thanks everyone for the feedback.

beta closed for now. will be back later.

It doesn't suck, but the controls do need some work. My husband and I noticed the jumping mechanism is very difficult to do while maintaining forward motion (i.e. old-school Castlevania jumping). Much of that issue stems from the lack of space for two fingers (which was the only way I could try to jump and move forward) on the d-pad. The Roku 3 has A and B buttons that would work well for the jumping mechanism (and I'm sure that other Roku remotes might have other alternate buttons that could be used as a jump mechanism or an accelerometer in the remote that could be used for the forward momentum). This game uses a ball character, which is more likely to have the consistent momentum of ball physics, but the jumping mechanism is very much like Simon Belmont in the first three Castlevania games, which don't lend itself well to a ball character in a Mario-style universe. An actual jump button can better control the ball physics and make the game more enjoyable. Another idea is the one I mentioned earlier, an accelerometer for forward momentum. It's actually a very good, no-frills platformer. It's just the controls (and limitations of the Roku remote on earlier models) need some refinement. Thanks for allowing my husband and me to beta test your game.

thanks!

unfortunately, roku only allows one remote button press at a time in their development language brightscript. ...so this can't be changed, at least not by me. They also don't give us access to the accelerometer, so even though that would be frickin awesome to play with (jump by moving the remote up? ) we can't do that either. Only channels developed in third party languages can do these things.

The good news is that once you get used to the controls, they are very easy, even with that limitation. You just have to train your fingers to work in single button mode. A bit unconventionl at first, since the traditional control would be just hammer down on the right button and jump when needed, but once you get into that mindset of the ball, you can only go one direction at a time, it works.

I'll see if I can put something in the tutorial level to help people more easily use the control system.

Thanks again for your feedback!
Please let me know if you think of anything else!

what are the stars for?In Mario they created a "super" state but could not figure out what they did in this game -- also I never could find the "secret" levels --- As a start tho the game is impressive

The stars are free lives, and they are the secrets, so if you get one you get a 500 point bonus (I think) at the end of the level and it will tell you that you got the secret. (they are secrets because they generally require some extra effort to find the way to get them.)

Once more levels come into play, these free lives will be a lot more important if you want to get to the end.

Nice start! An option to hold the remote horizontally would be welcomed, and possibly an option to map the UP arrow to the A or B button on the gaming remote. I found pressing UP to jump a little awkward, and spent about 15 minutes on the stairs in the first level..

Played the 1st 2 levels, seems fine to me.

TheEndless wrote:

Nice start! An option to hold the remote horizontally would be welcomed, and possibly an option to map the UP arrow to the A or B button on the gaming remote. I found pressing UP to jump a little awkward, and spent about 15 minutes on the stairs in the first level..

Thanks Endless.

I agree. in fact, I've put it in... twice. The game had horizontal remote support at first, but I had to take it out. Then, months later I thought, I should put that back in. And I did, ...then I quickly remembered why I took it out.


The big problem comes right back to the bs limitation of single button presses. I don't think there is much chance of that changing in the near future, so we have to work around it.

When the remote is horizontal, you want to use it like a game remote, which makes sense. hold the remote in 2 hands, and hit the jump button with your right thumb, and control the movement with your left thumb. We've all used game controllers before, and that's just how they work. We are used to that. Now, with the bs limitation of a single button press, it gets complicated. If you press right to go right, no problem. Then you press "A" to jump. Also no problem. But then you a problem because pressing "A" closed out the right button, and you are no longer moving right even though you are still holding that button down. So every time you hit jump with your right hand, you have to release and hit right again with your left hand or you stop. Back and forth and back and forth. It's really awkward and difficult. In contrast, when you hold the remote in one hand, like you normally hold a remote, you are already used to using just one finger, move up, move right, move down, blip blip blip. one finger, so one button at a time no problem. I understand it still takes some getting used to (As this thread is pointing out to me!) but it's actually much more intuitive, even though it's different than we are used to in nearly every platformer in history. (ug, I know)

I'm probably not explaining it very well, but please know that a lot of testing and thought did go into removing the horizontal remote option (twice).

I appreciate your feedback and will add another big checkmark to the item about making the controls easier to understand and use.


Thanks again!

and thanks Lion!

I just tested the training level and the first couple levels on Roku HD 2500X (on an old tube TV)
- Great game, well done so far, looks professional
- I love that you programmed a direction pad graphic to record your exact input for the Tutorial, brilliant!
- When I got the first secret, I also tried hopping around on way out and got "stuck" a couple times
- I really have to agree with previous posts that I want a separate control. I'm very familiar with the remote one-button limitation, but I think training myself to let go of Right to press jump and vice-versa would be a whole lot easier and more comfortable than having to move my thumb back and forth from Right to Up. I'm a pretty good gamer and yet it just kept tripping me up and and felt frustrating and unnecessary. What I want it to be able to keep my thumb hovering over the direction pad to mainly just use Right and Left, and keep my other thumb hovering over the jump button. Ideally I could map my buttons as I wish, so depending on which buttons I have on my remote I'll always be able to pick something that works for me.
- Twilight secret - I want some little subtle graphical hint where the hidden platforms are going to be over those spikes. I lost all my lives "testing" locations I thought were reasonable.
- Everything seemed to fit within the screen even with a lot of overscan on this old TV
- I love the music and the level themes, very nice.
- Performance was a little weak sometimes, but never bad, and this is the wimpiest Roku supported at this point, so it's okay I think.

Also tested on Roku 2 XS
- Noticed that it can overlap the SFX due to the max simultaneous channels being 2, so when I press OK the little "woohoo!" sound overlaps the bouncing instead of the bouncing always cutting it off like it did on my 2500, nice.

Thanks for the great feedback Komag!


Since both you and Endless would want the sideways control I just made a new cut with that in there. Update your system to get the new cut. On the main menu, press Star to get the "sideways remote test" mode, it will be written in the top corner.


I find it REALLY hard to use it that way, but I'm curious how you will feel. Please try it and let me know!

Sideways control works...no problems.

lion7718 wrote:

Sideways control works...no problems.

It is better... but, OK button for jump would be even better.

I tried it out - interesting how hard it is to fully press and release jump before pressing direction again - I want to do it faster but must have very clear distinctions. Ultimately I got better at it, then tried just using the direction pad alone (with remote still sideways), and that was the best of all for me! I'm not sure exactly why, just something to do with the leverage of the remote in my hand that way.

So my main conclusion is that you're right, I found that not using A and just using the directions was easier to control, since having distinct enough button presses "took care of itself" so to speak.

Would be fun to get a point bonus for jumping very high into the warp hole at the end And might be cool to get a multi-bounce bonus if I eliminate multiple enemies on successive bounces.

I played it on my Roku stick.. Performance was fine but I got impatient with the controls after the first level, and turned it off. Otherwise I could see it being a fun mario-ish game.

Thanks for your reply. My wife was the poster in the original post. I found myself constantly jumping and moving forward as need be, which worked at times and failed me at others. I could do this because of my "big honkin' man thumbs" as my wife calls them, but her thumbs were much to small to do it with any finesse. As we were working through the 1st post we did wonder if the controls were a limitation of the Roku as a gaming device, and now we know that is the case. Does seem weird they have the classic controller style remote, but no ability to have multi-button input.