899 replies to this topic

[C-Dawg]

The most comprehensive solution is to just check the combos below the player.  I think there are only four or five possible ice combos in the game.  That's certainly something I should do, if only to spare the strange interaction with the Scope.
 

Also - welcome back!  More testers = more bugs.  Good times.  I'll try to start work on updating the early game bosses soon so they're ready for ya.  I think it was the designer of Quake who once said something like, the first level of the game should be the last level you actually implement.  So that the player gets the benefit of your experience and streamlining, developed during the game, right away.  I'm planning a pretty major overhaul of the path to the Pulse Hammer and first boss for exactly that reason.  Stay tuned...

Edited by C-Dawg, 22 January 2015 - 10:34 AM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Okay, I've beaten all the corridors. I haven't verified they all remained beaten, though, since I cannot possibly complete Leo 00. (Scorpio 74, Pisces 33 and Gemini 75 all reset on me, as I'd beaten them all previously...) Upon completing Leo 00 the first time, it warped me to Aries 00. When I returned to Leo, the corridor was still open (with reward item still in the box) so I entered it again. As soon as I moved on each of the first two bosses, it warped me to the next boss. I fought the third/final boss again, and upon killing him, it dumped me back out in Aries 00. I returned to Leo 00 and it is still showing the corridor open. No new messages at the terminals and nothing new when I return to the lab, so presumably this needs to be fixed before the rest of the game is playable?

[C-Dawg]

Gah, yeah, something is awry. When all corridors are done, stuff happens right away. Will check into problems with Leo 00 post haste.

 

EDIT: Okay, I think I found the error.  I have fixed it.  I don't know about your earlier coordiors resetting, though; that smells alot like global variable problems.

Edited by C-Dawg, 22 January 2015 - 08:19 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Gah, yeah, something is awry. When all corridors are done, stuff happens right away. Will check into problems with Leo 00 post haste.
 
EDIT: Okay, I think I found the error.  I have fixed it.  I don't know about your earlier coordiors resetting, though; that smells alot like global variable problems.

Right. That's why I was loath to report them. I want to play all the way through (or up until this point where you need to finish all the corridors) on a single demo before complaining about them - no need to waste your time fixing a "bug" if it's just an artifact from mixing demo versions in one game save.

[C-Dawg]

Well, give eme a go. Itd be great to hear someone s reaction to the end stuff.

Did you fully explore Sagittarius yet?

 

EDIT: Updated quest file.  Phew.  While I probably havn't ironed out the Continue bugs yet, I am hoping (probably optimistically) that we're getting to about the end of the gameplay-busting bugs.  Once we get to a point where it's just polish, balance, and improving un-fun parts, I can take things a little easier.

 

If you know people who want to play the quest, please encourage them to do so.  We need all the feedback we can generate.

Edited by C-Dawg, 23 January 2015 - 01:40 AM.

[newstarshipsmell]

LOL, that corridor is still messed up, and I confirmed new bug behavior, not due to my previous version-spanning game save - I started a new game save on the new demo, used the cheat menu to beef up my health/energy/ship cannon/ship special weapon to roughly where I'd be at that point, warped to Leo 00 and fought the level. Upon killing the third boss, he does the same thing as his predecessor - his right claw in the lower-right corner does not turn into an explosion. Then, after he finishes exploding, I am warped to the upper-left corner of a blank screen, no-gravity, still in my ship sprite. The surrounding screens are similar black, empty, no-gravity rooms. ETA: LOL, I went all the way up then all the way left and ended up in another corridor into screen - and promptly died at the beginning of a shooter level I haven't seen yet.

Also, the corridor intros (and maybe the outros? wasn't paying attention) for at least this corridor (probably all of them?) retains the initial ship/robot sprites, rather than updating them after you get the 2nd/3rd rings.

Sagittarius: Am I supposed to finish exploring it before beating all the corridors? I wasn't sure if the plot drove me back there to finish, or if I was supposed to use Dash 2 to finish it. I hadn't gotten the Zodiac changer yet, and wasn't sure if I got that in there somewhere or as part of the plot upon finishing the corridors. I also haven't gotten the IJBs yet either, so I assume those are somewhere in there? (I've mapped out all but 3 screens in Aries and 1 in Capricorn for the first 11 areas now.)

And I've already drummed this thing up to the small handful of friends I hoped I might convince to give it a shot - none of them are ZC players, so I dunno if they'll act on my suggestion to try it out.

ETA: Okay, in Sagittarius, I got an energy upgrade after brute-forcing the maze near the start point. Is there a hint somewhere for passing that screen? (I have a suggestion for one if there isn't.) I suppose I might be able to navigate the warp tiles up above with the grappler 2, but was hoping I would get the IJBs for that nonsense. There's a high ledge I missed earlier - I can't seem to make it to the top without burning either an overcharge adaptor or a life tank, though, so am I supposed to go up there without IJB? ETA: Never mind, I forgot I had the Grappler 2. Still, it might be nice to give the player a message override from Dr. Mo at some point (after you get the second grappler?) suggesting returning to that area to explore further, if that isn't already included in the ploy progression.

I reached an underwater maze with fish/cubes. Spin attack destroys all the blocks in there, which I assume is a bug, since you can then end up destroying the bottom row of blocks and fall down into the ceiling of rooms below and end up stuck. ETA: So there seems to be a type of block you're using that's destructible with SA that I don't think you intended - just like the warp zone with blocks that can be destroyed, including the device tiles themselves, as well as "ghost" tiles that are empty air, the same thing happens in the maze near Sagittarius start point - you can destroy the two blocks on the bottom, but there's also an empty tile let of the right-side block which also explodes if you spin attack through it.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 23 January 2015 - 07:40 AM.

[ShadowTiger]

I suppose I wish to express a concern; likely a potentially valid one.

that corridor is still messed up, and I confirmed new bug behavior, not due to my previous version-spanning game save - I started a new game save on the new demo, used the cheat menu to beef up my health/energy/ship cannon/ship special weapon to roughly where I'd be at that point, warped to Leo 00 and fought the level.

This here may be an issue. The testers can't be 100% sure that with a script-heavy quest like this, doing such a thing via the cheat menu would ruin events, having bypassed a critical flag-setting event that happens internally and invisible to the player.

I'd ask for a contextually script-based "timeline" or order of events of the game, but would that be too much to ask for, for the sake of ensuring that all triggers work properly?

At minimum, a post from a quest creator saying "First warp to Dmap 2 Screen 11 and defeat the enemy there, then go to Dmap 23 screen 52 and collect the item," etc, all the way down the line until the parts that need to be tested.

I only ask because I have a history of doing that; skipping parts that shouldn't be skipped so that I'll actually be able to allot the time to thoroughly scour an area in its entirety after having played through the beginning of the quest fifty two times to get to the new area, only to have to start over again for completion's sake when a new area is fleshed out.

Ninety six times through the first few maps, barely a few times through the later maps. We all know this happens. People have schedules and lives, and a tiny part of me wishes they didn't, so that this quest and the undoubtedly occasionally Sisyphean amounts of effort involved in designing, writing, drawing, and implementing it could reach a satisfactory conclusion rather than be dragged out by the consistent foibles of humanity.

That said, I'm off to MagFest. See y'all Tuesday night. Best wishes with everything.

[newstarshipsmell]

I suppose I wish to express a concern; likely a potentially valid one.
This here may be an issue. The testers can't be 100% sure that with a script-heavy quest like this, doing such a thing via the cheat menu would ruin events, having bypassed a critical flag-setting event that happens internally and invisible to the player.

Perhaps I should have clarified: I discovered this bug by traveling to the corridor properly, from my current game save that started on Demo 399 and is currently using 406. Because I'd beaten the first two bosses in that corridor on the previous demo, 405, when it was dropping me out in Aries 00 afterwards, they were bypassed, presumably because C-Dawg coded it so if you die/return, you don't have to fight through the 1st/2nd bosses again if you've already defeated them? Or maybe that's a bug too, and you're supposed to have to fight all three each time you go to that corridor. After defeating the third boss (in 406) it gave me the bug as described. I started a new game save and cheated as stated above to go up there and see if the behavior was identical - it was - so I assumed that ruled out the bug being related to the previous save spanning demos. If that had mattered, I would assume I would've seen a different bug, but the exact same thing appeared to happen. (Excepting that I had to fight through all three bosses this time, all in 406, since I hadn't beaten the first two on this save.)

None of this is to say that your point is not totally valid. I obviously am a newbie when it comes to the inner workings of ZC/ZQ - some of it I've been able to infer just from playing lots of quests and seeing what quest creators are limited to doing, and I've picked up a couple things here and there (I just started reading the 2.50 ZQ tutorial in the hopes of better understanding what goes into designing the quests, so as to improve my bug reports and suggestions.)

I just wanted to stress that in this case I don't think cheating caused the bug - I think it happens in 406 regardless, and needs afixin'.

/resume bug reports:

?????:

Spoiler

The room in the upper-right has no gravity.
The room in the lower-left, has another instance where the Dash 2 is very difficult to use - the ability to line it up properly midjump is very tricky, and generally seems to require patience and lots of button-mashing. When you're trying to dash through a column to a hole on the far side that is higher than one tile, it generally makes entering the column simple, as your gravity causing you to fall gives you a range of vertical coordinates that match up to activating it. Whenever the far-side space is only a tile high, however, the window seems to be pretty much limited to single-pixel precision - so if you cannot lock your Y-position (by standing on the ground next to it) the changing Y during your fall makes it supremely difficult to hit that window and enter/pass through the column.


Example of breaking blocks with spin attack. Gets me stuck in blocks sometimes scrolling rooms left/right in this area, gets me stuck in the top row of the rooms below when I break the blocks along the floor.


Inside the cave room (on the right) are a number of invisible solid blocks.


Looks like it's missing a tile in the upper-right corner.


These warp tiles do not warp you.


These warp tiles all warp you to a no-gravity/empty cave. The 1x2 crystal on the right side is not solid - you fall through it.


The bottom center warp tile does nothing. The rest of the warp tiles warp you to another no-gravity/empty cave.

Furthermore, the room above this seems like a pointless dead-end? It just warps you back to the beginning point.

Okay, I'm inferring from the level design that these sandblocks are intended to be destroyed with the spin attack, but... they seem to make tiles around them destructible as well, regardless of whether or not those blocks are solid combos or empty spaces. Destroying adjacent solid combos removes them, destroying adjacent empty spaces just displays the explosion graphic for a bit. Here it blew another hole open to the room border (which I guess, at least I know this is the left edge of the map now, lol!)


So, you need to tweak those tiles so they stop destroying the ones around them, as well as swap out the bottom row of destructible blocks at the bottom of the underwater maze with something non-destructible.

Also, the Grappler 2 attaches to everything, including empty space along the room borders, which seems... odd.

The large enemies' death explosion sound plays when I enter a room with them - not sure if it's doing that every time, or just when I return to a room where I've previously killed that enemy (or enemies.) It also plays the sound properly when I destroy them. They also frequently produce a noticeable graphical glitch where they briefly appear at their starting positions after killing them, but then quickly disappear.


I get stuck in the destructible block on the top row when I fall back down this hole. Can't jump to spin attack out of it.


This cave has nothing in it. Also, it has the same invisible blocks as the other one does. ETA: The other two caves I found further along also had the same arrangement of invisible blocks in them.

Capricorn 4E: Okay, Iron no longer damages you, after you've talked to Dr. Mo (and she activates the terminal warp._ But he still damages you before that, and when you exit ????? it still warps you above and between them, so you fall onto him and take damage.

Capricorn Wave: Generally, when you fire it diagonally, it fires 20° angled away from the direction you're facing, towards the diagonal you're holding. Occasionally, some of the waves will travel significantly slower, and at a 25° angle instead. Not sure if this is deliberate or a bug, but anyways, that angle annoys me. It's kind of frustrating to get the proper facing to fire it in the intended direction - I would suggest simplifying it so it only shoots at 45° regardless of which way you're facing.

Spin Attack: You continue to spin attack indefinitely while you cling to walls, after activating it midjump.

Zodiac Changer: It fuckin' skips over the Capricorn Wave. Bummer. ETA: ROFL! Those annoying Libra Crystals... switching the Zodiac weapon and firing a new one only clears one of the crystals. THEY NEVER GO AWAY!

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 23 January 2015 - 11:40 AM.

[C-Dawg]

Re: Aries 0,0  

 

This particular problem should not be related to global variables.  What happens is, after the Crab explodes, you are warped by the script to a DMAP and a SCREEN specified by the last and second to last variables defined by the FFC.  Its like D4 and D5, I think.  What sometimes happens is that I mis-calculate the Screen target.  That's easy to do because Zelda Classic defines screens in Hexadecimal, but when you pass the variable to a script, you have to use base 10.  So Screen 10 (in ZC) is actually Screen 16 (in Script).  However, I thought for sure I re-did that calculation correctly last night.  I had been sipping a rum and coke, though, so perhaps I made a mistake...?

 

Anyway, if you really want to bypass the problem, what you need to know is that there is a room in Aries with a closed door behind a bomb wall you can't get into yet.  All that finishing the corridors does mechanically is add Iron to your party (he's an idiot right now, you are not missing much) and open that door.  So, if you noclip through the door, you can pick up from there even with Aries 0,0 being an asshat.

 

ALTERNATIVELY

 

You can go to the crab boss and then noclip down three screens.  The way I check when you finish a cooridor is that you have arrived on the post-boss screen; the one where the player transforms back into a robot.  That screen for Aries 0,0 is located just below the screen where you enter the coorridor, or 3 screens down.  You could go into Aries 0,0 and noclip south until you hit that screen, then let it ride from there.

 

RE: Capricorn Wave

 

It should be part of the cycle from the Changer.  Will address.  

 

It also does have a subtle way of handling, doesnt it?  What is going on here is that, like the boomerang in Zelda 1, you can be facing in one direction but actually fire the wave at a slight angle in front of you if you're mashing a different direction.  The resulting wave is slower but travels at an angle.
 

RE: Sagitarrius

 

Ooooooh right I made those blocks destructible to Spin Attacks at one point.  In 2008. Whoops!  I completely forgot I had done that.  Will fix those areas post haste.  

 

Did you find the Infinity Jump in Sagitarrius yet?  You can certainly challenge the last boss without it, but... I wouldn't recommend it.  It's hidden in a particularly devious place...

Edited by C-Dawg, 23 January 2015 - 12:10 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Did you find the Infinity Jump in Sagitarrius yet? You can certainly challenge the last boss without it, but... I wouldn't recommend it. It's hidden in a particularly devious place...

LOL, yes, that "particularly devious place..." I CHECKED that, well, I walked across the opening, but because there was no gravity, I didn't fall down into it, thus didn't realize it was there. I only found it later because I was noclipping around the underwater maze and skipped into the room from the left. I didn't even realize those are conveyor belts, until I came across them again in a gravitied room later, since they don't work if you aren't standing on them under gravity.
 

Anyway, if you really want to bypass the problem, what you need to know is that there is a room in Aries with a closed door behind a bomb wall you can't get into yet. All that finishing the corridors does mechanically is add Iron to your party (he's an idiot right now, you are not missing much) and open that door. So, if you noclip through the door, you can pick up from there even with Aries 0,0 being an asshat.

ALTERNATIVELY

You can go to the crab boss and then noclip down three screens. The way I check when you finish a cooridor is that you have arrived on the post-boss screen; the one where the player transforms back into a robot. That screen for Aries 0,0 is located just below the screen where you enter the coorridor, or 3 screens down. You could go into Aries 0,0 and noclip south until you hit that screen, then let it ride from there.

I tried the former, rather than the tedious sounding latter. Two things:
1. During the last cutscene with Dr. Mo, assuming you meant I was supposed to acquire Iron as an item upon completing the corridors (hence why she says "you found her" to him when you reach Dr. Mo) Iron appears twice, as your item beside/on top of you, and as the NPC by the door.
2. Dr. Mo tells me the ship is docked somewhere in Aries... is this correct? I wandered around most of the level and couldn't find it. That one other room I hadn't explored yet, 4A, I saw no way into with the SRX, so I noclipped into it and it is completely empty - so is the other room I hadn't explored yet, in Capricorn (0D). I tried returning to Leo 0F in case you meant that, but while the "boss" is gone, the ship door damages me when I touch it and I can't noclip "inside" it (i.e. to the right.) So... is it really somewhere in Aries?

LOL, what's up with the Snake Zone? I warped to it out of curiosity, and the exit warps me to the upper-left corner of Aquarius 00. Is that supposed to be an intro area after the opening shooter level but before reaching Aquarius the first time? Did you abandon it? Or is it just a leftover artifact experimenting with ZQ?

And I forgot to mention,

Spoiler

in the conversation with the alien in the simulation, Dr. Mo's face is displayed in the upper-right box the entire time. You should draw a face for the alien and toggle it in for his strings. Since you do that for the other conversations where it alternates between NPCs, it's kinda confusing as-is and feels like she's talking to herself.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 23 January 2015 - 02:14 PM.

[C-Dawg]

No, it's in Leo where it was before... My bad, does she say aries? anyway, remember the second connection between aries and leo? It's close by so you can get there easily... don't cheat, just go back that way, up the shaft.

Snake man stuff was just for the lols. it's possible it might end up as bad bus material.

Also, keep your eye out for choices to make... there is a good and a bad ending so far. if I have time, there will be more, later, based on how many characters you are able to save from destruction on the zodiac.

Edited by C-Dawg, 23 January 2015 - 02:12 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

No, it's in Leo where it was before... My bad, does she say aries? anyway, remember the second connection between aries and leo? It's close by so you can get there easily... don't cheat, just go back that way, up the shaft.

Snake man stuff was just for the lols. it's possible it might end up as bad bus material.

Also, keep your eye out for choices to make... there is a good and a bad ending so far. if I have time, there will be more, later, based on how many characters you are able to save from destruction on the zodiac.

Heh, yeah. I noclipped around inside one of the "inside" areas and saw some funny looking aliens... that did nothing but contact-damage me. Was wondering what they were there for.

I see... I suppose you probably can't come in from the original direction; you close the gates left of the Pandora on the player so they have to come up through the second Aries entrance?

Anyways, it's kinda screwy... I was confused because I got tired of jumping and tried to use my AGD - on the screen that triggers the switch in the middle. So my AGD kept getting interrupted and I'd fall back into the previous screen below. I thought it was Iron interfering with it since it kept failing as he fired his 2nd/3rd shot. You might want to code him so he only fires when you're using a Weapon item rather than the Equipment items... He likes to shoot shit when you're just trying to look at things with the XRS, heh.

ETA:
Okay... I "beat" that Leo 00 corridor by your second suggestion, and got the health upgrade/closed the corridor door. However, I used "Goto Location" to warp around the Zodiac and check all the other corridors. Several of them are definitely not staying closed. If I beat them again, I can warp to another Zone, warp back to that Zone, and revisit them, and they'll still be closed, but then when I've visited every corridor nothing happens on clearing the last one, and when I warp around to check them all again, the following corridors have reset to open (with item box empty but unbroken): Scorpio 0F, Aries 00, Pisces 33, Gemini 75, Leo 00, Taurus 79. All of the other corridors remain closed after beating them.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 23 January 2015 - 03:03 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Ok, noted. I'll recheck that whole system. Bastards.

[newstarshipsmell]

I know you're still working on Iron - just wanted to make sure you were aware, he doesn't hang on to you at all in the final shooter level, but sits at the bottom of the screen, and mostly shoots sideways since you're constantly moving left/right to avoid shit, which is not terribly helpful of him.

But the main reason I'm posting, so you can hopefully fix before pushing out another update, is the continue point - if you die and resume, you start off on the very beginning shooter level. With Iron. Awesome.

Also, if you can change the height at which his dialog triggers upon reaching the empty dock screen, that would be awesome. As it is, he talks to you right at the bottom of the screen. So you end up falling back down when you don't time your jump precisely after closing the dialog window. And then he says the same thing when you jump back up into the screen. Again. And again. And eventually you are lucky and he shuts up finally so you can finish jumping up into the room all the way.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 23 January 2015 - 07:22 PM.

[C-Dawg]

I hear your concerns.  I managed to waste all night drawing the new sprites to turn Pheagon from a boring sad sack of a boss into a legitimate badass, and now it's bed time.  The early bosses will be at least as legit as the later ones! (You have no commented many bosses at all, which I take as a good sign; I take it those you do not mention are challenging enough but beatable, move correctly, etc).

 

Oh well, I will spend some time investigating your problem tomorrow!

 

EDIT: Pheagon upgrade is taking forever.  It's functional, kinda, but rough on the edges.  Will probably squeeze out an update based on that and the bugs you posted on this page, then take a breather for awhile, update a little less frequently.  Of course, since I'm averaging an update every 2 days right now, "less frequently" is all relative.

 

EDIT2: Okay, boss is now updated and working.  I really should do more to iron out the cosmetic quirks, but I think it serves perfectly well as-is.  Getting the Pulse Hammer is now no longer a cakewalk; to the contrary, it will probably cost you another controller due to button mashing damage.   

 

I'll update the Project file as soon as I can get some of your other bugs addressed.

 

EDIT 3: Iron now hangs on for dear life when you turn into a ship.  His cannon fires forward with your own.  This is only relevant for the last flying level, but it's a nice touch, I think.

 

Tweaked Catawhirl speed.  It's less likely to get to mach 3 and then stay there throughout the fight.

 

Changed height of Iron's dialogue upon finding the dock empty.

 

Fixed continue point at last flying level.

 

Fixed target warp after defeating Leo 0,0.

 

Corridor completion flags have been checked and checked again.  I can't fathom what might be going on here... there are only three scripts that do ANYTHING with the global array that keeps track of your completed corridor during the game.  

 

HOWEVER... on the very first screen of the game, a script runs that clears all of the corridor flags.  This was also (erroneously) running on the final flying stage, too.  That means if you nocliped around in the map storing the corridor data, it was possible to hit one of these two screens, clearing all of your completed corridor data.  Is this what happened?  Anyway, I fixed the erroneous second corridor clear function on the final level.

 

Fixed spin attack-vulnerable block maze in Sagittarius.

 

Changer now selects ALL zodiac weapons.   No fool'n.
 

EDIT4 - Uploaded, pending staff approval.  I think I will take a break from coding for most of this week and focus on starting to assemble the instruction manual and other stuff.   I still want to tweak a few more bosses and have more beta testing conducted, but I'm getting very close to calling this Version 1.0.

 

Did you manage to finish off he-who-will-not-be-named-in-this-thread yet, Spaceship?  I've practiced enough where I can beat him on 3 energy tanks at this point.

Edited by C-Dawg, 25 January 2015 - 11:13 PM.