Another Jenka's Nightmare remake

See? See? I told you the four pieces thing was there from the beginning!

 

Good to see everyone's calmed down the past few days~

I think the whole New Game Plusish idea is really good. It's an interesting mechanic, with the bonus of providing an awesome incentive to play the original differently if the player hasn't, which is cool.

This idea sounds like it has potential, but only time will tell. Good luck!

EDIT: Just a suggestion. Perhaps the concept of Uberweapons should be rethought. They're very fun to use, but break the bosses' difficulty in half. If you don't change much-or take them out altogether-at least don't give them out midway through the game.

 

Good to see everyone's calmed down the past few days~

Give it a little time.



I agree with Pola, having a clear game save carry over would be neat-o, would make JN feel so much more like a sequel than before.

 

I just wrote down the perfect ending to the mod this morning. It both makes sense of the plot setup and will tie everything together in a nice little bow.

Hidden text highlight (or click) to view:

The Gunsmith is the most important character in the game.

Perhaps the concept of Uberweapons should be rethought.

I'm using a clean game and piecing things together manually (like a schizo), which should remove all the bug-spawned and bug-inducing bonus weapons. While I might rename and recolor some existing weapons to keep them fresh (and changing their scale of physical power to make the limited-ammo thing worth something), you can probably forsee the difficulty of obtaining things.

Something of note, Spur + Turbocharge = fast charging Spur. But I'm sure everyone already knows this. I might abuse this as a means of making the spur more difficult to use WITHOUT the turbocharge, and make it more powerful to compensate. Then the turbocharge is the be-all-end-all of "break the game" items.

 

Yeah uh don't use the uberweapons, they were stupid.

@turbocharge
(tests)
Oh jeez it does
I guess you don't really notice that most of the time huh

 

I guess you don't really notice that most of the time huh

Original game never gives the combination, and there's no incentive to test it out unless you're just fucking around (But the fact that it occurs means Pixel originally planned for it as some kind of insane super-weapon. Yeesh). I think the boss rush mod from forever ago might offer this opportunity?

 

(But the fact that it occurs means Pixel originally planned for it as some kind of insane super-weapon. Yeesh).

not necessarily; it could be a bug/oversight, or a relic of some previous functionality. There's a lot of that in the game.

 

Well the thing is the spur litterally uses the EXP guage for charging. Picking up exp-cheese will make the thing charge slightly faster, so I can't fathom a bug or oversight causing turbocharge to affect exp gain.

 

Forgive me if I'm a total spaz and absolutely wrong on this, but there was probably a different method of obtaining the Turbocharge somewhere down the 5 year development line, one that didn't make it exclusive to the Machine Gun. Maybe the Spur was even more secretive and difficult to find than in the released Cave Story, like in some sort of secret alcove or something. Perhaps Pixel included the functionality of Super-Charging to the Spur, but later found it pretty much destroyed most of the game's difficulty. So, he made the Pole map to add a little logic and make the Spur slightly easier to get, while making the Turbocharge exclusive to the Machine Gun. The Whimsical Star was probably there earlier-no access to a computer so I can't check the items in Cave Story's data-and then lifted from wherever it was to replace the Turbocharge. Either that, or it was added in to compensate.

EDIT:Ne'er mind, somehow forgot I have access.

Yeah, the Spur was pretty much the last gun made if ArmsImage.pbm can be trusted. The Whimsical Star was also added late, so I'm not sure what this means for my stupid 'lil theory up there.

(Probably still wrong~)

 

Regarding what kinds of bonuses loading an earlier game could entail: perhaps doing this could make it so that you would have access to a certain item later in the game, rather than starting the game with some kind of advantage or uberweapon. The idea dancing around in my head is something like a booster 3.0 (which might have unlimited fuel). Maybe this item would even be necessary to get the very best ending, for which you would have to navigate a large, bottomless map without the use of the machine gun. Maybe there could even be falling blocks and such a la first corridor in Hell.

This might be related to an idea I had for part of a mod that I have thought about making, but sadly I have neither the expertise in modding nor the time to dedicate to learning the craft.

 

The uberweapons were just hacks onto the existing weapons as a whole to make them pierce walls, more or less. There was no 'normal' spur in this case; it was just the uberweapon version alone. Same for bubbler.

In this case, there's really no way to have a booster 2.0 with limited fuel, and a second one with unlimited fuel. Or at least not without some ASM.

That said, the machinegun sort of acts intentionally like an unlimited fuel flight source. Just as long as you don't level down.

 

Still, a problem is the inability (I don't remember a lot of commands, so I might be wrong) to know exactly how much health the player does have at that moment. While I -could- decrease by 42 or something, if the player happened to have min-health ran the game, they'd suddenly have negative HP, or the game could crash.



Unless the HP has a minimum cap at 0 or 1? If that's the case I can -100 and +3 or something.

I think you can read max health's 6 least significant bits via OOB flag values (assuming that it doesn't ever exceed 63), then <FLJ bunny hop your way across 96 different events. At least that was my understanding of the matter, I've never tried it personally.

 

Keep reading the topic; already clicked that I could just check the flags that were flipped upon capsule collection.



So just a heads up, I'm not dead yet. I just seem that way, what with working 40 hours a week and all that.

I'm going to try to push some progress into the game each weekend until there's enough new content to deserve a demo. This of course doesn't include the act of reorganizing maps, which I've done earlier, or reorganizing events, which I'll do later today.

I'll also try to include something visual to keep your eyes distracted from all the terrible decisions I'm making.

I'll clean up the junk at the bottom eventually; it isn't a priority right now. If you all think the title screen sucks, you're welcome to artsy-fart it up.

Other things, I'm re-balancing the weapons. Going to follow my old method as I did in Eternal Chaos, wherein Max exp is half of level 1->2 exp, which is half of level 2->3 exp. As for the actual power of the weapons, it will follow a general scheme of difficulty to obtain. The only exception being the snake, of course, which will take a bit of EXP to level but will become painfully strong (I have it set to pierce 10 enemies now!). Of course, to compensate, getting a replacement after it falls off the island is going to be difficult.

Something else I'll probably do is add "Secret Rooms" across the game wherever the player should absolutely not be able to access without devious methods or some skill (For example, getting to the Labyrinth from the First cave from the get-go). These rooms will probably consist of a small reward and some creative commentary about the game.

 

So, whenever something with my name is getting put on it, I always want it to be as perfect as it is within my power to make it. WIth that being the case, when I was helping Doors with JNR, I asked him if I could shave some rough edges on some of the maps, to which he obliged. All of the changes were to maps pre-existing in the original JN, so I thought you might like to have them in your remake/continuation too, if you were planning on leaving the existing maps the same. Here's a sample of the more major changes:

Spoiler

If you are interested in applying them to your own mod, then here's a download link to all of the .pxms of the modified maps, .pxas and .bmps of the modified tilesets, and a modified TSC script of one of the rooms that has been changed so that one of the script's areas of <CMP action is changed to accommodate the new tileset, and make the deformation of the room look more natural:

http://www.mediafire.com/?6poto1tedtt98ar

If you would like to know what specific changes have been made, then here is a rough summary:

Spoiler

- [006] Grasstown (Weed) - very minor visual tweaks
- [009] Labyrinth I (MazeI) - very minor visual tweaks near the top
- [011] Mimiga Village (Mimi) - numerous visual changes, one foreground change
- [012] First Cave (Cave) - some minor visual tweaks, I think maybe some minor foreground tweaks as well
- [013] A Familiar Cave? (Start) - some minor visual tweaks, I think maybe some minor foreground tweaks as well
- [014] Pipe Works (Barr) - some visual tweaks
- [015] Reservoir (Pool) - a couple very minor visual tweaks
- [016] Graveyard (Cemet) - very minor visual tweaks
- [024] Genesis: Spirit (Pens2) - a few minor visual tweaks
- [028] Labyrinth C (Frog) - a considerable amount of visual tweaks
- [029] c_Balrog (Curly) - a lot of visual tweaks
- [034] Genesis: Earth (Dark) - Same as 29
- [038] Labyrinth H (MazeH) - Some visual tweaks
- [039] Labyrinth W (MazeW) - Some visual tweaks
- [043] Labyrinth B (MazeB) - a couple very minor visual tweaks
- [048] Waterway (River) - some minor visual tweaks
- [056] Oblivion: Erosion (Cent) - quite a few visual tweaks
- [058] i_sand (Momo) - a few visual tweaks
- [060] Sand Zone (CentW) - a lot of visual tweaks
- [084] Genesis: Earth (Hell4) - same as 29 and 34
- [086] Mimiga Village (DIE) - same as 11

Just thought I'd offer it to you. I won't be offended if you turn it down, seeing as how the real time that I put all the effort into making these changes was when I was helping Doors with JNR.

 

I'm technically already using it all since I've been going off of the original JN's exe combined with MagicDoor's JN's maps. And I might also apply the idea to some other maps as well to help diversify the layouts.

 

Oh, whoops, didn't catch that.

 

Alright been working with getting the New-game-old-profile working (Which I'll just call "New Game +" because it makes it easier to reference). First thing I'd like to say is thank flippity fucking christ for the JavaScript parser in Booster's Lab. I'd have run my wrists ragged manually typing out all the <FL-'s from 0001 to 3000.



So here's the deal. You'll still start in the "prefab house", but the bookshelf on the left no longer does anything. When the game is loaded all your items except the few shown in the 'before' picture below will be removed (As well as the Little Man and Ikachan Medal, both of which I don't have in this save file).



BEFORE:

Spoiler

AFTER:

Spoiler

So there are two things of note. Health, and these funky green capsules.



Health is simple: It is reduced to 1 after the jump. From here, you are given an additional +1 life for every life capsule you found in the original game. If you did not find a life capsule, a flag will be set to let the game know this, so you can pick up a duplicate of it later. In this way, players who deliberately low-HP-ran the original game will receive a larger challenge in this one. On the other hand, doing so will also reap a much higher reward in HP if you collect all the duplicate capsules in this game.



As for weapons: For each weapon you had (except the Fireball, since you're kind of forced to keep it unless you get the snake), you will be given a green capsule. On its own it does nothing. However, if you give it to Chaba in the Labyrinth, he'll offer to open them all up for you, and give you the reward inside. This isn't necessarily the weapon itself, but it will still be just as rewarding.







EDIT: Here, have a screenshot of some tangible progress with my rewrite. (Stop being so quiet you guys, gawd.)

 

Oh that is a nice background

 

Here, see if you can spot all the visual tweaks to this map.

Spoiler

 

Awesome! The mod looks pretty good so far!

I especially like your new game + ideas, though I hope you have some sort of nice reward for getting those capsules. I understand about not giving a capsule for the Fireball, since it can be upgraded to the Snake. Speaking of which, will there be capsules for the Snake, Machine Gun, and Blade?

...Does the Machine Gun count as a basic weapon? It's an upgrade to Polar Star, so perhaps not. Maybe the Blade is basic?

Whatever. Although I do think the player should be rewarded for getting through the game with the Polar Star, the best but weakest weapon. Or maybe that's just me, since I do it all the time

Anyway, I noticed some things in that delicious screenshot you threw at us:

★Curly Brace should say "...Say, Quote. Do you ever...miss the island?" Just minor punctuation.
★Also, there are two little water particles in the lower left of the picture - are these supposed to be there?
★That background really is pretty.

(Stop being so quiet you guys, gawd.)

I'm only quiet if I have nothing to add. Otherwise I go on gigantic Tl;Dr rants like this one