Devlogs
Version 2.0 !!!
Major Update - I did things!
This update comes reluctantly, but excitedly, as I didn't think I would work hard on it and found myself really working quite a bit on it instead. I'm excited to release this update after hours of additional work, because I think this really is substantial.
I received the help I needed for this major update from the Mystic Quest Randomizer Discord and in particular, GIGA. Giga connected with me, shared lots of documentation, and made me realize I had a lot of work to do.
MAJOR CHANGES:
- LOOPING MUSIC! I can't begin to tell you how excited I am about that. Thank you, Giga, for doing the entire legwork on finding looped files already. Whoever made them, please let me know.
- The entire battle system has been re-written from scratch, and it is now 99% accurate for EVERY attack in the game. This is also a confession: I was WAY off. Way further off than I expected. This has been a bee in my bonnet for a LONG time, and it makes me smile to no end.
- Drastically reduced download size thanks to optimizations.
- Every battle animation has been updated. Every. Single. One. Even attacks that did not have graphics before have graphics attached to them now.
- Lag has been reduced by 99% in pretty much every area. This required a serious rework of some areas, and you may notice two or three squares on a map cause a moment of jitteriness, but the rest of the map should move at an unrestricted framerate.
- Flying enemies now float in battle.
- Tools now use the D button. A for jump, S for switching weapons, D for using weapons. They're all in a nice row, and the HUD reflects it. :)
- Bombs, Mega Grenades, and Dragon Claw have been reworked again. They're so much more friendly now.
- I decided to update the guts behind the scenes of most of the third-party plugins. This should mildly increase speed in some areas.
- Experience and gold gain on the victory screen was a mess and was doubling some numbers and not others... I'm still not exactly sure what is causing it, but I've hard-coded some solutions into the engine so it all works now. It's just not as pretty when you win.
- That sweet white fade in at the start of battles in the original is now implemented.
- The Achievement gold star will appear from a random location and travel to a random location... Making your achievement TRULY unique! :)
- If using the built-in cheats that make the game easier, the Achievement gold star is disabled. No cheering for you.
Debuffs now apply and calculate, and persist, correctly. Refreshers are actually useful, now!- Also, in order to get the real super final last secret, you can't be using the built-in cheats.
- I added a few more built-in cheats.
- I bet very few people even knew there were cheat codes.
- If you want to have "A bad time" it's now even harder than before.
- Giga provided better graphics for enemies on the map. They're so pretty now, with 99% less janky movement.
- Giga also did quite a bit of bug testing and found more than I could believe - and had I imagined a lot to start with. Then I found some more. I'll list them here:
- You used to not be able to jump over spaces that contained monsters, trees, bombables, etc.. Now you can!
- Chests would occasionally not show their contents if you opened another chest a second before. This should be fixed.
- Typos.
- Cure Spell was bugged, because its formula is different. It's fixed now.
- Refreshers wouldn't show up in the field menu, but would in combat. This has been fixed.
- Disabled party formation swapping. It was causing glitches for reasons, and it's not a major feature.
- Some markers appearing on the map too soon.
- Incorrect music playing in some areas is fixed. The Ice Pyramid music was in the files, but apparently, I never implemented it.
- Some rare soft-locks that required some uncommon movement.
- Bombs will no longer miss, and do proper damage.
- Flamerus Rex did not know Poison Flour. He does now.
- The whole game now has the Cure overflow glitch coded. This also means that if, in theory, someone could do over 32,767 damage, it would heal them, but I can't think of a way that would happen.
- Windia's interior completely broke for... reasons? I know which plugin did it, but I'm not sure why, so I had to rebuild the whole area.
- Giga was added to credits, if that wasn't clear.
BONUS BITS:
- I also took the time, since I was on a roll, to add another secret to the game. It doesn't add anything crazy - just a little extra story. But, it's really obscure to find, so good luck. I will tell you, though, that it adds more meaning to the most useless place in the game.
- Implemented the rest of the developer commentary
I'm sure there'll be a few new fixes. Now to get the web version up and running correctly. After that, it's time to get back to working on Memeal Mantasy: Us, Too! I've taken a long enough break.