899 replies to this topic

[newstarshipsmell]

I'm going to hazard a guess that not picking up the item makes the game think you haven't finished it yet.

This was not the case for me. Some corridors, which I left the item behind after beating, remained closed for the rest of my game, while others, where I left the item behind, reopened later, with the unclaimed item returned inside the box. With the corridors which I took the item, some of them reset, and the reset corridors had an empty box, as I'd already acquired it. I can't remember which ones did which, but I noted them all in a previous post. This was after Goto warping around the map at the end to double-check them all. Cancer 6D did not reset on me, though, and I'd left the item behind on that one (as I already had an Overcharge Adapter I bought earlier and hadn't used yet.)
And I know that at least Pisces 33 was resetting well before I began using the cheat menu, so it's not possible to tie the bug solely to warping/noclipping around. I had noticed a couple other corridors that I knew I'd beaten resetting, but didn't think to start noting them all until the end of the game.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 31 January 2015 - 01:08 PM.

[C-Dawg]

The item has nothing to do with it.  Here's the mechanics of the Corridors.

 

There is a global array called corridors_completed with 22 elements, [0] through [21].  

 

On the first screen of the game, there is a script called "corridor_clear" that sets all the elements of the array to 0.

 

When you arrive on the screen after a corridor boss, a script called "corridor_completed" sets one of the elements of the array to 1.  

 

The labyrinth screen with a corridor entrance has a script called "corridor_check" that looks to see if the correct element is set to 1.  If it is, it triggers secrets.

 

I've noclipped through all of the corridor completion screens quickly (they are all on the same map) and, when you exit them, the end game script does indeed run.  So, the array elements are getting set properly.  Something is un-setting them though, and that's what is troubling me.

 

If I declare my array as full of 0s at the beginning of my global script, will it overwrite it to 0 just when a new save file is created (what I want) or will it clear them to 0s every time you continue?

[newstarshipsmell]

On Demo 418 now.

Sandfalls (Scorpio 31):
Well, since sandfalls no longer allow you to jump up a half-tile, rooms like Scorpio 31 become F6 traps. Also, because of how they work - you can't jump up at all until fully outside of them vertically vs. before you just had to walk most of the way out of them - sandfalls with 1-tile spaces between them and cactii are super annoying, since you have to walk out of them and stop with pixel-precision to avoid walking into the cactus and taking damage while still being in position to jump up and over it. You can hold up/down and edge towards the cactus at least - you'll still probably take damage, but at least it won't keep knocking you back into the sandfall, so you're lined up to jump over it at that point. Still - annoying. ETA: Overall, this is obviously an improvement to the sandfalls - they just need to be carefully playtested for traps like this, and make sure they don't impede previous progress that is intended.

Also, ZC menus always act weird for me. Is it just me? Sometimes, they behave perfectly normally. Other times, the cursor will rapidly move backwards along the tab track, and when it does this, the input windows act weird, and as a result, I find myself unable to actually input a cheat code into the entry box. So when this happens, and I'm trapped somewhere, I can't even noclip out of it, but have to completely quit the program and restart it. Is there some way to avoid this behavior? (Aside from, obviously, activating cheats at the beginning of every session.)

Iron 1/Scorpio 02: He doesn't stay dead. After the defeat cutscene, if you proceed to the right and scroll into Scorpio 03, nothing happens. If, after completing the cutscene, you walk to the left, when you reach the spot that originally triggered the fight (after the intro cutscene) it will trigger the intro cutscene and fight again. If you return to the room (either backtrack from 03, or quit/continue|save/resume from 00 and proceed right to 02) you'll get the cutscene/fight again. Agh!

Aquarius 1D: You can still get trapped here prior to obtaining the Pulse Hammer:


Aquarius 7A: When the boss explodes, one of his tiles turns into some circular tile instead of an explosion. It disappears with the rest of him.

Scorpio 21: With the sandfall change, I don't think it is possible to cross this room from right to left anymore. You can't jump up from the top of the sandfalls anymore, and even if you jump and enter the fall from the right at the top of your jump and hold left the entire time, you end up sliding down into the sand on the left side and not reaching the blocks. Since you must pass this room this way to get to the switch in 20, which opens the gate to the boss at 65/66, I believe this is a game-ending bug. ETA: Okay, I've jumped off the tops of some sandfalls elsewhere - though it seems you only get a little half-tile hop off them, at best, rather than a full height jump like you could get off the old version of sandfalls - but I was unable to do so here. I tried over and over. Maybe I just had bad luck or timed it wrong. So I don't know for certain that it's impassable, but it may very well seem so to the average player, and still cause them to become stumped.

Scorpio 31: Elaborating on the above re: sandfalls, this room as-is is particularly tricky with the aforementioned F6 trap. If you enter from the right, it's pretty easy to jump over the taller cactus and move through the fall to exit it above the rock on the left. But if you come left-to-right through this room, if you jump through the left fall, land on the rock, then jump as high as you can and move right through the center fall, you won't clear the tall cactus, and unless you quickly react and face up/down, its knockback will push you into the middle of the fall, and you'll probably descend too far to escape above the rock on the left, becoming trapped.

Subscreen: Cursor looks much better now. But it's still displaying on top of some items, and behind others. More critically, I cannot select my Life Tanks. I only have the Sidearm, Explosives, Missiles, Pulse Hammer, and 4x Life Tanks. No matter how I move the cursor, it will not move to the TOOLS row and land on the Life Tanks. *sigh* And here I was complaining about how I had too many of them...

Aquarius 71: I got the Spy's message here after obtaining the Explosives. One of the strings displayed inside a white window frame, instead of dark blue like all the others. Also, the cave exit warps you inside the half-tile to the right of the door (so you have to jump out of it.) Perhaps you should simply remove that tile.

Aries 60: Seriously? I think you may have overpowered this one a bit. Even with the Shield, and all the Life Upgrades I know of before reaching Aries, I only have 192 HP. And each of those little bullets it shoots on its third attack does -64 HP. That's a third of my life meter, and I can't really dodge all of them. I'm not even sure I could damage him quickly enough to beat him, even blowing through all four of my Life Tanks, except that... LOL I can't even use them right now. Sure, I could wander around the level looking for other Life Upgrades, but I'm not sure they would add up to that much to make a difference.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 31 January 2015 - 06:27 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Mind-boggling.  I didn't mess with any of the codes involves in most of these new errors you're finding.  Bananas!

[newstarshipsmell]

Scorpio 21: Okay, after playtesting this room some more, it is not impassable like I thought it was. It is incredibly tricky, though, and may convince some players that it's not meant to be passable, without some in-game text describing hopping across sandfalls and/or messages directing you to this room and past it.
ETA: The room below it, 31, however, is still an F6 trap, due to the inability to hop up at all inside the falls, and it being bordered by two solid combos. ETA: Unless you've made changes to other rooms with sandfalls in them, I see no other rooms with the potential to trap the player. (I warped to 61 and checked it out - and it works just fine.) I'm only looking at the outside area though - I think there were one or two cave rooms with sandfalls inside them, which you should review and make sure don't contain traps.
It would still be nice if holding down in a sandfall caused you to move downwards faster.

Well, I guess one upside of the impossible ray boss is that it's compelling me to gather as much as I can from the rest of Aries before a rematch, so I'll inevitably end up finding all the F6 traps (ETA: lol, all one of them) you overlooked by assuming the player would gain the HJBs sooner...

Aries 7E: F6 trap. If you pass through the lower half to reach the Energy Sidearm upgrade in 7F, you are stuck. The right-most pillar is only destructible near the top, where you cannot jump to, nor wall glitch up to. I tried using one of the inchworms to damage boost myself up, but since they infrequently spawn on the right side there, and they will not move from a 2nd-from-border column to a border column, and you have to jump up to destroy the block in the first place, that makes even attempting it really tedious, so after one attempt where I got everything lined up, then didn't face down in time when I landed on it, and it promptly crawled through the pillar, I gave up and F6'ed.

Aries 58: Maybe you should move the block from 7E to 7F so it matches the adjoining room... it's kind of a dick move for the player who falls into the lava in 59 to jump out onto the lowest platform, backtrack into 58 and then promptly fall back into the lava again. Plus, the whole "you can scroll into a solid combo" thing applies if you jump out of the lava in the lower-right corner of 58 and scroll into 59 on level with that block.

Aries 51: The passage in the lower right corner to 61 reaches the room border, so you can scroll right into 52 and walk out of the wall.

So yeah, after obtaining everything I can from Aries pre-HJBs, boss guarding them just clobbered me again. Not sure how much damage the beam and spray weapons do, but those shattering bullets really need their damage dialed down. I considered cheating simply to simulate using up my Life Tanks, but fuck it. I just made myself invincible instead. Boss is too hard. If that room/door underneath him were a continue point... maybe I would want to practice and see if I can beat him, but with all that backtracking to reach him... fuck that.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 31 January 2015 - 11:39 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Yeah, that's my bad. They are like eight times more powerful than they should be. I'll try to pinch off an update tonight to square it up. I've got a new and improved version of iron working at level oNE and I wanted to update his other levels tonight first.

Edited by C-Dawg, 31 January 2015 - 10:58 PM.

[Solairflaire]

This is all on the previous build, not the current one. I don't know if any of these were fixed with the update.

 

Scorpio 2,0: Switch doesn't say where it goes to

Scorpio 5,5: Bottom right wall next to the sandfall can be broken with the Disintegrator. You can fall into 6,5 from the broken part and get stuck at the top of the screen.

Scorpio 2,6: Top 4 grey blocks can be broken with Disintegrator.

Scorpio 0,C: No gravity in this room.

 

Libra 3,7: Exiting shop puts you in top left corner.

Libra 0,7: There is nothing here and it seems like there should be.

Libra 0,F: Again, nothing here when it seems like there should be.

Libra 3,3: There are two ice blocks on the right side where you can shoot a missile through the blocks but you can't go through them. It seems like this should be a secret to get to a door at 3,4.

Libra 0,C: Upgrade room had nothing in it. I'm almost 100% certain I was never there before.

 

Taurus 6,0 and 2,F: The door at 6,0 was already open when I got there the first time. I later made it to 2,F and it said it was to open that door. I had not hit that switch yet.

Taurus 7,D: Inside Shop: The HUD gets screwed up here and displays the original LoZ screen. The pause screen is also in the old style. Shop also eats your money.

Taurus 7,9 Corridor: There were sprites and damage tiles that just seemed to show up at random and stay on the screen. They went away when I encountered the boss. I haven't encountered this on any other corridor.

 

Virgo 7,5: You can jump through the "creatures" mouth and get stuck in the little area above it forcing an F6 continue.

Virgo 3,6: Door goes to blank room

Virgo 6,6: Door goes to blank room. Also, leaving puts you over the pit to 7,6 instead of near the door.

Virgo 7,3: Door goes to blank room. Leaving the room puts you on the top path of the screen instead of near the door.

Virgo 4,4: Screw this boss. I wasn't fighting the boss. I was fighting the controls most of the time during this fight. Also killing it doesn't end the fight. F6 Continue and coming back keeps the boss dead after killing it though.

Virgo 4,5: What is that blue and red heartish type thing for? You can just walk behind it and nothing happens.

 

Capricorn 0,4: Seems like there should've been a boss here.

Capricorn 1,8: Door goes to blank room

Capricorn 4,C: Door goes to blank room

Capricorn 6,4: Door goes to blank room

Capricorn 3,0: The right exit of the room is blocked by an invisible wall on the edge of the screen. You can jump over the top of it, but it's kinda weird that it is there.

 

I think I'm going to start over with the new build. I want to play and pay more attention to stuff from the beginning.

 

One thing I found annoying in the shooter levels was the "bombs" that quickly came on screen and explode into a storm of bullets. There is no way to actually avoid them. This is really apparent on the fish boss in Pisces who just poops the things. I honestly wouldn't mind the damage being increased on these and the number of bullets halved or quartered as long as I could avoid them. The "improved" version that casually floats on the screen and disappears if you don't shoot them are equally bad and they deal a ton more damage (though you can just not shoot these, but that's easier said than done most of the time). These wouldn't be so bad if your hitbox was a lot smaller and ZC didn't screw up hitboxes that aren't moving solely horizontal or vertical.

[C-Dawg]

Solar, good man.  keep chugging along on that last version and reporting bugs!  Its all good!

 

I see you've encountered the wonderful exploding spore sacs in Virgo, huh?  They suck balls.  It's true.  But here's the thing: by that time the game, the player is used to just spamming their weapons with impunity.  I have to break the rules a little bit to make you more careful about that.  If you spam your bullets in Virgio and beyond, you might get a faceful of acid.

 

I'm very happy with Iron's redesign.  Those who wanted polish will be pleased, I think.  I'll get you guys a fix tonight with at least that and the Life Tanks fixed, maybe some more stuff.

Edited by C-Dawg, 31 January 2015 - 11:23 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Subscreen: Bought an Overcharge Adaptor. Now I can move the cursor from the missiles to it, and over to the Life Tanks. So the cursor movement just needs to be modified so that when you try to move up/down to an empty spot, it just moves over to the next populated spot (wrapping, so it moves to the first item in the row if there's none after the empty spot above/below.)

Cancer 3D/Iron 2: The gate frames turn black/disappear during Iron's dialog. He's stopped skipping out on me it seems, for now. But, after his defeat, once his dialog concludes, he just sits there, next to the Life Tank. I bombed him copiously just for the hell of it. ETA: I shot the switch in the next room, and backtracked. This fight began all over again, like the previous Iron fight.

Libra 3,3: There are two ice blocks on the right side where you can shoot a missile through the blocks but you can't go through them. It seems like this should be a secret to get to a door at 3,4.

Sweet! You found a bunch I overlooked - thus, likely not fixed yet.
Anyways - that passage in LI33 - if you blow up the blocks, you can dash through the spikes (with only Dash 1, no Dash 2 needed) to reach the next room. I wasn't sure if this was a bug or deliberate, but thought it was pretty neat, regardless.

Taurus 6,0 and 2,F: The door at 6,0 was already open when I got there the first time. I later made it to 2,F and it said it was to open that door. I had not hit that switch yet.

See, C-Dawg? I WASN'T SMOKING CRACK! It was just open from the beginning. Mystery solved!

Virgo 4,4: Screw this boss. I wasn't fighting the boss. I was fighting the controls most of the time during this fight. Also killing it doesn't end the fight. F6 Continue and coming back keeps the boss dead after killing it though.

LOL, agreed. I just cheated and gave myself the damn stomp boots.

Virgo 4,5: What is that blue and red heartish type thing for? You can just walk behind it and nothing happens.

I think it's just a decorative tile.

Capricorn 0,4: Seems like there should've been a boss here.

Did you notice the switch in the room after it, that doesn't report a target and completely disappears when you trigger it?

Capricorn 3,0: The right exit of the room is blocked by an invisible wall on the edge of the screen. You can jump over the top of it, but it's kinda weird that it is there.

I believe that's due to the magnet force interacting with the slow underwater force to produce a weird result.

One thing I found annoying in the shooter levels was the "bombs" that quickly came on screen and explode into a storm of bullets. There is no way to actually avoid them. This is really apparent on the fish boss in Pisces who just poops the things. I honestly wouldn't mind the damage being increased on these and the number of bullets halved or quartered as long as I could avoid them. The "improved" version that casually floats on the screen and disappears if you don't shoot them are equally bad and they deal a ton more damage (though you can just not shoot these, but that's easier said than done most of the time). These wouldn't be so bad if your hitbox was a lot smaller and ZC didn't screw up hitboxes that aren't moving solely horizontal or vertical.

Again, agreed, as far as those bombs. Super annoying - shooting them just blows them up, and regardless of whether you shoot them or they just blow up, they still drop an item, and it's always so close to one of their bullets and scrolls at the same speed as them that you end up taking a hit just to pick it up. Lame.

[Solairflaire]

Pisces before hammer confirmed. You have to damage boost twice to pull it off. Once to get up where the money is (which you can just leave in) and another 2 screens above that (Aquarius 1,F). The second one you have to get hit while zipping up the rightmost block to get enough distance to the next block. Solution is to remove that rightmost block. I'd check if you can get stuck in Pisces, but I'm already almost 100% certain it's possible.

 

I was also talking about the boss guarding the spike boots. I could almost never attack him. The arena is just too sparse to ever get in a position to attack him.

 

Those spore things can also be stunned or outright killed with super missiles. They're actually a great way to restock and earn money. They also drop bombs instead of missiles when killed. The Green Vyre like enemies in Aries (and somewhere else I can't think of) also drop bombs when you kill them and they don't split.

[newstarshipsmell]

Pisces before hammer confirmed. You have to damage boost twice to pull it off. Once to get up where the money is (which you can just leave in) and another 2 screens above that (Aquarius 1,F). The second one you have to get hit while zipping up the rightmost block to get enough distance to the next block. Solution is to remove that rightmost block. I'd check if you can get stuck in Pisces, but I'm already almost 100% certain it's possible.

That's some sequence-breaking-hunting-dedication right there.
Just for shits, I gave it a shot. Without HJBs, I could not make it farther than 59, going right. Jumping from above near the entrance doesn't clear those two shell platforms, and I can't damage-boost over to them from the blocks in the lower-left corner. So Ithink the entire area of the level past that screen is not possible to reach out-of-sequence.
Going left, I was able to make it as far as 40 - in theory, one could damage-boost off the sword projectiles twice in this room and make it above, but you can't become trapped up there, since you can reach and backtrack to the entrance from 40-44 and 50-55-45.
I did get stuck in 60 (which requires at least bombs to reach.) The low coral next to the three-tile wall didn't give me a damage boost, and kept damaging me so I couldn't try to get a boost mid-jump off an enemy/projectile near the top of the wall. But I don't know it's impossible to get back over that wall.
Still, all of the doors in this level serve as continue and save points, so if you enter one of them, past a point you cannot backtrack from, you'd have to quit/retry to resume from a previous save, and if you save anywhere in here, after using a door, conceivably you could end up unable to make it back to the entrance, and ruin your gamesave.
I just warped here from later on, with 208HP+Shield, so someone entering early on probably wouldn't live nearly as long - they still might end up setting a continue/save point somewhere they can't make it back to the entrance without dying. Ascending back up to the entrance from below it requires numerous wall jump bug exploits with those tiny shell platforms.

/bug reports

Ship Weapon: At levels 1 and 2 (possibly 3-5 as well?) when you depress the firing button, the very first shot travels substantially slower than the subsequent shots.

Cancer 3A/2A: It's possible to use wall jump bug 2 to ascend from the upper left corner of 3A and reach the left side of 2A, bypassing the switch on the right and the path to it. You still have to defeat Iron to reach the switch to form the blocks in 29, so this shortcut doesn't take you directly to the Disintegrator.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 01 February 2015 - 01:25 AM.

[C-Dawg]

1. Iron revamped up through third appearance. There's a trick to suppressing him; can you discern it? If you don't figure it out, I hope your controller is well-lubricated. (The suppression trick actually works so well that I might remove it or make it harder to do.) He should not be able to skip out on anyone now. Additionally, if you like this death animation thing better than what I had before, I could work this into other bosses as well.

2. Fixed item drops from Vire-types.

3. Removed block at Aquarius 1,F. I love this Solarifaire dude. He's like a sequence-breaking machine!

4. Removed one of the three showers of bullets that come out of exploding shells in Pisces Corridors.

5. Capricorn 0.3 switch appears to work normally. There is no boss at 0,4. Would you like there to be? I could install some burly men to greet you if you wanted.

6. Taurus 6.0 door problem solved at last. For reasons known only to the baby Jesus, one of the mini-bosses in Taurus was opening this door. Should be fixed now.

7. Libra 3,3 fixed.,

8. Ray Crystal boss damage from the splitting bullet attack brought back to reasonable levels.

9. Subscreen selection problem with Life Tank fixed. Boy, talk about a non-intuitive problem. Suffice to say that it is REQUIRED that the end of the top and bottom rows wrap around to the opposite row rather than the same row to avoid this kind of problem.

10. All of the bugs on this page except:
a. Taurus Corridor random damage spawn. I dont know what this is about.
b. Libra 0F and 07. Theres nothing here. Yet.
c. Spaceship's last post. Came about as I was wrapping up. I'd do more, but I gotta 5k in the morning.

Uploading now.

Edited by C-Dawg, 01 February 2015 - 02:22 AM.

[newstarshipsmell]

1. Iron revamped up through third appearance. There's a trick to suppressing him; can you discern it? If you don't figure it out, I hope your controller is well-lubricated. (The suppression trick actually works so well that I might remove it or make it harder to do.) He should not be able to skip out on anyone now. Additionally, if you like this death animation thing better than what I had before, I could work this into other bosses as well.

My strategy for the first three Iron fights are/were largely the same. The first fight is easiest. Shoot a missile at him. Wait for him to fire, then jump up against the wall as it hits so the fragments miss you. Immediately face towards him as you fall and fire another missile. Repeat. He will just stand there on the far side shooting at you and taking the missiles. If I remember correctly, the Sidearm does not produce the same results, since it travels at a different speed, and messes up the rhythm. At the second fight in Cancer, this same pattern largely works on him, though I can't tell if messing it up is due to me fucking up the pattern or him having more movements/more random action. But generally, if he starts jumping around, if you can hit him with a missile when he lands and distance yourself to the wall, you can resume the pattern of shooting him with a missile, then jumping up over his shot when he returns fire, immediately firing another missile at him when you land, etc. Once you fight him again in Gemini, it becomes even harder to hold him to this pattern, at which point I usually give up and, as I posted earlier, jump up as high as I can to get him jumping even higher, then run underneath him and spam him with my Sidearm. He'll typically make several mid-air jumps a bit to the left and the right while you're underneath him, doing his uppercut or something, uselessly, because you're below him, and you can knock a large chunk of his life off him each time you get him to jump up, while avoiding any damage. Once he lands again, he'll probably hit you, and you have to trick him into jumping up again, and maybe burn a life tank to finish the fight, but all in all, he's one of the easier bosses. We'll see how the new Iron holds up.
 

5. Capricorn 0.3 switch appears to work normally. There is no boss at 0,4. Would you like there to be? I could install some burly men to greet you if you wanted.

Did you do something to fix it? Because every time I made it that far in the past, that room contained no target coordinates, and triggering the switch caused the switch to simply disappear.
 

a. Taurus Corridor random damage spawn. I dont know what this is about.

I mentioned it before. Many of the enemy sprites simply appear, stationary on the screen, not scrolling downwards, and take no damage from your weapons nor deal you any damage when you cross them. They stay on screen for a long time, but not the entire corridor, eventually disappearing, and all of them are gone by the time you reach the boss. I think some of the sprites are explosion sprites instead of enemies, which is what he's talking about - I think.
While we're talking about corridors, I think the Gemini corridor (the one on the right) was one of the worst (best?) examples of messed up color sets for the sprites. I see enemies with a messed up color set in nearly every corridor, but there was an abundance of them in that one.
Also, those ships on the top row that drop bombs - the bombs briefly appear somewhere to the left of the ship before being dropped and scrolling down the screen. The distance they appear from the ship doesn't seem to be uniform, either horizontally or vertically, though they're generally near the top of the screen, and to the left of the ship.

Also, swapping out demos from 418 to 420, at point after 2nd Iron fight in Cancer / before obtaining Disintegrator Beam (for future bug reports.)

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 01 February 2015 - 03:05 AM.

[C-Dawg]

Okay, so Iron is fully upgraded.  I've also given him an invincibility period, so he can't be just manhandled by keeping him in explosions.  I added the same invincibility period to the final boss too, which makes Leo Laser less problematic.  I might go add this graphic to other labyrinth bosses, since it is a good way to tell the player, "atta boy, you hit a thing."
 

EDIT: The boss guarding the explosives in Scorpio now has a different attack.  I probably will tweak it a bit, since it's not MUCH of a change.  Baisically I sped up the tail strike and reduced the number of them, and randomly have him fire a wave-pattern attack instead.  

 

Generally, as I work back through the bosses, I am adding two critical things I started doing only in the late game: 

 

1) Finding FFCs and assigning scripts on the fly.  When I started the project you could not assign Scripts to FFCs using a script.  Now that you can, projectiles are VASTLY easier.  I can find an FFC on the screen with Data->0 (meaning it has been assigned no combo and is consider not in use by ZClassic), move it where I want it, assign it a script and a new Data, and then send it on its way.  This allows me to be much more creative with the projectile attacks enemies use, as you will see playing the bosses I revamp.

 

2) Improved death animation.  Previously I was keying the death animation off of the hit points of a ghosted enemy.  That was really not necessary.  By using a simple for loop instead, I can make the death explosions more controlled and more elaborate.  I will probably add little victory trills or something, too.  Im looking into making this its own function that any custom boss can call.

 

Next stop on the coding train is gonna be some of the minibosses guarding the Shield in Aquarius and the Level 2 Jets in Pisces.

Edited by C-Dawg, 01 February 2015 - 09:19 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Okay, so Iron is fully upgraded.  I've also given him an invincibility period, so he can't be just manhandled by keeping him in explosions.  I added the same invincibility period to the final boss too, which makes Leo Laser less problematic.  I might go add this graphic to other labyrinth bosses, since it is a good way to tell the player, "atta boy, you hit a thing."
 
EDIT: The boss guarding the explosives in Scorpio now has a different attack.  I probably will tweak it a bit, since it's not MUCH of a change.  Baisically I sped up the tail strike and reduced the number of them, and randomly have him fire a wave-pattern attack instead.  
 
Generally, as I work back through the bosses, I am adding two critical things I started doing only in the late game: 
 
1) Finding FFCs and assigning scripts on the fly.  When I started the project you could not assign Scripts to FFCs using a script.  Now that you can, projectiles are VASTLY easier.  I can find an FFC on the screen with Data->0 (meaning it has been assigned no combo and is consider not in use by ZClassic), move it where I want it, assign it a script and a new Data, and then send it on its way.  This allows me to be much more creative with the projectile attacks enemies use, as you will see playing the bosses I revamp.
 
2) Improved death animation.  Previously I was keying the death animation off of the hit points of a ghosted enemy.  That was really not necessary.  By using a simple for loop instead, I can make the death explosions more controlled and more elaborate.  I will probably add little victory trills or something, too.  Im looking into making this its own function that any custom boss can call.
 
Next stop on the coding train is gonna be some of the minibosses guarding the Shield in Aquarius and the Level 2 Jets in Pisces.

So I have a few suggestions for the scorpion boss. He has potential, but was one of the most tedious bosses in the game (perhaps I feel that way simply from how many times I had to fight him before you fixed that bug, heh.)

His tail attacks are directed to your current position when they strike. This makes sense, but you could increase the challenge/interest of this boss by modifying his behavior, so that as his health decreases, his tail strike column is calculated by your current position + the distance you will travel at your current direction of travel, so that the tail lands where you'll be, rather than where you were. This can be mixed up too - some of the strikes mid-health go for where you are, and others where you'll be, but in a set pattern the player can learn and react to. So upon playing him, you'll learn you must move out of the way, then realize the boss is learning, and reacting, and you learn you sometimes have to OH SHIT REVERSE DIRECTION quickly.

Also, the shots he fires with his eye open, seem either random and/or poorly aimed. I can't tell what drives them. Another progressively harder attack AI would be if he generally shot towards your current location, forcing you to move out of the way, and then deal with his tail strikes. Then, as you drop his HP, he could redirect his firing pattern, so that depending upon which side of the screen you're closer to, he basically fires towards the center of the room and/or the far side of the screen - which is where you'll naturally want to run to, to give yourself maneuvering room to dodge his tail strikes.

And as he reaches the end of his meter, you could have some (maybe the last in each set) of the tail strikes come from the side, and strike maybe 2/3rds across the screen, from the side you're closer to - so you'd want to maneuver into the center on the preceding strike, slightly offcenter so you know which direction it will come from, and then cross the center to the far side to avoid it.

Look forward to playing him with a new attack mode though. All of the above, of course, might prove more balanced if added to the latter version in Libra instead, or more pronounced there (i.e. make alternative, more challenging AI happen sooner/more frequently etc.)

Death animations: if you made some of them explode in a shower of pieces, that would be pretty satisfying. If you do that, I'd recommend redrawing the internal edges of the fragmented tiles so they don't simply cut-off into squared/cornered tiles.