Healing Items and Stuff

Edit: (11/20/2013) It's the Planetside 2 first year anniversary. On that note, if you tried the game and were turned off from it due to it running like shit, I recommend trying it again. The game has had a huge overhaul on its back-end and has improved its performance for nearly everyone, and they're doing 2 more, smaller, optimization passes on the game. It's also going to be on the PS4, again as a free-to-play game, and you won't need PS+ to play it.

The other day after shopping, I found about a quarter of a burger left outside. Well the top bun anyway. It had been out for awhile, which was made apparent by the bread being hard. I saw a grackle close by and tossed it over to her. She happily skittered over and grabbed it. That happy mood was quickly replaced by very visible frustration at the bread being hard. She shook it and threw it on the ground twice. I waited and watched to see what she would do next.

One thing that grackles know how to do is put hard food in water to let it soften, such as dog food. However, bread can be a pain in the ass for them to eat when it's wet. There were plenty of puddles around for her to use, which I figured she'd use, but that's not what she went for. Instead, she grabbed the dried bread and flew in front of a parked car, then placed the bread in front of the left front tire. What's interesting to note is the setting is a parking lot, so there were plenty of parked cars around. She didn't just put the bread in front of any random car though, she chose the one car among the rest in the area that had someone sitting in it.

So after putting the bread in front of the car, she went to the side, looked up at the car, and started chirping at it.

Healing Items
Short segment here. It's worth noting that when playtesting, I don't ever use healing items. If I can't get through a segment without the help of healing potions, then the level has to be edited. (Technically I have to be able to perfect run a segment, but when doing a full run through an entire area, that is disregarded due to human error. The healing potion clause always applies though.)

Stuff
I've mentioned that DT3 will be the last fan-game (or game with sprite-rips) that I'll do. It'll also be the last of its scale that I'll make, at least alone anyway. DT3 is massive, its main quest is definitely bigger than DT1, and that's not mentioning DT3's side content. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it would be a lie to say this wasn't an oversight. I prefer smaller games honestly, both in playing and making I've found. Really, I think games should be smaller for the most part, MMOs aside. I feel games typically explore their gameplay well enough within 5-8 hours. The rest seems like filler or copypaste content. DT3 isn't any different, to be honest. I've tried to bring something unique to each area, and not just in the visuals. If I were in the mindset I am now 2 years prior, DT3 would be a bit smaller, but at this point, it would hurt the project to cut it down. It certainly explores each of its Ability Sets extensively, especially on the end game chapters.

On the note of games being shorter, this is a huge topic, and not one I know how to fully address. In some cases, more content can be better, even if it's more of the same type you've come across before. I'm pretty sure we could have gone without level... we'll pick 5-2, or 6-1 in the first Mario game and it wouldn't have felt any different than it did... or would it? It's hard to really figure out, “Is this better with or without this content? Does it add anything to the experience? But does it take away something without its presense?”

I know if I were to start cutting existing content, the Sky Castle in Gate 3 would be the first to go. Next would be a few misc. maps in Gate 2, and I know of 2 or 3 maps in Gate 5 that I'd remove. That's speculation though, I'm not removing existing content that currently works.

Progress
Chapter 14 is getting fairly close to being done. Just a few more gameplay scenarios to script and it'll be ready.

As for unique content for each new area, the end game certainly does this better than the rest of the game.

Data Entry

Something about birds. I'll have something about them next time.

Random Shenanegans
Slaix and I had a totally super serious conversation about the end of DT3 the other day. These are such really big spoilers that I don't know if I should post this very serious conversation.

Slaix223: Speaking of time travel, I hope you're going to have time travel play a major role in the ending of DT3 just to piss everyone off.
ZephyrBurst: Haha.
ZephyrBurst: Right as the world program is about to go down, Jeremy hacks into the recovery drive and reverts everything back x days.
ZephyrBurst: START AGAIN!!
Slaix223: Start the entire game all over. It needs more length.
ZephyrBurst: Yes.
Slaix223: How are you supposed to say DT3 is a good game if it isn't 50 hours long?
ZephyrBurst: With only a few dialogue changes since the protagonists know what's going on this time.
Slaix223: Also everything does more damage because of the paradox effect.
ZephyrBurst: And when you get to the end, there's no epic final encounter. The protagonists just know how to hit the kill switch.
ZephyrBurst: THE END!!

Enemy Scan Data
This is a fairly big part of the game, especially for DT1 on Hard mode since cripple points were about the only way to do significant damage to a lot of late game enemies. I always liked the idea of being able to look up information about what you're going against in games. This idea came from Metroid Prime's scans and while they weren't really necessary, (like in DT) I found them more immersive more than anything. In DT1, it was mainly there to help players out that haven't played the source games that the enemies were from, or to clue them in on how to engage a boss fight. In Metroid Prime, it had all these nifty bits of info about what the creature ate and how it lived in the habitat you found it in. The Space Pirates always had interesting entries in how it described their weapons systems or about the heirarchy of their command when you found a higher ranking Pirate.

In DT2... let's just skip DT2.

In DT3, I wanted to make sure Jeremy and Chao, for the most part, had seperate roles in the scan data. Jeremy reclaims his role in DT1 of giving the player basic info on how an enemy behaves.
Chao will sometimes fill in a few blanks Jeremy left behind, but her primary role is tell where the sprite came from, source wise, and sometimes the differences in their behaviors in the source material and in DT3.
The Dev Comments are just my bits of info about not just the enemy scan, but about some of the things I was making on the game during that time. It was also made to seperate this from Chao's scans, since she started getting a bit too meta with her entries.

Talkhaus Is Back

I've been getting informed on the Talkhaus' state of recovery. Just in case you go there, but didn't know, it is now back. A thread about it is here.

Also a screenshot.

If it's not on fire, you're doing it wrong.