DT3 Spinach Mod Update

Spinach has updated his DT3 mod with many bug fixes!

Exe and text files: https://files.catbox.moe/4g19er.zip
Music Part 1: https://files.catbox.moe/yjynji.zip
Music Part 2: https://files.catbox.moe/zn6qad.zip

Refer to the last paragraph in the previous post for info about an antimicro setup if you're using the "gm8_fix" version of the game since that will disable the built-in gamepad support.

The Next Game

I'm still working on the next game and it's going really well. My silence about it is not an indication of it going poorly. I've just elected to not talk about it until it's much closer to completion.

The Spinach DT3 Distorted Mod

It's been a long time coming and a bit late on my end to be posting this. So instead of me telling you about this mod, I'll let him via copying his post.

What is this, you ask? The updated distorted mod aims to provide a new experience for DT3 veterans. Every single room is changed to provide greater challenge and make you discover things about DT3 you may not yet know. Unlike the first distorted release, almost all bosses have significant changes now. In short, this was made for people who have beaten DT3 and are so hungry for more that the already existing difficulty options weren't enough for them. For the advanced masochists among you, know that you can still use the vanilla difficulty mods in distorted, so if you really, REALLY hate yourself, you can try out Distorted Night Terror (don't). It's hard for me to estimate how difficult distorted is on its own, I would rate it harder than vanilla nightmare and easier than DT4.

To play, simply put the .exe in your DT3 folder, backup your old vanilla save just in case, then merge the supplied "Music" folder with the one in your DT3 directory (again feel free to make a backup of the vanilla music), and start the .exe. You'll have noticed that there are two executables. The standard one is pre-patched with gm8x_fix, which cleans up some issues with GameMaker8.X games. Controllers will no longer work with this. If you still want to use a controller, I recommend using antimicro. The unpatched executable is included as well just in case the patched one doesn't work for someone for whatever reason. 

On the topic of music, please do not check the music credits ahead of time. You may accidentally spoil yourself a funny or two late in the game.

Now for the links!
exe and text files: https://files.catbox.moe/x1dtbw.zip
Music part 1: https://files.catbox.moe/yjynji.zip
and part 2: https://files.catbox.moe/zn6qad.zip

If you're using the gm8x_fix version and have antimicro but don't want to set that up yourself, someone else in the community already has a set up that you can get by clicking here. If you know how .amgp files work, then you know where to put that. Sorry this took so long for me to finally post here, Spinach. Enjoy everyone. I'll say nothing about the mod because there's a lot of cool stuff I don't want to spoil.

Reveal of the Next Game

 A few years back, I mentioned that Distorted Travesty 4 had started development. A short video and a spattering of screenshots were posted. Some of you thought since it was announced on April 1st (2 years in a row) that it wasn't real. Well I'm back this April 1st to say that it is indeed real! No video this year, but I can share some screenshots (quite a few too!) as well as some info.

A few posts down, this post in particular, mentioned a few mechanics that mostly still hold true, though rereading the 'raw numbers' section now, it's very incorrect. The game's central mechanic is still Chao's shield being used to deflect attacks and build up a damage multiplier for her following attacks.

Chao guarding against a bee's claw attack.

Roaming through a Yoshi village.

Dashing through some blocks with a new ability!

I won't go too much into the story this time around, except that it takes place after the events of DT3. (The true end of course.) Throughout the game, Chao is accompanied by a new friend she encounters early on. He's the little bird you see in these screenshots! By this point, Chao has become a dungeon diver and much of the game involves her hunting these down and exploring them alongside her new friend who can look up info about the places she's in, much like Jeremy could do in previous games.

Hitscan gunners are back of course.

What am I looking at?

Secret message?

The DT series is known for its difficulty and DT4 is no exception on that front. I like to say that DT3 was made to be completed and that DT4 is made to be mastered. It is by far the hardest game in the series and I can see it not sitting well with some. There is an included difficulty adjustment menu that can be used at no penalty if you're not looking for the type of struggle that the game desires.

Tick tock?

The DDR Man himself???

Firefight!

???

I'd talk about the many abilities that Chao obtains through the game, but I'd like you all to discover that for yourself. However, there is one I'd like to talk about that I really wanted to make in DT1, but just didn't quite know how to go about it. You may have noticed that Kirby Star in some of the screenshots. This ability allows Chao to steal a Kirby related ability from any enemy from the Kirby series, and in some cases, gaining passive abilities, such as low gravity, or even another jump!

And for the big question that I'm sure many will ask. When is the game being released? Unfortunately not for some time. (Definitely a couple years still.) So the true answer to that is; when it's done!

That's all from me for now. Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. Hope you're all having a great April 1st!

Back From the Void

Hey I'm back! There were plans to post info about an upcoming game of mine this year, but that all had to change. Its been a long year on my end. Had to move twice, once planned, another due to flooding. Had a few other roadblocks as well that I won't share here. (I'm in good health, nothing of that sort.) However, things have calmed down again.

This won't be a long post, just an update that my shenanigans are continuing. I'd like to note that I'll probably be moving this blog over to wordpress in the next few months. I'll have a post here if/when I do.

The Spinach Mod

This was mentioned in the previous post, but was never released. Spinach never gave me the okay to release and has lately been updating the mod again, so it's going to be a much more substantial mod. Not much else to say about it at this time, but expect nearly every map (maybe all?) to be changed.

The Future Game?

I'll be putting something together to show more about this game in Q1 or Q2 of 2022. It was not initially planned to be such a large game, but as a good friend once said to me, I'm obsessed.

Game of the Year, but really just some games to mention

Psychonauts 2

I can't go without mentioning this one. Been awaiting its release ever since its announcement years back. Its combat isn't anything special, but if you're playing Psychonauts, it's not for that. The narrative and characters are top-notch, going into deeper issues with nuance and respect. Every chapter was less about Raz and more on the character whose mind he dives into. (Which could be said about the first game, it just felt more pronounced in this.) I noticed most of the cast were older, which was welcome considering games almost never have that. It's absolutely worth a playthrough.

Deep Rock Galactic

Yeah this game didn't release this year, but I don't care! I've found this to be the best game of "Grab your friends and go have fun." all year. Easy to explain too. You play one of four dwarves working for the mining company, Deep Rock Galactic, who send you to the planet Hoxxes to mine resources for them. The core loop is selecting a mission from the hub, diving into the planet with a massive drill, gather the resources, and leave.

When diving into Hoxxes, the world is all randomly generated, everything is destructible, and many many alien bugs and creatures are trying to eat you while you gather whatever DRG is sending you to get. Each of the dwarves have their own playstyle and guns. But the real fun is in their support tools, such as the gunner's zipline that anyone can use once fired. The miner can... well he can dig. The engineer has a platform gun that yes, creates platforms on any most surfaces. (Think Earthshift, but fired from a gun. (Said platforms can also break falls.))

The fun comes from how almost no two dives are ever the same. Fun adventures with friends seems to be the mission statement of the game and every design choice and update back that up. As of this post, there are 8 different mission types that greatly vary in how they're approached. Each one can greatly change how the caverns are generated. There's your standard resource gathering that the game uses to introduce itself. An escort mission that's actually fun and not shit. (No really.) My personal favorite called On-site refining, which has you creating pipelines to pump a mineral out of the ground. The terrain and location of the resources has a huge impact on how the team will create the pipes. For example, the distance and elevation differences between the refinery and resources. The pipes need stable ground when placing them, which luckily the game helps facilitate with the tool used in this process so you know exactly why a pipe can't be placed. Even better though, is that these pipes can be used to grind on!

Divinity 2

Get a friend and play this.

Actual DT3 Mods

Update, the Andrew mod is linked below.

Its been quite a year for everyone, but we've all experienced it together, so no need to really address that further. Instead, I wanted to share a bit about two DT3 mods that have been in the works for some time. These mods are not made by me, but I do endorse them as they're both really cool in different ways. Both of them aren't out just yet, but I wanted to bring some attention to them before they released. (And so they'll both stop feature-creeping and just release them already, lol.)

The Andrew Mod (Altered Insanity)

The first to talk about is Andrew's mod that focuses on the equipment in DT3. All 40 pieces of equipment have had massive changes that both make the game easier and harder in a very challenge run focus. Stuff like causing temporary 1-hit kill spikes to spawn on your location so you have to stay on the move. I don't want to spoil them though, cause a lot of them change the game in sometimes very drastic ways. If you wanted to replay DT3, but with some odd/quirky challenge rules, this is the way to go. He also has a room of extra challenges and a full new level all aimed for end-game players.

Get the Andrew Mod here.

It doesn't have the base game's music and sounds, so add the audio from this update to your existing audio folders and place the exe from this in the same root folder DT3 is in and bam, it'll all work.

The Spinach Mod

The next one is spinach's mod that, at first, started as a silly joke to add a Hex Ring to every map in the game. But this then morphed into a full on game mod with some bigger changes throughout the entire game. If you're looking for a sort of 'hard-mode' version to the main game, this is the mod for you. I've not played through the entire mod just yet, but what I did play was pretty cool and full of fun (and sometimes really funny) surprises. I've seen others stream earlier versions of the content though. This mod also has a new level aimed at end-game players.

Both of them started the mods to be smaller changes to the game, but eventually went on to become much more substantial. The feature-creep is real, but jokes aside, both put in a lot of work going through DT3's spaghetti code to make these mods. I believe both will work with existing save files, but I'd suggest starting a new one if you're going to play these. Both mods work with Nightmare and Achilles mode as well. If you've never played DT3, I don't think I can suggest the mods, lol. They are both definitely aimed at players that have gone through it at least once.

Once they're ready, I'll post them here.

So Many Ys Games

Time for the most hastily typed and boring write up of Ys games ever. Had to get it out before the year ended.

For reasons now unknown to me, I played the entire Ys series this year. Ys 8 was on a summer sale and I'd heard great things about it. Turns out, those great things were true. It's easily the best Ys game in terms of feel and gameplay. About the only thing I didn't care for was the end, or rather, the end itself was fine, but I feel that it would have more impact if...

I had decided to stream Ys 8 and during that, ChillGuy said something that I now can't remember at all, but it did inspire me to try Ys 7 again, which I had attempted before, but didn't enjoy. Very glad I did though. While the beginning is kind of a slog and the clunkiness can be a turn off, once I understood how to play within that clunkiness and the bosses started getting better, I was having a really good time with it. I'd say Ys 7 has the best bosses of the party system games. Other than the first few, they're all fairly engaging with a fair amount of things to learn. (I've heard the Ys 9 bosses are really good too, but I have to wait for the translation of that one.)

I was going to stop on Ys 7, but decided to keep going and once I did, I figured I might as well play the entire series. Since I started with 8 and went to 7, I decided to continue like this and play backwards. My start with Ys games actually goes way back to the SNES days when I played the awful game, “Ys 3: Wanderer of Ys”. I didn't think it bad back then and it was at least somewhat different from other side scrolling games at the time, so it did leave a memory at least.

Next up was Ys 6: Ark of Napishtim. This game is kind of bad, but its atmosphere and feel of adventure and discovery it had was pretty neat. It also plays a fairly significant contribution to the overall Ys lore and a big reason I was playing at this point, was for that lore. The gameplay balance may have soured this game, but it still ranks up there because of said lore.

ChillGuy played and streamed Ys 5, which certainly exists. It was neat to see that the sword Adol has and of course losses at the beginning of 8 was obtained near the end of this one. It has a vampire that I believe is written out of the PS2 remake. That's really all I can say about it.

Ys 4: Memories of Celceta was one of my favorites. It was more basic in enemy design than Ys 8 and 7 (all of these used the party system) but the characters and lore were great. It also had spoken Adol lines, which are a rare thing. I was convinced to play the two original releases of Ys 4. 'Mask of the Sun', released on the SNES and 'Dawn of Ys' released on the PC Engine. Mask of the Sun is trash garbage and janky as hell, so let's move onto Dawn of Ys, which was actually really good. I used a fan translation which also translated the voice lines which I hear they attempted to match the tone of the original voices. Those ranged from awful to hilarious. I'm glad the translators did it. Even when it was bad, it was still enjoyable. The story was fairly cheesy so the voices played right along.

The Memories of Celceta remake is by far the best version of 4, like Duren's character being my favorite of the game. Leo is also exceptionally better. Though having seen the stronger tie in and visit to Esteria in the original games, I wish Memories had a short moment like that as well. Time was probably an issue since remaking Esteria in 3D would be quite a task so I say remove Ozma and his village then replace that with a small section of Esteria instead. Just as long as we're not going up Darm Tower again. Maybe we'll bring dynamite to the tower in Ys 10.

On to one of my favorites, Ys 3: The Oath in Felghana. I had played most of the games on Nightmare mode. This one was, by far, the harshest of them all for that setting. Every boss aside from maybe one was an event. There were two bosses I was getting... irate at on stream and I believe I even said I just wasn't enjoying it, but the reality is I was enjoying trying to figure out what I needed to do. The anger was really at myself for making a mistake I knew I shouldn't have made, but in the moment, the game needed to be blamed.

Ys 1 and 2 Chronicles is next. I'm not a fan of bump combat (despite playing 5 games with it during this whole Ys adventure) but the Chronicles remakes manage to bring it to its best form. Ys 2 is more like a light weight bullet hell since most bosses require the fireball spell anyway. It's hard to dislike Ys 1 and 2 because of the overall mysterious vibe to it. The entire thing (I think of them both as one game) feels like trying to uncover lost secrets. With the Chronicles remake, all the npcs are named and unique and it feels like a lost community isolated from the world.

Then there's Ys Origin.

After that, I played the PC-88 version of Ys 1 and a bit after that, played 'Mask of the Sun' and 'Dawn of Ys.' Seeing where Ys started was pretty cool. It didn't age well at all, but I can see for the time how it gave a good impression. The music, even then, was really good.

If I had to rank the Ys games:

Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana

Ys 3: Oath in Felghana

Ys 4: Memories of Celceta

Ys 7

Ys 1&2: Chronicles

Ys 6: Ark of Napishtim

Ys: Origin

Origin IS better than Ys 6, but at that point I was playing for lore. Ark just carries more weight for the series.

Ys can't be separated from its music so I'm obligated to list a top 5 or ChillGuy will come after me.

1. Valestein Castle (Ys 3) – Yeah, it's a classic pick, but people pick it for a reason. It's fucking awesome.
2. To Make the End of Battle (Ys 2) – It's another classic pick, but again, there's a reason. Knowing the history behind this track and how it inspired a lot of early video game composers is also pretty rad.
3. Primeval Breaker (Ys 7) – This opening isn't as icon as the Ys 2 opening, but it feels so right for Ys 7.
4. Ruins of Amnesia (Ys 6) – With an honorable mention for “Ernst” in this same OST.
5. Walking the Path of Legend (Ys 4: Dawn of Ys) – The OST for the original Ys 4 games were really good and this track just felt so quintessentially Ys. Another honorable mention is “A Great Ordeal” in both this game and 'Mask of the Sun.'
6. The Ancient City Surfaces (Ys 4: Dawn of Ys) – It doesn't get any more metal than this. (I lied, it's Ys, it's impossible to list only 5) Listen to this.
7. Be Careful (Ys 3) – Really fond of this being a first dungeon theme. Sets up the game well.
8. Yesterday in Etania (Ys 8) – Not sure what to say about this one. It was always used well.

Long Awaited Info

A year has passed since the big reveal and since we've hit the first big anniversary, it's time for a bit more info about it.

You've probably already seen the new screenshot on Twitter, but just in case, here's a link to it. You'll notice some drastic UI changes. That early in the project, it was doubtful that other UI would stick. It may seem the UI is a bit minimalist for a DT game, but this screenshot is of the first real dungeon and Chao doesn't have too much in the beginning. Dashing, for example, isn't unlocked until after this first dungeon.

I didn't mention anything about the mechanics of DT4 and I figured this year would be nice to share a bit more about them. The basic HUD there displays Chao's current HP count numerically (and in a meter next to it.) Underneath is one of the big mechanics of combat this time around. The value displayed is Chao's damage multiplier for her next attack. Through evasive and defensive options, Chao is able to boost the power of her follow up attacks.

To put some of this into their base raw numbers, (because I know a lot of you like this stuff)

Chao has 2 major defensive options. Those being blocking and dashing. Blocking can block all incoming frontal melee attacks, but will only mitigate 90% of the incoming damage, unless she performs a perfect guard.

Guarding will boost power by 10% per attack blocked, but a perfect guard will increase it by 50%. Blocking however, will only block 50% of projectile damage, but the 10% power boost is still granted.

Dashing will, like DT predecessors, phase through enemy projectiles. Dashing through projectiles in this way also increases the power boost by 20%. This time though, dashing will not give iframes from melee attacks. It's still a quick dodge, as both forward and back dashing have made their way back in.

Power boosts will also stack up to a certain capacity. (that can be increased throughout the game) Whiffing attacks will not deplete the power boost, only successful attacks, by 50% per hit. It will also deplete over time at 10% every few seconds.

This dynamic between blocking and dashing is only the base mechanics. It's not DT without an array of secondary abilities, and Chao certainly has a fair number of them, but that info will be for another update. (Though she does have a bomb ability similar to Jerry's Link bomb in DT3.)