Post by Wyrd_Agyo in Echidna Wars Mini: Revitalized comments

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Yo! Nice job coding the game and making it more accessible for other people. I thought about doing this myself years ago with the raw java files, but it was too much work.

The original game is still playable with a specific link on D-Gate's website, but REQUIRES legacy versions of Java and Internet Explorer/Firefox to function properly. I've only ever gotten them to work within a virtual machine I have running Windows 7 and another on Windows XP.

I do have a few notes on inaccuracies between this version and the original if you're interested.

Mirea's flight/hover ability only lasts for 2 seconds before she needs to land to refresh it. In your version, she flies indefinitely which is broken.
Mirea is able to attack while flying. Being unable to do so in this version feels really bad.
Power ups (namely the Max HP one in level 1-3) do NOT respawn after screen transitions, you have to reload the level entirely.
Mini Pukis, once collected, NEVER respawn.
When a character dies, they lose all of their HP and attack/level power ups.
The lamia in stage 1-2 does not interact with TGO-03's cage. In this game, she deletes it on contact lol.
Enemies do not acknowledge other player characters in any way when they are grappling or digesting another character. (I do kind of like that they move towards/attack you in this version, but it feels awkward since they kinda just slide around.
The balcony at Sachiho's room does not have an invisible wall blocking the player. Rather, it has a loading zone a few pixels to the left that kicks the player back to the overworld map.
Delta, Puki, and the cat seem to be missing from Sachiho's room :c
The "HELP" icon along with the HP bar under it when a character is being grappled/digested offscreen is missing entirely.
The earthworm's vacuum ability (I know you're aware of this one already, but I'm including it for my own sake).
Jellyfish movement is a bit more limited in the original (they don't plummet as quickly as they do in this version, and generally feel a bit more "floaty"). But their movement code is WEIRD AF, so don't worry about this one too much.

That's everything that I noticed at a glance between the two versions. The general feel of your version is slightly different too when it comes to player movement, attacking, and jumping. Still, this is a great effort and gives players the opportunity to experience something they otherwise wouldn't. Great job, man.

Ceph9 days ago

Thanks for the feedback!

1. I've been desperate to figure out how Mirea's flight worked, because indefinite flying does feel broken, but I had no way to verify if any instance of a video showing the player no longer flying was due to a time limit being exceeded, or due to the player simply deciding not to fly any more. His is invaluable information.

2. That's interesting to hear! More guesswork on my part, this time due to the sprites- there's no flying + shooting sprite so I had assumed it was not an ability (while playtesting, I, too, find myself wanting to shoot while flying. This should be a really easy fix, simply removing the "&& not flying" from the prerequisites to shooting as Mirea. [Maybe also confirming it looks correct.])

3. (& 4.) This one will be tougher to properly implement, but sounds correct. Levels should keep track of which pre-generated items in each room have been collected, including Pukis. Actually, if they always respawn (minus the Pukis) on level reload, that makes it easier, as I don't have to carry over knowledge of which items were collected indefinitely, and can naively reload the level from static data on level start (minus, of course, pukis, which are already tracked indefinitely, in your save file.)

5. Good to know. As they are now, they ONLY lose all HP, and keep their health/weapons upgrades. There is a central "kill character" code block that I can pretty simply add "also set the levels back to 0" to. This also implies, level-design-wise, the developer should be fairly benevolent with level ups.

6. Woah that's not good!! I'm not sure why that's happening (i.e. this will take a while to figure out...), I'll have to investigate this more closely.

7. I'll revisit the enemy behavior code, as capture and digestion SHOULD preoccupied the enemies, with the exception of the lamia, who moves around (and possibly attacks w/o capture ability) while digesting. Possibly my janky-ass target-priority code needs to be rewritten.

8. (& 9.) Sachiho's room is incomplete, yeah... What one might also note is level 3 ends "late", with the player jumping up to end the level instead of there being a hitbox in the final room, on that final platform, to end the level. I haven't implemented a "level-end trigger" hitbox type, they've all been screen transitions sorta hijacked for multiple purposes. The puki, delta, cat, AND flowing curtain are in-game, I just have no appropriate protocol for an animated background (or foreground) element and never picked a best way to implement such.

10. I'll be honest. It wasn't very fun to work on, was a pain to test, and a personal deadline was rapidly approaching, so I did what I could and called it good enough. I really should get on top of PROPERLY implementing ALL of the "help!" icon because it does look really nice in the videos and will look nice once implemented.

11. I am fairly sure I implemented the worm's vacuum ability after the initial release, so if you downloaded the game near its release and are relaying feedback only now, download the updated version! It has the worm suckies

12. GOD YEAH THE JELLYFISH IS WEIRD! I took a stab in the dark implementing its movement and I'm still not happy with it (it goes crazy when capturing someone because it stops bouncing up but its gravity doesn't stop pulling it down.) I should analyze video more thoroughly to figure out how it ACTUALLY behaves when moving up towards a player character, and when moving down towards a player character, with those edge cases I can safely interpolate behavior between the extremes.

Re: moving & attacking, there is a one-or-two-frame delay between first holding the jump button, and a jump actually resulting, this is when the "bending knees to jump" sprite is displayed, but it also makes jumps feel a little stilted as you have to plan ahead, not just react to enemies. The moving and jumping actions themselves are based on frame counting on blurry videos with no actual input displays, so they LOOK right to an outsider, but may not feel quite right, and might not be accurate pixel values. I suspect running might be half a pixel per frame too fast...? And jumping is equally likely not right- tuned to just about the correct height of a jump as per the video evidence, but gravity's strength is a big assumption (it might not be constant through a jump, like gravity being stronger while you're falling, or there being a terminal velocity we might reach while falling, etc) and so it may feel wrong.

(Also, sorry for springing this much text on you, I just really appreciate this game for its specifics and want to address feedback adequately.)

Wyrd_Agyo9 days ago(+1)

Nah, no worries dude, it was a joy reading your feedback. I was very passionate about this game about 10 years ago which is why I know all these things. Then DX came out and I kinda walked away from this one, viewing it as more of a tech demo of sorts leading into the DX version.

I did notice just a couple more nitpicky things on a second glance.

1. Mirea's level 2 power up seems to be missing. Her projectiles don't gain more damage or change visually on each level up like Sachiho and TGO-03's do, she just gains an additional one per level. Level 2 gives her the upwards angled additional shot and level 3 gives her the downward one (which you have correctly implemented).

2. Enemies heal at a fantastic rate when digesting a character. So much so that if you're trying to save Sachiho with Mirea and only her level 1 shot, you're going to have a tough time out-DPS'ing her heals.

3. Escaping a grapple is not a random chance each time as you've implemented (though I do kind of like this change). In the original, it ALWAYS takes EXACTLY 10 button presses of any combination of movement, jumping, and/or attacking to escape. You do have the HP cost of each button press down pat though.

4. Lamias have a very small chance (~5%) to drop an HP MAX upgrade upon defeat. You may have already implemented this, but I didn't farm them enough to find out for myself, so I'm notifying you here just in case.

NOW I think that's everything haha.

If you want some more help or information, I do have the raw original java files if you care to decompile them.

I also have my own footage I recorded of a playthrough back in 2015. It's only ~6 minutes long, but maybe it has something unique in it compared to other vids.

Keep up the good work, mang

Ceph9 days ago(+1)

1. Oh, this is helpful! I haven't been able to find anything on the level 2 attack, just 1 and 3. I'll get right on that.

2. They might be recovering every frame, instead of every animation + sound cycle, and they might be recovering way too much. What I know is that some (slime and jellyfish) are meant to spit out their capture after dropping below half health, which I don't remember whether I properly implemented. They DO take half damage from attacks while capturing, I did implement that though. I'll double check video evidence and compare notes again.

3. I originally had it exactly like this (press the button X times in Y seconds to escape) then I carefully read the user manual which said something about a gacha-type system for escape (which sounded like spend X health for a Y% chance to escape). I think both have their merits, and I could definitely add it to the list of things to include in an options menu once I know how that should look like.

4. See, I knew SOMETHING was going on with the inconsistent, infrequent item drops. I did a whole statistical analysis across multiple videos, tracking which rooms exhibited which enemies of which types dropping what at which frequencies. I believe I settled on a per-enemy sorta.... "juiciness" metric, which determines which item pool to select from. Enemies are either "regular" (25% chance to drop rice, 12.5% chance to drop meat), "ricey" (50% chance to drop rice), "meaty" (50% chance to drop meat), or "upgradey" (25% chance for rice, 12.5% chance to drop meat, ~3.9% to drop a pow-up, ~3.9% to drop a health-up [3/4 × 5/6 × 1/16). If you had more concrete stats, or could tell me otherwise why the slimes at the end of level 1-2 seemed to drop a meat when that's outside the expected range, or why the spawned slimes from le pipes ALWAYS dropped ONLY rice, that'd be awesome and amazing, stats are really tough to glean from limited video evidence.

And thank you for being so thorough with your feedback

Ceph7 days ago(+1)

Re: Point 2, enemies healing very quickly. I checked the code, they SHOULD (excluding unforeseen consequences) heal 1 hitpoint every 32-60 frames (depending on their eating animation lengths, a shorter animation means quicker healing), WHICH IS once to twice per second (it's the worm that heals every 32 frames, and I could probably artificially slow that animation down to take 48 frames instead...?)

Is it ACTUALLY true that enemies take half damage once they have captured a player character? It really limits your DPS- if it's not true, that'd get you double the friend-saving DPS and make Mirea plenty effective at saving characters.

Wyrd_Agyo6 days ago

Yes, but since they didn't move or attack you directly (lamia's would bump into you if you were careless, but wouldn't chase you), the half damage made sense to keep you from just destroying them in an instant. It created a nice sense of urgency when trying to save your friend.

If you were lucky, you could have your attack free your ally and then you'd have a few frames before the still-helpless ally just got scooped back up to deal some real damage.

itch.io

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