Bad Fan

Edit: (May 22, 2011) Slaix mistyped the url for the blog and came upon this. I laughed.

Edit: (May 21, 2011) All the ability sets except for one are set up. (Small nuances aside.) One was removed, or rather replaced today. All the sets have distinct advantages and drawbacks based on each other, but the removed set didn't flow well with the others. The set in question was a Contra set. It doesn't mean I won't have a Contra themed level though. The replacement has been decided and is being coded now. It looks good on paper, whether or not it actually plays well with others is another story. I'll know very soon.

The bad fan is me. I was generously given a copy of 'Viewtiful Joe: Double Trouble' this last weekend and I didn't know it was the third game in the trilogy. I saw the title of the game and assumed it was another spin off to the series like Red Hot Rumble and didn't research on it. This whole time I had been looking forward to finishing the trilogy and it was out THIS WHOLE TIME!! >_< As soon as my roommate lets me use his DS, I'm going to play it cause I'm cheap like that and I don't have a DS of my own. Viewtiful Joe (along with most of Clover Studios games) is one of my favorite games of all time. My top 5 if anyone is curious are:
1. God Hand
2. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
3. Viewtiful Joe / Okami
4. Yoshi's Island
5. Ikaruga

Distorted Stuff
I'll start off with giving screenshots of stuff. Yay!

Both shots actually show works in progress. The first is of the abilities menu which displays info about your eh... ability sets. :P As you can see they have levels per ability and level up the more you use them. (I think I said that in a previous post.)
The second shot is the skill menu. (or Spend AP as shown ingame) It's pretty self explanatory for the most part. The red circles are locks and are unlocked through story progression. The skills attached to the locks are not only unattainable but what they do are also obscured until the lock is undone. All the locks must also have a point or two in the skill they are linked from to unlock as well. The blue ones are the unlocked ones.

So there's a little bit to look at and speculate on for now. The way it is planned out, the player will not be able to max everything out by the end of the game unless they go for the extras. (Or grind, but who does that?) :P

All of the writing is almost done and I think for those of you that want more story focus will enjoy what I have prepared.

Other Games
I got a chance to play a really obscure PS2 game this last weekend called The Red Star. It was shown to me by a friend. (Same guy who gave me Viewtiful Joe.) If I had heard about this game online or seen it on the shelf, I may not have thought much about it considering it's based off a comic book and I generally have low expectations for licensed games. But seeing how said friend has the same taste in games I do and highly recommended it, I knew I was in for a treat. It's an action game mixed with shooter mechanics (think bullet-hell). Generally the levels with the (sometimes) swarms of enemies are brawler action based, where the bosses change to bullet-hell. It sounds like it's a genre mix gone wrong, but it actually blends together rather well. It's a difficult game and if you're not good at bullet-hell games, you may not enjoy it. Then again, if you're here and playing DT, then you'll probably enjoy The Red Star.

I really shouldn't let the licensed game fact get in the way of my first impression of games (or anything). Getting past that sometimes reveals rare gold mines. Like this game or the new My Little Pony. (Yeah I know, I slipped in yet another mention of it.)

Production Started

Nearly all of the pre-production work is done for DT3 and more time has been put into the actual production. I have been building all the systems and ground work for the game as well, which is also, surprisingly, almost complete. Surprising because I'm often not given much time to work on these things. Though the time I do work on it is very focused.

Design Challenges
Periodically I'll be talking about the challenges that come up during development for the game, the first is here.
While the game doesn't start off in a Mario styled level this time around, one does pop up fairly early on. The difference with DT3 is that the worlds will work a lot closer to their original format. (Those that are not part of the main overworld that is) You already saw near the end of DT2 on the airship that you could stomp on the projectiles the ship threw at you. The Mario area works like this as well. The design challenge with this segment was figuring out an effective way of handling collision. It's not enough to just have the stomping work exactly like Mario games. The physics involved with them highlight and work with the ability to jump on enemies. DT isn't quite like that. The movement is not set up for that type of gameplay, resulting in a lot of fumbling on the player side. I thought about changing the physics for that area, but it felt inconsistent. These enemy types also appear in other areas of the game, so that awkward control will just resurface. Plus there's too much else for the player to learn how to do in the game without having to try and figure out yet another movement style. My method comes in 2 parts. The first is the amount of leeway given when stomping on enemies. In DT2, you may have seen cases where you were able to stomp on an enemy even when hitting from an area like this:

This is due to how the threshold works, which is largely based off of your downward speed. (This threshold was scaled down a bit and changed for DT3) It is very possible with enough downward speed, that hitting an enemy from the side half way up your character will still result in a success on your end. The other minor part of this is how the character bounces off of enemies. In DT3, you are given a lot of slow air time after bouncing off of them. That is if you don't hold the jump button on contact. Doing so has the effect of giving you a rather large lift, but it doesn't have the slower motion the low bounce has. These 2 changes, specifically the hit detection, make things feel a lot more fluid.


An Interesting X-Box Live Game
I was recently shown an interesting game that can be bought on Live called Chime. It's a musical puzzle game... No really, that's what it is. Basically you put 5-blocked pieces on a board to create rectangles, the larger the better and try to fill a board with these completed rectangles. The concept is simple, but where it becomes awesome is how the music dynamically changes. Where you place the pieces, where the completed areas are all change how the music plays and it's interesting to out how the music evolves as the board is filled up. The beats always start simple and build up as the board is filled, which flows nicely with the gameplay.

The game was released in February last year and is very cheap. Only 400 points ($5). Even more awesome, 60% of this goes to charity. All of the music in the game was written for it and given free. I have a soft spot for things like this. If you enjoy puzzle games with a lot of meta-gaming potential, pick it up.

Ponies
The entire first season of Friendship is Magic has finally aired and now Hasbro is stating that they do not have plans to release a DVD/Bluray set of Season 1. The fans have expressed their displeasure to this statement, me being one of them. There is a lot of interest and demand for a physical copy of this show. If you're a fan of the series and wish to see a DVD, I suggest expressing your interest to them in some way. Online petitions typically hold no merit, so that is not a good method. Writing a letter directly to the marketing team, or customer service, (probably the better choice of the two) expressing your interest can be effective. Another, somewhat surprising method to me, is Twitter. There are various ways through Twitter to voice yourself to Hasbro.

Lots of Work & a Choice

Edit: (May 3, 2011) I'll be out of town for a few days. Be safe and have a great week. Also wow, you guys have added a lot of tropes to the trope page. Thanks for keeping that going. :)


Edit: (May 1, 2011) Feel free to suggest ideas for levels too. Also the GM8.1 update broke the supersound extension. I thought it was me, but it seems plenty of others are having the same problem. It's weird because I'm sure the sound was functioning 3 days ago in 8.1. Luckily sound isn't important right now, but this is still an annoyance.

DT3 is proving to be a lot to handle. No worries, it's nothing I can't handle. I knew it would be a lot going into it and I've prepared myself. (So many notes and spreadsheets. Excel is God's gift to organizers.) No really though, there's A LOT in this. O_O What Applejack said.

Suggestions for one of Claire's Ability Sets
One of Claire's Ability Sets are still in the planning phase, so here's where you guys can have some choice on what you'd like to see in the game. Either email me at "the_happyfungame@yahoo.com" (without the _) or leave a comment here on what game or character's abilities you'd like to see in the game. You can suggest just the overall idea or even ideas for the abilities themselves.

All Ability Sets have 3 main attacks and/or abilities and some have an extra active or even a passive ability as well. (Such as being able to block frontal attacks while in the Link set) The attacks are all set up as projectiles, though I won't rule out close range. This is for Claire, all of Jerry's abilities at this point are set. I may or may not announce which suggestion I choose. I probably won't as to keep it a surprise, though I will note who's suggestion I used for credits purposes. :)
Currently announced sets: Mario, Link, Samus.

Viruses and Updates

Edit: (April 26, 2011) After testing GM8.1, I've found that it renders roughly twice as fast as the old version, which is awesome.
I can finally zoom in and out in the map editor. The maps look so small when zoomed out.
Click me for image (you know this place)
Oh yeah, when DT2 gets another update, it will have the anti-aliased text fixed up. GM turned it all the way up for every font. Whoops.

Bleh, I got one last night. Luckily my virus protection got rid of it in the blink of an eye. Unluckily it didn't catch it soon enough and it destroyed all my file-type associations. Couldn't even get System Restore open. Luckily I managed to get Firefox open and found something to restore everything back to normal. So it was a short lived chaotic computer moment.

As you might have noticed, I've started changing the blog around. The downloads for the games have been moved up a section, I like it better this way. DT2 was updated with the changes outlined in the previous post. The file size was boosted by half a MB, oh no! D: I remade the exe with Game Maker's update. The exes are a bit bigger with the update, but I didn't see any changes to the loading times. The game itself will run faster now. Yoyogames sped up the sprite rendering, yay! I haven't actually tested how much better it is yet. I'm going to do a stress test after this post. They said they fixed the font issues, so the jumbled font issue SHOULD be fixed. I finally have more font options, like making the anti-aliasing better or turning it off completely. The update doesn't have any changes in that regard yet. Whether or not there's a significant boost in performance, the first DT will be getting an update from this too. I gotta fix those sound bugs anyway.

Won't be a spoiler if you finished DT2.
***** SLIGHT SPOILERS BELOW... I THINK *****



So you all saw the end of DT2 right? As you saw, it left on a cliff... hanger. (Wow that's a bad joke.) This does mean that there will be a third and final chapter to the game. It's not going to be finished for quite some time. I'm thinking 2 years. I won't have too much time to work on it for the next few months. That and it's a fairly ambitious project, at least that's what I've been told. If you got 100% in DT2, then you got an extra room that shared a bit of info about the third chapter... and an endless enemy gauntlet where you have infinite health and energy... because uh... I said so.

So here's some more info to add onto that.
The third part, called "Saved Game", picks up right after the events of the second. Both Jerry and Claire are playable throughout it. (They can be swapped much like how Viewtiful Joe 2 was done.) The narrative will be receiving a huge boost, so those of you that enjoy that aspect will definitely enjoy this. The story centers around a city in the middle of the large game world in DT3, where Jerry and the group focus on gathering others to assist them in their fight against the virus that is consuming the world.

The elemental attack system has been removed. The virus strips away everything that Jerry and Claire could do from the first 2 games. However, they are able to equip ability sets. For example, Claire will get access to a Samus ability set, which lets her use Samus' cannon, missiles, and bombs, which of course means the Morph Ball. Jerry will get access to a Link set. The others will be kept secret. None of them, aside from one, can be used by both characters. These abilities are gained in separate zones and until that zone is completed, it can only be used in there, and is also the only set that will work in that zone until it is completed. Once that zone is complete, the abilities can be used in the main world. While each set has its own play style, I'm doing my best to keep things as simple and intuitive as possible. I understand a concern with the first two games was how fast all the game mechanics were given out. DT3 will bring players into the game world at a much better pace. Dashing will make a return, but it is also taken away at the beginning. In fact, the only thing you can do in the very beginning is run and jump... actually you can't even jump, wait... you can't even move. Jeremy will assist with these issues at the start of the game. :P

The health system will take a simple approach. Jerry and Claire will share the same health of course. This screenshot will show what I mean. The HUD is super incomplete as you can see. (Free Internetz if you can guess the game that background is from.)

The engine has received a boost in performance. (Not counting the faster rendering that the Game Maker update provides. I only just got that yesterday.) The target fps is still 30. Right now I have no plans to bring it up to 60.

RPG elements are coming back. Enemies give out points (AP) which can be assigned to skills in a skill tree. (It actually looks like a tree this time.) They're quite a bit different from what you saw in part 1. Each of your abilities can also level up through just using them.

The game physics have been changed. The characters both control relatively the same, Claire runs a bit faster and is a bit more slippery. Jerry has a tighter Mega Man like feel. Their dashes both work differently. Air Dashing will make a return as will wall jumping, though with the wall jump, it is limited to only 1 of the zones. It will never be usable in the main world. Wall sliding however, may possibly be available everywhere. That hasn't been decided yet.

As far as things like Link's arrows and Samus' missiles. They are consumables, and at this time, are the only consumable attack source. The others work on a recharge, including Link's bombs. (Actually if you have 0 arrows or missiles left, they will recharge to 1 after a few seconds.) There is a single pickup that will recover these. If the active character is Jerry, the arrows are refilled, etc.

Well I hope this excites you guys. Feel free to ask questions about it. As far as game length, it looks to be a bit shorter than the first, though only for the main quest. The third part, by far, has more optional things to do.

Biscuits

Edit: (April 23, 2011)  Going to release an update to DT2 soon.
--Changes--
-Twin Bloom's threshold for hiding was boosted so they don't hide quite as often. The target time was reduced by 2 seconds due to this.
-The spin threshold for the end of the Core fight was slightly reduced.
-The random meteors in the final level were removed in favor of a more scripted sequence.
-A new enemy named "Dopple" was placed in levels 2-3 and 3-1 so now all levels are completely chainable. Dopple doesn't do anything aside from be pathetic. Everything is a 1 hit kill to it and if you manage to take damage from it, it's only 1 damage. The target score on 2-3 has increased by 200, and 3-1 by 100. Dopple is worth 10 points on its own.


This really has nothing to do with biscuits.

Well if you've beaten part 2, even without 100%, then I'm sure you've figured out what's coming up. In the next blog post, I'll talk about how it's going to work. I can say right now though, that you shouldn't be expecting it within the next year... most likely even next 2 years. It also looks like my attention will be drawn to a small group project for a bit of time, this isn't confirmed yet, but the project sounds really fun. It wouldn't be right of me to say what it is right now. I can and will say hoverboards and being awesome. That's all I should say on it.

The fixes to part 2 are still in the works. I'm thinking Tuesday. (Argh, I really shouldn't say a date.) Oh and by the way, Portal 2 will be released tomorrow around this time. That is unless the playing of the games quota is met. Doesn't look like it will. I'm sure a lot of you are looking forward to it, I know it's going to be awesome. Yay for calling out of work 'sick' to play it. Take THAT corporate manager whom is the bane of everyone's existence within the office! Hooray for being irresponsible with sick days!

Have fun, happy easter, and something else which I'm sure I'm forgetting. Go ahead and comment on the ending here if that is your preferred method. It should be safe now. Plus this line acts as a spoiler warning... or something.

No pictures with walls of text are no fun. So I'll once again post an image related to my latest obsession.
Apparently she was so insulted by Rarity's comment, she changed her mane color

Version 2 of Part 2

Huh... It definitely needs one after the feedback I've gotten from various people. It's been very consistent feedback which is a good sign to me. At least from the perspective of things that I did right, people really liked and didn't feel the need to mention. Nearly all of the concerns are about the final area. Surprisingly, no one raged at me for 3-1. I'm pretty happy about it. That level went through way more iterations than all the others. It took a lot of revamping to get the pieces spaced out just right. The version before the final had 4 more Fire Eyes spread out among the first map alone. This quickly proved too much to handle, specifically for attempting high score runs.

The levels are laid out in a way that the player can chain from enemy to enemy without running out of energy. There are only 2 spots throughout the game that will break a chain. I'll go ahead and mention them, 2-3B during the narrow spike wall section, and 3-1A when grabbing the second Gem. It's possible that the 3-1A one is chainable (I know that's not a word Firefox) and I just suck... or something.

If you guys have ever looked at the "Special Thanks" section and noticed the name "Dave", then... uh... you've noticed that name. Anyway, he was one of my roommates in college whom I bounced ideas off of quite often. We've had numerous design discussions, even now. I mentioned the 2 breaks in chaining to him last month and he suggested to have an enemy that is there just for continuing a chain. Basically making it a very pathetic enemy that does nothing but stand there being cannon fodder. I will probably put this in for the next update for DT2. If I do though, it is going to change the score requirement for both levels by a tiny bit. If you've gotten the target score on these 2 levels and then fall under that score for the next update, it will take away the award. Though I doubt it will affect much, it the target score will only increase by 100 or 200. The target score is based on the points given by all of the enemies in the level. This does not include chaining bonuses. Technically the later levels are easier to get the target scores on. Though with the easy chaining in the early levels, this isn't true. :P The later levels give a bit more of a grace period for the target time as well. (Aside from 2-3, you'll have to play that level a lot different if you want the target score.)

I really think a color change is needed for the blog. White on black is starting to bug me, so if you see a change to the layout or anything else here soon, don't be surprised.

No image to break up the wall of text, so I'll just link this.

Part 2 Coming Soon

Edit: (April 9, 2011)  Released a small update for DT2. Fixed a saving bug and made the auto-save not save EVERY time you come to the world map. A life bar bug with the second boss was fixed. A music glitch on the final level was fixed as well. (It didn't crash, just something presentation related.)

Edit: (April 8, 2011) And of course, send me bug reports and most importantly, critiques and comments, and things you would like to see better. I'm sure you'll have some. :)
Just don't post about the ending. Send concerns, comments, or questions about that privately for at least the next 2 weeks. :P

Edit: (April 7, 2011) I lied, the game is being released today, check the side links and you'll find it. Have with this. :D
Here's a screenshot showing my scores. The objective is to beat some of these. Also there's a hidden achievement in the game. You'll know when you find it, you'll see an "Achievement Unlocked". Don't try looking for it. For a clue, it requires 100% (It isn't getting 100%) and has nothing to do with scores.

P.S. You're all going to hate me for the end.

I'm not dead, just been away for the last 2 weeks painting an apartment. Luckily I have a laptop now so I could slip in some dev time for DT2. I would give a release date, but when I do, I wind up delaying it. I'm going to say Saturday. :P I was actually surprised that I was able to get anything done on it the last 2 weeks, they've been SUPER busy. Even if it's not Saturday, it will still be very soon. Sunday? (Sooner than Duke Nukem Forever, which got pushed by back another month.) So yeah, the suffering and numerous death by pitfalls will be able to start soon.

The only cut I made was there is 1 boss fight on the final level instead of 2. (Well it's got 2 parts at least... sortaish.) I can't say it's as epic as DT's final battle, but it will require you to think about it more. The World 3 boss will make up for the low amount of boss fights. :) On the boss note, be sure to scan them and see what your partner has to say about them. (It helps.)

Anyway last week felt somewhat empty. Probably because there was no new pony episode. I need my pony fix. Friday was April 1st, so yeah... And on the April 1st thought, I had an awesome idea for one this year, but due to my being away and having "almost" no way to use reliable Internet, I couldn't go through with it. :( *Really hopes that everyone buys his "lack of Internet" excuse.*

Well I'll see you guys in a few days with part 2. Oh yeah... lets not think of it as a sequel. As we know Jeremy makes fun of sequels. Lets see it more as an expansion... an expansion that plays differently. Or maybe just a continuation... bah, it's a sequel. :(