I'm also not fully “against” the idea of forest levels, but I think it would be much better if the forest would at least be snowy so it's more believable. Apart from forests, there are also other biomes that could have been chosen. If not antarctic, then maybe something that is not as far away. Like the tundra which has a little bit of vegetation but is still very cold overall. And it's not that far of a stretch.

There are also still mostly unused tilesets. Crystal cave is only used by 1 level so far. The “blue mountain” tileset is not used at all yet (in official levels).

I don't understand your complaint about the ghost tree, and I think that's just not fair. The ghost tree is a VERY obvious sketch and I don't believe the devs will actually carry it over all the way to v1.0.0. I'm pretty sure it will either be replaced or removed.



But overall, I still like SuperTux, mostly because of all the community levels.

And to be honest, I don't really take the graphical stuff TOO serious. The physical complaints are real, however.

What about climbable surfaces? Well, the problem is basically that Tux can “overshoot” with walking, causing him to fall off. If you press up too long, you fall off. VERY annoying. So my idea is to make it impossible to fall off climbables. If you "walk" too far on a climbable, Tux should just refuse to move further. Instead, require the Jump key to be pressed.

I Agree. Its Pretty Annoying, Plus Sometimes You Have To Spam Space And Up Key.

But my actual problem with the forest is … that there is a forest world. I like Tux to live and run in the antarctic.

I Get Your Problem, And I Get That You Want Him To Live In Ice Biomes, But I Don't Really Like Being In Ice Levels.
They Are Annoying As Hell, Because You Don't Have Much Control Over Them. I Don't Think Its Bad That There's A Forest World.
Plus, Its A Video Game. It Doesn't Have To Make Sense.

Why remove wind? Well, I don't see what it adds, really.

Uhm, Ask The Devs. I Think Its Fine As It Is.

Well Thats Everything Im Going To Say.
-Some Regards, KiyanTheBluePenguin

Aaaaaghhhh please stooop!! Your capitalizing every word is even worse than all-caps.

Aaaaaghhhh please stooop!! Your capitalizing every word is even worse than all-caps.

Excuse Me, sorry. I just do it.

Nitpicking time!

• There's no page or wiki to keep track of development (lethargik.org is dead and unreliable to host apparently, FreeGameDev, IRC and Discord feel more like chat platforms than a way for people to keep track of things). I often find it hard to keep track of what needs doing and what direction the game is headed in, ideas are easy to get lost in a sea of other messages and it feels unorganized.
  
  
• Barely anyone knows how to contribute. I myself am not familiar with C++ or Git and making art that looks close to the game's style takes literal ages to get good at, GIMP is an image manipulation tool that happens to be able to produce art if you have a drawing tablet, and even if you have both of those it takes forever to make something that looks close to the original style let alone something presentable. There should be a better art guide than a simple shading/tiling tutorial from 12 years ago on a dead wiki.
  
  
• What's this google images city background doing in a ghost forest level? Where'd consistency control go? (I do like the new trees though, those are great)
  
  

  

  
  
• I'm not a huge fan of the new music. It sounds alright but it feels way too ambient, uncorrelated music loops come in and out at seemingly random, the tracks sound too slow to feel like they're driving the player forward, and there's no new melodies in them, it's all just existing ones played through something like a xylophone at half the speed. Would be good for some sort of background music but doesn't feel like level music.
  
  
• Everyone has random ideas for the game that don't match each other and there's no attempt to get people to contribute to the main game. There's a large disconnect between the majority of what gets suggested and what actually makes it in game, and most of the stuff that does make it ends up not being the most crazy of additions (suicide button, bugfixes, a couple new levels). Not saying there's anything wrong with those, but there seems to be a lack of ambition, things like interesting new enemies, mechanics or bosses, and there's no to-do list or contributing guide to make a community effort to integrate any new ideas. All the new changes feel like adjustments and bugfixes, not new ideas.
  
  I'd love to see the planned "reworked boss fights, graphics, and worlds" for hopefully 0.7.0 but I feel like the extent of the changes will just be optimizations and tweaks. I guess there's a limit to what can be done in purely spare time, maybe I'm being too unrealistic with my expectations, but if that's the case how'd anything get here in the first place? Surely there would've been co-ordination to develop a new engine and gimmicks like lanterns and carry blocks and springs, where'd that go?
  
  What's here is great, the game is fun and controls well, the levels are fairly balanced and enjoyable to play, but I sure wish there were more things to play around with, ideas and mechanics and bosses and whatnot.

What about the ghoul, altzer?
That background... maybe that should used for industrial levels instead...