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Post by Strife on Aug 4, 2010 3:09:08 GMT -5
Woow, you're playing again, GLQ? xD; That's dedication thar. ^^
Fixed the intro dungeon door. Also, the issue with Jarth's jump lesson is caused because the lesson isn't really marked as "Complete" until the following skill point lesson has been finished. Until I've made it skippable, I'll just make it so that you can't use Esc directly after the lesson.
As for Quendy, I made it so that the same number of spiders will spawn whether you collected the claw or not. The claw now only skips the "press arrow keys as fast as you can" sequence.
Armon is supposed to have the lighter blip tone. xD; Thanks for spotting that - I fixed it.
That's pretty strange, Omni... but since the final version of the game won't involve switching between patches, I think I can safely ignore this one.
Also, some sort of data collection feature would be pretty nice, but I have no idea how to go about it. xD; Maybe I can look around for some sort of debugging extension for MMF2... Certainly not out of the question. :3
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Post by Strife on Aug 4, 2010 16:45:51 GMT -5
Lately, I've come to acknowledge one of MMF2's biggest pitfalls: object management. It's pretty annoying how, when I want copies of the same monster to behave independently from each other, they either all do something at the exact same time, or only one of them does what I want it to while the other copies just act goofy. xD Despite this, however, it seems like I've finally figured out a decent way to attach separate collision mask objects to certain monsters. What this means is that, for the first time, I can actually make monsters and NPCs that jump in the air and adjust their height like the player can.  As you can imagine, this opens up a lot of new possibilities for monster behaviors and attacks - such as the monster in the screenshot which moves exclusively with jumps. No longer will Ikkin be the only character in the game world that can (technically) lift her feet off the ground. xD |
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Post by Killix on Aug 4, 2010 16:55:39 GMT -5
As you can imagine, this opens up a lot of new possibilities for monster behaviors and attacks Yaay, that means that you can have melee enemies that don't follow the "move towards player, move up, move down on player" attack pattern? XD |
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Post by Gelquie on Aug 4, 2010 17:15:45 GMT -5
Well, I haven't played in a while. XD;
Whoo! That's excellent news! ;D And more attack styles for NPCs and monsters are a plus. ^^
Will this be applied to the BWK boss?
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Post by Strife on Aug 5, 2010 5:17:51 GMT -5
As you can imagine, this opens up a lot of new possibilities for monster behaviors and attacks Yaay, that means that you can have melee enemies that don't follow the "move towards player, move up, move down on player" attack pattern? XD Exactly. xD Well, I haven't played in a while. XD; Whoo! That's excellent news! ;D And more attack styles for NPCs and monsters are a plus. ^^ Will this be applied to the BWK boss? I'll definitely want to add it to Armon, if that's what you mean. :3 I'm also thinking about giving the Solar Temple's secret miniboss a Jump ability as well, along with all other humanoid bosses from now on. On a different note... I've decided that I want to rework the plot in the wetlands a little bit. I just think that Ikkin helping the Bloodweed King is a pretty stupid move, especially after her experiences with Quendathu. xD;
So here's what I'm thinking: When Ikkin first enters the B-King's arena, he would be burrowed underground, but leave Rider and Zylaa on the surface, making it appear as though they're just sitting there together. The B-King would not reveal who he really is and just use Rider and Zylaa as his puppets, telling Ikkin that they need her help in order to stay alive. Ikkin would be a little creeped out by their talking-at-the-same-time, but she would otherwise feel obligated to assist them and wouldn't know the full story right off the bat.
After that, the quest would play out more-or-less the same as it did before - it's just that in this case, the B-King would seem far smarter, making it seem like Ikkin was genuinely tricked instead of just being ignorant. xD; |
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Post by Pacmanite on Aug 5, 2010 9:18:50 GMT -5
Hey yeah, that sounds like a great idea for a smart change. It was pretty ominous to see a big injured monster asking for help, but if those human-puppets were just standing there as if trapped by some bad tangleweed thing, it'd be kinda creepy but otherwise not too obviously threatening... at least at first heh heh.
 Ok, here I found a way to get 500 ore out of a 250 ore treasure chest in a room at the desert gateway to Otanis. 1. Open both treasure chests. 2. Pick up the wheat bread. 3. Pick up the Ore. Get +250 ore. It reappears... 4. Pick up the ore again. Get another +250 ore. Now it doesn't reappear. The ore bonus can also happen with a stranger sequence of events, 1. Open both treasure chests. 2. Pick up +250 ore. 3. Pick up wheat bread. A pile of ore magically reappears in its own treasure chest. 4. Get another +250 ore. |
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Post by Gelquie on Aug 5, 2010 19:53:08 GMT -5
I like the change; I'm all for a smarter Ikkin. XD; And I think the cutscene of the BWK unburrowing himself would make a stronger impact. ^^ So the King person would burrow himself after being attacked by Armon, I take it? Also, I ran into something peculiar while going through the fireball mini-game. Ikkin's sprite changes directions in accordance to direction of travel, but I can freeze that up. I decided to put it into video to portray it easier. Video, taken using CamStudioThis happens whenever I try to jump in a certain manner while zoning away. (As you can see, not all jumps do this, but I have been able to replicate this quite often. (Mostly while trying and failing to record this. XD; )) I don't know what's causing it exactly, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with jumping while zoning. But it all goes back to normal if I tab out of the game, do some stuff, and go back in. Or Ikkin discovered the fabled art of running backwards. XD; |
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Post by Strife on Aug 6, 2010 12:27:32 GMT -5
Thanks Pacmanite! ^_^ I fixed the chest bug. GLQ - Hmm... I'm wondering if that bug might be related to the plugin I'm using for keyboard input, or if it's just Ikkin's fox sprite not registering the actual direction of her base object. (Ikkin is split into two separate objects - The first object is her collision mask which is always invisible, and is what the player is actually controlling. The second object is her various outfits and appearances, which I paste onto the collision mask.) Yeah, the Bloodweed King would have burrowed underground after Armon tried to slice at it. ^^
So here's the plan: The B-King will hide in its "bulb" form and pretend to be a non-threatening plant while keeping Rider and Zylaa outside. When Ikkin approaches, it pretends to be Rider and Zylaa and tells her that if she heals the plant, it will no longer need to use the pirates as a life source and will release them, and that it will also open the path to some stardust. Ikkin would have a funny feeling about it, but she'd otherwise comply.
Once the B-King shows his true form, Armon would mention briefly how he's been looking for stardust too. After the fight, Ikkin strikes a deal with Armon concerning the stardust (I'm not sure exactly how it will play out yet) so that he has a better reason to help her carry the pirates back to Terris Town. |
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Post by Strife on Aug 6, 2010 14:16:23 GMT -5
Alright, folks, I have a quick announcement.
Unless someone finds a particularly game-breaking bug, there will be no further patches for Alpha 3. I've started work on the eastern region of Megatia, and because of this, I've reached a point in development where it would take too much time and effort to remove the new areas for future Alpha 3 patches.
If things go well, the next patch I upload should in fact not be a patch, but Alpha 4 in its entirety. It's going to take a while, just like the transition from Alpha 2 to 3, but hopefully it'll be worth the wait. x3
Alpha 4 will add the following content:
- A fully animated intro movie that plays right when the game begins. Depending on their availability, I might get either Komori or Spot (or both) to help me with this.
- The northeastern sections of Megatia, which includes a beach region, pirate cove, and room for two other regions that I haven't picked a theme for yet
- New secret areas in the earlier regions to fill in some of the empty spaces and make exploring more worthwhile
- An Ally system in which the player can choose one NPC to follow them around on the overworld map and assist them in combat, starting with Rider. This would only see limited use in Alpha 4 (namely in the fact that Ikkin needs Rider to show her where the pirate cove is), but the player will have more options related to it from Alpha 5 onwards.
- At some point, the main quest will split into three smaller objectives scattered around Megatia, which the player will be able to tackle in any order they please. I might have the strength of the monsters adjust itself automatically based on the chosen order. Once all three objectives are completed, access to the fourth dungeon will be granted.
- New skills, including Dive, Shield, Snowball, Poison, and Summon Sev.
- A rework of the Demolitions skill so that, at the mastery level, the player can throw bombs like a projectile by holding either left or right while using one. The player will also be able to pick up dropped bombs at the mastery level before they explode and return them to their inventory.
- And of course, new music.
If anyone has any ideas for secret areas that I could place in the older areas, feel free to suggest. Just mention the location as well as the method that I should lock it with (in order words, what skill the player needs before accessing it). I do know that I would like to add a few more bloodweed bushes around Megatia leading to secrets, and I still haven't decided what the heck I should put in the area with all the junior cheshires. Sometimes I forget about these old areas because the game world is getting so big now. xD;
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Post by Draco on Aug 7, 2010 3:10:55 GMT -5
*has bad memories with the junior cheshires*
The idea with the Wetlands sounds good to me XD And the new stuff sounds interesting to. I'm finally heading home tomorrow, so I should be downloading the new patch and hopefully finish the Solar Temple next week sometime.
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Post by Pacmanite on Aug 7, 2010 9:49:05 GMT -5
All this stuff sounds really exciting, Strife, I hope it all goes well. ^_^ The Ally system in particular sounds like it could have very interesting effects on gameplay. I can just imagine being followed around by strong NPCs like...  At them, soldiers!  ... or having a companion. That'd be cool, too. *broods in corner with her ant army* If anyone has any ideas for secret areas that I could place in the older areas, feel free to suggest. Just mention the location as well as the method that I should lock it with (in order words, what skill the player needs before accessing it). I do know that I would like to add a few more bloodweed bushes around Megatia leading to secrets, and I still haven't decided what the heck I should put in the area with all the junior cheshires. Sometimes I forget about these old areas because the game world is getting so big now. xD; Ooh ooh... for the junior cheshire place, you could put in some kind of a nod to the Alice in Wonderland following, like a pack of playing cards or a flamingo croquet mallet. And then you get the player to do an absurd little minigame with those props, like building a card house or something. Or maybe the player could get to keep the flamingo croquet mallet as a joke weapon. That little hole place kind of reminds me of a rabbit-hole, anyway...  I'm wounded! Or not! xD Mild continuity slip: After Ikkin wakes up in his house, Kalimus says "good evening" and Raiken comments that Ikkin overslept... but the sky above Otanis is as bright as ever. In the armory, Ikkin looks at all the blades and says something like "There's so many different kinds of weapons here..." when it ought to be "there are".  When battling Arcadios for the first time, it was kind of hard to get in the right position to start the cutscene where the dude from Alysius will meet you. It felt like I had to step on only a very small area and the first time I went through this I thought I was stuck because nothing seemed to be happening in this room.   These two screenies show instances where NPCs (or zombified Ikkin) appear to have got themselves stuck in the wall and unable to get out. The first intance may have been a result of the Otani spawning inside the wall but in the second screenie I definitely saw Ikkin stumble into the wall and stay there, only changing the direction she faced.  Also, for some reason this "Gd" symbol was flashing in the corner of the screen as Raiken rescued Ikkin. I can only guess that it's meant to indicate a Guard/shield that Raiken cast over her. Also, since you were saying before that you wanted to know what parts of the game might need graphical revamps...  The overworld grass texture. It's the thing I see the most often when I play FQ, but when I look at it I mostly see random noise like green gravel. If you were to update it, though, I reckon a nice subtle texture that shows the shape of shallow clumps of grass and bumps in the ground rather than every individual grass blade would be ideal... because there are a lot of other objects placed on top of the grass, including grass plants, giving the texture too much contrast could be a bad move. But you know it could look something like: fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/075/b/0/Grazing_horses_and_cows_by_edelweiss26.jpg if a little less noisy.   I'm not totally sure why the darker mud at the edge of the wetlands stops and starts in a jagged ring like this. Or maybe it has something to do with the willow trees overlapping it. |
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Post by Strife on Aug 7, 2010 11:50:37 GMT -5
That's an idea. x3 Though pretty soon, the junior cheshires won't be exclusive to that one little corner of the forest. As for the ghost telling you that you're wounded - that's a good point. xD Maybe I can skip over that part of the cutscene if the player has full health.
The reason you have to be in that specific part to trigger the cutscene is because the ghost spawns in an area that's relative to the player's position. If I expand it any more than it needs to, then he might end up teleporting into one of the columns near the center of the room. xD; Buuut I'll see if I can stretch it out a little more - the actual area you need to cross is pretty tall vertically, but horizontally I may be able to stretch it without affecting the cutscene.
As for the GD symbol, yeah, it's supposed to do that. ^^ Hmm, you got a point with the grass... How does this look?  As for the jagged mud edges, that's probably one of my least favorite map tiles in the game. xD It has nothing on it except for some water and a gurgazon, and it looks a tad ugly. Maybe I should just redo that whole piece of land at some point... |
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Post by Bacon on Aug 8, 2010 18:17:38 GMT -5
My only problem so far with the newest patch is that standing behind the guy reading a book next to the tree(said guy will henceforth be referred to as James) in certain spots results in... well, these screenshots:  Not only are Ikkin and James closer than an NPC and PC should be, they're closer than real people can be. It looks like her knee could be embedded in his back.  And now he's sitting on her shoe. Boy, that James is such a kooky character!  ...yeah.  For some reason, Photobucket suddenly seems to not like PNGs, or at least not PNGs made in MSPaint, so these may be a tad bit blurry for the time being... |
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Post by Pacmanite on Aug 9, 2010 8:55:49 GMT -5
... How does this look? Ooh, spiffier. It breaks up the white-(green?)noise pattern and kind of gives the sense that the ground is not perfectly flat everywhere. Much better, and still in keeping with the game's style ^_^  I'm not sure if you intended it to be this way, but all the arrows in the fast section of the magic lesson were down arrows for me. xD Kinda takes away from the intensity of the minigame.  I found that if I walked around down the right hand side of this big room full of warp tiles, and then across the bottom of the room, I could get very close to the feather tile. In fact, just one tile away, which takes not much skill in timing my jumps.  I was struck by a black orb thing while I was in the room that has about three of those orb/spikeballs bouncing around in it, and it brought me into a fight with Mallus. I quite like the way you manifested Ikkin's fears here in the way Mallus talks... but now that you've updated the death animations, I guess his line about Calin crying buckets kinda doesn't make sense any more. xD  Ooh that's kinda creepy... ._. he touches Ikkin's hair, and the hair that he touches stays a golder shade than the rest of the hair on Ikkin's dead body.  I'm not quite sure if this is related to the glitch, but right after I died to Mallus, I closed the program and started it up again so I could resume (press Y) from the moment I got into the fight with Mallus. (the boss music didn't play when I restarted from this point, but that's a relatively minor thing). But then when I defeated Mallus, I was teleported over to the wrong room - I'd originally been in the room with threeish orbs, but I was teleported to the corridor outside the big room of dodgeballs. So I ended up very far from where I was before. Hold that thought...  (Photobucket is being weird and won't let this post as an image)...Because when I tried to make my way back to where I had been before, I entered a cutscene in this room. But all through the cutscene I was in my running animation; I didn't stop running on the spot until after the cutscene ended and the white light beckoned me to follow. I think I entered the room from the wrong side, and that's why the cutscene was landed with the running-on-the-spot bug. ...Oh, and one last thought. The portal stone is a little annoying in that it's placed inside of the Solar Temple... but because you can't flit in and out of the ST whenever you feel like it, you likely won't be exploring much of the upper world again until after the ST dungeon-quest is completed. So.. does it make sense if you only get to use the portal stone just as you're done with this part of the game and are about to leave the Otanis area...? I don't know, I guess it doesn't take too long to get to Terris Town from Otanis via the tunnel and the river, anyway. But when I wanted to stock up on heat bombs prior to re-entering the Solar Temple, it maybe would have been nice to be able to zoom to the Dyre Woods and meet Rivers again without having to trek the whole way there from Otanis through Terris Town. |
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Post by Strife on Aug 9, 2010 9:23:23 GMT -5
Bacon - I'll see if I can fix up James' sprite. Good name for him, BTW. x3 Pacmanite - Sweet. ^_^
The down arrows in the minigame are on purpose. I always thought that the intensity of the game clashed with the fact that Ikkin's supposed to be relaxing during the exercise. xD; Not only that, but it's impossible to quit the lesson if you can't beat it, so I figured that there wouldn't be much loss in making it easier.
That little shortcut for the tile puzzles is intentional. Depending on how many people actually used it, though, I might remove it.
Calin still pours tears out of his eyes, but only during the first couple of frames in his death animation, so Mallus' comment is still somewhat legit. Also, I've fixed Ikkin's hair color when he grabs her.
As for getting teleportaled to the wrong room, I do believe that's being caused by closing and reloading the game. ^^; I'll see what I can do to fix it.
EDIT: Okay, I just modified the random encounters so that the game doesn't autosave when you enter one. If you close the program during one, and then reload, you'll appear in the area you were in just before the encounter instead of in the start of the fight itself.
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I'm not totally sure why the darker mud at the edge of the wetlands stops and starts in a jagged ring like this. Or maybe it has something to do with the willow trees overlapping it.
