Jellor (Platformer)

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Giga Nova

Guest
Hey!

Jellor is a level-by-level collectathon platformer with simple controls with at times difficult platforming. Each level is non-linear with branching paths and secrets to find. You play as Jellor, a peculiar cube of jelly who is simply trying to find out why there is no other being quite like him.

The game at this stage is very early in development, and many of the game mechanics I would like implemented aren't there yet - but there is enough gameplay for which I'd like to get feedback on, positive and negative.

Features and gameplay elements:
  • Environment interaction, including spikes, vine climbing and spring boards
  • Collectable jelly orbs with values of: Blue = 1, Green = 10, Red = 50
  • Simple slime enemies, jump on them to kill them.
  • Jump through platforms and moving platforms
  • Chests which contain only jelly orbs at the moment
  • Hidden areas and routes
  • 4-piece heart system, death not possible yet, so you're currently immortal!
  • Aspect ratios that adjust to the screen, thanks to this tutorial:
Controls:
  • Left and right arrow keys to move horizontally
  • Up arrow key to jump
  • Down arrow key to fall through platforms
  • Hold up to spring higher on spring boards
  • Press up while colliding with vines to grab it, and hold up or down to move along the vines
  • Hold left or right to jump off the vines
  • Press 'X' to open chests while next to them
  • Press 'Esc' to pause all instances
  • Press 'F' to set to fullscreen, and 'G' to adjust window size
Plans for the game:
  • 5 areas, each with 6 levels and a boss level
  • Each level will have 5 special tokens/gems to find
  • A storyline that I haven't fleshed out quite yet
The artwork, programming and soon music is and will all be done by me. Some sounds are used from freesound.org but also my own.

Here is the download link to mess around with:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/26qg5kq9ukbqbzi/Jellor.zip?dl=0

It's just the first half of the first level, but hopefully there's enough there to critique the gameplay.

Here are some images/gifs:




That's that I guess. Tell me what you think, and especially what needs improving. Thanks for your time!
 
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Game already looks good. Add more diversity in your solid rock walls like bones or a big rock. Your colors are also a bit flat. Modify the hue or the saturation. Especially with your main character he doesn't stand out enough.
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Game already looks good. Add more diversity in your solid rock walls like bones or a big rock. Your colors are also a bit flat. Modify the hue or the saturation. Especially with your main character he doesn't stand out enough.
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, adding more variety in the tiles is a definite, as with updating the character sprites, I agree that it looks a bit bland. In terms of colours looking flat, was there anything specific (i.e grass, dirt, background) that needs modifying or is it the whole thing?
 
Grass looks fine color wise, but the dirt and player in general both have flat, lifeless colors. Shift the hue ever so slightly between your illumination and that should give the colors more depth. The background seems more like a work in progress.
 
M

Matt Hawkins

Guest
Your game is pretty good so far. the movement feels fluid and the environment is nice. Pressing up after you jump to grab the vines feels a bit tricky though and I noticed a bit of pixel distortion on the player sprite during vertical movement. The horizontal movement looks really smooth though and your game scales great at full screen.
Would you mind sharing your code for scaling as I'm having some problems with my game atm with scaling and pixel distortion. I am terrible at maths :)
Also your game might look better with a lerp type camera for vertical movement. I have a bit of code that makes vertical scrolling nice and smooth here -
Code:
middley = view_hview[0] /2;
middlex = view_wview[0] /2;
y += (global.positiony  + global.yspeed / 5 - y) /20;
view_yview[0] = y - middley;
x = room_width /2;
view_xview[0] = x - middlex;
The global.positiony variable is the player objects y position.
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Your game is pretty good so far. the movement feels fluid and the environment is nice. Pressing up after you jump to grab the vines feels a bit tricky though and I noticed a bit of pixel distortion on the player sprite during vertical movement. The horizontal movement looks really smooth though and your game scales great at full screen.
Would you mind sharing your code for scaling as I'm having some problems with my game atm with scaling and pixel distortion. I am terrible at maths :)
Also your game might look better with a lerp type camera for vertical movement. I have a bit of code that makes vertical scrolling nice and smooth here -
Code:
middley = view_hview[0] /2;
middlex = view_wview[0] /2;
y += (global.positiony  + global.yspeed / 5 - y) /20;
view_yview[0] = y - middley;
x = room_width /2;
view_xview[0] = x - middlex;
The global.positiony variable is the player objects y position.
Hmm, the pixel distortion vertically doesn't seem to happen for me, it might be your monitor... unless it might be the stretching of the player when you jump?

Also, the scaling maths is very, very complicated and I'd fail to answer in a decent way in that regard, but if you look in the 'tutorial' spoiler on the thread it has the tutorial for which I wrote my own scaling functions, that should help you a lot. If it's hard to understand he has a few other videos explaining the idea behind it.

Thanks for the feedback!
 
M

Matt Hawkins

Guest
Hmm, the pixel distortion vertically doesn't seem to happen for me, it might be your monitor... unless it might be the stretching of the player when you jump?

Also, the scaling maths is very, very complicated and I'd fail to answer in a decent way in that regard, but if you look in the 'tutorial' spoiler on the thread it has the tutorial for which I wrote my own scaling functions, that should help you a lot. If it's hard to understand he has a few other videos explaining the idea behind it.

Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for the link Giga Nova I'll check it out after my nap. I have my laptop plugged into an LCD TV so yes that might be why i'm getting distortion.
Keep up the good work friend. :)
 
F

FROGANUS

Guest
hello!
i gave it a try and enjoyed it. the controls and motion are responsive and smooth, graphics are super nice so far.
people have made some valid points about the artwork- overall its really nice, but i agree, it could use a few more highlights- just to differentiate background/foreground depth (jello kid does seem a bit dark, edges of walls and bridges also a little dark, background and foreground vines could use a little more distinction) i might suggest a different sky color to differentiate between your blue tokens and blue character.

also i agree vines are a bit hard to grab- if you could hold and latch to them rather than having to press it right on, it might be a bit smoother. (also at the top left of the level my butt was getting in the way of climbing through that gap, might be fixable.

btw i found a secret too ;) are there more?

good work! i'd like to try the next version.
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
hello!
i gave it a try and enjoyed it. the controls and motion are responsive and smooth, graphics are super nice so far.
people have made some valid points about the artwork- overall its really nice, but i agree, it could use a few more highlights- just to differentiate background/foreground depth (jello kid does seem a bit dark, edges of walls and bridges also a little dark, background and foreground vines could use a little more distinction) i might suggest a different sky color to differentiate between your blue tokens and blue character.

also i agree vines are a bit hard to grab- if you could hold and latch to them rather than having to press it right on, it might be a bit smoother. (also at the top left of the level my butt was getting in the way of climbing through that gap, might be fixable.

btw i found a secret too ;) are there more?

good work! i'd like to try the next version.
Thanks for the feedback!
Don't worry, the artwork has been improved since the few previous posts, so that should be good. Except for the vines, I'll update that because I do agree it needs more differentiation. Also, holding to latch might be a much better idea, I will definitely do that, and the climbing next to wall glitch, I'll look into.

There are 3 secrets in at the moment, so you're not done :)
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Yay, the next build is here!

Here is what I've done:

Additions
+ Signs that display text when you stop and stand next to them
+ Vertical moving platforms
+ 5 special crystals to collect, which will appear in each area
+ 2 Other slime enemies: A big slime with more health, and a floating slime that you can bounce off
+ Rolling Boulders
+ Keys that will open doors
+ Some new tiles, including wooden beams and grassless dirt

Changes
/ Updated some colours
/ Slightly altered jump height
/ Platforms will no longer allow enemies to pass through if the player's y position is greater than the platform's
/ Updated background and tree sprites

Here is the link to try it out, and some images:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/logb0p4hwkdndnp/Jellor Build 2.zip?dl=0



 
7

7bones

Guest
Totally great! I love it ! Only one thing i would change is main character - cubes are moooooost overused main character in indie platformers.Make him "somebody" maybe :fruit,animal.children,monster - anything but NOT cube. But game still looks great
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Totally great! I love it ! Only one thing i would change is main character - cubes are moooooost overused main character in indie platformers.Make him "somebody" maybe :fruit,animal.children,monster - anything but NOT cube. But game still looks great
Thanks for the feedback! Although I do agree a main character cube is overused, the way I've set up the game, in my head atleast, that you are a cube of jelly. I could easily change a few things like the collectables, heart colour and the character, though. I'll think about it.
 
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FROGANUS

Guest
nice build! i ran through, got 4/5 diamond gems. what was the green one? lol
a couple quick points:
-vertical platforms were making player jiggle vertically slightly.
-collisions when running into a wall seem to have an extra pixel of space than i'd prefer. not crucial..

cool boulders and i dig the flying jellies.
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
nice build! i ran through, got 4/5 diamond gems. what was the green one? lol
a couple quick points:
-vertical platforms were making player jiggle vertically slightly.
-collisions when running into a wall seem to have an extra pixel of space than i'd prefer. not crucial..

cool boulders and i dig the flying jellies.
The green things are the same as the standard blue orbs but give 10 of them instead!
- Yeah I've noticed that and its definitely something I need to look into. Will be hard though but I'll work it out!
- That's mainly due to the wall collisions and the tile width - I made the walls thinner so that the grass could sort of seem to poke out the sides. Hopefully its not too much of an issue though.

I swear everybody'd pixel art 20x better than mine..... Great work btw ;)
Haha, well, to be fair I honestly believed mine needed work! But anyhoo, as with everything, if you keep trying you will understand how colours and such work. Like just before, Changing the hue and saturation slightly made it look so much better. Learning these things will help, and the only way to do that is to practice. But thank you!
 

pixeltroid

Member
Looks very nice OP. Clean and refreshing visuals and smooth controls.

I like the open world level design as well. There's a nice balance between platforming and exploring.

Some areas did feel a little empty...the enemies were few and far between. But that's just my opinion.

I have a few questions.

- Is it all set in one room? If so what is the room size?
- What are the room view settings?
- how many background layers are you using?
- In your second image, are all the dark brown areas tiles or one background image? I'm asking because your room area looks huuuge, and it must have been a pain to add the tiles in one by one?
- what are your sprite sizes?

Good luck and please give more updates on your game!
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Looks very nice OP. Clean and refreshing visuals and smooth controls.

I like the open world level design as well. There's a nice balance between platforming and exploring.

Some areas did feel a little empty...the enemies were few and far between. But that's just my opinion.

I have a few questions.

- Is it all set in one room? If so what is the room size?
- What are the room view settings?
- how many background layers are you using?
- In your second image, are all the dark brown areas tiles or one background image? I'm asking because your room area looks huuuge, and it must have been a pain to add the tiles in one by one?
- what are your sprite sizes?

Good luck and please give more updates on your game!
Thanks for trying it out! But before I answer any questions, did you play the build on the main post, or the second build (you'll see if you scroll a bit).
 
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Giga Nova

Guest
Hi. I played both. The second build feels more complete, with keys and doors.
Okay. I'll be answering in terms of the second build.

- Yep, all set in one room. The room size is 4500 x 1500.
- The room view settings are set according to the monitor dimensions.
- There are 6 Background layers: The sky, clouds, mountains and hills, and the three forest layers.
- Everything is tiled except for the interactive objects and the background! Auto tiling helps out a lot, I guess. And some code to randomise a few tiles.
- It varies, really. The player's is 32x32, but it fits in a 16x16 space, just some extra room if I need to change something. Tiles are 16x16. Most collectibles are 8x8.
 

pixeltroid

Member
Okay. I'll be answering in terms of the second build.

- Yep, all set in one room. The room size is 4500 x 1500.
- The room view settings are set according to the monitor dimensions.
- There are 6 Background layers: The sky, clouds, mountains and hills, and the three forest layers.
- Everything is tiled except for the interactive objects and the background! Auto tiling helps out a lot, I guess. And some code to randomise a few tiles.
- It varies, really. The player's is 32x32, but it fits in a 16x16 space, just some extra room if I need to change something. Tiles are 16x16. Most collectibles are 8x8.
Hey thanks for the reply.
Ive been working on a platformer myself and there are still a few thing I'm trying to figure out. I'll keep an eye out for updates on Jellor!
 
Pressing escape pauses the game. It needs to specify "paused." It also needs the option for full screen so I can see it better. Alt + Enter doesn't make it full screen either. Then again I can resize the window.

Game looks good. Game plays good. Game feels good with its bouncy animation and squishy enemies.

Player cannot go down slopes so much as run off them. Secret areas are good, but add a transition effect. Make the background vines different or darker since they look similar to the vines you can cling on.

One of the more enjoyable demos on this forum.
 
S

Stretchcb3

Guest
This game looks amazing. I don't know what it is but the camera movement is really sharp and was making my head hurt, but maybe playing it at 1:00 in the morning was a bad idea. lol.
I know you can hold Up to go higher on the bounce pads, but it only works if you jumped on the pads and held Up, and not while you're on the the pad and pressed up. It would be cool if you could jump higher on the pad while already on the pad.
Also, I lost all my heart and didn't die.
But awesome game and graphics. I'm gonna play it again in my free time.
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Pressing escape pauses the game. It needs to specify "paused." It also needs the option for full screen so I can see it better. Alt + Enter doesn't make it full screen either. Then again I can resize the window.

Game looks good. Game plays good. Game feels good with its bouncy animation and squishy enemies.

Player cannot go down slopes so much as run off them. Secret areas are good, but add a transition effect. Make the background vines different or darker since they look similar to the vines you can cling on.

One of the more enjoyable demos on this forum.
- Haha, yeah, I added code for pausing but nothing else to specify it. Wouldn't think anyone would press escape... whoops. But yeah, I will obviously at some point elaborate on it.
- Press F to fullscreen, you can see that in the first post
- I'll work on the down slopes.
- I have no idea to do transitioned secret areas. There is no tile alpha so I'm stuck there.
- Can-do about the vines.

Thanks for the kind words!

This game looks amazing. I don't know what it is but the camera movement is really sharp and was making my head hurt, but maybe playing it at 1:00 in the morning was a bad idea. lol.
I know you can hold Up to go higher on the bounce pads, but it only works if you jumped on the pads and held Up, and not while you're on the the pad and pressed up. It would be cool if you could jump higher on the pad while already on the pad.
Also, I lost all my heart and didn't die.
But awesome game and graphics. I'm gonna play it again in my free time.
- I think it might be because you're playing at 1am, haha.
- I'm kinda confused what you're trying to say with the jump pads, could you possibly reword what you mean?
- Yeah, the player's still immortal... will add death in the next build.

Again, thanks for the kind words!
 
S

Stretchcb3

Guest
Heh, I thought i was weird when I typed it.
Lemme try again,...Okay so you can only just higher when you press Up BEFORE jumping on the pad. It would be cool if WHILE jumping on the pad you could press up to go higher.

Hopefully that's better explained.
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Heh, I thought i was weird when I typed it.
Lemme try again,...Okay so you can only just higher when you press Up BEFORE jumping on the pad. It would be cool if WHILE jumping on the pad you could press up to go higher.

Hopefully that's better explained.
Oh, I see what you mean.

Actually, if you hold up while jumping on the pad you gain more height than if you jumped normally, but, if you press up as soon as you hit the pad, you get an extra boost.
 
S

Stretchcb3

Guest
Oh, I see what you mean.

Actually, if you hold up while jumping on the pad you gain more height than if you jumped normally, but, if you press up as soon as you hit the pad, you get an extra boost.
Oh, I see.

I should play it some more then. Are you playing to implement other "controllers" besides keyboard? Like a gamepad or Xbox controller?
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Oh, I see.

I should play it some more then. Are you playing to implement other "controllers" besides keyboard? Like a gamepad or Xbox controller?
Maybe. I don't have those controllers, but if its in high demand at some point I'll add support.
 

JasonTomLee

Member
Wweet track :) What program you using?
And do you think it would be useful to have a modular controller / phone support ? Because I was thinkin on making a very simple one for yall
 
S

Stretchcb3

Guest
Wweet track :) What program you using?
And do you think it would be useful to have a modular controller / phone support ? Because I was thinkin on making a very simple one for yall
That would be cool! I think his game would be cool with something like that.

If Giga Nova made it multi-player that would be cool to impliment.
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Wweet track :) What program you using?
And do you think it would be useful to have a modular controller / phone support ? Because I was thinkin on making a very simple one for yall
I used FL Studio 12 to make the track.
By phone support do you mean making it playable on mobile? Because I don't have the module for it unfortunately. Or if you meant as in making it 2 player, perhaps.
 
G

Giga Nova

Guest
Update: I've done a lot of work, even though I haven't been posting. Expect something within the next week or so :)
 
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