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Bernard & Hank : Springtime Again
Author: Hayo Submitted: 5th April, 2007 Favourites:1
Genre: Platformer Downloads: 555
Rated:
Game of the Week Winner


Edited By Joshtek on 25/09/2022

Edited By Joshtek on 25/09/2022

Edited By Hayo on 8/8/2009

Edited By Hayo on 4/11/2007

Bernard & Hank : Springtime again


About the game
This is not Bernard & Hank 2. This game originally started as a little entry for an easter compo in 2006, basically just an easter expansion for BnH1. It used the same graphics and engine as the original game, but then Matt Esch suddenly turned into a good coder so a new engine was made. The game we submitted was still kinda lame and flawed, you can see here http://www.caiman.us/scripts/fw/f2361.html to
see how terrible it was, so we decided to keep working on it
to make it more of a worthy game. Then we stopped working on it at all till Matt suddenly turned into a better coder
and made anoter new engine, this time a very solid one. Now it's done, it's not called Bernard&Hank 2 but you can
probably see it as a second Bernard&Hank now. Still, if you didn't like the first one I suggest you don't download this
and go play monopoly with your friends instead.

Story
Hank makes some pocket money by selling eggs, and plans to win the yearly egg contest with a huge egg. NationalLiberal, on the prowl for revenge, steals the big eggs and sends out his minions to paint and hide the rest of the eggs. Bernard and Hank have to go through 25 levels to get the bigg egg back and collect as many eggs as possible. If you don't like easter stories I suggest you don't download this and go watch a horror movie with your girlfriend instead.

Graphics
The game still has the same graphics as BnH1 because I was lazy (and working on too many other projects). Some gfx have been improved a little here and there, and some effects for water and fog were implemented, but its still low colour "old school" and "retro" and comformist bullshit like that.
if you are not a fan of old school or low colour I suggest you don't download this game and go play your Xbox instead.

Sound and music
All music tracks and sound effects are original (I do believe people who pick sound effects from the net should be shot btw). The sound effects are not like the ones of BnH1, this time it has SNES-ish samples and real voices.The music was made using the SMG180 soundfont and real intruments. This mellowed down the original (kind of piercing) midi music alot. Special thanks go to Joshua Mononoetoe for soundfont advise. As the game is very about farmers, cows and barns most of the music is country and honkytonk, with a little bit of cajun, blues and rockabilly here and there. I am fully aware that this might not be your taste so if you don't like it I suggest you don't download this game and go listen to your pop songs and trance mixes instead.

Levels and enemies
The game has 25 normal levels, "hidden" bonuslevels and also plane levels between worlds. Apart from the generic enemies from BnH1 every world has its unique enemies like the eilingLiberal, the Liberal Mole and the decending UziLiberal. If you don't like liberals I suggest you don't download this game and be a communist instead.

Extra stuff
The game also has extra stuff in the form of a jukebox (you can listen to all music track there yeah), and the
Liberball minigame that also was in the first BnH but nobody ever played that because you had to beat the main game first. Liberball is just pong with liberals and gravity by the way. If you don't like pong I suggest you don't play liberball and just play the main game and listen to the jukebox instead.

Credits
Matt Esch: Coding, level design, music
Johan Jansen: Level design
Hayo van Reek: Graphics, level design, sound effects, music
Sander van Reek: Coding
Testing players: Joshua Mononoetoe, Adam Lobacz, Jonas Isakson, Steve Harris and Sander van Reek.

(If you don't like any of the people above I suggest you don't download this game and go to bed and have fun with your Bulbasaur pillow instead.)

Version 2.1
Fixed in this version:
- Swimming in the air
- Flying bunnies
- Stuck at boss
- Ghost wrecking balls
- Press A key
- some stuff that nobody will notice

Review This Download



     
 


http://www.hayovanreek.nl/viewpage.php?id=6 (9500 kkb )



Posted by Ski 5th April, 2007
Rated :

Awesome. At last!So colourful

 
Posted by The Chris Street 5th April, 2007

OOH!

Front page time.
 
Posted by Hayo 5th April, 2007

Thanks

 
Posted by Del Duio 5th April, 2007

"old school" and "retro" and comformist bullshit like that.

My company's platform... both of them!

if you are not a fan of old school or low colour I suggest you don't download this game and go play your Xbox instead.

Words truer were never spoken.

 
Posted by The Chris Street 5th April, 2007

A big bug:

The swinging mines are very inconsistant. Lots of them have chain peices missing, and in a couple of cases, the entire mine was missing.
 
Posted by Hayo 5th April, 2007

Thanks, just noticed it, will fix it as soon as possible.
 
Posted by Hayo 5th April, 2007

By the way, bug reports are very welcome folks, we will probably do a bugfixed version soon.
 
Posted by The Chris Street 5th April, 2007

I thought you said to me in the chatroom the other day that the game was undergoing testing?? Seems like a pretty huge bug to miss o_O

Still, I'm up to Level 17 now.
 
Posted by Hayo 5th April, 2007

Yeah, it only happens in the latest build after another bug was fixed, but it's pretty stupid yeah.
 
Posted by The Chris Street 5th April, 2007

Heh, I just noticed your witty "If you don't like this then..." comments at the end of each paragraph of the description... I didn't catch on to that.
 
Posted by Ski 5th April, 2007
Rated :

Circy when you release MSD2 Im goint to nitpick it to death. It will be pixel crumbs on the floor, most of them black from the lovely outlines.

 
Posted by ~Matt Esch~ 5th April, 2007

Surely the nature of the bug should be considered before you start to form conclusions about the testing strategy -- sorry circy it's been a long 48hours
 
Posted by Pkeod 5th April, 2007

Yay!

http://img263.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eggmv2.png
 
Posted by Willy C 5th April, 2007

I'll download this after work tomorrow. Right now I gotta go to bed and have fun with my Bulbasaur pillow.
 
Posted by Silveraura 5th April, 2007

I liked it, unique style... very good. Thumps up.
 
Posted by s-m-r 5th April, 2007

The engine is superb, and the graphics are top-notch Hayo work.

All in all, a VERY fun game to play. THUMBS UP!
 
Posted by Taofeld 5th April, 2007

Is there a reason it started me on level 26, upon my first time playing?
 
Posted by alex37 5th April, 2007

Very good, but I had trouble identifying with the main characters. Corn? Tractors? How about a SyncMaster 940bx LCD monitor in jetblack? Now THAT would be a good theme.
 
Posted by Hempuli 6th April, 2007

Yee-ha!
 
Posted by The Chris Street 6th April, 2007

Matt Esch: I understand that, but the missing chains and swingball things were the first bugs I saw, they were very prominent, and very obvious. In the meantime of course, its easy to overlook any platform engine bugs, for example (not that I found any) because they're generally a lot harder to find.
 
Posted by The Chris Street 6th April, 2007

Bug Number 2:

If you press an arrow key in the cutscene preceeding the NationalLiberal boss fight, Hank starts running on the spot - but also cannot move left and right when the actual boss begins.
 
Posted by Hayo 6th April, 2007

Thanks, hmm, can't make that happen on my pc, even when I press keys in a wild rage. It happened to the bonuslevels before tho (pressing right when the level is loading) and was fixed by replacing an object that somehow still stored its value from the previous level, so I really hope this is the same bug.
 
Posted by The Chris Street 6th April, 2007

Try pressing Right as soon as Hank stops walking.
 
Posted by LIJI 6th April, 2007

Really good game but it's a little too easy.
I started losing life only at level 8, which is a little too late for game to become harder...
Up anyway

Also, A tutorial level is really needed, and add a story to the game itself.
I couldn't really understand what the enemies are, my best gueses are Lawyers, Bunnies, Shahids and... erm... moving poo.
 
Posted by Hayo 6th April, 2007

Thanks

I agree about the game being pretty easy, but the rest is in the pdf manual The poo is uh, a mole.
 
Posted by Hernan 6th April, 2007

Wheee! Bernard can fly, you guys made him a superhero? lol
http://img362.imageshack.us/img362/764/swimminginairbw0.png
Don't know what happened, can't reproduce the bug.
 
Posted by eyeangle 6th April, 2007

Nice graphics. Can I ask why you didn't make the game in a higher resolution? Eg: 800x600.
I'm interested to know for my own game making.
 
Posted by Hayo 6th April, 2007

@Hernan: Yeah, that's another bug caused by an object leaking values ito the next level, thanks for reporting it

@Edwin: Because 800x600 isn't retro and oldschool
(It's really a personal preference)
 
Posted by axel 6th April, 2007

The graphics are very, very pretty. I love the retro style, and the cheery bright colors, and the water effect (the thing you did with the background) was very impressive too. Music was nice and fit well with the rest of the game, although it could get a bit repetitive after a while. The game was also quite well programmed, I couldn't find any bugs there, but maybe I wasn't looking too hard.
However, there's a huge difference between good programming, and good gameplay. The movement felt very awkward to start with, probably because it was so darn fast! Especially the jumping. It felt as though you'd taken an average platform movement engine, and increased the FPS with a few hundred! But the movement wasn't the only thing that disappointed me. The gameplay was very generic and monotonous. You jump on enemies heads, you shoot them, you collect eggs (what were they for anyway?!), trying to reach the rightmost side of the playfield. But it wasn't that much fun to play. It also took a while before it got any difficult; I got to like level 10 on my first run, without dying even once.
 
Posted by TheoX 6th April, 2007

This is a fun game - pleasant music, colorful graphics, easy... the only thing is that the gameplay gets repetitious fast. I give it a thumbs up, but I don't have the drive to play anymore - sorry, maybe another time. I got to level 5 or 6.
 
Posted by Hayo 6th April, 2007

@Axel: I don't have that problem with the movement, it plays pretty smooth on my computer and think Matt did a great job balancing it. The game runs at 60fps, which sure speeds it up compared to the original BnH, but to me it improved the gameplay.

As far as gameplay goes, it's prolly all down to personal preference. People who want to be challenged all the time and want to explore levels when they are playing a game will never like any game I worked on, and they will be RIGHT, but when I look at the games I personally enjoyed most of them are straightforward reach-the-other-side games. I am aware of the fact I am taking this a bit to the extreme in most games I worked on and I want to change this, so I do appreciate your feedback on the gameplay

Oh yeah, the eggs are for extra lives, it's all in the manual folks.
 
Posted by Steve Harris 6th April, 2007

Awesomeness
 
Posted by Taofeld 6th April, 2007

The bug I experienced (posted above) was because I pressed "a" when it said "Press a key" on the title screen. Probably a debugging event you forgot to take out.
 
Posted by David Newton (DavidN) 6th April, 2007

Taking the message a bit too literally!
 
Posted by Hayo 6th April, 2007

Haha, my mistake, thanks for the heads up.
 
Posted by Fifth 6th April, 2007

Cool.

I thought the farmlands/quarry area was pretty tedious, level-wise, but I started enjoying it more once I stopped caring to scour every level (since it wasn't really advantageous). I really liked the feel of the Bayou (the colors, the background, the music, and all that), and I enjoyed the vertical levels of the watchtower (especially the rush one).

As far as bugs go, I saw a couple minor ones... I once shot an enemy into a state of perpetual blinking. And when Hank gets hit by a bear trap, he sounds like Bernard.

...And I really wish there were an alternate button for jumping. JoyToKey only works with shift if it's a button that you don't have to hold while changing directions (like variable, mid-air jumping). 'Course, it only matters underwater in this game, but there're quite a few underwater bits so far.

Anyway, I'm enjoying it so far in a pick-up-and-play sense.
 
Posted by Guillermo (Cc) 7th April, 2007

It's better than the first one (which, honestly, got boring quickly), I dig the graphics, and the PDF manual was pretty cool too! The plane scene is a nice break from the platforming action, but I still think the music doesn't quite fit and the tune that's played on the first 4 or 5 levels is really annoying! But, all in all, it's pretty nice, thumbs up!
 
Posted by jpSoul 7th April, 2007

what a great game !!! I've played about half an hour !
and I will continue
I like the very progressive difficulty, I like the graphics, colorful, the sound effects are amusing, music is well but sometimes a bit repetitive.
you should activate the V-SYNC in your game because a lot of tearings are visible when the scrolling is moving
 
Posted by ~Matt Esch~ 7th April, 2007

V-Sync is active, it's just not using direct x at this moment in time due to some errors at low res. Part of the screen gets cut off on my system, but it seems to work fine on most, so we are probably going to make a config proggy so you can change all the display settings yourself, hopefully with a dynamic frame rate calculator, or a 64bit option to stop some people with 64bit machines experiencing ultra-fast movements. Can't understand why "60 frames a second" isn't actually that on some 64bit machines, but hopefully we can allow for those machines. Maybe also some res options will make some people happier
 
Posted by KnifeFight 7th April, 2007

I found a bug (or secret) you may be interested in. At the title menu press 'A' when it says Press A Key. It takes you to a bonus level. When you finish you are jumped to level 26. If you die, when at the Map Screen you cant go into a level, it just takes you to a black screen.
 
Posted by blanco 7th April, 2007

I'm lovin' the new engine/sfx/bgm! I did, however, find a glitch. I'm not sure if it's exclusive to Level 5; but I found myself unable to 'stop swimming'. I swam right out of the water and continued to the end of the level. I haven't (tried to)reproduced it yet, but it seems exploitable, and worth taking a look-see.
 
Posted by ~Matt Esch~ 7th April, 2007

Yes the swimming bug and the secret are known of. The A key was used when testing and we didn't remove it, and the swimming bug is in the process of being fixed along with the wrecking ball problems. Overall it's fairly stable.
 
Posted by Ski 7th April, 2007
Rated :

OMG I found a new bug lol when you go onto the bayer level and press g you turn in 2 a bunny liberal. ¬_¬'
 
Posted by ~Matt Esch~ 7th April, 2007

you wish
 
Posted by Ski 7th April, 2007
Rated :

Do American keyboards not come with Caps Lock keys?
 
Posted by ~Matt Esch~ 7th April, 2007

The engine is stable and original unlike anything you created pod
 
Posted by Del Duio 7th April, 2007

MEOW!!
 
Posted by axel 8th April, 2007

Featured:

http://indygamer.blogspot.com/2007/04/bernard-and-hank-springtime-again.html
 
Posted by Squirrelhair 8th April, 2007

Your games are very good hayo! Lovin the fishead games they rock, and the bernard and hank games (including this) are cool as well. Well done!
 
Posted by Hayo 8th April, 2007

@Pod: I appreciate the fact you took your time to give contructive feedback without being rude. I agree with your points about the sound and the unevenness of the game. The game didn't have a plan from the start and some things were tacked on at the last moment (like bonus levels) and I am still a n00b when it comes to making sound effects, but I do want them all to be original.
I think Matt did a great job at the engine tho, it plays exactly like I would want it to play. Also, knowing you are a fairy good musician as well, not hearing the difference between wellknown christmass themes and generic country in G kind of baffles me. Still, thanks for the feedback, and thanks for the post on TK.

@Axel: Thanks for the notice
 
Posted by ThePodunkian 8th April, 2007

@Matt Eschehehe: you should maybe play the underside sometime. but i can understand how custom levels with custom npcs and a fully feature scripting engine with a fully modular and stable platform engine couldn't possible compare at all with this gold nugget.

@Hayo: it's not so much the melodies as it is the "sound" of the music. the music is too "calm and happy" for a game about a guy running around shooting people. and i think axel already said this but it's too fast. it feels like the game was built at 45 fps and then someone upped it to 50-60 fps at the last minute or something.
 
Posted by ~Matt Esch~ 9th April, 2007

@Podfuckedintheheadhethan: you should probably shut your face sometime
 
Posted by Hayo 9th April, 2007

Step 3: use the title of your game in everything you say.

About the speed, the final version has a configuration app so you can set your own framerate. It has been tested on faster machines and it did run way too fast. Thanks to everybody who reported the speed issue.

As far as the music goes, to me this is not a game about shooting people, it's a countrythemed platformer, so Nashville sound. Hardrocking stuff would not do it justice in my opinion.
 
Posted by Steve Harris 9th April, 2007

@Pod: Your ego is HUGE. How do you make it out of your door in the morning?
 
Posted by ThePodunkian 9th April, 2007

i open the door and walk out, how do YOU do it?
 
Posted by Ski 9th April, 2007
Rated :

you forgot to mention the Underside in that.
 
Posted by Steve Harris 9th April, 2007

That must be one big door
 
Posted by DaVince 9th April, 2007

What the hell is wrong with people here? lol
 
Posted by The Chris Street 9th April, 2007

Lets not bicker
 
Posted by Hayo 9th April, 2007

Yeah, it's making this game controversial
 
Posted by Jason Orme 10th April, 2007

Loved the first one.

Fantastic backdrop art.
 
Posted by PixelRebirth 10th April, 2007

Adorable graphics and solid gameplay. I'd love variable jump height though...
 
Posted by Del Duio 10th April, 2007

I had problems before with my games being too fast when I built them on a 500MHz computer and than they were run on a "real" computer afterwards. Everything was faster- TOO fast in a lot of circumstances.
 
Posted by axel 10th April, 2007

TIGSourced:

http://www.tigsource.com/articles/2007/04/10/bernard-and-hank-2

Only cool people don't like too-fast movement engines.
 
Posted by Ski 10th April, 2007
Rated :

lol, Derek U.
 
Posted by Hayo 11th April, 2007

Ok, that made me decide NOT to fix the speed issue.
 
Posted by Ski 11th April, 2007
Rated :

I played it again last night and officially decided the speed is fine. Ive played loads of platformers like it.
 
Posted by Joshua M. 11th April, 2007

I actually like the engine and it being fast. Now I'm uncool
 
Posted by Hayo 11th April, 2007

The bugfixed version is done folks, fixed are:
- Swimming in the air
- Flying bunnies
- Stuck at boss
- Ghost wrecking balls
- Press A key

Not fixed:
- speed issue, only asians and scandinavians have this
problem so fixing it would be racist.
 
Posted by bhlaab 11th April, 2007

Movement is a little bit too clumsy for some of the platforming in world 2
 
Posted by Dr. James MD 11th April, 2007

I'm not too keen on this, it feels extremely basic without alterable height jumping. Wasn't keen on the controls either, did feel very loose but the speed was okay.

Overall it's a very well made and solid game. I love the music, the graphics are beautiful and clear and I can really appreciate the huge effort gone into it.

+1 for the PDF manual too.
 
Posted by The Chris Street 12th April, 2007

Yeah Hayo I pin-pointed the bug on the final boss.

When Hank is walking, press the LEFT key, not the right one.

Also, when Hank climbs up the spikeball ladder thing, part of the parallax backdrop shows whiteness (at the bottom) - you can tell because another backdrop object which creates the "mist" using semi-transparancy reveals it. (if that makes sense)
 
Posted by Ski 12th April, 2007
Rated :

And Pod accused me of nit-picking lol.
 
Posted by Hayo 14th April, 2007

It's uhh, what BnH1 should have been. The next BnH will be what BnH2 should have been.
 
Posted by Retired Kliker Lazarus 14th April, 2007

It smells likea classics.
 
Posted by DaVince 15th April, 2007

Hayo: reminds me of http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/video/chronologically
 
Posted by Joshua M. 17th April, 2007

LOL, indeedy haha. The Angry Video Game Nerd rocks
 
Posted by Aloan Moreira 21st November, 2008

Hi Hayo!, how could these professional graphics be created? they are Masterpiece. Just like a commercial product like Nintendo games. Can you share the secret with me? did you draw them yourself? I'm really amazed at how Pro they look. And I didn't download it yet! I'm the creator of the platformer "Cliffall".
Oh and if it's not asking too much: do you know how to not let a character keep animating when we stop in the middle of climbing a ladder in MMF2? it happens in my game and is an awful bug I'd like fixed! Thanks
 
Posted by Ski 14th January, 2009
Rated :

n/a
 
Posted by tecbug 11th May, 2009
Rated :

Good oldschool platformer. I like those pixelart graphics. Good work Hayo.
 

 



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