899 replies to this topic

[C-Dawg]

Good feedback, thanks!

 

Having now completed the circuit of Zodiac Zone bosses, and finally dipped my toe into the living nightmare that is Capricorn, I can tell you this: do NOT wait to finish off the Pisces Zone boss.  At high levels (you're probably there now, Ranagus) it has buggy behavior.  Basically it sits in the middle of the room twitching, and then suddenly lunges at you, grabs you, and murders you.  Without Scorpio Shot, which is it's weakness, he's basically unbeatable.  Yikes!

 

Oh, and the max for any one stat is 25 (you can go higher, it just doesn't do anything).  Note also that the Zodiac Weapons use your stats for power, though different weapons use different stats in different ways.  It's a mystery to everyone...  

Edited by C-Dawg, 09 July 2015 - 10:41 AM.

[Solairflaire]

I probably sounded harsher on the momentum than I meant to. It's not so bad you can't get used to it. I just like having finer control over my character.

 

Pisces 0,8: Behind the breakable block next to door: Next to the right exit is a "water pushing" tile that pushes you away from the exit.

 

Taurus 3,4: Enemies can spawn in the rocks on the bottom right.

 

Virgo 0,6: Blaster power ups were constantly spawning... I could only see efficiency and speed, but power was probably spawning off screen.

 

Cancer Zodiac Weapon: I think I mentioned this before, but the charge shot doesn't go in all 4 directions. Facing up has it shoot right and facing down shoots it left.

 

The floating "Fairy" item is still a drop from large enemies, like the giant blobs in Cancer.

 

Taurus 1,4 Corridor: The big fire enemies here were killing all enemies on screen when I killed them. Is that intentional? It seems odd if it is since there is no animation for it and they all just explode.

 

I got all the zodiac weapons and went back to Mo and it she said she'd start up the computer but it doesn't happen. I had to clip through the right wall to get her to start it up. I'm guessing the warp isn't working?

 

I also got up into the area where the infinite jump boots are with only using the Libra weapon. It's really really hard with the one room with the medusa head shooting stuff everywhere. But, it's doable. Timing is everything. And hoping you don't get knocked one of the ice blocks. Too bad you need dash 2 to get it.

 

Those half tile blocks up there can be removed with the Libra weapon as well. Full tile blocks seem to be immune. You have to hit those tiles with the top two parts of the charge for it to erase them from what I can tell.

Edited by Solairflaire, 09 July 2015 - 05:58 AM.

[C-Dawg]

Cancer Zodiac Weapon: I think I mentioned this before, but the charge shot doesn't go in all 4 directions. Facing up has it shoot right and facing down shoots it left.

 

It's not a bug, it's a feature!  That particular weapon can't fire charged shots up and down.  It's very powerful, so I put in that limitation.  However, it does look a little funny, doesn't it?  I'll think about ways to handle that.  

 

 

I also got up into the area where the infinite jump boots are with only using the Libra weapon. It's really really hard with the one room with the medusa head shooting stuff everywhere. But, it's doable. Timing is everything. And hoping you don't get knocked one of the ice blocks. Too bad you need dash 2 to get it.

 

Kudos to you!  That is one of the ways to do it.  My intention was you had to coordinate between several tools to get up there: Anti-Gravity Device, Libra Charged Shot OR Leo Charged Shot, Ice Beam, and Level 2 Grapple.  I'm sure any combination of those devices makes the trip easier, but yeah, once you have those items you can probably (with great difficulty) get anywhere in the game.  Hence why the Infinity Jump is optional.

 

Grapple 2 + Libra should make it downright trivial.  You just grapple up to the top, make a platform below you, hop up to the next screen, rinse and repeat.  Since Grapple 2 requires the Dash 2 to get it, that was kind of how I expected most people to end up handling it.

 

EDIT:  I'm collecting the endgame items while finishing the corridors now.  Holy crap, Red Pheagon is a friggin' beast.  I don't last three seconds against him.  And, he's buggy on top of everything else!  I think I might tone him down, at least giving the player a better place to stand and lower his damage a bit....  anyone found a cheesy strategy for him, or he really as impossible as he seems?

Edited by C-Dawg, 09 July 2015 - 11:37 PM.

[Solairflaire]

EDIT:  I'm collecting the endgame items while finishing the corridors now.  Holy crap, Red Pheagon is a friggin' beast.  I don't last three seconds against him.  And, he's buggy on top of everything else!  I think I might tone him down, at least giving the player a better place to stand and lower his damage a bit....  anyone found a cheesy strategy for him, or he really as impossible as he seems?

 

 

Is that the guy at Taurus 5,8? Cause you can stun lock him by double jumping from the left platform and shooting him. Or you can just get under him and constantly shoot him, whichever. Obviously having the rapid fire blaster is really useful here. If you have wall cling, just grab the leftmost pillar and fire away. Unless he's also even more glitched on my end and isn't behaving at all like he's supposed to...

[C-Dawg]

No, I'm talking about the boss in Scorpio guarding the Nova Armor.

[newstarshipsmell]

I somehow ended up invisible at Libra 21.  The effect persisted when changing screens but F6ing fixed it.  Not sure what happened, I remember getting hit, a Windrobe spell passing though me while hurt, falling off the bottom of the screen somehow, scrolling back up, and realizing that I can’t see my character anymore. 

Did you warp through a door as you got hit by the windrobe warp? I know I reported that bug before - if you press up (in front of a door) when the shot hits you, you'll warp through the door and appear invisible in the next room, and this will persist until you quit/restart IIRC.

It wouldn't surprise me, though, if there were other ways to trigger the same graphical bug without using a door warp. I haven't been back to Libra lately so I don't know or forgot if my bug's been fixed.

Edited by newstarshipsmell, 10 July 2015 - 11:39 AM.

[C-Dawg]

Wow, thats... strange.  I'm guessing it has something to do with the engine setting Link's graphics to be invisible after he is hit by a windrobe projectile but before that projectile leaves the screen?  So, if my code moves the player somewhere in that period of time, the engine never hits the "start drawing Link again" trigger?

 

If so, very interesting ZClassic bug.  The only way I can think to avoid it is to not use windrobes at all.

[Solairflaire]

No, I'm talking about the boss in Scorpio guarding the Nova Armor.

 

Oh, him. I forgot about that one. Just hang on the left wall about 2/3rds up. When he goes to chomp on you drop down close to the spikes and go back up (don't run into him). If he shoots, hang just below his "tongue" and the shots go right over you. The fish aren't an issue since screw attack kills them instantly. I preferred the blaster for this fight.

[C-Dawg]

 

Whew!  Okay, I finished the playthrough.  Even without going to get all the optional stuff in Sagittarius, this took me more than a week -- but I was playing for maybe 1 - 2 hours a day.  Hard and long, it is.

 

I've now got four pages of notes and bugs to fix.  There are still GAME BREAKERS, which sucks, but at least I know of em now.  On the current build, here's what you need to cheat to get past:

 

Cancer Zodiac Boss - Won't die on some upgrades.

Taurus Corridor 1 - Randomly closed on me, denying access to the screen you need to visit to mark it "cleared."

 

In Dr. Mo's lab, you will get stuck in the dialogue, but at least this one is just an F6 away from working properly next time you visit.

 

My next trick is to try and get through all my bugs and notes so I can post a new version by the evening of Monday July 13.  I'm out of pocket until August after that, so what I get done by then is what there will be to test until I get back!

 

EDIT: Hard at work.

 

1. Fixed lots of bad screen designs and mismatched tiles up through Dash 1.

2. Added a script to patch around the stupid doors that won't put you out in the right place on the screen.  It looks weird, but it works.

3. Removed remaining TGL / Metroid music and replaced with clips from SAVESTATES. 

4. Fixed continue points if you die or F6->Continue after fighting a boss.

5. Tweaked Iron's second encounter behavior.  He's a lot less dumb now.

6. Fixed the bug that was making a black square'o'doom in the top left on any screen with moving platforms.  Finally.

7. Tweaked Wiggler 1.  His flowers now shoot fireballs instead of magic, making them harder to dodge.

8. Tweaked Catawhirl 1 to give it more health.  As it was, it died incredibly quickly.

Edited by C-Dawg, 11 July 2015 - 12:21 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

5. Tweaked Iron's second encounter behavior.  He's a lot less dumb now.
6. Fixed the bug that was making a black square'o'doom in the top left on any screen with moving platforms.  Finally.
7. Tweaked Wiggler 1.  His flowers now shoot fireballs instead of magic, making them harder to dodge.

5. Did you fix it so he actually gets knocked back/damaged in the direction you're facing/firing/hitting him? I noticed on this last playthru that whenever I hit him, from the right or the left side, he'd slide a little to the right while damage-flashing. I hadn't noticed this before, but realized I always end up on the left side when exploiting his lame, predictable movement for fight #2. Without realizing that him inching towards you with each hit pretty much forces you past him to the left side...

6. Thank God.

7. Is this the boss guarding the explosive missiles? I hope so, and I hope this makes him challenging. He's a breeze. The biggest challenge in getting them is to remember not to drop straight down from the damn door above the switch. Though with continue points working uniformly and properly now, that mistake is just an F6 away from an easy fix, lol.

Are you going to upload another demo with these bugfixes shortly? I'm starting Pisces 1 on my current game, but I'd rather not play through the rest documenting things you've already fixed. Heh. Would be more productive to start over on the next demo and play through that looking for anything you overlooked.

[C-Dawg]

Look for another update on Monday. It is gonna take me tome to fix my long lis from my playthrough, and I was hoping gleeok might come through with a new version of ZClassic by then.

 

EDIT:  Progress continues.

 

More various bugs and bad designs fixed.

Improved Flameskull (you face him in two Corridors in Gemini and Scorpio) drastically.  No more cakewalk for you.

Small bullets made bigger.  This is to make the bullet more match the hit box, which I cannot easily change.

Added graphics and sound to armor pickup to make it seem more important.

Edited by C-Dawg, 11 July 2015 - 08:43 PM.

[newstarshipsmell]

Alright, here's my paltry list of bugs so far:

There is some bug in ZC where sometimes if I hit Menu and alt+tab to something else, return, and resume play, it'll either kill the music, or kill some channels in the midi. Guessing it's a known bug. IIRC it also happens sometimes when I simply alt+tab to another window and alt+tab back without hitting the Menu button in ZC (i.e. without pausing the game.) Not sure. But the music will remain partially or entirely silent until I go through a warp that changes the music, at which point it will resume playing properly.

Anyways, I triggered this bug either inside the Disintegration Beam room - post-boss fight - or in the room immediately right of it (Cancer 28 or 29.) I can't remember which. Either I'd already killed the music while inside 28, and this happened when I scrolled into 29, or I killed it in 29 and this happened when I alt+tabbed back to ZC: It began playing the boss fight MIDI in Cancer 29 where it should have played the Cancer OGG (or MIDI if the OGG were absent.) I can't remember if the boss MIDI continued playing when I scrolled out of Cancer 29 or if the next room triggered the Cancer OGG to play again - I may have simply F6'ed and Saved.

Some enemies that still drop Fairy Hearts:
Spiders (in Scorpio.)
The 2x2 enemies that spawn the 1x1 leaping enemies (in Cancer.)

Time to bitch about the Ship Cannon again. I am not saying this needs to be fixed - you already said you were fine with some exploits like this. I'm just pointing it out again in case you didn't realize just how badly this eliminates all challenge from and unbalances the corridors... So I'll shut up about it if you tell me to.

The lack of a cap on the Ship Cannon rate-of-fire when repeatedly depressing the button makes the corridors super-trivial to beat. I'm using Joy2Key and mapped a button to autofire B 30x/sec, which lets me deal an absurd rate of damage to stuff when I get in close. Without exploiting this, the Aries 00 corridor is rather difficult, especially compared to the two subsequent corridors (Cancer 6E and Scorpio 74.) I am unable to complete it without expending at least one Life Tank. (I can beat the next two corridors without using one.) If I use this exploit, I do not even worry about my life meter, because it never drops anywhere low enough I need to worry. The corridor becomes a total cakewalk.

The Aries 00 boss is also super-easy to kill off quickly since it takes continuous damage, and you can fit inside the tiny triangle space between his shots when he stops, and pummel him. (I'm not sure anyone could position themselves inside it before/as he stops and opens fire, so you have to take some damage to get into position, but once there, you won't take more damage, if you line up correctly.) I only tried this towards the end of my last fight with him (the shots look like they're too close for you to fit between them without getting continuously hit, but that is not true.) So I'm not sure whether you'd need to do this more than once to completely drain his life and kill him. Of course, I'm self-capping at 30 shots/second - I could up that, and I'm not sure where it would max out within ZC in terms of how quickly shots can be fire and how quickly enemies can register damage, so perhaps upping it to something ridiculous like 100 would let me kill him in a couple seconds. I dunno, haven't tried.

Cancer 6E: One of the 6-way shooting enemies kept generating its firing sound effect after I'd killed it - using rapidfire, so I'm not sure if this is some weird bug with dealing massive damage or cumulative damage so quickly while killing it that it tripped something up. Never heard it happen before I began using external rapidfire.

[C-Dawg]

Did you play with the Turbo controller back in the NES days?  It did something similar, particularly in Mega Man games, where your blaster speed was limited only by the fact you could have only three lemon-bullets on the screen at once.  

 

That said, I can go back and give the bosses longer invulnerability periods between hits.  By and large the bosses in the Corridors have very short periods -- a few frames -- versus the 20+ frames that some of the Labyrinth bosses have.  By tweaking that, I can set a hard limit on how much your auto-mashing can accomplish.  I think that's how I'd prefer to address this bug because it gives people who tinker long enough a little exploit to discover.

[newstarshipsmell]

Did I crouch Rygar in the left corner facing right with Down and Rapid B on the Turbopad clamped down and leave the NES sitting overnight? Yes, yes I did that too.

[C-Dawg]

Okay, fixed Grimgrin so he's more difficult, made Overdrive Adaptor better (you now heal x9 times faster, making it into basically 500 tics of invincibility), fixed the Cancer Zodiac Boss (I think?), put the Wallet on the subscreen, and checked off another page of bug fixes and redesigns.  Time for bed, will try to finish all the rest of the notes tomorrow.

Edited by C-Dawg, 11 July 2015 - 11:40 PM.