Well, I hate to bump my own topic, especially when it's been dead a while.
But, relatively big news: v1.1 has been released.
I tried to work in as many possible suggestions from Lunaria, Eddy, and other people posting in this thread and in reviews. So, here's a little bit about the update.
===== Gameplay =====
The majority of changes have to do with the gameplay in the final third of the quest. It seems most players don't like chaotic finales, so significant adjustments have been made to keep the difficulty increase at a ramp rather than an exponential curve.
• The primary reason for v1.1 is because I found a trick to limit the Wizzrobe Summoners. While Wizzrobe Bat Summoners have a 40-enemy limit, regular Summoners have the capacity to fill a screen to its 500-enemy limit, resulting in an incredulous flood of enemies if not dispatched immediately. Why they're free to do this, especially when they can summon far stronger enemies than Bats, is confounding to say the least. To "fix" this, I modified a series of Wizzrobe Bat Summoners by changing their summoned Enemy IDs from Bats to other summons and reassiging their sprites to the original Wizzrobe Summoner sprites, thereby enforcing 40-enemy limits on all summons, resulting in far more manageable challenges and far less system strain. As an example, if I stepped into a Stalfos summoning room then left to go eat lunch, I'd come back to this mess. Now if I do the same thing, it maxes out like this.
Additionally, a number of summons have been weakened in a variety of ways, whether by moving slower, firing less projectiles, having less HP, splitting into fewer children, or becoming normal splitters rather than tribbles. The last one is perhaps the most important, due to the way tribbles could go out of control if not quickly dispatched. For example, Eddy posted a shot of Vire tribbles flooding this room. Now with normal Vires, this is as bad as it gets.
• Next, the Underworld difficulty level has been considerably decreased. Most enemies have had HP reductions between 15 - 40%, others have had step speeds slowed and attack damages decreased, and some have had all 3 stats lowered. Also, almost all enemies now have an adequate chance of a 3-heart drop upon death, so while they're still tough, you'll be seeing a number of drops like these to compensate for the challenge.
And that includes ZC enemies too. When I made my next-level-up enemies, I built them around the existing next-level-up enemies: Magic Octoroks, L3 Leevers, MirrorRobes, etc. I initially thought it was too much, although I eventually got used to it. But now that I don't have a misplaced reverence for staying "true" to ZC, I've weakened those as well.
Originally, I wasn't sure how HP vs weapon damage played out, so I simply tested different stats to get the right "feel" while playing. This time, I wrote out an Excel spreadsheet linking all HP and weapon damages so I could precisely calculate difficulty according to the different items the player might have by that segment of the quest.
• Finally, a majority of bosses from the second half of the quest have had HP and damage reductions, and some now have new weapon weaknesses. In particular, the BS-Zelda bosses, like Patra. I wanted a boss that would challenge even players who did the third bonus dungeon, so I temp-tested it with a Hurricane Scroll/Master Sword combo and came up with the HP I did. I also tested in-game with a Magic Sword and no scroll, and it seemed decent. Except I made a major oversight - I had the Whimsical Ring on the in-game tests. And with the amount of hits it took, the ring's 1-in-15 insta-kill ability would always come into play. So I disabled the ring and tried again. And uh... oops. Nerfed that bitch.
• Also, for decreased frustration, I implemented Lejes' Fire Trail reduction script to reduce flame duration for fire-dropping enemies. Fire Zol flame durations have been reduced from nearly 11 seconds to under 6 seconds, now leaving a maximum of 4 trails behind them. Rooms with fire-dropping Patras vary from 4 to 8 seconds.
===== General =====
A number of other changes and tweaks have been made, ranging from interface & interaction to items & equipment to visuals & layouts to file organization. Here's a few of the bigger ones.
--- Some visuals ---
• Dungeon Maps now display full-color layouts with all fundamental components visibly marked. Doors are open spaces, locks are yellow squares, boss locks are red squares, entrances are white bars, and bombable walls are black squares. To use Lunaria's most-hated dungeon as an example,
this now looks like
this.
• Desert Dungeon & Inferno Dungeon palettes have been moderately reworked/recast.
I hated working with the desert palette. I came up with a favorable stand-alone palette, only to find it didn't remotely fit the existing sprites. This led to extensive brightening in an attempt to match the default colors, with the Overworld "tan" as reference. I wasn't a fan of the result, but it worked in context. Still I wanted it darker, so I went through another 20+ reworkings while making v1.1. Can I just say how damn hard it is to make "sand" without a sandy texture? I finally made best match I could between the Overworld tan, dark blue and orange enemies, light white enemies, rocks and cacti, and Link himself. Now
this looks like
this,
this looks like
this, and
this looks like
this.
Inferno I mostly liked. A picture of a fire demon emerging from flames inspired me to make a color "burn" between the red enemies and a bright-and-bold red palette. However, I didn't like how Red Ring Link blended in. Since the v1.0 palette was based around the dungeon boss, Fire Gleeok, I based the v1.1 palette around Red Ring Link instead. The result is a moderately darker palette with greater distinction between red sprites while retaining its bold appearance. Compare
this to
this,
this to
this,
this to
this, or
this to
this. Note that CSet 9 now uses in-between colors so level-colored enemies stand out more.
• Recolored CSet 6 lava-water in Scorched Lands using CSet 8 to prevent sprite-palette-based color-shifts; smoothed animation.
• Added slightly tweaked dirt/sand tiles to indicate whistle-blown staircases. Can you find them
here or
here? (Don't mind that I'm looking directly at them
)
• Added
darker stumps to indicate burnable trees in dungeons. Not every dark-stumped tree is burnable (symmetry), but every burnable tree is dark-stumped.
--- Some items & interactions ---
• Sword beams can now be fired down to 91% health (e.g with 6 hearts, beams fire at 5.25 hearts; with 16 hearts, at 14.5; with 24 hearts, at 21.75).
• All fairy life-restoration rings are now life-and-magic-restoration rings.
• Link isn't hurt by own fire weapons.
• Magic Shield now blocks flame attacks.
• Peril Ring/Peril Scroll now activate damage divisor/sword beam at 2 hearts rather than 1.
• Many significant item prices reduced by 25 - 50 rupees.
--- Some layouts ----
• Maps moved to earlier rooms in first four dungeons.
• Added step-switch in Desert Dungeon to permanently raise tiles across hyper-spike room leading to boss segment.
This room was designed as a Boot-check, but due to their absurd magic consumption, multiple crossings were a hassle. Now you can have
a safe path back after your first crossing.
• Compass positions on each floor of Frozen Dungeon now indicate stairs leading to Triforce room.
• Blocked some segments of water in Underworld Dungeon/Cave Of Life on which player could get stuck using Two-Way Ladder.
• After defeating BS Patra guarding Boss Key on L2 of Ganon's Palace, statues turn into
healing stones (fairy rings).
• Added the Winchester cave.
--- Some file organization ---
• Multiple levels (DMaps) now compiled into single maps. Previously, each DMap had its own corresponding map; now, anywhere from 2 to 4 DMaps (and in one case, 7 DMaps) have been placed within single maps, using DMap offsets to replicate the original positioning. As a result, the map count has been reduced from 44 to 16, and the file size decreased by 599K. (This is strictly a matter of file organization and has no effect on gameplay.)
• MIDI file information reconfigured to display proper credits and instrumentation in "Quest MIDI Info..." listing.
===== Wrap-up =====
So those are a few of the updates I thought were most relevant. Hopefully they've satisfactorily addressed most of the comments and critiques in this thread and in the reviews. I didn't rip out and redo Spider Dungeon, so this isn't exactly version Lunaria.0, but barring any fatal bugs, this will be the final version.
A full (7-page) list of all changes, including detailed item & enemy stat updates, can be found in the text file.
Alright, that's it from me. Hope any future players have fun
