Post by Yal in small graphical inconsistency (almost fixed)

Viewing post in small graphical inconsistency (almost fixed)

Part of why I consider the boomerang sword stronger than the bomb is that it has more utility (it can block bullets and isn't affected by gravity so it's possible to hit some things the bomb can't), and likewise Paige's "increased sword strength" is actually referring to her attack animations having a much larger hitbox than anyone else and not the damage output. But it shouldn't be too hard to just fudge the numbers a bit for both those cases since there's already support for dealing fractional damage.

(I fixed the text issues on the store page, including mentioning the "more spikes" modifier)

Imaynotbehere4long2 days ago

Wait, but then why does her description say "range and power" if it was always meant to be just range? Ah, I guess it's moot if you're gonna make it more powerful regardless.

Anyway, I noticed a couple more things and can hopefully get them in before the next update this time:

- Yal's World 1 convo says "threadmill" (again, no h in treadmill). Also, the word "gym" is a noun, not a verb; it'd be more natural to say "work out" instead. (by the way, it looks like you didn't change "moment of surprise"; may I ask why?)

- Seems like players can get stuck by Marble Tower's first painting if double-easy blocks are active and they fall from above without a sword or whip item (which is entirely possible if they end up with a fireball/float combo). Maybe save introducing the Balloon Cake until the next power-up block and put a whip or sword in that first one instead?

By the way, I remember you said you had an idea to make a collection/compilation of all current and future Daemon Detective Gaiden games, but I found an archive of the first game from 2014, and most of the levels in it got repurposed for this sequel. The main differences are 1) less HP, and 2) powers are locked to different characters, which is how I discovered that Marble Tower was originally designed so that the (first two) paintings could be collected with either the whip or the cat claw power, which I thought was a neat detail that got lost in the sequel (though besides that and the zoomed out camera, everything else about the sequel is a huge improvement).

What I'm trying to say is: in this hypothetical collection, would you make new levels to replace the near-duplicates, or would you expect players to effectively go through the same levels twice?

Yal1 day ago

(I didn't change it because apparently I forgot to put it on my to-do list, since I made sure to fix everything on it. It's there now though)

And yeah, not sure what I would do with the redundant levels. There's a bunch of unused ones that didn't make the cut (like the invisible blocks beach level) so going for a reimagning with all-new levels would probably be the best option, or touching them up with the new mechanics I added through the development of DDG2 (slopes aren't used a lot, for instance, pretty much only in Monument Valley and Snow Queen's Castle).

Imaynotbehere4long1 day ago (1 edit)

Oh, and one more if you'll hear me out: one of the things the shopkeeper can say is "Jason's discounts is coming to town." This would make sense if "Jason's Discounts" is the name of the store (singular), in which case the d in discounts should be capitalized. However, if it's referring to the general discounts (plural) provided by Jason, "is" should be replaced with are.

...except the phrase is preceded by "When fighting crime has worn you down," which isn't referring to something currently happening right now, but rather to something that will happen in the future. Therefore, it'd be more natural to say that Jason's [D/d]iscounts "will come to town," which also coincidentally avoids the is/are kerfuffle entirely.

Imaynotbehere4long1 day ago (4 edits)

Wow, I just barely missed you with my last comment, huh? Anyway, I discovered another glitch: if you speak to an NPC while using the Hikkori Skull's phasing power, you'll still be able to move around and jump while the dialogue box is on screen. Granted, the Hikkori Skull is rare enough that most players probably won't ever encounter this minor bug, but I thought I'd let you know anyway. EDIT: Also, doing the Hikkori Skull glitch while entering a door turns the player invisible until the next room loads (so only a fraction of a second).

I guess you could always just put this in your "Known Issues" thread if it's too much work to fix for too little gain.

EDIT: Also, is it just me, or is there no tutorial for panning the camera up/down? I only figured that out after I kept running into surprise death-falls in levels like Monument Valley and Massively Makeshift Bridge, but I had just assumed I forgot about that mechanic at the time. However, looking back, I don't think the game ever explicitly mentions its existence, so it'd be nice if you added some text explaining it somewhere in-game.

EDIT 2: You said you didn't change Yal's world 5 convo because you forgot to add it to your list. Did the same thing happen with removing and replacing the invisible blocks in those two levels that still use them, or did you simply disagree with my criticism?

Yal20 hours ago(+1)

Both of those glitches probably could be fixed by disallowing interactions specifically in the phasing state, the codebase is such a mess I didn't really do proper state machines with behavior packages so I'm pretty sure interactions are handled entirely in the NPC / door objects instead of only being done in player states where they make sense.

I'll look into adding NPCs to those levels telling you about the mechanic, it's something I added pretty late so I might've just forgotten (the view being shrunk was a side effect of switching from 480x272 resolution to 640x360, normally it uses 320x180 because things just get too small when in zoomed-out mode so it's exclusive to multiplayer mode when players are far away from each other)

I could look into adding a new option to always have the camera zoomed out though.

I ignored the invisible block feedback since I don't want to completely trivialize the challenge by removing them, but if you insist I'll figure something out...

Imaynotbehere4long14 hours ago (6 edits)

Thanks. To clarify, I wasn't asking you to replace them with trivial challenges, but rather simply challenges that the player can see upfront. Like I said before, you have to be very careful when introducing and building upon invisible blocks, to the point where you basically have to design the whole game around them and use them frequently in order for them to be intuitive and fair, especially if you're gonna use them without hints. Not even Lost Levels could pull that off perfectly, so don't feel too down about it.

One example of a potential replacement could be: for Load-Bearing Grid's first painting, below the bottom jump-through platform in that shaft, add one extra jump-through platform that can only be reached by jumping from the item block. Then, you could add a spike on the left side of the new jump-through block so that a simple running-jump wouldn't be enough, and the player would also have to slow down at the right time to land safely. That should be non-trivial enough for world 3, don't you think?

EDIT: Oh, and just in case this also needs to be specified, the shopkeeper sometimes calls the name of his store something like "Jason's powerups" or "Jason's quality powerups," which would require the p and q to be capitalized (watch your p's and q's! ;P). I guess it could be one of those slogans where the name of the store is just "Jason's" followed by listing one or two things the store sells, but then there'd at least need to be a comma after Jason's.

EDIT 2: Discovered another Hikkori Skull glitch: if you run into a wall while phasing, you can reliably phase again in another direction. I guess you won't fix this one since you said you're okay if something's unfair in the player's favor, so maybe keep this in mind for the sequel since it lets you expand on it by allowing for makeshift wall-jumping.

EDIT 3: Okay, okay, get this: I noticed a couple grammar mistakes while rereading the 1.0.8 launch post. In the first paragraph, you say "flaws that's been" instead of "flaws that've been," and in the second paragraph, you say "these changes trends towards" even though a plural noun (changes) means the verb (trend) should not have the added s at the end. ^__^ EDIT 4: ...and on that same topic, I just noticed that the store's description of the Blood Violet says "enemies that loves" instead of "enemies that love"

Imaynotbehere4long4 hours ago

Oh, and before I forget again: I really wasn't a fan of how the solid-white room near the end of the game had coins in unreachable locations. Even though I had gotten all the notes in that level, I thought maybe there was another key in that world or something that the coins were hinting towards, except no, I ended up falling to my death. Please remove all the coins that are below the platforms in that room, then lower the three coins in the top-right so they can be reached.

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