Line Rider v3.4 Update

Uploaded for kevan, 'cuz he's a silly willy.
Description is below, significant bits are more or less intact.



"Not enough significant features to call it V4, but enough to call it 3.4. Expect release around Christmas (Dec 25)."

I really like that spacebar fast forward idea. And the contact points will prolly be super helpful, though I wish they were on top of bosh instead of behind him.

I don't really understand the zooming stuff.

Great that he fixed the frame counter. not sure how I feel about the second .sol...

Space bar ff?

Remaking the help screen. Part of it will include a basic introduction to Line Rider. I need help making one. I have one already, but I was pointed out that it wasn't very good (https://2img.net/h/i757.photobucket.com/albums/xx213/kevansevans/introduction_zpsae33f85b.png)

1) It has to sound like Playing LR for years and years is worth it, without it sounding like a years waste of time. I.E. Don't point out that we've played this for years.

2) Has to make sense to a new guy. The community may be made up of seasoned riders, but the new people are always drawn to what they think is the most advanced version, if they go looking for themselves that is.

3) No hints towards any form of skill past flat sledding. You can explain how you can get better and make smoother tracks, but as far as these new guys are aware of, gwells don't exist.

Thanks for the help.

rabid squirrel wrote: not sure how I feel about the second .sol...

You'll never have the need to even touch this file. It's separate so peoples settings don't get mixed.

Welcome to Line Rider! Use the pencil or line tool to create a path, click play, and watch Bosh ride across the line! Playing this game can be as simple as drawing a hill or as complex as drawing an entire city! After you have finished your drawing you can record Bosh's adventure across it, then post the video online for your friends to see! There are no boundaries to what you can do in Line Rider!

Probably less exclamations, but this is my best shot.

Guys, tell me what you think of the new help menu. Note, this is just the help menu, no LR playing game thing, and it's a little unfinished. http://www.mediafire.com/?p4d2j3p5lx5pysk

Yay, you used my description! =3
I also like how you told about every single shortcut key that was not described in the original help menu.
Overall very nice, you also described gravity wells very well.
You spelled "fifth line" wrong on the playback slide though.
Also glad you finally put in the ghost flag toggle I've been asking for =D

Shotoku wrote:less exclamations

This.

I don't like the "beginner's tutorial" link because part of the magic of LR was figuring it out for ourselves (and youtube).

Also, perhaps a sidebar title that says "FAQ's" that links to an informative thread at IRTL. It's not giving a link to IRTL to join the community, so they can figure it out for themselves and we wouldn't be [blatantly] advertising.

Possible Sample FAQ Thread (Add More):
Where do I post tracks to share?
There are many Line Rider (flash) video sharing sites, the most well-known being www.linerider.org. However, we recommend either www.weridethelines.com or www.elitelinerider.com mainly because of their general understanding of Line Rider and commitment to the flash version. (edit this one, I have no idea how this will come across to a nub)

Wait, isn't Line Rider dead?
It had a (fake, to make us seem more mainstream) revival as of recently with the induction of the new 3.4, which was more user-oriented and open-sourced. In other words, yes, it was, but now it's back. (miiiiiight not include this one)

Q: Where can I download all the other versions of Line Rider?
An open source of any potentially "serious" stand-alone is available at The Line Rider Flash Backup. If this doesn't have what you may be looking for (which is unlikely), you may find it here.

But don't go making a thread right now, this is just a sample, so we will need more faq's if this FAQ idea is accepted.

Would any of the more experienced members post their thoughts?

efrazable wrote:I don't like the "beginner's tutorial" link because part of the magic of LR was figuring it out for ourselves (and youtube).

I see where you are coming from but I think it would be better for new players to have this information. The "magic" you are talking about I think is non-existent in figuring out the controls and is more in mastering manuals, flings, and alt flings (which is not covered). This isn't really a "beginner's tutorial" even in the sense of what a tutorial is.

Spoiler:

Umm, you guys can worry about the FAQ, I'm however not so sure about how I can link the forums.

Shotoku wrote:

efrazable wrote:I don't like the "beginner's tutorial" link because part of the magic of LR was figuring it out for ourselves (and youtube).

I see where you are coming from but I think it would be better for new players to have this information. The "magic" you are talking about I think is non-existent in figuring out the controls and is more in mastering manuals, flings, and alt flings (which is not covered). This isn't really a "beginner's tutorial" even in the sense of what a tutorial is.

haha, I made it really vague for that tutorial.


UPDATE!

i love this epic music you use for these

i want.

Under Zoom help menu item:

600: 6.0 - 6.7/6.x max zoom

- There was only very very briefly a 6.0 dunno if it was released.
- 6.1 has max zoom of 200 in editor (?) but max zoom of 600 in playback
- 6.2 has max zoom of 200 in playback and in editor
- 6.6 & 6.7 IIRC have max zoom 200 in playback and 600 in editor while holding shift

Just the one thing I caught skimming through it, probs more but don't have time

rabid squirrel wrote:Under Zoom help menu item:

600: 6.0 - 6.7/6.x max zoom

- There was only very very briefly a 6.0 dunno if it was released.
- 6.1 has max zoom of 200 in editor (?) but max zoom of 600 in playback
- 6.2 has max zoom of 200 in playback and in editor
- 6.6 & 6.7 IIRC have max zoom 200 in playback and 600 in editor while holding shift

100 is the zoom you begin with when you open LR.
200 is the zoom you get when you press play without holding shift.
600 is the max zoom without holding shift
1400 is the max zoom you get when you do hold shift.

Kramwood wrote:Can you make it so that max zoom in playback is 600 again?

You mean in the editor, right? Because the playback zoom has always been at 200.

Tested this for a bit. The 200 zoom is correct, 6.1 only went to 300, and 6.2 went to 600. So nothing is actually broken or incorrect.

Adding this before someone else comments.

If you watched my September update, you would of saw that I was trying to capture the artistic side of the community by playing random scened tracks at the title screen to show that off. I've kind of realized that wouldn't be that ideal, or pratical. Apparently flash doesn't like to have more than one video or something... tbh, this is pissing me off more than when I couldn't figure out how to get the status texts to align properly...

So as my solution to that, I want to use screenshots instead. I want people to submit screen shots of their beautiful art work in playback mode to show off this artistic side to all the new people. Because, and be honest, the original idea of LR was to make a track and add art, and not to exploit a glitch, right? So what i want is some really nice screenshots of beautiful art done in LR that your willing to share. The images I would prefer to have are .png, but jpegs and gifs are fine. (Flash handles .pngs better because it's a sister product of Fireworks, and Fireworks is basically nothing but the drawing side of Flash) Please have them in high quality, anything in 720 (1280x720) and bigger is most recommended.

In other news, my post of 3.3 to New grounds is doing quite decent, average rating of 2.94 stars, and a few comments. I've put in a link to weridethelines.com in the description hoping it it'll bring some attention here. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/603375

Sorry guys, I'm not doing an October update. To be honest, I haven't really progressed since the September update, not because I can't get anything fixed or implemented, it's just that I haven't done anything...

What I would actually like to talk about is my process of deciding what goes in, what stays, etc. It basically goes through a 3 tier process. Convenience over novelty over skill.

First I ask: "Does this ruin skill?". One of the most odd questions to ask, does this make tricks easier? Or does it make the track making/editing/recording smoother? This one is very hard to get a correct answer from. Some people may think a feature or tool may be useful, remove aggravation from doing whatever it is that got you angry in the first place. However, some may think the opposite. They feel like this makes what their previous work hard, now amounts to moot since it just became easier, which numbs down skill. An excellent example is the auto stack feature (duplicates the line and moves it 1 pixel above the previous). This made the process of drawing each line individually, and finding out what worked or not. Since each line was 1 pixel above, you knew at which point the well got as strong as it possibly could. Obviously this wasn't added, because obviously that ruined the skill.

Second: "Who's going to use this, and how will it be used?". Novelty, or as I like to put it, "Is this here for lulz?". One, if it's for lulz, it's not going to be in the editor. When you make a track, you want [censored] done. Now, when I say "Who's going to use this?" I mean, is the guy telling me this (Or me coming up with it myself) going to be the only guy to use it? Why should one guy have his idea added, because he thinks it's a good one? "And how will it be used?" Simply, is someone going to use it once, because he was wondering what did it do, or will the person need to use it more than once, since the player needs it.

Third: "How can I make this easy to use?". Okay, this one is just as big as skill. How can I put this in, without it looking awkward, being in the way, or inconveniently used. I want you guys to have a smooth experience, something that feels like 6.7, but you just never bothered to try these new things till just now. (Does that make sense?). I have been suggested a lot of features that have to be turned down because of this step. Every now and then, I would be asked to make a GUI that has a button for one feature or another, which practically meant make a button for nearly everything. It would of looked something like this:



Not really practical now, is it? I'm looking at you Happy. ¬¬

When it comes to bug fixes, they don't go through this process. They're bugs, they have to be fixed. Right?

I hope I enlightened you guys.

kevansevans wrote:Some people may think a feature or tool may be useful, remove aggravation from doing whatever it is that got you angry in the first place. However, some may think the opposite. They feel like this makes what their previous work hard, now amounts to moot since it just became easier, which numbs down skill.

IMO nothing really "numbs down skill" when there are the same physics and the same lines.

An excellent example is the auto stack feature (duplicates the line and moves it 1 pixel above the previous). This made the process of drawing each line individually, and finding out what worked or not. Since each line was 1 pixel above, you knew at which point the well got as strong as it possibly could. Obviously this wasn't added, because obviously that ruined the skill.

As for this feature, it's much like a fill tool for scenery tracks. It doesn't "dumb down" skill, if anything it would aid in the process and make general track-making faster, not necessarily easier.

In general, anything that speeds up an otherwise time-consuming part of track-making would be fine by me. It's not like you can make such complex things to auto-balance manuals or create powerful flings on a certain contact point just by a few key-strokes. Just shortening the boring parts.

(BTW you gave a reason for why a black-space filler wouldn't be added ever. What was that again?)

EDIT: I lol'd at that pic of the fake LR control section.

efrazable wrote:

kevansevans wrote:Some people may think a feature or tool may be useful, remove aggravation from doing whatever it is that got you angry in the first place. However, some may think the opposite. They feel like this makes what their previous work hard, now amounts to moot since it just became easier, which numbs down skill.

IMO nothing really "numbs down skill" when there are the same physics and the same lines.

An excellent example is the auto stack feature (duplicates the line and moves it 1 pixel above the previous). This made the process of drawing each line individually, and finding out what worked or not. Since each line was 1 pixel above, you knew at which point the well got as strong as it possibly could. Obviously this wasn't added, because obviously that ruined the skill.

As for this feature, it's much like a fill tool for scenery tracks. It doesn't "dumb down" skill, if anything it would aid in the process and make general track-making faster, not necessarily easier.

Votale, would you care to explain this one for me, pretty please?

In general, anything that speeds up an otherwise time-consuming part of track-making would be fine by me. It's not like you can make such complex things to auto-balance manuals or create powerful flings on a certain contact point just by a few key-strokes. Just shortening the boring parts.

To you, it may be shortening boring parts. But to others, this isn't the case. You're a bit too progressive for me to explain these things to you and get you to understand, so I'm going to leave it at that.

(BTW you gave a reason for why a black-space filler wouldn't be added ever. What was that again?)

Convenience.

I'm at the home stretch guys, by the end of this month I'll be releasing beta versions to a pre-determined list of those who are going to test it. I'm going to drop the frame scrubbing, and make it a on-the-fly pause button. simply said, it will work like the M key, it'll inverse the pause.

Oh, and the new help menu is done.

Also, if you have a phrase you'd like to add to 3.4, post them please. You'll see what it was for when I release it, if you don't know what it is already.

I don't know if you've actually done this yet, but can you add a classic mode and a extended mode which determines which tools are visible?

^as far as I'm aware, only 3 things will change, and I assume it will only be applied during playback.

1) The status text will look like 6.7, maybe a 6.2 setting
2) No options showing up
3) no pause button showing up

I have had this suggested to me before, but with those little changes, it's "idk" at the moment.

Meanwhile last night at one in the morning, I tested my lag reduction, and it produced quite noticeable results:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQDYiZrVlQ0

To be honest, the only thing I want from an LR version atm is one that uses more of your GPU, RAM, and CPU so that computers that can run Skyrim/Battlefield 3/other games on Ultra settings can run a scened track with 50k lines without lagging :|.

TheRevTastic wrote:To be honest, the only thing I want from an LR version atm is one that uses more of your GPU, RAM, and CPU so that computers that can run Skyrim/Battlefield 3/other games on Ultra settings can run a scened track with 50k lines without lagging :|.

Does this help?



That's only one lag reduction trick I've applied. But since it's flash, I doubt we'll get side by side with skyrim playing at 40 fps with 50k lines.

http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/help01.html

What Rev said.

Also I really hope that you're going to implement Cereal's crosshair idea. Ideal for a very precise quirker such as myself.

@Rev and Helios. This version utilizes the ram a lot better. Fsk had it set to where only the editor's lines would be cached inside the ram. Well, I should say the movie clip of "world" was cached (world movie clip allows it to be dragged), and not the lines itself. So now, for every instance there is a line, be it the line you get when you click and drag, or the string on bosh, it's cached.

as for that crosshair thing: