In that case, why not swap out the boss room's Whip power-up for a Fireball or Mega Buster power-up so the player will naturally be far enough away to avoid the kneeling when it happens? Seems like that would also be the simpler solution.
EDIT: Oh, and while you're here, do you still plan on making that remake of the first game you mentioned in another thread, or did you decide your time was better spent elsewhere?
I think my reasoning was - if the first boss doesn't start you with the most basic powerup, it's harder to escalate from there over the course of the game.
I also dunno if you've noticed, but if you have any powerup active, the freebie from the boss doesn't override it so you can use whatever you're comfortable with that way - though having to re-equip it on death is a bit of an issue... maybe I should look into pulling from the inventory automatically if there's enough leftovers of the same loadout when retrying bosses?
I don't have any active plans to make the remake of the first game (I wanna finish off Burgertale before I take on another BIG project) but I have a bunch of ideas for DD games (3 more spinoffs 2 of which are platformers, some sort of "Daemon Detective Gaiden Collection" which combines the first and second game and brings it up to spec with modern Game Maker, and of course the main RPG thing that I've kept putting on the backburner because I'm waiting for technology to mature enough that I can make my dreams reality).
Bit more feedback: the bomb girls in Metal Underpass send out red projectiles on death, but said projectiles get lost in the also-red blood splatter and are often very hard to see. It took me killing several of them before I finally figured out what I was getting hit by, and even then, there were times where I couldn't see their death-shots even though I knew they were there. Please change the color of those projectiles. Also, minor grammar mistake in Paige's convo (also in Metal Underpass): she says sunlight "aren't" instead of sunlight isn't.
By the way, I did eventually figure out that reserve power-ups get sent to the inventory when you get a third, but to reiterate, my issue is that the boss's kneeling will abruptly send it forward into players if they're whipping the boss, giving them no time to react. Even if I had kept the float/sword combo that I went in with, I still would've taken the cheap hit since the sword is also close-range. Maybe you could have the boss kneel in the other direction, away from the player? It'd fix the cheap hit without you needing to draw new sprites or add that "!" zone.
I like that idea for the boss, that should be a pretty doable.
All of the others are noted down on my todo list.
I've noticed some other issues that'll need fixing as well (updating the project to the latest version of Game Maker broke some stuff) so it might be a pretty large patch.
Good to hear. By the way, can the first painting in Load-Bearing Grid be gotten by anyone other than Matt? I had assumed you wanted everything to be obtainable by every character, so if that's not the case...maybe you could tweak the mid-world convos to provide hints on who to bring where, so astute players know who to choose going in and aren't forced to go back, switch characters, and replay levels they've already beaten in order to get 100% (and maybe let players switch characters from the overworld's pause menu if it isn't too much trouble).
...and speaking of Matt, I noticed another minor graphical inconsistency: when he has the float power, he mysteriously gains white gloves when crawling that are absent in all his other frames:
EDIT: Wait, if updating breaks stuff, why not just use the older version? The game as-is works fine and plays well, and most--if not all--of my requests would only involve minor tweaks like recoloring sprites.
EDIT 2: Hey, did you mean for the Waste Disposal Plant to play the Nice Day theme? Normally, I would've just written it off as an odd choice, but given the other unintentional little issues, I thought I'd just make sure.
I try to stay on the most recent version of Game Maker since I need to make sure all my asset packs work whenever Yoyo changes things, but it didn't occur to me to check if all my games still work (it's been years since I opened the DDG2 project last so there's been a lot of changes in the meantime). Thankfully it doesn't seem to be a super complicated thing to fix.
I've been trying to avoid reusing the same theming for too many levels in a row so it might've been a weird choice, but I'll have to check if I need to re-evaluate it. (Nice Day is supposed to be the 'main' overworld theme that shows up whenever a level is just kinda generic even if it IS inside a themed world)
Anyone can get the painting, there's a sequence of invisible blocks below that are the "regular" way to get it.
Oof, not a fan of invisible blocks being a requirement. I've hated that ever since Lost Levels 5-1, where for years I assumed the only way past was to take the vine to the World 6 Warp Zone. It wasn't until I stumbled across a YouTube video about a "world 9" that I'd never heard of that required beating the game without using warp zones to access and I was like "wait, how do I get past world 5 without the warp zone?" and looked it up that I discovered the truth, and to be honest, I'm still not over it; no wonder Nintendo of America reskinned Doki Doki Panic instead of localizing that title.
I didn't even know that invisible blocks were in this game until now, so I guess my recommendation would be...don't have them at all? Do something else instead? Maybe in the sequel, you can design the early levels in such a way to guide players into hitting them naturally and safely and/or having obvious clues like holes or markings on background objects to indicate their location, then slowly work your way up to having more subtle clues before finally having end-game level design like what you did here..but right now, as-is? No, you didn't earn that invisible block placement.
By the way, I realized I misunderstood what you were saying about the boss powerup not overwriting the player's current powerup because I went into the first boss with the float power, which *did* get replaced even though I would have considered that to be a powerup as well (just not one with a weapon). It wasn't until I reached the Metal Underpass boss with the Reinforcement's bomb power and died that I realized it actually gives me the Fireball power instead. In that case, I think it might actually be a better idea to have the boss room powerup overwrite the player's current power anyway so, for example, players don't end up fighting the Sand Queen with melee weapons when the game would have given them the Mega Buster instead (I went in with the cat-claw power but happened to have a Mega Buster in reserve, so I just barely avoided the issue). The thing you brought up about letting players choose their own power still works since their current one would just go into reserve where they can simply bring it right back out.
Also, is it just me, or is the Gaping Abyss a bit of a difficulty spike for world 3 due to the instant death pit? I'm sure the boss could work as-is in a later world, after the difficulty has ramped up to match it...but the easier solution might be to cover the hole with spikes so the player only loses some HP for getting knocked off instead of dying outright.
EDIT: Okay, so apparently Caldera Keep was supposed to be world 3, but I think my point still stands. Also, in Yal's convo for Caldera Keep, he says "moment of surprise" instead of "element of surprise." Was that an attempt at characterization that I didn't get, or did you just forget the expression? Will he be corrected if I pick the right character the same way Sugar quips at Tomato in her Metal Underpass convo?
EDIT 2: Actually, after playing it a bit more, I think Caldera Keep is actually harder than Metal Underpass and they should have their painting requirements swapped to represent this. It feels like this world has more blind jumps/drops than average, where you can't see if there's a hazard or floor below you until you jump down. In particular, Dining Hall of Hell doesn't have certain platforms visible from a safe distance even if you hold down to pan the camera down...unless you bring in the cat claw power from another level and climb down certain walls. Maybe you were trying to indicate them with the chandelier chains, but just like with the invisible blocks, you need to build up to that, for example by having a preceding chandelier level that isn't so dark so the chains can be seen clearly. Still way better than Fun In The Basement, though.
EDIT 3: And while I'm at it, the camera takes too long to pan down after the player starts holding down. It kills the pace, especially with how frequently the player is expected to do it. It should only take around half a second.
Yeah, overwriting the float cake is a special case because you need to have SOME means of attacking a boss for the fight to be possible (I forgot about that, it's been 6 years...)
The chains are supposed to indicate chandeliers (every chandelier has chains and there's no troll chains that just end in the middle of nowhere)
Frozen enemies instantly shatter and die when hit by melee attacks, though you'd need to either be in multiplayer or have a reserve whip to hotswap to in order to do this. (They also don't become solid if the player is partially inside them upon creation so if you're close enough you can slip through them, but it's hard to do that without being in contact damage range...)
I'll add "faster screen scrolling" and "tells for Icon of Sin" to the todo list. When refamiliaring myself to the game I also noticed its divekick attack has like zero warning so that'll also need some tweaks.
(So far a lot of the things you've suggested have been fixed and I've started to chip away at the compatibility issues)
Dang, I was just about to add "or by keeping another weapon in reserve" to my killing-frozen-enemies comment because I JUST beat The Bay's Medbay where I figured that out--and then near the end of that level, I experienced a situation where I had my ice flower in reserve but got hit and lost my equipped sword power, once again leaving me no way to kill frozen enemies in those narrow halls.
To be clear, the main thing I was trying to get at with my initial comment is that the ice power should have a way to kill enemies on its own, like how Metroid lets you keep shooting a frozen enemy with the ice beam to keep dealing damage. Maybe you could do the same thing with your ice power? EDIT: I know the New Super Mario Bros. games don't let you do this, but what those games DO let you do is grab and throw the frozen enemy to break them against a wall, and since your game doesn't have a grabbing mechanic, I went with the Metroid suggestion instead.
By the way, my issue with the chandelier chains wasn't worry over the possibility of troll chains, but rather that the chains don't stand out too well and that the ones for secret-path chandeliers are placed right beside the chains for the platform you're already on, so you won't really notice them unless (and sometimes even if) you know ahead of time that's what you need to look out for. That's why I thought I had to use the cat claw power at first (because I straight-up didn't see the chains for secret-path chandeliers on my first playthrough) and why I suggested having that level be preceded with another chandelier level where the chains stand out better, because it COULD work as-is if it was properly built up to. ...though I guess you could also just directly make the chains in that level stand out better; that'd probably be easier. What if you recolored them to be bright yellow to match the chains in the level's overworld icon? I think that could work.
Oh, and thanks for responding to me. Not all developers do this.
EDIT: I also had some clipping-off issues with the vertically-moving blocks in Torrential Tower, including one time where I swung the sword while standing on one of the sets of three blocks beside the third painting and ended up falling straight through it. I tried reinstalling the game in case something happened on my end, and while a quick replay didn't reproduce any of the floaties' issues in Water Gun Warzone, I did still clip off a block once during my second Torrential Tower playthrough. EDIT 5: To add a bit more detail, it always seemed to happen when I fell pretty much directly on the left-half or right-half of a 2x2 block (such as the beach balls or vertically moving blocks); it didn't happen if I was closer to the center (or at least it not as often), though the time I fell through the longer floaty, I was in front of what would be its second tile from the left.
EDIT 2: In Brickwork Pipeworks, it's very easy to off-screen the fireball demons' fireballs before they get launched, to the point I did it unintentionally a couple times.
EDIT 4: Umi-Bozu's hands appear in pretty much the exact spot I am when I jump to throw my axes at its face, so I suddenly take damage when there was nothing there before. Maybe you could have his hands come in from the bottom or top of the screen instead of just abruptly materializing? Maybe you could have a harmless black cloud appear and then have the hand scale into the screen from the cloud before becoming harmful?
If you're still checking this thread, I have a couple more things to add:
1) The invisible block placement for Ominous Clock Tower's third painting is marginally better since it's first one is right next to a wall, but I still only found it by chance, so that level also isn't a great way to introduce them even if Caldera Keep was meant to be before Metal Underpass.
2) If you're willing to make more drastic changes, I'd like it to be possible to kill frozen enemies in ways besides jumping at them from below. The first level after Caldera Keep's Reinforcements has lots of narrow halls, so when I tried out my brand new ice power, I ended up having to sit there and wait for the enemies to thaw before I could progress.
EDIT: Also, the Icon of Sin has a similar issue as Patient Zero did: it should have some indication of how far its melee flame attack will go, especially since the boss room gives the player the short-range sword and the Reinforcements give the player the longer-but-still-melee green whip. Since you don't want to do ! zones, maybe you could show its flame being drawn out during its wind-up pose so players can actively see its length increasing and realize how far they'll need to run away to avoid getting hit.
EDIT 2: The collision on the floaties in Water Gun Warzone is spotty. Sometimes I'd land directly on a beach ball and just clip off of it suddenly, and one time, I did a running jump off of the platform by the third painting and fell straight through one of the longer rafts, into the water.
