Stuff Under the Header

5/25/2016

The Pew Pew Segment Needs Love

Edit: The dropbox link has a version with a slight variance on a mechanic in the game that I'm going to be monitoring for a few days, which I'll then note. The change should help the flow of the levels various LPers are on that I'm watching. Secret tests!!

Most of you that come here seem to have beaten the game or have come close, so I'd like to hear your voice on this topic if you feel you have something to add to this. The segment I've been thinking a lot about lately is the shooter bit very late in the game. If you don't want spoilers on this segment, do not read on as this entry will have various specifics about it. (Though I'll leave out plot related things involving it.)

These are all proposed changes and I'd like to see what you, the players, think of some of these. Feel free to throw in suggestions as well.

-Focus Speed-
-I've heard many voices (not just from you Brian) on the focus speed being abysmally slow. I'm in agreement and think it could use between 0.5 - 1 pixel more speed per frame.
So this makes more sense, the normal speed of the ship is 6, while the focus speed is 2.
I'm thinking either 2.5 or 3 is a better speed for focus mode.

-Sucking-
This needs work for sure. Something that has always bothered me that I didn't ever address during development was mitigating the issue of getting hit while trying to gain new weapons, which a lot of times ended up in the player losing the weapon right after getting it. I'm thinking of having the player invulnerable the moment an enemy is latched by the sucking. (Trying to be as spoiler free as possible for potential accidental grazing eyes here.) And once an enemy is suckessfully sucked in, give the player somewhere between 15-30 frames of invulnerability. (0.5 - 1 second)
This may sound like it could be abused, but lets be real, that would be pretty hard to pull off properly. If someone was able to suck an enemy around the field and use the periodic i-frames to avoid bullets, well... I want to see that.
If this change is made, it'll be noted in the tutorial fields. (Which Robin hilariously passed over and questioned what the sucking did. Though in his defense, he figured it all out without the tutorials. So really, I'm both making fun of you, Robin, and giving you a compliment.)

-Weapons-
This part would take the most work, but I've thought about making a huge change to this. Essentially you'd always have access to the standard gun and it would be a neutral third slot. Getting hit would no longer revert the current weapon back to the standard shot, so you'd always be able to store 2 sub-weapons along with the standard one. (Thinking about even having them carry over through game-over and subsequent plays, maaaybe.)
When starting out, all 3 slots would be the standard gun, and if you eat an enemy with Jerry or Claire selected, it overrides their slot. Eating an enemy in neutral mode would either heal a bit of HP or give a longer invulnerability time. (I haven't decided on this if I were to make this change.)
If this goes through, weapons would probably be slightly rebalanced. The standard gun would get a very slight nerf. Some of the other weapons would get a bit more oomph to them as most of them are pretty situational.
Another idea is to keep the 2 slots the way they are, but the player does not lose the weapon when getting hit and can instead voluntarily revert back to the standard gun on that slot any time.

Let me know what you guys think in the comment section. I don't think this section of the game sucks. (Well, it kind of does actually.) Though it definitely could use a bit of love. The first two things should definitely happen.

5/24/2016

Fixes and Fur

Not a huge update this time, but I mainly wanted to get the Claire dash change out.

Patch Notes (Version 1.0.2.8)
- Claire's back dash will now properly be stopped by pressing left or right. (Meaning you can use her back dash and tap forward to keep her in place and use the invulnerability frames.)

- Claire's charged cannon starting damage from 70% -> 65% of standard cannon power. It will now lose 1.25% power per hit instead of 1%, minimum is 50%. It now takes 12 shots to bring it to 50% instead of 20.

- A few other minor fixes throughout that I've seen. And of course, birds added. 2 more to be precise in Central City - South.

- The bird counter in the records sub-menu will not correctly increment by 80 when leveling up in Gate 6. Glad I finally got this game breaking bug fixed. I apologize for those of you that have reached max level there and have missed out on the 5040 birds that should have been counted.

Star Fox Zero
This game sucks and I was gonna go on a rant about it, but upon seeing these two videos, I found that they more eloquently said everything I was going to.

Honest Trailers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IceMIN7wzAk

And my favorite reviewer
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/116870-Star-Fox-Zero-Review

5/16/2016

Time Flies

Its almost been a month since the last update and it doesn't feel like its really been that long. Today there are a lot of small fixes and tweaks to help the play experience and flow of some very late game bosses.

Patch Notes (Version 1.0.2.7)
- The following changes have been made to the first boss of Chapter 20.
  - All attacks have been reduced in power by 1. (check below for a few exceptions)
  - The hands had their attack power reduced from 16 -> 12 and now linger a bit longer.
  - The fire near the end of the fight burns quite a bit less: Power: 12 -> 9
  - The eyes near the end of the fight hurt less: Power 11 -> 9
  - The eyes near the beginning of the fight have a slightly longer warning time on their attack.
  - The attack dropping from the ceiling has slightly reduced frequency.
  - Added some sound effects to a few things in the encounter, which should help with their telegraphs.

- The following changes have been made to Shadow Eura.
  - Attack power reduced by 1 for all attacks.
  - The rocks now have scan data.
  - He will always appear in the rocks in the same order. (Used to be based on where the player was standing when the rocks started falling.)
  - He will no longer escape from the rocks prematurely. (That's right, I nerfed him, but then fixed the early rock release exploit!)

- All of Brain Machine's attacks now give half a second longer of a warn time before firing them.
- Brain Machine's floor lasers will spawn at a higher frequency. (On phase 1 and 2.)

- Jerry and Claire have extra input on the various tutorial messages for the Chapter 16 event to make those not so dry. (Might do the same for the late Chapter 19 event too.)

- The door leading to Death's Hall can no longer be opened with only 2 of Death's pieces.

- Fix for the enemy barrier sometimes not being removed during the encounter on the second map of the Displaced Construction Site.

- The Nightmare Mode exclusive morph bomb ability now properly removes its charge level when releasing the charge key too early. (It also has the charging sound.)

- The Nightmare Mode exclusive dagger ability no longer crashes the game when they hit a wall.

- Speaking of Nightmare Mode, check the NPC in Central City that talks about that mode's exclusive abilities. Some of them have been made much easier to perform since those new abilities should all be as accessible as the others.

- Note: I didn't mention this a bazillion updates ago, but on Nightmare Mode, the Belmont abilities (including the recharge speed) are set to the cost of the first level of their skill in the skill tree as that set is very restrictive, more so than the others, without any upgrades.

- Other misc fixes for things I've seen in LPs and from feedback.

- There are now birds on the title screen lined up that are equal in number to your AP level. If you're at the end of the game and aren't max level, go grind so you can have them all. GO GRIND! (Don't really.) If you're playing on Nightmare Mode, well... I'm sorry. :(