899 replies to this topic

[C-Dawg]

Well, there's not a problem in placing enemies by hand. I'd just move the ffc into position and set it up by hand instead of having my enemy setter function handle it.

I don't want to do this on every screen, Though. Maybe you can note the most aggravating areas and I cAn focus on those?

EDIT: I can't use enemy flags, at least not without lots more coding, because none of my custom enemies are handled by zquest. Each one is an ffc.

 

EDIT: Egoraptor has a good video about Castlevania 2 where he goes on at some length about enemy placement.  He points out a big, fundamental problem with exploration games -- you can't really deliver the kind of precise, tight experience you can with a linear game.  Enemy placement can be its own art form if you know exactly how the player is going to approach the room.  When the player can come in from four sides, you can't plan around the player's expected path in the same way.

 

Compare the original Big Three: Super Mario Bros, Zelda, and Metroid.  So, Mario was linear and so the enemies were precisely placed so that they would cause maximum headache.  Zelda (and ZClassic) is open ended and so enemies spawn randomly.  The challenge is not that they get in the way of where you want to jump, but that they're there to deal with.  Combat is the thing, not being careful with your jumps.

 

Metroid sort of did both.  There were set enemy placements, but the game did not rely on messing with the player's expected path the way that Mario did.  It was still using the Zelda model where enemy combat was the critical thing.  So, look at how outstandingly MOBILE your enemies were in Metroid.  The weakest enemies would crawl along all solid surfaces, ensuring they could threaten you anywhere.  Most enemies flew around very quickly.  Others reacted when you got close to them.  In each case, it wasn't about carefully scrolling the screen and dodging a bat you know is coming where you are going to jump; it's still all about the combat.  It's about getting past the enemy, not planning around the placement.

 

Super Metroid and SOTN were kind of the same thing.  Now, they made a bigger variety of enemy and so they would put enemies in particular places to highlight what they were good at.  But, the precise place on the screen they were was not really the critical thing.  Those spear-thrusting dorks who could hit you from below only appear where you can walk above them, but it didn't matter where on that screen they spawned as long as it was somewhere below the top.

 

What I'm saying is that random spawning should still work just fine for Zodiac (in most cases) because it's about getting past the enemies, not planning a route around them.  The design choice comes in which enemy is best suited for which screen, not so much where on the screen the enemy spawns.

 

HOWEVER -- what I do not want the player to do is to be motivated to go back and forth changing enemy layout until he or she finds an easy way to get past.  That suggests that a particular room has such huge variance in how enemies spawn that the player is motivated to waste time to get past.  I  don't want that.  I figure this will occur when one or more of these factors are present:

 

(1) The enemies spawning are not mobile enough.  For example, I have some large defensive cannons that spawn in Leo.  They are stationary, so I should probably find specific places for them to spawn.  Otherwise you are motiviated to make them spawn in dumb places to make your life easier.

 

(2) The room layout allows a particular type of enemy to spawn somewhere irrelevant to where the player wants to go.  Like, one block is open somewhere so an enemy can get stuck there.

 

So, I think the plan here is to finish up all the enemies with basically random spawning, and then go back and install some enemies by hand to avoid these issues on particular screens.

Edited by C-Dawg, 12 March 2015 - 11:47 AM.

[Air Luigi]

Yeah, that should work. Cautious testing will do wonders in the end. The difference that I see with these metroidvanias (Metroid-SOTN), it's that they have side scrolling. The only metroidvanias that I have played that used square screens are Maze of Galious and La-Mulana. And these games are way slower paced than Zodiac, and they use a fixed enemy position. In the other hand, Legacy of the Wizard uses random spawn and respawn in the same screens.

[newstarshipsmell]

Off topic, but this is brilliant: https://soundcloud.c...gend-ost-a-surf

I was listening to it on repeat all evening yesterday.

Okay, back to playtesting.

[C-Dawg]

Leo enemies are drafted, but I have some tweaking to do.  Should be pretty impressive if I can make them less aggravating and a little more precise.  No update tonight, I gotta iron out these kinks first.

 

That surfer music is... an interesting take on the theme!

[newstarshipsmell]

Bugs are becoming fewer and farther between. At least in the early part of the game. Where I've been stuck the last few demos now... But you're getting there!

Aries: Turrets will form hanging from phasing blocks that are solid on room load.

Suggestion: Modify the turrets so that a) they emerge/retract faster and don't remain retracted as long and b) instead of firing straight down, they fire a spread with the center shot aimed at you (but restrict the angle so that the largest angle from straight down which they can fire sends the outside/highest shot on a horizontal path - and have them fire at that angle towards whichever side you're on when you're above them.)

Suggestion:

Please fast-track these things for custom enemy replacement. They are super-tedious to fight, since you can only hit them with the sword, and they move randomly and slowly, oftentimes well out of range so you have to wait for them to slowly wander over to you to resume fighting them. Not to mention the horrible way ZC handles their hitboxes, which presumably you could fix simply by replacing them.

Cancer 12: Inside the cave room, the enemy occasionally glitches graphics, like this:

(ETA: He is centered in the spot these tiles take up, so essentially one of his animation frames is pulling tiles to the right of where they ought to, causing him to visually shift leftwards and replace his right side with some other enemy's tiles.)

Cancer 37: The bomb-launcher always spawns in the same spot inside the ceiling in this room.


Cancer 39: The bomb-launcher frequently spawns underneath the bridge, so it simply falls off the bottom of the screen. ETA: When it does this, it also intermittently launches a bomb, which you can hear, but does not appear onscreen.

Suggestion: Modify its spawn code to eliminate any tiles with a walkable path straight down to the room bottom.

Cancer 0C: What triggers the floor destruction in this room now? It used to be shooting the ceiling tunnel entrance - now that's just a walkable bubble combo the breaks when you cross it, and I found no way to open the floor. After beating Iron, out of curiosity I cheated and noclipped up through the rooms below it, and popped out on the right side of the room, with the floor exploding. Did beating Iron blow up the floor? Or shooting the switch he was guarding? Or did I trigger something by noclipping up through the floor on the right side of the room?

Cancer 4E: Grabbing the Life Tank causes the giant blob to disappear while you're frozen/holding it up (and it reappears when you regain control.) I don't remember TLOZ enemies disappearing like that. Does this happen with all the custom enemies whenever you pick up an item that freezes you for a second? Is it unavoidable or can you fix it?

So I've noticed you've removed the cave door continue points in Cancer.

Can you explain to me exactly how continue points work in ZC? I only grasp what I've observed, and I've noted that where you resume from can differ depending upon whether you select Continue when you F6/die, or select Save and then resume your game from the main menu.

Previously, it worked like this:

             Continue		Save
   Aquarius: Last Entrance	08 Start Point
    Scorpio: Last Entrance	00 Entrance
      Aries: Last Entrance	77 Entrance
     Cancer: Last Door/Entrance	Last Door/Entrance
     Pisces: Last Door/Entrance	Last Door/Entrance
     Gemini: Last Entrance	52 Entrance
        Leo: Last Door/Entrance	Last Door/Entrance
     Taurus: 53 Entrance	53 Entrance
      Libra: 47 Entrance	47 Entrance
      Virgo: 04 Entrance	04 Entrance
  Capricorn: Last Door/Entrance	Last Door/Entrance
Sagittarius: Not sure, forgot	""

So it seems to me like there's two kinds of continue points being used - "softer" ones which you continue from, and "harder" ones you'll resume from after saving. How does it work, exactly?

Of course this is complicated by the fact that these "cave rooms" are not actually caves inside the Labyrinth maps, but rooms on other maps you warp to. Hence, when you F6/Continue inside them, some will resume at the warp exit inside the room, others will resume at the warp exit outside in the Labyrinth room, and others are completely fucked and warp you to the wrong place, such as the first terminal room you reach in Libra.

It would be helpful if you could also explain exactly how you intend for them to be set up within your game, once you've finished overhauling the continue points, so I can report the ones that are not working as you intended them to.

I just beat the first corridor in Cancer, and afterwards, noticed that both F6/Continue and F6/Save/resume both start me at the Corridor room 6E, rather than the entrance at 46. Is this intentional? When I F6/Continued from Aries 00 after beating that corridor, it resumed from the entrance at 77 rather than the corridor at 00.

Will the entrance to Libra at Cancer 6A work the same way, to prevent you from continue warping back to 46 and bypassing the entire gut route?

Does this mean Pisces, Leo and Capricorn will be getting (or have already gotten) the same treatment with Door continue points removed?

And will you be updating Scorpio, Aries and Gemini so that F6/Save/resume after entering one of those levels from an entrance besides the first one resumes from that entrance instead of the first one, blocking you from continue warping across those levels? I guess Aquarius would be problematic, since you actually drop down out of the "main entrance" and would have to jump up into that room to set the continue point there, when returning to that area from another one, yes?

Understanding how exactly they work in ZC, as well as how you expect the game to behave, would be helpful for identifying/reporting any further bugs with them. If you (or someone else) could also explain to me how to read and change them in ZQ, I could at least open the quest file and "proofread" them - I wouldn't have the patience to actually wander around and F6/Continue and F6/Save/resume from every single cave room to verify they are all set correctly; reading the quest file to look for mistakes is another matter entirely, and totally reasonable, I think?

Anyways, I've been screwing around with the other Labyrinth entrances I've reach so far, and none of them deactivate like the Aries entrance at AQ36 does. Any idea what's causing that bug?

Oh, by the way - I've been playing ZC in windowed 640x480 mode this whole time. When I play in fullscreen mode, I tend to get annoyed by focus-stealing shit going off and killing me, as ZC will continue applying whatever direction I was pressing upon losing focus, while my system lags as it switches resolutions to flip over to something else, and this direction always seems to lead to stuff that damages me. But since I'm playing with scrolling off now, I tried fullscreen, and lo and behold, for some weird reason playing it that way completely removes all the issues I had with scrolling off vs. on. When I walk off one side of the screen and appear on the other, or jump up/fall down, my eyes naturally track to the correct spot on the opposite side instantly, whereas in windowed mode, that rarely happens, so transitions were always slightly disorienting for me. And in fullscreen, I can glimpse the flickering screen above me I'm bouncing out of with ease, and pick out where the gaps are, whereas this was nigh impossible in windowed mode for me. Sadly, with how often I ALT+TAB from ZC to something else, while playtesting, I'll have to remain in windowed mode - otherwise, I'll just get sucked into the game and forgot to note any bugs. But it's nice to know that once it's done, I can play it with scrolling off and not suffer from any of the drawbacks which that was presenting to me.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 13 March 2015 - 07:33 AM.

[Solairflaire]

I believe continue warping and save warping both take you back to Sagittarius' entrance. Same with the Pandora.

 

Cancer 4E: Grabbing the Life Tank causes the giant blob to disappear while you're frozen/holding it up (and it reappears when you regain control.) I don't remember TLOZ enemies disappearing like that. Does this happen with all the custom enemies whenever you pick up an item that freezes you for a second? Is it unavoidable or can you fix it?

That happens with all the custom enemies in rooms where you can get items like that. At least so far.

 

For a lot of the custom enemy spawns, I would suggest making it so that there are areas they can't spawn on each screen. Specifically, away from doors and such when the player comes out of them. There have been a couple times I came out of a door and one spawned right next to me and I had no time to even react. Best example was coming out of the corridor at Cancer 6,E. I actually died to that one... Is it possible to make "zones" for enemies to spawn in?

 

One thing that kinda bugs me about the Cancer zone is the shooting to find the hidden "scabs". There's only 1 time it's required. This makes it seem like a forced mechanic more than anything else. I would suggest either removing it (I actually kinda like it, so please don't.) or put more of it in. You could actually make the switch at 0,D open up the bridge to get to the Disintegrator and have you shoot the platforms in that room to get across. I also think it should come into play later, like trying to get into Libra later. In Cancer 6,8 you could close off the top section more and make it so you need to shoot some of the scab things below to get across with the double jump boots. It would also make the spikes in the room actually mean something. I just never like having mechanics be one time and then they're done.

 

I think the custom enemies so far add a lot more to the quest. The only suggestion I have with them is that turret type enemies should shoot faster. I often can run across a room before they even think about firing. Those cactus enemies in Scorpio could use less health. If you want stronger ones later, that's fine. Just the early ones take a ton of hits to kill.

 

Some bugs:

 

Aquarius 0,D Inside Door: The enemies here are still LoZ enemies. I'd suggest putting in the turtles here.

Aquarius 6,8: LoZ enemies

Aquarius 5,C: The top right section can't be jumped up until you have the high jump boots. It seems kinda mean to have a door in the next screen give a power up and then you can't get back without going all the way around this early in the game.

Aquarius 3,7: Is there a reason that grapple point is there?

Aquarius 1,1 area: Those Big Bug enemies stop swooping and just glide horizontally for a while when they hit something. It seems odd to me. I think they're supposed to do a swooping motion like the ones in metroid.

 

Scorpio 0,6: Those hoppers seemed out of place now, but if not, they should probably be allowed to jump on top of the sandfalls. Jumping off the bottom of the screen is beyond odd.

 

Cancer 4,6: Invisible block below top most spike.

 

Aries 6,0 Cutscene: Apparently, it's possible to trigger the cutscene with a short hop and fall through the floor that appears. This leads to the end cutscene against Iron 2. I was able to trigger the Iron 2 fight by moving right in Cancer there... I'm fairly certain I could have damage boosted up to the door during the fight to hit the switch after beating him, but didn't think of it in time and had to F6 warp out since I didn't have High Jump Boots. It took me to the normal Cancer entrance. I could just walk out (through the closed door in Aquarius). I doubt I could've gotten the Disintegrator even with damage boosting. There's just too many jumps that require the High Jump boots in Cancer.

[C-Dawg]

RE: Continue Points

 

I'll tell you what I know and what I'm doing, but I'm constantly surprised by how Zelda Classic screws around with this kind of thing. 

 

First, let's talk about what happens when you die and select "Continue."

 

So when you set a Warp on a screen, you can tell the game what kind of warp you want to use.  If you choose "Entrance/Exit," you get the animation that is like an opening black circle that you see in Zodiac.  Then, if you die, the engine is supposed to put you back at the last "Entrance/Exit" warp you used.  

 

There are other ways to warp.  The one that all doors use now (enforced by the door script) is "Insta-Warp with Opening Wipe."  This LOOKS like an Entrance/Exit warp, but it does NOT set the continue point where you arrive.  Moreover, it doesn't interact the same way with MIDIs, which is why the theme plays during the transition.  (Incidentally, if you think that's annoying, I can script it so that music stops during the screen wipe.  Would that be better?)  Since all doors in the game use the same script, all continue points in the game SHOULD be working the same way.

 

The only warps in the game that are supposed to be using Entrance/Exit warps anymore are: (1) the doors between different Zones in the labyrinth; and (2) the exits from Corridors leading back into labyrinths.  So, what is SUPPOSED to happen is that when you die you go back to the last corridor you completed or last door between Zones you used, whichever was later.

 

Here's how it works when you boot up a save file.

 

Zelda Classic now ignores your warp types and looks to see whether the DMAP you were in allows you to continue there from a reset.  Each DMAP has a flag, "Continue Here," which you can set or not set.  What is supposed to happen is that you can only start up the game on a DMAP with this flag set, and no others.  The engine looks for the last DMAP the player was in that had "Continue Here" set, and then puts the player on a screen specified in Zquest for continuing.  I do not THINK that this interacts at all with the Entrance/Exits warps, but it might.

 

In Zodiac, what is supposed to happen is that only Labyrinths (and Pandora) have a Continue Here flag set.  The continuing point is generally the door out of that Labyrinth pointing back to Aquarius.  

 

If anything isn't working like I described, then it's a bug.  I have no Earthly idea what's going on with the Aries door, but I'll check that out tonight.

 

Custom Enemy Issues

 

I'll lower the health on D.Pokers (the cactuses) and add a condition to the turret-types that triggers then when you're close or lined up in addition to periodically.

 

Each custom enemy actually does already check to make sure it's not spawning on top of the player.  They look in a 32x32 square around them and don't spawn there if the player is in that area.  Hanging enemies check only the X axis to ensure they don't spawn above the player, either.   I suppose it's possible that a fast-moving enemy spawns only a few tiles away, so it's hard to react... I can expand the no-spawn radius a bit, that should help.

Edited by C-Dawg, 13 March 2015 - 10:56 AM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Thanks, that's very informative.

So I guess that means the reason I ended up in that Libra terminal cave, near Libra's entrance, after F6/Save/resuming from several different Virgo cave rooms, was because they're all on DMap 37, and it erroneously had a Continue Here flag set in that terminal room?

But on the most recent demo, I definitely F6/Continue'd from Aries 00 (after beating the corridor) and resumed from the level entrance, so that corridor exit warp needs to set a continue point.

As far as the music transitions, if you cannot have the new music begin playing at the beginning of the wipe, I would prefer silence until the wipe finishes, rather than having the previous area's music play over it. But this is purely aesthetic. So choose whichever suits you personally, or get a consensus from the other playtesters.

Demo 452

Cancer 36: No enemies here. Intentional?

Scorpio 28: Can you make these bombable blocks stay destroyed?

Scorpio 18: Does not set a Continue Point. I came in this way and worked my way down to 77, where I died, Continued, and resumed from Scorpio 00.

Scorpio 20: Cactus enemy is dropping and getting stuck/hanging from blocks in these positions:


Scorpio 6C: Giant skull is missing his lower-right tile on this screen:

Also, because he's spawning offscreen, you can see him through the Energy/Missile counters. When he's overlapping the menu between them, it doesn't show up in the screenshots, but ZC's displaying those green explosions that appear when your shots hit the room edge, where his upper tiles would be otherwise. (This probably happens on the other screens with him as well, and I just didn't notice before. It definitely happens on the screen above, Scorpio 5C.)
ETA: This applies to the Giant Skulls everywhere, apparently. If you look closely, their sprites are missing a line in the middle before they open their mouth to spawn enemies the first time:
/
After they've opened/closed their mouth the first time, they display correctly the rest of the time onscreen. ETA: They glitch the same way in the corridors. It looks like there might be a slight lapse between when the upper and lower tiles move, so that the full sprite is drawn correctly for an instant, before the upper tiles move down a pixel and scrunch it up again.

Scorpio 51: Sandblocks indestructible here. Is this because there's a switch in the room that opens the door? If they can't become destructible, recommend replacing them with rock?

Scorpio 6A: F6 trap. You cannot backtrack through here on the left side (entering from the left and trying to go up) without the Double Jump Boots, though perhaps you could damage-boost to scroll the screen, and if you missed the ledge above, the regenerated sandblock would place you high enough to jump again and reach it.

Aquarius 02: After defeating the Zodiac Boss, if I walk left out of this room, I walk into 01 normally. If instead I jump so I hit either the middle or top tiles of the door along the left side, I will warp to the Aquarius boss fight screen, which lets me walk off the left side and into the wall in the adjacent room. Walking back in restarts the fight. From the left column of the boss fight room, if I walk right, I'll warp back to the Labyrinth room - but if I only move half a tile, I'll fall and hit another warp to the boss fight. Walking all the way onto the second column finishes warping you back to the Labyrinth. The door between 02 and 03 does nothing weird like this.
Also, there is still a weird extra-long delay in the initial ZW pickup message/prompt.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 14 March 2015 - 01:10 AM.

[C-Dawg]

New upload pending.

 

Didn't fix any bugs except the MIDIs playing during door transitions.  I did implement custom enemies through Leo and the second visits to Gemini and Cancer.

 

Whew, they're starting to get pretty complex at this point.  Next up, Libra and Taurus.  I think I'm about one-half done with the new enemies.

Edited by C-Dawg, 13 March 2015 - 11:54 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Cool. Can I swap 454 in for 452, or should I start over?

Demo 452

Scorpio 2E/2F: So yeah, these sideways combo mismatches across rooms do let you jump up from the open side and scroll while partially into the ceiling, so in the adjoining room you're half a tile up, and don't simply fall out of the adjacent mismatched combo, forcing you to walk back into the previous screen to get out. Do you want to fix these / should I point the rest of them out? Or are you okay with these ones, since you can't get stuck / it just looks bad?

Scorpio 4F: I can still jump up into the hole in the upper-left corner and walk into the wall in 4E. Is it not possible to fix the moving platform script so that it doesn't remove the upper-left tile on screens it's used in?

Scorpio 6B: I can use the autojump/bottomjump bug to reach the right ledge on bottom here, without DJBs. It only leads to a Sidearm pick one P/S/E and a Missile Upgrade, but it also leads to an F6 trap, as you cannot jump back up into 6C from 7C without DJBs. Even with DJBs, the jump is really tricky, and requires perfect timing to make it.

Is it possible to refill the energy meter to full upon death/F6?

Pisces 3D: This boss cheats. Something screwy with how his projectiles and/or his shell interfere with missiles. They frequently simply disappear when shot sideways at him, either near his shell or the projectiles, without exploding. He is also one of those bosses that still attacks while dying, and since his shot packs a wallop, you can easily die after beating him if you're low on health.

More importantly, though, on the exit screen, I moved up to the center, and then, before doing my dance, reappeared at the bottom, proceeded through the normal exit animation, and exited in Scorpio 74. I cheat-warped back to Pisces 3E and entered 3D, and the corridor was beaten/closed and the Stun Beam fell out of the box.

Not sure whether I influenced that glitch during the initial exit screen or it happened anyways. I was trying to fire off Explosive Missiles during the initial exit, but I don't think it fired them. I shot them off during the corridor entrance screen and they detonated immediately and flashed/shook the screen, but I don't think you can fire weapons on the exit screens, just the entrance ones. You won't see them on the entrance screens, but you'll hear them (explosive missiles being an exception, due to screen flash - you still don't see the missiles or their explosions.)

I'm unsure whether or not you can drain your energy meter on the intro screen by using energy draining weapons.

While you can't fire weapons (that I've seen) on the exit screens, your bullets on the boss's screen will sometimes carry over and either freeze, I think (if carried over in place) or move slowly forward at the same rate as you (if carried over directly in front of/above you.) ETA: Actually, I was able to fire my missiles off during the exit screen for the second Pisces corridor - I guess my impression that you couldn't was probably due to the ship cannon being removed on this screen, and consequently, not being able to fire anything with the button it was assigned to. Since I usually have the Sidearm on B, and usually hit B out of boredom on the intros, I guess that is what confused me into thinking you could only fire on intros.

Is it possible to complete deactivate and/or remove the player's A/B items during the intros/exits? And always clear any onscreen projectiles when you warp from the dead boss to the exit screen?

Still seeing occasional colorset errors with enemies in the corridors.

Pisces 7C/7D/7E: These enemies are graphically glitching just like the one in Cancer. They seem to glitch at precisely the same time as they emit their noise effect.

Pisces 6B: Still an F6 trap as posted previously, without DJBs. The water overlay does not extend to cover the bottom three rows of the hole, so you clearly fall out of the bottom of the water when dropping, and scroll into/appear in water on the screen below.

Pisces Corridors: The jaw/teeth enemies that close on you - you can destroy both the left and right halves by shooting the left half while it's descending, without moving between them and causing them to close on you. You cannot destroy them by shooting the right half, though. This seems absurd. Shooting one half ought to only destroy that half, and let the other one zip across the screen at you if you are directly across from it (and continue off the far side, without its counterpart to merge with in the middle) - or just have it zip towards the other side as soon as it's opposite part is destroyed.
ETA: I forgot to try F6/Continue after beating each of the Pisces Corridors, so I'm not sure whether or not they set Continue Points on their exit warps.

Pisces 79: Is it possible for this enemy to shoot so many bubbles that there's no FFCs or whatever free to use for your ZW charged shot? During my fight with this boss, I charged up the Scorpio Sting (with enough energy to do so - not a charge fizzle problem) and when I released the button, it didn't fire. Happened several times. Can't reliably recall whether this always happened while there were tons of bubbles onscreen or not. And I can't say for certain that I didn't have cheats enabled every time it occured - I sank 2 Life Tanks into a fair attempt to kill him and died while dealing my killing shot to him, so I just cheated through the subsequent fights. (When I noticed my charged shot failing to fire on the subsequent fight, I F6'ed, screwed around with it to make sure it was working normally again, returned to kill the boss, and saw this happen bug happen again. I probably had invincibility on, but noclipping off, each time it happened.)

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 14 March 2015 - 04:13 AM.

[C-Dawg]

Pisces 79: Is it possible for this enemy to shoot so many bubbles that there's no FFCs or whatever free to use for your ZW charged shot? 

 

It sure is!  This is precisely why most weapons do not dynamically use FFCs.  Imagine if this was the case with your Sidearm or regular shots.

 

Anyway, I can fix this by tweaking the code so that the enemy only checks for free FFCs above a certain number, which should ensure there is always one or two available at the lower end to use for your weapon.  I have already done that for most bosses, so it should be easy to implement here.

[newstarshipsmell]

Demo 452

Pisces 30/20: Not a bug, just pointing this out: it's easy to reach the door above without working your way across the rooms from the right. With Dash 1 you just jump up on the left side into the coral in 20, eat the damage, and dash/jump across to the platform, to then jump up to the door. I've never even bothered trying to use the moving platform in 31, since you can just dash/jump onto the platform above it to rrsch 32/22. Is it there for players who explore up here before gaining Dash Jets?

Gemini 40: Are these enemies supposed to move out from underneath ceilings? They only spawn below solid combos, but will move freely past the end of an overhang. Also, this room is a prime example of benefiting from hardcoded enemy placement - it's trivial to keep jumping up into the room and fall back down when they spawn on side you want to take.
]

[C-Dawg]

Gemini 40: Are these enemies supposed to move out from underneath ceilings? They only spawn below solid combos, but will move freely past the end of an overhang. Also, this room is a prime example of benefiting from hardcoded enemy placement - it's trivial to keep jumping up into the room and fall back down when they spawn on side you want to take.

 

Yes, they move back and forth in the air.  They only spawn by ceilings to ensure that they're generally going to be up above the player rather than in her way.  That particular enemy wants to be up somewhere and fires on you when you get too close to directly below or above it.  Good point about the placement, though.

Edited by C-Dawg, 14 March 2015 - 04:28 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Demo 452

Gemini 03: There's two of them on this screen, and they only spawn in the one spot on the right. So they're trivial to kill from the left side, but when you backtrack from Iron 3, likely with low health, they are positioned to immediately unload upon you. Will they spawn underneath Armos? If so, you could line the top row with Armos so they'd have somewhere else to spawn in this room.

Aries 08: I killed the boss and it warped me inside the cave room at Aquarius 18. Returned to the room and boss remained dead, was able to proceed and acquire the Aries Saber.

The Grapple Beam boss and the Aries Zodiac boss both die very quickly with 3-4 charged Scorpio Stings. They are cakewalks compared to Iron 3.

Gemini 5A: Don't think this matters, but you used to be able to jump from the right Armos up onto the top path. I don't think you can with the new collisions - I kept either running off the edge of the Armos or bouncing off the 2x2 bubble. It just leads to a cave and the warp; I forget what is inside the cave. So you'd have to come back with the DJBs to get up there now.
ETA: Actually, that cave room is just a hint - to blow open the floor in 58 on the way to get the Grapple Beam (the room with the 4 installed turrets has a weakness in the floor message.) So, this room is totally useless now, unless you move the Armos over in 5A so you can actually jump up and reach this room before finding the Grapple Beam. It looks like 58 only has three of the new turrets there, rather than four. And since they're allowed to spawn on the same tiles, that obfuscates the count anyways.

Aries 2C: This boss still takes continuous damage. A single Scorpio Sting charged shot fired directly on top of him will instantly kill him.

The orange fliers in Aries, that also shoot at you, could possible stand to have their rate of fire and/or damage dealt dialed back a bit. There's a great deal of chance involved whether you make it to the boss guarding the Leo entrance with much health left. (Sure, you could eat a Life Tank at the beginning of the boss fight, but...)
They move so fast that you frequently get knocked back down as soon as you enter a room and they spawn near you. If you're lucky, you end up chaining a sequence of rooms where they mostly spawn somewhere you can kill them off from a distance while dodging their bullets.
Alternatively, you could just add a door in Aries 0D with a recharge station inside. Make it cheap or free, and perhaps replace the enemies on that screen with less threatening ones, so you get a slight breather before the boss that kills you near-instantly on your first attempt in the next room.

If you're going to keep reusing the spider enemies, I'd suggest you spruce up the ones encountered later in the game. Instead of webs, they could fire floating baby spiders (1x2 sprite with spider on bottom, suspended from webbed balloon on top) that launch at same speed as webs, but slow down and track towards you?
Also, do the webs do anything besides simply damage you? I always kill them before they get off more than one shot, and never get hit by them. Could the webs temporarily trap you or restrict your movement as well?

Demo 454 (I swapped quest files from 452 to 454 at the beginning of Leo. Nothing bad seemed to happen. Let me know if that's going to screw my game up.)

Leo: Recommend getting rid of the TLOZ enemies that you've partially replaced with custom enemies (I think they're blue wizzrobes? The robots that shoot missiles and phase through walls.) It's kind of unfair to the player to have the custom enemies that take damage from the Sidearm appear earlier, then leave some of the older TLOZ enemies with the same sprites that take no damage from it, requiring the DB/ZW/missiles to damage. I just sat at the bottom of 32 shooting one over and over that was on top of me, and nearly died before I realized I wasn't damaging it.

The giant cannons contact-damage me when I'm only this close to them:

Doesn't seem right.


Is it possible to have these guys detect which edge you're on when you enter and spawn somewhere on the opposite side? They are particularly unfair on Leo 32/42 when they keep spawning right next to you and you can't manuever to avoid them and/or just get knocked back down into the room below. It necessitates grinding for hearts in 22 above, to regain my health, which is tedious. (Or just pressing F1 and doing something else for a minute...)

Leo 01: Is it even possible to make the jump over the spikes without landing on them? It seems kind of excessive to force the player to eat 64HP here with all the damage the enemies are doing to you. Especially with the giant enemy in 03 coming up. Honestly? I can't kill that thing without dying. The only winning strategy seems to be to dash past it and use a Life Tank in the next room to prepare for the core fight.

I like the computer core boss, but just in case you care about it being too easy, this is a sweet spot on mode 3:

None of the shots/fragments will hit you when you're standing right here, so you can run underneath it during the pause in firing and shoot it, then scoot back over here to total safety. You can stand right about here on mode 1 as well and avoid all the shots. Modes 2 and 4 are trickier, of course, since it's actually aiming at you, with shots that aren't blocked by solid combos.

Here's an idea that might be impracticle, or not worth the effort:
Put a special terminal in the very first cave, that basically works as an inventory analysis. If you can script it to select particular message strings, and select which strings each points to next, and maintain a set of flags for each item you've gained... Make a string for each item in your inventory describing what it does/how to use it. When you enter the room, have it compile a list of strings, based on what you've gotten since you last read the terminal, so it only displays the strings for new items. Upon reading them, clear the flags. If there aren't any new item flags set, just have it read through everything you've gained. (Tradeoff to let player reread all the item descriptions, without being forced to do so to read something new.) Then put the item sprite in the NPC window for each item as its message string displays (or if you feel like it, draw new larger, more detailed versions for them instead.) This would let players learn what everything does after gaining it, without having to consult the included manual.

Aries 0F: Inside the cave room, when you purchase the item, the box completely disappears instead of breaking open.

I've also now tested all the other Labyrinth entrances in Aquarius - both Scorpios, Pisces, Cancer and Gemini - to try and reproduce the buggy behavior that the Aries entrance suffers from. All of them work normally. I tried F6/Continue, from both sides of each warp, followed by repeatedly entering the warps several times, with all of them working normally. ETA: Cannot duplicate glitch on Gemini/Taurus or Cancer/Libra warps.

Stun Beam: It doesn't seem to work on the custom enemies. I know you mentioned coding the Ice Beam to work on them. Will you upgrade the Stun Beam on them as well?

Scorpio 3B: Wow, this F6 trap is so obvious it's been hiding in plain sight this entire time. If you fall down here before getting the Disintegrator Beam, there's no way out. Easiest fix would be to simply block off the right side of 3A with destructible sandblocks so the player can't come down this way before getting the Disintegrator Beam.

Aries Saber: The first time you use it after Continuing or booting from main menu, it slashes with a beige graphic instead of white. It then remains white on its subsequent slashes. Aside from that, every once in a while, one of the 16x16 tiles doesn't display - no clue why. It sometimes did that with the old graphic/pre-charged ZWs.

Gemini 7E: Boss sometimes graphic-glitches when jumping back up out of the bottom, like this:

He also drops one of those wriggling enemies' sprites on the ground, but it doesn't move around. Also, the door frames are missing in the boss fight.

Taurus 59: Boss needs work; no challenge at all. He doesn't shoot at you, and won't descend below the third-from-bottom row, so you can just move around on the floor and shoot up at him until he dies.

Taurus 36: You can knock the little volcanoes off their platforms:

If you shoot him from "behind" while he's walking towards the edge of a platform, it'll knock him off the edge, and if he falls onto the bottom row, like this screen, he'll continue walking on empty air rather than dropping off the screen.

Message Terminals: If you have the Grapple Beam on A and used it outside, when you enter a terminal cave and read the terminal, the GB attachment pulse will appear in the upper-left corner during the message. Gemini Twin on A will cause the beams to freeze on either side of you - I suppose all the ZWs do this, and it's just more obvious with this one. Can the A item be suppressed if you're on a tile that reads a terminal?

Taurus 46: Want to make your Gemini Beam slow-dance?

Stand on this platform and fire it. Sometimes your rear beam will start circling the block you're standing on, other times your upper forward beam will warp on top of the 1x3 platform and begin circling it. It may or may not be triggered by proximity to the circling fireballs. Something similar happens if you stand on the 1x3 platform instead, but nowhere else in this room. I haven't seen it do this on any other screens, but it may be a universal interference between the fireball enemies and this weapon, rather than just this screen. (And perhaps it might mess with some of the other ZWs in a similar fashion?)
ETA: So far, it's doing the same thing in any room with fireballs that circle a single block or short row of blocks, when you stand on or near their blocks and fire it off. However, if there is another fireball that circuits the room, the fireball circling a platform seems to have no effect on the shots, such as in 6B.

Taurus 18: The fireball along the left wall moves down and off the bottom of the screen.

Taurus: The flying fireballs - the ones that the firepits spawn - if they are set enemies that spawn when you enter the room, they will only spawn the first time, presumably until you reset the level by leaving+returning/dying/F6'ing. The firepits still spawn them normally, but the preset ones are gone when you return to any of their rooms, regardless of whether you killed them or not. Unlike the vanishing centipedes in Cancer, these ones do not return if you enter a cave room and exit back into the main level.

Demo 452
Scorpio 18: Does not set a Continue Point. I came in this way and worked my way down to 77, where I died, Continued, and resumed from Scorpio 00.

Actually, this is setting a Continue Point. When I F6 or die nearby and Continue, I'll resume from 18 - but sometimes, after wandering around the level, without passing through 00, if I F6/die and Continue, I'll resume from 00 instead of 18, even though I entered the level from 18. Could some other room(s) be resetting the Continue Point to 00? Could entering/leaving a cave room reset it?

Aquarius Bubble: The charged shot might be more practical and balanced with a couple changes:
a) Have initial damage cause it to flicker, and disappear after a couple/few seconds, while maintaining character invulnerability during the flicker - during the Scorpio boss fight, it's pretty easy to get hit by a string of the high-damage shots, making the bubble only good for the first one, and death likely.
b) Have it timed to expire, after say, 30 seconds or so? When it expires, it would just do the same flickering thing. It seems a bit absurd that it lasts indefinitely - I believe you can even F6/Save and resume with it still on, though I'm not sure.
Did you implement the floating-in-water feature? I didn't check; I'd forgotten you mentioned that in a previous post. I am guessing not, since you also mentioned limiting it to one screen - which is clearly not the case presently.

Pisces Spread: The charged shot seems kind of buggy. I didn't have it for long, as I promptly went and got the Gemini Beam, but it seemed like only one of the shots was homing, and the others just drifted off. I dunno. Wait for the Zodiac Changer to test it out again, I guess. /refrains from joke about delicious Pisces Spread

Gemini Beam: Could the charged shot have your twin face/fire the same direction as you? That would let you place him, and then aim his direction of fire, which would make him a little more useful.

Libra 10: F6 trap. I see you added a solid combo below the tail in 22, but... it's possible to get hit by the warp on the 4th column, but slightly offset to the left overlapping the 3rd column, next to the left alien. This warps you firmly inside the ice pillar underneath the alien in 22, slightly left of the 4th column, so you are completely stuck inside the combos. Suggest completely removing the 1x2 ice pillar in 22 (with the block underneath it as well?)

Libra 2C/2D: There is a snowdrift on the bottom path of 2C which is abruptly terminated at the room border when you scroll into 2D.

Libra 33: Just checking - are you supposed to be able to enter the secret passage on the right with only Dash Jets 1, or is it supposed to require Dash Jets 2? You only need level 1. All you gain is the Remote Explosives.

Libra 34: Inside the shop, purchasing the Remote Explosives works normally, without removing the floor, but the item box disappears instead of breaking.

Libra 24: Think I reported this before. The empty combos left behind after destroying the ice pillar do not flash/freeze you. Is it not possible to have destroyed blocks reveal empty walkable combos underneath which flash with the rest? The space underneath the tail is empty by default and does not flash either.

Libra 44: The hook seems redundant. Is there some reason it's here?

Libra 5F: Ice blocks are not slippery in here.

Libra 2F: Was it your intention to let the player shoot the open eye from the side, or did you intend for them to have to shoot upwards to hit it? Having High Jump/Double Jump Boots makes fighting him considerably easier here. With Rapidfire Sidearm, even easier. Still, I sank a Life Tank into this fight. With all your new enemies, and lack of cave door continue points, I've been eating a lot more of those playing through - so no more complaints from me about any over-abundance of them anymore.

Libra 1E: If you don't replace these enemies, be aware that you can access the room above without Wall Cling Boots, if you persistently leave/re-enter room until one enemy spawns above and on the right, where you can run in underneath him and freeze him - then jump up and eat the damage on the spikes above, and quickly jump across to the platform. It's just a Life Upgrade in 0F that this reaches, however...

Libra 0E: With the new collision code, entering the spiked passage on top/right is a chore and requires holding/facing down while jumping up/right into the spikes, and you have to jump 3-4 times very quickly before you work your way in enough to get up on top of the ledge, and still have to hold/face down while you inch right to avoid getting knocked back out of it. (Of course you can face up too, but the knockback makes it even harder to inch right and get up on top.) Not sure if you intended this, overlooked new collision making it more complicated, or meant to make the spikes non-damaging... So just pointing it out, in case. Cosmetic.

Libra: Snowman enemies - When you kill them, they pause, then their explosion continues moving, and then stops and disappears/drops an item. If you shoot the moving explosion with the Ice Beam, it will freeze the explosion into an unwalkable cube that is either completely black, or only shows part of one side.

Also, LOL that you can freeze the frozen ice cubes. Nice!

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 15 March 2015 - 09:25 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Damn boy, that's a lot of reports!  Good stuff, I'll try to get to those tonight.

 

In the meantime, the first visit to Taurus is full of new enemies now.  Gonna try to populate Libra next, and then get to as many of your reports as I can before posting a new version

 

EDIT:  Well, I got Libra underway.  Not totally done, but most of the first visit to that area is populated. Did not get to your bug reports, though.

Edited by C-Dawg, 16 March 2015 - 12:04 AM.