I leave here in the forums a copy of my entry to lowrezjam 2022, Aztec. Code ended up being really messy and there's a lot of things to fix/improve post-jam, but I thought it would be a nice addition to the BBS. It's multicart (has a loader companion) as I needed a bit of extra space in the main cartridge to fit everything.

aztec

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aztec

by slainte

Cart #aztec-1 | 2022-08-18 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

34

Tonatiuh, the Sun God is angry! The High Priest Tonauac has decided to invoke the Tanatiuh Cualo, the ritual that will eat the Sun God and placate his wrath, but to achieve it he needs the Jewel skulls to be placed in their right places in Tenochtitlan's Templo Mayor.

While he prepares for the ritual, he sends you, the Aztec prince Guatemoc, into the temple to search for the sacred skulls and place them in their pedestals. Beware the traps and misteries that protect the sacred grounds of the Temple!

Code, SFX & Art by SlainteES
Music & SFx by: VavMusicMagic

Find this game on itch: https://slaintees.itch.io/aztec

Issues and bugs to fix:

• Jumping whlie climbing continuously reattach you to the ladder if pressing a directional button
• Some issues with "top of a ladder" state detection can cause you to drop from the top of a ladder
• Some performance issues randomly due to suboptimal collision detection
• If dying mid-air ocassionally the game does not make you land before actually dying (rare to happen)
• Minor sync issues detecting activable objects (particularly Obsidian mirrors, that can be activated a bit earlier than they should)
• Some more (yes... those again...) ladder issues can end up pushing you inside walls... 1 bugreport so far, but a nasty one... (Really... who decided ladders are cool?)

Fixed Issues:

• Reset DX velocity to 0 before respawn, you could "move" while respawning because it was not set to 0

This is nice! Great soundtrack, and that 2x really helps to tie it together. When did you decide to "zoom in"? and why? I like it, I´m not through yet, but i enjoy it a lot.

This is really fun and it looks soooooo good! It always amazes me the things people can make in 2 weeks. Very nice job.

@taxicomics The 64x64 resolution is a mandatory restriction for lowrezjam :)

Glad you guys are enjoying it

good game, nice soundtrack and art, will add more things later?

This needs a massive refactor before moving forward and needs to go heavier into multicart I'm afraid... but yes, i think the project has potential for working more on it

Really excellent animation. I really didn't notice the 64x64 resolution when playing.

Hi @slainte. Jumping is a little tricky.

If you press jump twice quickly it jumps without hesitation.
If you jump and then press jump not so quickly, you are stuck on the ground for about 1/10th of a second, then you can jump again.

Pretty fun! the movement is a bit hard but the things like moving against a wall and jumping lets you hop just up to it is nice.
If I'm honest waiting (or maybe moving away not sure?) to prompt a save point else restarting is.. doesn't feel great? but other than that and some odd times with ladders it all came together good! I like the flame trap's sprite very cool

Very cool! I like these sorts of games.

@dredds Thank you for the comments... if you really did not notice it was 1/4th of the normal resolution I am much better than I thout at this XD

@dw817 Not sure if I depict what is happening there... Jump gets longer/higher if you keep the button pressed. The thing is if you get enough momentum you "land" a bit harder and crouch to absorb the impact, which requires a bit of recovery time... is that the case? I think it's one of the points I need to balance/polish around...

Thnx @profpatonildo, glad you liked it!

@SmellyFishstiks thank you for the feedback... Getting some fire around the checkpoints :P I might need to fine-tune those as well... and ladders? Who thought they were a good thing to add in a game? There's just so many things you can mess when implementing them... i guess your comment revolves around the auto-reattach happening when jumping while climbling?

Nice short game!

The puzzle is good though one of them puzzled me because it was mixed with other.
My biggest issue is jumping. I wish I could control momentum mid air more so I can position myself properly after jumping.

@slainte ya I think so. I was trying to recreate it (shown in .gif 2) and I also found out they let you survive death if you cling on to them! (I think I'm being pushed into the wall and it's shoving me to places it shouldn't? not sure)

@SmellyFishstiks the thing about surviving death has nothing to do with stairs... you had the obsidian mirror activated (see you had the mirror icon next to your life meter).

The other issue is because jumping up/down ladders is not correctly supported and also aligns you to the stairs to prevent colliding with the walls around it... Ladders are a pain in the a** :P

Thnx for the comments @Bloodbane A 2 weeks jam does not give you that much space for a "long" game, it was quite the miracle I could complete such a reasonably sized map. The mid-air control restriction is intentional... I wanted something in the spirit of old days platforming, not easy-peasy mario speedrunner platforming :)

Okay, so I got a ways in and then one of the deaths caused text to pop up and the cart to reset, instead of going back to a checkpoint. Was that supposed to happen?

yes @kimiyoribaka ... and it's one of the things I need to refine for post-lowrezjam version... checkpoints need to be reactivated in several situations:

• time: the mirrors remember briefly (that's the hint the voices of ancient lore give you)
• respawn/activation: the magic on the mirror gets depleted and they require some recharging time, so after a respawn you need to activate the mirror (waiting for it to be available) or find another one to activate... That's the mechanic I need to file out a bit

The art is beautiful, it makes such good use of the limited resolution and the palette is obviously very carefully considered. The animations also add refinement and give the title a polished feel.

Congratulations on making such an attractive game. It feels perfectly natural rather than limited by the restrictions of the jam.

Thank you for the feedback @PAK9, glad you liked my little game.

When I join lowrezjam (I try to do it regularly...) I put a lot of effort on not fighting the resolution but into embracing the limitation and design things for it rather than hammering on a "regular" game to make it fit the available space. Takes a lot more effort for sure, and particularly gfx and text interaction require a lot of preparation, but I think the end-result is really worth the extra effort.

Wow, this was beautiful, but brutally difficult to control sometimes. Thanks for sharing this wonderful little game!

Thank you for the feedback @binarycrusader, the game has a few control issues and movement bugs (collision bugs mostly) I need to fix. The time I can dedicate to pico lately is not that much, so this is pending.

Most of the difficulty comes from the jump mechanic (lack of air control, fixed keypress order...) but that was (mostly) intentional... wanted a different platformer (more old-school and cynematic) experience than your avg platformer.

Glad you liked the overall result ;)

Okay, beating this game took a couple of "ah ha" moments.

Ah ha 1: You can bunny hop by tapping jump lightly.
Ah ha 2: After you are revived, wait by the mirror for a bit and you can reset it.

I think the fact that you can't control your jump after it starts is true to real life, but difficult in video games. But figuring out I can reset the mirrors helped me survive. Seriously, try winning this without it. Also, the bunny hop thing, when I thought that all jumps had to be full strength, some of the smaller jumps I was trying to accomplish by doing the less easy short jump that you get by jumping and pressing movement quickly after it, or at the same time. I don't know for sure, I couldn't pull it off all the time.

But I've beaten it now.

Great that you've beaten it @joealarson as the game is quite hard and it has a few "nasty" bugs hidding still in there. As you say, I wanted a somewhat realistic approach to jump (not really that close without the need for a sprint for long-jumping though). Not sure if you've read the post-mortem I wrote for the game with some of the motivations behind the mechanics.

The game creation & coding process was a bit of a rush (2 weeks jam to do everything) but I'm quite happy on how it ended considering the available time (and almost half of it went to gfx).

I just hope that it was, even considering how hard it is, enjoyable ;)