Todo the Tea-Mouse - Prototype 1

[davidn]

For a few weeks now, I've been saying that I'll put something playable of Todo up, but I just never got it into a position where it felt remotely presentable, even with the caveat that this was not complete work. However, tonight I think I've got it to a pretty good place to call a first prototype - most of the interface works and you can complete a task, so you can see the rough mechanics of the game. Have a go at this!


http://www.clickteam.info/davidn/games/todo/zip/todoprototype1.zip
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to acquire a "PipeBit" (which you can't use yet) and collect all 71 available Quest Points. Use the arrow keys with X to jump, and Up to interact with things - Q brings up the menu. You'll find that the game has some holes of varying degrees of hilarity and you have a couple of abilities which you won't really have from the start of the game, but feel free to poke around and do the unexpected - you may be surprised at what I've thought of (or more likely what I haven't).

It may seem slightly disappointing that I've been working on this for a few weeks to achieve roughly three minutes of gameplay, but so much of that time has gone into the backend - taking the base Crystal Towers 2 engine (which you'll see evidence of) and doing it... right. I've grown to love the Hatogate scripting engine as it grows more and more into what the game needs it to do - the game is pretty easy to expand now, and the game so far serves as a decent showcase of what it can do in terms of interacting with objects and characters. The scripts and rooms are all plain text in the "rooms" folder, so you can open them up and fiddle around with them if you like. Best of luck with that.

I haven't been as pleased with my game creation in a long time!

Comments

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

This is really charming! I can see the Dizzy influences already (along with a touch of Okami when you get to cross things off your list with a big horizontal swipe), but it's really... sweet, right from the more peaceful music down to the Green Hill Zone feel to the place you're in. I can see some of the leftovers from CT2 (Todo drops gems when he gets hit by the snails, for example), but that's cool; is there going to be an equivalent for dropping QP or items or something when hit, or is he going to get a health bar like Bernard? Or, alternatively, to keep the more peaceful feel of it, is he going to be invulnerable, but enemies just knock you off platforms or cause similarly annoying effects and make your quest harder?

I found a bug, as well; the way the grab-the-wall grass is positioned next to Mister Ringtail's key, it's possible to jump up and on top of the wall at the edge of the level, then walk left and fall off it and all the way down to the bottom and die from falling off the screen; that's not so much the bug as it is me being a dick and screwing around with the system, but when the scene resets, it doesn't reset your accumulated QP total, meaning that on my first run I scored 91 out of 71 quest points. :P

I'm intrigued by the possibilities of the 'Aladdin's Cave' of teapots halfway down the hill; I keep thinking that if I can get in there, there'll be a Tea Genie or something in one of them. (It's not quite a lamp, but in this housing market, what're you gonna do? :P)

Awesome stuff - loving it so far!

D.F.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Oh~ To-do is a bad pun!!! DX


I think the character is a bit too agile when performing aerial acrobatics. His land based movements seems fitting for a monk, though. Monks are only allowed to move quickly if they are from Asia.

I seemed to have encounted a glitch where, after opening the inventory to no purpose, and then closing it; attempting to open it again locks the controls for several seconds, and does not open the menu or anything.

Is David N from England? Yes, yes he is.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Also: will the main character ever has a sword? =3

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

The Cavern of Teapots reminds me of an Eternal Darkness sanity effect...

I'll note for my playthrough (which, right after posting it on my Tumblr, I then played it!), that I noticed a bit of screen tearing when the screen scrolled in any direction. I don't remember that happening in Crystal Towers 2, so I figured I'd bring it to your attention.

I also noticed that heading to the screen to the right to Todo's house and heading left from Ringtail's house just repeated the same screen. I'm sure that will be expanded upon later :)

Wonderful game, I'm surprised how much you've made already! So you've put two engines together, as it were?

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

OK, to start I'll reiterate the stuff I mentioned on IM:
- jumping is lovely, especially with that animation<3
- jumping/landing sounds are a bit aggressive for my taste
- text voices and text 'slowing' system are charming
- the font itself is rasterized entirely too blurry
- todo's depth-sorting with regard to the walls

and on to new things:
- The music is lovely! :D
- The camera movement's is much too swift and abrupt for me (I felt the same way about CT2). The camera needs some inertia/momentum (i.e. acceleration) to smooth out its movements, so it's less distracting. (If only vertically; todo's horizontal speed is slight enough that it's not really noticeable, but with such a rapid jump I feel like the camera is always being jerked around.)
- It's a bit odd to have the 'investigate' button make the camera jerk if there's nothing to investigate, come to think of it (although a slower camera acceleration might mitigate that anyway.)
- Hill Y position should be based around the center of the character's sprite, not their edge -- Todo's robe looks a bit odd flying out into space ;) Same for the snails...
- Needing to select the correct quest item from a menu seems needlessly archaic, compared to the character just recognizing that it's in your inventory the next time you speak to them.... (but, I could be convinced that you should keep it in, if you plan to have humorous responses to each wrong item attempt ;P)
- Similarly, it felt a bit weird to have to manually pick up the key, but I could see it being more natural if it were hanging on something, rather than floating in air like pickups do.
- Maybe collectable things could have a flicker/glow? I almost didn't notice the pipe... (Or is identifying them in context meant to be part of the game, as in adventure games?)

Augh! Comment length!

[budgiebin.livejournal.com]

I still vote for Teapot Rattmann. Just strange little inaccessible teapot caverns in every level that has something strange in it sometimes, until you eventually find the person responsible and you discover why they're there.

EDIT: maybe the teapot caverns themselves give you a clue to their creator :D