100th Post Anniversary

Edit: (November 2, 2011) Huge derp on my end. Can't believe I didn't have this in the original post.

Happy Halloween everyone! :D

Now for the best halloween song. Hope everyone had a fun one this year. We'll need to next year, cause it will be our last. Remember, the world ends in 2012 which means... hmm, DT3 is released in 2013. This is indeed a problem.

You've read it right, this is the 100th post for the DT blog. Something special needs to be done... well... I don't have much prepared to make it all that special. I'd love to release a demo, but I wanted to release a sizable portion of the game. You've heard it already, just the first 3 gates. Well let's continue on with the blog post and see where it goes.

Split Party
We'll start with a screenshot.

Look out Claire.

I was tempted to not give any context behind this shot. I know that some of you are probably thinking multiplayer, but that is not what this is eluding to. There are times in the game where Jerry and Claire will split off and the normal swap rules will change. When swapped, the character you're controlling will stay where they are (even in the air) and will get a bubble shield that blocks nearly all enemy projectiles. These will be more puzzle driven than anything else. The first instance of this is really straight forward and just introducing its new concepts. Once the characters get more of their unique abilities like Claire's morph ball, that puzzle aspect will open up a lot more. These will obviously only be encountered on non-gate chapters, the first of which will occur in the middle of chapter 5. (Which of course means using Claire without offensive abilities. No worries, I'm not that mean with this aspect.) Expect this to appear periodically throughout the main quest.

Progress
Chapter 6 (Castlevania gate) is almost ready to be started for actual level design work now. Since there's no dashing in the game till just after the gate, it's going to follow closer to the earlier Castlevania games in every aspect. It's still going to play faster than those since Claire moves faster and isn't stuck in a jump direction till she lands.
Note to my testers: (Even though I can tell them without this.) The early bosses in this zone are not going to follow the pattern that the early Gate 2 bosses did. Aside from the last one in Gate 2, which is a new boss, the others are all taken directly from Zelda 2 and are hilariously easy. There are very minor changes done to them to boost their difficulty, though it doesn't help them much considering Jerry is faster, jumps higher with more control, and has a much larger attack range. On a side note (within the note?), that range might change a little bit.

WHY IS IT GETTING COLD!? I hate winter.

Collision Fix
Remember in DT1 that you could jump on top of the map? Then in DT2, I fixed that. I'm sure some of you have noticed in both DT1 and 2, that you could do the same for the bottom, if you time it right, you can actually air dash under the level and even save yourself with Blast Off if timed right. You can even go around obstacles if the dash gets you far enough. Granted, that took pixel perfect precision to pull off without the game detecting you were under the level boundaries, it still creates weird design problems and feels sloppy. So that is fixed in DT3. Any future updates to DT1 and 2 will have this fixed as well. It's literally a 2 line piece of code to fix this. The top of the level deal will not be changed in DT1 as it was part of the level design.

Cancelled Secret
I was going to release a secret demo that had various enclosed scenarios in DT3. Like those Zelda demos that allow you to choose a dungeon, boss, and misc. scenario. Since we're getting close to the full demo that I actually want to release and considering the areas that are available, I don't truly feel are ready for viewing. I figured I'd not spend the time to put that secret demo together and use that time towards more actual DT development. It was going to be a url scavenger hunt much like those web-based puzzles. That other demo is, hopefully, only 2 months away.

Other Random Things
I'm not using the Mega Man 2 Wily theme anywhere. :P

DT3 has some new fun enemy types, such as healers. If a healer is in the area, they can be called out to by allies of the same affiliation as the healer. (So you won't have Wily type enemies healing Mario type) There are other assist types as well, such as one that will create barriers around targets that you're attacking. An enemy will give out a visual indicator saying that they are calling out for assistance. These new enemy types, I feel,  create more dynamic scenarios that require a lot more thought on the player end. Their first occurance will be in Chapter 7.

These call outs are also global, an assist bot can be called out to by any enemy of the same affiliation. Some of the more advanced healers are also fully aware of ally HP levels and will heal by priority. The HP levels themselves are not the only factor in this, as some of their allies are viewed as being 'worth more' and will give them priority assistance.