Probably a Mod

A few things I felt needed pointing out:

A skipflag for the weapon choice at the beginning would work wonders.

There's an invisible tile above the door leading from "passage of interest" to "oh yeah baby". I can shoot though it, but energy crystals bounce off of it.

After going from the "passage of interest" to the outside area called "start" the door will not work in reverse. Also you can walk off the map just left of this door.

A save point in "strange room" just before the boss fight would be ideal.

The pseudo-balrog's projectiles can sometimes push you through the floor of mushrooms. Maybe put some solid invisible blocks under the bottommost mushroom platforms so that they exceed 1 tile in thickness?

You can enter the door during the boss fight.

Entering and exiting the door will reinitiate the boss fight, regardless of if the boss has already been defeated. This sort of behaviour applies to switches as well.

The opening created after the boss fight is gone again after entering and exiting the room.

The "this is it" room allows you to fall off the right-hand side of the map.

There is no way to recover ammo.

 

Oh, thanks a ton. I actually forgot about some of this stuff, like being able to walk off the left edge of the "start" area.



The invisible tile I had no idea about, it was probably misplaced when I changed one of the invisible tiles to block npcs; Most importantly keeping "balrog" from flying through the animated bricks.



There's a lot of flags I need to set up. Particularly ones for the door during the boss fight and a skipflag for the cutscene before. That, and the opening that appears after you win. I plan to have several flags activate during the weapon selection that alter certain things later on.

Though the way I presented it in the demo is a little simpler than it should be. I plan to add a small room before the "intro" room where you choose in gameplay somehow.



The "balrog" projectiles are kind of a finicky idea and they have pushed me through the mushrooms as well, though placing solid tiles below them seems like it would work. It probably wouldn't work on the mushrooms leading up to the door since you jump under those. I've got a way around that though.



For the door that leads into the "start" area, I've been wondering whether or not to make the areas before inaccessible.



The "this is it" map will have a <TRA leading back whenever it becomes an actual map.



Lastly, for saves and health/ammo refills, a save in the strange room will work nicely. Oh, and you're not actually going to get the gun in that room. That's how it was before I added the sword. I haven't thought of anything to replace it yet. Thinking about putting a refill in there too, in case someone uses up a ton of ammo for some reason and saves, leaving them absolutely stuck on the boss fight.



One question.



Would the sword work better if I moved the point where the projectile spawns in front of the player and removed the speed so it behaves like a sword should, or does it work fine the way I have it now?

 

For the door that leads into the "start" area, I've been wondering whether or not to make the areas before inaccessible.

I can understand if you want to make the jump a point of no return, however there is no reason to apply this logic to the door itself. Having to worry about if a door will lock me out of the previous area seems like a bad way to go about things.

 

I see what you mean. Also, if someone gets to the cliff, they will probably realize that they won't be able to get back up and want to go back to see if they missed anything. The way it was in Cave Story makes sense because there's nothing to miss, and you can get back up later.
Okay, here's the next demo.

DEMO

 

Let's give this a go.

Spoiler

-I'll go into more detail about the aesthetics later, for now I'll merely say that everything looks and sounds lovely
-I'm not sure why you skip the opening fall segment after completing it once, but either way it would be a good idea to clean up the reset so that it doesn't open with a glimpse of the fall map. You could put in an autosave upon hitting the ground to load from, which would also alleviate the problem of being unable to replay the falling map when restarting the game while the skipflag is still active. Or you could simply go back to the start each time, it's not as though it's very far until the first save point.
-When leaving the 'optional' area before the first save point, the door doesn't animate open.
-Oh gosh I have limited ammo, I better start paying attention to that
-The projectile knockback in the red mushroom fight can cause some severe loss-of-control effects when gitting hit by more than one at once, and even then it's easy to get pushed off because the arena is so flat. Staying in the corners will get you stuck behind the boss, and if this happens on the left side then there's no way out. Being stuck at level 1 in the save room didn't help (and I hate to think what this fight would be like with the melee weapon, which I didn't take), nor did having to redo it if I messed up on the next area. I like the idea of having to use the terrain carefully for the Balrog boss AI, but it could do with some tidying up.

There's not much after that so I'll leave it there for now. Anyway, very nice art and sound, and there are some neat effects in there too. I always like seeing it when people take advantage of the sprite frames that are available, like what you did with the hearts. Aside from the couple of things I mentioned, I like the general design of the areas and the ideas presents, which I'm sure will be developed upon in future releases. Reskinning the entire game is always time-consuming, so best of luck that you can keep your momentum going.

 

-I'm not sure why you skip the opening fall segment after completing it once, but either way it would be a good idea to clean up the reset so that it doesn't open with a glimpse of the fall map. You could put in an autosave upon hitting the ground to load from, which would also alleviate the problem of being unable to replay the falling map when restarting the game while the skipflag is still active. Or you could simply go back to the start each time, it's not as though it's very far until the first save point.

I've been messing with that area quite a bit. I sorta fixed it with flags but it could be better.

-Oh gosh I have limited ammo, I better start paying attention to that

I wonder if 300 ammo is too much to start with?

-The projectile knockback in the red mushroom fight can cause some severe loss-of-control effects when gitting hit by more than one at once, and even then it's easy to get pushed off because the arena is so flat. Staying in the corners will get you stuck behind the boss, and if this happens on the left side then there's no way out. Being stuck at level 1 in the save room didn't help (and I hate to think what this fight would be like with the melee weapon, which I didn't take), nor did having to redo it if I messed up on the next area. I like the idea of having to use the terrain carefully for the Balrog boss AI, but it could do with some tidying up.

Do the projectiles do 1 damage in this version? I originally had them just bounce the player around so the only way to die would be to fall off. I may make it that way again.
I've adjusted that entire scene save for a few platforms; You can't hug the wall on the right anymore because of a large gap and the left side I'm still working on.
Also, the weapons have been tweaked a bit (damage, range, hitboxes, graphics), so it should be a bit easier/less clumsy.

I'm glad you enjoy the graphics and stuff.
Though I'm working on tilesets and sprites more than mapping, honestly...

 

Can't touch this. Pararararam...

Well, the mod is good, but aside from some flag errors (you can take infinite fly and infinite

Spoiler

Curly's panties)

there is a glitch with level 2 Totsuka.
You removed the disappear effect, but somehow you messed up and instead of really removing it, you just made it spawn invisible effects that only take up effect spaces, and after some attacks no effects appear anymore. Try it out yourself. Take level 2 Totsuka, spam it for some time, and "examine" wall from time to time. Normally, a heart appears above your head. After some time, it will not. That also applies to damage effects (red circles) that appear when you hit a foe, and to just every effect.

I'll look into the code and try to find a fix for that.

EDIT: Got it, I guess.
Remove this piece of code.

Spoiler

so it looks like this

 

PART 1/?

Spoiler

oh hey it's called LOVE
Love Story
open the chest
it's a heart
you can now be known as a murder literally anywhere in the world

thakn you for config.dat
les do dis

---

what's Perfect DOS VGA 437 Win?
wtf

best intro

funny, I thought I downloaded V0.0.0.2

falling w/ no music
kinda boring

p cool mod so far

this bridge doesn't last long

it's a trap
you're a dead man now
mod story
open the chest
it's a TRAP

it's impossible to cross
kill me

godbe space old man

THE DOG IS HURTING ME
HELP

o shit limited ammo wohsp

great platforming

whatever I can't play this

i'll finish it later once I not feel like shit

 

there is a glitch with level 2 Totsuka.
You removed the disappear effect, but somehow you messed up and instead of really removing it, you just made it spawn invisible effects that only take up effect spaces, and after some attacks no effects appear anymore. Try it out yourself. Take level 2 Totsuka, spam it for some time, and "examine" wall from time to time. Normally, a heart appears above your head. After some time, it will not. That also applies to damage effects (red circles) that appear when you hit a foe, and to just every effect.

Oops. I knew something was wrong since nothing in caret was showing up... I'm too new to assembly. Thanks for fixing it.
You won't be able to juke the poor mushroom next time around.


Also, Spirit, and uh... everybody else, since I forgot to mention...
The file "Perfect DOS VGA 437 Win" is the font meant to be used in the game.

Could've sworn I changed the version number.

I guess I could put music in the falling scene.

I've made the bridge last longer, and maybe...

Spoiler

you can jump before the spikes come out

 

Just a heads-up... My mod just lost all its sense of subtlety.