899 replies to this topic

[newstarshipsmell]

I swapped 400 in place of 399 at this point. Did you change anything that's likely to screw up my game save that I should start over again on a clean copy with 400?

Leo 39: You can jump up into 29 from the bomb hole in the wall and grapple to the top/right, bypassing the path along 17-27-28-29.

Leo 62: Upon killing the boss, I am warped to the upper-left tile, so I have to walk left into the wall in 61, walk left out of it, drop down to the door and re-enter 62 to grab the Life Recharger. Also, this boss is still trivially easy to kill with the Aries Saber - all I have to do is run underneath him while he drops, then aim up and keep slashing and he's dead in a couple seconds, only draining me about 15% of my health in the process.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 17 January 2015 - 04:48 PM.

[C-Dawg]

I reworked the Cruiser (first boss) again.  Maybe now it won't give people trouble with failing to die?  I went against it like six times and I can't get it to break the game.

 

Missiles now move at a consistent speed.  Missile 2 was slower than the rest.

 

Scripted weapons now work at X<8 and Y<8.  Be on the lookout for any problems.  As I recall, I set them at 8 instead of 0 to ensure fast moving ffcs couldnt get off the screen in a single tic.

 

Increased damage you take by touching Magnetman while he's using his magnet pull by four times.  

 

EDIT: I did not directly mess with global variables in my last update, no.  When I add the "countdown, stuffs blowing up" thingee, that'll be part of the global script and might require caution.

Edited by C-Dawg, 17 January 2015 - 04:55 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Double Jump Boots: I've found it's pretty easy to ascend walls across multiple screens with the DJB, if you can work your way into a bottom corner to ascend them on the bottom screen - even walls higher than you should be able to jump up into the room and double jump from the top of your entry jump to reach the top of the wall. Basically, you can exploit what seems to be a bug with the double-jump resetting while slightly inside the wall, chaining a series of jumps until you reach the top. I've been able to spam the jump button up into some spots I don't think I should be able to reach prior to obtaining the DJB, but all trivial early item pickups and nothing sequence-breaking, so I didn't bother posting them - as you've acknowledged you've designed your levels with the wall-ascending trick in mind.

Basically, if you line up a jump so you rise up the wall to the top of the screen, you can then quickly hold up+away from wall and press L, scroll the screen, and hold up+against the wall as the screen scrolls, and you'll remain slightly inside the wall. If you time it right, you can chain the jumps by continuing to press L while holding up+against wall. If you just hold up at this point, it seems like the jump pushes you out of the wall a little, you can't work your way back in by holding against it again, and you lose the double-jump chaining.

I did this on both left and right sides of walls, in Leo 71-61-51, and was able to reach the left side, top center, and top right sides of 51 doing this. Just pointing it out in case it can be used somewhere else to go somewhere you really don't want the player to go yet, so you can either fix it or edit the room(s) to prevent it.

ETA: The only spots I see where it's exploitable in the first 9 areas (besides that spot in Leo) are Pisces 11-01 (big deal) and Scorpio 2B-1B-0B - it's possible you might be able to reach the outcrop, time your jump correctly, and hit the lower-right corner of the outcrop, thus ascending to the top of the ledge and reaching Virgo way early, but I tried it ten times in a row with no luck. If you don't (or can't) make that jump, you have to fall all the way back down to try again.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 17 January 2015 - 07:06 PM.

[C-Dawg]

I think the jumping code could be cleaned up and made more professional, for sure.  It's not that complicated for me to code the jump function to not activate if you're at the bottom of the screen, but keeping track of whether you've double-jumped between screens is a little more involved.

 

On the other hand, I kind of like the idea that there are kinda-sorta-buggy secret techniques that let the player do a little exploiting without breaking the game.  So, I guess I'm not sure what I want to do about that little trick. 

[newstarshipsmell]

Also, some of the later enemies randomly drop bomb pickups. Do these replenish a later expendable item, or did you simply forget/choose not to remove the regular bomb item drop from some of the enemies' inventories? If the latter, lol. Pretty useless.

Aries 2C: This boss (I think, from memory) was completely black both times I fought it. Intentional?

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 17 January 2015 - 07:28 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Not originally but once I saw the invisible monster, I kinda liked it!

[newstarshipsmell]

Sidearm: Prior to obtaining the Rapidfire. Interesting - I have no clue how many times I've grabbed the Speed upgrade for my Sidearm, but the last one reset it to the same speed you start off the game with (where they travel slightly slower than your walking speed.) Which is kind of funny, since if you don't have to worry about draining your energy meter, it proves more useful than having them go superfast, since you can basically blanket the screen with bullets and hit everything, rather than trying to aim at stuff. LOL, my Cancer Charge is faster than my Sidearm.

Cancer 60: This fight becomes patently unfair when you try to jump through his ribs and accidentally trigger the wall-ascension, causing you to shoot upwards and into his head, where you become stuck for the rest of the fight or you die.

Libra 34: Not sure if this happens in every shop or just this one - but I was able to jump off the prompt platform with the YES/NO prompt displayed. The prompt started flickering, and my movement was sluggish, but I had Explosive Missiles assigned to B - pressing and holding B rapidly fired them at machine gun rate, depleting half my stock in a few seconds. Sadly, this state did not persist when I exited the cave.
More importantly, like the bug below, purchasing the item causes all the slippery blocks on the right side of the floor to vanish.

Libra 33: Destroying the block on the right side triggers the block on the left to blow up as well - also, all the other blocks in the room that are slippery all turn black, and remain black when the screen freezes/flashes, and you can walk/fall through them. Destroying the block on the left side causes none of this to happen.

Libra 10: The alien on the right side doesn't feel like playing toss-the-warp-tile today and ignores it.

Libra 24: More disappearing slippery blocks when you break the blocks. (These disappearing slippery blocks didn't happen before, when I played through on the previous demos - did you try to change them so they don't disappear under the X-Ray Scope?)

Libra 25: I was able to use that double-jump-chaining bug to climb the right side of the center pillar - even better, I was able to jump to the right just underneath the spikes, contact the ice block under the door, and chain a last double-jump off the side of it and up onto the door platform.
The missile-shooting enemies inside are still messed up - and don't disappear when they "die"/their life meters deplete/disappear. I was literally down to like 4HP and dealt the killing blow to the one in the far room, and then comically jumped too high into spikes and my death. My cursing subsided when I discovered it set a continue point at the entrance to this cave, rather than, say, the beginning of the level, or inside the terminal cave that those caves in some other level resume to.
Speaking of chaining double-jumps, I also used that to get the Life Tank in 48 (as well as the Health Upgrade above it) by jumping around the corner of the outcrop and jumping off the side of it to hop up on top, so it is definitely possible to use it to reach Virgo way early. Unsure how far you'd make it underpowered at that point.

Oh, and I forgot to mention - that locked up overclocked Sidearm that fired at a snail's pace became practically useless, so after ditching the Cancer Charge for the Aries Sabre (to go crunch some ice!) the very first thing I did in Libra was go get the Rapidfire upgrade - in the hopes it would solve my bullet speed, which it did. And I was so desperate to get it that I went ahead and blew three Life Tanks on it, heh.

Libra 2F: Boss is on vacation.

Libra 0F: Is this room supposed to be empty? I bombed every block...

Taurus 08: Third time in a row that Iron has skipped out on me... Not that I'm complaining - he was kicking my ass badly this time, but then opted to rush off the bottom of the screen.

Leo 36: You can stand on the spikes on the bottom row without taking damage. Same applies to Leo 16. The spikes on the right side of this corridor damage you when you stand on top of them, but not on the left side. Maybe global.

Leo 15/14: The column spanning the rooms is a tile higher in 14, so you can walk into the top of it from 15.

Leo 33: Still cannot obtain the Energy Recharger.

Leo 79: Is this cave room supposed to be bright yellow? Just checking. Nothing wrong with the room.

Leo 5F: Recommend placing a platform over the corridor entrance (perhaps with spikes on top if you're feeling evil.) First-time players might accidentally fall into the warp, otherwise, and then, not understanding it's the only option, choose to quit/continue in order to go past it, instead. They'd be forced to play through the entire cutscene above a second time (or more, if they've died multiple times up there already...) only to learn that they cannot proceed any further, which would be aggravating.

Gemini 6A: Probably not particular to this room - one of the fish enemies that I "froze" created an ice block, which did not melt shortly, as they normally do - either the enemy+ice beam created it without freezing the enemy, or the block did not melt when the enemy unfroze. Too many enemies cluttering the screen to tell which. Somewhat related, the flying enemies still display copies of themselves in the upperleft corner while frozen.

Gemini 7E: Hmmm, there's an eel floating in the middle of the screen that doesn't seem to do anything? Also, one tile of the boss's sprite is displaying far to the right, somewhat below the rest, relative to the actual boss.

Taurus 79: I think this is a different boss than the one I reported before? This boss also briefly displays alphanumeric tiles instead of explosion tiles during his death. Also, not sure, but I think he died before I'd exhausted his life meters. This corridor also had numerous enemies who appeared onscreen in a static position, did not attack, and could not be destroyed, each of which eventually disappeared after a period of time.

Also, I'm having trouble remembering which other corridor I noticed some graphical glitches in, but it had the ships at the top dropping bombs, and the small jellyfish enemies, I think. Many of the enemies displayed with abnormal colors, including the bomb-dropping ships, most of which were grey as normal but with blue nose tiles. Some of the enemies were even all-black.

Pisces 33: On both playthroughs, now, I've noticed that this room resets to its initial state, excepting the item is gone from the window box. I was hesitant to report it again, since both times that I noticed it, I'd already swapped .qst files on a gamesave, and figured it might be due to that. But I haven't noticed any other corridor rooms resetting - admittedly, while this one's on a route I would take, the rest are mostly squirreled away in out-of-the-way corners, making me unlikely to revisit them, so there may be others. But the few I have revisited (I forget which ones) didn't reset, so... maybe it has something to do with this room also triggering block destructions? The other ones generally don't, that I've noticed.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 19 January 2015 - 12:49 AM.

[C-Dawg]

New upload available.  I didn't get to many of your new bug reports, but I fixed many other issues and pushed the endgame material up to the point where I need to mess with global variables to code the "oh noe the ship is exploding run run" schtick.   This is the last update that's probably safe to replace your save file with.  

 

I hope you push further along than the last save file, though.  The endgame stuff is really, really cool (in my opinion) and it'd be nice to get a fresh pair of eyes on it.  Before you say anything: yes, I know Iron just runs around in space.  He will hold onto the Guardian for dear life when flying in space instead as soon as I get around to coding that.

[newstarshipsmell]

Cool, then I'll swap .qst files again. And yes, I mean to play through until the ending this time. I restarted since I wanted to see how much differently it played with many of the bugs (the doors, whatever was intended on the other side of them, etc.) fixed. Also, it's a lot faster to play through now that I've made my maps, know where to go when and next, and have (mostly) mastered all the tricky jumps. That jump near the furnace in Taurus? I totally forgot about that - because I made it on my very first attempt by sheer luck the first time through, thought "wow what a dick move putting that there, glad I made it" and promptly forgot about it. So when I got to it on the second playthrough, I wasted at least fifteen minutes trying to freeze the fliers on both sides of the room border to jump up in there, before I got aggravated and tried a dash/double-jump one last time - and made it. Phew. Ironically, that section of Gemini I spent so much time bitching about? I managed to cross it on my very first attempt with the WCB this time, and killed the boss on my first try. So disregard all my earlier moaning about it.

Libra 37: Exiting the cave warps to the upper-left corner of the room; not stuck, but have to walk left/scroll screen, and walk left out of wall in room 36.

Capricorn 46: No gravity in this room, first time I played through (haven't reached it again, yet.) Looks like I may have helpfully misreported this bug as "Cancer 46" previously (which is... the level entrance room... *sigh*)
 

...
Cancer 3A: The enemy's lower-right tile is blue, instead of red/orange like the other three tiles.
...
Cancer 49: All of these vent things I've found elsewhere had rising dust graphics above them, but this one does not? Intentional, or tile bug?

Cancer 27/37: Tile bug: the column to the right of the bombable floor tile is empty, so it looks like you can jump up/right into the open space, but you can't (or I couldn't.)

Cancer 46: No gravity in this room.

Cancer 33: It looks like you forgot a pipe-corner tile on the left wall. Also, every single room in every area with moving platforms causes the upper-left tile to disappear after scrolling into the room.
...

Ugh. I was talking about the Cancer Charge, and put "Cancer" for all these bugs in Capricorn. Sorry.

Swapped to Demo 403.

Sidearm: I've occasionally noticed the sidearm firing when I've switched to another item. It just happened when I switched to the X-Ray Scope, pressed B, and shot off a burst of sidearm. Next time I pressed B, the scope activated instead. I cannot recreate it, so I'm not sure what exactly I did. And I don't remember which item it happened with before; I just vaguely recall it happening.

Libra 1B: I fell into the spike pit on purpose this time, from the room above. Landed on the 3rd of six spike tiles, and was immobilized - could not move left or right, and could not jump. So I suspect the entire pit is a death trap, not just the left corner.

Corridors: When the colors on the enemies have been messed up, sometimes my bullets from my main weapon also turn dark grey. It doesn't last long though.

Libra 71: Like a curious cat, I climbed the left wall to see what happened. The screen looped back into 71, so I hit the warp on the bottom row. It warped me to room 32, but into the 1st row, 2nd column, stuck in a solid block. Presumably the same thing happens if you simply fall off the platform in 71 and into the same warp tile below. ETA: Nope, if you simply fall into the warp, it plants you in room 22 instead - stuck in the bottom row, second column. Presumably, all the warps on the floor of 71 warp you to 22 or 32, to the same corresponding column as the warp, but dependent upon whether you fell into them or jumped up into them as to whether you end up in 22 or 32.

Taurus Torch: The first fireball I shoot from my Taurus Torch after resuming a save in Libra is briefly red bordered with light blue, instead of yellow bordered by orange. It changes back to the normal color quickly.

Libra 50: Hahaha. I didn't notice this behavior before, but maybe I never "went" the "wrong" direction until now.
I vaguely recall the hint from one of the terminals about knowing the correct way through the maze, but I'm not sure whether that was specifically referencing this warp, or just the maze in general...

Spoiler

After bombing the hole open in the floor, when you fall into it, the room scrolls from 50 into 60, however, it scrolls in the direction you are facing when you fall in, rather than simply scrolling down. Not sure if you did this deliberately or it's a bug - if the latter, I like it and think you should leave it that way - since it fits with the weirdness of that area of Libra, despite that it forces the player into solid walls, which is generally a bug. Assuming you fix room 71 so that falling/jumping into the warps along the bottom does not stick you inside a wall in 22/32, forcing a quit/continue, this arrangement does not produce any way of sticking the player and forcing a quit. Amusingly, while up and left both force you back into the loop, you can also face right instead of down, and either scroll left into 70, right into 71, and escape from the wall without falling into the warp, or when you first scroll into the lower-left corner of 60, just quickly double-jump over the pit and go up and back left into 70.

Libra 70: Door still broken. When you first enter it, it puts you in an empty room, on the bottom, which you immediately fall/walk out of (hard to tell) without pressing any directions, and returns you to 70. Re-entering the door produces the same result as entering any of these other empty room door warps.

Libra Crystal: This weapon might suck less if you modified the code so that the angles they bounce at vary somewhat slightly and randomly from the angles it calculates based on them always rebounding off of perfectly horizontal/vertical surfaces.
Heh, I managed to get one of the crystals stuck in a loop between the right wall, big and small bubbles - and it tapped out a 'bink... bink-bink-bink-bink-bink" beat that was almost perfectly synced to the BGM, except it was slightly slower and kept falling out of phase with the music:


Virgo 78: The eyeball dude wandered off the edge of the platform and kept walking left across the air. He died when the next Crystal hit him, before reaching the wall, and I couldn't reproduce it.

Virgo should be fun. Apparently the last time I came through, I'd grabbed more Power upgrades than Energy vs. this playthru; while it drained my energy pretty quickly, it still fired rapidly enough when you've depleted the bar that it worked. I think I still had the Aries Saber too - both of which were powerful enough to kill the spores. Now, I'm stuck with the Libra Crystals, which don't, and a comparatively underpowered Sidearm,, which also doesn't, so I'm wandering around carefully avoiding shooting either when I don't have to, heh heh... ETA: Oh, THAT'S RIGHT, they NEVER go away, until they hit something! Joy.

They don't even go away when you jump into a corridor! LOL! You can hear them trapped in place and furiously bouncing about during the robot/ship transition, and then they reappear in the shooter level. They disappear as soon as you fire your ship weapon, but will strike enemies and deal damage until then. ETA: Ah, they will disappear if you're standing on the room border and fire them offscreen. What a relief. That should make Virgo slightly less tedious until I've powered up the Sidearm to clear them.

Virgo 2B: Am I supposed to go looking inside a giant mouth somewhere? Is that what it's telling me?


Virgo 2C: Inside the cave, the bomb hole is a row lower than the opening on the far side, so you walk into a solid wall. There is also no gravity in the two adjoining rooms, and the stretching plant enemy on the ceiling in the far room is messed up - the first segment after the head is not moving properly with the rest, and lagging behind.

Virgo 15: Inside the cave, the bomb hole in the wall leads to a no-gravity, empty room. I can walk up into the floor of a cutscene where Dr. Mo talks about the Voltaic Key (and bounce back down into the empty room when her set of message strings conclude) or I can walk right, and walk out of the wall inside the cave room at Libra 37.

Virgo 20: Lifemeter exhausts/disappears before boss runs out of HP.\

Virgo 44: During the fight, I fell down somewhere near the bottom of the left pillar, and it warped to the item room, and then immediately back to the boss fight, with his lifemeter reset to full. I had gotten him down to maybe 3/4 by that point. Sigh. ETA: And it happened again, five minutes into a frustrating fight with him - after falling into the spikes below the left pillar again.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 19 January 2015 - 11:15 AM.

[C-Dawg]

Here's an idea to toss out there.  Since keys are so awkward in this game, what if I removed them entirely as usable items?  I could use the game counter that gets freed up to give you a running total of the total number of upgrades you've applied to your sidearm.  I don't think there are any other displayable game counters I could use... well, no, I could use Bombs as well since they're basically unlimited.  They'd have to be on the active subscreen only, though, to avoid flickering when the player uses a bomb.  Is there a third game counter I'm not using that I could pirate for this purpose?

Edited by C-Dawg, 19 January 2015 - 10:56 AM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Here's an idea to toss out there.  Since keys are so awkward in this game, what if I removed them entirely as usable items?  I could use the game counter that gets freed up to give you a running total of the total number of upgrades you've applied to your sidearm.  I don't think there are any other displayable game counters I could use... well, no, I could use Bombs as well since they're basically unlimited.  They'd have to be on the active subscreen only, though, to avoid flickering when the player uses a bomb.  Is there a third game counter I'm not using that I could pirate for this purpose?

Heh, I wasn't going to suggest eliminating them, though I'm not opposed to that. I was going to suggest restricting/eliminating the random drops, and increasing the supply of hidden/reward keys, as well as the number of locks, so the player only has to find maybe half of them to unlock everything. Alternatively, if you keep the random drops, I was going to suggest more ways to sink them later on when your supply becomes ridiculous - possibly stuff like putting lockblocks on top of most/all later cave doors, maybe something funny like an invulnerable lockblock enemy in a shooter level that shoots powerful beams sideways and you basically just have to ram head-on to "kill" or take a shitload of damage going around.

Capricorn 61/71: The path in the lower-right/upper-right corner is missing water tiles and conveyor affects, thought perhaps you should avoid the conveyor effect in 61 if the magnet effect will not play nice with it on the player.

Capricorn: The purple coordinates Dr. Mo gives me have changed to 66, from the last time I played this far. (Previously, they were 4E, where her lab is. 66 seems to be a dead end, that I likely need Dash 2 to go right from?)

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 19 January 2015 - 12:53 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Isn't Capricon 66 where the Zodiac boss is for that zone?  The brain? I believe you just bomb your way into that.

 

Probably, it's best to eliminate keys.  If I gave them another use in the late game, the player would have this tension between - do I expend my keys to do whatever, in fear of having none when I need one and then having to grind for more?  That doesn't sound like fun.  And not in the "throw-my-gamepad" kind of frustrating un-fun I'm going for.  

 

We removed the Torch awhile back based on player feedback, and that was a great decision.  I think this will work, too.  Streamline, streamline, streamline.

 

Yeah, I think I'll try that tonight.  Remove keys, overhaul the game counter and key system and try to put counters for the sidearm upgrades somewhere instead.

 

EDIT: Something else I've been toying with are Missile Batteries.  Basically life tanks for your missile supply.  I'm not sure how relevant this is during most of the game, though, since I think you always have enough missiles sitting around.  It's a bigger deal in the endgame, when you have to go through so much crap without being able to recharge between them.  I dunno, though.  Have you ever found yourself wanting a portable missile refill, or are your other weapons good enough to bridge the gap when you run out?

 

EDIT2: Or -- better yet -- I can make the Overcharge fill up Missiles.  So it's basically a blue potion in a jar.  That might be the best way to go.

Edited by C-Dawg, 19 January 2015 - 01:14 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Isn't Capricon 66 where the Zodiac boss is for that zone?  The brain? I believe you just bomb your way into that.

No, 66 is just some dead end. It has a few mollusks in it, and nothing bombable to get into 67 next door - though it's only separated with a pipe on the right side, which is why I assumed I'd need Dash 2 to get into 67. The Zodiac boss/weapon is in the far corner in 6F/7F. On my map I made during the first playthrough, all these screens from Capricorn have 4E in purple in the coords under the room coords, which is where the lab is, which is where Dr. Mo is directing me to go at this point in the game. But when I reached Capricorn on this playthrough, it's displaying 66 for some reason - I think you fudged something up? Unless this is some sort of intentional misdirection on Dr. Mo's part, or the Captain has interfered, and are sending me dead-end coords.

Capricorn 52: The door leads to a no-gravity/4-bat empty cave.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 19 January 2015 - 01:49 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Hah, no, it's probably a bug.  If someone was trying to fool the player, there would be a hint about it somewhere.

 

Added it to the list.

[newstarshipsmell]

Explosive Missiles: Whatever monkeying you did with the explosive missile impact has now caused missiles fired at the ceiling to strike/detonate against destructible blocks, but without destroying them. Shooting them from the left/right sides works fine. If you can jump up and get close to them, sort of like sticking the bombs in the ceiling close, and fire it, the explosion will destroy the block.

If you can't display the individual levels of your Sidearm powerups, you could always do something simpler: put a terminal in the very first cave with the health/energy/missile restore point (can you have both the regen field and a terminal in the same cave?) and script the message so it simply reads out and tells you what you've got. You could even go all out, and include descriptive strings for each item you gain, and have it only list off the explanations for the items you currently possess. That would obviously run on for a long time, so maybe you could code the message advancement so each page displays at once, A advances, and B cancels the entire message?

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 19 January 2015 - 02:52 PM.