Personally, I've been waiting this long and have no problem with you taking
the time to add these puzzle elements into the game. I'll certainly
understand completely if you decide to bow to pressure from people less
patient and more short-sighted about this. God knows you and your wife have
been stretched on the rack and then some by this project.. However, please
consider; The more such elements you can add to it, the greater replay value
the game will have and the more paying customers you'll ultimately get for
it as word spreads over time of the game's higher quality. Take the time you
need to do the best sidescroller you can and you won't find yourself looking
back later as a dissatisfied artist. I've been there and done that with some
of my creative projects over the years. You'll also emmencely please folks
like me who have been keenly following your work from day one. Due to the
level of preorders you have to honour, you won't make as much money on this
project as others you do in future. However, you should look at this as a
chance to show us the kind of work we can expect from you as you pursue your
own ideas. Take the time to do it right and people will come to your defence
when others less patient give you a rough time.
You've come an incredibly long way indeed since that easter weekend I
remember when you were on the verge of packing it in. As a fellow creator
and due to my having edited Audyssey for so many years, I have a deep
admiration and appreciation of how far you've come on this journey as a
person. You give me an example of someone to point to when people say that
the best years of accessible games are behind us. Only you can ultimately
decide what's best in this situation. You'll likely take flack either way
unless people have been paying attention and have learned something of
patience and respect over the past while. I hope you'll find the strength
and persevereance to go that extra mile. Either way though, you've won me
over as a supporter. Best of luck to you Tom.
Michael Feir
Owner of Silver Smiles
Join and share the silver lining in your life.
Group home page: http://groups.google.com/group/silver-smiles
2010--
Twitter: mfeir
Skype: michael-feir
Author of Personal Power:
How Accessible Computers Can Enhance Personal Life For Blind People
2006-2008
http://michaelfeir.blogspot.com/2009/01/personal-power.html
A Life of Word and Sound
2003-2007
http://michaelfeir.blogspot.com/2009/01/life-of-word-and-sound.html
Creator and former editor of Audyssey Magazine
1996-2004
Check out my blog at:
www.michaelfeir.blogspot.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 11:51 PM
Subject: [Audyssey] Mysteries of the Ancients Levels
Hi everyone,
Here is a little something I've been thinking about for a while now,
but have been to occupied building the Genesis Engine to really think
about Mysteries of the Ancients specifically. So now that the engine
is pretty much squared away at this point I can now focus my full
attention on designing Mysteries of the Ancients. Which is precisely
what I am going to be doing over the next few weeks.
In brief my ideas and thoughts have been surrounding the level maps. I
don't know about you personally, but I can't help but think that the
current levels, levels 1 and 2, are just a tad too simplistic for my
liking. Basically, what we have currently is a simple split level map
with an upper and lower level, and about 20 rooms in a 20 by 300 grid.
Otherwise it is just your basic side-scroller starting from the left
side of the screen and ending on the right side of the screen.
However, yesterday when I picked up my game pad to test and play
Mysteries of the Ancients it brought to mind all of the classic
side-scrollers I use to play when I was sighted. One of the big ones
is puzzle elements. Montezuma's Revenge is a great case in point.
One of the things that made Montezuma's Revenge such a great game is
that there were 11 2d mazes the player had to solve in order to beat
the game. Each maze had 25 rooms spread out over five floors. There
were various other puzzle elements throughout like vanishing
platforms, color coded keys required to unlock doors, burning torches
to light dark rooms, force fields, and so on. Plus there were traps
like fire pits, chasms, burning ropes, etc to jump over/avoid. In
short, in terms of the level maps alone games like Montezuma's Revenge
is far more complex and I can't help but feel as though MOTA doesn't
quite live up to its full potential as a treasure hunting game.
Another game that strikes me as another good example is Tomb Raider
Prophecy for the Nintendo Gameboy. While the levels themselves were
not as complex as Montezuma's Revenge in design they were more
difficult in terms of traps and puzzle elements. For example, there
were trick doors that when you pulled a lever they would open and
after a couple of seconds they would close again. That made it a real
challenge to run through the door before it smashes you flat or locks
you out of that chamber.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I know I can do a lot more to make
Mysteries of the Ancients a much better game. Add more puzzle
elements, add a better maze design to the levels, and add more traps,
etc to the game. All of these would be over all improvements to the
game itself in my book.
However, my worry is that if I take a little time perhaps an extra
month to really redo the game and add these new revisions I'm going to
take a lot of unnecessary heat from the community. I've already taken
enough heat for various things like switching programming languages in
the middle of development, attempting to add cross-platform support,
and other things like that. I really don't want to make people any
more upset or frustrated with me than I absolutely have too. So it is
up to you if you really think these revisions or worth it, or you want
me to just complete the game without them.
Finally, if we do decide to go with the more complex level maps we
have a couple of ways of going about it. We could base them off of a
game like Montezuma's Revenge, which is what this game started out as
to begin with, or we could just create some all new original maps. Let
me know what you think.
Cheers!
---
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