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Project: Tormishire
Project Started: 7th February, 2007 Last Update: 15th December, 2009
Project Owner: Dr. James MD Project Members: MrPineapple
Project Type: Platform Project Progress:
More Info: http://satansam.co.uk/tormishire Faves: 78

Starsh
Posted 8th Jul 09, by Dr. James MD  
Back in 2007 I added a little beta stuff to Tormi which recorded the frame, player position and cause of death whenever the player died. Which is then saved to deaths.ini for later evaluation.

Originally this was super coo but as these records grew I needed a way to interpret them quickly.

So I made this!

It's a small app in 18 events that plots out a graph of where players die.
Image
This one being mine, going back to 2007.

Image
This one being Piney's going back to 2008.

So whats this in aid of? It lets me see which levels people mostly die on so I can go back and adjust them. Though this will be much more important once the game is nearly finished and in testers hands.
Ideally I'm aiming to get both our graphs flat on release so it isn't too hard.

Update:
Image
Just updated this. It now supports longer frame scrolling (which is selected depending on how many frames there are). Gonna bundle this with the finished game too with some markers to show level/boss names.
It's even possible to have the stats uploaded and have a global display like this. But that would be silly.

Posted by -Nick- 8th July, 2009

Thx for keeping us updated!
 
Posted by Blue66 8th July, 2009

Dude, no offence, but maybe you should focus more on making the actual game
 
Posted by Scott S 8th July, 2009

Ah, but if its completely flat then it may be too easy, right? Personally I dislike games that serve everything on a silver platter, it needs to be difficult but they can't be cheap deaths. (Pixel perfect jumps, rooms filled with millions of enemies, etc.)
 
Posted by Dr. James MD 8th July, 2009

It was only an hours worth of playing around with MMF2, Blue
 
Posted by MrPineapple 8th July, 2009

frame 125 is a bitch i can tell ya!
 
Posted by Dr. James MD 8th July, 2009

Heh, I've had no deaths on that one.
 
Posted by Codemonkey 8th July, 2009

That's pretty cool!
 
Posted by W3R3W00F 8th July, 2009

Seconded. I never though about doing that.
 
Posted by Poobical 8th July, 2009

Ha ha ha ha cool! Neat idea.
 
Posted by Marko 8th July, 2009

You really are dedicated to this project (understatement of the year entry)
 
Posted by Dr. James MD 9th July, 2009

Updated the update
 
Posted by alastair john jack 9th July, 2009

This is a good idea, to get some sort of indication of difficulty in particular areas.
Are you able to load multiple death profiles? so you can get an average?
 
Posted by OMC 9th July, 2009

I like this idea, very smart!
 
Posted by bigredron 10th July, 2009

Thats a good idea. What I would suggest though is that you should go for a slight upwards curve rather than being flat. Make it harder the further you go in the game!
 
Posted by alastair john jack 10th July, 2009

I don't think increasing the death rate as you get further into the game would be a good thing. Increasing difficutly/keeping the game challenging shouldn't relly on trying to kill the player/give them a game over.
But then again, this isn't my game so I don't know how its intended to be.
 
Posted by Dr. James MD 10th July, 2009

Ideally the amount of deaths should be constant to a new player, and flat to someone who knows what they're doing. Any curves would be bad, unless I chunk in an Echo World or summot.
 
Posted by MrPineapple 10th July, 2009

well up untill the last few bits of the game surely... and bosses!

thats the thing about having such a long game here, if we make a point of increasing the diffculty it'll end up impossible by the end
 


 



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