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ImmanentDeath
Keeper of the Lunar Lighthouse.

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Controls

Posted by ImmanentDeath - June 6th, 2019


Darkhouse has been out for a couple days now, and it's been doing pretty well. However, as I suspected, there were bugs found, just not the kind of bugs I expected. Several people are telling me the controls either don't work or are difficult to work with. I didn't know Enter was a problem for flash games.


When I started developing Darkhouse, I chose WASD to be the movement because there were a lot of games I played that also used that control scheme. But since it's a platformer game, I wasn't sure what to do with up or down, since Space was jump. So I assigned the down control to entering doorways and moving to the next scene (which may not have been clarified), and I decided the up control would display an animation of the player looking behind themselves, an animation that also appears in the scoreboard scene and cutscenes, since I didn't really have a purpose for it.


Now that I've learned that there are better options for controls, I'll be releasing an update with the new controls. I'm used to the current control scheme, so I'll keep that option in the game if you're weird like me, but if you prefer arrow keys and ZXC, or if the Enter key isn't working, this update should fix that.


Before I release the update, though, I want to ask some more about how the new control scheme scheme should work. Left and Right arrow keys are for moving left and right, the Up key is for jump, and Z can be the new attack button. But what button should be assigned for moving to the next room in a doorway? I coded it to require a button press so you could be in the doorway and still fight enemies without accidentally moving to the next room (for balancing reasons, I removed the ability to go back to previous rooms). But it seems many people didn't understand that at first, so I'll also put the controls in the settings menu for clarification. I could make that button the Down arrow key, but I could also make it X as an action key.


Also, since enter doesn't work correctly with Flash, do Backspace and Esc also have problems? Esc is the pause button, and Backspace is used to exit either the game or menu screens to return to the main menu. Another thing, I'm aware that HTML5 is better for web games. I'm working on an HTML5 version of Darkhouse, there are issues with it that make the game unplayable right now, but I'll see what I can do about them.


I also want to clarify that I'm new to game design. This is the first game I've made, and I want it to be the best that I can make it. But my coding knowledge is very limited. That's why I still recommend reporting any bugs you find, so I can keep a list so everyone knows about them, and so I can try to fix them. If you have any questions, please ask, and if I have any questions, I too will ask.


Comments

I have an update ready that adds a new control scheme using the arrow keys and Z for attack, and also alternate keys for jump (W) and attack (L) on the original control scheme, among a couple other changes. I plan to release the update later tonight, but I would still like to know if anyone has other suggestions for controls. I don't want annoying controls for Darkhouse, because it's a very difficult game.

Edit: The update is now live.