The development is finished. The To Do List remains as part of the game development history 🙂
Current actual version is 1.0.1.1038 from 13.3.2014. See Alister main page.
Last updated 13.3.2014
Open Bugs
– Nothing
To Do
– Nothing
Catched Bugs
– Nothing
Done To Do
– Nothing
On ice
– Nothing
Not Catchable Bugs / Not reproduceable
– Toilet behind witchhouse doesn`t open up like the other behind the wizardhouse +++ Hmm, odd. Not reproduceable. They both open fine.
– Some Goats stands up after shooting them. Only in the big castle level? +++ Not reproduceable. All goats stays at ground when shot. Possible that this is another linux problem. EDIT, okay i have seen this quite a few times now, also with other characters. So no linux problem. But it is still not catchable. Hm.
– Simultaneous dying of enemie and Alister +++ I have seen this too. But this is nothing that can be fixed. There are situations where your enemy can kill you while you kill him
– Totally mixed up graphics under Linux. The geometry is exploded. Not reproduceable because i don`t have Linux installed
– Invisible spider in the spiderjail level. Just the shadow moves. Win 8 on Webplayer in Firefox. – I cannot reproduce that one. Might be a Win 8 issue. It doesn´t happen with Win 7 here.
– Zsorting problem with the billboarded grass. +++ This would mean to write my own shaders. Behind my current skills. Behind my nerves. And behind the performance too 🙂
– Linux – very low FPS +++ I cannot change anything at the export settings to change this behaviour, sorry.
– Linux – no visible fire when shooting +++ I cannot change anything at the export settings to change this behaviour, sorry.
– Spikey Castle – Goat can kill Alister when he stands behind the fence. +++ Fixing this one turned out to be complicated. Either by adding lots of code or making the fence much bigger. Both is not what i really want. So i decided to leave it the current way.
– Killing a spider in honey winery can cause to spawn lots of books +++ I tried several times and several approaches to provoke this behaviour. No luck. Another uncatchable bug it seems.
– Reinvested into jumping and get stuck. Too much effort for this little nagger. I will leave it this way.
– Very low fps in the spikey castle. Not reproduceable in current build. Possible cause is that i have forgotten to turn off the lightmapping lights in an earlier build.
– Snail Island, Null Ref Exception when receiving the questitem. iTween moans +++ Not reproduceable. What kind of hiccup was that?
– Hellgate west writes bookcount to savegame. But there are no books to collect. Doesn’t really matter. A fix would mean to do some heavy tweaks at a scene independend script. It doesn`t disturb really. So it stays as it is.
– Cake valley, music is set to zero, but music is playing. +++ Bug report came from Linux Debian 7.3 testing branch. Not reproduceable.
– The big bridge, problems with physics and one of the chests. The chest played rocket … +++ Bug report came from Linux Debian 7.3 testing branch. Not reproduceable.
Suggestions/Ideas
– The time for Suggestions and Ideas is over. The game is fihished.
Discarded ideas and suggestions
Here you can find the discarded user ideas that came up while development. Discarded ideas doesn`t mean that the idea was worthless. Just that it didn`t really fit into the concept after thinking it to the end. Even a declined idea is something very useful.
– Beat em up fighting system +++ It`s a jump n run. This doesn`t really fit.
– Toilet flashing sound +++ Nice idea, but it`s no water toilet. So …
– Revisit movement script. Too many people are unhappy with the current way to control the character. +++ After revisiting i decided to leave the controls in the current way. There are worse controls. But not this much better ones. And they don`t fit here.
– Gamebalance – easier jumping, less precision necessary +++ Can´t do that one. It`s a jump n run. When you don`t need to care about jumping, then it`s no jump n run anymore. Possible that i may revisit this one in the beta stage. But for now it stays as it is.
– harder gameplay, more enemies, more clever ai – VERSUS – Easier gameplay and less enemies. +++ It stays as it is. I will revisit the chapter game balance once the game is in Beta.
– honey winery – increase the time for the sinking stones so that you can get easier to the other side +++ The time was fine. I found a bug instead though.
— Side view, a 2.5D level. +++ I´ve thougth about this again and again. 2.5D would be a completely different setup. And i am more than busy to balance the current setup. So that one`s unfortunately out.
– Swimming and diving. +++ I don`t have transparent water areas. Means this idea is out because of too big effort.
– Climbing. +++ I am more than busy to make sure that Alister cannot reach areas where he doesn´t belong to. To implement climbing would mean to redo the levels from scratch. Too much work.
– Slide down cliffs. +++ There are no cliffs to slide. This would mean a compeltely different leveldesign.
– Swinging from rope to rope. +++ I don`t have a level or a situation for it, sorry.
– Drift across water at barrels. +++ Not enough water for such a feature.
– Riding rockets, Riding something, Flying in general. +++ I have enough problems to keep the player in the level without caring about air stuff, sorry 🙂
– Special Terrain Splatting that doesn´t mix the textures not only by splatmaps but also by the colour informations of the textures. +++ This would mean to write a special shader. That`s to time intensive. I have too much open roadworks already.
– Respawn in front of the corresponding teleportergate instead of the one in front of the witchhouse. +++ You need to talk to Esme quite often. The way between respawn point and esme is ways shorter than the way between level entrance and Esme.
– FPS style controls with mouse to look around and WASD for movement. +++ Too much effort, sorry.
– No lives anymore. But continuous Gameplay which sets you back to the last savepoint. +++ I have already a lives based system. A question of effort again. Because this would mean to have a completely different game balance.
– Collected book pages vanishes once they got collected. +++ This would make the reentering of the levels quite boring when there`s nothing to collect anymore.
– Casting Spells, besides fire. +++ Too much effort. Every new feature needs a situation where you can use it.
– Dying not at the first contact. Possible solution: something like the mushrooms for mario. You loose a goodie at contact. And the second contact is the one that`s killing you then. Same for enemies. More than one shoot or kick necessary. +++This would complicate the gameplay. And make it more into a beat em up instead of a jump n run. Currently you can kill most of the enemies with fire from the distance. That`s the main weapon. And here it doesn`t make sense to push the enemies back. And you have to avoid the rest of the enemies and traps anyways. A penalty in form of a little bit damage doesn`t really make sense.
– Remove launcher and integrate the settings in the main menu. This is especially interesting for Linux. Beause there is no launcher. +++ Turned out to be too complicated. I don`t have linux, i cannot test it. My main target platform is windows.
– Collect book pages in the first level too +++ This conflicts with the barrers in front of the teleporters. I would need a second display for that. So no book pages in the first level, the cake valley.
– Another or alternative, more quiet song for the levelselection level + After rethinking this issue i decided to leave the current song in the level 🙂
– Special push animation when pushing chests and stones around. +++ Made too much trouble with overriding other animations. It`s not game relevant, so i leave this one out.
– Camera can look through walls in the first moment of wall collision. Because it checks for collisions between camera and player. And so it is already in the wall when the collision happens. Suggenstion is to cast a ray sidewards so that the collision is triggered much earlier. +++ Good idea, but it makes nothing than trouble. The raycasts tends to override each other. And the camera dances around. I do most probably something wrong here. To solve this i would have to rewrite the camera i guess. Too much effort. That you can look through walls here and there is not game relevant.
– LOD for trees. Thie trees are not at a Unity terrain. So this is a bit more complicated. A simple LOD script from the unify wiki looks extremely ugly. The popping effect from low to high geometry is too visible. The LOD system from T4M doesn`t work here. And no answer from the developer of the T4M system. So it stays as it is.
– Spikey Castle. Add another savepoint after the bassin with the floating stones. That`s too much sorry. I cannot place a savepoint behind every hurdle.
Thanks Folks
A special thanks goes to Flatterbacke for his Lavashader and his Watershader. And more than one help now with coding problems.
Another special thanks goes to Joshua Michael Waggoner for fixing my miserable english translations.
A big Thanks for help, feedback, bug reports, ideas and suggestion goes in no particular order to
Jonathan
Toa
Thegusse
Boothj1985
CaPGeti
hum-bee
mp5gosu
GuyGood
DraconiX
Sascha
overdev
Mauri
fairygirl
jonnydjango
schoen08
Sleepy
khaos
artoo
abeing
Niki
marcgfx
n8boy
Schrompf
Koaangel
Kevin
Marrrrrk
keftes
Flatterbacke
Syrka
Marrrrk
empirebattles
smn
Spiele Programmierer
Cash
Neoxit
Dynamichead
Reisekeks
Mese 96
And all the other lost souls that gave me feedback and help, but that i have forgotten to mention here 🙂
I downloaded Tileset Maker V3, for students to use in game programming. It works fine for me, but the students cannot see anything in the dropdown box where the sprite sheet size can be selected. Due to this, no bitmaps are being loaded on the sprite sheet.
I also noticed that all three items in the Options dropdown were not selected, so I selected all three (Autocrop, Autozoom, and Auto TilesetMaking). Obviously there is a difference with the PC steup. Do you have to have administrative rights to be able to run this application?
Hi Steve,
That`s odd. This is the first time that i hear about such problems. On the other hand, people are lazy and simply use another software then when something doesn`t work. So thanks for this report 🙂
I hope we don`t talk about Win 8 here. I have no experience with it and its internal security settings. Tilesetmaker should work at Win 7 and XP.
Hm, you shouldn`t need to have administrative rights. A normal user should be enough. It uses the same storing method as most of my other apps and games. It stores a ini in the appdata folder. And that`s the way Microsoft wants it to be. Usually it`s a hidden path at XP and Win 7, that looks like that:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\myproduct\mysettings.ini
In my case C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\tilesetmakerv3\
And the folder should contain a resolutions.txt and a settings.ini. Plus a tmp folder when you work with it.
There is a hook though. That way only the user who installed the software can see the settings. And everybody else is having blank settings. Because the content of the appdata path is account dependant. That is because every user has its own account. Probably that`s your problem at the moment. I haven`t thought about multi account useage when i made this app.
I could create a new version that uses a global folder for storing the ini when you want. Or a mobile version that creates the ini and txt file when it doesn`t exist. Maybe both. I will have a look. Just give me a few days to sort things.
Hi Reiner,
On the level Spiky Castle, my fps goes down to 3. Every other level has great fps, but this one is terrible. Because I need to complete it to unlock more, it makes the game unfinishable. This is really annoying.
Thanks
– Cash
Thanks for the report 🙂
I have no idea why the fps drops at your end for this frame. It runs fine with 60fps here, like all the other frames too. But i will have a closer look at it.
I have uploaded a new version now. Could you please have a look if your problem still exists? I still hope that this is a hiccup, and not a real problem ^^
Hi again,
It’s slightly better now, but there’s still considerable lag. It drops hugely at the part where you have to turn the wheels, maybe because of the many particles? I managed to unlock a new world though, by returning to the main world halfway through. I don’t know if this is a bug, but I kept all pages aquired in the level.
Another bug, even when I die, and it plays through the fall down animation, I can still shoot fire.
Thanks
-Cash
Thanks for the reports Cash 🙂
Okay, then it was a hiccup. Because i haven`t changed anything. I remember that i had in one build forgotten to turn off the lights for lightmapping though. Maybe that was the reason.
That the fps drops at the wheels is normal. Particles are resource hungry. And there are quite a few emitters in this area. Mh, i could reduce the number of particles per emitter again. But then it doesn`t really look like steam anymore. Hmmm. I will have a look what i can do here.
What do you mean by unlocking the half way through? When you have enough books then the seal with lower bookcount goes away. This is intended. I think you simply touched the collider that performs this action. Hm. i could make this collider a bit smaller. Goes to To Do 🙂
And thanks for the bug report about shooting. You always forget something ^^
By the unlocking, I meant this:
Halfway through the level, I return to Cake Valley, and it acts as if I finished the level. It takes the books I acquired in the level and adds them to the total. I can’t tell if I’m being clear or not. Hmm… I can collect pages from the level without finishing it.
Hope this makes since.
Also, if the fps drop doesn’t happen to you, it could just be my machine. I’ll check this out and get back to you.
Another bug. 🙂
In Spooky Mansion (I think that’s the name. It’s the one with the ghosts): After the second room, where only the left gate is open, if you go down the stairs by the left gate, and then go up the stairs to the right gate, there will be a line, where the two objects are not quite connected. If you walk on the line to the right wall(as you are going up the stairs), you will fall through the wall and then fall to you doom forever.
I’ll keep playing and updating you.
-Cash
Thanks for the reports Cash. Much appreciated 🙂
Okay, so Spooky Mansion has a gap in the levelmesh collider somewhere. I will have a look to catch that one.
Hm, that you keep the currently collected bookpagess when you don`t finish the level is intended. I see though that it would make more sense when you would loose the bookpagecount then. I will change that behaviour 🙂
Performance is always a issue. I can not make it run at really ancient or very weak machines. You have to set a limit somewhere. It`s a game. And games are always hardware hungry. It`s in the end a thing of the look. But i will nevertheless always try to optimize. Here it runs good enough, with full 60 fps speed at a three years old standard pc. That`s my way to check if the fps is good enough.
Glad to help.
I have a pretty good machine, though, and the other levels have fps in the hundreds. It’s just that one level that I’m constantly at three, the max being about 20. Huh. Well, it doesn’t really matter, as I think it’s only on this machine.
Just tried it on my dad’s computer, and it works fine. Good to know it wasn’t a bug in the game.
Also, any of the stairs in Spooky Mansion have that unsolid wall problem. I think.
Thanks Cash, that`s good to know 🙂
The fix may last a bit. I want to shape the missing levels first before i update the game again. Which may need a few months …
Ok. Great to know I could help. 🙂
Ok. I have a question, this time it’s not a bug. (I don’t think).
I can’t seem to find all the dragon eggs. I’ve looked everywhere, and the last one is nowhere. I found the one behind the fence before the bouncing rocks, behind the windmill, on the rocks, and in the ending village place.
Could you please tell me where it is? 🙂
Thank you so much.
-Cash
Have a look at the waterborder. There are two hidden overhangs. The first one is after the second bridge at the left side. The second one is after the third bridge at the right side.
I will make a walkthrough once the game is complete 🙂
It worked! Thank you.
Yet another bug. 😉 The mushroom ingredient in the mushroom world does not travel back with you when you complete the level.
Also, I feel like I’m missing something. I’ve finished all the worlds, except Hellgate West, and have all but the Mushroom ingredient, but the list of found items when I talk to the witch suggests that I have way more ingredients to go. I’m confused.
-Cash
A couple minor bugs about speech.
When talking to the helpful tips guy, he lists the keys for straifing as q and r. They are actually q and e. Also, when Alister asks how to kill an enemy, he says how can I defend them. I think he means how can I defeat them.
Also, what’s all this about snails? I see nothing of snails anywhere.
Many thanks for your reports Cash 🙂
When i shaped the level i had a couple of snails having a race a the island. Then i had another idea for the storyline. First you have to clean the race track. So they don`t have a race when you first enter the level. But they start their race once you have collected the questitem. Come back to the level and you will see them 🙂
Mushroom doesn`t work? Ouch. I thought i had this one. This means that you cannot finish the game yet, sorry. You have to wait for the next version. The curse of playing an alpha version …
Good find with q and r and defend vs delete. I have definitely mixed that one. English is not my mothertongue. Will put it at my to do list 🙂
I’ve noticed a couple other errors in the text. If you give me a list of all the conversations, I could look over them for you. 🙂
Thanks for the offer. The texts are not external though, they are hardcoded. I would have to isolate them from the code. And then i would have to redo the samples too i guess. It has cost me over two weeks to create them. Not sure if i really want to redo them 😀
I would say let me finish the game first, there are still some levels missing. And there will surely be more conversations in them 🙂
Ok. That’s fine. I didn’t realize the samples were actual talking. I think it was automatically turned off, so I didn’t hear them.
Cheers,
Cash
Interesting. They shouldn´t be off by default 🙂
Any idea when the next version is going to come out? I have limited internet access, and it is always very slow.
I can’t wait. 🙂
Most probably not this year anymore. I am back at shaping the missing levels. And this is a very time consuming task 🙂
Noooo… I guess I’ll just have to wait. 🙁
Could you just fix the blue mushroom bug as a quick fix? Maybe? Please? 😛
I cannot promise anything. First i have to catch it 🙂
The problem is i have no clue what is wrong here. I have succesfully played through. The blue mushroom worked. I wait for an idea here where the problem resides 🙂
Oh. That’s not good. I thought you had some idea of what was wrong, because up in the bugs section you said, “I thought I had got this one”. I see now that it might not have been that you tried to fix it.
Oh well. It’s ok. I won’t have a lot time on the computer anyway, due to not having enough power.
I think i have it. Fingers crossed. New version is at its way 🙂
Yay! I’ll test it out as soon as it comes.
Well, I downloaded it, but some of the objects appear to be missing. By this I mean only trees, wells, and pink water show up in mushy swamp. Huh…
Huh? This sounds definitely unhealthy. Thanks for the report. Is this also the case for other levels?
I cannot really test it here at the moment, fixing your bug means that i have lost my savegame where everything was open. I have to play it through again when i find the time for. I am currently at shaping new levels, not at fixing bugs.
It’s gone? It always saves my progress even through new versions.
Ok, so all the objects are gone, in all levels but cake valley. The pages are still there, and things like gates or trees or particles are still there, but everything else is gone. I’m not sure if my file isn’t completely downloaded. Let me try to download it again (probably a half an hour to an hour. The internet here sucks), and I’ll try again.
Also, the guy in the blue in cake valley will eventually stop speaking.
I had to modify, means delete, my savegame to fix your blue mushroom bug. But i was able to cheat me to the level now to have a look 🙂
The build plays fine. Nothing is missing, no pink areas, all shows up. The guy in the blue talks just fine. I will redownload the windows build now to have a look if eventually the upload has broken something.
Thanks for your reports Cash 🙂
Okay, also the redownload plays just fine. So either your download is corrupt or your graphics card is in trouble with some shaders here. On the other hand, you were able to play the previous version, which also uses those shaders. What`s left is a corrupt download then. I hope a redownload will fix it for you 🙂
Or are you at a Linux system? This could also explain the quirks.
No, I’m not Linux. I had an extractor program that ran out of free trials. I remember now that the first time I extracted the zip file, I got an error. When I played, Cake Valley was gone. I downloaded another one, and used a different extractor, because the first one ran out of free trials, and thinking back, it probably had an error and just didn’t tell me. That was when all the levels were gone.
I’m going to try downloading it one more time, and hopefully it will be fixed. 🙂
No wonder. When you get an error means that there is a problem with the file or the extraction 🙂
7Zip is free 😉 www.7-zip.org/
I have one. I believe it’s built into Windows. I’m not sure if it downloaded wrong, or if the file itself it bad. As I have said before, the internet here is terrible, and it takes about four hours to download. I’m trying one more time, and will alert you when I works.
It worked! I got the blue mushroom too! And, even more good news: The spiky castle worked, and I was able to complete it and get the apple!
I still don’t have all the ingredients, though. Could I have a list of where to get them and what they are?
Thanks Cash. That`s nice to hear 🙂
There is a special riddle element in every level. Like finding all seal parts for the door in front of the mushrooms. Or the colour riddle in the water library. And every riddle results into an ingredient. Just go through the levels again and have a look which riddle you haven`t solved yet.
Hm, it might be a good idea to mark the levels where you have already found the ingredient by a little solved symbol. I will put it onto To Do 🙂
Ok, thanks. It’s weird though, I didn’t see any hint of a riddle in some of the levels. I will go and try to get them all.e
It`s not neccessarily a real riddle. Sometimes it`s just a job like finding all dragon eggs or picking up some mud with a crane. The vital part is that every level has a quest in one or another way. And in every level you can get something by solving it 🙂
I can’t remember if you’ve fixed the return to cake valley thing where you keep the pages, but I have a bug to report. I fell in water and lost my last life. Before it said game over, I hit escape, and went to cake valley, and I still had the item. It was nice for me, but you’ll want that fixed. 🙂
Haha 😀
Thanks for the report. That`s a nice catch. I definitely need to disable esc when dying 🙂
The issue with returning to the cake valley and loosing all things isn`t fixed yet. It`s at To Do 🙂
Ok, cool. Another question. How do I get the item on snail island. I feel like it’s in those stone passageways, but I can’t jump up there. UGG…
No, it`s not in there. You have to kick the bombs back and destroy the bombmakers by that. Then you get the questitem from the snailking.
OH.. OK… I SEE. THANKS SO MUCH! haha. 🙂
I FINISHED. That was a fun game, and you got me looking into Unity. Before I was trying to code it all without the help of a program like Unity, and it was overwhelming. I never really got started. Thanks so much for this, and I’m eagerly awaiting new levels.
Congratulations. And thanks 🙂
Unity is a really nice tool. It makes game development really easy nowadays. But don’t underestimate the effort. It is still hell lots of work to make a game. I work at Alister since two and a half years now. And still need more time 🙂
No, I know. But what I like about it the most is the sandbox, instead of having to tweak your code and test the game to tell if everything is in the right position.
Then again, I have to learn JavaScript instead of Java, but that’s a good trade-off
You can also learn C# instead Unity`s Javascript 🙂
Oh. Well, either way, it’s a new language. 😛
Hey, I was just wondering about your workflow from a model to Unity. I think I read somewhere that you use Blender, but I’m not sure.
Blender is part of the pipeline, yes.
Cool. I love blender. 🙂
My first bug of beta found! When I try to quit from in a level, hitting enter does nothing. To clarify, I hit enter, it says, “are you sure?”. I hit enter again, and nothing happens.
I’ve played Goat Valley and Mountain Something? and I like them, especially the Mountain one. I still have to finish it.
– Cash
Thanks for the report Cash. The quit bug is already fixed for the next version. Besides 50 other bugs that i have catched meanwhile. See list above 🙂
I also got the great lag problem at spikey castle, I cannot proceed in the game because it’s impossible to finish this level. I guess I’m gonna have to try in another computer
Thanks for your report. And sorry to hear that you have a performance problem. Seems that your hardware is in trouble with the particle systems.
Performance problems are unfortunately nothing that i can fix. I cannot buy my players the needed hardware ^^