22 ms·
The story of the hardest platform game ever
- mootothemax 15y agoAn interesting story sadly ruined by the profanity and sexist photos. Best of luck, although I must admit that were I an investor, I'd want a signed guarantee that there wouldn't be any hidden easter eggs along these kinds of lines ;-)
- RandallBrown 15y agoThe whole time I was reading it I just wanted him to stop talking and take my money. He should release it on Xbox Live no matter what microsoft says. (I think anyone can do it now right?)
- 54mf 15y agoYes, through the Xbox Live Indie Games program (they might have renamed it recently). Problem is, he wouldn't get the promotional backing that a "real" game gets, both from MS and from a publisher. Those games hardly get any attention, and good games often languish amongst 2-hour tech demos and ridiculous Minecraft ripoffs.
- RandallBrown 15y agotrue, and hopefully microsoft comes through for him. But if it doesn't, he should go the indie program and steam route. Put up a post on reddit, and make his millions (thousands?). That'll get their attention.
- fridek 15y agoGreat story and the game is looking good. Do you plan to release your algorithm (as a code or paper)? I wonder how much does it take to check if a level is beatable.
- archivator 15y agoI'm not the author, actually. I just ended up with that page as one of my tabs and I'm embarrassed to say that I've no idea how I ended up there :/ Supposedly the AI would have extra knowledge from the level-building stage, so the search space would be smaller than playing "normally".
- glhaynes 15y agoI've long thought we'd see a web browser appear soon with a menu option to see how the user got to that tab's location. I'd use that at least once a week.
- flomincucci 15y agoI loved the idea. Hope this guy makes it, because I wanna play that!
- TylerE 15y agoCan we get a semi NSFW tag on this? It's a bit...edgy.
- RandallBrown 15y agoI'm really glad I don't work somewhere that this wouldn't be completely safe.
- TylerE 15y agoWell, I mean, there's an above the fold pic of a guy simulating sodomy, and lots of F-bombs. Some of us don't work for startups, or even, gasp, in places with an HR department with no sense of humor and a sexual harassment policy.
- tomjen3 15y agoYou work at a place where the word fuck on a website means it is not safe for work?
- TylerE 15y agoIn a place where I wouldn't want my boss's boss to see me reading a site with the word in 60pt type, yes.
- jrockway 15y agoThe higher up someone is in a company, the less offended they tend to be by "fuck". We've all heard the word before. They even say it on TV now. (At my last job, people were always worried I would get into trouble with my "open source, fuck yeah" laptop sticker. But nobody actually cares.)
- TylerE 15y agoWelcome to the bible belt.
- alexholehouse 15y agoI've never smiled so much at a game demo - the final video looks insane and so much fun! I really like the various co-ops modes you're throwing into the mix. Looks awesome - best of luck.
- NDizzle 15y agoIt looks like a neat concept. I'd probably throw him a few bucks if he had a kickstarter project.
- killnine 15y agoAgreed on the great concept. I'm in love with the idea of infinite levels, and playing a level that hasn't been played. It reminds me of the thrill of watching a minecraft level birth itself in front of you. Agreed also, on the kickstarter project. My wallet is ready.
- 54mf 15y agoThe author appears to have the maturity of a high school sophomore, but wow does that game frighten me, in a Super Meat Boy way. Forget Microsoft, do a Kickstarter to raise funds to hire a real artist and build some kind of story around the game, then publish it for PC and Mac (on Steam if you can - good luck with that meeting). If you're successful there, the publishers will come calling. The game mechanic is clearly there, but it needs a story and style. Again, Super Meat Boy has the "ungodly hard" thing down, but without the distinctive art direction and slightly disturbing story, would it have been as big of a success? I suspect not.
- psykotic 15y ago> Super Meat Boy has the "ungodly hard" thing down SMB is very playable and does a lot to mitigate its difficulty. You can find much harder platformers out there. An example is IWBTG (http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/ http://kayin.pyoko.org/iwbtg/) whose creator also designed some of the bonus levels for SMB.
- 54mf 15y agoOh, definitely not the hardest game ever, but I still think "ungodly hard" is an appropriate label, especially for a mainstream game.
- joshu 15y agoI was totally expecting this article to be about IWBTG. The thing about Super Meat Boy is that it's JUST A BIT harder than you can do normally, but just a bit easier than you can deal with at your very best. So it makes you want to win.
- 54mf 15y ago"So it makes you want to win." YES. Mega Man 9 is another great example of this. Both games get incredibly difficult, but only so difficult that one's inability to complete a level is their own fault, not the result of any "unfairness" on the part of the level designers. It's too hard, then you get better, then you win. That's how you make a great game, and SMB does it to a T.
- Cyph0n 15y agoAs 54mf said, it needs more polishing. Kickstarter is a great idea. You'll surely find scores of hardcore gamers interested in funding a game that suits their tastes. As long as you satisfy the elite gamers, casual gamers (like me) will follow suit, just like we did with Super Meat Boy. What I haven't addressed, 54mf has done already, so all that's left is a "good luck".
- Thoreandan 15y agoSeriously? "Ha ha ha fat chicks! Ha ha, theorem proved, bitches!" [image of him doggy-style dry-humping a woman he assures you in the comments 'he has no idea who that girl is'] ...The subject is honestly interesting, I'd like to see the game-dev work he did, but this guy has a huge problem throwing sex into it. Way to make women hackers feel welcome there, "bro".
- jrockway 15y agoTo be fair, this makes male hackers feel unwelcome too. I opened the page, thought "I'm not being caught with this open at work", and came here to deride the author. That's nice work, Lou...
- llimllib 15y agoI felt uncomfortable with it as a male hacker as well, though the story is actually interesting. Either he's actually naïve enough not to know that he's being offensive or he's devious enough to be using it as troll bait.
- jrockway 15y agoWhat's the advantage of trolling in this form? All he's achieved are a few one-liner comments saying he's an idiot. Victory?
- llimllib 15y ago"all publicity is good publicity". Piss people off == more visits == more sales?
- kennywinker 15y agopiss people off == less links == less visits == less sales. clearly their is a fine line, but I think the best link baiters lead with a premise that is outrageous, and content that is pretty agreeable.
- Vermeulen 15y agoWhy is it such an all or nothing approach to distribution? Getting on XBLA, which requires a publisher (I guess he must be meeting with Microsoft Game Studios then), is extremely unlikely for a indie dev's first game. Value might be able to look away from the game's lack of polish if the gameplay is really good, but even then there are indie games with a lot more polish and award recognition that don't make it on to the service. Even without Steam/XBLA a good game could still make enough money for a indie dev to make another game
- TheEzEzz 15y agoYou're right, I was over dramatizing things a bit. It's only getting easier for small indie studios to get their games out and be successful. This really is the indie golden era.
- glhaynes 15y agoMight be a good game underneath all that but the article made me say "yuck". As a general rule, thin young guys don't look better when they comment on "big girls".
- ap22213 15y agoOh. I was hoping it was going to be about Blaster Master. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_Master http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaster_Master
- efnx 15y agoI loved Blaster Master. Though it's only half platformer, and that half didn't seem to be the hard part...
- knieveltech 15y agoShut up and take my money!
- Tichy 15y agoYeah - I thought we had agreed that we don't want to see that kind of jokes in presentations anymore.
- chaostheory 15y agoI'm surprised he didn't go through the minecraft or kickstarter routes. The game looks good enough now to sell.
- functionform 15y agoAs a guy who opened this at work, lol. Not sure if he intended it to have a sexist vibe, I got the impression he was single and poking fun at himself. The game I will never play because I don't hate myself, but entertaining post for sure.
- SkyMarshal 15y agoI thought this was going to be about Contra, but then I watched the videos. Makes Contra look like Hello Kitty.
- TheEzEzz 15y agoHi all, pwnee programmer here. Thanks for all the support! I'm headed out to our meeting with MS in about an hour. I'd like to quickly add: I'm good friends with all the people in the pictures (except the monkey). The humor was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and I apologize if it came off as offensive. My 'wife' in the story is actually a great guy I met in Thailand. I don't believe he would be offended by the caption.
- 54mf 15y agoWasn't offended, but I was put off by how immature parts of the article were. The game itself is quite an achievement, and while I certainly don't expect suits and ties, I think the tone undermines your effort and accomplishments thus far. You could have just posted the video and a PayPal link, and probably brought in 4-figures+ by the end of the day. The game stands alone, you don't need to sell us on how high-larious and cheeky you can be.
- TheEzEzz 15y agoAsking people for money scares me. A lot. We could certainly use some though. This post was just a quick tongue-in-cheek piece, mostly to calm my own nerves. We didn't post it to HN and weren't looking to get a lot of attention.
- danso 15y agoJust want to point out that your perception of what is offensive is going to be strongly skewed from the perspective of everyone else. That's just human psychology and relative experience; because you're the originator of all the humor and jokes, you know exactly where the wit stems from. Anyone who is not you (or a close friend of yours) does not, and no matter how much you say "It wasn't meant to be offensive, people who know me know it's my sense of humor," that's not a sentiment that strangers can judge. So they're likely to go with their gut and have a negative first impression. Simple as that. People on HN are most likely more tolerant/forgiving of this as long as the hacking is good. I doubt that suits at Microsoft or any other corpopration will be. There's just not much point in risking offending someone who has the ability to ax a deal when the humor in question -- from the average outsider's perspective -- adds absolutely nothing to the enjoyment of the explanation.
- georgemcbay 15y agoHis brilliant idea for infinite platformer levels came in 2009.. 3 years after Notch released an infinite Mario Bros level generator as public domain and numerous competitions had already sprung up around the idea. Also the video shows elements that are way too close to existing Nintendo properties for my liking and probably the liking of MS or Valve's lawyers. I mean, taking ideas from other games is fine, by why are your fireball sticks fireball sticks? I can't think of anything other than Super Mario Bros. when I see that. You can pay homage without ripping off (see, for example, what Jon Blow did with Braid while also creating an actually unique game idea, in his own time, without funding and without coming off an 8th grade misogynist in his pre-release blog posts).
- TheEzEzz 15y agoThe fire spinners have been in the game for 3 years, and we've debated them for 3 years. I can see both sides. They're clearly a direct homage to Mario, but it's just one small piece of our game, and the overall package is really nothing like Mario at all. There have been a few procedural platformers over the years, which is awesome. We're not the first to scene. But I believe we are the first to offer provably possible levels that can scale to any difficulty, both casual and insanely hardcore.
- icefox 15y agoA few years ago there was a mario competition to generate levels. When the contest was over I downloaded the entries and tried out some of them. Quickly I found that while they had successfully generated a lot of levels the levels were not very fun. A few years ago I started playing a lot of mario style platformers writing down notes including what I found "fun" (for the day I would get around to making my own platformer). http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-makes-fun-mario-level.html http://benjamin-meyer.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-makes-fun-ma... Skip down to the "What is fun" section and you will find the first two items pretty much say when you die it is not fun. Skill level doesn't necessarily equal fun in a platformer game. That block that almost kills you and scared you? Turnes out it was scripted and there was no way you could have died no matter what your skill level was. There are a handful of platformers on Linux and they all have the problem of being too hard. The games in the first few levels are so hard that the player quits before they can explore what the engine can even do or find the "fun" in the game. Maybe difficulty is simply the easiest nob to twist when designing platforms which is why so many first time platform developer turn that first, but I would have to think that the fun found in a platformer is not from the difficulty, but in other aspects. No one would dare say that Mario 2 (japan version) is better than Mario3 because it was more difficult.
- PotatoEngineer 15y agoSome people honestly do love nigh-impossible platformers. I am not among them, but the Linux games are going to be made by people who 1) are making it for themselves (and possibly a few others; that community's relatively small) and 2) aren't looking for massive distribution. People who love platformers that much usually like them to be hard.
- AUmrysh 15y agoI love insane platformers like N+, Super Beat Boy, the upcoming cloudberry (from the OP), and of course the super hard mario levels. I think what's interesting about cloudberry is that they are dynamically generating the levels, so you can play the game easy or hard. Properly implemented, it could be attractive to both casual and hardcore platform gamers.
- mcfunley 15y agoRape jokes at the top of the site for the crap you're trying to sell. You come across as a thoroughly repellent person who deserves to fail miserably.
- akukurt 15y agoim just offended.. there is an asian girl sitting behind me she's probably thought i'm the member of sodomy club or something. I just left her behind without any further explanation. what a sad day to start. :(
- United857 15y agoI still think the Super Mario Brothers Frustration mod deserves the all-time title. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in6RZzdGki8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in6RZzdGki8
- sakopov 15y agoI stopped reading about 3 "fucks" into it. Certainly not the writing style I would consider reading. Good luck with the project. Looks interesting.
- jknl 15y agoGame looks amazing and article was a good read. I'm ready to pay for this if it gets to PC!
- TheEzEzz 15y agoI will gladly take your money, sir/madam! Things sounded pretty solid when we talked to Valve, so a PC version will definitely be in the works.
- jphackworth 15y agoI was hoping this would be about Battletoads, which IMO is the hardest platform game I have ever played. Even on an emulator, with the ability to freeze frames and save/reload game state, I could not beat Battletoads.