Lots of Video Games

I went on twitter for the first time in forever and figured out there was the @Connect button at the top. Yep.
Also I watched a bird stretch her legs, and then stretch her wings. I don't know why it looked interesting to me. I'd get a picture, but I can't just ask her to do it again.

DT3 Thingie
On an unrelated topic, I've found the hardest thing for me when making complex things in DT is just starting them. The Death encounter, for example, I knew what I wanted to do and all the elements that would need to go into it, but where to start had me puzzled. Thinking about the end result when starting from almost nothing is a headache. At the start of things like that, I usually take baby steps with it, setting up very simple things. The process isn't always the same.

For example, with Death, his sprite wasn't his hitbox, (it was for damaging you) so making sure that was where it needed to be was first. Next up was his animation speeds and zoning. After that, I kept him stationary and made sure each of his attacks were positioned right. The telegraph before each swing was part of that step. Next up, his 3 consecutive swings were implemented and his movement was given back. The swing size increase as the fight goes on was made after that. His projectile deflect was added in just after. This without anything else was tested for awhile so all the minor adjustments could be made to make sure it was perfect. This aspect of the encounter was the most important part, so most of my attention was on that. His periodic scythes were added in after that. This was actually where it was originally going to stop, but it felt like there needed to be one other interruption to the player. That's when I added the multiple scythe summons. (Not the mid-battle sequence, that was always planned, but those are done last.) After the timing and adjustments were made to those, it was time for all the finishing touches, like figuring out what was a fair HP count. It needed to be enough that kept the player from brute forcing in any scenario, but not so much that the fight would drag on. I wanted the fight no longer than roughly 90 seconds. The outcome needed to be fairly quick, it would either be you or him going very fast.

Not really sure of what my original point was, other than I'm currently making something puzzling on my end for Chapter 10. It's pretty nifty to see this sequence in action though, probably the most cinematic DT has ever gotten.

DT3 Changes
DT3 has had lots of changes after the demo (2.1) release and it will continue to do so, some minor and some very big. The biggest change that isn't in the game yet is Gate 6 and 7 being merged into one and its ability not able to be moved outside of it. (Not completely anyway, there are certain passive elements taken from it that will apply to both characters.) Here's a list of some of changes in the game now, some based on feedback. (That would be visible to anyone that played the demo, a few have been mentioned before.)
- The max bottles is 2 instead of 3. (Technically not in the game, but a 3rd will not be available later.)
- Ammo, such as arrows and heart energy, will be set to 20% if it was below that when respawning after choosing 'Retry from checkpoint'.
- Movement speed is no longer affected when charging attacks.
- Inactive abilities recover energy at 1/4 their normal speed.
- Claire's control was tightened up to match Jerry, but her dash has remained the same. DT3 is going to require more precision and Claire's floaty control didn't work for it.
- Everything causes knockback, including stationary traps like spikes. No more sliding around everywhere uncontrollably. There are a few non-knockback damage objects in the game, they do not interupt your attack state, but you do not get invincibility frames. Like the undashables (red outline), these are also clearly marked.
- Wolf Heads don't shoot through walls and Tektiles don't glitch through walls.
- Jerry's Sword Master skill and Claire's Cool Whip skill no longer affect attack speed. That is now static and set to the equivalent of Lv.3. The skills instead boost the stun time of their respective abilities.
- Jerry's Bomb can be remotely set off. (To its flashing point.)
- Claire's Holy Water loses 25% of its power when entering its Explosion state.
- There is a limit on the amount of projectiles you can fire from one ability at a time. Example, Jerry can only have 2 arrows on screen at a time, same with Claire's Dagger and Holy Water.
- Salem Witches deactivate sooner and a witch's projeciles are destroyed when the witch that fired them is defeated.
- In Gate 4, Jerry can fire off walls at any time instead of when only having downward velocity.

AP and item costs probably won't be finalized till just before the game goes beta.

Something under the hood changed that made particles about 3x more efficient when spawning in. It had the side affect of breaking some of the places that particles spawned, but most of those have been fixed. Maybe all of them by now. One tester found quite a few places in Gate 4 that I had missed.

Video Games
So many games. The first is this little game called Skrillex Quest. I don't really care for dupstep much, but this still got my attention. Some dust gets into an NES cartridge and messes up a game world and it's up to P1 (You) to fight through the glitches... and playing along with Skrillex' song, "Summit". I found the music enjoyable for this little game and I forgot I was listening to dubstep, in fact, I like the song.

Slaix showed me this one (and a friend posted it to me on Facebook) called Old Spice Saves the World. Sound ridiculous? It is, and its got some fun humor along with it involving current political silliness. The rest I won't spoil.

If you like stealth games, check out Mark of the Ninja on either Xbox Live or Steam. This game has no combat at all. If you're caught, you're probably dead. It respects the gun beats sword logic well. I actually got Jerry into it as it matches his view of ninjas. He doesn't like Ryu Hyabusa for that reason, which I like to call the action ninja. There's a demo available and I recommend playing if you love stealth games.

On the subject of stealth games, if you've been around my blog awhile, you might remember when I recommended Stealth Bastard, a game which Slaix had shown me. It was made in Game Maker and featured leaderboards and the works. This game is now on Steam with improvements. The old version was pretty sweet and while I haven't played the new one, I'm sure it's even better. Dust Force started as a Game Maker game as well before coming to Steam and saw many improvements for its final market version.