Oh noes! The fire had started at the Warehouse! And there are people there!
enter...
HEAVY DUTY SPRINKLER!
The ultimate AI, sentient fire extinguishing tool!
Control it with LEFT and RIGHT arrows and rain water by pressing Z!
Don't overdo it though, as water is precious and for any unit of water used, you'll have to hang on for another second before firesquad arrives!
You need to save PEOPLE, by putting out any fire that is WORTH 5 POINTS. Don't rain on people too much, as water is under HIGH PRESSURE and if too much of it lands on a person, it'll PEEL THE SKIN OFF!
After each LEVEL you'll be presented with screen that will show how many PEOPLE you SAVED (each of these worth 15 POINTS added to your SCORE!) and how much of WATER you used (not necessarily in that order).
For every SAVED LIFE you'll be saved 5 SECONDS of waiting on the next level!
I am not a big fan of my music.
Credits where credits due:
Wall tiles - Connorses
Floor tiles (modified by me) - nineraser


I'm still not exactly sure what I'm looking at. Is this a wall or a brick floor? Why are all the fires and people at the bottom? Why is the sprinkler at the top and how is it moving? Gameplay makes sense but the graphics don't provide much context right now.


With so many examples which use it right, all completely different games with unique graphical styles and atmospheres, it's certain that there is a correct way to use it in almost every case.
Puzzlecave - Raiders Of The Lost Potato
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2039
Celeste
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2145
Dusk Child
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2274
Jelpi
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=1810
Super Poulet Poulet
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2393
etc etc


Yeah the graphics are suffering highly from poor usage of the Pico-8's palette. Try practicing around some more with the colors and maybe you'll make something that is more recognizable.
Also, I'm not sure exactly what sort of feedback you're looking for. You seem to be aware that it works the way that it does, it looks the way that it does and that it's incomplete and you need to do more to it.
What exactly are we supposed to comment on, just out of curiosity?


Yeah, I know it's not interesting but:
a) This is my first P8 game
b) It's unfinished
As for making something happen, next version will have gameover screen when all people die (and maybe more levels).
As for your P.S., you have Pico's palette to thank for that - hard to make bricks that are a) gray, b) shaded.


You might want to try to make your graphics less detailed. The decision to have detailed graphics and tiny sprites has made your life more difficult trying to draw detailed bricks with limited colours.
Try a solid grey wall.
Try bigger bricks.
Try different colours.
Try bigger sprites.


@darkhog take to reduce your all palette to 4 colors,or even 2 ( black and white)
I'm pretty sure the result will be much better.
In term of gameplay , it remind me the Game & watch games, but I think you need a sense of rhythm to make it fun, at the moment it just feel random.
Good luck


sorry , *take , Try to ...
take a look to http://www.downwellgame.com


Hi Darkhog,
I think the Pico-8 palette is perfectly sufficient for a game like yours.
Sure, the predefined colours have their limits, but there is plenty of beauty in them.
My advice would be that you try to embrace what is given. You might be surprised what can be done with just a handful of colours...
I took the liberty to download your cartridge and repainted a few tiles to demonstrate what I mean by this:

I take it from your comments on the palette thread that my usage of colours here might not be what you had in mind when you started developing your game, but this is visually exactly what can be done easily within Pico-8's limits... And I hope I can encourage you to further explore the possibilites of a constrained platform instead of fighting it.
I think your game has potential. I'm looking forward to playing the final version!
Keep up the good work.
Cheers!
gizmo^hackefuffel


Thanks. I'll probably use wall graphics, but rest stays the same. Can't use these water graphics because of how water checking works (if you downloaded my cart, you know the details). As for fires, I like mine better and if not for the water beam, I'd think your sprinkler sprite is some kind of lamp.


It's strange, but I find it's easier to make a "gradient" if you are okay with using an array of colors, because if you only want to use the pure greys in PICO-8 it can be difficult. One grey is dark, and another is bright, and the background can't be both dark and bright because then it's hard to see everything else against it. You could get away with using PICO's dark blue/purplish grey in the bricks as a third color, for instance, without breaking up your style.


The solution for middleground shades in pico is to use the less saturated colours, like the purple and dark blue. Using them correctly makes the graphics have a lot more character as well (slightly blue walls instead of boring gray, colour ramp instead of straight gradient).


^
Rhys explains it pretty well.

I suppose the palette is literally designed to make it harder to make games with dull, boring colors. Even my "grey bricks" here have some blue or reddish tint because that's the colors I had to choose from. amazed face


Hey Darkhog,
sure, take what you need and leave the rest! Here is the cart:
Cheers!
gizmo
P.S.: @Connorses, really nice looking wall!


Version bumped to 1.0, added splash screen logo and fixed critical, "death screen" type of bug - after level 12 flames stopped spawning.
See? I would fix it earlier if I would know about it. And I would know about it if anyone actually bothered to play this and tell me about the issue

Heh...


That is by design. Also every 12 levels spawn rate of flames is getting higher (but no faster than 1 flame per second) so eventually, you won't be able to just tap the sprinkler. Actually increasing spawn rate and my omission in code is what caused that bug I was talking earlier and fixed along with version bump.
As for firemen, well I had planned something like that from the beginning, thanks!


Nice game. I laughed at the game over screen when you hose the people too long.
My only nit pick is that the score screen can take a bit too long if you hold down the water hose for a significant period of time. It refills very slowly.


The people tend to move away from the fire before I can put it out, meaning it's hard to really react to the fire and prevent people being burned. I suppose this is pretty hard to fix at this point, though. Good work figuring out the levels and such, anyhow.


Wouldn't you move away from the fire when it is right next to you? And the trick is to prevent too much flames, even when they're outside of any person hitbox otherwise when fire finally hit them (or just water), they'll go into a "death spiral", hitting each unattended flame until they're just a pile of dust.
And the levels are pretty much final, this is finished version. I may put in new update sometime that has changed graphics, but don't count on it.
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