Afterlife 2: Rickard's Journey version 1.0.2 update released

[Ryan]

Hello everyone!

A second update (v1.0.2) has now been released, fixing a bug causing a crash when editing custom controls. Please find the new version available to download here.

Sorry about that, anyway - you can now edit your keyboard setup to your heart's content!

Seems that something always slips through the net, no matter how much testing you do!

Regards,
Ryan

[Aloshi]

I just finished the first act for the Fire realm, and I have to say, I'm having a really great time. The realm before (Mystical ruins or something) was just awesome, and the levels felt really big.

Also, the little minigame for Ankhs is pretty cool (Bomberman or something?), and definitely adds to replay value. The first time I played it though, in the second realm (third, if you count tutorial), the game froze after placing a bomb and getting hit by a ghost (on "Destroy all enemies!", stage 3), and I had to close it via ctrl-alt-del.

Every few realms, there seems to be new things - the crystal place added the Aspect change and taught you to use the umbrella to block things (which is an awesome gameplay mechanic, might I add). I bet near the final realms there'll be a hot-air balloon.

Also, against the second boss (flying skull with spike-balls), when I fell down the spike-hole at the start of the level, sometimes I would fall into the boss, before the battle had started. It was a pretty creative boss, though.

I have to say though, this is pretty addicting - I've been playing it for about an hour and a half, maybe a little more, and I haven't gotten frustrated to the point where I feel I'm stuck (which happens very easily most of the time).

[Ryan]

Great to hear that you're enjoying the game, Aloshi.

And thanks for reporting the design issues you've discovered - I'll endeavor to release an update fixing those soon. I'm a little surprised by the game hanging, though - I'll look into that as soon as I get a chance.

Good luck with the rest of the game in the meantime...

Regards,
Ryan

[Cryoburner]

I finally got around to installing this today, and it's great so far. The overall visuals, gameplay and level design feels much improved from the first Afterlife, and the little extras like the ankh minigame are a nice touch. The cap is awesome, and once found in a level, losing your umbrella isn't quite so bad. : )

I did encounter some issues though. Much like with that prior Afterlife update, I encountered a bluescreen, most likely related to some incompatibility with my Audigy 2 card. The crash came while the third graveyard level was loading, so it might potentially be related to the music track used in that level. Once again, I'll point out that your games are the only ones I ever encounter this issue with. : P

Anyway, the crash itself wasn't too bothersome, but that leads to the second problem I encountered. When I went to check whether the level would load on a second attempt, I noticed that none of my progress to that point had been saved, aside from the one training act I had completed prior. Apparently, progress is only saved when exiting the game, which is probably a bad idea if it happens to crash for whatever reason. I only played through a few levels, but I can imagine it would be rather annoying for someone to play for hours on end only to lose all their progress due to a crash. It would make more sense to save after every level.

Also, sort of a random feature request, but it would be nice for gamepads to be directly supported. I don't see why they shouldn't be, as detecting button presses with something like JoyGetPosEx is relatively easy. Buttons and pad directions could then be assigned in the existing key config menu and used in-game. For now, I'm using Xpadder to map the buttons to the keyboard, but it would be nice if such functionality were built in.

[Ryan]

Really glad you're enjoying the game, Cryo.

I did encounter some issues though. Much like with that prior Afterlife update, I encountered a bluescreen, most likely related to some incompatibility with my Audigy 2 card.

You and that damned soundcard.

I'll make a note of this. Although I never could find why it happened before, the problem seemed to go away as a result of reordering some of the related function-calls, so I'll see if I can forward-port the previous solution to Afterlife 2.

When I went to check whether the level would load on a second attempt, I noticed that none of my progress to that point had been saved, aside from the one training act I had completed prior. Apparently, progress is only saved when exiting the game, which is probably a bad idea if it happens to crash for whatever reason.

Actually, the game does save your progress even if it crashes, in theory... In this case, however, as the crash was caused by the system bluescreening, rather than the game itself crashing, the save routine simply didn't have a chance to kick in. Saving at the end of each Act is certainly a possibility, though - I'll look into it.

Also, sort of a random feature request, but it would be nice for gamepads to be directly supported.

I'd love to do this - a game like Afterlife 2 naturally suits being played with a gamepad... But actually, I don't have a gamepad of my own at the moment with which to test it! At some point in the future, I'm sure I'll look into adding native pad support to both games. In the meantime, as you mentioned, there are lots of great keyboard/pad mapping utilities that can be used to bring the console feel to the game.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, and hope you have fun with the rest of the game!

Regards,
Ryan

[Qabach]

I've played a few times since it came out. The controls are taking me a long time to get used to. I eventually settled on mapping both the "up" and "jump" keys to the up-arrow key, and while that makes interacting a bit clumsy (and I believe impossible in the training levels) it simplifies actual gameplay a lot.

I have one small feature request: The lore scrolls by faster than I can read, and it would be nice to have a "freeze" button that I could hold in order to temporarily stop the scrolling. The scrolling is great for atmosphere, but if there was a bit of optional control, then slow readers wouldn't have to re-open each lore item over and over.

So far, I am finding the game to be very hard, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it one of these days. Thanks for the game.

[Qabach]

About the second boss:
I agree that it's clever. It's also a very aggravating level: I've beaten the boss three times now, but not the level itself.
I'll be trying again after this post, but before continuing, I thought I'd point out...
a bug: I landed on the platform as it was raising (since I had been unable to get onto it once it raised fully) and Rickard raised faster than the platform, resulting in a floating effect that lasted until I moved.

[Ryan]

a bug: I landed on the platform as it was raising (since I had been unable to get onto it once it raised fully) and Rickard raised faster than the platform, resulting in a floating effect that lasted until I moved.

Well spotted! This is now fixed as of version 1.0.3.

The first time I played it though, in the second realm (third, if you count tutorial), the game froze after placing a bomb and getting hit by a ghost (on "Destroy all enemies!", stage 3), and I had to close it via ctrl-alt-del.

Hmm...

I can't seem to replicate this, but of course, it would count as a serious bug, so it would be good to fix it. If it happens again, or if you have any more information, please let me know!

I eventually settled on mapping both the "up" and "jump" keys to the up-arrow key, and while that makes interacting a bit clumsy (and I believe impossible in the training levels) it simplifies actual gameplay a lot.

Ah, um... I'm afraid that actually, the ability to map more than one command to a single key was in fact caused by a bug, so this feature has been "fixed" in the new version. Sorry about that.

Thanks for the game.

No problem - thank you for playing!

Ryan

[Cryoburner]

Saving at the end of each Act is certainly a possibility, though - I'll look into it.

You still haven't fixed this, have you? : D I was playing again yesterday evening, and of course ran into that bluescreen issue again. I only lost one level worth of progress though. I wouldn't mind so much if the bluescreen issue wasn't addressed, but it would be nice if progress would be saved after every completed level. As it is, I have to exit and restart the game frequently to avoid any significant loss of progress.

I have one small feature request: The lore scrolls by faster than I can read, and it would be nice to have a "freeze" button that I could hold in order to temporarily stop the scrolling. The scrolling is great for atmosphere, but if there was a bit of optional control, then slow readers wouldn't have to re-open each lore item over and over.

I second this request. I wouldn't consider myself an especially slow reader, but I find myself having to speed-read to keep up with the scrolling text. A freeze button likely wouldn't be necessary though, as it would probably be best to just decrease the scroll speed by around 20% or so. I don't think anyone's would consider that too slow for casual reading.

Also, it might be nice if a patch version of the download was made available for future updates, since downloading the whole game each time there's a new patch seems a bit wasteful when only one or two files have changed. Those on slow connections or with limited bandwidth might prefer to download a 3 MB patch over re-downloading the entire 38 MB game as well. : )

[Ryan]

Hey Cryo.

You know, I really would like to get to the bottom of what's causing that bluescreen you're experiencing. I seem to remember that it stopped happening to you in the first Afterlife as a side-effect of some other changes to the arrangement of the sound routine calls, but I can't see any difference between the current setup of the two games...

Anyway...

Regarding the text scroll-speed, it's a fine line to get that right; I find it frustrating when scrolling text goes too slowly and I end up having to wait for each sentence to appear onscreen, but of course, it's also annoying when it goes by too fast to read. I have an idea, actually, which might solve this...

As for patching, I've considered it, of course - the only reason I haven't gone that route thus far is that, although it's certainly a much larger file than the first game, it's still quicker to upload it, I think, than it would take to test a second installer with each update. Plus, of course, I hope not to have to release too many further updates.

It's a good point, though, and I'll certainly consider releasing a patch-installer for minor updates in future.

Anyway, hope you're enjoying the game, the above issues aside!

Regards,
Ryan