Hi Yal, long time no see! :D
I've started the game up from the beginning a few days ago, and Mario is now at level 28 (yay to fighting all the tiny birds in the first room of the Thermal Power Plant, the Bubble Whirrs and Bubbles in the Water Tower and underground tunnel/cave!). I found a secret room in the underground tunnel after the shopkeeper, and will return to it once I have gotten the wings (I fought off two blue Setniles before finding my way forward blocked due to high blocks).
If anything, I'll be combing each room a few times as I play through the game, just in case I missed any lore or upgrades, especially before I face off with Smith near the end :D
3 years ago (+2)
Nothing like a good ol' 3-year-break to get over the frustration with inescapable areas, huh? Better luck this time! :3
Most of the super-secret areas were added after I'd already ran out of lore to place (I decided to limit myself to 50 for a reason... which I've now forgotten) so most of them only house the gun upgrades (and powerups/money), the majority of all lore is on the critical path or in "regular-secret" areas. But combing the game for all the secrets hopefully feels worth it regardless~
3 years ago(+1)
Oh, hi Yal! Long time no see! :D
Ah, I see; I was hoping this secret room would yield a few more Lore, but I got the ATG Laser upgrade instead. Looks like some riddle-solving is needed fully complete the game :p
I very much look forward to a remake of this game in the future, should you ever decide to do it, since I want to rescue as many people from Columbus City as much as possible (& face off against the mysterious AI boss that the Columbus scientists were protecting their weapons from, as well as uncover what 'Final Columbus' really means) :D
3 years ago(+1)
Long time no see indeed! Years are getting shorter and shorter these days, aren't they? :P
Out-of-universe, the name is supposed to mean that you're the last great explorer (since the world ended in the apocalypse). Turns out I did a mistake picking that name, since googling "final columbus" gives you a ton of info on Super Bowl finals played in Columbus, and it just completely buries my game. That's the reason I changed the main title into "Heart of Ruin" :P
I have no immediate plans to make a remake (I barely have enough time to make new stuff, lol) but on the other hand I also have no reason not to... so we'll see what happens~
Yes, it only seemed like yesterday that I had last played the game (aside from the past week or so :p), and I was happy to receive a reply from you! :D
Ah, I see (I had forgotten that the Heart of the City had ruined the world, and thought the Ancestors had left for other planets :p); well, that's something new I've learnt today, and yes, "Heart of Ruin" does aptly describe the game's backstory :D
Well, I look forward to seeing the remake, and in the meantime, I'll try to find all the 50 lore, and play Arengius a bit too.
I have a question regarding Ashley (nicknamed 'Voice'): is it possible to rescue her at all, whether at the Water Tower after the explosion or after collecting all 50 lore? I ask as your update 'readme' file indicates that as possible.
Also, I had found Baron McFungi in the Vegetation building, whereby he said I should go look for Sunshine in the Canal. Aside from that, I was about to ask you about whether there is anything of interest in the Rattleskull Valley, only to uncover an old save file that showed me otherwise :p
I found another door in the Thermal Plant that should lead to a room with lots of those giant brown living mounds (there are some that spew fire while spinning and others that hold a large stack of barrels like a shield) and a blue jar, but I haven't found a way to the door. Is it a fake area like you had mentioned before?
3 years ago(+1)
The Thermal Plant and a small handful of other areas has fake walls (aka things that look like walls but are passable) so there might be a much more obscure way to reach the thing you're looking for (I have a faint memory of a gun upgrade being hidden in a large room designated as something along the lines of "the reactor" through an easy-to-miss pipe leading offscreen). I also remember there's an area reached through one of the "indoors" areas that doesn't connect to the main maze, that's probably what you're seeing. (The area has a bunch of jars, but it's mostly an excuse to respawn everything in the room you just left :P)
Rattleskull Valley used to connect to That One Level (the brutally difficult, unfair and unfun bonus level) but I moved it to a more hard-to-find location at the last moment. The area just ends in the middle of nowhere now if I recall correctly.
@ Saving Voice: [spoilers] I distinctly remember an ending post-credits scene (which I never actually made) where Cain explains to Daphne that "mom's not going to come home" and it reveals that she's his daughter (and Cain/Voice was a couple in the past that split up) and she stuck with Voice after they divorced... so saving her is probably non-canonical. Not sure if there's an actual way to save her buried in all those lines of code I haven't touched in a decade, but I suppose my patch notes know best :P
(Saving her would involve going to the Water Tower after you regain control... potentially before going back to the truck to avoid wasting time, I'd guess?)
I see; I might root around the Thermal Plant and other buildings in the vicinity for a bit before moving on to the Smoggy Highway, though at the rate that I'm going, it would be much easier if you could explain what all the riddles meant as well as point me in the direction for uncovering the remaining lore (as well as where to find the upgrade for the Cryosphere gun).
My analysis of my previous save files and current file indicate that I had gained about 6 lore in between the Smoggy Highway and the final fight with Smith/heart amalgamation in a building (where he briefly regains his consciousness, shows his remorse, then warns you to get away before he explodes), bringing my total lore collection to 44 in 2017. The ending I previously obtained, which may or may not be the Neutral ending, had Mario and Sarah sitting at a campfire after getting everyone else to safety (Emily Withers, Jack Deadwater, Albert Coffee, Cain Brown/Buddy and the other female scientist).
Hmm, it is sad that Mario might not be able to rescue Voice after all, though that leaves certain parts unanswered, such as what was behind that door that she had previously unlocked before the Thermal Plant and Vegetation building, as well as what she and Teal were up to.
3 years ago(+1)
Hi Yal, I completed the game 2 days ago with 46 lore (the last one being on the table with the small crystal), and will root through the earlier areas one of these days for the remaining 4.
Will keep checking the walls in the Thermal Plant and the Reactor building (assuming I remember where I last saw that signpost that said 'Reactor').
Ah, now I understand what you meant by going up the Water Tower once the explosion starts; I'll use one of my old saves to make my way up after triggering the explosion and see if I can save Voice :D
3 years ago(+1)
Hi Yal, after much thought, I had decided to start a new game while recording each room I'm visiting as well as what I've found in them (lore, money piles, jars, hidden secrets/secret walls etc) in a Word document (which I will send you a copy of when I'm done, for your future reference), and have found this exercise to be quite fulfilling, although a tad slow.
I found the Bat character at the very top of the 'Grasshouse (outside)' area, so that was neat :p
Anyhow, I managed to find another part of the Thermal Plant, thanks to a secret wall, and went through the door, but at the end of that large new room (with much lava in the floors) was a door which was rusted shut, so I'm back to square one. I did access a room above me in the plant despite the lava ceiling, but didn't find anything of note. Will go through the entire plant again, room by room, until I've found a way to the other jars (& possible the gun upgrade room you had mentioned before).
As I had found out before, there is nothing of interest in the Rattleskull Valley (thanks to an old save file that I had kept aside), so that will remain off-limits to me.
To my surprise, after heeding Albert's advice to check the Water Tower for any survivors, I managed to find Voice, and she was still alive! She's being nursed back to health by Albert while I head off to find the female scientists from the Waste Canal (after we parted ways at the Main Artery).
Another surprise was that after checking the 2nd Canal Building (which I thought was the one I visited before and ended up fighting the Epic Whirr), it turned out to be quite different from the first Canal Building. I assumed the green ceiling robots had moved in after I had fought the Epic Whirr, but I was wrong, due to the fact that I had found a new lore, quite distinct from my previous playthroughs. It was quite rewarding :D
Other than the above, I came across the signboard left behind by Artillery Swifthand in the Waste Canal (or as I termed it for less confusion in my Word file, Waste Canal 3) after using the girls to get rid of 3 destructible blocks in the ground. Although I have taken screenshots of each section of his message, I am concerned that I might not be able to meet him after the girls are completely rescued (since said blocks will reappear after leaving the room), but I will visit unlock the special door in the Barkley Goods Station once I've unlocked the 3 wing flaps (& noted down all the lore I had found).
Thank you for making this game, Yal; I appreciate your helping me out despite having released the game in 2011 and my first asking you about it in 2017 :D
3 years ago(+1)
I'm glad I could be of some help after so many years x3 I've forgotten so much about the game that I can't even dig around in the project file to find things because I don't know where to start looking anymore... (the game is so old that I didn't think about scalability or properly commenting my code)
Since you've been stuck on this puzzle in the fire area so long, I looked up the solution. The secret in the fire area is near the sign that says "Boiler Room, Do Not Enter":
The "rusted shut" message is the standard message when a door is an actual door object, but it has no destination. I might have kept some in for flavor, but it's also possible that area is meant to lead somewhere, and I just never finished that area. (All 50 Lore are in the game and obtainable, at least - I finished that part during the game's original 3-month jam development, so all secrets added after that are independent of the Lore system, which is why they're a bit thin on those things)
*looks it up*
Oh, the door being rusted shut at the end of that long lava area probably is intentional - there's all these signs warning you not to go through it before finally giving up and just saying "okay, fine, go through the door already" and then it's rusted shut for comedic effect. There's a lore right outside, so there's a proper reward for the trouble, and the room has a much higher ID than any of the other levels in the lava area, so it was added much later... I probably moved the Lore there because they were too easy to find originally.
Swifthand's message doesn't set any flags, so it's only there for the information dump (it points out two actual secret areas). iirc, my intention was that Swifthand lived before the apocalypse (it doesn't quite get across clearly as it is now since anybody could've written graffiti on a signpost at any time, but since the city is surrounded by monsters and a desert, and was thought abandoned before you meet the Shopkeeper, chances are urban exploration isn't a huge thing anymore, at least not in Columbus)
Interestingly, there's two versions of that canal room with layout differences, and the signpost and breakable path only appears in one of them. I've forgotten what the other copy of the level is for. Maybe it's the Epic Whirr flooding cutscene, or maybe there was a redesign at some point and I didn't want to risk losing the original layout if I didn't like how it turned out, so I kept a backup of the level.
Another fun fact: that level is named canal3 internally in the game sources, so you managed to guess the canonical name :P
3 years ago(+1)
Oh, I see; when I started learning how to make games a few years ago, I learnt how to add comments to my game's code, and found it helped me to focus on the parts which were giving me issues. Comments are a godsend, so I understand when you're facing challenges with poking around your own code (I use Construct 2, which is similar to Godot and other 'visual blocks of code' game-making engines) D:
Ah, I remember that room; after a few days of your mentioning the Boiler room, my thoughts went to the exact room and of exploring it fully, since you mentioned that some lava floors hide a secret, though I never would have guessed that the secret would be hidden within a pipe :D . I obtained the Hellbreath upgrade at the end of that secret room (called Thermal Plumbing; so many monsters and lava floors! :o), and found it quite useful :D
Hmm, I might have missed seeing any lore in that Thermal Plumbing room (the one that ends with a 'rusted shut' door) nor near the door leading up to it, so that warrants another look. I doubt that the lore would be missing due to my playing on Casual mode, so it should be fine to backtrack a bit later on :p
Oh, if Swifthand was living there much before the accident that ended in disaster for the Ancestors, then it means that Raccoon (which I'm assuming is the bat, whom I had found much above the Handgun upgrade station), Sunshine (who is in a room surrounded by fotocells, which can only be accessed by not getting hurt by the electrical sparks located in the Subway), Baron McFungi (in a secret room in the Green house/vegetation building, and asked me to say hi to Raccon for him), Vanessa (in a secret room somewhere in Smoggy Skyway) and the other 2-3 characters (your patch notes say as much, but I don't know how many more to look for) have been in the city for a very long time :p
Oh, that's good to know; I just name the similar-sounding rooms (Waste Canal, Fungi Cave) according to the sequence of my entering them :D
Anyhow, it seemed that saving Voice from the Water Tower was important enough for George to continue selling me ammo (& a Super Jar) after everyone decides to go after Smith beyond the heart of the city, though Voice is now wandering the tunnel (or Subway; didn't think to screenshot Misty's dialogue about Voice's disappearing act), and I have a feeling that both Jack and Voice are pivotal to getting the good ending :o
Other than the above, I'm keeping track of the lore I had found, and noticed that the Rusty Gun, numbered at 43, was found inside the Green house, which somewhat throws off my theory that you had placed all the lore according to the numerical sequence and location (for example, the first 5-10 lore would be in the rooms in Outskirts street, followed by another 5-7 in Highway Street, and so on), so I'll have to comb around each place with more diligence.
I'll keep you updated on my search :D
Hi Yal, I have mapped out most of the game by now (until Final Street and the room where you fight Smith twice in his human form (& obtain lore #50), so I have returned to the Pipe Building to locate 1 lore (#10), only to find none left (though I did manage to find some fake floors and ceilings to obtain $1000 and a blue jar, the very same one I couldn't access before).
Aside from that lore, I need to find lore #22 (either in the Water Tower, which I doubt very much, or the Waste Canal, which is more likely) and #29 (either in the Canal Reef, again which I doubt that I had overlooked it, or in the Waste Canal).
I did, however, manage to get the Mist Charger (after a painful and tediously long journey through several large rooms in the Forgotten drain area), though I wouldn't have bothered if I had known what I would get at the end of it. There's a bug with the door that leads out of the room where you get the Mist Charger; if you exit the room to the room where you can see the endless columns of fire blocks and then reenter the Mist Charger room, you'll get stuck inside the door. Thankfully you had laid out save icons throughout each long room, as otherwise I would have stopped playing the game for a while :p
Since I had bought enough water bottles to have more than 1000 ammo for the Fairy Gun, the Mist Charger seemed rather pointless, ith the endless fire blocks being a long and tedious affair to overcome D:
Anyhow, I'll return to the game after some time and use the upgraded ATG gun to sniff out fake floors and walls while rummaging about for lore in the Pipe Building and Waste Canal :D
3 years ago(+1)
I did some searching through the level data... lore #22 is in the Waste Canal in a hidden side room, #29 in the Water Tower Ruins (it seems to be exclusive to the ruins and not appear in the normal version of the tower).
You should've seen lore #10 if you went to that rusted door, it's placed right here at the end:
Infinite ammo still is better than 1000, but it depends on how much you use the Fairy Pistol, I guess :P But it was one of the last upgrades I added, so I guess I didn't think it through. (Since bodies of waters are pretty scarce in the game outside of the Water Tower, it's pretty tedious to recharge otherwise)
3 years ago(+1)
Interesting... well, the signpost hint (the bit under Swifthand's signature) points out their actual location, so it's partially true :P (And the other hint points out Sunshine's location, and Sunshine & Raccoon come from the same game originally)