The Witching Hour

Good new demo. I was frustrated by the logic puzzle in Netherworld and skipped it, though. WAT DO.

That's actually intended as an optional sidequest, so don't worry about it.

 

That's actually intended as an optional sidequest, so don't worry about it.

BUT I WANT DO IT! What's the end result, just another lifeup?

 

More than music and graphics in mods i love only assembly hax.
Good job man!

 

Whaaaa I missed this update completely D: I'll try to get onto playing it this evening.

 

So I decided to remember to finish this.

INCREDIBLY DELAYED SPOILERS
-From what I remember of the end of the desert part, the conversation with Tyr dragged on a bit. There may have been a boss as well, if so I don't remember it being particularly hard.
-The water area is nicely done, but I couldn't find any way to get back up after falling in the gap in the first area, and I have no idea how the puzzle even works. There doesn't appear to be any way to interact with any of those weirdly-shaped blocky things, in the puzzle room or outside of it.
-The "technology" area is well-presented, but not really very challenging or interesting. Maybe you have more plans for it, but at the moment it would be nice if it had some kind of extra task, like maybe Luka having to figure out how to use some of the computers in order to open the shutters to reach the end or something.

 

Wait fuck when was this updated?

 

Wait fuck when was this updated?

It wasn't updated. DoubleThink's review was just posted since he decided to finish the current mod version after a long while.

So I decided to remember to finish this.

INCREDIBLY DELAYED SPOILERS
-From what I remember of the end of the desert part, the conversation with Tyr dragged on a bit. There may have been a boss as well, if so I don't remember it being particularly hard.
-The water area is nicely done, but I couldn't find any way to get back up after falling in the gap in the first area, and I have no idea how the puzzle even works. There doesn't appear to be any way to interact with any of those weirdly-shaped blocky things, in the puzzle room or outside of it.
-The "technology" area is well-presented, but not really very challenging or interesting. Maybe you have more plans for it, but at the moment it would be nice if it had some kind of extra task, like maybe Luka having to figure out how to use some of the computers in order to open the shutters to reach the end or something.

Spoiler

You're not supposed to go back up if you drop down in the lagoon. If you don't have what you need, you'll just drown anyway and be returned back up to the previous part.

Those little block thingys are actually hints for the puzzle room. The blocks tell you which switches need to be turned on/off, not the other way around (i.e. the switches don't change the blocks).

And yes, there will be some more stuff for the tech area.

I swear I'm still working on this.

Here's a small preview of the next update (which is still under development, obviously)

This guy is a boss that acts sorta like the Curly Brace boss, except he can jump and is kind of more dangerous.

 

This guy is a boss that acts sorta like the Curly Brace boss, except he can jump and is kind of more dangerous.

I don't like the way that screeny looks. There's too many bright colors that seem to contrast eachother heavily and they all just seems to clash eachother.

I recommend you tone down on the color a bit, since right now the colors are a bit overwhelming.

You have practically every color of the rainbow in that screenshot (excluding purple).

 

I don't like the way that screeny looks. There's too many bright colors that seem to contrast eachother heavily and they all just seems to clash eachother.

I recommend you tone down on the color a bit, since right now the colors are a bit overwhelming.

You have practically every color of the rainbow in that screenshot (excluding purple).

I suppose I could modify the tech background to rely on duller blue-colored circuits so that more of the colors match. I should also fix up some parts of the boss bar/health bar, since they tend to have a lot of blue + red. Thanks for pointing this out--I haven't thought much about possible complementary color overload.

EDIT:
Here's a new scheme that gets rid of the color clashing:

 

Spoiler

You're not supposed to go back up if you drop down in the lagoon. If you don't have what you need, you'll just drown anyway and be returned back up to the previous part.

Spoiler

I fell in on the way back

 

I really like the game. The music seemed to be really good, although at times tile placement could have used work. How many of these songs did you make your self? "meaning that their original and not from midis"

 

I really like the game. The music seemed to be really good, although at times tile placement could have used work. How many of these songs did you make your self? "meaning that their original and not from midis"

All of the songs are taken from other sources, mainly classic videogames, i.e. no original compositions, since I really don't have full faith in my compositional skills yet. Maybe by the end, I'll make a couple.
Otherwise, I wouldn't really try a midi to get the track notes, or if I'm forced to make use of a midi, I would also listen to the original song a bunch of times, since midis tend to sound different (sometimes extremely different) based on your system.

EDIT: If you want the names of the songs used, look in the readme.

 

Alright. Constructive critisicm!
(Or, I Think My Opinions Are Worth Shit.)

1. The game is linear. REALLY linear. It feels like you meant it that way, though. There's only one way to go through each level, and that's fine and good, especially in a plot-heavier game like this. But...
2. You NEED Potions of Life to not die in 5 seconds (and even then you're likely to die to something that does more damage than you could possibly have.) They tend to be in out of the way locations that are easy to miss, and there aren't many. If I were to miss that first one in the irrigation canal then the boss kills me in one hit, as does every enemy in the forest. And you have to drop down to an empty area to get it. If you miss some of the ones from before the Point of No Return... OH GOD that desert would suck. Either make them not necessary or give the player more (and more hinted at) potions to let them live.
3. The difficulty is a bit high, at least on hard (I didn't play on easy). It's also EXTREMELY erratic. The forest is pain. You have like 7 health max and a polar star. You're up against resprited Grasstown enemies (when you'd have like 20 health and a fireball normally) and those horrible, EVIL jumping things that kill you in one hit. Then you get to the cave... and it's slow. There's no reflexes tested, except with the jumping, and the puzzle isn't exactly rocket surgery. It gets difficult again at sand zone. You get a resprited rocket launcher... But no fireball. Against sand zone enemies. With about 15 health, when you'd have like 30 in Cave Story. When you get to the water cave you have enough health to take hits, so it gets easy again and stays that way until the end of the demo. It creates noticeable spikes. Marble Forest and the Desert need to be toned down, and the Mines (unless you don't want enemies there) and water cave toned up.
4. You get weapons a bit slowly. Cave Story gave you a new toy roughly every other area (Egg Corridor = missiles + polar star kinda, Grasstown = fireball, sand zone may = machine gun, Labyrinth start = sword, labyrinth mid = super missiles + maybe snake, labyrinth end = spur, outer wall = nemesis). So you constantly get new things to try out. Here, you don't get a second weapon until the desert, and that has limited ammo. The baddies also escalate in toughness faster than your weapons do in power (52 health in the tech area, with a resprited polar star. Oof.) Maybe I just took forever to get past those areas, but it felt like forever without a new toy. Try inserting more weapons, maybe into areas already in (maybe even hidden!)
(it looks like you are adding another weapon in tech from screenie I saw after I wrote this so cool)
5. OR do something that if I ever stop being lazy and work on a hack I wanted to try. Have the level ups take a while, and keep the progression of enemy health low. Then, increase power and spectacle of the weapon dramatically as it levels up. It would make it feel like an accomplishment to level up a weapon. Also, have tougher enemies drop much more exp, and increase each level's requirement by a lot as you go up. Make sense? I'm bad at explaining so sorry.
6. What happened to the brother?
7. The side puzzle in the cave was cool. Side puzzles are always awesome. I would do something like An Untitled Story did though. Have hidden puzzles that are easy to make many variations on, like the sliding block chests of the aforementioned game. Make those variations. It might be awesome.
8. Bosses. They don't create things like in Cave Story that you can shoot for exp and health. Makes them annoying, though not necessarily bad.

Now what I really enjoyed.

1. Music. Custom music is always very nice in a hack, and adds atmosphere. You chose well. I would love to hear you compose tracks yourself, if you're thinking about it. I'm sure you're better at composing than you might think.

2. Levels. This is where the game actually shines in my opinion. I thought that the levels had a distinct feel to them. It felt like you were being faced with a series of challanges that, instead of blasting your way through, you needed to figure out how to navigate. This is a combination of the high difficulty and the constricted tile placement blocking both you and enemies. I don't really know how to explain it... But it was different and fun. Disregard any previous advice if you can make this kind of style fun without it, which it seems you can.

3. Again, the puzzles. (Except the portal one. Too much trial and error.)

4. Graphics. The game was shiny. Ooo. I liked them newsprites. I suck at art and can't give further advice on this topic, but you don't need it anyway.

5. The writing was actually entertaining enough. Nothing groundbreaking, but clever. I like the twist that the magical special people are evil for it.

Ultimately, I liked it, despite the flaws. It's not done yet though, so I can't expect it to be flawless. Sorry if I'm nitpicky, but I'm just trying to say everything so you can improve the things that you feel need to be improved.

If you read this far, thanks for taking my thoughts into consideration.

EDIT: OH MY GOD. I just realized the last post was from 2010. You're not working on it anymore, are you? Sad. But sometimes we just lose interest. I await your next project with anticipation.
EDIT2: Not my day. You WERE working on something else. A Lost Land. I'm totally playing that.

 

I'm pretty sure he's still working on it. Pretty sure.

 

1. The game is linear. REALLY linear. It feels like you meant it that way, though. There's only one way to go through each level, and that's fine and good, especially in a plot-heavier game like this. But...

Certainly true. My last mod (A Lost Land) was sort of nonlinear, and I intended it to be that way. But of course, there's that "fetch quest" problem that may come with nonlinearity. I might make it more non-linear in the future, but for now linear mods are a lot easier to manage.
Linearity isn't always bad. For example, WTFstory is extremely linear yet it has excellent gameplay. It's certainly one of my favorite mods.

2. You NEED Potions of Life to not die in 5 seconds (and even then you're likely to die to something that does more damage than you could possibly have.) They tend to be in out of the way locations that are easy to miss, and there aren't many. If I were to miss that first one in the irrigation canal then the boss kills me in one hit, as does every enemy in the forest. And you have to drop down to an empty area to get it. If you miss some of the ones from before the Point of No Return... OH GOD that desert would suck. Either make them not necessary or give the player more (and more hinted at) potions to let them live.

Ok - that may be true. The first life capsule in Cave Story is easily visible. I might make that easier. However, easy mode is really intended for anybody who has trouble with the mod. You don't get a bad ending for trying easy mode, and you can switch back at anytime.

Spoiler

Also, if you didn't get any water potions by the desert, you will be given them in plain sight. It's weird, but I believe it's a way to not punish the player excessively.

The difficulty is a bit high, at least on hard (I didn't play on easy). It's also EXTREMELY erratic. The forest is pain. You have like 7 health max and a polar star. You're up against resprited Grasstown enemies (when you'd have like 20 health and a fireball normally) and those horrible, EVIL jumping things that kill you in one hit. Then you get to the cave... and it's slow. There's no reflexes tested, except with the jumping, and the puzzle isn't exactly rocket surgery. It gets difficult again at sand zone. You get a resprited rocket launcher... But no fireball. Against sand zone enemies. With about 15 health, when you'd have like 30 in Cave Story. When you get to the water cave you have enough health to take hits, so it gets easy again and stays that way until the end of the demo. It creates noticeable spikes. Marble Forest and the Desert need to be toned down, and the Mines (unless you don't want enemies there) and water cave toned up.

I didn't do a ton of NPC HP and damage modification. Of course, that's all pretty easy with CE's npc.tbl editor. The Witching Hour is supposed to be more plain difficulty. In Cave Story, you worked your way up and learned the ropes. In Witching Hour, you're expected to have played Cave Story fully and gotten all the endings, so you should be able to survive in any dangerous environment. I agree that a lot of mods tend to be hard, so I'll try to add in more of a difficulty gradient.

You get weapons a bit slowly. Cave Story gave you a new toy roughly every other area (Egg Corridor = missiles + polar star kinda, Grasstown = fireball, sand zone may = machine gun, Labyrinth start = sword, labyrinth mid = super missiles + maybe snake, labyrinth end = spur, outer wall = nemesis). So you constantly get new things to try out. Here, you don't get a second weapon until the desert, and that has limited ammo. The baddies also escalate in toughness faster than your weapons do in power (52 health in the tech area, with a resprited polar star. Oof.) Maybe I just took forever to get past those areas, but it felt like forever without a new toy. Try inserting more weapons, maybe into areas already in (maybe even hidden!)
(it looks like you are adding another weapon in tech from screenie I saw after I wrote this so cool)

Yeah there's a new weapon coming up. The bullet 'aftershock' rendering is somehow buggy and I'm a bit lazy at the moment... but I think I'll fix it soon enough. You also get powerful weapons after a certain plot point that shall not be discussed due to major spoilers.

OR do something that if I ever stop being lazy and work on a hack I wanted to try. Have the level ups take a while, and keep the progression of enemy health low. Then, increase power and spectacle of the weapon dramatically as it levels up. It would make it feel like an accomplishment to level up a weapon. Also, have tougher enemies drop much more exp, and increase each level's requirement by a lot as you go up. Make sense? I'm bad at explaining so sorry.

It would work, but I like how Cave Story avoids grinding by making it really easy to level up weapons.

What happened to the brother?

He's not a brother - more like a friend. He'll be back in the next update. I keep forgetting that people can't see my progress since I don't keep a blog or website going. Maybe I should get one after all this time..

The side puzzle in the cave was cool. Side puzzles are always awesome. I would do something like An Untitled Story did though. Have hidden puzzles that are easy to make many variations on, like the sliding block chests of the aforementioned game. Make those variations. It might be awesome.

Yeah, you figured it all out? Some people were having trouble with the so-called 'secret' puzzle.

Bosses. They don't create things like in Cave Story that you can shoot for exp and health. Makes them annoying, though not necessarily bad.

I see. Personally I think that having a ton of NPC spawning will make some bosses harder, so we'll see.

Now what I really enjoyed.

Music. Custom music is always very nice in a hack, and adds atmosphere. You chose well. I would love to hear you compose tracks yourself, if you're thinking about it. I'm sure you're better at composing than you might think.

Yeah sure. I'll try composing eventually. It does take a lot of time to learn though, and that's me saying it without even bothering to go through the process.

Levels. This is where the game actually shines in my opinion. I thought that the levels had a distinct feel to them. It felt like you were being faced with a series of challanges that, instead of blasting your way through, you needed to figure out how to navigate. This is a combination of the high difficulty and the constricted tile placement blocking both you and enemies. I don't really know how to explain it... But it was different and fun. Disregard any previous advice if you can make this kind of style fun without it, which it seems you can.

Ah, thanks.

Graphics. The game was shiny. Ooo. I liked them newsprites. I suck at art and can't give further advice on this topic, but you don't need it anyway.

Actually - I think I can take the art a bit further. GIR really pointed out that tons of "complementary colors" is a very bad idea and will tend to make people groan. They should just be called contrasting colors. I will try to stick to a more Cave-Storyish art style for its simplicity and great effectiveness (i.e. using less colors to do more).

The writing was actually entertaining enough. Nothing groundbreaking, but clever. I like the twist that the magical special people are evil for it.

Ah, all right then. There will be something groundbreaking later, but that's more of a one time deal. I'm not sure I can spice up the dialogue significantly. One mod that I really think has good language is Schism, with all of Xaser's crazy dialogue that removes the boredom from conversation.

EDIT: OH MY GOD. I just realized the last post was from 2010. You're not working on it anymore, are you? Sad. But sometimes we just lose interest. I await your next project with anticipation.
EDIT2: Not my day. You WERE working on something else. A Lost Land. I'm totally playing that.

Um... A Lost Land was my first mod, and made much earlier than the Witching Hour. Witching Hour has assembly hacks and all that jazz.
I am still working on the Witching Hour, so it isn't abandoned. I just took a long break, especially since I temporarily left the forums. I'm making progress on this, I swear. Sorry about any confusion.

Ultimately, I liked it, despite the flaws. It's not done yet though, so I can't expect it to be flawless. Sorry if I'm nitpicky, but I'm just trying to say everything so you can improve the things that you feel need to be improved.

If you read this far, thanks for taking my thoughts into consideration.

Thank you very much. Many people don't leave super-long reviews, and I really appreciate all the info. Good advice here.

 

Puzzle-FUUUUUUUU

Great mod so far, I love the creativity and the well done sprite work
Only complaint is the puzzle. I think I have it but nothing happens!
Can someone help me? I really want to play the rest, but am stuck so far.

Spoiler

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

7 then 4 then 5 then 2 then lower hidden portal

not 7183 or 6 blocks in between those

But after I activate the hidden portal it stays at 2 blocks
and nothing happens. I'm expecting some
blocks to appear so I can get to the upper area.
Is there something in this puzzle I'm missing?
I think by saving I might have messed it up
I saved it with the hidden portal revealed
and activating it does nothing so far as I can
tell? Is something supposed to happen after
the hidden portal is activated?
Thanks for the help!

 

Re: Puzzle-FUUUUUUUU

Great mod so far, I love the creativity and the well done sprite work
Only complaint is the puzzle. I think I have it but nothing happens!
Can someone help me? I really want to play the rest, but am stuck so far.

Spoiler

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

7 then 4 then 5 then 2 then lower hidden portal

not 7183 or 6 blocks in between those

But after I activate the hidden portal it stays at 2 blocks
and nothing happens. I'm expecting some
blocks to appear so I can get to the upper area.
Is there something in this puzzle I'm missing?
I think by saving I might have messed it up
I saved it with the hidden portal revealed
and activating it does nothing so far as I can
tell? Is something supposed to happen after
the hidden portal is activated?
Thanks for the help!

Spoiler

You need to hit all the portals in a certain order.

It does not matter when you save your game. The puzzle is always solvable.

After the hidden portal is hit, you can do the second part of the puzzle. You don't need to do the first part again. Just hit more of the non-hidden portals after the hidden one.

 

Version 1.2 has been released. Bug reports and other feedback are welcome. Grab it here or on the first post.

 

The rising platform puzzle appears to be broken. It only lets me run sequence 5 and then sequence 0 in a loop, with seemingly no way to move it any higher.

 

The rising platform puzzle appears to be broken. It only lets me run sequence 5 and then sequence 0 in a loop, with seemingly no way to move it any higher.

Spoiler

If I remember correctly, sequence 5 is the "move down" command. So try to avoid using it.