Sep 9, 2017 at 7:42 AM
Join Date: Nov 23, 2015
Location: Somewhere within a world far away from reality...
Posts: 381
Age: 24
Pronouns: he/him
You uh... accidentally pressed fast forward, which was why the game 'got faster.' Check the readmeA continuation of my previous post...
The rest of my mod notes and my thoughts on Noxid's entry, Treasure Islands.
Gotta say that these dig spots are a wee bit finnicky.
Why was there a <NOD before the <YNJ?
Lesser secret get!
I appreciate you, HUD message box.
I wonder how much its armor will net me?
Strike the bug!
FLAWLESS VICTORY
:eyes:
WHOA! A Chaos Emerald!
Where's a plane when you need one?
fug
willing to bet that it doesn't take AA batteries, either
"but..." should be on the next line.
But what makes it a PIRATE key?
thinking face emoji
whom
Now that I look at this again, it kinda looks like a face.
Ohhey, neato.
That leaves every clue I have so far except for the "Bigmoney clue" solved.
Needs a comma after "Alright", the first "this" on the second line, and a question mark instead of a period in my opinion.
do not question ancient pirate technology, m'kay?
I...
I think I just clipped out of the world.
ok
Time to walk all the way back to Rock Tunnel because it didn't autosave at the beginning.
Yeah, if you jump in this alcove you just zip through the wall and can't go back into the level.
i thought stone was supposed to be solid
It was more windy than anything, really.
i don't get it
roasted
A slight bug with the orb switches used in the fan puzzle:
If you go back into the cave to mess around with the switches some more, you need to hit them twice before they'll turn off again.
Not pictured due to being a static image, but she tends to have a seizure if you walk into the backs of these fans.
I can't believe I found that as quickly as I did.
Another <NOD before a <YNJ, too.
what in tarnation
it even increased my life by 1
It's probably still considered to be in mint condition by most slugs, though.
Wew, finally.
Oh boy, so THIS is where the rain gif came from.
Not gonna lie, I'm really digging this music.
Hey, at least it isn't as bad as purple Critters in enclosed spaces.
LESS THAN FLAWLESS VICTORY
(some damage was already accrued by Beetles and purple Critters)
you what
oh baby
I pressed Z too fast to catch it, but in the text afterwards "Lets" should have been "Let's".
Only the finest and most well-cared-for shovels are to be used on this quest.
more oddly not-solid rock
Polish only gives +2 damage, but that makes a vast difference. This is what proper balancing feels like.
There should be a comma after "Well".
booty spotted
oooOOO
"it's" should be capitalized and there's not enough space at the end of either line.
poor kid
Also, four lines of text were used here without a <NOD to break them up.
Time to backtrack!
... as soon as I open the game up again. (Crash count: 2)
i am incredibly upset right now
I can't believe it's (probably) almost over.
Oh boy, family issues.
Also, not enough space at the end of the second line.
How generous of her.
something something not enough space line 3
i can't believe the glasses were a prank this entire time
Time for an old-school sisterly throwdown.
I almost wish that she had more than somewhere between 1 and 4 HP, but swatting her out of the air in one hit was pretty worth it, too.
victory shovel
nonoNO I DIDN'T GET TO SCREENSHOT HOW MUCH DOSH I HAD
And thank you and the other members of the Hello Team for making this.
sportsHoly heck, I don't know where to begin. The custom graphics were fantastic; if it weren't for the Cave Story enemies and what other few elements survived the transition from Cave Story to this, this would honestly look like its own game. The music was also pretty good, though it could've used a little more variety. I also forgot to mention it in my notes, but the overworld itself was very impressive; I have a feeling that you used that weird hack you made where Quote would freely float about, though I can't remember the name of the mod it was used in. Overall, this was a really wonderful entry and it honestly deserves first place for all the hard work that's been put into it.
Of course, it was far from a perfect submission. I ran into a myriad of text errors throughout my playthrough, most (if not all) of which being pointed out in my notes. The digging mechanic was a little touchy with how exact your positioning had to be, though it wasn't necessarily a big issue. That clipping issue I suffered in Rock Tunnel was rather irritating, especially because the game didn't autosave your progress upon entering the main portion of the level. I think the biggest letdown, though, was how the Turboots were utilized.
I immediately backtracked upon getting them to try to access any potential secrets that I couldn't reach before. All that I got for my troubles, though, were fake floors and invisible walls. The only purpose they served was giving you access to Final Approach. In the long run, it's not a TERRIBLE problem, but it did severely hamper my wonderment.
Shipwrecked by yours truly? I think I'll leave that one up to you guys, though I will say one thing:
Try looking up more often, especially around sand and splinters.
Last and theoretically not least, there's Critter Tower Defense 2 by Thomas Xin.
Since I'm one of the few people who can open this and is willing to do so, I guess I'm not free quite yet.
Given how I can't pause the game after clicking out of the window, this is going to be a bit of a chore to commentate on.
Before I start, though, a few things I've learned through a past playthrough and things others've said:
1. Transparency secretly saves if you swap it to OFF, but it will revert back to ON if you ever pause the game after closing it.
2. Placing towers in certain positions will still make it almost impossible to place a tower where you want; this is most noticable with tight groups of towers.
With that out of the way, onto the mod itself.
Level 1 status: Barely Tropical
it begins
this just in:
level 4 towers are busted
VERY ANGERY TOWER
M Y
F R A M E S
Rainbow Critter status: PURGED
FLAWLESS VICTORY
Well that was weird, I couldn't click on Start again until I paused and then unpaused.
Level 2 status: Literally Not Tropical At All
Level 4 Polar Star status: Surprisingly Useful
this is critter abuse to be completely honest with you
wow, level 3 went by so fast that i literally forgot to take pictures
oops uhhh
Level 3 status: Literally Not Tropical At All
Level 4 status: Literally Not Tropical At All
the volcanos give this more of an underworld vibe than a tropical island volcano, to be honest
I can already tell that most of the difficulty in this level is going to come from not knowing which hole the Rainbow Critter is going to pop out of.
Couldn't screenshot it because can't pause by clicking out of the window haha but the Rainbow Critter popped out of one of the spawnpoints to the right instead of the huge one to the left.
I guessed wrong on where it'd spawn, and without my abundance of rainbow towers on both sides I would've eaten an instant kill for it.
And now for Level 5, the level you said was "Rise of Ballos" levels of hard.
Level 5 status: Literally Not Tropical At All
also why did the critters spill so much strawberry jam all over their base
With everything the shade of blood red that it is, it all blends together.
With the framerate set to over 240, I cannot even begin to tell what's happening; it's actually impossible to look for holes in my defenses since by the time I get there the critters are either all the way through or dead.
This level is the exact opposite of game design fundementals.
I have done the improbable.
and now the title screen is having a victory seizure (check the framerate)
and so is any level i try to open
thanks
Might as well try at least one critter level so I can say that I did.
At least it controls a little better than it did in CTD 1, but it's still not the best. For example:
- If you get caught in something that hits very quickly, it becomes almost impossible to see what you're doing through all the damage numbers.
- I swear that I've seen the critters jump almost vertically before, but it's extremely difficult to do while playing as one without curving forwards, which could potentially cause you to lose your footing and/or get shot by towers.
>leaving the backsides of your slopes exposed
shiggy diggy
screw these jumps in particular
okay i take it back
with some of these jumps you made, it's went from "not the best" to "anti-fun"I tried to go into this with an optimistic attitude, but it just slipped away with each additional level. I think the only positive things I can point out are that it's ever so slightly satisfying to see increasingly large groups of critters evaporate under the fire of several rainbow towers, the Critter mode has some interesting concepts, and that I think this is the first mod ever to include achievements.
I think it will be easier to type out the mod's negatives in list format, beginning with the elephant in the room:
- IT'S NOT TROPICAL AT ALL. The only level that can be considered tropical is the first level, but as someone told me: "Water is not tropical on its own."
- The travesty that was the mod's release. It may run fine on my computer, but the version that was submitted to the contest did not run on a majority of the others' computers. I understand that you were busy around the end of the contest, but this could have been avoided by posting a demo or unfinished version literally anytime before the deadline.
- The ever-increasing game speed makes it harder and harder to plan out your actions and quickly plug up holes in your defenses. More on that below.
- The inability to tell where the Rainbow Critter will spawn. With only one spawn point, this is not noticable, but with the multiple spawn points in Levels 4 and 5 this becomes a big problem. Level 4 makes it look like it will spawn in the giant spawn point to the left, when in reality it spawned to the right. More on Level 5 below.
- Critter mode controls terribly in any environment where you need to do precision platforming (read: any level that isn't the first level). I took easily 100+ damage while trying to jump around an overhang and teleport onto solid ground. It'd help if you could tell where you were going to reappear before you become vulnerable again, but that isn't a feature.
- LEVEL 5. The quality of this level is so low that it brings down the entire mod as a whole in my eyes. Every single block in the level excluding the tower locations is a similar shade of blood red, and it all bleeds together into one mass of red unless you concentrate. The game speed goes out of its mind in this level, making it impossible to do anything other than place towers and pray that the next wave dies. The sheer amount of places where Critters can spawn throws all strategy out the window, and this also makes it impossible to plan for where the Rainbow Critter will appear; I frantically scrolled looking for it and couldn't find it before it died to my walls of Machine Gun towers.
I will wait until specific voting and related input guidelines are posted before giving any kind of rankings, though I do have a list of them in mind.
The game was actually supposed to be more tropical than it seemed, but making a tower defense game with all the levels looking the same just makes it look boring.
Last edited:
