Changing Methods

Slaix and I had a conversation that involved randomized and deterministic elements in games. I won't go into exactly what we were talking about, but later on when thinking about it, it did remind me of the shift I've had in designing DT3, especially compared to DT1. That being, everything being designed lately has not had any random elements to them. Every action an enemy has is completely deterministic based on it and the player's current state.

Flame Instigator
Thinking back to the Flame Instigator fight in DT1. All his actions were somewhat randomized, but depending on what was happening, certain actions had a much better chance of occuring than others. At the time, I felt that was okay. Had I made that today, there would have been more to his decision making and no random elements would be around.

Death
Looking at Death, he has 3 scythe swings that can be chosen, in a combo of 3. These are chosen at random, which will be changed before the final version is released. I'll instead, set up a table that he cycles through. (Though I will have something set up that will skip or reset the table to keep it from being a set sequence every cycle.) I'm somewhat okay with that random element, given what it is, but in an encounter like Death, I'd like everything to be consistent.

Another random element to Death are where the single spawning scythes appear. They always appear at the top of the screen, with a variance of 16 pixels along the y. For x, they'll appear anywhere randomly within a 32 pixel margin border of the map sides. This will change to always be consistent for the final version. Something like spawning it directly above him, then the next spawn above the player, then the next being the median between the two along x, always near the top of the screen.

The larger scythe summon (where he'd kneel) has always been set in a sequence. The first is on the left, then right, then the top, and it repeats that cycle.

Gate G Boss
I won't be spoiling who/what it is, however the fight has similar elements of the above 2 encounters. I'll be keeping with my current standards of it being 100% deterministic.

Getting There

The final Gate level for DT3 has been finished! That doesn't mean DT3 is close to being complete (it is, but it isn't), getting there, but there's still quite a bit to do. Unlike DT1, which ended shortly after all the McGuffins were obtained, DT3 has quite a bit more that happens, which I've been referring to as 'End Game'. This takes place over the last 1/4 of the chapters (16-20). Though chapter 16 is a very short event that plays out in a crossover minigame. 17 and 18 have about as much content as chapter 7 (Begonia). 19 and 20 are fairly expansive sections of the game. So... it's getting there.

NZZ did a silly thing with the debug mode. This is 'technically' possible to occur under normal game rules, but would take forever to actually make happen and... well, all that spam.

I've also recently uploaded a video about some of the changes made to the game.

ZephyrBurst: Oh yeah, I'm doing it. I'm putting flashbacks in DT3.
ZephyrBurst: Well sorta.
ZephyrBurst: Towards the end of gate 6, there's a place called 'Dream Woods'.
Slaix223: Oh no.
Slaix223: Make sure to start it off with a flashback of when they entered Dream Woods.

Final Version

Been keeping a surprise for awhile. DT3 has been complete the last few weeks, but I just wanted to polish it up more before releasing it. Its been quite a thing to make this game and I definitely won't be tackling something so large on my own like this ever again. I enjoyed it though, even if I did go through a few down times with it and had to back away from the project now and then.

One thing to note, your demo save will not be compatible with this version, though I believe I mentioned that way back in the day. Someone is making a trailer for the game and that should be up soon, which is pretty cool of them to do so. Anyway, enjoy the game, things are a lot different this time than they were in the demo.

I said in the past that I would be releasing the project files for all 3 games, this is still true and will happen in a few months. And with that, I am done with the DT series at this point and will not be providing that much support for using the project files. I'll still be updating DT3 as far as bug fixes and all that go though, as I'm sure a few slipped through to the build released today.

You can get it here or in the usual spot on the side.