Hey everyone! To reiterate my opening sentence from last time: It’s been a while since I last posted, but don’t worry, I’ve been keeping busy.
Normally, I’d dive into the technical details, but not this time. It’s been too long, there’d be too many of them, and even I don’t remember them all. I’d have to read through and summarize ~1200 commits, and if I wanted to spend my time doing that kind of thing, I’d get a job as an LLM.
Instead, how about we skip to the part everyone cares about? The Run 1 and Run 2 remakes are both close to completion, with all levels (plus Infinite Mode in Run 1) working. However, both games still have a list of issues.
Run 3 remains on the back burner until those first two are ready.
Run 1
I’ve already released an HTML5 remake of Run 1 (which I consider to have been a beta version), but since then I rewrote most of Runaway (the underlying engine), so I’ve had to redo most of Run 1 as well. It’s coming along well so far, and since I invested in building solid foundations, fixing the remaining problems should be relatively painless.
Adventure Mode is nearly done. The levels are unchanged, but I’ve been playing around with the physics, trying to make the game feel nicer but still close enough to the original. I’ve also done my best not to mess up game balance. I know people like Run 3’s physics, but those would make Run 1 too easy.
There’s still more to do for Adventure Mode. For one thing, it saves your progress but can’t load it, so you always restart from level 1. Also, there’s no ending, and the level transitions are missing something. At the moment I’m still using the “flying through space” level transition from the beta, but it’s less interesting without all the tiles zooming into place. Either I need to recreate that animation, add other scenery to look at, or go back to the original “endless tunnel” version.
Infinite Mode is finally working! This one took a while.
I tried to adapt the original level generation code, but something went wrong along the way. The new generator makes levels that are both harder and less visually coherent. As for why it’s green, I haven’t gotten around to adding multiple colors yet.
In previous status updates, I talked about how Run 1’s Infinite Mode required an overhaul of how levels were loaded. At the time, my plan was to place the levels in 3D space, loading them as soon as two conditions were met: (1) the camera was almost close enough to see them, and (2) the player beat the previous level. The original version of Run 1 would only load a new level once the previous one was over, and it’d use the player’s performance to determine the difficulty of the next level. The more you fell, the less difficulty would increase (though it would always go up by a little).
Well, I did that. And then I did something else instead. Whoops!
Now, Infinite Mode levels load based on the camera’s position (1), without waiting for you to beat the previous level (2). The difficulty increases as you make progress, and the tiles update in real time, which I think makes for a cool effect. (Also, the difficulty decreases each time you fall.)
I like this concept, and it took a fair bit of work to make it happen, but I’m not sure I like how it feels in practice. Pros: if it generates an unfair level, things will get easier once you fall off a couple times. Cons: it feels less like you’re making progress if you can just lose it again. In the original version, any progress you made was locked in. I could go back to that, but I think (hope) this should be fixable while keeping the cool new real-time updates.
Finally for Run 1, there’s currently no Edit Mode or costumes. I’ve got a working editor in Run 2, and I should be able to import that without too much trouble. Not sure what I want to do about the costumes, though. Do I keep them as costumes, or is it worth the time to flesh them out into separate characters with unique abilities?
Run 2
For those who weren’t there, in late 2024 I rebuilt Run 2 in a series of livestreams, better than before. New UI icons, touched up levels, clearer indicators of where you can and can’t rotate gravity, higher-resolution backgrounds, and a new sci-fi font.
I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get this thing out. Many of us (me included) expected it to be out by now, but some of the remaining problems proved stubborn. At this point, I’m going to wait until I’m ready to release both remakes at once.
Here’s what was broken as of my last stream.
- The player character stutters, as if updating at a low framerate. The rest of the game moves smoothly, so it’s not actually a performance issue. And Run 1, which is using the same engine, doesn’t have this issue. Still don’t know what’s up with this.
- Sometimes when you deleted a cube in Edit Mode, it wouldn’t disappear, but you could fall through it. I’m happy to report that this is now fixed!
- Sometimes when you added a new cube, nothing would show up but it would still be solid. Also fixed!
- Often when you clicked and dragged to “paint” several cubes at once, it would place some in the wrong layer (usually one layer closer to the camera than expected). Fixed!
- There’s no way to edit level properties (color, dimensions, title, etc.) other than manually editing the level data. I still haven’t done anything about this.
- Though you could save levels, there was no way to load them. I’ve since added a basic text box to paste level data into, and levels do load successfully, but this promptly revealed a bunch more issues.
- The UI isn’t built to deal with standalone levels like this, so the next/previous/bonus buttons do nothing and display incorrect data. They always indicate that there’s a previous level and that you haven’t beaten the current level or earned its bonus. When you do beat the level it says “press jump to continue,” but you just jump normally since there’s no next level to go to.
- I didn’t program the levels to unload, so they just stay around until you quit to the main menu. This lets you load multiple levels on top of one another, though you can only interact with the most recent one.
In addition to all that, a new rendering issue popped up. If you leave a level and then navigate back to it using the pause menu, only the level’s outlines will appear. I distinctly remember having fixed this at one point, but no, it’s still here.
This looks pretty neat in some cases, so I might add official support for it later. But I can’t keep the bug itself, as some levels lack outlines, and with neither fills nor outlines they end up being fully invisible. Good luck playing those!
As if all that wasn’t enough, I recently tried building for HTML5. It starts out in outline mode, and then the scene goes completely black if you ever move left or right. You can’t complete (or fail) the level in this state, but everything comes back if you reset, so it’s not like the game crashed. I suspect the Runner’s coordinates are getting divided by zero.
What next?
I plan to fix everything mentioned above. When these games come out, I want you to be able to do everything you could do in the original. I’ll try to leave it at that, and not get distracted working on new features. Though it occurs to me as I write this that an “import save” feature would help a lot. Then you can pick up exactly where you left off.
I also want to do some marketing, to build interest. Keep an eye on this blog and my YouTube channel for updates.
