899 replies to this topic

[newstarshipsmell]

Sorry - edited my previous posts on the previous page to hide the spoilers.

So where's the Dynamo 2? Have I overlooked it, or did you misplace it?

Also,

Spoiler

Have you added any of the other super-secret stuff? I see a number of rooms with weird aliens in them, in ZQ, which I'm assuming have something to do with this, but haven't found any of them ingame. Are they accessible yet?

Victor's Cancer mode attacks are based off the old Cancer Charge. If it's your intention to have him suffer the same weaknesses as the Zodiac bosses, this may confuse the player, and make it hard to figure out you're supposed to use the Aries Saber against him. I only fought him once this morning, so I can't remember if he had other moves/attacks besides his giant Charge, that would clearly give it away. If not, you don't have to change his charge attack, but you might give him some other attack/move/aspect that clearly pegs that as the Cancer mode. I don't think the Cancer boss itself uses an attack like that.

I don't know how hard this would be for you to implement, or whether it would be worthwhile, but if you wanted to assure yourself that one can't exploit some bug to escape the corridor rooms and wander around, you could move them around so they're all bordered by empty rooms, and then line the sides of those rooms where they face a shooter room with invisible warp tiles, perhaps two tiles wide, that simply warp the player back out to the associated Labyrinth room. Not sure if/how that would handle reverting the player to the Labyrinth sprites/removing ship cannon/restoring sword items.
But if possible, it would firmly rule out any overlooked bugs allowing the player to wander around inside the shooter maps. (Yeah, you'd have to use more than one, to fit them all.)
My friend did something similar, at my suggestion, after discovering the bug that let you jump through walls. She lined the inside-facing edge of the external portion of the map with instadeath tiles, so at least the player would simply die if they escaped the map. (For some reason, she removed them all after thinking she'd fixed the bug, so it was still possible for some players to find ways out.)

Anyways, the new enemies are sweet. Disregard my previous bitching about how hard some spots are. They actually balance out the abundance of Life Tanks quite well now, lol. Since I was complaining about how many of those you get, previously. I used up all of mine, this last playthrough. I left behind a couple x4 Life Tanks towards the end, and had to come back for them after using up the rest. The x9 corridor prize was way more than I needed, but works as a nice top-off before taking on the home stretch of the game.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 21 March 2015 - 06:28 PM.

[C-Dawg]

RE: Last Boss Cancer Mode
Yeah, I realized once I changed the Cancer weapon that this mode made no sense anymore. It's still a good mode, so I guess I'll just change the way the projectiles look? I dunno.

Edit: Capricorn done. I went back and fixed some strange enemy behavior, of which the fleeing shellsprays were a symptom. I also fixed a bug with the ice beam not working on high hpb enemies and tagged some enemies as always vulnerable to it regardless of health. Gonna do some more cleanup and then start on Sagitarius and Pandora. Then, I'll be done installing cusTom enemies and I can get back to updating bosses.

 

EDIT:

 

Okay, so let's organize my to-do list again.  Here's what I've got left to do:

 

(1) Finish replacing most LOTZ enemies with custom enemies.  Only Sagittarius and Pandora remain, but I might go tweak some enemies from earlier areas as well. Go back and identify screens where I really want an enemy in one particular place and set them by hand.

 

(2) Figure out how on Earth to allow the stun beam to work with custom enemies.  Stunning weapons don't actually deal damage, I don't think, so how am I going to detect when the ghosted enemy takes a hit from one?  Perplexing.

 

(3) Deal with outstanding bug reports and new ones as reported.  (Includes sidewarp issues in Libra)

 

(4) Add more recharge stations (requiring payment) in key areas.  Previously, recharge stations start drying up around Leo and don't exist at all after that.  The new enemies and lack of continue points make it very likely you'll be bleeding out as you reach the end of each area, so I should put pay-to-refill stations in more places.  

 

(5) Figure out continue warp problems with Aries.

 

(6) Clean up Corridors to fix strange graphic issues, fix timing issues related to boss chimes, make warps more natural, etc.

 

(7) Change Ice Slip function so it looks at the combo, not the flag, freeing me from conflicts between ice slip and secret combos.

 

(8 ) Change how the "freezing" statues work in Libra so it looks better graphically and doesn't interfere with secret combos.

 

(9) Fix outstanding CSet issues with some Zodiac weapons.

 

(10) Add another side utility to each Zodiac weapon.  Aquarius - the bubble should make you float in water, etc.

 

(11) Update bosses:

(a) Zodiac Bosses other than Aquarius and Scorpio

(b) Minibosses in Libra, Taurus, and Virgo

 

(12) Add special continue point to endgame

 

(13) Continue to update cutscene code for back half of game

 

(14) Fix ceiling bug

 

(15) Implement new music (I can't get mp3s to run AT ALL so far. :/ )

 

(16) Super Secret Mystery Stuff

 

EDIT:  Dynamo 2 exists, but I think I'll swap the locations of 2 and 3 since you found 2 so hard to locate.

 

EDIT: Uploaded new version.

Edited by C-Dawg, 23 March 2015 - 11:33 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Demo 458 appears to be completely missing custom enemies.

ETA: The engine is generating an enemy spawning green explosion in the upper-left corner in every room with custom enemies, but failing to spawn them.

It doesn't matter whether I play with 2.50 (build 24) or 2.50.1 (build 28.)

Also, the first shooter level boss died again without warping me to the Labyrinth.

(J/K about the boss.)

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 24 March 2015 - 03:00 AM.

[C-Dawg]

What the blazes....

 

I'll look into this when I get home.  If you could, go to Sagittarius and check the creatures there.  They were working before I uploaded the demo.  I didn't change anything related to any of the earlier zones that I know of, so I don't know why they would stop working.

 

Hey, Gleeok, are there size limitations other than the size of a single FFC script that I should be aware of?  Is there a limit on the buffer size?  The number of large FFCs that can be running simultaneously?  Anything like that?

Edited by C-Dawg, 24 March 2015 - 10:35 AM.

[newstarshipsmell]

C-Dawg, on 24 Mar 2015 - 07:42 AM, said:
If you could, go to Sagittarius and check the creatures there. They were working before I uploaded the demo. I didn't change anything related to any of the earlier zones that I know of, so I don't know why they would stop working.

Sagittarius and Capricorn have custom enemies that work correctly. I checked all 12 areas; all the earlier ones (Aquarius through Virgo) do the same thing I described previously, on screens with custom enemies.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 24 March 2015 - 01:51 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Yeah, that means it's a problem with the 1st custom enemy code rather than the second one.  Like, from when I split them up due to size concerns.  But... I didn't touch that one this go-around...!

 

EDIT: Well, I streamlined the custom enemy code a little more, and it works again.  It must have been a size issue again.  What a pain in the behind!  Anyway, new version uploaded.

 

EDIT 2: Finished adding enemies to the final part of Leo and mostly done with enemies in Sagittarius.  Tomorrow we finish that, and begin adding some special enemies to the hidden rooms.

 

EDIT 3: Finished Sagittarius and the revisit to Libra areas.  Unless I missed something, ALL of the labyrinths should be populated now,  Next step: make a few more unique secret enemies and move on to fix all the enemies inside all of the doors in the game. If I can get this much done this week, I think I'll take a break until Sunday.  It's not an exaggeration to suggest I've put in a 2 - 4 hours a day into this game (with perhaps two days off) since Christmas of 2014, so a breather might do me some good.

Edited by C-Dawg, 25 March 2015 - 11:06 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Okay, I got back to wok on Sunday.  Uploaded a new version.  This one has:

 

1. All LOTZ enemies I mean to change should be changed now.  There are a few remaining who worked fine as is.

2. Remember the crappy miniboss I removed guarding the Disintegration Beam?  I put a new one in there now.  He's better.  My custom enemy script lets me make super lazy minibosses now, hooray!  This means  you will very quickly see the minibosses in Cancer, Virgo, and Scorpio updated with new versions.  They won't be as flashy as the big bosses are, but they'll be hella better than the crap currently sticking to your shoe in those areas.

3. I did a play through up to the Dash Jets and noticed a few more death traps and areas that were frustrating in ways that have nothing to do with the design.  Fixed 'em.  Also tweaked some graphical issues.  The ramp up of the difficulty curve is going exactly how I wanted it, though, so that's good.

4. Aquarius bubble now floats you in water.  Turn on the shield and press "up."  It will float you until it strikes a solid surface above, at which point it will pop.

 

I think the next step is to swap out the minibosses, since it's so easy to do now, and then turn my attention back to updating all the Zodiac bosses.  Unless, of course, I get more bug reports to fix...

Edited by C-Dawg, 30 March 2015 - 05:59 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Unless, of course, I get more bug reports to fix...

Demo 466

Aquarius 7A: Part of the boss exploded in the upper-left corner again. Did you just add shooting fireballs to him? You might revise him to spit fireballs as soon as he recovers from a hit - like instantly. If I stand on the platform and shoot him repeatedly, he generally doesn't remain off his taking damage sprite long enough to attack with them. If he shot them off immediately each time he recovered, this would force the player off the block to dodge it (or be knocked off) and give him a little extra time to do attacks before the player hops back up there to shoot him again. Could make him far less trivial to beat.

Aquarius 7B+7C: Reported this room before with enemies spawning strangely. They aren't spawning at all now. Did you remove them?

Aquarius 34: The bomb launchers in the cave room need spawn code revision. They frequently spawn stuck inside the walls/ceiling. They can walk unimpeded underneath solid combos a row above their lower half, and their bombs will detonate inside those combos if they stop to fire while overlapping them. Can they suppress bomb firing while overlapping solids, or revise bombs to not explode within 1st tile's distance along trajectory/pass through the solid combo it's spawned on top of? Also, sometimes when they're stuck, the bombs explode in the upper-left corner, instead of on top of them. ETA: Forgot to add, there seems to be two of them, but they both always spawn in the same place (different place each time you enter.)

Aquarius 11: Another example of preset > random enemy placement. Easy to hop up from 21, and if the swooping metroid enemy is on the right, hop back down and up until it spawns on the left, where you can avoid it.

Aquarius 12+14: I know you mentioned coding the enemy spawning to avoid spawning next to you. But the swooping enemy has a trigger range that is apparently farther than the don't-spawn-this-close-to-player distance. I walked into 12 from the left, and it spawned close enough to immediately swoop and attack me before I could react. Another one did the same thing in 14 and killed me. Kind of unfair.

The 3-way shooting helmet enemies - there is something wrong with their hitbox. When they are fully retracted into the ground, sometimes, but not always, I can jump and land on top of them, either directly, or offset to one side a bit, without taking damage. It seems I always take damage when walking into them from the side. If I wait, on top of them, until they pop back out, they'll damage me (I forget if the damage happens as soon as they start coming out, or only once they're fully out of the ground.)

I still recommend you revise spawn code, in general, so enemies do not spawn directly on top of each other.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 30 March 2015 - 07:10 PM.

[C-Dawg]

I will check into why the Lips enemies (the ones who shoot the bombs) are spawning in solid blocks like that.  Should be easy to fix.

 

Stopping enemies from spawning on top of each other is not trivial to fix because I've set it up so that each enemy chooses its own spawn location. They can't see each other, at least not as currently programmed.  I suppose there are things I could do to fix that.  I could make each enemy temporarily set the combo on which it is spawning to solid so that no other enemies find it... this would lead to black spaces on screens with any background tiles, though.  Or, I could check to ensure no other FFCs running the enemy script are nearby; that could work, too.  As long as it doesn't cause too much chugging.  I guess it wouldn't.

 

(For reference, if I try to spawn 45 custom enemies on a single screen, I get a slight pause when the player enters.  Other than that, I've seen no slowdown on modern machines.)

 

So I replaced the boss guarding the Explosive Missiles last night, but he's not working quite right yet.  Gotta do a little more tweaking.  Then I'll plug an advanced version of him and the Cancer boss in Virgo (palette swaps ftw), and that should be it for mini boss upgrades.  Huzzah!

 

P.S. You know what I really want?  A Wacom or something like that.  All the enemies you see were all drawn by mouse and MS Paint.  (The manual artwork was by hand and scanned, and the title screen artwork started by hand and then was moved into photoshop where I worked on it by mouse).  I could probably do better artwork with a tablet.  I wonder what they run nowadays?

 

EDIT: Uploaded new version.  All minibosses should now be replaced with versions that are far more functional and difficult than the previous rough versions.  Next: on to the rest of the Zodiac Bosses!

Edited by C-Dawg, 31 March 2015 - 11:00 PM.

[C-Dawg]

At least one non-Pure ZC player has commented that a map feature would be really nice.  Because I'm warping around a bit to create special effects, and there' no room on the subscreen anyway, I don't want to use ZClassic's build in map feature.  However, I could code a custom solution.  It would involve re purposing either the Ex buttons or the Map button to toggle an on-screen map display.  It would have to obscure the playing area, however, and I don't have a good way to freeze all my custom enemies and nonsense while it displays.  So, you'd have to find a quiet corner to look at the map.  That's not a problem by itself, but it's jarring with what the subscreen does.  

 

So, I think I'd make it so that the map displays while you HOLD the map button down?  That would make it less likely to screw someone up.  And, you could keep exploring with the map up if you wanted.  Perhaps I could make the map transparent to facilitate this process?  That might be kind of cool, actually.

 

Anyway, what I would do is just draw tiles representing the map for each of the Zones and establish a 15x7 array for each zone as well.  Then, the map script just draws the tiles corresponding to screens you've seen when you hold the map button down.  As I recall, the screen in Zquest is 15x7 itself, or thereabouts, so I'd want to shrink the map so that each room on the Zone fills up just a quarter of a tile when it's displayed.   That would shrink the map display to 7.5 by 3.5, which is more reasonable to put in the middle of the screen.

 

I dunno, would this be worth the effort?  I don't want to dumb down the game TOO much.

Edited by C-Dawg, 01 April 2015 - 12:49 PM.

[Air Luigi]

Mmm... that's tricky. I honestly like the "old school" feel without a map and with the coordinates. But I suppose that "no map" would be a deal breaker for a lot of players... If the map is made without much detail, and it just shows screens that you visited before, I suppose it can work pretty fine.

 

 

Do the game in a way that you love it, that's the best advice that I can give. It's impossible to please everyone. It's better to do a product that has the potential to fascinate a certain kind of players. Games that are for everyone, are for nobody at the end. 

[C-Dawg]

Guess what? I finally figured out how to get a decent capture program working and I uploaded a thing to Youtube!  

 

https://www.youtube....e&v=9726IzhjW-s

 

I can't record sound, apparently; my sound card doesn't' support it or something.  Anyway, hopefully this gets more people playing and commenting so we can squeeze all the pimples while Im busy redoing bosses and so forth.

[newstarshipsmell]

I dunno, would this be worth the effort? I don't want to dumb down the game TOO much.

Isn't the final game package going to include full maps as well? That makes adding an in-game map seem redundant, since anyone can simply refer to the provided maps if they end up lost. Omitting any in-game map retains the added difficulty/authentic 8-bit era feel. Admittedly, one loses the option to use the map as a guide/reminder where one's been and hasn't, when it isn't in-game and doesn't reflect where you've visited, but... go with what seems right to you.

Just keep in mind, you ought to bind it to Map rather than one of the EX buttons - if you chose to implement the quick-toggle for the A/B items later, you'll want to keep all four open for that.

Demo 471

Aquarius 54: Post-boss fight warp bugs:

After defeating Craboor, I kept warping back to his fight (and had to beat him again) several times - every time I warped back after moving onto the highlighted space. So I got him to mode 2 on my 4th fight, and lured him into the lower-right corner, then jumped up above that highlighted row and pummeled him. When he died, I think I warped to the old boss room (it only had the four single blocks along the top, and none of the 1x2 platforms below) with no powerup, no floor exit and no boss. I warped again when I fell off the upper-right block, I think, landing on the 1x2 block below in the labyrinth room. Now I can reach the powerup, but prior to doing so, every time I cross that row, jumping or falling, it quickly warps me to the boss fight and then back to the labyrinth room. Jumping up onto the powerup's block warped me back to the boss fight before I acquired it, but I warped back to the labyrinth as soon as I walked off the block. I was then able to jump up and obtain it without warping, but afterwards, the row below it still triggers momentary warps back and forth.

Aries 72: F6 trap, sort of. Once you fall off the ledge on the right, you must defeat the boss/gain the high jump to backtrack, or die/F6. Same thing in 70, once you fall to the floor on the left - which is even trickier, since any damage you take from the flyer is relatively permanent, since you cannot backtrack to the recharge station in 72, and that sole enemy is a pain to grind for hearts.

Aries: Turrets spawning in rooms with phasing blocks can still spawn underneath a solid phase block on room load, so it phases out and they just hang in midair.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 02 April 2015 - 11:37 PM.

[C-Dawg]

The maps with the final game package are intended to be part of a walk-through.  In fact, what I think I'll do is continue the old-school trope by making a PDF in the style of an old-school Nintendo Power magazine and set the maps up that way.  Should be pretty fun to do! 

 

I might or might not add a map feature.  The thing is, many NES era games DID have map features.  The original TGL, Metroid, Zelda, all of these games had some kind of way to mark where you had explored and where you had not.  Now, others lacked this feature - Blaster Master, Clash at Demonhead, etc.  So, you could go either way. on it.   I'll just put it in the "maybe" pile.

 

Of course, that's a long way off because I gotta be done first.  Thanks for the updates on bugs, will address those tonight.  Yesterday I did an interview for the PureZC podcast, so I only had time to code up one new custom boss.  Freezepod replaces the midpoint boss in Libra.  He flies around spraying out ice blocks that solidify into solid combos.  As the fight progresses, you will get closer and closer to the spikes on the top of the room; think fast!

[newstarshipsmell]

I might or might not add a map feature. The thing is, many NES era games DID have map features. The original TGL, Metroid, Zelda, all of these games had some kind of way to mark where you had explored and where you had not. Now, others lacked this feature - Blaster Master, Clash at Demonhead, etc. So, you could go either way. on it. I'll just put it in the "maybe" pile.

Just nitpicking, but Metroid, as well as Metroid II, don't have an ingame map feature. They don't even have a subscreen - Start just freezes/pauses the screen. The subscreen menu and map features were added in Super Metroid, and retroactively added for Metroid Zero Mission.

Demo 477

Cancer 3B: These bomb launchers always seem to spawn on top of each other in pairs, never in separate locations. Everywhere, not just this room.

In this particular room, they keep spawning inside walls:
|||

Also, if I enter from the left, they'll frequently spawn over the left pit. They also frequently spawn over the right pit if I jump up from below (falling and immediately damaging me before I can react.) In both cases, falling off screen does not "kill" them - they will fire their bombs intermittently, which will be audible, and usually visible as explosions mostly off the bottom of the screen. Sometimes the one on the left produced explosions which seemed to wrap and display the bottom of it in the upper-left corner.

Yesterday I did an interview for the PureZC podcast, so I only had time to code up one new custom boss.

Where do they post the podcasts? I don't see 'em anywhere...

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 03 April 2015 - 02:06 PM.