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Neat, can't wait to get some time to play it, although that'll probably happen in 2015 - if I'm lucky! :p

I got hit Hitman: Absolution for 4.99 euro, that offer was too good for me not to give in. I loved all Hitman games prior to Absolution and while I know that it's quite a bit different, I still want to own it and give it a try, see how I like it.

Okay, that worked, but it needed a bit of practice. Thanks. Now I'm stuck on the next stage. The part with the 'staircase' and the guns on each step is just cruel

Glad you beat that part! The trick to getting through the staircase is to safe the shield for that part. Without shield, while it's possible to survive the staircase (even on hard mode), it's extremely hard. With shield, you want to rush up there as quickly as possible! You will get hit but you get 2 seconds of invulnerability. Use that!

It took me way to long to find out I can just stand on that icey platform without getting hit by anything

Hahaha, see, it's not THAT bad!

As a workaround, what I did in The Art of Dying (which is open source) is allow people to simply define their own keys in an ingame options menu. Seems like the best solution for everybody!

That is the trickiest jump in the game! What you can do to practice it is to go into the editor and recreate that scene (count the tiles to get the distances right). In general, you absolutely need to dash into double jump. The key is, of course, timing the key combo right. So you hold down and right, then hit jump to initiate the dash, hit jump again immediately to start the first jump. But don't hit jump a third time right away, because now you need to wait until you're at the apex of your single jump, only then hit jump again to maximize your jump length. It's tricky at first but once you've done it a couple times it really becomes second nature.

So, again, hold down and right, hit JUMP JUMP WAIT JUMP! Also don't let go of the right direction key at any point during the jump, some of my testers did that initially!

Hope this helps, thanks for playing my game and let me know if that made it clear please!

Excellent work Andail, very nice animations I have to say! You people NEED to check his mod out! Nice touch with the lightsaber sound effects as well!

Also got one (the fourth code still wasn't taken)! Thanks Mark!

My pleasure!

The Art of Dying was mentioned on PC Gamer: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/12/21/the-best-free-games-of-the-week-6/ (Thanks to the wonderful IndieStatik, who also covered my game: http://indiestatik.com/2013/12/18/art-dying/). IndieGames also covered TAoD: http://indiegames.com/2013/12/the_art_of_dying.html

There's also a nice Let's Play out there already:

[embed=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky01xU8NbJ0[/embed]

I just uploaded version 1.1, both for the game itself and the source. The changes don't matter if all you do is play the levels that come with it but are related to the in-game level editor.

CHANGE LOG:

Version 1.1

- fixed a crash caused by level filenames shorter than 4 characters (plus file extension)
- fixed an issue when hitting ESCAPE while the save level dialog in the editor was open
- improved the way decorations are placed in the editor, now you left-click to place, right-click to remove and use the left/right arrow keys on the keyboard to cycle through the available types of decoration

Interesting, I indeed tested it with a wired controller! I guess I'll bother Wyz, the author of the plugin, about it. Let me know if using XP makes a difference.

About the bug, I definitely did this on purpose, thinking it feels natural. If I understand you right, you would prefer it if you walk off a platform, start falling naturally, then only be able to jump once? I initially had it like that and didn't like how limited and restricting it felt, especially when you meant to jump off a platform and walked off instead by 1px, then suddenly 'couldn't' double jump - that actually felt more like a bug to me! Hope that makes sense.

Thanks and good attempt at the last level haha!

What you want is to import/export your variable, search the manual and/or the forums on how to do that. Hope this helps!

Congratulations! You are the first person to beat the game and get back to me! :-)

@Khris: Hmm weird, so the analog stick down doesn't register? Or the d-pad down? Or are you trying to use the keyboard in the menu with the controller plugged in? It's weird because The Art of Dying has been tested by me and some of my betatesters with the X-Box 360 controller and nobody had that issue! Interesting that you deem walking off a platform and still being able to jump once, then one more time a bug. That's the way I thought/think it should work! :p

Thanks for the feedback everybody, glad you're all enjoying the game from the sounds of it! Let me know if you've beaten it on hard mode, because I've yet to hear from anyone who did!

[The Art of Dying has been released!]

The Art of Dying has been released!

Thank you for the interest during development, now go over to the Completed Games thread to download the game, play it and let me know how you liked it!

[The Art of Dying]

The Art of Dying

The Art of Dying is a really challenging platformer I've made in AGS. It features two difficulty levels (really hard and unbelievably really f*cking hard), a six level campaign and a full-featured level editor. So you can make your own levels, then share them and find others to download and try to beat yourself on the official level sharing platform: http://dkh.agser.me/die. The whole project is also open-source, so go ahead and take a look at the source - it's not in great state but it should be useful to some I guess! Gamepads and other external controllers are fully supported, although the controls work nicely on keyboard as well.

Download (Version 1.1)
Download the Source (Version 1.1)
(build with AGS 3.2.1, requires the joystick plugin found in the game archive)

I produced four development diary videos, so if you want to get a first impression before downloading anything, take a look:

The Art of Dying - Dev Diary Entry #1: Movement
[embed=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_WmTg8Az9k[/embed]

The Art of Dying - Dev Diary Entry #2: Attacking
[embed=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np4ixRjp5w4[/embed]

The Art of Dying - Dev Diary Entry #3: Enemies
[embed=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kD2iZJ7qs4[/embed]

The Art of Dying - Dev Diary Entry #4: Editor
[embed=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_5ryKGxWkM[/embed]

Please let me know what you think! Refer to the readme-file for the credits and some important notes. You can rate the game over on the AGS gamepage. Have fun, prepare to die a lot and make sure to let me know if you managed to beat the game.

CHANGE LOG:

Version 1.1

- fixed a crash caused by level filenames shorter than 4 characters (plus file extension)
- fixed an issue when hitting ESCAPE while the save level dialog in the editor was open
- improved the way decorations are placed in the editor, now you left-click to place, right-click to remove and use the left/right arrow keys on the keyboard to cycle through the available types of decoration

He has. He has.

And he... kinda... Liked it I guess? Not sure but it sounded like he kinda did. Oh the humanity!

Ooh! What incredibly offensive thing will we learn about Grundy this week? Does he hate puppies? Is he reading Mein Kampf? Is he parking in handicapped spots?

It's much worse. He hasn't seen Star Wars Episode IV.

[The Art of Dying is officially in beta!]

Haha!

The Art of Dying is officially in beta! The testers lucky enough to be selected by random.org have been contacted! If you weren't selected, don't fret, the game is hopefully releasing very soon and, if more issues are found, there's a good chance I'm going to include a second wave of testers a bit later.

Have fun, testers! Keep in mind not to share the gamefiles themselves please, but do go ahead and post or tweet about the game, take screenshots or record gameplay footage and upload it!

  Welcome (back?) to the board, which apparently is in America.

AGS has always been an American product. Don't you know what the A stands for? American Game Studio. Chris Jones, born in New York, moved to LA to write AGS as a means to fund his business economics college degree. Currently he's working on American Game Studio Patriot Edition which is exactly like the old AGS except that the splash screen now shows a beautiful American flag. It's going to cost 249,99 US dollars or 149,99 if you're upgrading.

[I'm almost done assembling the beta build so this is your last chance to sign up if you're interested in betatesting The Art of Dying. I will randomly pick a number of people from the list very soon!]

Thanks Frostfalk. So this is the list of currently entered beta testers:

Code: "AGS"

4 "Friends and Family" Testers
Stupot+
Adeel S. Ahmed
selmiak
Arj0n
Peder Johnsen+
Scarab
Bulbapuck
Andail

I'm almost done assembling the beta build so this is your last chance to sign up if you're interested in betatesting The Art of Dying. I will randomly pick a number of people from the list very soon!