Jump, Copy, Paste

Dibs on a walkthrough

Well, that was... completely non-intuitive. The instructions really didn't suggest that the game mechanic worked that way at all.

And now I'm on level 5, where some other completely non-intuitive puzzle solution is doubtless staring me in the face. Did it really seem like explaining which objects the little guy can -- and can't -- interact with directly (buttons, boxes, whatever the heck I was supposed to use in level 5) would have 'ruined' the puzzle? If so, that's... really not the best way to design a puzzle game.

I'm kinda bummed out. I like the concept of this game, I'd really been looking forward to playing it, and the first three levels gave me a taste of how much fun it should have been. They also suggested that this was going to be the kind of game where most or all levels have multiple possible solutions, like Magic Pen, which is one of my favourite puzzle games.

But "ha ha, guess how the game mechanic works!" is approximately 80% less fun than pixel-hunting (which ruins way too many point-and-click games and which is itself less fun than trimming my grandfather's toenails) and if every other level is going to be me trying every "obvious" solution and non-obvious solution, getting more and more frustrated, only to eventually go begging for help or finding a walkthrough... that's not fun. I feel like I'm trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle that's missing enough pieces to render any actual jigsaw strategy (other than randomly trying to match every two pieces in every possible combination) useless.

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Okay, so when I clicked "Preview" to double-check my comment before posting, I spotted a very, very, very (read: too) subtle clue in the first post in the thread which led me to be able to get past level 5. I can't begin to imagine how anyone who finds the game via someplace other than this thread would ever figure that out. That was a triumph of non-intuitive, non-logical, non-obvious "solutions".

Level 6 was just the sort of gameplay I'd been expecting from JCP, and I thoroughly enjoyed beating it. The gory death animations of the enemies were a nice touch.

Now, though, I'm at level 7. I figured out how to turn on the one light & turn off the other -- because all that required were deductions which flowed naturally from what I already knew about the game mechanics -- but I frankly just don't care enough anymore to try to figure out what to do about the circular saws. (I'd been hoping they would be rendered harmless along with the killer light, but I guess I should have known that would've made too much sense.) It's a "puzzle" with a solution that's not going to frustrate me any less once I know what it is.

Honestly, when a game that could be as fun as Jump, Copy, Paste manages to be at its best is instead continually sucking the fun right out of itself, that is tragic.

I can't begin to imagine how anyone who finds the game via someplace other than this thread would ever figure that out. That was a triumph of non-intuitive, non-logical, non-obvious "solutions".

Uhm.. I didn't spot anything in the first post, and I got past level 5 just fine.

Anyway, the videos are up: [Part 1 (1-10)] [Part 2 (11-16)]

um... i'm pretty sure the readme explains pretty much all you need to know about the game mechanics. anyway,

And now I'm on level 5, where some other completely non-intuitive puzzle solution is doubtless staring me in the face. Did it really seem like explaining which objects the little guy can -- and can't -- interact with directly (buttons, boxes, whatever the heck I was supposed to use in level 5) would have 'ruined' the puzzle? If so, that's... really not the best way to design a puzzle game.

It's explained quite much as clearly as possible in the readme and level 2: you can copy any object that is not fixed to a darker wall. The darker areas act like incopiable area, so copying anything fixed to them would just immediately make it not work.

Ok, I'm not going to start arguing with you about this thing, since you seem to hate the thing so much. All the other players this far have had no problems whatsoever with the mechanics, and I see no real point to make such a long post just to ramble about the fact that you didn't enjoy the way the puzzles were constructed and that you didn't read the readme.

Now then, relax down a bit. It's sad to hear that you didn't enjoy the game as much as you had hoped, but this far the reactions of other people have shown a bit against your point.

Edit: Oh, and thanks for the cool videos Pineapple! I'll fave them straight away!

I never said I didn't read the readme. (Someone else assuming something about me =/= proven fact.) I did read it -- before I ran the executable for the first time, in fact. And I re-read it when I started getting ridiculously stuck; you may have intended for it to address the issues I was having, but it didn't.

You don't have to argue with me or acknowledge any of the issues I raised. The fact that no one else who's tried the game has brought up the issues I have doesn't necessarily mean that the game is fine and I'm a lone doofus; all it means is that ...no one else has brought up those issues. This doesn't necessarily mean that nobody has had similar problems yet -- plenty of people just lurk on these forums, and/or are shy or non-confrontational in general -- nor that no one else could possibly have similar complaints in the future. I would've thought you would want to know that some people's experience with your game was so uneven; clearly that was my mistake.

If you only want glowing feedback, and no constructive criticism, though, you should say so when you make your first post.

edited to add:
After you've considered your response to yohji's comment, below, Hempuli, you might want to think about why you chose to characterise someone who's made as many positive comments about this game as I've done in this thread -- including in my comment immediately before this one -- as someone who "hate(s) the (game) so much." Did my praise just not register? Did you need to mentally remove me from the set of people who like and/or enjoy the game and thus "matter"? Seriously, I'm curious.

I will address why I made "such a long post" for you: Quite logically, it was because I cared about the game. If I didn't care about the game, or if I just hated it, I could indeed have made a short, to-the-point "Thiz game suuk!1" post (or, since I try not to be that rude or immature, kept my dislike to myself). It would've been useless for me to say "Well, I tried it and it seems to be broken," however, without pointing out what flaws I thought the game had.

I like this game and pretty much most of Hempuli's other work; but yeah, it did take me a couple of days to realize that It was worse with the next (I think) level, the first one where you have to After I figured the solution out, the game became quite enjoyable and interesting, just the right difficulty and all... But those two levels, particularly the second one, were a huge problem for me.

It's interesting the way everyone's having trouble with the earlier levels.

I never said I didn't read the readme. (Someone else assuming something about me =/= proven fact.) I did read it -- before I ran the executable for the first time, in fact. And I re-read it when I started getting ridiculously stuck; you may have intended for it to address the issues I was having, but it didn't.

You don't have to argue with me or acknowledge any of the issues I raised. The fact that no one else who's tried the game has brought up the issues I have doesn't necessarily mean that the game is fine and I'm a lone doofus; all it means is that ...no one else has brought up those issues. This doesn't necessarily mean that nobody has had similar problems yet -- plenty of people just lurk on these forums, and/or are shy or non-confrontational in general -- nor that no one else could possibly have similar complaints. I would've thought you would want to know that some people's experience with your game was so uneven; clearly that was my mistake.

If you only want glowing feedback, and no constructive criticism, though, you should say so when you make your first post.

Hey, please, don't just go angry and start attacking. If nobody else has said about having problems with the game, I don't have any other choice but to think everything is fine. The reason why I mentioned other people's positive attitude was because your point wasn't really about the amount of information given to the player, but rather that the puzzle structure I had made was "a triumph of non-intuitive, non-logical, non-obvious "solutions"". If no one else has complained about the puzzle structure and you make a long post criticizing exactly that, I don't think I should instantly agree. I can add even more information about the copiable objects to the readme or even the game itself, sure, but looking at your posts that wouldn't really do it because it seems you'd want to fully redesign the whole of the game.

Could you calm down a bit, and explain why it was you thought the puzzles to be what you said them to be? It seems you had problems with copying the different objects in the levels, and using them to interact with the other stuff in the levels. Constructive criticism is always welcome, but I would hardly call your post constructive, since you didn't really mention what it was that made the levels non-intuitive or nonlogical in your opinion.

You mentioned being confused with what the player could interact. I agree that it is actually quite confusing not to be able to touch that ceiling button, but otherwise it seems to have been clear that also the laser bullets could be copied. I'll probably add the possibility to touch the button, so thanks for pointing that out.

This is heavily spoilered, mostly for length, but there are potential gameplay spoilers also.



I don't think you necessarily need to "redesign the whole of the game."

Ahh... The Jack, well first of all I see completely eye to eye with you on this subject, and when I read your post, I knew that you put some thought into it. It wasn't just "MUH F**KAH FIX YO DAMN LEVEL B***H!". Thank you for explaining yourself in a manner that is serious, and I also understand how PO'd you were at the time of the "box issue", as I was stuck there for a good five hours.

But on the lesser part of this post, you probably should turn down the typing, as it is a little much, but that's just me. I don't know who else is reading/paying attention to this, but I feel I am not alone. Thanks for listening all!!

Ok, I'll answer those in order.

who's angry?

Ok, I must agree that in some cases saying "calm down" and "don't attack" may seem provocative, so sorry about that. I must say though that some of your choices of words were a bit provocative by themselves. Sorry about that.

Let's look at what's actually been said so far

Please note that the game hasn't been posted only to the Nifflas forums, and there was a betatest phase before release. Quite much all of the comments I have got on those other sites have been 'positive' in the sense that people have figured out what to do. I'll say more on this later in this post.

instructions in the readme

Let's check these in order, again.

• Copying the box -> I didn't think many would have a problem with this, but now when I think about it, it may indeed be confusing to realize that you can actually copy the dark area, it just doesn't appear. Good point, I'll add this to the readme and perhaps make a note to the fourth level itself.
• Projectiles -> You later on mentioned thinking that the laser bullets were parts of the laser cannons. This one is quite much a place where I wanted to make the player realize through thinking that the bullets are actually copiable. I didn't think it would be that hard, since they're anyway separate objects flying far apart from the cannons.
• Touching the box -> At first I intended to make the box pushable and/or stackable, but this would've caused some problems with the copying, so I had to remove it. I'm sorry about that, though, since it would of course be nice to be able to interact with them.
• Sideways buttons -> This is a good point, and I'll add possibility to touch the buttons yourself.
• Button interaction -> My original idea was that the buttons sticking from the ground could be pushed by the player, and the ones hanging from walls were meant for the laser bullets. As I noted above, adding possibility for the player to push the sideways buttons should fix this one.
• Two different results -> This is a bug, I'll look into it.

Specific suggestion

Good suggestions, related to the points noted earlier. I'll add them to the readme.

bug?

That is perhaps not specifically a bug, there is indeed a minimum width and height to a copied area (I think it's 3x3 pixels) - this was added to prevent another bug caused by the code I used to copy the areas - if the area was too small, the code would for some suspicious reason copy the whole level, which confused a lot of players until I fixed it. I didn't think the player'll need copied areas that narrow.

on the nature of...

I kind of answered to the first problem earlier on. I think "you can copy anything that is not fixed to a dark wall" should cover the laser bullets as well, since they fly on their own, not related to the cannons. Of course the clarifications about the dark walls you made should be there, but the bullets don't interact with the dark walls much so I don't think there's a big problem with that. The button thing is indeed a good idea, I'll add it.

About the screenshot

Yes, this is indeed a bug. The baddie checked that it's overlapping with a wall before the empty air was pasted onto the wall, causing the baddie to flip out (because the engine isn't really prepared to objects being inside walls).

...Ugh, you're right, it happens every time I copy a baddie into a wall. Thanks for noting this, it's quite an annoying one and I'm a bit embarrassed I haven't noted it earlier.

So then, sorry for my prejudices, you made really good points and had very good suggestions for the game! Thank you.