Strife

My handwriting is chicken scratch, so no worries. xD Nice sketches, by the way. Lilac is definitely not as fast as Sonic, that's for sure. Quoted for truth. Rocket Knight is the second most common game it's compared to. After that, Ristar and Megaman Zero. Would be refreshing if people focused on the similarities to those games more often. :3

FGR - Noted. Thanks! By resetting, do you mean by pressing Esc or by quitting the game and starting the stage again?

...Should I be putting up a scoreboard on the first page? :3

Indeed. That's actually a patten that I'll try to keep: Each stage having at least one mandatory miniboss, one mid-level boss, one skippable boss, and one end-of-stage boss.

My record for Carol in the 1.1 build is 5:17:12. I find that she gets around faster if she rolls while running downhill. Also, if you remember the second waterfall where the snake boss pops out and spits fireballs, there's a jump pad at the top of that which completely skips the third log, and if you roll as soon as you hit the slope at the bottom, it can send you flying past the stomper miniboss. I haven't beaten your time for Lilac though. xD That was pretty impressive.

Alright, dudes and dudettes, version 1.1 is up! http://www.mediafire.com/?1jfqnswq7usdvwe I haven't updated the links on my website or on IndieDB yet. I'll let you guys test it first to make sure things are in working order. There's a changelog in the download that lists all of the modifcations, but I'll put them here too:

I just hope the update that's coming soon won't butcher peoples' scores too much. xD; If anything, it should improve them since it'll be slightly easier to build up Lilac's boost meter and Carol's pounce should also improve her times. Speaking of which, I'd like to try and get it released today. Just gotta make sure I didn't produce any new bugs or make derpy mistakes like leaving debug keys activated.

Oh geez. xD; Should definitely fix that one. (This ironically wouldn't be the first platform game I've made where you're stuck swimming after restarting a stage while underwater).

Carol has a new pouncing move. Instead of crouching down, she'll get into a "ready to pounce" stance, and if you press Jump while crouching, she'll lunge forward at the same speed as Lilac's maximum running speed on a flat surface. This should hopefully make her more of an ideal choice for speedrunning in certain stages. Plus it fits her feline personality. :3 As for Lilac, I tweaked her energy meter so that it slowly regenerates over time, but I also slightly reduced the impact that your speed has on increasing it. The net result is that during a speedrun, you should get a full boost meter in roughly the same places in the stage as before, with the added bonus of it being slightly easier to refill if you mess up.

Sounds like an idea. I'll also add it to the FAQ on the website.

Noted. ^^ I'm trying to figure out what's causing it, but having little luck. =/ Also, for those of you who are hunting bugs, this video should give you an indication of some of the stuff I'm trying to fix right now:

For those of you who are getting screen flicker problems, try one of the following command line functions and see if they fix it: /DIB => forces standard graphic mode /DIB3 => forces standard graphic mode, 256 colors /DIB4 => forces standard graphic mode, 16 millions of colors, 24 bits /DIB6 => forces standard graphic mode, 32768 colors /DIB7 => forces standard graphic mode, 65536 colors /DIB8 => forces standard graphic mode, 16 millions of colors, 32 bits /DDRAW => forces DirectDraw + VRAM mode /NOVR => no VRAM in DirectDraw mode (To use these, create a shortcut for the game in Windows and go to Properties, then in the Target field, add them after the quotation marks.)

After some experimentation, I don't think partial boosting is a good idea afterall. Even if I have a tiny sliver of boost energy, I can still use it to knock my running speed up to maximum. It also removes the strategy involved with figuring out where and when to boost because I'm able to take every single shortcut that's possible instead of saving my boost energy for the most beneficial shortcuts. I could make it so that the boost meter slowly increases by itself, so that if the player is caught in a tight area and can't build up running speed, they can just sit still for 20-30 seconds and wait for their meter to recharge. This could also remove some of the frustration of having the meter 98% full but with no room to build up that last bit of energy.

Hmm... Given that I'm going to map her boost to the C button now, that's actually not a bad idea. I could make it so that the boost is usable any time you have energy, but is much shorter if it's not full (i.e. only has the half the power/duration of a boost executed when the meter is full). As far as Carol goes, I'd like to try and give her another ability to vary things a bit more. How about a flashstep-type move where double tapping one of the direction keys makes her leap forward and start running as fast as Lilac? Also, those times are nuts. xD My best time is 5:23:23. Good job!

Good catches! I'll get to work on them.

I caught wind of that earlier, Rawr. It's so much win. :'D I can't believe it.

I'm not sure. My AVG reads the ZIP file as infected, but when I extract all the files and then scan them, they're clean. As a precaution, I already re-uploaded clean ZIPs to IndieDB and Mediafire. I unfortunately have to wait on the SAGE mirror until they tell me which e-mail address to send the new files to.

Thanks Cleb! Violet - Ah, it appears you are correct. I set the message to appear with a time of less than 6:15:00 whereas the character select screen locks it until you reach 6:00:00. Augh. xD; Anyway, I've decided that in the next update, I'm going to map Lilac's boost to the C button instead of requiring a double jump. As a consequence, she will not be able to store an extra shield. Carol will still be able to, though.

I thought I replied to that. Sorry. xD; Anyway, check the Time Attack record and see if your time is indeed below 6:15:00. If it isn't, I can PM you the cheat code to unlock her to see if that works.

Yeah, definitely. It's only going to be like that in Time Attack, though - In Adventure mode, you'll have to pay crystals to continue from the last checkpoint, else you start from the beginning of the stage. Anyway, I added a Hard mode in there too, so now there's the traditional Easy-Medium-Hard setup. Easy gives you twice as much health per petal, while Hard kinda does the opposite by making enemies do double damage - which should offset the fact that I put more petals in the stage. I won't be making enemies behave any differently between difficulties as it would skew Time Attack records too much, so the difficulty just determines how squishy your character is.

Yeah, I like the idea of adding difficulty options. Last night I replaced the "Lives" feature in the Options menu with the ability to choose between Easy and Normal. On Easy mode, petals give twice as much health when collected and the player's mercy invincibility is longer. Difficulty is a tricky subject, but I hope the folks who enjoy a challenge don't mind me making DV harder to die in. I really don't think it's a good idea to leave the stage as hard as it is in the final version of the game. Rest assured, future stages in the full version will offer more challenging situations. I am using that extension... But the thing is, I want to be able to stretch the screen (2x, 3x, etc) AND have the ability to change the screen width at runtime. So far, I can only seem to do the latter with the Window Control object and only if screen stretching is disabled, so it looks like I can only have one or the other. =/

Did you try the Mediafire link? http://www.mediafire.com/?7fbp87386baffht

After some experimentation, it doesn't seem like there's going to be an easy way to dynamically alter the screen width during runtime, as long as I allow the display to stretch based on the window size. =/ The simple solution would be to just make this the default screen size from now on... but there's always the chance that someone might want to stick with 320x240 if they have weird display issues while going fullscreen or something. So, I dunno. xD;

Widescreen anyone? It's surprisingly bug-free; the only real issues with it are graphical in nature, and most of the work would involve getting the level cards and menu interfaces to stretch dynamically depending on your chosen screen format. If I spend today working on it, I should be able to throw it into the next update.

Indeed, he speaks the truth. 6:15:00 is the target time for Carol. Anyway. I'm going to see if I can ask to get a new version of the game uploaded with my fixes.