Musical Chairs

Edit: (July 24, 2011) I forgot to mention this, Mega Man Legends 3 was cancelled! WTF?! :(

This is the 85th post to this blog. You guys know what that means right?

Chapter 2 is done and Slaix has tested it. Got some good feedback from him and am awaiting another report from someone else. Meanwhile, the next section of the game is coming along.

Music is now loaded into memory as it's needed in the game. I haven't seen any hiccups or points when it needs to stop to load the music resource going into memory. They are also removed from memory when they are not needed, as opposed to DT1 which did not manage this at all. The resource loading time after the game launches is almost non-existent. The overhead is... super low now. I think I said this once before too, but saving is practically instantaneous too. DT3 has much more data to store than DT1 too. Everything is working great, despite me being a horrible programmer.

So I don't really want to show any screenshots. I'll show one of how the map screen looks sometime, but for now, here's a boring chart that describes how I'm handling difficulty in DT3.

DT3's download (you know, in a few years) won't be hosted on adware spamming sites, I'll be hosting it from a dropbox. Later on I'll be adding a download for DT1 and 2 to dropbox as well. No more waiting pointlessly on that timer and no more ads. The next post might be a rant... maybe, depends if I can gather my thoughts on the topic properly.

Also ponies... because I can. :P

Hannah Nebraska

If you play Metal Gear Online (MGS4), and run into a character in it with the above name, that's my roommate Jerry. He wanted to name her Hannah South Dakota, but it wouldn't fit. So life hasn't allowed me any time the last few days to work on DT3. Actually it has, but during the times I had free, I was either hanging out with my roommates, (this happens a lot, we're high school friends actually... well not Jerry and Jeremy, I'm just the bridge) playing Borderlands, (SteamID/gamespyID: ZephyrBurst) or RPing. I role play from time to time, it's fun and it gets the creative cogs turning. This lack of free time, err, free time given to other activities is also why there's no video. :D (No I lied, there's also real life and all that, wait a minute... the above still applies, so it's not a lie.)

Project CAS
There's a nifty little project that I've watched for the past several months. It's been interesting watching it grow and expand in every way. The engine, gameplay, and art, especially the art, have come a long way and seen a few revisions. You can see the progress that's been made on the art throughout the blog that's been set up for it here. Check it out if you have the time, it's had a lot of work put into it.

Nothing to post about DT at this time.

Experimental Spiders

Edit: (July 11, 2011) No video of DT3 it looks like. I was busy with IGDA stuff most of the weekend and then hung out with the roommates the rest of it. Instead of announcing a soon-to-be-released video, I'll just skip the partial hype and suddenly pop it out of nowhere.

Edit: (July 8, 2011) I might actually post a video this weekend! It will be short, but hey, it's a video! :D

Meant to mention this two posts ago. I finally found that spider again! It was crawling along the side of my bed. You know what this means? IT COULD HAVE CRAWLED ON ME IN MY SLEEP! Anyway, I removed it from the premise, so that is no longer an issue, and my window spiders are safe!

The Claustrophobia Test, (but not really)
I periodically use random DT players (you guys) as guinea pigs in obscure tests. They're mostly oddball ideas that pop into my head, but some of them produce interesting results. For example:

Shot A

Shot B

These two shots are, gameplay wise, exactly the same. You could argue against that for some situational things in DT with its utility spells, but for 99.99% of the players and time, this will present the exact same gameplay. During the following examples, I didn't bring the above point up, I merely showed the shots and asked a question with no other context, so with that...
Question 1
I showed these two shots to a number of people and asked which one they felt more threated in. That question left things somewhat mixed, 7/10 of them said they felt more threated in Shot B.
Question 2
Then I asked which one they felt more likely to fall off the platforms in. And this was the surprising part, every person said Shot B.
Question 3
I followed that question up with which one they felt safer in. I know it's sort of asking the opposite of question 1, but again, I was surprised to find that everyone said Shot A.

I derped a lot of things with this test though. I should have been documenting their responses and explanations for their answers. Though I do think the results explain themselves, I see it as inconclusive since I failed to record and document everything properly. The only accurate part of it are the tallies of what people chose.

There are some other little tests like this that I've done and will continue to do in the future. I'll be making them more public from now on though.

Design Decision with Gate 1
Gate 1 is the first major gameplay point in the game. It is reached within minutes of the game's beginning and is where the Mario levels take place. Since it's essentially the first level in the game, I wanted to keep things simple and straight forward. I thought about having a few branching paths, but I didn't want to add that sort of complexity for this part of the game, so went with a simple Mario approach. There is one spot where you'll backtrack through 2 maps, but that is all. These maps are set up to be a very different feel both ways and are designed with the backtrack path in mind. That aside, it's a simple stroll through various Mario themes mixed with some DT elements for the second half of it. I feel it's a good beginning level that will have the player seeing the Game Over screen only a small handful of times. For the optional pick ups like Heart Pieces, Chests, etc, all of them can be obtained on the first time through. Some, no, all of them are obviously easier on return visits. Some of them may look impossible to get, but with enough observation, you can get them. Most of them don't take a lot of finesse to get.

One thing which may disappoint people is the big major bosses at the end of the 7 gates do not offer a full heart container like Zelda bosses would give. I'll be designing the damage enemies deal to the player as if they collected 80% of the heart pieces up to that point. (That are reasonably obtainable.) But really, you shouldn't be getting hit. It's not like DT has difficult to dodge attacks or anything. :P

An Update The Day After An Update

What is this madness!!

This update is about one thing only, and that is to tell you to watch the series Firefly. If you've seen it, you know why I'm posting about it. If not... go see why! :D Also go watch Friendship is Magic as well.

I Lied
This update is actually not about the above. Significant progress has been made on the project. The item shop interface and equipment sub-menu are all fully functional. Shop owners can all have unique items instead of DT1's static shops. (Like it should be.)

The Item Shop Window, fairly standard.

I'm really happy with the whole thing. (The project in general.) Everything is nice and optimized. There's more going on with DT3's system and it runs a whole lot better than DT1 ever did. I look back on DT1's code and I wonder how the game even ran at all sometimes. The code was inefficient (and still is in some aspects) and was sloppy. Slaix knows about a few of my coding atrocities with it. He probably cringed hard at how collectibles were handled, and that wasn't even the worst part of it. I dare not tell you how some of DT1's systems were handled. Luckily DT3 has none of that. I leveled up throughout the first DT project. :D

Well I guess that's it for now.

Progress Update

I'm back from being away again. (Wow I'm away a lot.) Oh yeah, remember the spider I mentioned from the last post? Well he's back... WHY?! It stayed in my room the entire 5 days I was gone. As long as it doesn't mess with my window spiders. I have a few spiders that live along my bedroom window. They never leave the window and yes they're on the inside. They're small and as long as they stay there and don't go on my bed, I'm cool with them. I never see any other critters so they must be doing their job. Plus they keep me company.

Stuff on the Game
A lot got done on the game's systems while I was gone. Since I don't have internet or any other distractions at night where I was, I can get a lot of busy work done on the game. Interface code is really tedious, so that's mostly what I worked at this last week during the moments I got to work on this. The map system has been revamped, it gives you a lot more feedback, info on the world, and where you are much better than before. No screenshot for it, it's a secret to everybody. There's a page in the menu that displays all your character stats like charge times, recovery rate, and such for your abilities. It's probably unnecessary to show it for 90% of you, but I figured there's no reason to hide those numbers. There's quite a mixture of effects you can have on these stats based upon your skill tree and equipment.

On the equipment thought, both characters have their own slots for them, yay. If you like to metagame, the end game of this will interest you, there's quite a bit to explore in the stats department if you're that type that loves to optimize everything. (Though like I said, it's not necessary, most of you will probably go, "I like bombs, so I'm going to equip everything I can for those." Change 'bombs' to whatever you're into.) That's a good thing. Anyway... :P

Internet Stuff
(Oh yeah, the currency is still called "Internetz" because... I have no reason other than because I said so.) Anyway, internet stuff. I periodically google "Distorted Travesty". I've only posted/advertised the game on 2 sites (RRR and Shy Guy's Toy Box) and I always notice that the game is posted around various forums, which is totally fine. That's cool that the game is liked enough for people to do that. :)

Imposters
But I came across something interesting while I was gone last week. I found a place where it was posted under my name. (I don't have the site url, when I find it again, I'll link to it. I wasn't on my computer when I found it. It's not in the google searches anymore.) o_O It's totally cool when others post the game in other places, though make sure it's an appropriate forum, but I don't get why someone would post it under the "DarkYoshi" name. If you see DT posted by "DarkYoshi" anywhere but the 2 places I mentioned above, that's not me. Oh well, someone loves me enough to impersonate me. :P

I've more recently been referring to myself as "ZephyrBurst" online. It's a lot more original than DarkYoshi and I kinda like it more. If you see someone online with that name, it might be me... or not. The Internet is a strange place like that. Man I'm boring, no screenshots this time. Oh yeah, to summarize this post, I hated the Duke Nukem imposter game that came out a few weeks ago. I guess Duke Nukem Forever is never actually coming out. :( I might give my opinion/review of the imposter game in the next post.

Simplified... and Spiders

You ever had those moments when you see a spider or another kind of creepy crawly on your desk and then it runs behind something out of view? Then every time you feel any movement on your arm, no matter what it is, you quickly look down at it thinking, "OMG IT'S ON ME!". That's me right now. There's a medium sized dark colored wolf spider somewhere on my desk. I have no idea where it is. Last time I saw it, it went under my laptop, or at least that's what it appeared to do. (It wasn't there.) I'm just waiting for it to jump out at me, or at my hand on the mouse, at any time now. If this post feels a bit edgy, this is why. WHERE IS IT?!

DT3 News
I'm happy with how DT3 is coming along. It's going even better than I hoped actually! The Mario area is almost complete. Sorta... the first pass is almost complete. Once all the levels are laid out and all gameplay necessary assets are in, I'll be going back through the entire thing and making things pretty with background effects. Clouds, birds... Jerry and Claire's bantering, and more humor. The main enemy type that you'll come to love/hate are the Bros. Hammer and Fire, I removed the Boomerang type unfortunately. (omg I just saw it again... and it hid again) Maybe at a later time, I'll give them some love and put them back in, but they just didn't go well with the other two. Hammer Bros spam the sky, Fire Bros spam the ground. The Boomerang Bros just got in the way and didn't mix well with the other two. You'll be seeing a lot of these two enemy types and the dynamics between the two work really well. They create interesting situational puzzles in a sense. And their differing personalities work well. The Hammer Bros show empathy for their fellow Bros, the Fire Bros are dicks. You'll see what I mean when you get to play it when it never comes out. (omg this game is going to take so long to make.)

(omg where is that spider? O_O)

Slaix will get to experience the horrors they create later this week, since he's my bi-, err tester, whether he wants to or not. >:3 Hey, if it wasn't for Slaix and a small handful of others, levels like the DT1 Data Segment would've been MUCH harder. Remember, I can only test difficulty so much. Difficulty is the main thing that I need worked out by others. (There were a few times when I said "NO, IT WILL BE THIS PUNISHING!", but those were rare.)
Oh this song.

Slaix has actually played about half of the Mario area. He got a pretty crude version of it and the game state. (It didn't even notify you of when your AP Level increases. (Not that AP Level means much. (omg I wish I knew where that spider was.)))

Gameplay Simplified
I've simplified some things. I removed 2 attack types from the game. Link's Boomerang had a unique "Boomerang" attack type, which was unnecessary. Actually the Boomerang will probably be removed altogether. Samus' Missiles also had a unique "Missile" type, which was changed. It went against how the gameplay flowed and made things more complex than they needed to be. There are now only 6 attack types and they're really easy to identify and they make more sense now.

Back on the, omg this game is going to take so long to make, note. It is... really. I won't be releasing it the way DT1 was done. It will be all at the end, BUT, once the first 5 or 6 chapters are done and I'm happy with the game's state, I'll release a demo. When that's happening... I don't know. Only the first one is done. I'll end here and with a screenshot.

(As soon as embedding works again...)

Super Jerry World

It's been 8 days since the last post, but it feels like it's been much longer. The game has been coming along awesomely, despite not being able to work on it very often. For game content, it is playable up to and through the first boss fight. When you see it, you'll see right away that the bosses in DT3 will have much more variety to them than the first two games. :)

That star does what you think it does.

Checkpoints & Saving
Checkpoints work the same way they have been and bosses will still allow you to retry. The checkpoint system works wonders in the main world for when you're traveling around looking for stuff. Random deaths are fairly meaningless out there since it starts you at the last map entrance. As for exploration and hidden items, the main world are littered with them. There are WAY more hidden maps and items than the first game. Once you have 2 or 3 Abilities Sets, your options open up a lot. (And especially after the mid-game chapter.)

Game Over Screen
You will be happy to know that it has returned to insulting you. There are a few differences...

This screen will become a common site.

It always says "GAME OVER" at the top with the insult below it. Under that are the typical 3 selections, 4 if you're in a boss fight. Below that are situational hints... or useless garbage. You're bound to see a few of them, but doubtful that you'll see them all. You'd have to die at some strange times to see them all. Also, guess the reference. It's very identical to another game's Game Over screen. (Though to be honest, those games were really easy and it was unlikely that you saw it often or at all.)

I should have more to say, but I don't. Maybe I'll review a game next time...
Infection of adorable!