899 replies to this topic

[newstarshipsmell]

Demo 440:

Intro corridor: Saw a couple enemies with CSet errors again, have you figured out what's causing that? It was one of the enemies that dives towards you, and one of the enemies that circles around the screen.

The following is (I believe) purely cosmetic, but plays weird. Didn't really notice it before, but seems unchanged between 434 and 437/440. If (without the double-jump boots, obviously) you press L after walking off the edge of a platform, and hold it, you either do a normal jump (2.5 tiles high) or a little hop (0.5 high) when you land. I can't really work out why it does one or the other. High Jump doesn't affect the height of the higher jump.

Is the hopping behavior in there so you can make jumps when scrolling up? Or to ensure you can reach platforms 2.5 tiles above you? But because however it's coded, it applies to everything, and produces this other behavior?

It's sort of like Super Metroid's jump, except available as soon as you fall, rather that just prior to landing, and produces unpredictable jump heights, heh.

Anyways, just figured I'd point it out, in case it's something worth trying to fix, to you. I don't see any way it could be exploited, and doesn't present any real sort of control issue/nuisance.

ETA: Also, BTW, I never bothered to remap my L/R buttons when I began playing this. After half an hour or so of playing, I got used to L=Jump. (R=Dash is no biggie, since that's how I've always set up my dashing control when able to do so, ever since SM on the physical SNES.) I tried playing Momodora III last week. I ended up mapping the jump button to L. I couldn't friggin' manage to play it with Jump mapped to 'A'. Thanks, heh!
 

4. Aquarius 54. Not a bug in the slightest, but the boss's second phase is far, far too easy. I didn't take a single point of damage. I just held up the whole time while pressing left and right occasionally. Maybe make rocks fall or something. The first phase is dozens of times harder than the second phase.

If you think that is easy, try guiding it into one of the sides as it rises, so it gets trapped in place and throws a tantrum against the platform below it, while you stand still and shoot it to death.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 26 February 2015 - 09:06 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Hm. The Scorpio door at Aquarius 7,0 is a deathtrap.  Awesome!  

[newstarshipsmell]

Hm. The Scorpio door at Aquarius 7,0 is a deathtrap.  Awesome!

Do you mean because you can't backtrack into the main part of Aquarius, without getting the bombs? 60 is actually passable, backtracking (just in case you mistakenly thought it wasn't) but room 40 has a 3-tile jump, which you can't make, to ascend further. I guess if you got the Pulse Hammer, which you need to reach Scorpio, but skipped the Missile Launcher, you'd find yourself challenged and/or fucked at this point. Or are you talking about something else?

Also, am I imagining it, or is my terminal velocity different depending upon weather I fall off a ledge or hold L past the top of my jump (slower) vs. releasing L before I reach the top of my jump (faster)? I can't tell, but the latter looks like I'm falling faster.

ETA: Also, the hopping thing? I just noticed - if you fall off a ledge and then press/hold L, sometimes when you hit the bottom row it will trigger the autohop, which you can use to move farther sideways that you should. It seems to depend upon the height you've fallen from - I can reproduce it every time, walking off a block on the 11th (bottom), 9th or 6th rows, in the corridor above Scorpio entrance. But when I do the same from the 4th or 7th rows, I just fall through the bottom as normal and then do an autojump/hop when I land in the room below.

Not sure this could actually be used anywhere in the game to sequence-break, but it's possible.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 26 February 2015 - 10:53 PM.

[C-Dawg]

I believe, if you blow up the bomb blocks at the Scorpio door, you're stuck and can't get out.

 

Aries 5,2 has a similar area.  These places were passable before, but the wall cling bug fix has made them bad.

Edited by C-Dawg, 26 February 2015 - 10:44 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

I believe, if you blow up the bomb blocks at the Scorpio door, you're stuck and can't get out.
 
Aries 5,2 has a similar area.  These places were passable before, but the wall cling bug fix has made them bad.

Well, then. I guess the Alliance wins?

ETA: Just to confirm, while you can use the hopping trick to automatically hop off the sandfalls, you can also hop off them by immediately pressing L when you land on them, from a jump, so the ability to hop on them is not dependent upon that "bug." You used to be able to get a regular jump off the top of the old sandfalls, but it seems like all you can get is a hop now.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 26 February 2015 - 11:18 PM.

[Air Luigi]

Newstarshipsmell could be upgraded to co-developer of this game. His tenacity it's amazing, beta after beta, he is still testing.

In the other side, there are bad guys like me, which are waiting for the final release xd But it's because I want to enjoy this amazing work at their full potential. How much is left to reach to the final edition?

Edited by Air Luigi, 26 February 2015 - 11:34 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Newstarshipsmell could be upgraded to co-developer of this game. His tenacity it's amazing, beta after beta, he is still testing.

In the other side, there are bad guys like me, which are waiting for the final release xd But it's because I want to enjoy this amazing work at their full potential. How much is left to reach to the final edition?

Nah. Mostly I just bitch and moan about how hard some boss is, days after complaining about how easy he is.

I know your feeling though. After playing a couple all-too-short demos for some excellent projects, it left a bad taste in my mouth, being cut short like that. When I saw the project entry for this, and read that it was nearly complete... I was like "yeah, I'm playing this now."

[C-Dawg]

Think of it like editing a paper. This game is all done, in the sense that the content is all there. Right now we are just doing edits to improve quality and remove typos.

I suspect I can complete what I want to do in another month, tops, but u can't predict exactly what all bugs will require fixed ng between now and then, so it's hard to say.

Edited by C-Dawg, 27 February 2015 - 07:41 AM.

[Solairflaire]

Going through on the newest build.

 

The only real complaint I have with the new jump mechanics is when you need to jump from a 1 tile high space. Not wide, those are fine. High, like you have a ceiling directly above you and you need to jump around it and you just instantly hit your head on the ceiling. It took me 10 minutes to get up to the high jump boots fight in Aries because I couldn't go up that little sequence with the disappearing blocks right before it. I just couldn't jump around them to get up consistently at all. Maybe it's because I'm playing in 2.5.0? Could you shorten the detection at the top of the Guardian a pixel or two? It would make things much more doable.

 

Bugs:

 

Aquarius 6,0 to 6,1: the gap between the rooms has a ceiling inconsistency

Aquarius 2,6: There is an invisible half tile near the hidden door on the bottom step.

 

Scorpio 2,8: Can't get back from the right side without High Jump.

Scorpio 7,5: Can't get up to the switch in the next room to open the corridor because the solid blocks go too high. Having double jump required for that one seems like overkill since the corridor itself isn't very hard.

 

Aries 2,4 to 2,6: Deathtrap without High Jump if you fall into the lava on the bottom. The pits might also be below this area. I didn't check.

Aries 7,9 and 7,A: Can't get out properly without High Jump. Clever damage boost can get you out though...

Aries 7,7: The lava pits are also Deathtraps...and this is the entrance.

Aries (in general): You look like you're standing above the pillars that are already broken. Only example of where some of those pillars are that I can think of is 7,F.

 

Cancer 3,0 to 2,0: High Jump isn't enough to get out of that area if you fall into it.

Cancer 0,7: Killing the enemies here has a missile refill drop if you kill all the enemies. Is this supposed to be an expansion?

Cancer 0,C: You have to open the ceiling path to open the bottom. Is that intentional? It seems odd.

 

I've only seen the Scorpio and Aquarius charges. I was afraid you were going to have us try and use Stone Man's weapon from Mega Man 5 with the Scorpio charge. I'm so glad it isn't. Though it is kinda slow going forward since I can outrun it without dash...

 

The Scorpio Boss is... interesting. Though you may want to dial back it's charge attack cause it takes off a ton of health, though right after Disintegrator Beam is probably a bit early to fight this guy.

 

How are you scaling the zodiac bosses?

[C-Dawg]

re: Scorpio boss. If you challenge him without the Aquarius weapon, you're supposed to get it in the behind. Try it with the bubble, and you can cancel the charge attack by hitting the tail with the bubble sheild.

Re: scaling. So the boss gets a level based on the number of sidearm upgrades you have. This level is used to choose how much damage it does, how maNY projectiles it shoots, how fast it moves, and sometimes what attacks it has.

I noticed the same thing regarding jumping around blocks. Its still possible, just really precise. Ill check out the idea of easing up on the y axis detection. This will mess with wall cling a bit, but I bet I can reclivlblibrate that, too.

Re: Scorpio charge. Yeah, it's slow, but it's supposed to be. It's patterned after a weapon in TGL. And, really, it kicks a lot of tail. You want a room cleared? Here ya go. It makes me want to keep the Scorpio weapon even over some other weapons, and that's exactly the tension I'm going for.

Edited by C-Dawg, 27 February 2015 - 10:09 AM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Aquarius 7A: Boss death includes an explosion in the upper-left corner. (But I believe his neck is finally exploding with the rest of him now.)

Aquarius 49: Can you have these blocks solidify as quickly as the blocks in AQ7A form?

Aquarius 34: Secret door needs an in-wall top tile.

Scorpio 20/10: New collision mechanics usually force two up/down room scrolls to jump on top of the grey block in the upper right corner. Any border like this, with a block on the bottom row of the upper screen, and a block on the 2nd row of the lower screen, where you're trying to jump up onto that 2nd row block from below, is going to present this issue. You only move a single pixel sideways when jumping/scrolling up/back down like this, so unless you jump from the closest vertical position you can that lets you jump up past the block, you won't move far enough to land on it. And if there's an opening below it, like here, you have to learn to immediately release the D-pad when you miss it or run off the edge of the platform you're trying to jump up from.

Is it possible to add some code that detects when you're on the bottom row, inside a solid combo, and pressing Left/Right, and have it simply move you 1-2 extra pixels in the direction you're pushing? That would give you just enough of a boost that you'd quit missing the jumps and only require one up/down scroll to land on it.

If you're doing something else to generally loosen the collision detection without reintroducing the wallglitch, then I guess this suggestion would be redundant.

Suggestion: The half-tile platforms in Aquarius, with the tiny vines hanging off them - if you could add three more tiles, a left-end, center, and right-end variant of them, and then use those to make a solid platform, instead of individual tiles (which make them appear segmented with gaps) that would look better. With the black background and black border (in windowed mode at least) it oftentimes looks like platforms that span left/right borders actually end with open space beyond them (the open space being the border outside the game screen.) If they were, instead, center tiles that cut off on the screen edge, that would make it more visually apparent/intuitive that the platform continues across a room boundary, and that it's safe to walk directly to the far end without falling off it (instead of jumping, which I reflexively do on a lot of room borders with those platforms, even though I know it's a border and the platform continues past it.)

Also, if you made them a full tile high (but still walkable on half) by adding background grass growing out of them on the top half (and making extra tiles with the grass on the bottom half, for the platform tiles on the top half) this would give the player a visual cue to the existence of bottom-half, bottom-row platforms that are otherwise hidden, and make it look less weird when you stand on the bottom of the screen.

Scorpio 2,8: Can't get back from the right side without High Jump.

You can jump on top of the cactus while holding up/down to avoid the knockback, and jump up onto the platform.
Er no, I'm wrong. With how the collision mechanics work now, you end up stuck partially inside the cactus, instead of landing on top of it by jumping up through the half-tile gap between it and the platform. So yes, F6 trap.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 27 February 2015 - 06:23 PM.

[Air Luigi]

Think of it like editing a paper. This game is all done, in the sense that the content is all there. Right now we are just doing edits to improve quality and remove typos.

I suspect I can complete what I want to do in another month, tops, but u can't predict exactly what all bugs will require fixed ng between now and then, so it's hard to say.

 

Are all the cutscenes and the final custom music in the latest build?

[C-Dawg]

Are all the cutscenes and the final custom music in the latest build?

 

Cutscenes are there, but I'm re-doing them in a more robust way.  About half of the cutscenes have been so redone.  Music?  I can't get mp3s to run.  It's on the list to figure out.  No matter where I put em, nothing works!

 

Running total:

 

1. Continue updating bosses to fix graphic glitches, avoid bugs, and improve quality of:

a. Shield Armor - Fix the way the bullets work, tweak damage and death animation and script.

b. Remaining 8 Zodiac Bosses - Tweak damage and death animation and script.  Scorpio needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, the rest can work as-is with some minor tweaks.

h. Super secret mystery stuff - A few graphical issues with these guys need to be worked out. 

2. Overhaul cutscene code, from destruction of the computer in Leo up through the end of the game. 

3. Now that the corridor spawner is working perfectly, use it in more places.  This will mix up the enemies you see.

4. Finish bibliography and credits.

5. Fix ceiling-cling bug.

6. Consider bomb upgrade and possibly an additional tool.  

7. Make custom enemies to replace the more annoying LOZ default ones used at the moment.

8. Implement new music.   

Edited by C-Dawg, 27 February 2015 - 08:40 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Aries 70: You can't backtrack out of here without earning the High Jump above, once you fall off the platform above the door. Probably not a big deal. But the phase blocks are super-tricky. If you can't/don't tweak the collision detection so it's easier to jump up around blocks like it was before, then I'd suggest either making all 4 blocks phase, and phase in a sequence that lets you simply jump up a number of times to ascend, or stagger them, moving two of them left or right one column.

Cancer 0E: On the top left side, suggest making the tile above where you must jump up/right through a column also walkable, so it's not so damnably annoying to make that jump when you can't even see yourself and have to just keep trying it over and over again - assuming you've shot upwards and inferred there's a passage that way.

Cancer 6E: Upon dropping the boss's lifemeter to zero, he disappeared, leaving a string of three bubbles he was spitting out sitting there stationary, in the upper-left side of the screen, and his ghost on top of them shooting fireballs at me.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 27 February 2015 - 10:22 PM.

[ShadowTiger]

From Cancer 11:4D, is there even still a Plasma Torch in the game? It used to be the candle, yes? I know that Leo 69 used to be dark, but it isn't anymore. So what does that string still do?

Aries 70: You can't backtrack out of here without earning the High Jump above, once you fall off the platform above the door. Probably not a big deal. But the phase blocks are super-tricky. If you can't/don't tweak the collision detection so it's easier to jump up around blocks like it was before, then I'd suggest either making all 4 blocks phase, and phase in a sequence that lets you simply jump up a number of times to ascend, or stagger them, moving two of them left or right one column.

I agree. I also spent at least six minutes on this screen. That's approximately three hundred seconds. Once you get past thirty seconds, it starts to get boring or frustrating. The bad sort of boring/frustrating.