Re: WTF story demo v 0.4
Okay I FINALLY finished playing through this big chunk of highly concentrated awesomesauce. I didn't read previous comments, so I'll probably end of saying a lot that's already been said
General
The title screen is fucking amazing, though I'm hoping the music shows up later in the mod as well because it's so awesome and it's too long to be just a title screen song. Throughout the whole mod the gameplay is hands down the best of any mod. I haven't had this much fun with platforming in
years. After playing this, I think I might have to change the verse in the MiraiGamer Song about RuneLancer being "the assembly hacking master" to being about you
! The storyline is starting to get much more interesting now. And of course it's always a treat to hear the music I've listened to in the orgs thread in the context of the mod.
Chapter 1
I like the new custom sound effects, and the new "lightning" animation is really sexy. Did you alter the music slightly? It sounds a bit different to me. Most of the changes are good, but some of the notes at the beginning sound like the get chopped off too quickly to me. Was that secret mission there in the previous demo? I don't remember it, but I do know that the "not-so-subtle hint sign" wasn't there before, so thanks a lot for putting that in. In the memory bank, the whole "all that glitters is not gold" thing seems a bit unhelpful. It might be more helpful if you hacked the treasure chests to blink more often, so that the one that doesn't stands out more. Then it's B@lrog time, contributing nicely to the WTF factor, which is especially well brought out in this chapter. Finally, the sound effect for the Booster kinda bugs me. The tone is good, but I think it might be better if you increased the duration slightly and/or made it decay more slowly. Cause right now there's too much silence between blasts, making it sound more like a jackhammer than a jetpack.
Chapter 2
Epic tetris is epic, and also extremely WTF-ish. Though if you ask me the music is too calm here. And another secret mission which either I missed last time, or it didn't exist last time, not sure which. Blocky seems to be a somewhat anticlimactic ending to the chapter. It's not that he's not difficult enough, he's just not unexpected enough. All of us have played CS and fought Misery before, and the first time you fight her, you're like "OMG epic boss fight!" and then you get used to her and know exactly what to expect from her. It would be sweet if you did some assembly hax so that Blocky does something more unexpected. He doesn't need to me more difficult necessarily, he just needs to be not just another Misery clone. At the very end cutscene, Excerpt says something like, "let's send him to the pipe fields" implying that he has control over Quote's location. Presumably he did this for his own convenience, so that Quote goes through all the effort of killing the guards and breaching security so that Excerpt can just casually stroll through the pipe fields without having to risk his own life. It seems like there's a bit of a plot hole here: if Excerpt has control over Quote's location and wants him dead so badly, why doesn't Excerpt just teleport Quote onto a deathtrap or something? I'm hoping this will be explained later.
Chapter 3
When you posted the newer version of "sunset3.org" in the show off your orgs thread, I didn't like the new version as much as the old, but in the context of gameplay, the new version actually seems to fit better so good job with that. The difficulty of this first section seems much more reasonable now that I have two health upgrades (or RAM upgrades as the case may be). I never actually got past this part in the previous version, so everything after this part I've never actually played before. The second part of this chapter really,
really,
REALLY needs a skipflag at the beginning. Also, in that part, I found a couple glitches. Sometimes the blocks on the right side of the chambers don't disappear when they're supposed to. It usually happens when I'm right next to them as I kill the final enemy. I'm guessing it's because it keeps running a blank event due to a V-Trigger and therefore doesn't register the enemy's death. Maybe instead of a V-Trigger, make the player pull a lever or something. Or you could have the "call event on death flag" set for all enemies and as the last enemy dies, make the blocks disappear. That last option would take a lot of extra tedious/annoying scripting though. The other glitch I found is one that probably existed in Cave Story as well, but knowing you, you could probably fix it with a hack
. It is that if you start boosting underwater, and then emerge from the water mid-boost, you continue moving in slow-mo as though you were underwater until you release the jump key. The puzzle room with the water and the bricks you have to shoot is awesome, and the music fits perfectly. At first, I was gonna criticize how it looks weird that the rising and falling of water is so jerky, but I've decided it actually makes it look cooler/more dramatic. And then some epic boss action (I was so sure it was gonna be Heavy Press when I entered the room, guess not...). I love how you made the explosion modify the terrain of the room; it's so much more realistic and dramatic than what most modders (myself included) probably would have done (namely make a door unlock at the end of the fight or something along those lines). I'm guessing that there was a secret mission somewhere on this chapter, but that I just missed it (don't tell me, I'll figure it out myself eventually).
Chapter 4
Hmmm... a rogue robot named Interrobang... the plot thickens. And I don't remember this cutscene music; it's very beautiful (right up there with the "to be continued" theme from Schism). Ahh, good old fashioned platforming at its absolute best! There's just nothing like it! And you made the difficulty curve extremely smooth with a very wide range of difficulty (which I know from experience is not a trivial task) so great job there. And more perfectly fitting music of course
. I only have a few complaints here, and they're all pretty minor details. First of all, you might wanna make the second savepoint a bit more obvious, 'cause I missed it the first time, and was about to get pissed at you for putting savepoints too far apart. Second, having the moving blocks flash red when they move is a bit misleading. The association of "red = bad" is so strong, especially in video games, that at first I thought you could only touch the blocks when they were stationary. Maybe make them flash white or blue or cyan or black or a different shade of green. Finally, there's this tiny little oddly shaped purple spot on the background which really bugs me, you should erase it. In hindsight, there's a good chance that the mysterious cell phone call at the end of the first level in this chapter was a subtle hint about a secret mission, seeing as how I found no secret mission in this chapter. But again, don't tell me, I'll figure it out on my own. Omfg, this next part is equally pwntacular. This is another place where a skipflag would be nice. Also, I'd recommend clarifying what happens when you shoot a train that's already berserk in Curly's dialogue. Something along the lines of Quote asks what happens and Curly says something like "they continue being berserk, but you reset their internal timer for how long they stay berserk" because for a while I was totally clueless on how to get past the thing at the very end where you have to retrigger the berserkness of the train to get past all the presses. Also, bug find: If you get knocked off the train by a critter at this last part, then it doesn't say "you were never seen again" it just makes you fall forever. Okay, this matrix thing is just plain mean, and not in a good way
. Making the right/wrong text go backwards first and then go into hex ascii was a nice touch, but the sequence required to escape didn't really need to be
54 moves long 20 would have been plenty. I like the concept of the matrix, but it was just far too long. I'm not sure whether or not I like "Girl By The Windowside" as a precursor to Interrobang. I'm leaning towards liking it, though I think it would fit even a little better if it were just slightly more menacing. Not necessarily faster/louder/more rhythmic, but maybe just a little bit more dissonant/less predictable. And Interrobang herself is one the most fun bosses I've fought in a while; right up there with the Orangebell Parking Inspector. She's definitely the best hacked boss I've ever seen. I remember RuneLancer making a "totally from scratch boss" in Original Sin, but it didn't seem very natural, whereas Interrobang seems super natural. If I hadn't already played Cave Story, I'd have no idea that you had to do so much assembly editing to make her work, which is true of your other assembly hacks as well, and it's a skill that I've yet to see any other hackers on these forums master to the extent that you have. Anyway, the Interrobang fight was a great way to end the chapter, and this demo.
The Portal Gun is so sexy that it would put the porn industry out of business in a snap if you ever distributed this mod on larger scale :eek:
And I've decided that this is now officially my favorite Cave Story mod that is currently in progress, and will probably stay that way for quite a while
. Sorry, Xaser/Ralren
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