Dude. Stop being so awesome. <XD

And again... I'm made to step up my game in Game Maker... Do you have Pro?

I use Game Maker 5.2A to build my games. I cannot work with any of the versions after it, due to them being major rewrites.

I found the first boss, but he wiped the floor with me so I had to go back and train a bit more to prepare myself. Now it seems like I've gotten stuck. The green card is gone, but the door to the boss is closed and I can't unlock it. Also. the weird disembodied head that looks at you when you walk past it is acting in strange ways. When I went there to grab the keycard, it was there; but when I re-entered the room after taking the card it had disappeared. And now after I have run around training for a while, it seems like the head has returned to its position in front of where I found the card.

I've had a lot of fun with the game so far. I like your art style and all the music is great. However, I think the level design could be improved upon. This first chapter seems to consist entirely of fighting enemies, most of which are the same type of robot, so it gets a little after a while. I would suggest either adding more enemy types for more variety or possibly mix up the fighting with some other activities, like solving puzzles or jumping on falling platforms.

Sounds like glitch cases to me. The first glitch I did fix up, because the game is programmed to destroy existing items (items dropped from boxes, enemies, etc.) once the player leaves and enters another room. I simply needed to program the game to destroy the items only if that item is not a key item. Thanks for spotting this one out! I think the alpha needs a re-update, as this glitch could cause some ugly, frustrating cases.

The second glitch is one that brings me to wonder. What I don't understand is how the head came back after you've trained, assuming you didn't quit/load the game during that time or saved when the head did move away. Game Maker's persistent option assures that it stays away once it moves away, which is something it will do once you obtain the green card. Even if it did return to its normal position, it would still have to be moving, given that it's horizontal speed would still be set to moving and that, for some reason, it doesn't destroy itself once it moves out of the map, which it will do under programming once it leaves the range of the map.

Thanks! To explain, the first chapter is to be all about fighting. I wanted to keep the first chapter simple and easy to work through, and with this game having some of the "beat 'em up" elements, the first chapter aims to gets the player started and warmed up with the basics of combat and performing combos, where they'll also already have two characters to practice with. Practicing how to fight efficiently is mostly a must in this game (unless you've done some heavy, heavy grinding), especially during the boss fights. The puzzles and such will occur within the later chapters, where the challenges will begin to increase in difficulty. Maybe the addition of conveyor belts would help mix things up within the BioLab a bit, but I'm also trying not to over-complicate the first chapter and to keep its focus mostly on combat practice.

Counting the 3 unique enemy types seen in the BioLab, how many different types of enemies do you prefer to see within a whole map? I don't exactly want to overfill the first stages with too many enemy varieties, but I'll certainly consider your suggested amount. I can agree that the BioLab could at least use more than 3 types of enemies.

In any case, I really appreciate the helping words.

I don't remember exactly what I did in the room with the green card, so I'm afraid I can't help much with this. All I know is that right now there is no card in the room and the head thing is lying there on the floor and looking at me. I might have loaded the game from an earlier save at some point, so that could explain it returning to its position, but not the card's disappearance.

Anyway, I hope it'll work better for me in the next version. Any chance you can post a link after you've fixed this bug? Also, will I have to start over from the beginning, or can I play with this saved game in your updated version? I'd rather not fight so much looking for items and experience another time, haha.

I guess you're right in that the first area should be simple compared to the rest of the game. Considering difficulty, I think this level is easy enough to work as an introduction chapter, and it certainly gives the player time to practice combat. Though I had two problems during this chapter. One is that it's very hard to heal party members when they have taken damage. It seems like the only way to do this is to use first aid kits and syringes, which are in very limited supply. A new player is bound to make mistakes so they waste their healing items, which is bad because they want these items later when fighting the boss. I would suggest adding some additional way of healing damage. Maybe save points could heal you to full HP when you touch them, or maybe monsters can drop another item that looks like shards, except instead of giving you money they heal a small amount of hit points when collected (and they are used immediately).

The second problem I had was that the boss was incredibly tough. I think I'm a good player in platforming games, and I was playing on "average" difficulty (which I think is the easiest one) but I simply did not stand a chance against him when I was level 2. Consider that this is the first level, and perhaps the first boss in the game shouldn't devastate the player so easily. Surely there will be time for such challenging bosses in later points of the game. Though I must admit it was pretty funny to watch my health go down so quickly, haha.

Sorry for the double post. I have now tried playing through the game another time, and defeated the first boss. Now that I made sure to be a high level before fighting him, he was much easier to defeat.

I think you should modify the benefits gained on level up a little. In my opinion the player gains too much defense and too few hit points per level. After I gained some levels and equipped two Buckets, the enemies no longer dealt any damage to me because my defense was higher than their attack damage. Perhaps you could reduce the defense gained per level by one point, and increase hit points gained instead. That way, the enemies would still be a bit threatening even if you were a high level.

The first glitch, where the green card disappears, had been fixed. The green card and the PC - G capsule will no longer disappear if the player were to leave the room without picking up any of those particular items and then to return to the same room.

I've also programmed to have the save points restore HP of all party members, but it will not recover a KO'ed member.

Quartz has the worst fight against that boss and it's an issue I'm still figuring out to fix appropriately. Peridot, however, has it easy, as long as you attack and escape/roll away right after. I'm going to see if I can fix this as well with the following upcoming re-updated alpha.

I've lessened the aptitude for defense on all characters, but left the aptitude for HP unchanged. The reason for this is that, once Quartz reaches his level cap, his life bar reaches further than the screen can handle. I've been experimenting with several equations to see what can be done to avoid the life bar from reaching to far, but at the same time, not being too much less. Though, now that I've lessened defense, I wonder what this could mean for Advance and Adept players.

That sounds excellent. I'm glad the glitch has been fixed and I'm looking forward to trying the updated version when it is available.

I've only tried the higher difficulty levels a little bit, but I noticed that I took a great deal more damage in them. Is the increased damage calculated before or after defense? Maybe the issue I had with defense being greater than enemies' attack damage occurs less often in this harder difficulty. I also noticed that I gained levels a lot slower in those modes, which was a source of some mild frustration.

Also, can you change the color of the SP bar a little? I am colorblind to a degree, and I find it difficult to see how many ability points I have remaining because the full bar doesn't look much different from the empty bar.

Increased damage is calculated before defense comes into the final damage value. Advance and Adept mean business so it's also harder to level up in there, but to make up for attempting such a feat you'll be able to meet up with enemies and items that you would never be able to find in the easier difficulties.

Will do. I'll be sure to fix this up now.

Thanks. I'd like to ask one more question, if it doesn't bother you too much. I've played this version for some time now, and I have seen all the Adaptation Skills except for the three in the bottom right. I believe I have Plus, Scan, Tough, Active, Life, Veteran and one more that gives you shards (I forget what it's called). What are the last three skills? Is it possible to acquire them in this version or will those be implemented later?

Not at all. The last three skills are actually blank; you can only gain 7 skills in total, all of which happen to be the skills you've already stated (the shard-based skill being Stocker).

Within the final version, there should be much more than just 10 skills to gain.

Would be cool if the game would be playable with a gamepad.
Also that the save point heals you just by running past it so you don't have to save to get healed (for whatever reason I shouldn't do it)
And I think it's a little weird that the head in the room with the green card disappears while I'm still in the room. It should be there until I leave the room so that it's gone when I re-enter it.
Isn't there any item to revive dead party members? It's annoying on the adept difficulty level because not even the save point revives them. You can still use potions on them though, which is odd.
I find the way equipped items are displayed a little confusing (Example: I've equipped the bucket to Peridot. When now I select it with Quartz (because I want to equip it to him) it shows what happens with the states of Peridot and not Quartz'). Maybe you should add a "Equipment" section to the menu where you can show it clearer.
On a side note: You can't go back when selecting the difficulty level of a new game. You have to start it and then quit.

This being said, even though it's very short at the current state, it's an awesome game and I think it has the potential to be as popular as Cave Story when it's finished.

The only thing I could recommend as now would be joy2key; I'm still new to the whole 'key customization' deal, so I'm not sure how far I'll get to figure out ways to program so into the game.

You recommend having save points heal you with a simple touch. That can be managed.

That's strange, since that glitch should had been fixed ever since the first FIX was released. I'll double check and see if it's still occurring in any case. You may want to refer to the update bulletins above to see what's been done.

For one thing, Adept is highly recommended to very experienced players, so it may be tough for new users to get used to its unforgiving level of challenges; I recommend at most Advance if you're a beginning player. There will be items that can perform complete recovery upon use, but not as of the alpha demos. If you wait long enough, any knocked out party members will eventually regain consciousness, followed by a notable beeping noise when it does occur. Let me go ahead and explain the different systems of how Glowstone works when it comes to usable items and the big difference between being knocked out and negative HP:

Usable items have a starting amount of HP and SP healing. As long as those numbers are greater than 0, those items will continue to exist for future use. To also keep in mind, using healing items upon knocked out members will also speed up their recovery rate to stand active once again.

As long as your character is not knocked out, they can still fight, even with negative HP (the most negative HP you can have is -600). It is possible for players to recover from being knocked out, even when they're upon said negative levels. Any touch from any sort of enemy attack will obviously kill them during this state. This enforces the player to heal them up as soon as possible. Ultimately, if the players can last long enough, they are rewarded with recovery for those who were previously knocked out.

Save points completely heal the HP of all party members, but does not recover a knocked out state of any members who are in the condition. This was to avoid any cheap exploits where players could easily work through a dungeon, go all out and have most of their party dead as a result, and then simply revisiting the save point to completely recover everyone.

I was trying my best to avoid adding an "Equipment" menu, as this would only bring further clutter within the in-game menu itself. Upon the most recent modification I've done, I've made it where if you try to have another equip an item that is already equipped by another, it will first remove that item from its previous user after a single press of a button. From there, you can decide if you want to equip it upon the new owner, this time presenting all of the stat boosts upon the appropriate character.

You can press [backspace] to return to the main selection, but pressing [x] should had achieved the same effect. I'll also remind myself to double check this one.

Thanks for the input!

I like challenges, at least at this kind of games. I have no problem with that.
That knocked out members will be automatically revived after a period of time is actually pretty cool. It doesn't even take long as I've seen just now.

I just tried [Esc] to get back to the main selection. My fault^^"