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Cart #mushroomrivals-4 | 2025-01-29 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Update 29.01.2025 - v1.0.3

  • "ghost mushrooms" removal
  • an icon now clearly indicates who will get overtime

Update 26.01.2025 - v1.0.2

  • extra time comes in the end of the regular time and only for the player which has collected more bonus timer than his rival
  • characters are blocked only when they reach half the height of the sprite during collisions
  • basket points are now more visible and in a specific color for each player

Update 25.01.2025 - v1.0.1

  • display order issue fixed for bonus time and mushrooms by updating the pick-up system
  • players can now pass behind houses (no more fake collision with the roof)
  • when collecting a mushroom, the total points in the basket are now displayed
  • to avoid unwanted manipulation, (and in order to use an additional button), you now have to press “x” to empty your basket when you're in front of a house.

Controls

Player 1: arrow keys + X (x button on a gamepad)
Player 2: S, F, E, D + A (x button on a gamepad)

Rules

On a beautiful autumn day, you decide to go mushroom picking (in a randomly generated landscape). Then the worst thing that can happen to a mushroom picker happens: another mushroom picker is already present in the same area.

You'll have to fight hard to fill your basket with the best edible mushrooms and bring them home. Unless, of course, you'd rather bring dangerous mushrooms to your opponent's house... The choice is yours.

Mushrooms

Good

[8x8]
+10pts (Boletus)
[8x8]
+15pts (Morel)
[8x8]
+25pts (Amanita Caesarea)

Bad

[8x8]
-10pts (Fly agaric)
[8x8]
-20pts (Amanita Phalloides)

Behind The Scenes

Mushroom Rivals is multiplayer only (2 players) (at least for now). It's my first Pico 8 experience, and not far from being my first video game programming experience.

I'll be happy to take your feedback to improve.

Credits

Barjo 2025
https://www.youtube.com/@Barjo-diy (diy projects, with or without code)

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Graphics are nice, idea is OK, if a bit lacking in interactivity between players. You can't really do much against the other player, the game feel is a bit similar to a pseudo multiplayer race against ghost cars despite being a real time multiplayer game.

Controls need to be improved :

When going up and down, you can make precise adjustments by doing slight horizontal taps while maintaining the vertical direction pressed, witch is great, but you can't do the same if your main direction is horizontal. In that case, the vertical adjustment presses are just ignored.
Ideally, when multiple directions are pressed at the same time, it's the last pressed down that should take priority if it's a valid direction. If the latest pressed direction is invalid, the 2nd earliest pressed should be tried. This would allow easy entrance to places like gaps between solid tiles with diagonal presses (image 4). You should also implement auto adjustment strafe : in image 3 where the player is walking right or in image 4 where he is walking down, instead of staying stuck, because more than half of the space facing the player is non solid, the player should still face the direction he's trying to go to, but his movement should be converted to lateral in the direction that increases the free space in front of him. This is one of the tricks that makes navigation great in the top down zelda games (Already implemented in the very first NES version) You never feel unfairly stuck despite the orthogonal only movements of the player.

About the sprite display order : you are displaying the players, then the mushrooms. This looks good when the player is higher onscreen than the mushroom (image 2), and bad when he's lower (image 1).

About the GUI :
scores are hard to read, the scores could be displayed directly on the houses, for example.
You also don't know what's in your basket. This can be a design choice, but when both players try to get the same mushroom and are roughly on the same spot, you don't know who got it. Each player could have a different color outline (say black and white) for his mushroom grab notification. This is easy to do : display the number in white/black four times shifted by one pixel in each cardinal direction before displaying the red/green version.
Currently, the player 1 has priority in case of a tie grab. Maybe have the mushroom be destroyed instead in that case, or just set the player check order randomly each frame ?
Another more advanced way to clearly convey who got the mushroom and what is in the baskets whould be to use the top line as basket inventory : show P1 in the top left corner, P2 in the top right, and each time a mushroom is picked, have it float to the next empty spot in the bar, from left to right for P1, and from right to left for P2.

Timer bonus is interesting but not really working : the player that is ahead wants the game to end, the player that is behind wants the game to go longer. This means that player ahead won't grab the item, and player behind will get it whenever he's in the area. Ahead player can't really do anything. If the bonus time was added just for the player that got the clock, timer would only increase if both players gained extra time, and at time over, if the losing player has extra time left, he could use it alone to try to win, making the item always valuable.

You have two unused buttons (X and O). This is an opportunity for more interaction. maybe steal top mushroom or give top mushroom for example ?

EDIT :
there's a recent post about another grab the items game here
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=160987#p
that has a lot of info applicable to your game.


Wow thank you, this is what I call a feedback ;) I need to take time to decide what I could implement in this huge list.

Some of the comments confirm what I think, particularly concerning the direction. Others were considered, but I didn't have enough time to complete them and the aim was to finish a first version, not to give up.

In any case, thanks for your time, I'll be analyzing all this shortly.



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