Trickster
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I conquered the first level and have some comments. For lack of a better place to put them, I'm putting them here as some of them may well be bugs.

1) Cinders seem to linger forever on the screen. These should probably be shortened a bit.

2) I don't suppose this is fixable, but movement is sticky. I have to wait about a half-second longer than I should after pressing and holding a key before the game interprets this as "repeat the action".

3) The 1st place score is given for 2nd place, unless we're changing that for FDROD. I don't think we are because it still reports 2nd as 3rd when there are multiple 1st ties, and I'm getting the double shout poles !! when I finally match mxvladi's obscene scores.

4) The "here's what a secret room is" message doesn't come the first time you hit a secret room. It comes only when you hit the first secret room (which is not every user's first secret to discover). I think the former is preferable. Putting an identical script with a blocking hasFoundASecret var in all three secrets in Level 1 would make me happy (though I'm pretty anal about things so I would probably drop them into 2 as well).

5) Can I haz trn ctr plz? Kthxbai.

6) Users are going to be frustrated that after discovering they got 12th place, they can't simply restore from the ESC menu to try the room again. "Restore to a different room" needs to be an option from the in-game menu. You might even want a quick option of "restore to start of previous room". Otherwise it's going to be annoying to optimize without constant checking.

7) FDROD needs its own board for this, would you agree...? Maybe "FDROD bugs and suggestions", if it's not big enough for multiple boards...

8) I had another important thing to say but I forgot. I'll play FDROD more later this week and hopefully remember.

9) Love the achievements. This is Gaming Done Properly.

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Trickster
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Ah! I remember now. RoboBob3000's similar comment on this topic triggered the memory.

8) Rooms that don't record high score should say so. "No high scores for this room yet," is what it currently tells you. If a room has no enemies or challenge token, or if someone has a one-move score, it should ideally show up as, "This room is not scorable."

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RoboBob3000
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Re: #5

F3, I believe it is, toggles the turn counter. I did have a problem with this in IE, though, since in my experience the browser captures the function keys (and Tab), instead of the swf. I also tested this out on Firefox, but Firefox handles it well.

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12th Archivist
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Did either of you read the controls? One of the commands is

Shift+Move/Turn sword - Do the action and its opposite

Ctrl-stuff is replaced by Shift-stuff in FDROD, probably because many Ctrl commands affect the browser, even if the game has focus.

EDIT: Now, if Shift-stuff *fails* to work for you, then that is a different problem altogether.

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[Last edited by 12th Archivist at 06-17-2012 06:35 PM]

RoboBob3000
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Ah - confusion. Turn counter, as in move counter, is what we're talking about. Not the command that does the move "counter" to a turn.

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Jatopian
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If the turn counter key does indeed not work well for all browsers, I say it should be changed.

Trickster wrote: 2) I don't suppose this is fixable, but movement is sticky. I have to wait about a half-second longer than I should after pressing and holding a key before the game interprets this as "repeat the action".

I feel this is a valid criticism, but apparently someone out there really likes the awkward feel. See here for a possible compromise idea.

4) The "here's what a secret room is" message doesn't come the first time you hit a secret room. It comes only when you hit the first secret room (which is not every user's first secret to discover). I think the former is preferable. Putting an identical script with a blocking hasFoundASecret var in all three secrets in Level 1 would make me happy (though I'm pretty anal about things so I would probably drop them into 2 as well).

Honestly, if we do this at all we should probably do it for every secret room. I doubt it would be hard to do it for all if we can do it for more than one. I would not be opposed to this idea (actually, I could've sworn we discussed it).

6) Users are going to be frustrated that after discovering they got 12th place, they can't simply restore from the ESC menu to try the room again. "Restore to a different room" needs to be an option from the in-game menu. You might even want a quick option of "restore to start of previous room". Otherwise it's going to be annoying to optimize without constant checking.

I'm no optimizer, but this sounds valid.

7) FDROD needs its own board for this, would you agree...? Maybe "FDROD bugs and suggestions", if it's not big enough for multiple boards...

Eh... maybe. I expect the suggestions to be much fewer after this initial rush though, since there will only be hold and room design to criticize once the engine has undergone scrutiny.

9) Love the achievements. This is Gaming Done Properly.

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skell
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Trickster wrote:
1) Cinders seem to linger forever on the screen. These should probably be shortened a bit.

Sure, fixed in 1.02

2) I don't suppose this is fixable, but movement is sticky. I have to wait about a half-second longer than I should after pressing and holding a key before the game interprets this as "repeat the action".

I have explained this already in our private boards, but let me explain this issue again. The repeat rate and the delay between pressing the key and it repeating itself is dependant on your operating system's settings. In any windows, in the control pane, under Keyboard you can find find two sliders: repeat rate and repeat delay. It's all o/s specific. Sure, it is not impossible for me to code it differently, but it is not very trivial in current engine and very bothersome to actually code. I think I'd rather rewrite the pathmapping from the scratch than do this. If it is really a big problem to many people then yes, I can change it but I'd rather not do.

3) The 1st place score is given for 2nd place, unless we're changing that for FDROD. I don't think we are because it still reports 2nd as 3rd when there are multiple 1st ties, and I'm getting the double shout poles !! when I finally match mxvladi's obscene scores.

Erm, I think you are trying to say the same thing as Robobob reported but in a way confusing to me. I should post 1.02 today so check then if it has resolved your issues.

4) The "here's what a secret room is" message doesn't come the first time you hit a secret room. It comes only when you hit the first secret room (which is not every user's first secret to discover). I think the former is preferable. Putting an identical script with a blocking hasFoundASecret var in all three secrets in Level 1 would make me happy (though I'm pretty anal about things so I would probably drop them into 2 as well).

We probably could put it in every secret room but it would increase the file size a bit (at least I think so, the sound files most likely would be stored multiple times). It's not an issue, the first secret room is very clearly marked and I really don't want to change the hold files from now on.

6) Users are going to be frustrated that after discovering they got 12th place, they can't simply restore from the ESC menu to try the room again. "Restore to a different room" needs to be an option from the in-game menu. You might even want a quick option of "restore to start of previous room". Otherwise it's going to be annoying to optimize without constant checking.

Sure, sound reasonable. Added in 1.02

7) FDROD needs its own board for this, would you agree...? Maybe "FDROD bugs and suggestions", if it's not big enough for multiple boards...

Don't think so. A month from now I am pretty sure there won't be any bug reports.

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[Last edited by skell at 06-18-2012 02:15 PM]

Briareos
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skell wrote:
Don't think so. A month from now I am pretty sure there won't be any bug reports.

Famous last words...

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Moo
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Can't the secret room thing be "hardcoded" rather than scripted into each room?

skell
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Moo wrote:
Can't the secret room thing be "hardcoded" rather than scripted into each room?

It's not as easy as it might seem and I am not sure of the benefit.

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slimm tom
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skell wrote:
I have explained this already in our private boards, but let me explain this issue again. The repeat rate and the delay between pressing the key and it repeating itself is dependant on your operating system's settings. In any windows, in the control pane, under Keyboard you can find find two sliders: repeat rate and repeat delay. It's all o/s specific. Sure, it is not impossible for me to code it differently, but it is not very trivial in current engine and very bothersome to actually code. I think I'd rather rewrite the pathmapping from the scratch than do this. If it is really a big problem to many people then yes, I can change it but I'd rather not do.

If this is OS-dependent, how come the delay in regular DROD is noticably shorter than in Flash DROD? Is that hardcoded then?

skell
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slimm tom wrote:
If this is OS-dependent, how come the delay in regular DROD is noticably shorter than in Flash DROD? Is that hardcoded then?

Regular DROD probably does it by themselves. As I said, I can also do that but it's very bothersome.

To explain how it works. Flash can detect two keyboard events - Key Down (when you hold down a key) and Key Up (When you release a key). If you hold down a key and hold it for a long time without hitting any other in the meantime, the operating system will start sending the Key Down event in succession. Open up notepad, and hold down "a". Every time the letter appears the operating system sent a Key Down event, and DROD reacts only to the Key Down event. That's pretty much it.

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Trickster
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RoboBob3000 wrote:
Re: #5

F3, I believe it is, toggles the turn counter. I did have a problem with this in IE, though, since in my experience the browser captures the function keys (and Tab), instead of the swf. I also tested this out on Firefox, but Firefox handles it well.

It works fine on Chrome.

I'm just an idiot. I looked through the command list three times and my brain skipped right over that line.

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Trickster
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skell wrote:
I have explained this already in our private boards, but let me explain this issue again. The repeat rate and the delay between pressing the key and it repeating itself is dependant on your operating system's settings. In any windows, in the control pane, under Keyboard you can find find two sliders: repeat rate and repeat delay. It's all o/s specific.

If that's the case, how does DROD pick up on key repeat five times faster than FDROD does? Is it because it's bypassing some layer of OS control?

skell wrote:
Erm, I think you are trying to say the same thing as Robobob reported but in a way confusing to me.

Yes. Though, for the record: trying applies only to say, not to confusing.

skell wrote:
We probably could put it in every secret room but it would increase the file size a bit (at least I think so, the sound files most likely would be stored multiple times). It's not an issue, the first secret room is very clearly marked and I really don't want to change the hold files from now on.

Well, just so you know...I'm great at finding secrets and I walked right by it. This is possibly because I've played KDD so many times and I was too preoccupied with dropping my move count that I didn't think to check there. My brain registered it as "something in the alcove, probably to save you from roaches, don't go there or you'll miss the achievement" and I forgot about it entirely. The only reason I went back and discovered it was I replayed through the hold to get the no-turning achievement.

I'm weird, though (I believe I have already established this ad nauseum). I agree it's a minor concern at best, but I try to nitpick to be thorough. Don't take any of my comments to imply a dire need, because FDROD works amazingly well IMO. If it would be simple to add the secret note to the three secret rooms, that would be nice...but not at the cost of significant file size increases.

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[Last edited by Trickster at 06-17-2012 09:50 PM]

Moo
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The first secret room someone finds may be on level 3 or something though... Especially if breakable walls haven't been introduced specifically or needed in order to complete rooms.

Trickster
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Moo wrote:
The first secret room someone finds may be on level 3 or something though... Especially if breakable walls haven't been introduced specifically or needed in order to complete rooms.

It'd be nice to know for certain, but it seems unlikely to me that someone wouldn't notice secrets until then. I'm sort of a completionist though, so I'm not the best judge. Someone new to the game might think a broken wall at an edge is just a mistake, not a path to another room.

One trivial way to fix this would be to force the player to find the first secret. As in, have the secret be the only way to exit the room (just removing that orb would work). It's not much of a "secret" in that sense, but as the first one I don't think it's a bad idea.

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Jatopian
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That might be a good way to force it, except we don't introduce broken walls. We could make it a not-secret secret, like some of the rooms in that one GatEB swamp level. No secret wall, just a green door on the left.

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Moo
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How about an achievement (early in the list) for "find the secret in Level 1 2E" or whatever? And the icon could be a crumbly wall or something.

Trickster
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Jatopian wrote:
That might be a good way to force it, except we don't introduce broken walls. We could make it a not-secret secret, like some of the rooms in that one GatEB swamp level. No secret wall, just a green door on the left.

It might be a good time to introduce broken and secret walls then, no?

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TripleM
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For what it's worth, the repeat-rate issue was the biggest problem I noticed when playing too. Took so long to repeat, in most cases I ended up tapping the key a large number of times quickly, as that turned out faster than holding it down.

Jatopian
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Trickster wrote: It might be a good time to introduce broken and secret walls then, no?

I guess. We've avoided adding or changing text after it went to translators and voice actor (singular), but I have suspected it would turn out to be necessary. After KDDL is completed through pack 6, I think we're just going to have to ditch the multiple languages idea. Either that or stick to translators that check the forum daily, but I think everyone's afraid of annoying the translators with a slew of last-minute text changes that would otherwise be no big deal.

Broken wall is pretty simple, but we might as well introduce it with secret wall, because secret wall isn't.

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Trickster
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TripleM wrote:
For what it's worth, the repeat-rate issue was the biggest problem I noticed when playing too. Took so long to repeat, in most cases I ended up tapping the key a large number of times quickly, as that turned out faster than holding it down.

Same experience here, at least initially. You have to change your typing style to compensate (like, you no longer hold down for fewer than six or seven moves because it's faster to type them separately). I'll probably get used to it but I'm not certain why it differs from DROD (but suspect this is because I don't program in Flash).

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skell
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Trickster wrote:
I'll probably get used to it but I'm not certain why it differs from DROD (but suspect this is because I don't program in Flash).

Meh, I think I have explained it twice properly - it's not that it is impossible to change (right now we are just using the o/s settings), but that because of the way the code is structured it is not something very trivial to do. Since it does seem people are bothered by it, I will obviously change it .

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TripleM
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For what it's worth, part 2 - now that I've finished the second episode, I'm used to it now. Just took a little while to adapt, but the audience isn't people who are used to the non-flash games, and if it's not a simple change I don't think its worth changing it.

PS - Skell, this game is totally awesome.

Trickster
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TripleM wrote:
For what it's worth, part 2 - now that I've finished the second episode, I'm used to it now. Just took a little while to adapt, but the audience isn't people who are used to the non-flash games, and if it's not a simple change I don't think its worth changing it.

PS - Skell, this game is totally awesome.

I agree with all of the above. As I said, "I'll probably get used to it", so it may not be a problem at all (though not ideal).

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skell
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Well hey, new version posted, it is changed .

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