Squishy!

Play HATPCR 0.4.4: http://droidfreak36.com/HATPC/0_4_4/

Changelog:

* GameMaker Studio has updated, which affects HATPCR. Performance may be improved, and there may be new bugs I haven't ironed out yet.
* Hannah's interaction with terrain edges has changed:
   * Edges are now squishier from the above - you will fall off of edges more easily and with slip off of them when falling past more easily.
     * This behavior is disabled when crouching, so you can crouch to walk onto the very edge of terrain or grab on to the very edge of terrain when falling. As soon as you uncrouch, the slippery behavior will resume, so be careful!
   * Hannah will now dive onto terrain when falling towards a terrain edge
     * This works by shifting Hannah's hitbox upwards into the upper 2/3 of her standing body, like crouching but upwards
     * It will only happen when moving downwards at a high enough velocity
     * It has a few interesting implications besides making it easier to land long jumps:
       * It allows you to walk across 1 tile wide gaps in terrain without falling in, because the diving onto terrain triggers as you begin to fall into the gap
       * It allows you to automatically duck into 1 tile tall corridors as you fall past them because the diving onto terrain triggers as you fall past and you dive into the gap
   * This is fairly experimental, let me know how you like these mechanics
* Level select screen scroll speed is 3x faster now
* Dialog boxes will no longer respond to the down key, they will only shift to be below Hannah when there's not enough space above to fit them
* Background 3 (fire) and terrain 5 (red) are now available courtesy of HB. Check them out!

I had a bug (that sadly I didn't get a change to record) where upon beating Tutorial 2, I was thrown into a very strange level. It was empty apart from an array of items at the bottom of the screen: a door, a heart, among a couple of other random tiles. I couldn't see Hannah. Any interaction resulted in dying so I quit. Have been unable to reproduce so far.

The same bug myself and rocketguy have both reported. Happens "randomly" on level loads.

I don't know why, but the game hangs whenever I play this URL

http://droidfreak36.com/HATPC/0_4_4chrome/?cave=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.interguild.org%2Flevels%2Flevels%2F1211.txt

does anyone know where I went wrong?

there's not a floor

Yeah, IDK what causes that glitch. I haven't seen it myself. I guess the level file gets corrupted on load or something.



Well, that level has water crates and taps, so maybe that has something to do with it. I don't think that should cause it to hang, but I don't generally pay much attention to what happens when you use features that aren't implemented yet.

What do you guys think about the physics changes though? That's what I really want to know.

The squishiness physics seem fine to me, though I don't play many caves like other members do. The only thing I'd change is "automatically duck into 1 tile tall corridors as you fall past them". I think this should only be possible if the player is holding the Down key at the same time. Going into such a small space without crouching feels unintuitive given that you have to crouch to get into spaces that small in every other case.

Well, the ducking into 1 tall corridors is an unintended side effect of the diving onto terrain feature. Let me try to visually explain:



As you fall past the gap, when you reach the point shown on the left, Hannah goes into edge diving mode because

(1) There's a block obstructing the bottom of the blue standing hitbox in the direction she's moving
and
(2) There isn't a block obstructing the bottom of the green edge-diving hitbox in the direction she's moving

So she transitions into edge diving mode (as depicted on the right), during which period she has the shorter, crouch-sized hitbox and can slide into the gap. Upon landing, she exits edge diving mode and the hitbox resolves in these steps:

(1) It attempts to re-establish the standing hitbox underneath the edge-diving hitbox, but seeing as there's a floor there, it fails.
(2) Failing that, it reverts to the regular crouching state.
(3) Then, as the crouch key is not held, tries to stand up. This too fails because there is a ceiling above Hannah, so she ends up crouching in the gap.

So the same process that lets you dive onto edges when making long jumps also lets you dive into gaps because it works by using the shorter hitbox and there's nothing preventing it from triggering.

It's basically like Hannah pulls up her legs while falling towards edges in order to clear them. In a regular location, she stands up again immediately after landing, but she still uses the crouching hitbox temporarily while diving onto the edge.

It's also worth noting that you still need to duck-jump in order to get into a gap like this:



because the ceiling blocks you from getting high enough to dive into the gap.

I understand what's going on technically, and I'm not saying it's easy to change - I'm just saying it feels strange from a user's perspective. It's the only time you can go into one of those 1-high gaps without crouching - it defies expectations and is inconsistent with the behaviour the player observes in other situations. I don't know much about game design, but I'm sure there's a rule somewhere saying that game mechanics should generally be consistent and not surprise the player.

Can anybody make a new design for the tutorial arrows, they look incredibly out of place in the game and could do with a change of appearance

Maybe a wooden sign with an arrow on it?

but the tutorial arrows are supposed to look out of place, as they need to remind you that you are only playing a game. otherwise, you could get confused and start believing that you are physically a squirrel in the pirate caves, which could cause you to have a mental breakdown as you come to the realization that you will never escape from them, and that, even if you did, you would still be stuck in the body of an anthropomorphic rodent.

My HATPC is in fast forward now for some reason lol

Hannah is also moving really quickly for me. Did changing the loading speed of the tutorial messages speed up the motion of the entire game?

That increased speed is probably due to the HTML5 optimizations in the GameMaker: Studio update. Chances are your tick rate was slowed down by lag before so now you're playing at the actual 60 ticks per second. Which does make it a bit faster paced than the original HATPC.

this is the worst post I've ever read

At the current speed for me, it's fast to the point of being unplayable. It was already a bit faster than HATPC, but I don't think this new speed is intentional.

EDIT: To give you an example, running from one end of tutorial 2 to the other takes under 5 seconds (once all the stuff is cleared out)

Huh. That sounds like a glitch. At an ideal 60 ticks/sec it ought to take 7.5s or more to traverse tutorial 2. Could be a bug in the GameMaker update.

I don't get that behavior on either Firefox or Chrome (for Windows). What browser are you using, kro?

hatpc is more dangerous than drugs, honestly. i mean, can you name any drug that would compel a person to stay on the same forum for ten years and a half.

I imagine there are some weed enthusiasts who have stayed on some weed forum for 10+ years.

Stoners love their weed.

I'm using chrome at the moment. Also, the bug only occurs in 0.4.4 as far as I can tell

Well, ATM 0.4.4 is the only version compiled in GM:S 1.4.1772.

What is your screen refresh rate? Are you on a 144hz monitor?