I am highlighting this level chunk from today's communal abyss for obvious reasons. Thanks, u/No_Badger1188, for encouraging us all to take a deep look within ourselves as we make our way out of our own Rock Bottoms.
There is a stupid easter egg I have had hidden for months now, and no one has found it. Granted, it's not the most thought-provoking or interesting easter egg, and the way you find it isn't particularly inspiring, but c'mon, I thought surely someone would have found it before I got around to removing it entirely.
I haven't removed it yet, but its time has come, and it will be removed relatively soon for reasons that will become apparent once it's out. Now, I thought it would be no fun to just tell you where it is and how to find it, but I want to be respectful of your time, given the banal nature of the easter egg.
Consequently, the burden rests with u/meepmeepmeeppp, should they choose to impart any hints (or the answer outright), however obvious, to anyone who feels like hunting it down.
HOWEVER, you better damn well treat them with respect, and anything less is unacceptable. They are entitled to however much or little information or hints they want to disperse to anyone who wants to participate in the mini hunt.
Thank you, and happy non-April Easter.
Today's pit is a challenging one! Here is a quick playthrough of how I got through it after a decent amount of trial and error.
Happy climbing!
In the prior Communal Abyss (Pit #101), there was an alarming amount of discussion regarding the alleged sentience of mushrooms.
There was even some disputation among those claiming to be mushrooms, as well as accusations against fellow climbers of secretly being mushrooms, like some veritable fungal witch hunt.
I would advise utmost caution regarding any and all fungal conspiracies.
Any talk of roots, chains, or claims that “the shrooms have eyes” is just that: talk.
Mushrooms are just mushrooms...
Right...?
Hey everyone!
I just wanted to take a second (before I finally go to sleep) to say thank you! Thank you so much for playing the game I have worked so hard to create.
I have spent countless hours and sleepless nights writing code, drawing art, debugging, and hoping that at some point there would be those who appreciate all my hard work. So often I have felt down and discouraged by life and the many challenges it throws, but I always manage to pick myself up and climb out of bed again and again, no matter how many times I proverbially fall short of living up to my own expectations.
However, it’s the connections I have made with family, friends, and the best dog in the whole wide world that have made the climb worth making each and every time, no matter how hard it gets.
To me, that is what this game has always been about: accepting the reality that we have all found ourselves at rock bottom at one time or another, and finding the courage to overcome hardship while helping to lift each other along the way.
This past week, I got to see lots of flags and celebratory comments from users reaching the top or having a laugh after experiencing a hard fall. Seeing so many people enjoy the game I put my heart into has been surreal.
I am grateful, and I wanted to leave my heartfelt thanks to all of you for giving Rock Bottom a chance. It means a lot, so thank you!
I am going to bed now because it’s like 7:30 AM and I haven’t slept yet lol.
Thanks again, and happy climbing! ❤️
BIG UPDATE INCOMING
v0.9.0 is imminent.
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Quick FAQ
So what do Flowers do anyways?
For now, think of Flowers as a mix of bragging rights and karma points.
I absolutely intend to do more with them. Eventually I want players to be able to see each other's Flower counts, have more reasons to spend them, and generally make the whole system feel more rewarding.
It just needs more time to cook.
But hey, receiving Flowers still feels good, right?
Why do you have to spend Flowers to place signs?!?
Good question.
I want signs to be inherently less spammy. Since this is a brand new feature, I want to see how it actually flows with the rest of the game before letting signs completely pepper every inch of the ground.
The cost may absolutely change over time, but for now I want to roll the feature out in a more controlled and considerate way.
What about the stability of this patch?
This is honestly more of a question from me than anything.
I went to great lengths to polish this update and account for as many potential issues as I could, but rolling out a feature this large always carries some risk that something breaks or does not go entirely as planned.
A ton of code was scrapped, rewritten, and reworked just to make signs play nicely with everything else in the game, and I did my darndest to catch as many problems as possible before pushing it.
If anything does go wrong, please direct bug reports and other issues to the dedicated support post so I can keep track of them properly.
If problems arise, forgive me. I will do my best to address them as quickly as I can.
Thank you.
ALSO, HAPPY CLIMBING!!
Also, it’s like 6 AM and I’ve been working all night to get this thing finished...
So yeah, I’m going to bed now lol.
To all of you fellow insomniacs out there, I see you. I’m here for you.
So I have a problem that has arrived at the worst time. I made a game on Reddit called Rock Bottom, and I have never had issues with audio until now. My audio, everything, sounds all staticy, and it's awful. For reference, please refer to the video link below:
https://youtube.com/shorts/9zdxO94XVeg
If you want to play the game and see if you are experiencing the static yourself, please feel free to do so by heading to this link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RockBottomGame/s/82zczuEAdd
I have no idea why this is happening and why it's happening now. What's weirder is that no one on my game's subreddit seems to be reporting it (which is a relief), but I have to imagine some are being affected just as I am. When playing my game on either Android or Mac, my audio is awful and staticky.
I haven't made any updates to the game that affect the audio at all, and yet it's totally cooked on my mobile device. There is no reason, as far as I can tell, for this to be happening now. I don't even know what to say to provide any additional context for my issue, because I don't even know where to look.
My sound effects are uncompressed WAVs, and my music tracks (of which there are very few), whereas my music is compressed-streamed. One thing worth pointing out is that, when building my game, I do get noteworthy output at some point (shown below). This is something I have always had appear in the output from basically the beginning, and it never made any difference, so I don't know why it would be causing a problem now...
If anyone has any ideas or guidance they could lend me, it would be much appreciated. I am desperate to solve this as quickly as possible. Any help at all would be amazing. Thanks again.
Warning: Source audio file '/Users/[REDACTED]/GameMakerProjects/rock-bottom/sounds/Snd_char_chirp/Snd_char_chirp.wav' is malformed - forcing conversion
Converting Snd_char_chirp to Wav 16bit mono @ 44100Hz Warning: Source audio file '/Users/[REDACTED]/GameMakerProjects/rock-bottom/sounds/Snd_hop_off/Snd_hop_off.wav' is malformed - forcing conversion
Converting Snd_hop_off to Wav 16bit mono @ 44100Hz Warning: Source audio file '/Users/[REDACTED]/GameMakerProjects/rock-bottom/sounds/Snd_step/Snd_step.wav' is malformed - forcing conversion
Converting Snd_step to Wav 16bit mono @ 44100Hz Warning: Source audio file '/Users/[REDACTED]/GameMakerProjects/rock-bottom/sounds/Snd_wall_bounce/Snd_wall_bounce.wav' is malformed - forcing conversion
Converting Snd_wall_bounce to Wav 16bit mono @ 44100Hz
Thou hast been judged, claimed by the chalice, cast down into the void, where only desperation accompanies you.
Restitutions be to those who hoist themselves from below the abyss that chained them.
Who do you climb for? The judge that damned you, the village that raised you, or for yourself?
What binds you, shackled one?
Marked by the chalice, swallowed by the hole, taken by the metal, will you climb still?
What shackles you?
This feature was rolled out in a recent update and so I figured it was worth mentioning in case anyone missed it. Just tap the trophy icon on the top left of the game screen and your mind will be opened to the wonderful world of stats.
-Enjoy
You bet it does, lore and all. What is it? Please feel free to share your theories.
Me personally? I never left lol.
Jk, I got the world's cutest dog who dragged me out from the proverbial pit of despair.
We watch movies together, go to the park together, and go to Dutch Bros together to get a drink/pup-cup.
What more can you want?
Some of you may have noticed that a new update was just released that introduces visual flourishes and decorations throughout each and every communal pit.
You may notice small rocks peppered about, vines, and small touches of grass throughout. These are placed automatically, and their arrangement is unique for each pit.
Normally, these visual niceties were exclusive to the normal ascent, but now the love is being spread. Beauty is in the air, and now you too can appreciate the raw tranquility blessed upon those lucky enough to behold its rocky-speckled luster. Your life is now forever changed.
Yours truly,
Muddrox
Take a look at an extremely early build of the game!
It's interesting to see how far it has come. I remember thinking, "Holy crap! I've spent this whole time trying to make the character animations cool without even knowing if the darn thing even works on Reddit."
This game was born from my participation in a game jam in which I had very little time to really flesh things out, and yet I was so distracted with settling on the game's visual identity.
I struggled to imagine how I could make something look aesthetically interesting while restraining myself to only using 3 colors for everything I drew. Quickly, I felt the game's artistic direction begin to pay off, and I am really proud of how things look.
However, I learned how difficult it really is to hand draw everything while building a competent game in parallel without even knowing how games on Reddit even work.
This is all to say that I am really happy with the progress this game has made since the game jam's conclusion and where it is today. I am grateful for all the players who enjoy the game I've worked so hard on.
Thanks everyone for continuing to climb alongside me. I look forward to continuing to build out and improve this game further.
Happy climbing!
Firstly, I'd like to apologize. I created this particularly diabolical level chunk some weeks ago and it finally reared its ugly head.
So here is a clip of how I beat it early this morning from inside today's communal abyss. Best of luck!
Happy climbing!!
Hey climbers!
A future update is coming soon with a nice new feature. After summiting the pit, whether it's the Main Ascent or the daily Communal Pit, the player ranked directly above you will manifest as a ghost during repeated climbs.
Now there are some caveats to this feature's eventual inclusion. For one thing, you must complete a run in under 10 minutes for your ghost to be submitted. This is a necessary measure to keep fetching ghost data fast and breezy between runs. This won't invalidate your victory or score in any way, but your ghost won't be visible to players ranked directly below you. So don't worry about it! If you like to climb at your own pace, please continue to do so without a worry in the world.
Secondly, this feature will be optional. I am working on a settings menu that will let you toggle certain things on or off, such as audio and ghost playback. So if you'd rather not be distracted by other players' ghosts while climbing, no problem, just turn them off.
Thirdly, new feature rollouts sometimes mean bugs and other technical issues may rear their ugly heads. If you run into an unexpected crash, unintended behavior, or an error of any kind, please report it so that I can address it as fast as humanly possible.
Lastly, thank you for playing my game. I look forward to improving it even further!
Happy climbing!
I will be sunsetting the "announcement pinned" game post soon.
Wonderful memories have been made, but the comment section there has become a bit bloated now at 300+ comments.
I originally pinned this particular post as an announcement so that it would act as an enduring hub-like entry point where you could access the normal climb, the most recent communal climb, and build tools all in one game post.
With this in mind, I figured the daily communal pit posts would just be handy shortcuts to the communal pit they represent. However, this meant the main game post consumed all the newfound engagement, which made it difficult for people looking for help on specific pits.
I can now see that I was a bit short-sighted in the way I initially set this all up. As a result, I am overhauling the splash screen so that it gives you all the options upfront for any and all daily posts. That way, no one needs to hunt around for the hub-like post because, going forward, all daily posts will have those options accessible right from the splash screen itself.
So, accessing the most recent communal pit will be as simple as opening that day's daily post. Older posts will remain viable ways to replay and compete on older pits, with the only difference being that the normal ascent and build mode buttons will always be accessible regardless of which post you're on.
I hope that makes sense. Basically, it's business as usual, but this will make it easier to connect with each other as a community without the comment section of any one post becoming too huge for individual conversations to stand out.
I am a new game developer on Reddit, and I've never built anything like this before, so I am taking some lessons I've learned over the past week and applying them in an update I expect to release soon.
This upcoming update will also make it so each new daily post features a pinned comment (continuously updated) showcasing the current leading players for that pit. This will be great because I can show a much bigger list of competing players rather than just the top three on the splash screen.
As for the splash itself, I've included a small clip of what the new splash is shaping up to be in the update planned for release sometime soon. However, as I mentioned before, I will be sunsetting the current hub-like post in favor of a fresh one until the next update rolls out and makes "hub-like" posts obsolete entirely.
Anyways, I am humbled by the sheer amount of love and positivity shared by people who have enjoyed their time with the game. Know that more updates are coming, and I have big plans.
Rock Bottom is a game about picking each other up and trying over and over again to overcome obstacles that keep sending us down the same path we've climbed before. We have all hit our own proverbial Rock Bottoms, but we get up and try again, learning to get up a little bit faster each time we fall.
Seeing someone reach the top of the main ascent after six hours of refusing to give up is beautiful to me. Not the fastest time by any metric, but they stuck with it and reached the top anyway. That, to me, is beautiful and moving.
Thank you all for being here, and happy climbing!
Just a cute little trailer. It won't win awards but I hope it wins your affection anyways
I SWEAR IF u/Icy-Selection7168 BEATS THIS I'M GOING TO LOSE IT 😤
I am obviously not serious, but it should be illegal to be this good at video games lol