MOM4ever complains

[gerstrong]

Hey! Long time no online in my case, and I was a complete jerk when I was on here last, so there's that.

Kudos on keeping up with this. I'll see if I can rope my brother into some multiplayer action later. Couple of things I noticed after a quick session by myself:

• Two-button firing is broken with the impossible pogo trick. Yeah, I know I'm the only one who still cares about two-button firing, but old habits die hard. Anyway, my test was in keen4 with attempting an ultimate pogo. The original game had a very short delay in which time you could press pogo, release pogo, and press jump in order to pull off an impossible pogo trick. I'm guessing the delay was one or two cycles (I'm not sure the exact fps the original runs at). Anyway, as CG is with the delay as it is, the impossible pogo trick with two-button firing is, well, physically impossible, as the fast sequence of pressing jump, releasing jump, and hitting pogo just causes you to fire.
• Wristwatch showing up does seem to depend on resolution/gfx settings. I've been fooling with it at different resolutions, aspect ratios, filters, etc. Occasionally it'll show up, usually not.
• Fullscreen mode seems to just make the window larger, without actually being fullscreen (The taskbar is still there). Other SDL2 applications I've run seem to work just fine, so no idea what's up with that.
• Current resolution in the video config menu defaults to 320x200, even when it's actually set to something else.
• The red bouncy ball dudes in Keen4 don't behave quite the same when pogoing on them. In the original game, I can stand on top of them to get them where I want, then pogo upwards, land back on them, and they stand still. Basically, they jump straight up for one bounce after you jump off of them. Here, they jump away the instant you pogo off them.

Overall, excellent work, and it's come a long ways since last version I tried.

[meh2481]

*as the fast sequence of pressing pogo, releasing pogo, and hitting jump just causes you to fire.

My bad.

[gerstrong]

So is the first issue non-existent or what?

[meh2481]

No, I just got the keys backwards. I had said that pressing jump, releasing jump and hitting pogo causes you to fire, while in the original game it causes super pogo. What I meant was the sequence is pressing pogo, releasing pogo, and hitting jump.

[gerstrong]

There is an RC uploaded, could you test, if those issues are fixed, because I was not able to reproduce them...

[meh2481]

I'm assuming you mean CGenius-1.7.4.0-RC3-win32.zip from Sourceforge?

Screen resolution vs size seems to be much better now (though I ran into some strange drawing issues when the resolution was set to 640x480). One thing I'd request here is to filter out the "Size"s here to only support resolutions your monitor supports. Scrolling through tons of different HD resolutions on a 1280x800 monitor feels rather silly.

The wristwatch graphic seems to always be there now.

Fullscreen mode works as expected.

The red bouncy creatures now only seem to immediately jump away about half the time, but it's still noticeable to me. Impossible pogo trick with two-button firing is still impossible.

What I mean for these two cases is this:

When standing on a Bounder close enough to the center, he'll simply bounce up and down. In the original game, you could do an impossible pogo jump (if you timed it right) while standing on top of one, making it possible to jump very high. If, however, you messed up the impossible pogo jump on the first bounce, the Bounder would still be bouncing straight up and down long enough for you to land back on them for a second try. In CG, they seem to bounce away far before you can come back down and land on them again.

In the original game, the impossible pogo trick is possible with two-button firing turned off by pressing pogo a split-second before pressing jump, and holding both down. With two-button firing on, the steps to perform an impossible pogo jump are quite different, as having both keys down at the same time makes Keen fire. In order to perform an impossible pogo jump in the original Keen, you would press pogo, very quickly release pogo, and then very quickly press jump. If you did it correctly and quickly enough, Keen would fire. In CG, this same sequence causes Keen to bounce to about half his maximum height now, rather than the full impossible pogo height. It is finnicky to get right, and nearly impossible to explain, so I would recommend firing up the original game, turning two-button firing on, and just playing around with it until you can get the impossible pogo trick down. It's very much timing-based. Then go back to CG and you'll see that it's impossible.

Does that help?

Oh, and a couple other things I noticed when playing multiplayer with someone else: If one player gets (for instance) the swimsuit, then only that player can swim in the water in Keen4. This is problematic if this player is Player 2, as the camera doesn't follow them in the world map. In Keen1, this is also an issue, as one player can get the pogo stick, then both have to leave the level and come back and play the level again in order for the second player to get the pogo stick as well.

Also in multiplayer mode, if one player dies, it's pretty boring for the other player to finish the level by themselves (And also problematic if the first player got any of the keys!). Would a respawn delay and brief invincibility period be possible? It'd sure make it a lot more fun.

Thirdly in multiplayer mode in Keen1, there was a time when the first player died, and the camera followed him off the top of the screen, then failed to begin to follow player 2.

Keep up the good work!

[gerstrong]

I have fixed some of the issues and the multiplayer issues have been moved to another section. 5e08490