To answers your questions, it depends on what conditions are you playing. Is real hardware? If so, what spec? Is it on the FS-UAE build? That has notorious issues with two buttons pressed at same time, specially if you use keyboard Z and X.
The stair access hotspots are limited to a 16x16 tile, always the 1st tile and last tile of the ladder. They are like this in most Castlevanias, I never liked stairs handling in most title of the series (no wonder they dropped this on SotN, it's just a slope skinned as stairs there), so I added the ability to just jump on top of it and move ahead.
But it's a valid point, and I can make tests with portals. "Portals" is a feature that I started to use on CD32 and they are spots that are not limited to a 16x16 tile. It's a ton of work to swap all spots for portals and that will likely add further, unexpected issues. So, I have to ponder a lot about it!
Sub-weapons on FS-UAE/CD32 pad: why you couldn't reliably use sub-weapon, what happens? Is it a USB controller plugged on PC? You can edit all button bindings in the file Default.fs-uae located at Game dir\FS-UAE\Configurations
And you can always press and hold (like a charge in MegaMan). It's better than up + fire because you can fire while crouching. ;-) But the ideal and recommended way is to use 3 buttons (attack, jump, and sub-weapon).
Simon taking a few frames to switch back to stand after landing goes down here as low priority, like anything that's just aesthetics. Everything written above was higher on order of priority. Attract mode goes straight into game by design, no frills. Could be readjusted, but again, low priority on the list and likely for 1.1, not 1.0.
Thanks for the feedback and thanks for playing!
