I will need to look into this. I don't remember if the movement code is so old it uses Game Maker's built-in collision system, if that's the case it might explain what's happening (colliding with a solid object cancels the ongoing movement and requires you to manually reapply it if you wanted to get as close as possible - like sticking to the ground when landing).
21 days ago(+1)
Stumbled across yet another graphical inconsistency regarding a player-character's footwear: Yal's disappears while using the Cat Sunflower's climbing ability:
This one's extra surprising because I'd imagine most people would play as Yal since he's first. Maybe they assumed Yal needed to take off his sandals to climb, but seeing as how this doesn't happen for Matt, Anikel, or Paige, I think it's safe to say this one wasn't intentional, either.
By the way, remember how I said that using the Hikkori Skull lets you move around while talking to NPCs? Same happens if you use the Rocket Pack.
21 days ago (+1)
More feedback: I don't like how the ice buster and fire buster only shoot after you LET GO of the attack button. I know a bunch of other games do this as well, and I hate it there, too. It makes the controls feel unresponsive. The default green mega buster shoots when you push the button despite also having a stronger charge shot, and the much-more-common flower-equivalent ice/fire powers also shoot when you push the button, so I don't understand why you broke consistency for the ice/fire busters. I would greatly prefer if they instantly fired a regular weak shot when you push the button like the green one does.
Anikel's cheery sprite used in the epilogue has the top row of pixels misaligned and has her hair-covered eye missing despite it being slightly visible in her other cutscene sprites.
By the way, I noticed that the data.win for v1.0.8 is around 4MB smaller than v1.0.7. May I ask what all got removed? I'm just curious.
19 days ago(+1)
I haven't intentionally removed anything, but since it's compiled with a much newer version of Game Maker something might have changed behind the scenes. I know graphics use a different (compressed) format now instead of using the source PNGs as-is but I don't think that's the whole explanation.
16 days ago(+1)
That's interesting. The sprite should be updated based on current state but I guess I overlooked instant death hazards skipping the regular transition back from crystal to regular state.
15 days ago(+1)
In the multiplayer VS mode, selecting the New Magma City theme has it play Nice Day for a Stroll despite the background being that same unfitting night sky that Waste Disposal Plant had. I'm guessing this is a holdover from DDG1 where the city had a day sky by default, so maybe you could swap it for the day sky, or swap the theme for Chemplant like you did before, or add an extra option so you can do both with New Magma City (day) and New Magma City (night).
Sometimes, wall-jumping with the Cat Sunflower's power will do a regular-height jump instead of the tiny jump it's supposed to. My guess is that if you're lined up exactly right with a 16x16 wall tile, the game will do a regular "jump from ground" jump instead of the "detach from wall" bounce.
By the way, did you remember to put my "add visual indicator on solid tiles that Zombies come out of" comment to your to-do list? I'm not sure you actually did anything regarding making the Zombie-spawning easier to see in dark levels if the player is in front of them.
EDIT: If gore is off, enemies will sometimes play an extra death animation. It's easiest to reproduce by playing as Sugar and running at max speed while jumping on top of a jump-able enemy:
8 days ago(+1)
I didn't remember, but it's on the list now. Thanks for the reminder!
I think the "double death animation" is because of managing to cause a HP death (from the afterimages) and a jump death (from landing on top of the enemy) on the same frame, there's no failsafe to make sure they don't both happen (it just didn't occur to me it was a possibility).
EDIT: Also, I'm not sure how intentional this is, but on the other end of the spectrum, bomb explosions can't be seen unless a shadow overlaps them (same for fireballs). Itch suddenly decided to break all my image upload attempts, though, so you'll have to take my word for it.
EDIT 2: Okay, I just found out that the Nitro Bomb is used! There's a chance it'll show up in PVP maps as an item drop, but using it will damage yourself. Was this an accidental holdover from getting Shattered Team to work, or did you mean for it to be an anti-powerup like the poison mushroom in Smash Bros.?
Either way, that's two more Sugar frames missing footwear if you haven't already corrected them with the rocket sprites.
EDIT 3: Why does the "Reaper's Castle" PVP theme have the lava background instead of, you know, the castle background? It has the castle tileset, though, which kinda doesn't fit with the lava background. Same goes for that world's Reinforcements, obviously.
EDIT 4: Oh, almost forgot: if you're in a PVP battle and you pause and go back to settings, the PVP settings menu won't have any music playing unless you back out further to the main menu.
Nice catch, I think the monochrome effect always draws the player regardless of if they're invisible or not. It might be depth sorted on top of the explosions too.
The explosions are very strong so they're balanced out by having a finite number of uses before you damage yourself enough to lose the powerup. I think them spawning is a holdover from DDG1 (the arena code might be reused with no changes) but I cut them from the main game since bringing one to a boss fight would risk making it unwinnable.
I might have mixed up some Reaper's Castle and Caldera Keep settings, I'll need to look into this.
6 days ago (+1)
Hey, I'm not sure we're on the same page about how strong the Nitro Bomb's explosions are, because I double-checked and confirmed that they barely do any damage to your opponent, only really hurting yourself:
If you meant against the regular enemies, what makes those explosions so much stronger than the regular bomb powerup that they needed to be balanced with recoil damage? Seems more like you were trying to do a Decoy Effect rather than counterbalance an overpowered item. The only benefit I see is that the explosions are *larger,* but there aren't many levels where you can end up getting beset on all sides by enemies like this, so its potential uses over the other powerups are very small in practice. This honestly seems more like a "three-second cooldown" situation at most, but even if you still want to go down the route of permanently-limiting its uses, you should at least give them a separate ammo counter instead of taking away the player's HP.
Though as an aside, I thought I'd mention that the ammo limits were one of my least favorite parts of Gun Princess 2, and I was glad to see that DDG2 did away with them, so I still recommend the cooldown option of the two.
Oh, and I forgot to mention this one last time: dying to enemies in the Unfinished Swan room removes the player's shadow.
EDIT: Another glitch with the Hikkori Skull: phasing upward through a jump-through platform lets you phase again before you land, just like phasing into a wall does. EDIT AGAIN: Same goes for if you Hikkori-phase upward from a standstill; you get to do it twice before it gets disabled, even if you don't touch another platform in the meantime.
EDIT 2: Hey, was it intentional to let other players jump on you and hurt you while you're in the middle of Hikkori-phasing? Because when that happens, you're still invisible during the knock-back portion, and you don't become visible again until you regain control and your flashing i-frames start.
6 days ago(+1)
Also, it might be a good idea to raise the border walls of Canyon Bridge because with a Cat Sunflower, a Hikkori Skull, or even just a bit of teamwork, you can get on top of them.