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AldenT

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Everything posted by AldenT

  1. Now that you mention it, Lilac doing the cyclone on the ground is a pretty good substitute for hitting enemies quickly, especially with the fast energy regen. You should at least let Carol's wild kicks break blocks, though. She was affected more by the loss of the roll, so at least that could compensate some. Great job on the graphic updates, by the way!
  2. It would be nice if those Greenlight haters stopped that. I think they're hating just to counter the overwhelming praise or something like that. Hopefully Freedom Planet will get past that kind of crowd. But say, regarding that goal, would the playthrough videos be anything
  3. I have some programming skills, but I admit I'm rusty. I was practicing with Construct 1 and 2 since last year, but I didn't get far. My skills are more along the lines of C++ and Java, but I could adapt to MMF2 if I'm one of those people you're thinking about. It would be a nice way to get back in the game. What I'm more worried about is making a new engine, though. It's not that Sonic Worlds is bad or anything, but something tells me that going fully commercial without a personal engine is gonna cause a lot of trouble down the line. Imagine, engine limits spoiling several of the features promised for the future of Freedom Planet. Seriously, plenty of the glitches I found were because I tested those limits and I'm worried about that bringing down the whole thing because Sonic Worlds hasn't been fully understood. If Strife can't explain why some of the features worked out that way, what would that say about the integrity of the game as a whole? Things like the joypad support, for instance... would we really have to say Freedom Planet just has little help on that end? That just can't go on.
  4. Thank you, Overbound. I don't know what all that was about, none of my business, but it really didn't need to take over a thread that had nothing to do with it. In any case, I'm glad I could pledge for Freedom Planet. Looking forward to that closed alpha a few months from now! Don't think I may be able to report bugs like I did in this topic but it's good enough to know I'll still be on the case. It's more fun than I thought, really. @TSS_Ty: Oh, that would explain it. I haven't gotten anything of that sort, but then I don't really use Steam much. I'd certainly vote for Freedom Planet but I guess they added this rule to ensure real costumers would vote.
  5. It really is such an inspiration to watch Freedom Planet come so far, you know? What's more amazing is that it will get even better with time... here's hoping it can make it all the way! Though if you don't mind me asking, Strife, when would one get the closed beta? A friend helped me to pledge for that (and plenty more), can't say I'd start bug testing right away but I'd like to get on that soon. That's when it really counts, right?
  6. You may want to re-add that border if possible. Switching between windowed and full-screen is still possible with Alt-Enter and being able to move the window should be a simple but nice benefit. To put that in perspective, I tried Street Fighter x MegaMan and it has similar benefits. I'm not sure if that was made in MMF2, but Freedom Planet gave me a nasty graphic error when running it while SFxMM was up, so maybe they share resources... and that game does have decent joypad support. It could be something worth looking into. Good luck with Greenlight, too! I'd vote but apparently I can't until I complete any transaction and I never really used Steam so I had no idea.
  7. Wow, Kickstarter already reached its goal in ONE DAY! That's just... wow. . _ . Though if you don't mind me asking, Strife, what kind of sub-boss would be worth $1000? What if it was a smaller boss than the ones showing in the trailer?
  8. So Milla won the poll! I knew it! 8D And the video... okay, wow, WHERE DO I START? It looks very well done, even taking time with jokes and everything. You guys totally hit it out of the park! X3 b But now I'm gonna have to take a loan or something, because that closed beta could come in real handy. Maybe even closed alpha... I mean, wow, $1000 for a boss? That is SO out of my reach. . _ . In any case, congrats on the Kickstarter plan! A month should be more than enough time to reach that goal.
  9. By the way, right now, I got some more things to report. It's real quick this time, but I suppose I dumped most of today's info in my previous post. 83; In any case, here's what I got: - Clearing DV with a multi-level shield then playing again starts the player off with 4 keystones. What's more, getting the last one to activate the shield gives you all the hits you'd stored in your previous run. I haven't tested just how many hits it's possible to stack this way, but it could potentially trip up players that test DV with one girl then the other. - More noticeably, Carol's energy gauge reverts to the old design when she runs out of petals. For that matter, her energy gauge being red but her keystone slots being yellow seems a bit inconsistent. Either thing could stand out to anyone who plays Carol long enough. - The bike parking workaround might not be enough to stop all those floating bike glitches. I got this to happen by parking it on the grey block before the weight switch. I'm pretty sure it's possible to do it with any platform that can give way underneath the bike. It may be especially notable with the breakable blocks or the bridges near the end of DV. That's it for now. Hopefully these will be easy fixes just in time for Kickstarter like the ceiling thing.
  10. That difficulty tweak would be a great experiment, especially at this point. It may just be that keystones don't play a big part in Dragon Valley, but could still factor into more advanced stages. If anything, if later levels have a certain element to define them, making certain enemies drop the proper keystones would reinforce the identity of each level AND make each effect more useful as they'd be more likely to appear when they matter. If you need more examples to borrow from, I can think of Super Mario World where one of the early features that stood out were colored "!" blocks. They had to be unlocked by reaching secret switches hat, once triggered, would spread the blocks all over the game world. You could potentially run into stages with hollow spaces that would only fill out after the correct switch was hit, hinting at the mystery to solve. And let's face it, Avalice will have its own mysteries, right? About elemental attacks, I'd recommend granting such properties to the characters themselves for the sake of identity. There's a good start in Lilac breathing for so long and swimming because she's a water dragon, but actually having a water element in her attacks could work to define her even more. Shields would be much more valuable in this case, to counter the weaknesses of characters that need them. Perhaps getting the character a shield of their element could give them a unique boost tailored to their strengths. Of course, if every attack became elemental, that could cause a problem unless some moves are deliberately left neutral. And then, without effects or new animations, it might be hard to tell players what's elemental and what's not. Really, there's just so much that could come from this that it could help to turn keystones and shield crystals into the central mechanic they seemed to be.
  11. The thing about MegaMan's health system is that it's huge because of the loads of damage you take from all sorts of sources, most of which you can't get rid of before they have a chance to hurt you. On top of that, health pick-ups are relatively rare, health drops are random (so enemies aren't worth killing sometimes) and even when considering E-Tanks, there's always the fear of spikes and bottomless pits to worry about. In my experience, I find Megaman lends itself to too much farming in desperate situations because there are few checkpoints and it's very easy to die on the way back. Stages with early E-Tanks (or bolts, in games that have them) are a blessing for this, since you can just get them and kill yourself over and over, but I don't see this as a good quality for Freedom Planet. Perhaps the health system in Freedom Planet is a problem because enemies aren't aggressive enough. MegaMan mooks work because they have a specific role that becomes annoying in the right spots. Some are actually spaced in order to bust a player who gets predictable, which is itself possible to design because of the linear feel of the stages. Freedom Planet has some fairly linear design to it, so I think it could use more enemies that attack more quickly. DV already has pretty good examples with the green cannon enemies, especially the one placed right above the second set of handlebars. That guy will nail you if you just wait for the platform to come down, so it teaches you to not do that next time. If you're ever considering these changes but fear you might butcher the difficulty, just experiment with Hard mode. That would help to set a clear difference. By the way, great to hear about the update. Not sure when Kickstarter will really, well, start, but I hope to find you a bit more info before then.
  12. Temporary shield effects? This could actually be better in the long run if they're built into the stage design, adding them right when they're needed. One of the older ideas you mentioned (that the shields are self-demonstrating when left alone) could be merged with that too, adding a decision between taking cover behind a permanent effect, or breaking it and using it yourself for a while. But from keystones? That might happen a bit too much for it to feel valuable. Shield crystals aren't common enough in DV as is so maybe that just needs more of them in place but if every keystone resulted in a shield effect (even a temporary one), they might as well be the standard for the game and that's not rewarding anymore. Frankly, shields as power-ups are better off removed from Freedom Planet. The effects are worth keeping but the idea of power-ups is another parallel haters could use to bash the game as a "Sonic clone". What better way to show it's not than using a new format for an old concept? I know I liked the Sonic shields until I realized the added effects made it that much more discouraging to get hit, even without the ring loss. All in all, I say go for it.
  13. Okay, you got me with that! Yeah, I've been all over DV by now, seriously need to record a run sometime. 8D; Though this does confirm overlapping as the main form of damage calculation in Freedom Planet. Great to know it works against the players too, that kind of consistency is rare. Speaking from experience, loading a game with passive effects makes it harder to remember what a player can do and even more complicated to balance the difficulty around them. Players may or may not have them, keeping track of it all in a menu tends to break the pace of the main action and the more passives there are in a game, the less useful each of them tends to be. So they usually need to be stacked together for some mindless game-breaking combo and that's even worse for balance's sake so yeah, I say stick with actives. For that matter, of your listed ideas I think the third one is the best. I mean, what else would open a chest than a KEYstone? That would be an incentive for beating enemies and could expand on chests as a mechanic, since some chests may need specific keystones while others could change their contents based on what the player has on hand. Of course, that crystal booster sounds great too and even the second shaver thing could be useful if record unlocks like Carol's will be common in the full game. As for health, I think it's great to go with a small base value that increases as the adventure continues. MegaMan X's heart tanks are an amazing example of a steady boost in health while Super Mario Galaxy's approach as a temporary boost works because the star mushrooms appear in the right spots. Both examples build these into their stages so perhaps DV needs more shields and/or less petals to make health more valuable. There's another example but I'll get to that soon enough.
  14. By the way, not really glitches but some things people might notice when playing: - If Lilac is going too fast in this section, she'll stick to the ceiling and run in the other direction, breaking up the flow of the moment. This doesn't happen to Carol, even on the bike, and she's unlockable so chances are players may run into this earlier than it seems. - It's strange that players can't leave Carol's bike on platforms. I understand it's because of the lack of physics and this is the workaround until then, but I predict people being forced to ride the bike when they meant to leave it behind. Personally, I hope this workaround doesn't make it to the final game. - Due to the shape of the second slope in the boulder chase, it's too easy to get behind the boulder and so the "chase" sorta inverts. This could be solved by sending several boulders at once (so it might be more of an avalanche) or simply changing the second slope so the player can't stall it. I honestly found it clever that letting the boulder run offscreen simply sends another one into the scene, but I don't know how the Kickstarter viewers might take that. I still need to check what's fixed and what's not in this update, but it's okay. It's still nice to see the project come so far.
  15. I'm with Sereph on this one. With the new shield system, it was way too easy to do a no-damage run in Hard mode and I couldn't even keep track of how many hits the shield could take. What's more, getting a different shield from a keystone rather than an orb reset the hits of the previous shield, so all that build-up didn't amount to anything in the end. It's more discouraging than it sounds. Of course, making shields too easy to get would make the health redundant (in fact, I play in Hard mode because otherwise there's no real reason to dodge) so reducing the health of the player to compensate might throw people off. At this rate you might as well make shields the real portion of health if they're gonna be that important and their effects will be central to the gameplay. You could consider Super Mario Galaxy too. In that game, health was a simple 3 HP counter and a star mushroom added another 3. The effect disappeared as soon as those extra 3 HP were lost but otherwise it worked like real health. That made it an incentive to not get hit (to conserve it) and rewarding to find (since it's a bit too easy to die otherwise and it takes serious skill to avoid that in several late stages). In the end, perhaps the beef with the shields is that they're balanced around immunity in a game that doesn't really need it. I'm willing to believe the full game may have that many traps and/or more aggressive enemies to compensate, but from what's available here it's not really showing that. I know Dragon Valley's the first level and so it needs to start off lax, but the case is that it deals in occasional hits rather than constant assaults by enemies. Since there's so much health, you just take hits and go. Is it a fear of making the game too hard that caused this?
  16. - That makes sense but considering that Carol's energy already regenerates, why not just have her gain no energy on the bike? Crystals would be more important that way and it might open up possibilities in the future, like a boost or something like that. - I never found the theme song to be an ear rape, to be honest. But using the title screen as the intro for the full theme is a great way to set up a surprise around the end. Looking forward to those lyrical bits, too! - So she gave you unused clips? That's pretty resourceful of you guys. :3 It'd be funny if the unknown trainer was in the game and Lilac talked to her, though this technically means she's telling herself (or Carol) to get ready. - Oh, well, it still looks good as is. X3; I just hope the animation shows up at some point. Those rotating runs could be useful for more than just the tunnels. - Great call on your part, Strife. It's pretty hilarious to see her like that, not enough games these days have such details. All the more reason why Freedom Planet is so good. 83 - You know, that sounds even better. I'm guessing that this invincibility you mention would happen so the shield doesn't disappear from any hit, right? Multi-level shields would help to keep the momentum going, but hopefully those stocked keystones will still matter. After all, a player that's good enough to keep a level 3 shield AND 5 keystones doesn't need much more. By the way, thanks for mentioning the bug reports in Retro.
  17. Alright, so here's an update on some things that, while glitchy, might not be entirely bad when handled right. These could have been found earlier on joypads, so it's a shame MMF2's bad support may hurt Freedom Planet in this aspect. In any case, here: - Lilac's uppercut can go higher if you do it with Attack AND Jump at the same time. You know you got it right when Lilac jumps then immediately does the uppercut, carrying her upward momentum. I spliced a screenshot to show you the difference, though it makes more sense in motion. - In that same way, pressing Attack and Jump at the same time in mid-air with full energy gets silly. Lilac does her cyclone, then immediately cancels into her aerial kick, bumping up a little bit and losing no energy. I think free glide kicks should be patched, but the ability to cancel the cyclone early would make it easier to handle. Just not immediately, and it should be good. - Going to Shang Mu Academy then to Dragon Valley starts you off with 2 shield orbs. No way this will stick in the final game, but I don't get why the academy offers such a boost when there are no shield orbs in those stages to begin with. That's it for glitches at the moment. I know that's not much proof but you can test this yourselves by opening Settings.exe and mapping Attack and Jump to the same button. It makes regular play odd (Lilac can't attack on the ground anymore) but you'll see what I mean. Last but not least, some thoughts I really should have posted a while ago. Wow, that was long. Anyway, I hope all this helps!
  18. Yes, I think that will do the trick for this. You may also want to look into players dying after the stage is cleared, since that's got two glitches tied to it: dying shortly after hitting the final target counts as failure, while dying a bit later (long enough for a "new record" message to appear) causes the music to stop until they leave Shang Mu Academy. Players couldn't die like this in 1.2 so there was nothing of that sort there. To be honest, yeah, it happened to me on accident too, since it IS pretty natural there. But I think the complaints have more to do with the cyclone disrupting Lilac's other moves. I mean, wouldn't people give the same complaints about Carol's air pounce? But that move costs no energy and doesn't affect anything else she does, while an accidental cyclone means half of Lilac's energy is gone like that. So maybe it should be possible to cancel the cyclone early by pressing Jump again? As for the uppercut, the problem might be with conveying directional and double-press inputs without changing the stance of the player, like with the crouching moves. I saw it done in Castlevania games where Up + Attack uses subweapons, later games gave the characters a second stance to point this out. Characters in Freedom Planet already look up, but not in a way that shows they're ready to attack. There might be other options, though.
  19. In any case, I got some more stuff to bring up. Yes, it's still a lot of info to just dump like this, but between this Kickstarter stuff happening a week from now AND said week looking to be a busy one for me, I'd like to do this while I have the chance. So here we go: - Now I understand what happened to that Shang Mu Academy glitch with the records being saved in the wrong spots. It's got to do with the "clear" script and how it's part of the saving process. For instance, here's a record for stage 1 with Carol. The "clear" message plays again if you unpause as the character celebrates, but BEFORE the "new record" message plays. Yes, you CAN pause during this time... and as you unpause, the record scrolls one stage ahead! So in this case, unpausing 14 times saves the record on stage 15 AND unlocks everything else up to that point. - In other news, I just realized it's possible to trigger power-ups while dying, like getting the 5th orb but dying before the shield forms. This makes the player respawn with the shield as if they'd started with it. This is Hard mode, by the way. - And speaking of starts, it's possible to jump near the end of the second tunnel. It's hard to wriggle around in there, but not impossible for the player to crawl to the top-right section of the tunnel, where they suddenly get shot to the top of the screen. But, since you're clipping through the ground, you can't move! Lilac's comet dash was the only way to escape and it makes a TON of noise as she bounces out. I know a picture can't capture the moment, but this definitely shouldn't happen. That should be it for now. I know it was a ton to post for one day but I hope Kickstarter goes well for the project.
  20. No problem! It's great to hear they've been fixed already. As for the Cacteon glitch, I think the issue isn't with the enemy. It's with the death of the player and how it's triggered: AFTER they land from the deadly hit. In this particular case, the player keeps bouncing off the springs so they never "land" and death never triggers. Would it be possible to change the trigger so that it's, say, 2~3 seconds after the hit? That way you don't have to tweak Cacteon or any enemies that could cause this, just the condition itself. This one has me confused too. I tested it with both USB joypads I got and the program just crashes right after it starts. However, plugging them in didn't seem to cause anything. It's only when I set them as the controller with Settings.exe that things go wrong. How was this program compiled? Would it need to be remade to consider Joypad 2? Respectable, huh? That's... a nice way of looking at it. I'm seriously not used to people respecting me for what I do. It feels great to know someone does.
  21. Thanks, I'm glad you think so! It might seem silly to do all this for free but I just do what I can. So what about those fixed glitches? Well, so far I can confirm this: Oh yeah, I really should test joypads too! I've been playing all this with keyboard controls and the only real app issue I ever ran into was having to Alt-F4 out of the Mahjong glitch. Then again, MMF2 in general seems to choke on joypads so it might be a programming oversight on their end.
  22. Okay, so 1.3's new gravity and moves definitely sped up the experience a lot. Even the menus are fast now, it almost threw me off with the new sound effects. Lilac's new voice clips sound pretty lively too! Having said that, I found quite a few glitches alright, especially involving the motorcycle and the new tunnel. - You can get off Carol's motorcycle with the special button (though she does a Wild Kick if you have the energy for it). Parking it on a platform gets weird once it moves, but the bike doesn't. - The new tunnel is much more automated, but it's still possible to jump out near the end of the first one. Taking the motorcycle to this point can let Carol stick around inside the tunnel. Dropping on top of the exit makes her roll and, though you can get out from the left, she doesn't react to anything else. Also, the sound starts to glitch up if she's left there. - Leaving the first miniboss behind as it explodes doesn't open the barrier, so the player is stuck unless they can beat another enemy. This never happened in 1.2, so maybe this is that MMF2 collision glitch at work? - Here's another game-breaker. In some lower sections of the stage (like this one before the first mini-boss), it's possible for Carol to drive the motorcycle into a stiff angle. Letting go of the controller makes her drop straight down, but when she lands she can't move to the sides anymore, bike or not. Not even the air pounce worked, so there's no choice but to quit. - And for some reason, the player can't pause once they land the first hit on the end boss. I don't know why that happens, but I ran into this by sheer accident. This is just the beginning, but I'll have to rush the next few posts. After all, it's for that Kickstarter gig. This could make or break the deal, so excuse me for taking it seriously.
  23. Ah, so you wrote the TV Tropes page? That'd explain why the info is so straight-forward, with some bonus details. So nice to have accurate stuff from the author himself. Wow, new demo? You have my word that I will dig everything I can out of this! I think I'll start by confirming the glitches I found are fixed.
  24. Are you sure it's only the recent build that has the enemy issue? I don't know the build that the 1.2 demo was made on, but several enemies only work onscreen. One in particular can follow just about anywhere, too. But assuming you worked with the newer build, would that mean coding the enemies again or just how collisions work? And if I remember correctly, joypad support is built naturally into MMF2 so they could update that. This joypad 2 thing might be part of Sonic Worlds rather than MMF2, so it shouldn't be just Freedom Planet having these errors. But on the off-chance that it is, wouldn't the lag spike be offset by the increase in FPS? Or maybe it has to do with how sounds are coded into the game. I have the 250 build but Sonic Worlds hasn't given me any sound errors.
  25. I'm surprised dynamic loading isn't as common these days, but I guess it takes skillful coding to pull it off. Sure, 3D data is much heavier and most consoles don't have the memory to preload all that without slowing the gameplay down, but you'd think this would have taught developers to not overload on the goods. Or maybe it's because they take the player's patience for granted? Loading times really can break the flow of the action, especially if gameplay mechanics work against this. This is exactly what I'm afraid of. Unleashed and Colors are enjoyable if you like linear experiences but that's about it. I still remember how Starlight Carnival Act 1 began with a 20-second cutscene you couldn't skip because you were "technically" playing. They actually have to tell you when it's okay to press buttons, so it's pretty silly.
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