Pyroclastic Flow

[CommanderCody]

Really nice game

[computergeek]

The restart button is exactly what I was looking for! Good job Mav!

[Bob]

I think the level 2 element powers should require more than just 1/3 of your energy, at least the one with making rain. The rain lasts way longer than the energy bar needs to recover, so one can simply spam rain, thus only having to care about jumping while still beeing able to slow down with the earth ability from time to time, which makes things too easy in my opinion.

[mswf]

Cool! Can I give a little feedback as well?

Hidden/Spoiler:

It's not really clear that the lvl2 elemental abilities are locked; they seem to just not respond. But I'd also like to know what I'd be saving up exp for, so maybe you could describe their effect, but then disable the start button as a result of that.
Shouldn't the button for instructions be accessible from both the game mode screens as well be there on the score summary screen ingame and not just from the main menu? A player could be looking for those instructions on those locations.

Also, small bug, the menu music in the elemental mode menu doesn't loop.

[Cleb]

One other thing, when you use an ability when its already activated, it simply wastes energy. (for example I used water element and accidentally used it again while it was still active and I still lost energy.) might want to fix that.

[The Nasal Abyss]

A couple of critiques, because I admire you so much and I want your game to be as good as possible.

1. The number one thing that bothered me was the volcano eruption screen shaking at the very beginning of the run. I had to reset a couple of times because I would miss the first jump because of it!
2. There is no contrast between the background parallax layers and the foreground layer. The background uses completely black outlines along with the foreground, and that made the game a lot harder to read and react accordingly. Perhaps try lowering the boldness/opacity of the background layers, I think it would help out a TON.
3. The elements were a really fun addition, and really changed up the typical runner formula.
4. The music was very boring and lacked punch and contrast. The song was the same all the way through, and there were no notable or catchy moments. I felt that it made the great gameplay suffer, because music is a very important element in a runner. (I know that creating your own music is extremely hard and takes a lot of practice, but I felt it necessary to mention this.)
5. I felt that it took much to long to speed up, in both game modes. I wasn't hitting any of the smoke clouds, and it still took a long time to speed up. I personally think the difficulty should ramp up sooner, but I'm not representative of the mass ios/pc/android market.
6. If I used an ability once, and then used it again before it was over, I would still lose energy. Perhaps a simple boolean variable to disable the use of the same ability while it is still going is in order?

Closing comment thing: I actually liked this more than canabalt. It was more fun, and had a lot more to the game. I'll totally buy it once it comes out! (If you sell it)

Great game, Mav!

[Maveritchell]

Thanks for all the feedback, guys. Still out of town, so I can't push some of these updates, but I'd like to reply to some specific questions.

I think the level 2 element powers should require more than just 1/3 of your energy, at least the one with making rain.

Does anyone else find this too abusable? I haven't seen any really gaudy scores that would indicate this (even with all the powers available, I find it very hard to get past 100,000 distance).

Shouldn't the button for instructions be accessible from both the game mode screens as well be there on the score summary screen ingame and not just from the main menu? A player could be looking for those instructions on those locations.

Did you find yourself in this situation (you, or anyone else)? Instructions are automatically presented at both of those locations the very first time you play, but I don't have them there later simply because it'd be extra clutter. If it's necessary, I could put them back in.

Also, small bug, the menu music in the elemental mode menu doesn't loop.

Is this duplicable? I can't check right now.

One other thing, when you use an ability when its already activated, it simply wastes energy.

As intended, at least right now. Many abilities are on timers, and re-pressing the ability restarts the timer. Water's the only one that you "waste" anything by pressing again. I left it as-is for symmetry in experience, but do you think it would be better to have water be a special case (i.e. just water wouldn't allow for a double-press)?

The number one thing that bothered me was the volcano eruption screen shaking at the very beginning of the run. I had to reset a couple of times because I would miss the first jump because of it!

I definitely want to have the volcano erupting at the beginning so as to introduce the concept. Did the magnitude of the shake or the length of the shake bother you more? I’ll reduce whichever is the bigger issue, at least for that first shake.

The music was very boring and lacked punch and contrast. The song was the same all the way through, and there were no notable or catchy moments. I felt that it made the great gameplay suffer, because music is a very important element in a runner.

I won’t change the music in this one (I can’t compose myself, so this is someone else’s pro-bono work), but I’d be interested to hear what you think would work better – maybe I can fold that feedback into later projects. If you have specific examples (Youtube, etc.), please let me know.

I felt that it took much to long to speed up, in both game modes. I wasn't hitting any of the smoke clouds, and it still took a long time to speed up. I personally think the difficulty should ramp up sooner, but I'm not representative of the mass ios/pc/android market.

At what distance (without slowing down) did you feel like it was an appropriate speed for which earlier distance? (E.g. “I felt like it was as fast at 5000 as it should have been at 2000”). Note that one-button mode speeds up at a significantly slower rate than element mode.

[Cleb]

One other thing, when you use an ability when its already activated, it simply wastes energy.

As intended, at least right now. Many abilities are on timers, and re-pressing the ability restarts the timer. Water's the only one that you "waste" anything by pressing again. I left it as-is for symmetry in experience, but do you think it would be better to have water be a special case (i.e. just water wouldn't allow for a double-press)?

Yeah water should be an exception, at least in my opinion. You can do it or not do it, its your choice, because its your game.

[mswf]

Shouldn't the button for instructions be accessible from both the game mode screens as well be there on the score summary screen ingame and not just from the main menu? A player could be looking for those instructions on those locations.

Did you find yourself in this situation (you, or anyone else)? Instructions are automatically presented at both of those locations the very first time you play, but I don't have them there later simply because it'd be extra clutter. If it's necessary, I could put them back in.

I'd favor putting them back in. Because there is a high (and extra high possibility because of it being a mobile game, people play them much more casual) possibility of a player skimming over the instructions wanting to just play. Then when they fail, they probably don't know why and can't easily find the instructions back. If they press "go back to menu" they are none the wiser still.
Putting the question marks in is just an extra way of preventing a player to not know what to do or where to find out and consequently closing down the game.

Also, small bug, the menu music in the elemental mode menu doesn't loop.

Is this duplicable? I can't check right now.

Weird, I can't seem to replicate it indeed. When I encountered it last time I was so sure of it; I must have had a brainfart.

Oh and another itsybitsy of feedback; the earth elemental visual effect currently disappears so fast that it can be missed. I'd suggest slowing it down radically and/or have some visual effect remaining near the player his/her feet while the effect is still activated.

[noMatt]

Any Updates mav?

[Marth8880]

Whoooa there! He'll post an update when there's an update to post, Essay! 1:()

[Maveritchell]

Any Updates mav?

Sorry! Completely forgot about this topic. I finished up the game a while ago, and I think I had the flash source set so that it updated as I pushed new versions. I just checked the first post, and it should have the final version. I switched it out to use the version from my site so that it avoids any ads that might have played.

[Marth8880]

Well fantastic, then. Any chance of porting it to Android still?

[THEWULFMAN]

I didn't know you had a website Mav. :O

I still play my version of Pyroclastic Flow from time to time, I enjoy it more than Cannonbolt so it replaced it.

[Maveritchell]

Well fantastic, then. Any chance of porting it to Android still?

It's still there, on the backburner. I've got a small limitation in that regard and I've been working on other projects lately in my free time anyway.