Caustic [SE Beta 9] [A99E] (Postponed)

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Qwerbey
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Post » 13 Nov 2017, 00:50

Image You have been captured! The guards found you sneaking about the forest, and promptly arrested you for possible treasonous behavior. As they toss you into a small dugout, you see a couple of pale, bulbous creatures leaving a trail of purple sludge that smells like a gastroenterologist's worst nightmare. One of the guards swipes one of its tentacles against a ramshackle wooden door in the dugout, closing it and locking you in. It's been a while since then...

Screenshots
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Not all of these are in the mappack demo; in fact, most of them aren't.
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Features
  • Puzzling platforming and portalling gameplay
  • Five levels of terror
  • All new enemies custom-built for the mappack
  • Beautiful tiles and graphics
Notice
This is not a final product. It's more of a proof-of-concept, and as such, has not been thoroughly playtested. That said, I did still try to make it fun and polished, but don't be afraid report any bugs, errors, or other grievances, just keep the mappack's current state in mind.

Download
Demo
A99E Port
Last edited by Qwerbey on 11 Apr 2020, 18:23, edited 4 times in total.

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MagicPillow
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Post » 13 Nov 2017, 01:57

I've been playing through it, and so far it's pretty great!
I did have a couple of problems, though:
-The area of light in 0-1 was too small to see anything going backwards.
-It took me a while to realize I could go through the tree trunk. Not sure if that was just me being stupid, or if it could've been more obvious.
-It was kind of hard to tell which blocks were and weren't portalable in 1-2 and 1-3
- The boss in 1-4 appeared really quickly and killed me. It's not too big of an issue, since there's infinite lives and all, but I thought I'd mention it. 
- I was kinda confused as to why the guard in 2-0 wasn't trying to arrest me. 
Aside from those small issues, I had a really fun time! I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the map has in store.

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Qwerbey
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Post » 13 Nov 2017, 03:28

Duly noted.

As for the final point, there is a reason, but it's not stated very directly. You can probably take a guess with what's there already, but it will become more obvious in the full version. Keep in mind that the plot is going to stay cryptic as hell.

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Sky
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Post » 13 Nov 2017, 05:13

Hi this demo is excellent and I love it, please make more
  • Pixel artwork is very well-made! The details are subtle and refined, almost to a fault - it makes it difficult to tell between portalable and non-portalable tiles (as MagicPillow said) and fading vs. permanent trails, but it's easy on the eyes and has great style.
  • Puzzles are also very well-made! Plenty of uses for portals, and the trail mechanics are used in very creative ways.
  • With what little of the story there is here, I can already tell it'll be really good. Can't wait to see more!
  • I wouldn't be so bothered about navigating the dark in 0-1, especially since you did help out with the camera a bit... but I managed to trigger an earlier checkpoint and die, which made me have to re-do some of it >_>
  • Custom music volume is a bit too loud (Mari0 is a very quiet game).  The sudden boss encounter made me jump because HI IT'S MUSIC TIME 
  •  Speaking of the boss, I think if it were visible before entering the arena, that would make it less sudden while adding more tension and anticipation. Also, the second phase may be a bit too difficult - you have to act immediately or the ground is covered in death. 
  •  Is there a reason the demo ends on 11-17? That's a pretty specific number, almost like a date... 
  • Why is there even a testing room when there's like 3 things to do in it :v

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Qwerbey
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Post » 13 Nov 2017, 05:56

11-17 is just the current month and (truncated) year. I couldn't really think of anything good with little significance other than 0-0, which was already my debugging room (that I forgot to remove). As for the testing room, it was basically to see how many active enemies I could get away with at once. I've also managed to fix the checkpoint bug, thanks for letting me know about that! I'll also likely loosen up on the darkness, too, unless I remember why I added it. The rest I'll deal with a bit later. Thanks for your feedback!

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MagicPillow
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Post » 14 Nov 2017, 08:20

Oh, yeah. One more thing:
at that one level where you have to go down (I think it was the start of 1-3?), the screen doesn't move far enough to see the poison, potentially causing a death. If you added some fumes or something that would let you know there's poison below, it would fix that.

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Qwerbey
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Post » 05 Dec 2017, 18:46

New enemy:
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It stays burrowed in the ground and regularly spits in both directions.

Also shown is a new box sprite somewhat inspired by the underground sections in Portal 2. In fact, boxes will end up having more prominence, as all enemies can be killed with them. (though I never showed that in the demo, whoops)

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Skel3t
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Post » 06 Dec 2017, 15:48

I gotta try this out!

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Superjustinbros
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Post » 06 Dec 2017, 20:53

Well this is shaping up to be an interesting mappack.

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Qwerbey
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Post » 09 Jul 2018, 09:32

It's been a while, hasn't it? I recently restarted work on this mappack, and I've got a few facts for you.
  • Regarding length, I'm currently looking at 5 to 6 worlds
  • Worlds themselves will likely not be a consistent length, acting more like the chapters from Half-Life
  • A lot of things from the demo have either already been replaced or is on the list; level design being the only area largely unaffected
  • I'll port this mappack to Mari0 2 if when it's released, provided its feature set supports it, but that's a long enough ways off it's not worth seriously worring about

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Qwerbey
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Post » 04 Apr 2019, 05:54

Unfortunately, my computer broke around February, and the shop I sent it to get fixed lost some files, including my entire mappack folder. I'm not in a mood to recreate everything now, so instead I'll restart development on this mappack when Mari3 gets released, as I'd need to recreate everything for that game anyway. It's a sad turn of events, but that's just the cards life deals.

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Britdan
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Post » 04 Apr 2019, 13:42

QwertymanO07 wrote:Unfortunately, my computer broke around February, and the shop I sent it to get fixed lost some files, including my entire mappack folder. I'm not in a mood to recreate everything now, so instead I'll restart development on this mappack when Mari3 gets released, as I'd need to recreate everything for that game anyway. It's a sad turn of events, but that's just the cards life deals.
F

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Qwerbey
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Post » 11 Apr 2020, 16:25

I've recently ported the demo for Caustic to Alesan99's Entities V12B, so more people can play it. Like Accursed, this version includes a few changes, some to take advantage of new features, others were things that I had added after posting the original and had to remake for this, including an entirely new level!
caustic new screen.png
caustic new screen.png (12.74 KiB) Viewed 3734 times
EDIT: The mappack has been slightly updated to make slime snap to the grid in V12.1c
Caustic A99E.zip
(7.93 MiB) Downloaded 226 times

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