I’ll get to it.
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#coloriarizz
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So for Coder King 5, when I saw the theme was rage game, my mind immediately went to things like Jump King and Cuphead (like you mentioned), etc. Those games make you feel like “this should be easy”, and that illusion is what drives the rage. Not raw difficulty, but the mockery of simplicity. That’s what I wanted to recreate, like a challenge that looks small and controlled, but breaks you from the inside out 
.
The Gauntlet of Self is my attempt at a medieval torture chamber. It’s set in a compact place with wooden floors, these repeating purple wall tiles, and a single flag in the center. The goal is simple: get the flag. Do that, and you survive the round. Fail, and… you die. Every round, a crosshair tracks you. If it touches you, you die. That alone keeps the pressure on, so that you’re constantly moving.
Each round, however, a clone of your past self appears.
It moves exactly how you moved in the previous round. It can take the flag before you do. It can take the flag from you. You can take the flag from it.
By round 10, for example, there are 9 copies of you doing exactly what you did, and it’s a literal HELLSCAPE. It’s almost impossible to track the flag if you don’t have it, since the clones can steal the flag from EACH OTHER, and the crosshairs is still following so… yeah.
It’s just you… outplaying you.
The challenge should be easy, right? I mean, you orchestrate the actions of your past, so you can make it easy for your future self. It’s just the crosshairs that changes everything. It’s way harder to camp because of it, so you just gotta keep moving.
Hope you like the torture chamber : )
9 Likes
@Jedi, @ChimbroDaPro, @WoofWoof, @Luke, @TeddyB, @BlueYoshi507, @randomuser, @danger_kitty , @Archer_Bright
(along with anyone else who would like the join the qualifiers)
Oh right, soo every month, I choose to do something called an Activity check. Pretty simple, really. It’s just to ensure that none of you become too inactive or inactive to the point where you’ll miss large deadlines later in the competition.
ACTIVITY CHECK
- I am alive and healthy, thank you
- Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I’m active
- Why hello there
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voters
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still waiting on some people… sigh
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Aight, considering how you were the only one to submit something @ChimbroDaPro, I’ll just treat it as if it were a finale game and write one large analysis before revealing what kind of score you would’ve gotten in an actual CK round.
Da Analysis (WARNING: LONG)
@ChimbroDaPro Analysis: The Gauntlet Of Self
Ok, so just to start things off, I’d say that the game is just really well built with the 536 lines of JS it has. With that many lines of code done in a span of 2 weeks, I expected the game to be really simple and compact. While I wasn’t lying in that category, I won’t deny that it was actually a good design idea on your end. This is a whole “trick player into thinking it’s easy until it’s not” as shown in games such as Cuphead and Getting Over It, and it works quite well here. Also, the simplicity allows for some less overwhelming stuff in general and less object spam.
The red crosshair is a clever mechanic to keep you on your toes for the entirety of the game. With it phasing through walls, you’ll really need to move quickly with the flag if you want to move on to each round. I also really like the whole “fiery explosion” death effect it has. With this much simplicity, I’d also expect a lot of polish in the game structure, and the crossguard plays a big role in helping convince me that.
The star of the show is likely the whole “clone” mechanic that uses your character’s specific movements in each round. Not only is it technically impressive to program in its own right (how you did it was just all too ingenious as well), it also makes the game feel more and more chaotic, plus intense despite being so simple, which is something that I really wanted to see from a CK rage game.
The way that those clones are implemented is really nice as well. With them keeping track of your past moments, you really have to tread carefully around them. If not, they can easily steal your flag, and you’re gonna have to chase them to take your flag back, only to find that you forgot most of your movements from the past rounds! Really, most players would curse themselves under their breath for this, truly a rage game.
So, overall? When you said this about your intention for your submission, I was actually intrigued, and did you succeed with flying colors at doing so? Why, yes, you did, genius!
Ok, ok, ok. So I’m done with most of my positives now. Now, onto the “big boy” stuff, the game does have a few bugs and glitches that I would like to address, though, and this is where the criticism really flows in for the submission, it mainly has to do with the mapping and the one key sprite…
So, apparently, when you try to move between multiple tiles (the purple walls) in the “medieval torture chamber”, there is a really big chance that your character will clip into the tile for a small moment and keep you from moving forward. This is a minor annoyance on my part, yet it (at the same time) wouldn’t have been such a large issue if there hadn’t been a red crosshair and numerous doppel-gangers STALKING me. There were so many times in which I died or almost lost by a thread due to me getting stuck at one point, and all the obstacles coming in HOT.
Another key bug to mention is that you can low-key CLIP outside the tilemap in some sort of way (this is likely due to the fact that you got to spam the A button to travel across the tilemap), and when the red crosshair can pass through tilemap walls to kill you, it becomes a massive unnecessary frustration in the gameplay, and if this “clip out and guaranteed death” was a part of the rage game mechanic, then I’d say that this is way too dang cheap to justify. I also mentioned this in another post beforehand:
CODER KING 5: End of an era - #86 by Taser
Also, there are some times in which the game mechanics can actually feel confusing. For one, you explicitly stated in the game description that if the red crosshair touches you, you die. Yet there were multiple instances where I came in full contact with it, and it never blew up and killed me. So, is it like the crosshair has to fully overlap you for a few seconds in order for the “game over” to occur, or could it be something else?
Ok, so this next part isn’t really criticism, more like feedback. 2 very different things when you think about it. It once again has something to do with the tilemap. I’m not necessarily in favor of having the wall spammed all over the place for every single round. I was thinking if you could create 3 different possible tilemaps and have them randomized. That way, traversing through the game chamber doesn’t feel any less monotone, even when you have numerous barriers to worry about. Also, it would help with the whole “sprite clipping through blocks” issue that I mentioned earlier.
Ok, rambling over, so with that all being said. I really love how simple yet engaging the game is, along with all the polish within the gameplay and the game mechanics. What is holding it back for me is that there are actually frustrating bugs that are nothing more or less than an impudence upon the gameplay, confusion with the effectiveness of the game mechanics, along with how monotone the map structure is. I’d overall give you a 97/100 score for this @ChimbroDaPro, and this is truly the quality that I would expect from a CK finalist. If you plan on following through in CK5, I have confidence that you’ll make it far.
3 Likes
@Jedi, @ChimbroDaPro, @WoofWoof, @Luke, @TeddyB, @BlueYoshi507, @randomuser, @danger_kitty , @Archer_Bright
(along with anyone else who would like the join the qualifiers)
Alright then, I think I have most of the dates down for the schedule of CK5, so… Here they are
(btw there are 3 day intermissions between each challenge, cause’ why not, I want to give contestants some time to relax)
Qualifier round: 8/1-8/15
Quarterfinals: 8/18-9/4
Semifinals: 9/7-9/23
Finale: 9/24-11/30
With my luck, this’ll all go exactly to plan!
(Do not dare to dream now @Taser , we’re not doing all this without a single extension)
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Not what you meant, but having a no extensions challenge would be interesting. I think opening someone’s project and seeing 15+ extensions is very weird, so this would be a neat challenge… maybe just one extension for blocks users because they don’t have the total control that we non-block coders have.
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That sounds like a great plan! With all the schedules made in advance, everyone should know what they’re getting into.
I know the “to extend or not to extend” debate is fierce- but in this situation, I’d suggest we ban extensions entirely for this competition!
Previous extension reasons like planning too much content for the deadline or not knowing the comp overlaps with another commitment just aren’t there.
(And this way the comp can actually finish on time!)
3 Likes
Hah that is cool! It would really challenge people to make everything they need on the spot, it could spark great creativity.
3 Likes
@Jedi @ChimbroDaPro @danger_kitty @Archer_Bright @randomuser @WoofWoof @BlueYoshi507 @TeddyB @Archer_Bright @Luke
(along with anyone else who would like the join the qualifiers)
Right, now to keep some stuff organized for the qualifiers
Do u plan on joining the qualifier round?
- Yes sir
- No Sir
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voters
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Yeahhhh!!! Thanks for that! Just a few things to comment on:
Yeah, i designed it to try and be as fair as mathematically possible, so it only kills you if you’re aligned with it for over 100ms, it even sometimes plays the exploding animation and doesn’t kill you, which is a bug i didn’t get time to fix 
Yeaahhhhh… i didn’t know how to fix it 
it just tended yo happen, so i kinda just rolled with it lol
I assure you it is NOT, in fact, that’s never happened to me once! (Sounds funny tho)
Ohhhhh that’s a possibility! The problem would be that each tilemap would need to be limited to where the ghosts can go… but it’s a super good idea!
WOW THANKS! THAT’S A LOT GOSH
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@BlueYoshi507 @TeddyB @Archer_Bright have been real silent lately…
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I have been on school holidays, and so i have been very busy working and doing other things at home.
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can anyone join?
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this lineup of people for the qualifyers is crazy, but I think I can still make it in!
with the help of a miracle of course
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Yeah, its kind of been agreed on multiple times at this point @CodePerson
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Spicy lineup this year, this comp could finally extend beyond a measly 3 rounds
Now, my job is to keep the hype at a stable rate, that way none of these guys go inactive before 8/1
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