Stuff Under the Header

10/21/2013

Game Mechanics

The grackles from the north are back for the cold season. Thousands of grackles fill the sky every evening now. They also catch on really quick when other grackles find food. Once one of the regulars that know me approach me, the 1 or 2 birds quickly turn into about 25-30.

Holy Shit, Censorship
This is partially why this post suddenly happened. Was gonna save some of this stuff for later, but here it is... well the stuff below this link, but check this out anyway, I find it very important to know about.
Silly things that happen
Edit: The dev responded to what happened

Game Stuff
Here's some changes that have happened lately.

Jerry's Dash
More specifically, his backdash is now a ground dash like the forward one. This had some humorous bugs before it got to the testers. Like being able to use up all your dashes incredibly quick to build up immunity time. It's still possible to do, but the button sequence and timing is so incredibly tight and specific, that if someone can pull that off, more power to them. Plus running completely out of dash points in DT3 can suck a lot.

Gate A Boss
Since all the other Extra Gates (now called Nightmare Gates) have boss fights, I figured it would be good to get one for this level too. That and there aren't that many other Mario based boss encounters planned aside from those in Gate 1. Though if you play the Nightmare Gates right after their respective gates, that's still quite a gap in time between the early and later Mario boss fights.

Changed due to... you guessed it! Reasons!!










The layout is the same for the level above, the tiles simply changed for the Castle level in Gate A. And the tiles now matching Yoshi's Island totally have nothing to do with the boss fight... nope! Actually the boss room tiles are using the Gate 1 castle tiles, but that's because they work better for that part.

Forest Palace
Do you guys remember this place in Gate 2? Probably not for most of you. I personally despise this level. There's only so much you can do with Zelda 2 styled dungeons and make it continually intresting. At least without changing it so much that it becomes unrecognizable from its reference material. Having 3 of them seems like overkill. The Desert Palace is good and introduces the Gate and the basic, 'press the attack button to kill things' mechanic just fine. The Great Palace is different enough (and specifically the memories involved for anyone that played it will instantly cause them to differentiate it from everything else) to keep it around. But the Forest Palace is just there, clinging to this weird rules with the floors being lies.

So it has been deleted and will be remade into a new, more interesting Forest Temple. It's closer to what you would find in more modern Zelda games, but in 2D of course. There were some decent moments in the level, so those will be ported over to the new place. The Dragon boss has been moved to the Great Palace as a sub-boss. Though he might be pushed to a very very very short new zone just before the Great Palace as a guardian of sorts. Still deciding on that. The new Forest Temple will get a more interesting boss fight as well. I mentioned below it was a boss fight used to test engine way back before it was DT.
Spoilers: It does involve OoT's Forest Temple's idea of turning rooms upside down.

11 comments:

Kurtis Haren said...

Oh yeah, I saw that video earlier today. I've gotten a video taken down before, but only because I used a clip from a MegaMan anime during a review segment of the video. Still, you are allowed to challenge the claim, and as long as you're following the Fair Use rules, it's not that hard to overturn a copyright claim. So, if TB decides to actively challenge it, he should have the video back up rather quickly. Still, the idea that a developer would do that to try and hide the quality of their game is pretty awful. I mean, the whole idea of criticism is to be able to improve the next time around.

I don't mind having the Forest Temple rebuilt. As long as it does something unique, it should make a pretty good improvement. Personally, I thought the Zelda gate seemed to drag on a bit longer than I would have liked, and that's before hitting the Water Temple. Although, the flipping mechanic when applied to 2D makes me think more of Symphony of the Night. (I've been doing a Castlevania marathon. I've never played these games before. I'm up to Legacy of Darkness, as Reinhardt on Hard Mode.)

Just to clarify, the Yoshi's Island tiles are for the Mario-themed area only, or are you using them for the Forest Palace as well? You brought them up after discussing the Zelda gate, but mentioned the Mario one.

ZephyrBurst said...

Ah, bad spot for that screenshot, I'll move it.
It's only for Gate A.

NegativeZeroZ said...

In addition to Gate A being the only Nightmare Gate so far without a boss, Gate A is also the only one that uses only re-used tile and music resources (except one later on that can't really help it). I approve of the change and kinda hope you'll take it further.

I'm sure TotalBiscuit/CynicalBrit would easily win his case. The only problem is getting YouTube to actually bother, but since there's ad money involved, I doubt that would be an issue. The issue is getting YouTube to actually bother protecting people who aren't making them money, but of course that would involve giving corporations less power over video content, so I doubt it will realistically happen, unless all YouTube partners suddenly went on strike or something, but THAT would involve people who ARE making money off of YouTube NOT doing that for the sake of people who aren't doing that already, which I also doubt would ever realistically happen.

ZephyrBurst said...

Yeah, I linked that not for TotalBiiscuit, cause like he said, he'll be fine. It's to spread the word of what can happen to those smaller guys out there. And of course, to help spread the word of a shitty pseudo-dev.

ZephyrBurst said...

And forgot, that castle segment also uses a new theme. As for more, it might in the future, but for now it's just a tile/music change.

NegativeZeroZ said...

Mainly all I meant by taking it further is applying the Yoshi theme to the first two rooms too. :P

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lostsoldier20 said...

I'm a bit late to the TB thing here (I actively watch his stuff so I knew about the situation), but I find the response to be pretty hilarious. "Monetization was not mentioned" It doesn't take any amount of brainpower to deduce that a game reviewer (despite reviewer being the wrong word) is going to monetize their video, since it is their job to do these reviews. And with that, they are also trying to be all "oh, we were in the right because it was never agreed upon" while still issuing an "apology". Right... we totally believe you are sorry.

And then nukemdukem got hit with some strikes. Someone didn't like him speaking on the issue.

Marcel Henry said...

Hello there.
I've been a somewhat silent watcher. But this blog entry actually excites me.
The revamp is a nice idea.
Hmm, could you upload a screenshot for the Forest Temple just as well? After all it is part of the available demo and in case that the demo won't be updated with the new content for these chapters us gamers would at least get an idea of how that new area looks like. Obviously you won't use any Zelda tileset since there simply isn't any 2D, sidescrolling Zelda game that could provide said tileset.
Hopefully, you'll use the awesome Forest Temple theme from OoT. It was undoubtely one of the best dungeon themes from any Zelda game especially due to its atmospheric sound.

The excuse for the incident is ridicolous man. What the hell?

ZephyrBurst said...

Oh yeah, the Forest Temple theme has been among my 'to be used' files for months.

I've recently moved the completion of the forest temple revamp to later, although some of it has been started, and I periodically go back to do a bit of work on it. When I have something to show, I'll definitely post up a screenshot.

NegativeZeroZ said...

Never agreed upon my ass. What game dev in their right mind would just hand out Steam keys to any random person claiming to be a game reviewer without doing any research on them? "Strongly implied" permission is an understatement. I have no doubt in the world that he knew exactly who TotalBiscuit was, and exactly what he planned to do with that Steam key.

It sounds like he's making his email responses to reviewers' requests ever so slightly "ambiguous" just so that he can see how his game is reviewed first, then shut down all the negative ones. "We've been busy..." yeah, filing copyright claims to YouTube, I bet.