What a Travesty

Horrible puns are... ... ... bad. horrible Just a heads up, there won't be a post new week due to me moving. Going to get settled in with new roommates, apartment, new area, etc. The area of California I'm moving to is very nice and about an hour walk from the beach! :D Never lived by a beach or even in California for that matter. Closest for me would be when I was in school in Phoenix, Arizona. The move is pretty exciting for me, going to be a nice change as I seriously need one. Been wanting to move out of Texas for a long time. Not that Texas sucks, it doesn't, but I personally don't like it here any longer. It's time to move on... with this post!













Various Changes
- Water Barrier now lasts 1 1/2 seconds longer. Approximate Duration: 8.5 seconds
This is the final change on Water Barrier.
- Zephyr nows lasts 1 second longer. Approximate Duration: 13 seconds
One more note with Zephyr, it actually behaved incorrectly and has now been fixed. You may not notice a difference, but it now affects other objects properly. No more sending enemies zooming off the screen with it.
- Earth Shift now lasts 3 seconds longer. Approximate Duration: 15 seconds
- An enemy's current life total is displayed in the bottom-right corner of the screen when they are hit. It is displayed via percentage meter. This can be turned off from the options sub-menu.
- Resources loading into memory again after returning to the title screen has been fixed. No more memory wasting and sound loading errors.
- Various help boxes have been placed around the world in the form of what is called a "Binary Index". There are 2 types, one that gives hints/info about the game, the other is notes left behind by a mysterious character, which will give more insight on the story. The story related ones have distinct difference in appearance.
- New "Pointless Records" have been added, there is another page and 1 or 2 entries have been moved for consistency's sake.

Platforming Stuff
Some of you are going to love me and the others are going to hate me for what I've put in the game, or at least what one of the new areas I'm working on has in it.

Conveyor belts, these will add a lot of level design fun for me, as well as ways to screw you over. ^_^ They work with everything, you, your summoned rock, everything.

Some New Hurtful Enemy Types
This new area has some nifty yet potentially destructive enemies. One being a mechanical turtle that fires a laser from it's mouth. The screenshot above shows one. It may not look like much from what you see there, but this has infinite range until it hits a wall and is out in an instant. You must be out of it's way before it is fired. This will pose a nice threat on bridges and some platforming areas.
There's a few other nice ones, like spread missile launching mechanical turtles, laser sight scanner bots, scatter flame launching... well you'll see. Understand your spells and your dodging and you will be fine.

The new area isn't as densely populated with enemies and traps since backtracking through an area will come into play there. This will be the first of the dungeons that you are given a map for help. I noted on maps in a previous post, again, these work roughly like they do in Zelda. I've kept the map/compass system, I even used this in THFG. In this though, you can see which rooms you've been in and where game progress sensitive(GPS) points are. (Don't use that, it sucks.) Actually THFG had all that, except for noting where you've been. o_O

Other Game Stuff
Brutal Legend is released the day before I move. BLARG!! I've been looking forward to this game forever now. It's going to be the best thing since Psychonauts. It's okay, I played the demo and I will indeed be getting the game, I just need to wait a bit. It's not really a major concern of mine considering the obvious though. :P