Mega Man 42 has been out for four days and has now surpassed 1000 downloads. It feels very nice that so many people want to try my game out. The vast majority of the downloads has come from our Indiedb entry, and most of those after the game's mention on At7addak.com. That's the fun part out of the way. Now comes the serious time.
When you make a fan game like this, you get a lot for free. People want to play your game because they like Mega Man games. But there is a flipside to that coin. There are people out there who will look very closely for the tiniest flaw on your game, even though I've never claimed that MM42 is 100 percent true to an NES Mega Man engine. This is the first real game I make in GameMaker and I don't have the skill set to do something like a perfect engine (read: to romhack a Mega Man game and extract the values from said game). The main critisism against the game has been that the jump mechanism doesn't work like in the commercial Mega Man games.
I've made a video where I compare the jump in the game side-by-side to the jump in Mega Man 1. When you look at the video, have in mind that there are people out there who take it as a personal insult that the jump doesn't work exactly like in the commercial Mega Man games. If that isn't worrying, I don't know what is.
Even though I tried to get the jump as close to the real thing as possible, I'm not a perfect person and it IS a little bit flawed. I have a list of bugs and other things to correct for version 1.1, and the jump is high on that list. I want to make a point though, that in my opinion you can still enjoy the game for what it is even though it's not completely true to the commercial games. Point in case: The Gameboy Mega Man games.
The GB Mega Man games' physics engine and jump is completely different from the NES games, but they are still very enjoyable. I recently bought all five on Ebay and played them through. If you count out MM42 on the principle that the jump is faulty, you should also count out the GB games, in which case I think it's just your loss. Furthermore, another fan game called Mega Man Rocks has a jump that isn't anywhere near the commercial games, you jump way too high. But it's still a fine game, and an accepted fan game.
I'm sure this post will not make the critics silence their voices, but at least you have my stance on this debacle. Enjoy the game for what it is, if perfect replication is what you're out for, play another game. I was going to say "play another fan game", but there is no such thing as a fan game that plays exactly like the real Mega Man games.
I think you may have missed the point of some people's criticisms. I for example pointed out that your jump doesn't make any sense in terms of physics. I am unsure if you are pointing me out, an experienced programmer and scientist who is also making one of the more popular fan games to be released hopefully later this year or early next year. I agree that people shouldn't nitpick over senseless things but core movement mechanics are something key to the gameplay and are worthwhile to bring up. It is quite a bit more different than somebody mocking a sprite for not being the same as in the official games. When a jump isn't working properly, it is more of a platforming game issue, not a Mega Man fan game issue.
SvaraRaderaLet me point out precisely what is wrong with the jump and how you can fix it as I am very familiar with GM as I have used it for maybe 8 years.
1) The acceleration is backwards in your jump code. You can set vspeed to be a negative amount to represent the jump speed vertically, then simply let the gravity variable that is built into every GM object come into effect. This works fine enough to get a jump working.
2) Set a boolean variable along with this to tell the object that it is done jumping and has landed. I find programming in GML similar to programming in C by using lots of flag local variables.
Now, you are entitled to your opinion, but people such as myself have indeed pointed out something incorrect about the jump. It would be ridiculous for you not as the creator of the game comment on it from a factual stance. Your jump mechanics are not even valid for a platforming game unless you assumed MM and Roll have rocket boosters on the bottoms of their feet. It causes the game to be harder to play since in any platforming game, there is some expectation to how the game should flow. Jumping is a fundamental part to a platformer, so I recommend maybe reconsidering your opinion on how the jump is working. I even looked at your video and it seemed to support my rationale as the two were not even like eachother (at all).
Consider this advice from an experienced programmer who does lots of fan game-like programming.
Have a beautiful day!
-DRP
Creator of MME.
No, I'm not pointing you out specifically, I remember you pointing out that the game reminded you of Mega Man DOS which I'm sure you've played many times, an enjoyable game as it is, and also that you took time out of your busy schedule to play an entire stage of my game before judging as thrash, which I think is big of you. I don't remember you saying anything about the jump though. but since you've taken the time to comment I'll respond.
SvaraRaderaI think the fact that you present yourself as a scientist, and as the creator of a popular fan game tells a lot about who you are as a person. I have no idea who you are, I've never heard of your fan game despite being involved in the community for months, and to be fair I think you being a scientist or a fan game creator doesn't give you license to bash my or any other person's games. This is my first game I've ever done in GameMaker, do you honestly think that it's expected to be absolutely perfect from the get go? If so I think you have unrealistic expectations.
The problem with your example is that the jump in the Mega Man games is variable depending on how long you hold down the button. It works fine for a game that only has one jump height, but that's not how the Mega Man games work. So you need the jump to continue for as long as the player holds the button in. I'm surprised you as a scientist, experienced programmer, cretor of the most popular fan game ever, and God knows what else, are not familiar with this. I'm not sure what you mean with rocket boosters, but indeed Mega Man *does* have rocket boosters under his feet, look at any official picture of him if you don't believe me.
I keep reading about how off the jump physics are, but I think in 1.1 you've done a good job with them. Honestly, the physics are far worse in my opinion in the Gameboy entries in the series, if for nothing else than because "lag" in the GB games made you stay in the air longer and you could potentially get hurt more because of this. In this game, the only criticism I have with the engine itself is I think the animations are a bit smoother than they were on the NES, which tricks my eyes a bit. But that's okay. Some of the graphics/music could use work or seem out of place, but that's also a minor grumble.
SvaraRaderaI like the game, in the end. I'd even rate it around a "B" or "B-," which are good scores coming from me. I like it enough that I may feature it in a live-stream on Twitch or a Let's Play on YouTube.
I'm interested to see you do a sequel one day, but I also like your other 8-bit project. It reminds me of a cross between Zelda II and Castlevania, like 8 Eyes or something. :)