Modifications: mostly missiles, maybe minor mistakes. Most meaningful: major mechanic metamorphosis.10/10/2016 First off, the modifications. Reworking Air Strike has forced me to take a closer look at a lot of missile code. In doing so, I've made the following changes:
The only other minor, non-missile related game change is a slight rework of Smite. Instead of having a 60 frame startup and instant cooldown, I've changed it to instant startup, but 180 frame cooldown, hopefully making it a bit more worthwhile to use. Now the mistakes:
Finally, the mechanic metamorphosis:
I've reworked Sniper Shot so that while your fighter is reloading, they are able to move at half speed (although they still cannot shoot). The reloading sequence remains quite punishing, but this change gives a skilled player the chance to avoid some of the damage. After the modifications to Sniper Shot, I realized that I have all but removed "recovery" from the game. The Fighter stat "recovery" is still a thing - it effects the rate at which techniques cool down. What has been phased out is the idea of techniques having "recovery frames:" a period after performing the technique during which your fighter is completely helpless and immobilized. Pieces of it are still there, but it's much less important than I originally thought it would be. Very early in the game's history, recovery periods were used as a balancing factor to force the player to think carefully about when and when not to use a technique. In reality however, they made techniques clumsy and awkward, so recovery time only ended up seeing use in Slam, Air Strike, Sniper Shot, and Sting. Now that it has been removed from the first three, I can hardly justify leaving "Recovery: Instant" in the info string of every single technique. As for Sting, until I get a chance to play-test it, it will still retain the traditional, "paralysis" style of recovery, but I'll make a special note of that in the info string.
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Mines: I've made two small improvements to this technique. All mines will now, over the course of 20 seconds, slowly turn transparent until they are completely invisible. I've also fixed the issue of mines being useless if the enemy has Reflect, since it's trivial to reflect all the damage from the mine. Now, mines will hesitate if they sense that the enemy is reflecting, and then explode after the technique is finished. I'm not completely satisfied with this fix since it seems a bit unfair to Reflect, but I'll leave it like this until I think of something better. Stone Throw: Originally, this technique dealt 15 damage and 9 knockback, had a range of around 100 pixels, and a startup time of 25 frames. Since the range was only long enough to beat Punch and Shield, and the damage was lackluster compared to the large startup time, the only reason to ever pick it was its knockback, which was really only useful for annoying the enemy. I was having trouble differentiating Stone Throw from the other techniques without making it clumsy. After several ideas, I finally settled on this one. The damage and knockback have been decreased to 10 and 3 respectively, and the startup decreased to 15 frames. However, holding down the attack key allows you to charge up the technique, adding 1 stone for every 10 frames you charge, to a maximum of 5 stones total. When you release the key, your fighter throws all the stones in quick succession. The damage is now quite respectable, which - despite the dramatic decrease in knockback - helps to keep enemies at bay. However, this new Stone Throw has a clever usage which might not be immediately apparent. After releasing the attack key, your fighter throws one stone every 10 frames, until all of the stones are gone. During this time, any technique (except Stone Throw) can be performed. This means that you can use Stone Throw to stuck-lock your enemy while you perform Energy Blast. Or to provide cover while Flame Burst gets up to speed. The new Stone Throw opens up a wealth of synergy with dozens of new possibilities. That said, I have yet to playtest it, so who knows? Air Strike:
Like Stone Throw, Air Strike has been reworked from the ground up. I was never satisfied with the way this technique was used in play. Although I had intended it to be used to force the opponent under cover and control their movement, it was much more effective when spammed incessantly, shaking the screen and disorienting everyone, all while raining death upon both fighters. Even though both of them took damage, the user of the technique usually came out on top. Usually. The new Air Strike is quite different. Now, you press and hold the special key to create a red target that can be moved across the map. Releasing the key will drop a single missile directly on top of the target. There's no recovery period and no startup, but a cooldown of 180 frames, so that it's not easily spammable. Air Strike now requires a bit of thought to use, but it's much quicker and doesn't leave you quite as open to attack. Hopefully we'll see some more creative uses. In addition, Air Strike will no longer damage the fighter who called in the missile. This is due to a series of tweaks I did to the missile code in general. Another major change is in the damage of all missiles. Due to the way shrapnel is handled now, a direct hit from a missile tends to deal around 80 damage, which is significantly lower than the previous value of 200ish. Below is a humorous glitch that occurred during the transition between the two versions of Air Strike. I've done lots of general improvements. Here's a list:
I've also reworked a few techniques, but I'll put those in another post. I discovered some notes I had written months ago, detailing some bugs and things I had fixed. I guess I never posted them here though, so I'm adding them to the list I'm posting for today.
Bug Fixes:
After a long hiatus, I've started work again on finishing up the 25 main techniques. This has been my primary goal since the beginning, although I've certainly distracted myself with other tasks along the way.
The new technique is a special attack called Sting that features some unique mechanics which set it apart from other attacks. Most notably, the technique's damage increases with each consecutive hit. Sting is completely finished for Player 1, so all I need to do from here is copy it to Player 2 and clean up some of its graphics. In this new version, I've improved Pyramind, Glasses, and Room Zero, added a bunch of new stages, created two new techniques, and fixed a good deal of bugs. We also have a brand new game icon and loading screen! Things I did since the last devlog:
Alright, I got sidetracked again, but this time on sometime more productive. Today I finally got around to replacing the pointless Spring technique with something a bit more useful. It's an Up+Special attack called Pounce which causes your fighter to streak straight towards the enemy and deal 30 damage if they connect. I'm afraid it may be a bit powerful, since there's no cooldown and you don't have to aim it, but I believe it'll be fairly easy to counter if someone tries to spam it. The only thing left to do is copy everything over to Player 2. Other things I did:
After finishing up Pounce, I'll upload the latest version. I got sidetracked today working on a secret level located in Babylon. Since it's supposed to be a secret, I don't really want to give much else away.
Fortunately, I did get some more important stuff done as well:
:When trying to test the game, it threw a bunch of strange errors and refused to run. I did what I always do and saved and tried again. No dice. I tried to restore from backup, but the backup was empty. Now I was scared. I tried to open backups from previous versions - they were all empty too. Now I was terrified. Had the errors corrupted all my game files? That's impossible - but that's what it looked like. I thought I was out of luck, so I was about to post on a forum when I thought of something else to try: I opened the backup from within Gamemaker 8.1. Success! All the data is back, I scared myself for nothing. Anyways, I've been working on some cool new things lately, namely a leaf-toss technique for the Elemental Temple, and a new map called Babylon. Here's what it looks like so far: It's a pretty simple stage and I have to say, I think the background is rather bland. I like the design though and the clear lines of sight. Not sure how it'll play out. You can see Leaf Toss in action here. The leaves bounce around, dealing only a little damage, but disrupting an opponent. They fire instantly too, so they're great for getting off a quick shot. Currently, only Player 1 can use this technique, so the next thing I'll work on before the release will be giving it to Player 2. Then we'll probably have a new version out. Other things I did:
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