Lots of Fun

Edit: (October 27, 2011) Just want to let everyone know that I'm not dead. Everything is going great. As I said, not much work was done on DT3 between now and this original post, but November will speed it up... until the 20th when Skyward Sword comes out. I'm going to be playing the hell out of that. And we're lucky I'm not getting Saints Row 3 when it comes out. I could play that game forever. Anyway, I'll make a new post in a few days, talking about some new stuff for DT3.

Well GDC was tons of fun and awesome. Always a great experience with great people that generates a lot of fun memories and stories to tell. I didn't attend any talks this year though since I was working at the IGDA booth on the expo floor... that's as far as I'll go with my stories though. Oh wait, business is good.

Production will still be at a stand still as I'll be out of town for a few days again and after I return, I'll be fairly busy. I'm foreseeing DT3 being put on hold till about early November, though I'll be able to devote a bit of time to it here and there, just not much. I only announce it so if you're following close to check out the demo of the first 3 Gates, you know what the hold up is. Oh, and to say that this will be the last post this month, so check back in November.

As far as DT3 stuff goes, there's not much I want to report on it. The enemy scan window now shows the maximum amount of money that can be dropped. And... that's all I want to say at this time. :P
Yeah, check back early November and till then, have fun. Also a new My Little Pony episode is airing today.

Another Game Recommendation
I recently found out about an interesting game called Descend the Beat. I like to describe it as a musical puzzle game, not to be confused with a rhythm game. I got a chance to play it during a launch party at GDC and had quite a bit of fun with it. Of course since it's somewhat of a musical game, it's got a sweet awesome sweet soundtrack. If you like fun, upbeat music, and puzzle games with a lot of depth, definitely check this game out.

The interface and controls are intuitive and easy to grasp. You have a 5 by 5 tiled board and blocks are thrown at these 25 spots on the board at varying speeds. When they're on the board, you can move the blocks in 4 directions. (90 degrees) However, each of the blocks can only be moved a certain number of times, which is marked in different ways depending on the current block (graphic) style. The objective is to fill an entire row (Tetris style) to clear it. If the blocks stack up to the 8th row, you lose. Pretty simple concept to grasp, but there are a few other nuances. When you move a block, it slides till it either falls down from its current row, hits the edge of the board, or another block. If you move a block that has others stacked on top of it, the entire stack is moved and if it falls or hits the edge of other block or stack of blocks, all but the bottom block will continue on.

There are a few game modes such as; A Tetris like Arcade mode where you play till you lose. A challenge mode with a number of challenges each with specific goals that slightly change a few gameplay aspects. (I was able to beat one of their harder ones at the launch party and got a t-shirt for it!) Then an expansive puzzle mode that starts to get incredibly deep. The idea being to get rid of all the blocks, no new ones fall.

A Week of Absence

Edit: (October 9, 2011) On the subject on enemies dropping currency in DT3. It is handled differently. DT3 doesn't have the boost from chains, that is now being used for drop rate of any item. Each enemy does have a difference in the amount they can drop, but there are a few new nuances. If an enemy can only drop Green(1), then that's all they'll ever be able to drop. If they can drop up to a Blue(5), then they have a 70% chance to drop the bigger amount, however, there is another clause involved. Blues will never drop if your kill chain is not at least at 3. The same thing occurs for bigger coins as well. It goes through the same process, but slightly different. If they are designated to drop a Yellow(10), then greens are dropped until a chain of 3, where blues will start to show up and once the chain has reached 5, the yellow will appear at a 70% rate. For Red(20), which is the highest in DT3, you'll need a chain of 8.

In the case of a yellow potentially showing up and that 70% not going through, it filters down to the blue chance, then of course if that doesn't go through because you're just that unlucky, the green will pop up. That 70% can be boosted up to 80% from the skill tree and even further with items. (Up to 95%)

Next week I'll be away as GDC Online will be happening. Well not really away, the Austin Convention Center is no more than 10 minutes away from where I live. When that's over, I'll be out of town for a few days. Got a busy week ahead of me.

I'll leave behind a screenshot of course.

Countdown of doom.

Yeah, that's a boss' life meter and that's also a countdown. You get 2 minutes to finish this little encounter. Most of it consists of you protecting that little bot there so it clears a path for you to damage the actual boss, which is currently off-screen. You'll be needing to manage all the things that the boss summons up, otherwise you'll find your bot being destroyed by enemy fire. Time is of the essence in this encounter and you can only afford a few mistakes before the countdown becomes a bigger threat than the projectiles. This is the first boss encounter in DT3 that doesn't lock the camera in place.

A good 1/3 of Chapter 5 is now finished. The next part includes some looking around in Central City, involving getting to know how it works, and story elements. Then of course the search for Gate 3 in DT3's massive world.

Smerbles

Edit: (October 6, 2011) Hmm, even my deaths are pretty high in my pseudo playthrough. Just after Ch.4.
Gyazo link to my failures (Can't direct link to gyazo anymore. We be stealin their internetz too much.)

Hard at work on Chapter 5 now. It will reintroduce some concepts from DT1 and bring in new puzzle ideas that will recur throughout more than just Chapter 5. Unlike DT1 where I said all the different platforming elements would... wait, this is the first paragraph, I'm breaking protocol here. The post title is an inside joke word that I highly doubt anyone who plays this would get. If the ones who are in on the word do come here, I'd be shocked and amazed... somewhat... maybe, I don't know. Anyway, I'm hungry so I'm going to end the post here and go eat.

Damn it! I didn't go eat and now I'm still hungry and posting here. Okay, time to continue on where I was... aaand I lost my place, so lets start again. Hard at work on Chapter 5 now. It will reintroduce some concepts from DT1 and bring in new puzzle ideas that will recur throughout more than just Chapter 5. Unlike DT1 where I said all the different platforming/game elements would come together and they really didn't, only half way, sorta, but not really. This time they actually will. But that's not the tangent I was wanting to go on. Wow this post is a cluster of bad in every way, so here's a screenshot.

Guess the game this is from... It's Drill Dozer! So have you guessed yet?

About 1/3 or so of Chapter 5 is spent in that place. The rest is a huge mess of story telling and the player getting lost for the first time in the expanding DT3 main world. Finding secrets and hidden power ups all over the place and then getting lost some more. Possibly seeing Game Over from spikes or attempting to fight things that they shouldn't be messing with. Remember, running away and alternate paths IS an option.

Anyway, I've gone on with random stuff for too long on this post and I'm still hungry so it's time to go fix that with whatever I find...

Laundry Effects

Another Edit: (October 1, 2011) I derped below on what combat awards do. Currently hit combos and streaks don't offer anything, but chains still give an award. DT1 would cause enemies to drop more money with higher chains. In DT3, they cause the drop rate of anything to boost. Currently the boost is (chain*0.75)% for the drop chance, and will take effect when you have a chain of 2 or higher.

Edit: (October 1, 2011) Wow, it's October already. Time is flying! Just updating with a bit about how hit combos, killing chains, and killing sprees work in DT3... The same. Except, as of this moment, they don't offer any gameplay bonuses. The voices are gone and the screen alerts are minimal, which can still be turned off. They are more, at this time, for the player to use for themselves. There's still records kept about highest on these. Killing sprees have been renamed to 'Streaks'. Here's a screenshot with their on-screen display at this time.

Yes, that is Comic Sans, piss off, it's a nice font. :P

Edit: (September 30, 2011) September just barely took the lead for second most blog views in one month. Still no contender for first though. December 2010 made quite a jump in views. :P

I'm in the middle of laundry, hence the post title.

Gate 2 is finished, and one tester has it at the moment, to find all my mistakes and derps. Going to be adding more effects before I start work on chapter 5, as well as some maintenance and touch ups to things.

If you look at the side, you'll notice that I've added a dropbox download link for both games. I should've done that months ago. No ads, no wait times. I'm big on the 'no ads' part of that. The other download locations have been left intact in case that is your preferred method or you're unable to download from dropbox.

Next Chapter
Chapter 5 is the first non-gate chapter with a decent amount of content (more than 10 minutes worth) and where the story elements pick up even more. If you don't care for the story or dialogue, DT3 has the cut-scene skip feature that DT2 did. 99% of the cut-scenes are skippable. (That's a word because I said so, piss off spell-check.) There are only a small handful of extremely short sequences that can't be skipped.

Just a small post.

Two More Days

Till Season 2 of what you really don't care about is aired... aside from those of you that do. I think that covers just about everyone right?

Gate 2 (well about 80% of it) was given to Slaix and a new tester, Amatsu. After a few save file compatibility shenanegans, lots of little bugs and mishaps were found. It was a fun evening of throwing newer versions at them every time they found something game breaking. I blame them for saying "Give it to us now!"... or something.

It's looking to be good though. They didn't have any major complaints, despite its incompleteness. (Hey, spell checker says that's a word.) I don't count, "WHY DOES THIS ROOM EXIST?!?!" as complaints. Those are always good signs. They'll have the completed version of Gate 2 hopefully sometime next week. Anyway, I'm sure I had more to post with this one, but I seem to have misplaced my notes... which is unlike me!!

My OCD has been driving me up the wall these last 2 weeks. I can usually keep it under control, but my fixations have been overpowering my psyche as of late. I've been working on an outlet for it, so hopefully that helps. Anyway, take care everyone. Oh... I just had to tell my stomach to STFU, so it's probably a good time to act on that.

Water You Doing

Edit: (September 13, 2011) I have switched over to GM8.1 now. Everything has been fixed up and it works great. I like all that's been done to it. AND, faster sprite rendering, not that lag has been much of an issue since completing Black Rock on DT1.

That joke sucks and has always sucked. Anyone who uses it sucks too...

So anyway, here's a few things that will be appearing to DT3 to add to your death count. You're all going to love this one.

Water
Oh yeah, DT3 has water. *Everyone screams* There won't be swimming, it's going to take on the standard 2D platformer approach. It works much like Super Metroid, except it doesn't slow you down THAT much. Your movement underwater is limited though, and your dashes are useless for any momentum boosts. The air dash gives you some decent momentum, but your ground dash is almost literally a dash in place. It doesn't negate the invincibility frames. When you're underwater, you can drown. The moment you submerge, a breath meter will be displayed and of course depletes. Bringing your head above water does the intended effect of returning air to you. That leads me to a few small nuances. If you're running or ducking, your head is underwater, which means it will take away air. :P As for when water will start to take effect on your movement, it needs to be roughly 13 pixels up from Jerry's feet. My roommate, Jerry no doubt, says he wants me to put in splashes if you're running through water. (A different effect when it's at your feet, but not affecting your mobility.) Not sure if I'm going into THAT much detail, but we'll see. :3 Aesthetics like that can wait for now as it doesn't add anything to gameplay. (Derp, I add stuff like that all the time, I really can use that argument.)

Oh no, water levels.

Water can also change height. In fact, there is an entire dungeon based around changing water levels to get around. Water affects more than just you. Platforms will float and have a bit of buoyancy, your bombs will fizzle out. Some enemies need water, so if you empty the room, they just flop about like fish on... ugh nevermind. Others can skid along the top of water. There's a few other deally bobs going on with water that you're just gonna have to find out on your own when the time comes.

Gate 2 is getting closer and closer for my testers to try their hooves, err hands at it. Looking forward to that feedback and all the crazy bugs they're going to send me.

More Info Supplied To You

Spoilers!

The new values on the right side display an ability's stun power. This is more meta gaming stuff for people. When scanning an enemy, you can now see their stun resist. It's very simple math for this.
BaseAbilityStun - EnemyStunResist = Frames the enemy is stunned
(Those are not the variable names.)
There's a few other small things factored into it like skills and equipment. This new way of handling enemy flinch times helps balance out your close and ranged abilities. The X-Buster only has a stun power of 1. Many of the enemies, specifically robots have a stun resist of 1-3, which will completely nullify stun. Even without using various equipment combinations, I've seen some nifty stun lock methods.

DT1&2 handled stun in a different way. It was based on the percentage of damage you dealt to the enemy's max HP, which really doesn't work all that well in retrospect. Not with the numbers I used anyway. These two games also reset the stun counter on every hit. In DT3, it is continually added on, making it even more possible to stun lock.

But again, the rest is really up to how you want to play, this stun info is ultimately useless outside of meta gaming. I'd rather have stun time be somewhat transparent/ignored like it was in DT1&2. It's simply part of the flow of the game. I provide this info ingame for everyone because of feedback that I've gotten from DT1&2. A lot of people wanted to see these kinds of things and here it is.

Game Maker 8.0 to 8.1
I am still using version 8.0. I have 8.1, but remember way way back when I said it was having problems? Well it seems all this has been fixed according to the internet. I'll be getting my 8.1 copy updated to the most recent version and testing all that. If I see that everything is in order, I'll start DT3 development in 8.1, which will speed things up. Last time I tried 8.1, it flipped out at all my extensions as well as the fonts and a few other small things. o_O

A New Month, A New... whatever

Edit: (Same Day) A review of the game was posted here just today. I was asked a few interview questions to go alongside the review found here.


His review style reminds me of something, I can't remember what it was, so... Instead of explaining his review style, just go see, I usually do a terrible job of explaining anyway. Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, what would that make videos? o_O Anyway, here's a link to his review site as well.
Gamerzsnark

I noticed that last month, (August) the blog got the second highest view count in its life time. It's been going up ever since April this year, which is right when DT3 was officially announced. No surprise there. March actually got the second lowest since creation and then BAM it spiked back up. The highest month was December last year, right after DT1 was released. Actually it was released early November and the view count nearly doubled... oh well. April and May this year got the exact same view count with June only 2 views higher. o_O That's... special. If you know blogger well enough I'm sure some of you can figure out how to view this stuff yourself, but I won't be saying the actual view count. :P It's really not that high, though admittedly higher than I thought considering I really don't advertise this game anywhere.

Retribution
Anyway, enough with boring logistics. DT3 will make gameplay throw-backs and references to both previous games. I found one usable reference perfect for a certain desert road in Gate 2. You know what I'm talking about most likely. :3 Except this time, retribution is possible. Hard, but possible. I'm sure many of you want it after that part.

Zelda 2 Exploit
If you remember back to Zelda 2, you could get into encounters on the map right on an event spot. This would cause you to spawn back in on it, which would allow you to skip over it. When I was doing a no continue run of the game, (and was successful) I exploited that little trick in various parts. (Mainly the road to the Great Temple) Anyway, this trick was going to be available for DT3's Gate 2, and it was originally coded that way. I decided to change that, it's not longer an exploit. In the event of you going over an event spot and an encounter at the same time, the event takes priority.

A few reasons for this. I really don't want you guys 'cheating' over these things. The event maps are designed for specific reasons. Throw-backs, to teach the player about a certain game mechanic through visual cues. (And to build the death counter of course. It's a sign of how manly you are.) The biggest reason are the hidden maps. They're pretty easy and usually obvious to find, but on that rare occasion for the two that I don't think are as obvious, I don't want the player running over it and getting into an encounter, then thinking nothing of it, and not double checking. (I'm glad there's no grammar or run-on sentence checker/auto-correct.) (wtf 'autocorrect' is too a word!!) That and I really don't want the exploit in there, that's really the bottom line. :P

More Exploits, but not really
I doesn't mean I won't be leaving in small non-game breaking exploits, they'll be there for fun for you guys to find. There is one actual game breaking exploit that I purposefully left in the game. The exploit came about through a design oversight with how one of the levels were built. I found it funnier to just leave it in and have a comment about cheating. (Of course the game fixes up the problems caused after you do so.) I'm going to try and put in little easter eggs like this whenever I can. Normally I'd go eww at the idea of breaking immersion but... well yeah...