Sydney Hunter & The Sacred Tribe

[+JasonlikesINTV]

Thanks for all the progress updates! I like the music, artwork, map, gatefold box....really above and beyond!

[+cmart604]

Thanks for all the progress updates! I like the music, artwork, map, gatefold box....really above and beyond!

I notice you didn't mention the manual because, well, you know....

[Nyuundere]

 

Yep, still plan to include a map

 

But hey, only cheaters are going to use it anyway

 

-Is your wedding day

-You don't know where is the location of the church

-You have a map, but you don't use it

-Profit (?)

[+JasonlikesINTV]

I notice you didn't mention the manual because, well, you know....

Go ahead. Say it. Tell everyone I never learnt to reeeed!

[+cmart604]

Go ahead. Say it. Tell everyone I never learnt to reeeed!

 

Bahahahahaha!

[retroillucid]

 

I like that artwork. Will there be posters, or tee shirts, of it made available?

 

Maybe replace the simple red text in the title screen with something more artistic?

 

Unfortunately I do not possess any photoshop skills:

 

post-11933-0-08990600-1472247328.png

 

While I like your idea, this wouldn't be doable for INtv

At least, not by keeping the Sydney Hunter logo

 

But, since I liked your idea, I decided to use it for the Colecovision/MSX

[+fdr4prez]

 

While I like your idea, this wouldn't be doable for INtv

At least, not by keeping the Sydney Hunter logo

 

But, since I liked your idea, I decided to use it for the Colecovision/MSX

 

Oh dratz this Intellivision limitation crap... maybe we should all go home now

 

 

HA!!! Well, regardless of this title screen limitation I'll predict that this will be a great game and a top seller

[retroillucid]

We also have updated the Tribe folk

Look more close to what was I imagined at first

[xybot67]

Wow, he definitely looks more menacing! Good job

[retroillucid]

Good news!

 

Sacred Tribe has passed the first Beta Testing phase successfully!

All previous bugs were corrected

 

 

Now to the 2nd Beta Testing phase!

[+fdr4prez]

[+nanochess]

Good news!

 

Sacred Tribe has passed the first Beta Testing phase successfully!

All previous bugs were corrected

 

 

Now to the 2nd Beta Testing phase!

 

And we need to celebrate because the kids have been good

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KchXzranIUY

[xybot67]

Awesome, can't wait!

[Sir Jay]

And we need to celebrate because the kids have been good

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KchXzranIUY

I like the doors. Never noticed them before. Does Sydney have any weapons to fight with or is he forced to dodge all the evil little creatures? Continues to impress.

[retroillucid]

Does Sydney have any weapons to fight with or is he forced to dodge all the evil little creatures?

 

No, Sydney doesn't have any weapons

He must avoid creatures and find a way to escape the temple

 

 

I don't know if I ever mentioned it, but Sacred Tribe is the prequel to Curse of the Mayans

[Guest LiqMat]

So at 1:26 is that a Reaper Archer? :-) Disappears on every arrow throw? Just curious.

[m-crew]

luv it, !!!!

[+nanochess]

So at 1:26 is that a Reaper Archer? :-) Disappears on every arrow throw? Just curious.

Youtube doesn't handle 60hz effect the right way

[+cmart604]

This kicks so much butt.

[AtariBrian]

Wonder if this could be made for the Atari 2600

[JohnPCAE]

VERY impressive! It will need an English grammar pass for the text, but wow!

 

I'd like to second the call for another mechanic in addition to jumping, even if it's something you unlock partway through the game.

[GroovyBee]

And we need to celebrate because the kids have been good

Looks good. A few suggestions:-

• Use lower case in the intro text. It looks a bit more professional in my opinion.
• The "teletype" text is nice effect, but you might want to slow it down a little more.
• Clip Sydney's lower half when hes in the quick sand. That way, it looks like hes in it and not floating on it.
• If you haven't already done so, add controller presses to bypass the intro sequence or allow the player to skip it completely. Eye candy is nice, but it can annoy the player when they just want "one more go".

[+DZ-Jay]

Very neat! I like how you changed the "walking through the door" animation.

 

I have some similar comments to those from GroovyBee:

• Upper-case letters only are hard to read on anything but titles, and on the Intellivision font they are especially brutal! So I suggest using standard sentence-case.
• The "beep" sound as the characters are printed is much too high-pitch and sounds close to a bug "chirp," and could also use a sharper decay to make it sound more percussive.
• During the introduction, you say that "you've been traveling to South America," yet the map is of Central America. If your intention is that you were captured on your way to South America, perhaps that should be conveyed better.
• I agree with GroovyBee that the text moves too fast (and should also include a means to skip the text animation, like in old Nintendo games).
• When the night sky sequence starts, it appears it should be scrolling fast towards the pyramid. However, it doesn't really give this effect. The terrain is so empty, that it just looks like the grass is shaking spasmodically until the Pyramid shows up. Maybe you could slow down the effect, or add some more terrain features (e.g., one or two trees, or slower moving mountains in the distance with a parallax effect) to make it more obvious.
• I understand that English is not your first language (and I don't know if retrollucid's is, so my apologies), but the story text seems a bit stilted and could use some finesse. Here's one suggestion, I tried to keep each sentence to a similar length:
  • "You're the great Sydney Hunter, adventurer." Or "You're Sydney Hunter, the great adventurer." (You see, if you're "great" you are famous, so your title is elevated to "the great" not just "a great.")
  • "You've been exploring the Yucatán Peninsula, seeking treasures."
  • "As you traveled, you were captured in the night by a mysterious tribe." (You probably don't know them, so it's strange to call them "a sacred tribe," unless they are a specific tribe that you know to be sacred. If so, then you call them by name or say "the sacred tribe of XXXX".)
  • "Although they claim they won't hurt you, you are still their prisoner."
• For the short introduction conversation from the tribesman:
  • "Greetings, stranger..." (Foreigners probably won't speak in informal colloquialisms like "hi.")
  • "We don't want to hurt you."
  • "Our people are in trouble, and we need your help."
  • "We've lost access to the sacred doorway which leads to the ancient Mayan city." (Are we really on an Island? It hasn't been mentioned. Also, it is not clear to me what the "sacred door" is or why they want to reach the "side [...] where the Mayans live.")
  • "Can you find it?" (Perhaps there should be some command from the tribesman. You are their prisoner, after all, and they should tell you what they want you to do...)
• The "quicksand effect" is not bad, but like GroovyBee said, perhaps it should make Sydney look like he is sinking rather than sliding on the surface.
• The collapsing bridge mechanic is very nice, but the bridge itself looks cheesy -- at least when compared to the beautifully rendered backgrounds. I understand that you only have one colour and that detail is limited, but perhaps you can give it some more texture to match the style?
• A similar point on the ladders. They are fine, but perhaps could use a bit of detail and texture to match the surroundings.
• When Sydney goes in through a door, it looks fantastic. However, then he just pops out on the other end. Could you just make a similar entrance transition and make the same animation in reverse, to make him look like he is entering the new room?
• I recommend to animate the "gleam rays" on the gems. Nothing fancy, but maybe they could go on and off, or move in two frames. Just to give them more dynamism, rather than remaining static.
• I understand that you are low on available MOBs due to the high degree of detail needed to compose Sydney. However, the Ghost disappearing when he shoots looks very strange and unbecoming. Perhaps you could make a simple three or four frame animation of the Ghost transforming into a spear. That way it would sort of "fit" that you are re-using the MOB without making it so obvious and crude.
• Perhaps it's an artefact of the video, but collisions seems very sensitive: Sydney barely touches the Snake or the Wasp and he falls dead. On some instances, it doesn't even look like they touched at all! Maybe you should narrow down the bounding boxes a bit, and allow for some overlap between the sprites.
• You know I'm a sucker for fluid animation. May I suggest adding a bit of flair to the game by using more frames for each animation? Two-frame animation was fine back in the 1980s (and it is evocative of that style), but your game has so much more detail and style in many other aspects that, say, a two-frame walking sprite seems a bit too bare.
• The end sequence and music is great!

 

Great job! :thumbsup:

 

-dZ.

[Kiwi]

My insane thoughts:

I do agree with using lower case letters if you're in color stack mode. The game does look like it is using colorstack mode so I would recommend using the lower case GROM letters.

 

You could increase the row of text from 2 to 3 rows. Then have the text write in 3 lines and then stop briefly or have the player press a button and it'll write the next 3 row. A lot of SNES games does that like Legend of Zelda:Link to the Past, Earthbound. NES game, dragon warrior, which write the text and text scroll upward(or downward) and then stops until the player press a button to continue the message.

 

The mysterious green roper, if he doesn't move, then I think you could have that enemies use the backtab so the arrow and the roper can stay on.

 

I also been thinking you can buy one more MOB from Syndey meta sprite to use as shot or bullet. For example his feet can be double-x size to make Sydney 5 MOBs instead of 6.

 

Syndey jump can use data table to make the jump smoother. I usually have the table for my game looking like

 

data 3,3,3,3,2,2,2,1,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,-1,0,-1,-1,-2,-2,-2,-3,-3,-3,-3

 

Hopefully there would be a hidden room with a disco ball and a bee with sunglasses grooving to the music.

 

These are my current thoughts and suggestion on the game.

 

EDIT: I forgot about the sand so that made me think it is in BG/FG mode. It is the only tile I seen that have 2 unique colors. You can use have the color stack set as, black, tan, black, tan. So you can advance the stack once the sand tile is placed, and advance stack tag to revert to black color for the tile after the sand and etc. So now you can use Color square tiles,and GROM card.

Edited September 12, 2016 by Kiwi

[retroillucid]

All very good suggestions!

Thanks guys!

 

I'm sure Oscar feels the same way as me and he's up to add those suggestions/changes to the game.

 

Let's make this game as great as possible!