itch.io

Oh my goodness, that was it. After finding out that you weren't kidding about how the game gets buried in searches (even with the "Heart of Ruin" added to it), I stumbled across the build you uploaded to Game Jolt, which is 1.2.19 and includes a bunch of other changes, like an existent room 241 and a combo mechanic that shows how many times in a row you hit enemies. Any chance you'll reupload that as an update to Final Columbus over here? EDIT: If you purposely chose to revert back to 1.2.15 for some reason, maybe you could give people the choice of which to download? EDIT 2: On second thought, maybe it'd be better to stick with version 1.2.15 since the upgrade for the Chain Core wasn't implemented (the sidequest seems to stall after giving the Master Floppy to the shopkeeper), meaning you don't get anything for fighting your way through that nonsense. EDIT 5: and the new boss fight against the electric-gun-wielder crashes the game when you try to speak to her afterward, so there's another reason to stick with 1.2.15. EDIT 6: and 1.2.19's credits are missing the comments/descriptions for the enemies/staff, but it does list all the enemies that were missing in 1.2.15's credits.

I guess I only have one more question: 1.2.15 has an unused music track called "sound87" that isn't present in 1.2.19 at all. What's the story behind that track? Was it a prototype of Frozen Hearts, a track for another one of your games that you considered reusing, or something that someone else composed and you included by accident?

When I set my save's room value to 250 or higher, the game crashes with an "array index out of bounds" error before even reaching the file select screen. Any idea what the problem might be? Even the nonexistent rooms let me reach the file select and only crashed (with a different error) when I tried loading that specific file. As an experiment, I set my room number to 30000 and got the exact same error as with rooms 250+, even though I'm pretty sure there isn't a room 30000, so I doubt its something like the rooms not having properly defined in-game area names or something. All I can think of is that the GM8 compiler has a hard limit of 249 rooms and simply left out those higher-number rooms when making the exe, meaning the level was accidentally unreleased after all (or maybe the v1_2_15 build you uploaded to itch is outdated and isn't actually the final Final Columbus :P).

If the problem is somehow on my end, can you upload a save file that starts in that room without crashing?

Thanks again for regularly responding to my comments. I do have one more question, though:

The sound test says that Frozen Hearts was the theme of a level in Final Columbus, but I recently beat that game and never heard it there. After I beat it, I edited my save file to put me back beside alternate paths I had skipped, eventually finding all nine gun upgrades, all five secret NPCs, and even stumbling across what I'm pretty sure are unused rooms (such as a speedbike tunnel, other final boss phases, and an alternate ending with Ninja), but I still never found any room that plays the track in question. I even cheated my way into That One Level (since it's inaccessible normally), which is what I was certain you were referring to, but no, that level plays a completely different track throughout. Is the reason only two people recognize Frozen Hearts because it was from a cancelled/unreleased build? Or if I just overlooked it, what's the room number that plays the song (and if relevant, how do I trigger the song to play)? I'm pretty sure I checked all 240 of the game's rooms (a room value of 241 crashes the game, saying that the room doesn't exist), so the only other thing I can think to do is ask you.

Because if that level really never saw the light of day...well, first, I'm curious how it managed to be worse than putting the factorial punishment after the escort maze, and second, I'd appreciate if its sound test entry was reworded to clarify that the level was unreleased since part of me was looking forward to seeing just how annoying that level was, and it would've been nice to know ahead of time that the level isn't actually there.

Maybe, but I'm not so sure since my second GIF shows me getting hurt before reaching the ground.

By the way, I noticed that one of the test players is credited as "OiviaSilver." Is that a typo of Olivia, or is that really how the username is spelled?

Revisiting the spinning spike logs, it turns out they have a much bigger problem than the one I mentioned before, and this is likely the real reason they gave me such grief: they can hurt you whenever, even if the spike isn't close to being in position.

This can also happen jumping at them from below, not just above. As far as I can tell, the only situation it can't happen is if you're already standing on them.

One of Sugar's running frames is missing the hair outline on the right side. It's extra-noticeable in the hub/world map where the game is zoomed in and loops the running frames when you move.

Oh, I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but it'd be nice if the inventory lets you push left on the left edge or right on the right edge to move the cursor to the other side instantly.

Bit of feedback on the Boss Rush: it's kinda annoying that it always puts the cursor on Play instead of Extras when you die. I often wanna try again immediately after losing (especially if it's an early loss), but tapping the confirm button when the game fades back in just ends up loading my main game save. Maybe, instead of going all the way back to the title menu, you can have it load the character select menu after dying instead? It'd be extra nice if you also have the cursor start on the last played character instead of its usual default, too, but maybe that's asking too much.

Oh, and I noticed that if my last-loaded save was on a harder difficulty, the Boss Rush mode also inherits that same difficulty level, complete with the fire banner and misaligned top-left flame shadow. Was that intentional, or did you want the boss rush to be on a set difficulty for all players?

Also, minor graphical inconsistency: dying in the boss rush refills your health when the game starts fading out.

Found another small graphics issue: Drake has a hole in his pants when he turns around mid-run.

Stumbled across a new one today: the momentum bug that Human Rockets have also happens with stuff that Minotaurs throw:

Also, small graphical bug with the reserve-powerup's glow being layered behind the door.

Hey, remember how I said that using the Hikkori Skull or the Rocket Pack will let you keep moving while talking to NPCs? Turns out, the same bug happens if you're in the middle of doing a whip attack or sword attack as well. 

I only just now discovered that Holy Cow's illumination orb also doubles as an attack that can hurt enemies (I was under the impression that it was ONLY for "lighting the way" and the sky lasers were her only offensive spell), so whenever you go to reword their descriptions like I suggested before, I'd appreciate if you made this detail clearer as well.

A bit more feedback: I like how the powerup-loss effect happens when the player is only one hit away from death (or two hits for certain weak enemy attacks or high-HP characters), as it functions as an in-your-face warning that you're about to die and should be more careful. However, there's no such warning during boss fights, where the player is immune to losing powerups; it's just the same as every other taking-damage animation until suddenly you're dead. The most that happens is that your tiny health bar in the distant corner of the screen subtly glows red. It'd be nice if you could add some type of more-obvious low-HP warning for those situations as well.

Noticed another small typo: the description for the knockback accessibility option says "attacks knocks" when it should just say "attacks knock" without the last s.

You mean donuts don't come back. :P  "Does" is only for third-person singular nouns in present tense, and "donuts" is plural.

I will say, I'm having trouble seeing how players can get stuck in multiplayer without getting stuck in that same spot in single player, but I guess I'll take your word for it. 

Anyway, here's another that I noticed a few days ago or so: the diagonal whip has a much-thinner hitbox than the horizontal whip. This is easiest to notice while trying to clear away the green skeletons' fog from a standstill, which is significantly harder to do diagonally:

You can tell by the skeleton's throwing animation that the top image isn't the fog disappearing on its own because of when those animations happen relative to each other compared to when they happen in the bottom image, where the fog *does* disappear on its own.

Falling into a bottomless pit in a dark level still has the player's spotlight bounce back into view for a bit. I figure you already knew about this one and tried to mask it by covering the dark-level pits with death water, but the problem with masking an issue instead of fixing it is that if  you miss a spot, well...

Oh, and that reminds me: if the player activates a solid donut block, it always comes back as a regular jump-through donut block. Was that intentional? If so, what's the point of having solid donut blocks in the first place if it makes no difference whether or not they stay that way? Was it just for visual variety?

Here's another one I've known about for a while but didn't get around to reporting until now: the Fire Bomb Girls' projectiles don't disappear when off-screened. Instead, they hang in limbo until they're back in the screen's activation zone, potentially resulting in an unexpected cheap hit.

(Note: I don't mean the first two stray ones that actually hit me, but the ones after I start jumping back up.)

Stumbled across a new one just now: if you rocket-boost into a concave ceiling corner in just the right way, you can get stuck forever.

EDIT: Oh, and for completeness' sake, I figured I'd also mention this other, less severe glitch I encountered while trying to recreate the previous one: rocket-boosting into a convex ceiling corner can cause the rocket to hang, but this one is much easier to escape from.

An addendum on the "add obstacles instead" option not being indicated enough: when you go to change the in-game description to mention that it can be either extra platforms OR extra obstacles, please replace "no help" with something less specific like "no change" to make it extra clear that the option isn't just for more help.

You added the option to turn gore off for those who are squeamish, right? If so, it just occurred to me that you might also wanna add alternatives for stuff like the meat factory and flesh tilesets/backgrounds as well, along with alternatives for the decorations in the fake Reinforcements boss room.

Noticed this one several days ago but only just now got around to capturing footage: chasing enemies (such as the Human Rockets) will continue gaining momentum while the player is switching/losing powers, allowing them to make much sharper turns than they otherwise could:

EDIT: On the subject of issues I noticed days ago but never got around to mentioning: holding a mega buster charge and entering a door will result in the "eeeeee" charge sound playing continuously, even if you exit to the world map or even the title screen. Even if you then set "SFX Volume" to 0%, the "eeeee" keeps playing. The only way to stop it at that point is to do something that mutes all audio, like die or close the game.

This has been bothering me for a while, but I think I finally know how to voice my concerns: the frame of the spinning spike log that hurts you doesn't look like it should hurt you. This is because it has the bottom of the spike outline bending downward (by a lot!), making it seem as if the spike is pointing towards the camera and the player would land behind it, but that's not the case. I think you were going for one of those slightly-downward-tilted-camera perspectives like what NES Ninja Gaiden does, but the problem is that the entire rest of the game is strictly straight-side-view like the Super Mario games, and this perspective conflict makes that hazard unintuitive. Please redraw the log's harmful frame so that the spike graphic isn't cutting into the log graphic, or at least so it only has the spike's outline overlapping the top pixels of the log. Maybe also make it so the harmful frame has a brighter spike for added clarity.

Stumbled across a few more regarding Chibie. First, her wings don't get shadowed/inked in the Unfinished Swan room. Second, her wing animation freezes if you cat-grab onto a wall while floating (so if they're in the middle of closing when you grab the wall, they'll stay in that partially-open state until you detach). Third, even when gore is disabled, the healing effect when she kills an enemy is still blood-red (though I'm not sure how much you'd count that one). I'd upload some more screen captures to show these, but itch is breaking my images again.

Oh! I just thought of another potential solution with the Nitro Bomb: even if you don't change anything about how it works (which I still think you really should), you could just have the boss rooms overwrite the powerup like you do with the Balloon Cake. That way, even if players switch back and run out of ammo, they still have the given powerup to fall back on.

Finally got this one on video! If you do a running jump into the bottom corner of a ground tile at just the right spot, you'll get stuck there until you move backwards out of it:

Keep in mind it happens with ALL solid ground tiles, not just bricks. Looking back at the footage, I think it might be related to the "get pushed back after landing" bug I mentioned earlier since the afterimages stick around until after I escape the wall.

You're right; I double-checked, and the regular bomb's explosion also only deals a minuscule amount of damage to opposing players, though this is masked by the bomb itself dealing a reasonable amount of damage on contact, pre-explosion. Even if this oversight got fixed, though, I still think that having the Nitro Bomb deal recoil damage is going overboard. You didn't add any similarly-massive drawbacks for other objectively-improved versions of powerups like the long whip or the axe/boomerang sword; at most, you just gave them a cooldown period and made them rarer. You should do the same for the Nitro Bomb, maybe even limit it to being a pricey shop-exclusive item like you did with the gold leaf, but no recoil damage; that's going too far.

Anyway, I stumbled across another one: if you're one whip's length away from your opponent, you can still hit each other with a down-angled whip attack, even if you're directly in front of each other instead of below at an angle:

Weirdly, it doesn't happen if you're too close to each other; you have to be at the edge of the whip's range for the discrepancy to occur.

EDIT: I almost didn't realize your intent with the jumpthrough arrangements for Prison Maze because the Skybase tileset's jumpthroughs are just flat clouds at the top rather than being full squares that can fill out the intended wall/prison bar shapes. You did a good job at making sure all the other available themes had square jumpthroughs, though.

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.

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.

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:

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).

Discovered a new one: dying in crystal form as Penguin Cop will cause the reinforcement to BE a pinkranite crystal until you take damage.

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.

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.

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.

Noticed another one: landing after doing a running jump pushes me backward a bit instead of smoothly continuing forward movement. It happens every time I land, but is more noticeable after longer falls.

Hey, the description for Shattered Team on the character select screen claims that they're immune to instant-death hazards, but when I jumped into a pool of lava, I still exploded. Sure, I respawned on the last platform as a reserve member, but Penguin Cop can do the same thing (if only once). And yes, the dead member slowly regenerated, but by that logic, they'd be "immune" to ALL damage with no need to specify instant-death ones, so I think that line should be reworded for clarity.

EDIT: Oh, and the Soaker Girl/Water Balloon Girl bestiary mix-up might've been on my end, too. EDIT 2: Or maybe it's only mixed up with specific Enemy Promotion settings? I'll have to double-check at some point. 

EDIT 3: Oh, and the unlock description for Holy Cow says she "can trample anything flat with her massive bulk," but again, this isn't special to her because it takes her the same number of bounces to crush enemies as everyone else, and she can't just run into enemies like Sugar, either. I recommend swapping out that phrase for one that mentions her vertical magic lasers or healing ability.

About that problem booting into fullscreen I mentioned before: it was on my end. My mouse has a double-click problem, and sometimes when I'd go to double-click the exe, the second click would register twice for a triple-click, which means File Explorer ended up being the active window when the game booted up. Somehow, that's what causes the game's fullscreen to get misaligned.

Hey, I just noticed that each of the three paintings gives a different amount of points on the mission results screen. Was this intentional? I feel like not all the levels ordered their paintings from easiest to hardest, let alone made the third one four times as hard to obtain.

Then again, I also recognize that this would be tough to undo since 14000 isn't evenly divisible by three, but changing the total points would throw off star balancing, so I'm not asking you to change it; I'm just curious what your intentions were.

Funny, I did notice its similarity to Cave Story's Balrog, but I never expected you to just come out and say it. :P 

Anyway, I stumbled across another mistake just now: if I set Enemy Promotion to "Harder enemies," the Sparky Po will move faster, but if I set it to "Much harder enemies," they go back to being regular speed with no differences, which you might notice is not harder.