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Brian @bcdefg123

Age 33, Male

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Ohio

Joined on 2/16/10

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Mechanical Ice Apocalypse Q&A

Posted by bcdefg123 - January 9th, 2011


Well, because I get asked a lot of the same questions in Mechanical Ice Apocalypse comments, I'm going to answer them here.

Questions denoted with N/A are not applicable to the current version anymore.

Q: This game is too hard! One life! RAAAAAGE!
A: Believe it or not, games were once hard. Both me and 3D-xelu are adamant about keeping the lives system just the way it is - in other words, if you get hit, you die. For every person that tells us this doesn't make a game, there are just as many people who support us in this regard. If hard games aren't your cup of tea, that's completely fine with us. But if you leave a review saying your giving it a one because it's 'impossible', you better be prepared to look like an idiot.
Also keep in mind that if you don't know how you're supposed to survive the lasers, there's a video walkthrough linked to in the author comments. Or... just here:

.
/* */
(N/A) Q: The victory screen doesn't work! Why?
A: As I repeatedly have to tell people, this is addressed in the author comments. In short, some code of a dubious origin made it into version 1.1.5. This code basically 'freezes' the victory screen before you are shown buttons to move on.
You may have noticed, however, that people have still been able to submit their best times. What is this trickery, you ask? While the buttons are not shown, they ARE there. If you poke around with the mouse, you will find two invisible buttons. The LEFT one submits your score (and awards the Showoff medal if you haven't gotten it yet), and the RIGHT one just takes you to the credits like normal (which the left one will do too).

(N/A) Q: Where are my medals?
Both buttons, however, will surpass the portion of the game that awards you the Winrar, Bronze, Silver, and Gold achievements. So for now, those medals are unobtainable.

(N/A) Q: So what are you doing to fix this?
We discovered this problem shortly after we put 1.1.5 online. We rushed out a fix, but unfortunately because our game was put on the front page, the number of views easily surpassed the benchmark needed to have all of a flash's updates manually approved by administrators before being put online. Updates have to basically sit there for 24 hours (at least) to be approved.

(N/A) Q: Wait, but this was at least three days ago, right?
It may be a combination of us and them. v1.1.6 was uploaded the day the game was frontpaged, and sat for two days without going anywhere. Yesterday, me and 3D-xelu finished work on 1.2.0. 1.1.6 was not up yet, and I figured this was a little slow for updates (having had the same experience with First Fantasy updates), so we just went ahead and uploaded 1.2.0. Which, of course, isn't up yet.

(N/A) Q: Can you PM an NG admin?
We definitely plan to if the update's not up by the full 48 hours from the time we uploaded 1.2.0. We figure though that there will be considerable time taken in getting an admin to respond.

Q: There's lag in the controls/game in general.
Some people seem to experience this more than others. While I had some problems during development, I am also convinced I have a slowly dying computer. 3D-xelu never reported any problems on his end. Make sure MIA is the only tab/window you have open. Choose the low-quality (not-so-good computer) option. If you haven't done those things, you can't complain. Also, we have optimized parts of the code for 1.2.0, so that may or may not help.

(N/A) Q: The collision detection is off
We have made collisions a bit more lenient in 1.2.0, especially with the lasers. We recognize this is an especially big problem in a one-hit kill game, but the most we can do right now is just hang tight and wait for the update.

Q: A time of 0:00?
A: Yeah... ignore that please. 3D-xelu asked to have it removed, and I asked to have my time removed as well (both were logged during testing). Now as for cgates... that's hax.

More facts:
- This game was made in three days for the Second Newgrounds Game Jam (http://www.newgrounds.com/collection/
nggamejam2
). Naturally, it isn't a very long game for that reason.
- We originally had four people on Team Moose: Me, 3D-xelu, another artist, and a voice actor. The other artist was present during the Jam, but really didn't do anything that made it into the game (I don't know specifics, ask 3D-xelu if you really want to know as he was the one to talk with him). The voice actor never showed up until a few days after the Jam. We used djhoohaa's music from the Audio Portal, but he isn't a part of the Game Jam team.

By all means, if you have any questions that aren't addressed above, ask away.


Comments

Thanks for fixing the medals bro, appreciate it.

Oh good game btw, I loved the art and the music you've put into it.

That was 3D-xelu and djhoohaa respectively, so go and give them a shoutout.

Wait, why are the medals worth 0 points now?

What the heck? They went back to pending... I'm going to PM Tom about that. It may or may not have something to do with the fact that the medal images keep going out occasionally.