Hello Newgrounds,
I have been making Fire Fighter in my spare time for the last few years without any real play testers. Releasing the game here has already pointed out problems other people were either too nice to tell me about or did not spend enough indepth time with the game to notice.
That means I had a lot to work on right after I thought I was done with the game. Today I released the first update to the game. All of this feedback is based upon the reviews given by the newgrounds community.
- I made controls less slippery - There were problems with the original release as to how the player moved that I had grown so used to I could no longer sense them as a problem. The player character would accelerate too quickly and wind up flying foward with the slightest press of a mouse key. I reduced this to be less sensitive although new players may still find it to much. I also changed the jump friction to make you feel more in control of the character. Before if you were jumping through the air and let go of the arrow key you would continue moving left or right for a substantial time. I have reduced that movement carry over so you can stop your horizontal movement before you hit the ground.
- I reduced the size of the fire hitboxes to match their sprites more closely - This mistake comes from a programmer point of view. When I was first making the fire hitboxes they were set to be exact units of my grid. It should have been obvious that I should have resized them to fit my sprites. Alas, things get lost in the huge list of things that need to be done. This one turned out to be far more important than I gave it priority.
- I made some of the jumps in the earlier levels less frustrating - When one of the most common complaints in the game is frustration I took that to mean the difficulty ramped up too quickly. I adjusted a fire in the first level and some other fires in the first 10 levels. This is supposed to be fun before it gets hard right?
- I added a new song to the challenge levels - I only had one track in the game before. Plus it feels like another signal that things are about to get more intense.
- I added a simple preloader so you can tell the game is actually loading - It is very basic and it is the first time I have ever done one. This is actually the part of this update that took the longest to add.
Give the new version a play here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/646743
