N v2.0 Public Beta

[aids]

Ramblings:

• Make sure to update the forum link on the Metanet Software website.
• I'd much rather see an overhaul of NUMA than integration of a broken website.
• Since this is a new version of the game, you might as well include some new things. I have an idea: doors that can only be open by being broken, e.g. by a rocket or chaingun fire or lasers. And for new enemies, there are too many to list. Maybe keep it simple and just make a rotating laser drone or one of the other NReality mods: http://n.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_NRealit ... _.28121.29
• Custom path drones would be amazing. Better teleporters would be a godsend too.
• Here's a thought: speedrunning wasn't even a thing when 1.4 was being made. NReality kind of made that more well-known and mainstream. So when you say that you want to make maps more speedrun-friendly, please don't. Part of the challenge of speedrunning is getting to outsmart the mapmaker.
• Is the two-player mode going to be competitive or teamwork style? I hope the former, because then you should definitely let people log in from anywhere to compete on a map.
• The most important parts of the new Ned should be auto-save, undo/redo, and an integrated text editor/storage. Moving objects and rotating and such would be majorly helpful though. Also, maybe no more userlevels file. It would be nice to see that become integrated too.
• I have a huge stash of maps which should work well in this new game if you're interested. Unless you are going to add new tiles or a bigger grid, in which case I can edit them accordingly.
• Speaking of new tiles, single-tile circles would be amazing. Don't really need any others, unless you're adding a bigger grid.
• And last but not least, please make custom userlevels have an optional "column/episode" option.

[Harvey]

I think the 100 Episodes should be made into a non-highscorable "training pack" of some sort. I'm really thinking most of these are gonna be pretty horrible to HS. Maybe we can have another pack, including user content that can be highscored and has leaderboards.

Also, what Aidiera said about SRing being about finding hard ways to skip portions of the maps is really true and is what seperates speedrunning and highscoring.

[Pheidippides]

I have a huge stash of maps which should work well in this new game if you're interested. Unless you are going to add new tiles or a bigger grid, in which case I can edit them accordingly.

Ha, get in line. Another SUBLiME would be welcome, but I doubt that's in the cards as the 500 maps for N 2.0 clearly already exist. From the beta and from Raigan's post it seems like user-made levels will be kept out of the 100 episodes, but will be better integrated with an improved User Levels menu. It makes me wonder what will become of level packs, though; if the new User Levels menu functions like NReality, with a NUMA search function, then user-made columns and episodes will become really tedious to share and to play.

[Hendor]

Oh wow, this is really cool. I've dreamed of this for literally 7 years. I just giggled thinking about 2 player high scoring.

[aids]

I have a huge stash of maps which should work well in this new game if you're interested. Unless you are going to add new tiles or a bigger grid, in which case I can edit them accordingly.

Ha, get in line. Another SUBLiME would be welcome, but I doubt that's in the cards as the 500 maps for N 2.0 clearly already exist.

I'm not talking about maps I've made. :/

[Harvey]

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/5499/betak.png

Not sure if if this image will work.

Clicked continue game and finished the episode. This happened. (it was 76 i finished)

[OneSevenNine]

holy damn i was still using this banner in my sig when i lost interest:

• I don't think user levels as the column levels would be a good idea unless M&R asked directly for mappers to map them, with strong guidelines, and organized them themselves. They know what tone they're going for and what curve they're going for one of the strengths of the original game was the uniformity of the original levels. (I personally never liked the 80's column). Given that -- maybe it'd turn out best if they just did them! Not that I wouldn't appreciate additional difficulty.
  
  Please please please let them implement something akin to the game mode of the Holiday Contesque from way back when, where time didn't reset on death -- not to play through the columns with but as an alternative. the potential for interesting new mappage is ginormous -- i have wanted for ages for gold to mean something more! Compared to the wealth of NUMA, only a very few levels ever actually functioned in the whole episodic gold-increases-time-so-manage-that-well world that the game was made around!
  
  But I am super, super, super, super, super excited.

[Gan]

Woow shit's getting serious.
Good job M&R, I hope you implement something to create and play a custom episode or even a custom columns. With only this feature game would be awesome.

But from what I heard and read, this isn't going to happen...

[remm]

The difficulty issue is interesting.

I look at it from the point of view of memorability. For me, a particularly difficult or unique map is more memorable. Many maps in the old 0th column were memorable for me because I had spent much time getting used to the game by playing those maps, and each difficult map there was like a milestone. I don't remember maps in the late 10's and 20's because by the time I got to them, my skill level was sufficient that I would beat them usually in one or two goes. For the people that reached it, MTI is probably the most memorable map

I believe you would want the maps and the whole game to be memorable, so the difficult maps *need* to be present somewhere in the columns. And they need to be in increasing density as the columns progress.

Also, a normal player will probably start in the early columns, and if they happen to be too easy then they will pick a higher number column to start on. The difficulty must be there in those later columns to satisfy those that want it.

[乳头的早餐谷物]

Please please please let them implement something akin to the game mode of the Holiday Contesque from way back when, where time didn't reset on death -- not to play through the columns with but as an alternative. the potential for interesting new mappage is ginormous -- i have wanted for ages for gold to mean something more!

Totally seconded.

[Gan]

For the people that reached it, MTI is probably the most memorable map

I believe you would want the maps and the whole game to be memorable, so the difficult maps *need* to be present somewhere in the columns. And they need to be in increasing density as the columns progress.

Eheh, 83-3 anyone? lol
Btw I agree with the difficulty. I'm not the best player, I'm average, but I beat the whole thing in just one day.. and the "satisfaction" of beating certain episodes wasn't the same of beating Bricklayer, 59-3, the Sibilant S, etc. After I finished Bricklayer I was like "FUCK THIS, IM NEVER GONNA PLAY THIS AGAIN!" lol (who was the user who made it? can't remember, but damn you).

I just hope they implement new features, because as of now, there is only the new time counter and the 2 player modes (not even online, but ok).

If an option of custom columns like in Nreality would be present, then we can consider the first metanet's episodes like a training eheh

Also, wouldn't mind a better editor with little tweaks

[Harvey]

Finally completed it. WOuld have to say i didnt enjoy it much :(

[Vanquish]

Bricklayer was created by xRyuenjinZeroEX
there isnt really much i can say about the 2.0 because everything i would have said has already been said. id just like to echo aidieras suggestions.

Since this is a new version of the game, you might as well include some new things. I have an idea: doors that can only be open by being broken, e.g. by a rocket or chaingun fire or lasers. And for new enemies, there are too many to list. Maybe keep it simple and just make a rotating laser drone or one of the other NReality mods: http://n.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_NRealit ... _.28121.29
Custom path drones would be amazing. Better teleporters would be a godsend too.

adding it some new enemies would be good, considering not much in 2.0 was new and exciting. some new enemies would add an extra challenge in 2.0 and you would learn new skills to avoid or use the 'rotating laser' or 'rocky drone'. it would also add a new vastness of possibilities in the Ned and could incite some awesome ideas an concepts. imagine all the things you could do with the rocky drone or a custom pathed drone. new objects would be sweet too. and actual teleporters other than coded launch pads. just one more thing: will there be ninja flavours for completing a column too? and if so, will they be the same flavours from 1.4?

[乳头的早餐谷物]

I can understand where some of the criticism (constructive or otherwise) is coming from, but it's based on mistaken assumptions. I think if you've been reading the blog it was pretty clear that the main point of N v2 was the new engine. To me, at least. And in that respect it delivered splendidly, notwithstanding the new bugs that have been pointed out. That the whole thing runs and plays so smoothly is worth the price of admission alone.

I guess what I want to get at is that this release wasn't really for us, the existing and hardcore fans, who have gotten so used to and fond of the quirks and intricacies. It's an all-polished-up version for the general public, who will assuredly dig it like crazy. I don't think what makes the game so special has been diminished, and I'm plenty happy to see v2 as the definitive version.

Having said that, what people have been saying about the difficulty is no doubt true and I'm sure throwing in some harder maps would go down a treat. But it's pretty cool as it is.

Oh, yeah, the whole reason I came here was to suggest the 'community' section on the credits page both be larger and directing people to page on metanetsoftware.com with the links rather than just listing them as is, because who knows if our domains will be around forever. Not that I don't trust sidke. Also I think it would be good if ESC still worked when the "press jump" messages are being displayed.

[ska]

Oh, yeah, the whole reason I came here was to suggest the 'community' section on the credits page both be larger and directing people to page on metanetsoftware.com with the links rather than just listing them as is, because who knows if our domains will be around forever. Not that I don't trust sidke. Also I think it would be good if ESC still worked when the "press jump" messages are being displayed.

That crossed my mind too. I was also wondering if it'd be possible to somehow dynamically update the urls if they've changed whenever N connects to the internet. That way new people to the game are perpetually able to connect with the different facet's of N's community...

[Mohit_Ghune]

can 59th episode be beaten?

i have made through 99 episodes and 4 levels of episode 59. I don't know how some were successful in completing this episode. when i reach 59-5, i am left with very less time. what the heck.... D:

[mediate]

can 59th episode be beaten?

i have made through 99 episodes and 4 levels of episode 59. I don't know how some were successful in completing this episode. when i reach 59-5, i am left with very less time. what the heck.... D:

Get the gold on 59-4. That alone is enough to get you through 59-5.

[999_Springs]

Some thoughts.

N was designed to be hard. I'm not saying that to mean M&R designed it to be. I'm saying that the nature of the game itself, with particularly versatile ninja/tile interaction, general ragdoll physics, and large variety of simple enemies lends itself really easily to creating and playing hard levels. That's the main difference between N and most other platformers. As an example, some platformers don't even have the concept of acceleration - you press the directional key to move along the floor and it goes at constant speed from time zero. That makes level design and stuff almost trivial, unless you can add extra gimmicks and concepts outside the platformer. N does not need to do that, because its engine lends itself to creating challenging and enjoyable levels. A quarter of a million maps on numa speak for themselves.

I understand M&R want to branch out to a wider audience and create something with a different reputation to v1.4, so they've stuck to making in-game levels easier and tried to put the focus on userlevels. The problem here is that even by M&R's own admission (blog post comment - can't find it right now) almost all of numa falls into the "very difficult" category. Someone new to playing this game will play through all 500 levels and still have a steep learning curve to go through before being able to enjoy numa levels comfortably. (That's in fact the opposite of v1.4 - most of the 80s column was too hard/tedious, and in-game userlevels together with numa provided some light relief and new mapping concepts.) Making the in-game levels harder and more memorable would really help this transition.

Of course, a lot of the difficulty from numa maps arises from the mapper. But what I mentioned earlier about map creation means that creating hard levels is very easy (I mean, I could create a map in 2 minutes that would take you 10 minutes to beat, even if you require that corner jumps and such like aren't allowed). (Creating good hard levels is a different thing altogether.) Even levels created at random have the potential to be hard. Here are 101 levels produced from Tanner's random map generator, which I offered to playtest a while back.

Of the 101 random levels, only 3 are impossible (#19, #32, #62). The one that stands out the most is #97, which is nearing simple-challenge territory and is harder than pretty much everything in v2.0 beta. The next hardest are #56 and #63, which are both completely intractable for the amateur and need a sequence of accurate tile jumps. #72 and #14 get honourable mentions. Personally I think it's astonishing that even randomly generated maps can be so difficult - it just goes to show how much intrinsic difficulty there is in playing the game, even without input from the mapper. M&R sort of exploited this in their v1.4 levels which they said were "unpolished".

Making all the in-game levels easier won't just change the game's reputation. It hides from the new player a lot of set-ups and tricks that are the whole beauty of N. It's like learning to skateboard and then only using it as a form of transport to get from A to B. Obviously a new player can focus on numa maps to see the true beauty of N, and this is probably what M&R want, but numa maps aren't newbie-friendly in general, and it's the job of the in-game levels to make it so. Let the player run around in a wide open space with a bunch of lasers following it but never quite getting there, for instance. Once a new player picks up the hang of how hard maps can be, the game will still maintain its reputation for being really hard, just because that's the way it naturally is, but with really easy in-game levels.

One more point. Reiterating what RD said, with less focus on in-game levels, how will you rank top players? The highscoring community thrives on competition - not just on levels, but on leaderboards. Scoreboards on 500 easy levels that will be really tight on most levels or even completely maxed out will slightly ruin this, and creating a leaderboard based on scores diluted over a quarter of a million maps is logistically impossible.

edit: wtf 700 words!? sorry if this post reads like a lot of waffle, it probably is mostly >.<

[zoasBE]

Some thoughts.

Bravo, bravo!!! :D

[Equilibrium]

When do they release a non-web based version, I only have wifi and it really lags..

[raigan]

@999_Springs: those are good points.

We really wanted to make the user-made maps the focus of highscore runs, because we realize our levels aren't very well-suited for this sort of thing. Something we're still trying to figure out is how to make highscores mean something when, as you mention, there are thousands of maps to score on.

We're hoping that the community figures out a way to handle this, e.g you could vote on which maps should be considered "ranked", and then you could use the set of officially ranked levels to determine global standing (since there would be a small finite number of them, like the 500 v1.4 levels).

We're definitely open to suggestions.

Another thing is: the game is still pretty hard. You might not believe this, and it's definitely difficult for us to gauge perfectly, but I think the built-in levels will still be challenging enough that not everyone can beat the game.

(For example, a lot of N+ players couldn't beat the level 14-4 "Master Control", they got stuck on it... to us it's a pretty trivial level to beat, for you guys it's probably even easier, but *many* people found it close to impossible)

[EddyMataGallos]

We're hoping that the community figures out a way to handle this, e.g you could vote on which maps should be considered "ranked", and then you could use the set of officially ranked levels to determine global standing (since there would be a small finite number of them, like the 500 v1.4 levels).

I definitely like this and I think its the best idea by far. Being able to highscore all userlevels is great, but definitely there needs to be an official set of levels so that they actually serve their purpose. I'd suggest the built-in levels (including the new unlockable userlevels column you just added) to be the official set, of course. They fit perfectly, and I think this is a must, after all, highscoring must be hard, must be a challenge.

This makes the concept of 0th rankings, top20 rankings, total level score rankings, etc actually valuable.

EDIT: Also, second beta released, and so im posting here some bugs I found. Overall the game improved loads, thanks M&R, no lag anymore, its works fine. I supose there will be a standalone download when the final version is released. Anyway, here you have, Its not much because I didnt really cared about checking the bugs, but:

• You cant sign-in! Any email you give, it takes it as invalid, and asks you for another one.
• The suicide button seems to be linked with the Player-2 jup button, because whe I change the first one the latter also changes. This makes it imposible to suicide (and I supose for Player-2 to jump as well :P).
• Also I saw that the "levels" section still doesnt work, so you cant highscore. I dont know if its suposed to be like that because you are still working on it, or maybe its just because im not logged into any account.
• Also I noticed the savefile is not saving the replays yet, only the unlocked episodes, so I supose that the highscoring feature is not enabled yet, I guess I misinterpreted your post.

[mercuri]

woow, guys, this is so awesome. it runs so smooth i have no words.

- i can't sign in either;
- i'd like to see the name of the level being played in the main screen (very useless but i'd be cool);
- thanks for this awesome game that still kicks asses!
- i found this by clicking twice in userlevels section (see attachment)

edit -- lol nevermind last point.

edit -- so, is the z-snap out or not?

[aids]

It says my email address isn't valid. Is registration working yet? The kill button doesn't work. Death after completing the level needs to be fixed. One-tile jumps seem to give you too much horizontal motion. I would really like to see normal corner jumps restored. Oftentimes in the middle of a level the everything lags embarrassingly slow, like a third the speed it should be going. fps should be added again. I cannot deal with this shitastic lag. Giving up.

[mercuri]

It says my email address isn't valid. Is registration working yet? The kill button doesn't work. Death after completing the level needs to be fixed. One-tile jumps seem to give you too much horizontal motion. I would really like to see normal corner jumps restored. Oftentimes in the middle of a level the everything lags embarrassingly slow, like a third the speed it should be going. fps should be added again. I cannot deal with this shitastic lag. Giving up.

registration not working yet; kill button overlap a button for player two; about corner jumps i couldn't make a single one (i'm not good but i can make them easily).
about the lags, the game is so smooth well i don't see any lags btw.