899 replies to this topic

[C-Dawg]

To answer the question no one is asking:

 

I've been quiet recently because I was reformatting my computer.  Spent a few days backing stuff up the old fashioned way, and then a night clearing the drive.  Runs much better now, with a fresh antivirus install. 

 

I'll be getting back to work on Zodiac this weekend.

[ShadowTiger]

Sorry to hear that you were having trouble. What antivirus are you using at the moment? I've always been partial to Avast's free version. Though it's really good to have SUPERAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes on it at the same time. They're Anti-Malware programs, so don't interfere with the anti-virus program.

Additionally, to loop MP3s, I found a little video that uses Audacity that might be of help. There is also a volume normalizing feature right on the front area of the program.

[C-Dawg]

Just checking in to say I've been distracted by other events, so I havn't put in too much time in the last week.  Annoying!  It doesn't look like I've got much feedback to work on in the meantime, though, so my list hasn't gotten any larger.  That's good.

 

(1) Continue to update cutscene code for back half of game. This one might take awhile. So, I have at least the following cutscenes to revamp:

a - Three different conversations with Dr. Mo

     (Make a fourth - what you see when you go there after finishing all corridors)
b - Encounter with ???? in Sagittarius
c - Encounters on Pandora
d - Game endings (good and bad, for now, with credits and some artwork splashes)

(2) Verify that Ceiling bug is gone.  If not, fix.

 

(3) Determine source of problems with continue warps at Aries entrance and landing problems at some Scorpio doors.

 

(4) Edit MP3s so they loop properly and have the right volume.  If this cannot be done, then abandon this approach.  If it can be done, get permission from the artists to use the tunes.

(5) Super Secret Mystery Stuff. This is major, and will require another month to do.

[newstarshipsmell]

I also tweaked the code to make it so you can't skid off of a platform unless it's made of ice. This makes it much easier to get to the very pixel-edge of a block now, actually.

I'm just waiting for you to upload a new demo with tweaked horizontal momentum. The slipping around and sliding off blocks was kind of annoying so I didn't play too far into the most recent version.

Eagerly waiting, I might add, since it sounds like you've added a fair bit of other cool stuff since I last played it, above and beyond just polishing things.

I can't remember where the doors in Scorpio that exit midair are - does it happen in any rooms that don't have sandfalls? If not, I'd guess the sandfall code has something to do with it?

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 02 June 2015 - 09:09 PM.

[C-Dawg]

Wait a bit longer.  I was busy with family this weekend after the reformat, so I haven't tinkered much.  I previously made the momentum code better, but I want to add some more visual and sound cues to guide the player in moving around (puffs of smoke when skidding to a halt and sounds when landing) before I re-upload.  

 

I think this has been the longest between updates since November of 2014!

 

As for Scoprio, no, there's a room over at like 4,F that has no sandfalls and still the door acts strangely.  It's really annoying.  I might just delete the room entirely and re-draw it to see if that works.

[C-Dawg]

Updated the file, finally.  Most of the work was on the player's movement.  I think it feels like a good balance now, where you have some momentum but not so much that it makes gameplay sloppy.

[newstarshipsmell]

ROFL! Game ending bug on demo 519.

You cannot jump off platforms on the bottom-half of the bottom row, so when you reach Aquarius 5D en route to the missile launcher and pulse hammer, you cannot proceed any further into the game.

I cheated over to 4A and 24 where there are other platforms along the bottom row/bottom-half, to confirm it is the position of the platform along the bottom - and not that particular room - causing this bug. Something you did with the momentum? Or were you trying to squash the bottom-jump bug? ETA: This happens in both 2.50 and 2.50.1. It also doesn't matter whether I have screen scrolling turned on or off.

Rather than trying to fix this... I don't think there are that many rooms in the game that have half-tile platforms on the bottom like these ones - so you could "fix" it by simply moving/removing them all, redesigning the room a little if necessary to make the required jumps possible. This would also "solve" the "problem" of platforms you cannot see with room scrolling turned off.

The ship in the beginning cutscene - it still has transparent black lines/spaces on the left side of it, that are especially apparent with the hangars.

It might look better if the star field extended above the Zodiac another screen, so it doesn't scroll a visible edge to it onscreen and leave the screen black before warping to the shooter level.

I'm assuming this is intentional, but just pointing it out in case not: the two inner allies only fire a widely spaced pair of shots from the side, and no shots from their center at all. So you end up with nearly all your firepower concentrated on the far sides of you.

I saw some CSet errors with several different kinds of enemies in the shooter level, but only the first time I played it, in 2.50.1 - I haven't seen any in 2.50, and I've played through the opening shooter a few times on now. Not sure if the ZC version matters at all, though. Wasn't sure if you thought you'd fixed this.

The new boss meter is cool - but I'd just like to point out that it almost completely hides the boss's weakpoint. Could you make the meter translucent instead of opaque, without it looking like crap? That would at least let you sort of see stuff underneath it.

The new landing noise is driving me nuts, but I suppose I'll get accustomed to it, and quickly too, if the up-enters-doors thing is anything to go by. But would it sound better if you made it a little quieter? Like, maybe 70-50% as loud as it is now? Not sure it really matters.

The poof - can you code it so it doesn't appear if you move slowly before stopping / inch sideways bit by bit? It looks a little silly when it triggers every single time you come to a halt rather than only when you're moving faster/farther and then stop.

I think the "ALL WE HAVE IS YOU" line in the commander's first message inside the Zodiac needs a period after "YOU" - the next message parses like a nonsensical run-on sentence without it. Also, his first message after all your allies die mentions four of you (rather than five) - was this a mistake, or is he deliberately discounting you and directing his talk to the other four (now gone) allies? LOL, if the latter.

Aside from all that, I like the new stuff! Intro sequence is much better now, and the horizontal momentum seems perfect.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 11 June 2015 - 07:24 AM.

[C-Dawg]

Ack, didn't realize I was turning off the ability to jump from solid blocks on the bottom! 

 

Yes, when I turned on the landing "crunch" noise, I could hear that the game considered the player to be on the ground at the bottom of each screen.  So I adjusted the jump reset code to not trigger down there.   But... this does mean standing on blocks is problematic.  I think I will follow your alternative solution, though, and just eliminate blocks that low.

 

As to the other ships' firing, yeah, that intentional.  The inner ships are bulkier and stronger, but the outer ships have more firepower.  When you add in your own shots, it actually evens out.  

Edited by C-Dawg, 11 June 2015 - 01:25 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

I'm going through the entire map looking for these, along with any other remaining walkability issues.

So if you haven't started fixing them, feel free to focus on something else and I'll report back in a few hours with a list of all that I found. Hopefully I won't miss any of the bottom-row platforms.

I just posted a warning comment on the demo so at least anyone else downloading it will see that. If you want to upload another demo that at least fixes the Aquarius rooms, you can do M4 S12 as well - it's the only other room I've found so far with one in it.

[C-Dawg]

Critical early game bugs deter potential beta testers.  I uploaded a fixed version with all the half-blocks in Scorpio and Aquarius fixed.  I don't THINK i used them anywhere else, but we'll see.

[newstarshipsmell]

You used them somewhere else: M10 S73 / M13 S0C. At least they're spikes, so you don't have to F6. Probably makes the boss more "fun." Best not let go of the grapple points!

ETA: Actually, I wonder... Can you grapple out of the spikes, since the bug only seems to prevent you from jumping? Would be fun to leave them as fun deathtraps that require immediate grappling to escape or die.
And I'm just looking at the map in ZQ. I forget whether those give you knockback damage, so maybe you could bounce out of them by pressing down and moving sideways.

ETA: Bonus points if you can draw/script agony faces for your wingmen to display in the upper-right as each one explodes.

You also might want to script any enemies still onscreen when the Commander's second message appears to explode right before the message - otherwise it just looks odd when they freeze during the message and disappear upon its conclusion.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 11 June 2015 - 10:43 PM.

[Deedee]

God, the first shooting level is brutal. Took me about 30 tries before I won, and that was with knowing all the moves like the laser, the missile, and the beams. Unless this is meant to be a hard game, you might want to tone down the difficulty, or possibly make a tutorial in the game before the mission.

[newstarshipsmell]

God, the first shooting level is brutal. Took me about 30 tries before I won, and that was with knowing all the moves like the laser, the missile, and the beams. Unless this is meant to be a hard game, you might want to tone down the difficulty, or possibly make a tutorial in the game before the mission.

LOL, just crash your wingmen into stuff until they explode. Losing them all triggers the second message and warps you to the easier second-half of the level.
ETA: The point of the super-hard beginning is just to demonstrate the viciousness of the defense and show how out of all the assault forces, only you were lucky enough to penetrate. If the actual gameplay is leading to excessive deaths, because the mechanic is non-obvious and players try too hard and end up dying, then obviously it maybe requires some tweaking. Perhaps the wingmen could generate a shield for the player? So you take no damage until they're all destroyed? Then, you'd only take damage from whatever shots/enemies are still onscreen until the message triggers, right? So you ought to be far more likely to survive and advance to the original shooter portion.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 12 June 2015 - 04:36 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Controls:
If you walk across holes a single tile wide, while holding left/right, you'll fall into the hole. If you release left/right just before you fall, your momentum will carry you across the hole instead of falling. This is minor, but especially annoying and counter-intuitive when you're trying to fall down a hole, and keep slipping across it when releasing left/right in order to fall...

You can still press jump after running off a ledge and autojump off the next platform you land on. You can also still use this bug to jump off the bottom row - I already posted all the rooms where I could exploit this in any way, I believe, and I also believe they were fairly trivial exploits.

Enemies:
The hardhat enemies sometimes don't fire the center shot. Because they run out of available FFCs?

M10 S18: The bomb launchers still sometimes spawn bombs that explode offscreen in the upper-left corner.

Rooms:
M4 S20: Are you supposed to be able to shoot the switch from the far right without going up/around? The sandblock in the middle used to absorb your shots. The placement of blocks makes it excessively difficult to ascend on the right, especially with the cactus constantly hitting you.

M4 S75: Suggest you change the two solid sand blocks on the 2nd row to sandtop blocks (with wavy surface) so it doesn't visually mismatch sand in adjacent room S76.

M10 S06+08+7C: All have unwalkable halftile spaces at Pos 26.

M10 S14+47: Seem to be missing combos at Pos 171.

M19 S6D: Pos 169 - Wrong combo.
M19 S6E: Pos 165 and 169 - Wrong combos.

M27 S22: The supports for the heads (the one in the room, and the three in the room below) are missing.

M35 S43+53: The pillar/rocks do not match.

M19 7C+7D: There's no floor here, just flames. Can you jump off the bottom of the screen? Or does the bottom-halftile jump bug apply to the very bottom of the screen as well?
M19 S73: Related to above, the walkable spikes extend to the bottom in the lower-right, is this a trap?
M23 S78+79+7A: Related to above, lava extends to bottom of screen.

Bottom-halfrow traps:
M19 S31 and S3E (spikes)
M25 S24 (spikes)
M27 S21 (spikes)
M29 S4D (after you've used the Voltiac Key to open the hole)
M29 S71 (spikes - but they are covered by warps above thus probably don't matter)
M35 S70-74,77-7B,7D-7F (spikes)

Walkability/Tile bugs:
Most of these are trivial/cosmetic; I've underlined the ones that can actually get you stuck.

L|R: You can walk/jump left|right to scroll into a wall in the adjacent room (but can walk right|left back out of it and/or continue into room.)
DW: You can fall down into a block on top of the adjacent room, but walk left/right out of it.
DS: Same as DW, except you get stuck, forcing F6.
-DJ: You need Dash Jets 2 to reach the walkability issue.

Map 1: S13 R, S14 R, S21 R, S3A R, S43 R, S4B L, S6C R

Map 4: S0E L, S1D DW, S2E R, S35 L, S3C L, S42 R, S4C DW, S5B R, S66 L

Map 11: S02 R-DJ, S13 L-DJ, S38 L L-DJ, S3B DW/DS, S66 L, S6B DW

Map 13: S43 R, S4E L, S55 R, S5D DW

Map 17: S0B R, S28 R, S38 R, S52 R, S5E L

Map 19: S08 L, S09 R, S0C L, S58 R

Map 23: S02 MC(15), S0A R-DJ DS-DJ, S0B DS-DJ, 1A R, S32 DS-DJ, S3B L, S3F DS-DJ, S49 L, S54 L-DJ, S57 DS-DJ, S5C DS-DJ, S60 R-DJ, S64 L L-DJ, S78 L-DJ, S7D R-DJ

Map 27: S35 L, S44 DW/DS, S6E R-DJ, S70 R

Map 29: S4A L, S57 L, S6B R, S6C L, S7A L

Map 31: S16 L, S5C R, S6E R

Map 35: S0D L, S17 DW, S1C L

Map 40: S0A L

[C-Dawg]

Learned how to use some very basic functions in Audiacity and got the improved music files working as .ogg files.  Also, with some learning from Zora and Zscript.txt, I have improved boss music functioning, too.  There are a few MIDIs left skulking around, but the vast majority of the game is now upgraded to improved music.  I will add an extra download file for the edited .ogg files I'm using.

 

Made it so that you can't die until your wingmen do in the initial stage.  So, no more excuses.

 

Scorpio 20 made easier.

Aquarius 34 enemies in secret door replaced to kill strange spawning behavior.

Scorpio 75 - Newstarship's aesthetic sensibilities respected.

Map 10 Rooms S06+08+7C fixed.  Also - HOW ON EARTH did you notice this particular bug? 
M10 S14+47: Fixed
M19 S6D: Pos 169 - Fixed

M19 S6E: Pos 165 and 169 - Fixed

M27 S22 - Fixed

M35 S43+53 - Fixed.

M19 7C+7D - Floor added to avoid deathtrap.

M19 S73 - Fixed.

M23 S78+79+7A - Floor added to avoid deathtrap.

 

All these addressed:

M19 S31 and S3E (spikes)
M25 S24 (spikes)
M27 S21 (spikes)
M29 S4D (after you've used the Voltiac Key to open the hole)
M29 S71 (spikes - but they are covered by warps above thus probably don't matter)

 

Not addressed, at least for now:

M35 S70-74,77-7B,7D-7F (spikes)

My reasoning is that this is very late in the game, when the player has multiple mobility enablers to get off the bottom without jumping.  And, it might be ok to make this a death trap at this stage.  Im not married to the concept, but let's see how it goes as is....

 

Fixed all those solidity mismatches.  If you can spend so much time looking for em, least I can do is fix em.

 

Preparing new upload.