FaustWolf's progress thread and bug report

[Agent 12]

I remember there's also someone that says 'follow the coast" or something?  Maybe that's the same person 99 mentioned.  I remember it got added cause like NOONE could finding singing mountain in the demo haha.

--JP

[FaustWolf]

I do remember an NPC saying something about Singing Mountain and the general direction. As long as the NPC repeats that line and associates it with Ayla, that should be enough.

[Romana]

Yeah, I wouldn't have found Singing Mountain if that NPC line hadn't been there. Maybe expand the path towards it slightly? I mean, the path along behind the mountains looks a little too thin to be really noticeable right away.

[FaustWolf]

Ugh, even showstopper bugs are conspiring to keep me from recapturing the prehistoric crater footage. At least we found this as a result:


If you're extremely unlucky in the Kasmir tunnel, you can bump into an enemy and then Frog will conveniently place himself inside a wall to do battle. However, Frog will never come out of that wall again. JP NOTE: hopefully....

[Agent 12]

hahahahah stupid crono following Frog to death.  FW you can just start a new game and the debug  room to skip to whatever chapter you want.

--JP

[FaustWolf]

FW you can just start a new game and the debug  room to skip to whatever chapter you want.

at me. Yeah, I should have figured that out.

Well, I'm at the prehistoric era again anyway. It's amazing how fast the game goes when you turn Frog's "Water" into Dark Matter and soup up the damage, and combine this with ZSNES' fast forward button. 

[FaustWolf]

Some minor visual bugs with tile priority in Singing Mountain:



I kind of like the multiple bubbles effect I accidently created wtih the tech editor, but I can't think of a practical use for them at the moment.  JP NOTE: yea it is pretty cooll

[FaustWolf]

IMAGES FIXED.

Chapter 8: An Emerald Dream II

How awesome. I really like the Robots vs. Reptites situation, that'll be completely unexpected on the player's part, and it's a great reversal of traditional sci-fi norms.

I love the fact that the writers are willing to be so brutal with the characters. Essentially there's dimensions in which they're stuck forever in their current situations I suppose.

What struck me most about the design of Dinopolis was one room where there's two leapers and a Gigasaur, separated by a empty floor tiles that create a physical barrier. Approach the Gigasaur and the battle's pretty easy, but approach the leapers and you're basically screwed. I love it when you can exploit positioning like that. Thumbs up! Plus I spammed that battle so Lucca and Robo could learn their flame tackle double tech. Boy, was that important for the Vision Serpent!

Bug Report

#1. Messed up tile on the 2305 alternate dimension overworld.



#2. Malfunctioning temporal sensors!? Looks like a leftover from an earlier draft.  JP NOTE: Or the atash kedah can send you ANYWHERE dun dun dun.....no..wait it's just left over...



#3. Misplaced arm for enemy rocket punch. Not sure how much you can do about this though.   JP NOTE: yea...i'm just gunna let that one fly



#4. Curious spell effect placement while fighting Bytes. This happens in a few other battles as well, so I'm wondering if it's actually a glitch that Protect does when there's only two (and not three) party members.  JP NOTE: oh geez....yea that is weird.  here i was hoping changing that tech wouldn't be that difficult



#5. Bad tile solidity on overworld. The red represents tiles that are solid but shouldn't be.



#6. Grammar nitpick here. What have you guys traditionally been doing with quotes and punctuation? Have you been doing quotes outside periods "at the end of a sentence?" Or have you been doing quotes "as shown"? Answered by ZeaLitY.



#7. Battle solidity issue. JP NOTE: as much as i could



#8. Monkey See, Monkey Glitch. Approach this winged ape without defeating the Craters separately and the poor ape discombobulates. Interestingly, it may not happen if you approach the ape from behind. At least I had one battle in which the ape was fine even with the Craters.  JP NOTE: These are usually from "activating" an enemy instead of touching him



#9. Battle solidity issue



#10. Speechless. Seems the defeat of the Vision Serpent has left these NPCs with absolutely nothing to say. JP NOTE: Bug'd for zeality




Difficulty Report: Difficulty's right on track in this chapter as far as I'm concerned; I'm using the "new65kk" patch, the latest as of this post. I think someone was iffy on the ability to quickly defeat the acid blob enemies in the factory, but part of game balance is throwing in a freebie enemy here and there. The Vision Serpent was a badass, but luckily I had a stock of Lapises to draw on (they're better than Robo's Heal Beam at this stage). I don't know what I would have done without Lucca and Robo's flame tackle double tech (their second one), so definitely don't get rid of the Gigasaur/Leaper set of enemies that net you 25 tech points. It's not a permanent farm as far as I can tell.

Also, a piece of the Vision Serpent seems to self-destruct the very moment it attacks. Is that part of the act?

[Chrono'99]

Seems like you accidentally posted some images twice.


The Vision Serpent is composed of two enemy sprites like Mother Brain was in CT, but for some reason his bottom part disappears without taking any damage. I think there was something in the battle against Mother Brain that kept it alive or something, but it's absent here. Perhaps it was the three Displays (computer screen enemies)? Putting them in this battle would make it insanely difficult though.

Also for some reason the Serpent's colors are fixed instead of animating like those of Mother Brain's:

[Agent 12]

Oh it is two sprites??? Are they both loaded in the location events?  If that's the case than maybe it is the enemy AI (I only checked the AI MotherBrain)

--JP

[Chrono'99]

Yeah, in that location there's an enemy that has a blank name; it's the bottom part of the Vision Serpent.

Maybe we should just make it static and give it zero HP as Justin did with TD Schala in the Schala project)? That way the mouth of the Serpent isn't targettable, doesn't disappear and doesn't even make a death sound. Mother Brain had a visible head and torso so it made sense to have two targets, but here it's just one serpent head thingy so it's strange if we make two targets for it.

[ZeaLitY]

I've been using European English rules, which I think dictate that

1) Any self-contained terms or phrases in quotations have the punctuation outside unless a question mark, and
2) Any quotations of actual sentence clauses have the punctuation inside.

So, if Belthasar wanted to talk about someone saying the Frozen Flame doing something,

BELTHASAR: The Frozen Flame did "it".
BELTHASAR: The Frozen Flame "did it."

The current rule in the United States is to put the punctuation in the quotations always, but like 's on the end of words that end with s, I've taken an opportunity here to promote what I feel is more technically accurate English than the US standard.

[FaustWolf]

Chapter 9: An Emerald Dream III

What a load of awesome this chapter was. The Marle skeleton scene was really intense. Absolutely loved the endurance battle before Coyopa and the other Reptite time traveler, talk about keeping players on their feet! Nice job hiding that tab behind a plant, that was clever.

I loved Magus totally pulling the spacemen explanation out of nowhere, that was priceless.

Bug Report

1. Foliage here could use a bit of work. Left side of screen. I touched it up a little...



2. More tile cleanup. JP NOTE: I made a few minor changes...maybe you should look again and tell me if i got what you're tlaking about?



3. Dactyl freaks out. I can't even fathom why this would happen, but it might have something to do with when the dactyl enemies overlap one another. JP NOTE: nah it's this weird thing called enemy PRM that you have to make sure is far apart



4. Battle tile priority issue.  JP NOTE: sigh...i fixed it best i could flying enemies + priority tiles == annoying



5. Another odd tile. Plus, that ape is walking on water -- is that okay?



6. Yet another odd tile (beanstalk-like plant has an odd tile).



7. Check tile priority on the doorway arch leading to Dinopolis. The sprite seems to have priority over one of those tiles (e.g., when Sorin enters Dinopolis, he overlaps the doorway arch instead of the other way around).

[FaustWolf]

Chapters 10 and 11: Stain of Regency; Founding of Guardia

Fascinating story stuff. I guess I won't even mention it here because I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise for other bugtesters. Suffice it to say that Porre has good reason to be resentful toward Guardia.

Bug Report

1. Cavewall nudity sensored?  Really, I think I'm quite old enough to handle that tile's full contents.



2. When we flash back to Marle arriving in 1AD, she says, "Cedric? That sounds familiar..." right after exclaiming, "Cedric Guardia!?" when the early Guardian soldiers find her. She already knows who he is, so maybe she could wonder about something other than the familiarity of his name.  JP NOTE: Bug'd for zeality


3. Discombobulated Bellbird  JP NOTE: I can't repro this......do you remember if this was the bell bird who jumped down or if it was the one already there?



4. Too much dialogue space here.



You could probably stand to bump down Antaeus' HP a bit. I know he's supposed to become some kind of Hulk after touching the Frozen Flame, but man, the battle just gets boring when all you can do is throw Ice at the guy for several minutes straight. How much HP does he have?

[FaustWolf]

Chapter 12: The Gray Forgotten


1. "Regimes" should have an apostraphe.



2. ...But the princess isn't in this castle! In fact, she's in prehistory. JP NOTE: Bug'd for zeality



3. Tile solidity issue in the missile base. I can't walk further right.



4. Tile priority issue shows up when enemy bot drops in.



5. False alarm. Approach the spot that triggers the battle above after the enemies have been
vanquished and the party tries to fight, but no enemies appear and the party gathers together.


7. Can you guys change the times listed for the Neo Epoch's time guage?



BTW, as soon as you get the Epoch you can go to the End of Time and find the Dreamtime. Is this kosher?