I was worried about losing simplicity too when I first thought of the energy cell idea, but it's not all that complicated when you think about it: fuel cells don't move, but they can be easily absorbed by other objects which must be destroyed to get the cell out. Such a simple concept but you can do so much with it.

Absorbing I think could be acceptable. The arrow thing concerns me... and transferring its direction? That's even crazier. I couldn't quite tell from your response though. Are you in favor of it, or not?

I'm in favor of absorbing things... NOT in favor, however, of the arrow moving fuel cells around. That might be intense. Maybe not though. Thinking about it, I see it as both horrible, and awesome. I'll stay out of this one; if we do it, I guess it'll be up to the level designers to make it not horrible.

no, the arrow thing makes perfect sense since the energy cell is always getting absorbed by things it comes into contact with.

And I guess it's mostly just a creative way to get energy cells around. Mostly for some cool visual effects.

But you know what, since you absorb energy cells too, when you die, should all of your energy cells fly out of you? Could make the death animation cooler....

That could be neat.

I think someone mentioned this, or at least something similar, about death. I think it could be a load of fun, and wouldn't really be tooooo difficult to program. What if you made it so that, when you die, a gravestone appears at your place of death... and stays there for future playthroughs? Not when the level is closed, obviously, but while you're still playing the level, until completion or exit. That way, we could have a little more entertainment while playing through a difficult level a thousand times... seeing all the absurd places we've died. If the game is online, grave stones from the last person to play the level could be cool too, but a bit more difficult to program, I'm sure.

It'd be fun.


EDIT- and sorry, wrong topic, haha.

How about, instead of a gravestone, it's a skull, and instead of it always being visible, they come up if you hit pause. And if you roll over them, they say what time you died at and the attempt number. Of course, this would also mean that we could let people move the camera around and explore while they are paused. Maybe if people don't like that, we can let them set an option in their level to disable that.

but yeah, that could be really fun to do.

Oh dear, potential problem:
What happens if the same object comes into contact with more than one fuel cell? What happens when that object is destroyed?

Like what? We only have one item per space at a given time, excluding the fuel cell.

Maybe the glow get's stronger? Or a number comes up on top of it.

Oh, I see what you mean, CSD.

I think having just one fuel cell per box could work well. That way, our caves could be slightly more flexible, and at the same time, not too annoying. What would be the purpose of capturing more than one? Would it ever help a trap, or similar? I can hardly see how.

Not yet, but that is the marvel of tricks and glitches.

well, think about it: you have two fuel cells, one on the tile on top of the other. Then a steel crate falls down and grabs both of them. You later destroy the steel crate and you now have two fuel cells on one tile.

I don't see the problem with that. Maybe when you grab a fuel cell, text comes up like "5/8", where five is the number of cells you have, and eight is the total amount needed to open the door. So if there are two fuel cells on one spot, it won't be much of a confusion when you collect them.

Well, I mean, what's the point?

Also, Harumbai: glitches are nothing more than errors in the programming. If we find a glitch in Aeon, it is likely it will be removed.

We could always leave that ability for the user levels to give more options, but in the main levels make sure that scenario never occurs.

@Deku: I don't really mean glitches then, just tricks that can be used to make traps out of.

Ha, gotcha, and I guess that could work. We'll see. *shrug* There's no way of knowing.

If that happened, wouldn't the top cell remain undisturbed, as the steel crate would pass right through it? I thought that the idea of being combined into crates only applied if the crate landed on a tile with a power cell in it, not just passed through one.

Also, what happens with boulders? Same thing?

As far as I am aware, crates capture the fuel cells. Other stuff doesn't. For example, a boulder won't effect it, nor will... a ladder, for example.

I thought the idea was to allow for any crate to absorb a fuel cell. There's really no need to add restrictions like that, even if ladder-energy combos would seem useless. Better to keep it as open as possible.

How about we give energy cells three types:
Strong: cannot get absorbed by anything, causes stacking with forcefield
Regular: can get absorbed by any non-moving item (example: crate that falls and lands on top of it)
Fragile: can get absorbed by anything, including falling/moving objects. Rare.

and maybe they can all be different colors or something.

ladders are not affected by gravity, and therefor should not even affect energy cells. In the game, I would imagine that the cells would be shown over the ladder, or something like that.

Also, you didn't want to go with my varying results, because it was too complicated, yet you suggest making 3 different types of cells?

It could be neat if ladders were affected by gravity though, hah. Maybe Livio could program that in. I was just trying to make a point of how other random objects cannot collect it. Honestly, I couldn't think of anything besides boulders.

hmm, good point. wait, what were your "varying results"?

I know: how about for the main game, we only use regular energy cells. But the level builder introduces the other classes. They should be easy enough to understand.

Quirvy - this is a different type of "treasure" with a different function. It's not just a duplicate that looks different. Your previous suggestion added complexity without adding possibility. That's the different.

Also, Livio, I don't think the level editor should have items the main game doesn't. Pyro II made that mistake. I still don't know the difference between the other "power ups."

Well, hopefully our editor will give you little descriptions or at least links to a help file...

Anyway, the editor will have tons of tiles that aren't in the main game if we go along with the idea to have a Custom Object editor, which will let users mix and match various options and properties of many tiles so they could create stuff like a flaming boulder or double-sided arrow crate or a merge between a platform and a ceiling spike so that this looks better: It could get super complicated, but hopefully we'll keep the user interface simple and easy and out of the way of those who don't want to use it.

But in terms of complexity or, in better words, lack of simplicity, having different types of energy cells with slightly different functions isn't all that bad. It could be done without many flaws.

But you know, I just thought something. We're creating this game mainly as a level-editor game, and the campaign is really secondary. I guess we should put more emphasis into creating deep gameplay elements that will maintain a thriving community, and worry less about initial campaign simplicity impressions.

Livio's first solution, where all the cells are in the same place, was the only thing I could think of as well. The problem is that you can't actually start the game with, say, 10000 cells all on the same time... or can you? We could give each fuel cell we set a "strength" which is sort-of like the amount of energy in the cell, and when multiple cells collide, they become one cell with an increased strength. I was thinking of numbers on the cells too, but that'd look like crap, so making it glow stronger and churn faster is probably the best solution, with some sort of indication as to how many cells you just collected when you finally do pick it up.

My one problem is with this is the minimum fuel-cell requirement, and without knowing how many cells exactly are in each cell before you pick it up... well, say you had to choose between these cells and one important looking one, which should you go with? There's no choice but to guess.... But I guess that's on the level creator's head and not ours.

I guess merging also makes sense sine fuel cells are always getting absorbed by everything, so it's natural that they absorb each other.