Actual boxart. I actually submitted this in a DVD case for every competition Trollbean went to. I still have it on my shelf.

Hey all.

This is my platformer, Trollbean. It is my first venture into the world of vidya game development. It was created for an Electronic Game Design competition at school. I intended to continue working on it after, but an unexplainable gamebreaking glitch forced me to drop the game.

In the game, you control Trollbean. Is he a troll? Is he a bean? These questions, and many, many others will go unanswered during your quest through the world of Trollbean. Hop on platforms! Turn red, for some reason! Feed live bunnies to creatures that are supposed to be bats! Anything is possible!

It was designed to be completed in under 20 minutes, and if you're good at games it likely won't take you ten. It was definitely a learning experience, and I'm a lot more comfortable with game design now. That said -- some parts of Trollbean are awful awful bad. Some are surprisingly impressive for baby's first Game Maker game, though.

But is it worth playing, Term?
Do you have ten minutes?
--If yes: play the game son.
--If no: what are you doing here?? Hurry!! You have somewhere to be in less than ten minutes!!

Download Trollbean on Itch.io!
It's free! But if you want to donate for some reason, you're more than welcome! It's like a Patreon!

If you like the sprites, you can get a better look at them in my sprite thread.

STAFF To avoid anal pain
-Myself
-Brad Lakey, Dylan Lovin & Jacob Long - Level design & Creative Infulence

WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO
Shyan!

ehh I suggest creating the base engine before integrating the sprites.

And this is where I lock this thread down and warn you for not following the rules. PM me to sort this out.

Oh hey, my thread is back


Got that bro. Still needs some tweaking but ehh making rooms is more fun. :p There is a "demo" up there, in the link


Btw this thread will be much more interesting further in production, obv

Hey guys. Just wanted to post this in here real quick, I have a demo uploaded in the OP. It has one five room level, two enemies and two playable characters. Give it a try, and lemme know what you think :p

And for an added challenge, try getting through room 3 with Trollbean - No Chili allowed. :p

It's kind of a large file, but I went and downloaded it anyway. Do you use mp3s for music for the game?

When I attempted to download the file, upon clicking the "Download Now" it forwarded me to a "The address is not valid" page.

That's odd, download worked fine for me.
Anyway, it seems solid I guess? I didn't quite finish it but it worked fine. I played as Chilli whenever I could, I didn't feel the punch was worth losing that speed.

I do use mp3s. And I know that's a bad idea. :p I just haven't got around to changing that yet

I wanna also note that several aspects of this demo are temporary - The music, the menu, the terrifying loading screen, the annoying sound effects. Those will all be fixed. If I can figure out what I'm doing wrong, I'll also add an air kick attack for Trollbean.

Thanks for trying it man, anyone else have any thoughts?

Wait... I'm able to download it now... That's weird. Maybe mediafire was just having technical difficulties. Well, the file works now (for me), so I'll do a quick playthrough and in depth review.



It was a fairly enjoyable game, and I was able to "complete" the game after traversing 4-5 so rooms, which ended my journey in a flower field (which I assume is the current end of the game). There are a few areas that could be improved upon, which I'll summarize below.

- Variable Jumping
When I pressed the UP arrow key, it naturally allows me to jump if I'm standing on a platform. While it's no problem on it's own, I have no control on the height of the jump. Variable jumping gives the player the option to change the vertical velocity of the jump. Such as tapping the jump key, allows for a very short hop, but holding down the jump key would allow for greater height. Another thing that got me during my gameplay was repeated jumping while holding the Up key, which sometimes killed my character by accidentally jumping into a monster.

- Ground Snapping
When I land on differently elevated platforms, I sometimes vertically stop a few pixels off the ground, before landing on the ground a couple steps later. I also found I was unable to jump through seemingly passable platforms, unless that was intentionally left out.

- Troll punching
I was uncapable of using the [P] button while moving, so my character had to come to a complete stop to punch, sometimes making hitting the flying enemies difficult, unless you were on even level terrain as the enemy. Due to the range of the punch, it was difficult to hit these flying opponents without getting hit myself.

I'd also like to see...
-More different types of enemies, such as ones that follow you or ones that try to hit you with attacks.
-More types of platforming, such as moving platforms and jump-through platforms.
-An [P] key ability for Chili.
-Jumping on enemy KO's allowing for general offense for both characters.

Good luck!

Thanks for the in-depth review. c: Lemme just respond to a few things here

"two bean shaped characters named Troll and Bean"
Nnnnope. The characters are Trollbean and Chili Pepper :p lul

"as they go on a journey together to some unknown destination"
There will be a story in the final version, This is just a demo, you know :p

"The controls being so close together felt a little awkward"
Really? Noted, thanks for the feedback. It'd be really easy to change that key

"Usually the stages are very straight-forward and linear, so the player shouldn't be confused as to which direction to go"
Again, just a demo. You can expect better levels in the finished game

"which ended my journey in a flower field (which I assume is the current end of the game)"
Yup. Nothing beyond the THRASHER room at the end :p

Variable Jumping
mmm Not sure I know exactly how to do that, but I'll certainly play with it a bit. I agree that it would improve the game.

Ground Snapping
Now that you mention it, I think I may know about how to fix that. It is a problem..
And you aren't supposed to be able to go through the platforms. Several people seem to have thought that you could; is it because they're a bit thin?

Troll punching
I agree. His attack is pretty useless, tbh. I'm having a lot of trouble getting an air attack to work, though, and I can't imagine a walking attack would be much easier.. I'm sure I'll come up with something, though :p

-More different types of enemies, such as ones that follow you or ones that try to hit you with attacks.
Definitely coming.

-More types of platforming, such as moving platforms and jump-through platforms.
Not sure how it'd be done. If a level calls for it, then I'll certainly put some work into figuring that out, but otherwise idk

-An [P] key ability for Chili.
Nah. I have about 10 characters planned, and each one has to have some weakness in exchange for their strengths. Several of them can't attack, including Chili obviously.

-Jumping on enemy KO's allowing for general offense for both characters.
I'm not sure I want the game to play like that, though. MAYBE for some enemies later, but certainly not the Batats in the demo.

Thanks for the feedback I'll work on your suggestions.

I'd like to see this game through, the idea is nice and room for improvement is definetely present.

I can assist you with codes or D&D functions if you wish, if this game is made with Game Maker. I have good knowledge of how platform games, physics, and mechanics work, and can assist with some things if it pleases you.

RE: The horizontal platforms do appear fairly slim, some people may be able to mistake it as passable platform. I did, at least.

That'd be nice, if you could tell me how variable jumping & moving/jump though platforms work :p I am pretty new to this tbh, never done anything in GM before.

Each D&D (drag-&-drop) function has it's gml equivelent, so I'll try to use the "Execute a piece of code" snippet.

Variable jumping: in a simple form. What this code should do is check if you are standing on a solid platform and press up, the character will execute a jump. If the Up Arrow is released before the character reaches the peak of the jump, the jump slows down. Also includes the obligatory gravity.

STEP EVENT for obj_characters (ie: Chili Pepper and Trollbean)

Hm. Thanks Shyan, it works really well

Though that makes the Ground Snapping problem quite a bit more noticeable.. any ideas on how to fix that one? . -. The thought I had only made it worse

Let's try something like this:

What this code should do is snap your character to the platform surface when collided with (when the character is moving downward or horizontally); and should allow you to jump through only certain horizontal platforms (and not get stuck on the decent).

Collision Event w/ obj_platform (the platforms)


Hope it helps!