40 replies to this topic

[MermaidCim]

Im intrigued about the Pokemon one the most, ill prob play that first.

[Timelord]

Screenshots fixed/updated. I self-hosted the 'Legend of Pokemon Warrior' screens, and Dimentio provided his own in a PM.

[ywkls]

Metroid: Origins
This quest is unplayably buggy. I hate to say it, but that's just how it is. At times I found it hard to even discern what's going on, ladders being a good example. Sometimes I couldn't get on the ladder, sometimes I couldn't get off the ladder, sometimes I got halfway on the ladder and it said that was good enough. Then sometimes I could actually climb the ladder and sometimes I couldn't, and don't even think about trying to jump off a ladder.

 
In all fairness, this isn't my script; it's one from the database. I don't particularly like it myself and have been thinking about ways to eliminate it entirely.
 

Another buggy thing is the health bar. I don't know what that number up there means but I can assure you whatever it was wasn't representing my health. It just stayed at 07 until I died...Until I saved and suddenly it was working again. And then sometimes when I died, it would play a custom death animation that doesn't actually do anything, then would take me to a Save and Quit screen, if I chose not to quit would loop infinitely.

 
Hmm.. I don't know what's causing this because nothing similar ever happened to me. The death animation should have been playing every time you died. And when you went to the Save and Quit screen; if you chose not to save it should have ended the game. I might need to tweak the code on that part. As for the health bar glitching, without having it happen to me; I can't exactly determine how to fix it.
 

Slopes are weird as well, as is probably to be expected of any time you mess with solidity behavior. Instead of moving the player fluidly, they jerk them about and when on a slope you cannot jump. Sometimes it fails to detect being on a slope altogether such as when in morph ball form.

 
There's actually no messing with solidity going on. It just detects solidity, if you're pressing against it and then moves you appropriately. I have still to figure out how to make it where you can jump on slopes, which bothers me. As for the morph ball not working on slopes, I'm aware of that glitch. The strange thing is that there is no reason why it shouldn't be able to go up slopes since the only thing it's doing is changing the animation drawn at Link's location and disabling the custom collision with enemies.
 

One time I just teleported through the screen, for no apparent reason. There wasn't even anything remarkable or noteworthy happening at the time, it just happened. One moment I was falling off the screen, the next, up I flew.

 
Screenshots would be helpful if you can reproduce this, because otherwise I have no hope of tracking it down.
 

Another time I unmorphed in a wall and realized I could jump up through it and get stuck at the top of the screen.

 
You came out in a wall? That shouldn't have been possible. There is one place I know of where a bomb jump could get you stuck in the floor; but getting out was fairly easy.
 

Using the bombs (which are more of a space jump) in an elevator cutscene lets you go out of bounds too

 
Um... where in the elevator were you doing this? Because anywhere except on the bottom or top, you shouldn't have even been able to use the bombs. Not to mention that it should be blocking all exits that aren't warps back to the normal areas.
 

Another subject worth bringing up is the graphics. A lot of them look like you didn't even recolor them. They use random colors with no visible ramps in places. In other places they're still visibly Zelda 1 tiles, like the background in the first area.

One problem that I had with some tiles is that for some reason between placing them onscreen in the editor and actually loading up the game, many of them changed their appearance for no discernible reason. This may have something to do with a change to the Cset of Link, but I just don't know really.

 

Finally, you can see that it is not without reason that I warned people this game was far from thoroughly playtested.

[Eddy]

Just got through the first two entries. Thoughts below, and I'll be editing the post to have the reviews of the rest of the entries as time goes on.

 

Thinking Without Logic (Avataro) - This was an amazing quest to play through. Short and sweet, but really fun. I was expecting a boss battle of some sort near the end like in the real Portal, but oh well, the unique ideas and gimmicks really made up for it. I haven't got any major complaints with this quest. The only minor one I can think of is the fact that some early chambers were harder than the later ones, but this isn't too much of a big issue. Good job Avataro, I loved everything about it!

 

I Wanna Be The Superboss (Dimentio) - This is an interesting one. For being inspired by IWBTG, this actually was far from that kind of unfair difficulty (which I'm thankful for). The screen design was pretty neat, though it was weird to see lack of detail in the Sapphire dungeon, and then quite a bit of detail in the tomb dungeon. The ideas were pretty cool, and I had fun going through the tomb dungeon (despite some areas having cheap enemy placements, and the boss being a bit overkill at first). The cooldown with the fireball weapon sucks though. It's very long and tedious to kill basic enemies with having to wait 1.5 seconds after every shot, and I can't get anywhere fast like that. I also found several bugs:

Nice job with the shutter here  (Realised you mentioned this in an earlier post, but I want to point it out anyway)

 

That mini-map looks amazing.

 

Pushing blocks out of bounds I see.

 

This staircase goes nowhere.

 

Overall, it was pretty neat, and had a few issues (I forgive you though, this was made in 1 month lol), but I had fun and this was pretty good. Nice job.

 

Legend of Pokemon Warrior (HeroOfFire) - This was one hell of an awesome quest. Took me about 4 hours or so to beat, with 8 Heart Pieces missing (got everything else). I had a lot of fun with this. All the worlds are unique and I love the dungeons you added in. The bosses are all great and the screen design looks superb. The difficulty curve was really great and assuming the items are randomised, that's a very clever way of implementing the randomising concept in a quest like this. The very beginning if one of the biggest highlights to me. Knowing that my save files are always named "Eddy", I should've expected an Amy joke coming (would've been even funnier if Amy just popped up somewhere only if you named yourself Eddy in that starting sequence). I dunno what the "Where is your home?" question is all about, but I assume you can change the game if you say a correct name? (like RANDOM in one of the caves). All around though, this is an awesome quest and I have no complaints at all with this one. Database submission incoming?

 

Zeldius (Lejes) - I had quite a bit of fun with this one. Short, but interesting and very frustrating. Screen design was pretty neat, especially in the second level. The first level could definitely be made to look better. The difficulty was pretty consistent too, and having never played a Gradius game, that just caused all kinds of hell for me. It was really cool though and I wouldn't mind seeing a more expanded version of this.

 

NightNight (Lunaria) - Well, I definitely was not expecting an experience like this. I have absolutely no idea what I just played but it was incredibly hilarious. All of those dank memes, air horns and that Undertale fight right at the end, totally worth it. The OST is definitely the biggest highlight for me, with some insanely crazy tunes and mashups I never knew even existed. The only criticism is that there isn't any DayDay inspired screen design, and because of that it doesn't feel DayDay inspired at all, which sucks because that was the magic of the original quest. I was really hoping to see something DayDay related near the end, but oh well, the Gannon fight made up for it I guess lol. Either way, hilarious joke quest, but sadly isn't centered around DayDay as much as I thought it was gonna be. I also assume you were going for some clickbait with those screenshots?

 

You Don't Belong Here (Geoffrey) - I definitely don't belong here. That was a pretty funny short quest. That's usually how I want to treat tetrominos when they go in the wrong spots lol.

 

The Apixelypse (Octorokoncrack) - This quest was definitely fun to play. I love how you pulled off all the games in a way that's still very fun and enjoyable. It gives a really big nostalgic feel to the old Game Boy days (though I didn't grow up with a Game Boy) and it all felt really authentic. One of only complaints is the fact that you cannot save at all. Why did you do this exactly? It just made playing the quest extremely stressful, especially towards the end with those bosses. I also really hated having to repeat everything over and over to progress and that got really long and tedious and just ruined it a bit for me. I wouldn't have cared if you added save points during the 4 games, but I felt not having any at all is a bit too much. The difficulty balance near the end also skyrocketed and the 2nd half of the Kirby stage had some pretty bad platforming. It felt really hard to jump over stuff with enemies all over the place, and it doesn't help that there's one specific section where you need to do a big precise jump, or else it's back to the start. The Pokemon RBY area also had some pretty crazy difficulty. It was really hard to avoid all those projectiles, especially when fighting Missingno and the Snorlax just before it. I'd suggest to tone down all of those projectiles, that was kinda absurd. Besides that though, I had quite a bit of fun with this game and I really loved the idea. Sad that there are a few issues which brought down the experience a bit, but it was pretty neat. Good job!

 

Metroid: Origins (ywkls) - I'm sorry, but I just couldn't enjoy this quest at all. This quest was incredibly buggy and I just couldn't play it properly. The bomb jumping wasn't thought out well and the transition between screens wasn't all that great (like some enemies spawning right on top of you). The death sequence is pretty bad. If you die, you can still move around and shoot, but with the occasional save screen over and over. I gave up after about 40 mins or so, the quest was horribly bugged out and I just couldn't get anywhere. Good try and good effort, but there's a LOT to improve on here.

[Mani Kanina]

Are you streaming these eddy? :V

(I didn't see anything about it in your stream thread, but I know you stream a lot.)

[Eddy]

Are you streaming these eddy? :V

(I didn't see anything about it in your stream thread, but I know you stream a lot.)

I'm not streaming these, just playing in my own time. And I haven't streamed in more than a year lol. Probably should get back into it, but eh dunno when.

[Avaro]

I like the turnout of the contest overall. Considering the theme, weird and unusual quests were to be expected. I've played a good amount of every quest so far. Here's my opinions on some of the quests.

 

You Don't Belong Here: Definetly gets the point across. I love the joke and it's fairly short too, which makes this a great joke quest.

Legend of Pokemon Warrior: This quest is all about exploration and the joy of finding random items. I like the premise, but I feel like there could be a bit more direction so that you are not totally lost.

Zeldius: My only complaint: You lose your progress if you restart the game. You have savepoints, but it would be nice if you could actually save them if you save and quit. I have not gotten very far, but I'll try my best. The gameplay is great and even the level design is pretty creative in my opinion.

NightNight: Actual good screen design. Randomness.

The Apixelypse: I love it! The idea of this quest is really great. I haven't gotten past the first world yet and I wish you could save or at least continue after dying.

 

Why is it getting popular to not allow saving anytime you want? Also, the A and B buttons on the subscreen get switched up a lot (which is just a pet peeve of mine though).

Edited by Avataro, 13 February 2016 - 01:27 PM.

[Timelord]

I'm not streaming these, just playing in my own time. And I haven't streamed in more than a year lol. Probably should get back into it, but eh dunno when.

Fixed the link to 'You Don't Belong Here'. That was due to an editing typo, and entirely my fault.

Posting it here as a reference: https://www.dropbox....g Here.zip?dl=0

Edited by ZoriaRPG, 13 February 2016 - 02:00 PM.

[Octorockoncrack]

The Apixelypse: I love it! The idea of this quest is really great. I haven't gotten past the first world yet and I wish you could save or at least continue after dying.
 
Why is it getting popular to not allow saving anytime you want? Also, the A and B buttons on the subscreen get switched up a lot (which is just a pet peeve of mine though).

Unfortunately yes, I doped out towards the end and forgot the save points. The difficulty past the 2nd half of the game is also crazily out of whack. I've gotten a lot more work done buffing out the difficulty and adding in the save points.

And when do the items shift in the subscreen? If you're talking about in between zones, then yeah because the feather gets disabled or reenabled in between. If it's the middle of one of the zones, then that's an issue.

Also eddy, were you able to get the hidden sword in the forest? I think when I uploaded the file for the contest that it was harder to spot where to go for it. It helps buff out some of the difficulty and you can OHKO snorlax with a sword beam.

[Moosh]

In all fairness, this isn't my script; it's one from the database. I don't particularly like it myself and have been thinking about ways to eliminate it entirely.

Hmm, which script was it? It didn't seem like the kind of problems a competently written and commonly used script would have. It's possible the problem was caused by either one of your settings (big Link, perhaps?) or a conflict with another of your scripts.
 

Hmm.. I don't know what's causing this because nothing similar ever happened to me. The death animation should have been playing every time you died. And when you went to the Save and Quit screen; if you chose not to save it should have ended the game. I might need to tweak the code on that part. As for the health bar glitching, without having it happen to me; I can't exactly determine how to fix it.

Is it perhaps a Link->HP==0 vs Link->HP<=0 thing? Or perhaps your death script isn't actually running every frame in your global? I can only imagine your global for this must be a mess, so it's a possibility...
 

There's actually no messing with solidity going on. It just detects solidity, if you're pressing against it and then moves you appropriately. I have still to figure out how to make it where you can jump on slopes, which bothers me. As for the morph ball not working on slopes, I'm aware of that glitch. The strange thing is that there is no reason why it shouldn't be able to go up slopes since the only thing it's doing is changing the animation drawn at Link's location and disabling the custom collision with enemies.

What I meant by messing with solidity, I was talking about creating any new types of solidity behaviors at all. When a player walks on a slope, other scripts and game behaviors can't actually tell they're on the "ground" by normal means. What I did for this in FiC was have a global boolean called OnGroundOverride. When a script places Link on "ground" and he's supposed to be able to jump off it, it gets set to true. Then at the end of the frame it gets set to false. That way you can detect scripted ground interactions.
 

Screenshots would be helpful if you can reproduce this, because otherwise I have no hope of tracking it down.

It only happened once and came by complete surprise. It's probably something that can either be fixed or tracked down as you fix your other scripts.
 

You came out in a wall? That shouldn't have been possible. There is one place I know of where a bomb jump could get you stuck in the floor; but getting out was fairly easy.

Yup. Should work in any place with a morph ball tunnel. Nothing actually checks to make sure there's room for your head when unmorphing.
 

Um... where in the elevator were you doing this? Because anywhere except on the bottom or top, you shouldn't have even been able to use the bombs. Not to mention that it should be blocking all exits that aren't warps back to the normal areas.

You can ball jump across the seams of any elevator cutscene and most of them where the warps aren't boxed in you can glitch out of bounds at the top from my experience. You need to be morphed and have a full stock of bombs when entering the elevator since the game doesn't recognize it as a platform.
 

One problem that I had with some tiles is that for some reason between placing them onscreen in the editor and actually loading up the game, many of them changed their appearance for no discernible reason. This may have something to do with a change to the Cset of Link, but I just don't know really.

You should always be ripping your tiles in a screen with the palette you intend to use them in, especially if your palettes don't all follow the same basic structure. And of course you shouldn't be ripping tiles into csets that aren't meant for them. Sprite csets (0, 1, 5, 7, 8, sometimes 9, 10, 11) only for sprites, terrain csets (2, 3, 4, sometimes 9) only for terrain, and Link's cset only for Link.

Why is it getting popular to not allow saving anytime you want? Also, the A and B buttons on the subscreen get switched up a lot (which is just a pet peeve of mine though).

Moosh repellent.

[ywkls]

Hmm, which script was it? It didn't seem like the kind of problems a competently written and commonly used script would have. It's possible the problem was caused by either one of your settings (big Link, perhaps?) or a conflict with another of your scripts.

It was the one by justin, which I've used previously for sideview ladders. You're right, though. The big link setup may have messed with it. Probably just easier to rewrite it, maybe even make it global.
 

Is it perhaps a Link->HP==0 vs Link->HP<=0 thing? Or perhaps your death script isn't actually running every frame in your global? I can only imagine your global for this must be a mess, so it's a possibility...

 
A check for Link->HP<=0 is run every frame first thing in the global. As for the global script being a mess, I blame that on not really having any clue as to what order the various sub-scripts should go in.
 

What I meant by messing with solidity, I was talking about creating any new types of solidity behaviors at all. When a player walks on a slope, other scripts and game behaviors can't actually tell they're on the "ground" by normal means. What I did for this in FiC was have a global boolean called OnGroundOverride. When a script places Link on "ground" and he's supposed to be able to jump off it, it gets set to true. Then at the end of the frame it gets set to false. That way you can detect scripted ground interactions.

I could probably implement a similar method... by rewriting the entire jumping script. I might need to do that anyways, due to the fact that the high jump is far too well... high.
 

 

 

Yup. Should work in any place with a morph ball tunnel. Nothing actually checks to make sure there's room for your head when unmorphing.

 

Yeah, I caught that one myself. The script now checks to make sure there isn't a solid wall above you.

 

 

 

You can ball jump across the seams of any elevator cutscene and most of them where the warps aren't boxed in you can glitch out of bounds at the top from my experience. You need to be morphed and have a full stock of bombs when entering the elevator since the game doesn't recognize it as a platform.

Probable solution... make every tile not in the elevator a warp.
 

Thanks for these tips. As for implementing them, that's likely to take a while. And I have found others later on, which unless you broke through the password; you wouldn't even have access to.

[justin]

 

It was the one by justin, which I've used previously for sideview ladders. You're right, though. The big link setup may have messed with it. Probably just easier to rewrite it, maybe even make it global.

 

to be fair, that script was designed around a normal sized player. i probably should have not hardcoded the values in the script to increase versatility - maybe i'll do that.

 

there is a global version included with that submission.

[Eddy]

Also eddy, were you able to get the hidden sword in the forest? I think when I uploaded the file for the contest that it was harder to spot where to go for it. It helps buff out some of the difficulty and you can OHKO snorlax with a sword beam.

I didn't get that. I had no idea that existed to begin with

 

Edit: Finished all the entries, thoughts listed a few posts above. Now waiting for the poll.

[ywkls]

Metroid: Origins (ywkls) - I'm sorry, but I just couldn't enjoy this quest at all. This quest was incredibly buggy and I just couldn't play it properly. The bomb jumping wasn't thought out well and the transition between screens wasn't all that great (like some enemies spawning right on top of you). The death sequence is pretty bad. If you die, you can still move around and shoot, but with the occasional save screen over and over. I gave up after about 40 mins or so, the quest was horribly bugged out and I just couldn't get anywhere. Good try and good effort, but there's a LOT to improve on here.

 

You could still move around while dying? That's something I'll have to look into... since you shouldn't be able to do that. If you thought your run was buggy, you should have seen Eppy's stream last night. He literally got stuck in an area he couldn't leave. 

[Eddy]

You could still move around while dying?

Yeah, I ended up beating Spore Spawn like that too