Fish Sticks

I had some last week.

So yeah, if you really like platformers and have one of the 3 major consoles (edit: or Steam), I highly recommend getting 'Rayman Origins'. Yahtzee reviewed it and showed quite a bit of love to it as well. Jeremy and I played all of it, getting most of the little pink thingies. (I forget what they're called now.) The game isn't afraid to go on the difficult side of things. (Oh man, that last world.)
It took away the pointless lives system and does checkpoints the way DT does. It's always fun, always pretty to look at. The levels all have this nice flow to them, like the way 'Super Meat Boy' has them. (Well when you become good at playing SMB anyway.) If what I said above didn't hint at it... it's multiplayer, with 4 people if you want, and not in the cluster-mess way 'New Super Mario Wii' was like. You can actually play it with 3 or 4 people without stepping all over each other.

So last Saturday the season 2 finale of Friendship is Magic aired. No no, I'm not going to go on about it, but I did really really enjoy this song. Even my roommate, Jerry, enjoyed the episode and specifically that song and he doesn't really care much for the show. If you follow the show or at least the music (mostly what I do), then you probably already know about the hidden thing in the song. It's incredibly nerdy, as I like to put it, but pretty awesome.

Also because I forgot to post a pony pic with my pony... thing above. (Yeah I didn't show this in my usual edit style.)

Did anyone else get a slight discomfort in that flashback when she used her magic to stop the two ponies from arguing? All arguments and theories aside on what she actually did, (maybe she just removed the negative thoughts) messing with someone's head, to me, is a scary thought. It doesn't solve the actual problem the two were having, despite that the issue was silly. I can't help but feel something like that would bring on cognitive dissonance.

Being a blog about a game I'm making, it would only be right if a blog post had something to do with that. So the rest of this will be about that. Now I'm going to go finish this boss encounter with this thing that has homing missiles.

Oh wait, one other thing. If your preferred method for contacting me was through email, use the address:
ZephyrBurst @ yahoo (.) com
Don't need those dang google bots picking up that one.

Regenerating Madness

Edit: (April 24, 2012) Another update for DT1. Hopefully the last for awhile. :P
Fixes!!
- A few more of those jumbled text issues that appeared in 3.0. I think I got them all this time.
- Some possible freezing issues with the sliding doors late in the game.
- A few level design 'blehness' areas. (There's actually quite a few minor tweaks here and there, so I won't list them all.)
- A crash bug with a certain encounter in Windy Slopes.
- 3 late game bosses had minor adjustments.
- A bit of time has been added to a certain timed sequence very very close to the end. I highly recommend the update for this one. The sequence seemed to be too much of a close call and didn't allow for that many errors on the players part.

As before, an exe only link is provided, this time in the downloads section.

And a screenshot since there has not been one for awhile.

What sort of trouble are they getting into now?

 









So yeah, Ninja Gaiden 3, I was playing that, and then suddenly something happened... I saw something, I thought it was just my imagination, or that I was doing really well or, NOPE, the game has regenerating health. Not only that, it has been reduced to easily stun locking everything and multi-killing everything before it has a chance to even look at you.

Now I haven't finished the game, but I have yet to die... once. I think I'm fairly decent at games overall, but I know I'm not THAT good at Ninja Gaiden. The first game tosses me around like a rag-doll. It's incredibly easy... no wait, it's not Ninja Gaiden. You really can't say Ninja Gaiden and easy in the same sentence, but this has happened now. It's not the lack of losing, even without that, you can still 'feel' when something is pushing you. The game also lacks any depth that the first two had and just comes out to be this shallow mess. Everything can be dealt with by just pressing one button with no further thought put into it. I've tried the hardest setting the game gave to me at the time, it's still nothing and still incredibly bleh. The game is all visuals pandering to the casual market.

Why, WHY does it have regenerating health? You'll barely get hit in it anyway! It has too much modern gaming garbage thrown into it where it doesn't belong. They're trying too hard to feed it to the masses that couldn't play the other ones. Once again, I'll say it. Screw them, there are plenty of games for everyone out there, and they're also great, but Ninja Gaiden should not be one of those games.

It also tries way too hard to throw the story in your face when you really don't and won't care about it. Remember the first two with its really short sequences that got to the point? Yeah, I do too...

Oh yeah and it has quick time events... EVERYWHERE... omg, they are all over the place.

Oh well, at least there is this.

P.S. (Wait I have those in this?) I seem to really enjoy coding enemies with partial shields in DT3. Those Spin Bots aren't the only thing with external shields. Also, enemies with full frontal defense, including from melee attacks is a thing in DT3. (Don't forget about those explosive weapons.)

Another DT1 Update

Edit: (April 14, 2012) Okay, fixed that text problem, the exe is here, (the link down there was changed too) Full download on the side if that's your thing or don't already have the game. Let's pretend 3.0 didn't exist and that text issue was all a bad dream... right?

Edit: (April 13, 2012) So yeah the font distortion in the new version... *headdesk* This is an issue that plagued the game about 2 years prior (on certain machines, and apparently my machine now) that I could never figure out how to fix, despite my efforts. Then one day, Game Maker updated to 8.1 and the font issue went away... FOREVER... or at least I thought forever until GM8.1 updated again last week... I blame them... for everything. For some reason though, it seems to only effect the text that displays when the camera moved the frame before. So cutscenes it's fine. But the text that pops up in action will distort... and only for dialogue boxes, not menus or anything else. That leads me to believe it's something I can fix, it's probably some issue with the text being draw on a floating point coordinate... wait, I never thought of that till now... *tries something*

Edit 2: AuGhghdheiasd;jfopihsdf;lksjdf That's me being a derp. It was indeed that the text position was not done as an integer. I have to go, but when I return later this afternoon, I'll re-release that update cause I failed to notice that so long ago. You'll know cause it will have a nice little .1 at the end instead of that .0. Oh man, at least I now know now know noknlsdkfjsaldfkhas;ldfkjasdfsf. Sorry about that mistake.

Just a quick note here about a new update for DT1. This should fix up the issues people are having with the West Side Jungle level or any problem with backgrounds not loading in properly. It also fixes my terrible misuse of "it's" and "its". Yeah, Game Maker has a search function... (Man I suck.) There's also a few very minor balance tweaks, 99% of them are for things near the end of the game.

The new version no longer has a "Backgrounds" folder since all of those are in the exe now. If you already have the game, and don't want to download 68mb worth again, you can also download just the exe file:
DT1 Exe Only
Simply put it where the old exe is and run it from there!

About the game not running
I develop the game on Windows XP, and I've noticed a lot of the issues come from users of Windows 7 and Vista. I cannot personally test the game on these platforms as neither I or my roommates have those versions of Windows, however... I've seen a comment on youtube where a user could not start the game, then he put it in 'Program Files' and the game worked. I don't know how/why that works, but if it worked for him, it may work for others that can't get the game to run. (Looks like I may do some research on that subject.)

Another thing to try is setting the game to run in 32-bit compatibility mode if you're running on a 64-bit system.

Lots of Update

Edit: (April 12, 2012) A few issues have come up with the game not starting properly for some people. For some, setting the game's compatibility mode to 32-bit if you're on a 64-bit version of Windows may help. It seems Game Maker games sometimes have problems with 64-bit systems. This 'may' also (in rare occasions) fix the issue where resources are not loading in properly, even on the newest version. I've seen nearly all of the problems come from the West Side Jungle level's background. If the problem persists, I may remove those backgrounds as external sources and embed them into the exe. The only downside is the game takes a bit longer to boot up, but seeing how this issue prevents some people from playing past that point, it's a fair workaround. (That and playtesting to make sure no errors slip through from changing things.) I just wish I knew why some of the resources are being skipped over...

Just a note: I've seen several comments saying people would like to contact me. You can contact me through the email here, PMing me on youtube or the talkhaus, or whatever suits your fancy... as long as it reaches me. I'm a bit slow to respond at times, but I try to address everyone that takes the time to message me.

I've been keeping up with raocow's LP, and I do read the comments, both on youtube and his talkhaus thread. It's roughly (not all) the same type of comments I'm used to, just in a much higher quantity. I do enjoy the comments, whether they are positive or negative, and do take them into consideration when applicable. Periodically I'll sneak in a comment on youtube, but it'll usually be to point out something I found humorous. As for his LP, I rather like his blind, learn as I go, way to playing the game. So far, he knows everything he should by this point. The normal setting allows for that at this point in the game.

So yes, DT3 stuff. I thought about releasing a small update to the demo to include Gate C, but I'm not happy with a certain map. I might scrap it and redo it. It has a nice cat and mouse flow to it that caused the testers to rage, which I'd keep. They liked the rest of the level, but no one really felt that map was well done, so... yeah. That has been done for awhile and I've moved on to finishing the 7th chapter for now. Gonna leave that map alone for the time being.

Also I've heard this game comes out this summer. Lollipop Chainsaw Which is sweet.

Oh yeah, there hasn't been a screenshot in a long while...

Cannons take you places!

Sequential Offsetting

So I heard (or saw rather) that a certain LPer is going to play through DT soon. I'm not much of an LP viewer, but I do check out a few here and there. I've seen some of Pink's, Roahm, and such. From what I can see, raocow does blind runs, and it's pretty cool to have the game picked up by a fairly well known LPer, so things could get interesting. As I said before, I don't view a lot of LPers, I only first heard of raocow about 6 months ago, that should give you an indication of how out of the loop I am as far as that goes.

The blog's look will go back to normal soon. My roommate said I should leave it like this for a week... I don't know if I'm going to keep it up for a week, but we'll see.

No updates or patches for the DT3 demo for now. When Gate C is done, there will be an update. It'll include some other changes based on feedback, so that'll be ready for those that haven't played the demo yet.

The feedback for the demo has been really positive. Even though I try to keep it fairly casual and think of the game as purely a fun little project that I just happen to be sharing with those that may find some fun with it, I still got nervous about releasing it. I figure that's mostly due to giving the third game expectations and being more vocal with the players about it. I'm liking this approach though, it's fun having all this feedback and suggestions. I've learned quite a bit from bouncing ideas back and forth with a few of you guys. (Including the testers, and to be honest, they're my harshest critics, but that's good. They have helped out a ton.) For some reason, I kept thinking the DT3 demo would be torn into very harsh, but that wasn't the case.