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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Mar 22, 2015 0:40:43 GMT -5
Last build of Punch Man, Jet Man, and Nunchaku Man is on the YouTubessssss now in all their new scary glory. Still some tuning tightening to do and whatever bugs may creep up, but baring anything crazy this is it for them.
Punch Man's now picked up a second punch wave, some fists of fury, roof exploding uppercut (to give some blockable shots for proto), and a punch dive on top of his previous arsenal. His desperation's been reworked to be much larger and handled location when to use it a tad different to prevent him from cornering you with it given the size.
Nunchaku has started using some clone's, shadow step, and regained his barrage from the original. His lil bombs have been reworked so you can disarm them now to let people start getting exposure to that kinda thing given it's use in later bosses.
Jet Man has had a massive overhaul and pretty much everything is different now. His standing arm cannons are no longer blockable, his dash is faster for longer and leaves fire, his missile and blitz is tighter, then he can jump to get access to another set of moves. While jumping he can do a dashing aimed shot (blockable) and his prior desperation move is baseline as a bombing run. At the end of those he can also sometimes launch a split missile to annoy players (and me). I had a last minute idea for his desperation so took a bit to work it in. Decided it'd be radically different from the others to have the fight shift to Rush Jet for a moment, so ran with it. Given it's length though it's a one time deal and he doesn't add it into his normal rotation.
So with that blob done of the next three Circuitry Man will be the problem child like Jet Man was -_-
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Post by mickgalbani on Mar 22, 2015 7:52:00 GMT -5
Ha ha ha! Holy snap those guys look awesome. I am definitely looking forward to fighting these guys. Here's hoping the next batch isn't too problematic for you.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Mar 24, 2015 2:58:57 GMT -5
They're definitely much less forgiving now, though with some touch ups should be fun and frantic fights. Might need to change the split missile and desperation move a tad for Jet Man since the missiles range from no threat to no mercy. Also I'm seeing that linear difficulty progression though isn't quite cutting it and will probably need to change it up some so that the sissy setting gives ample time between attacks aside from the tiny life bar to give nublets time to register what just happened and get ready for whatever next they throw. Decisions decisions work work -_- ~ Edit And tightening up is done now
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Apr 2, 2015 4:37:03 GMT -5
Figure I'll do bosses as they're done to have more frequent updates. So here be Arsenal in his final draft (minus tweaking and bugs that may emerge). He's picked up some new moves as well as a scrolling wall that needs to be destroyed as it creeps up less you get pinched and mauled. Lots of DoT effects which can melt you in a split second if not careful or end up cornered.
Outside of Arsenal's build, the difficulty setting is no longer linear for the bosses so the lowest setting can be far more generous on the delay between attacks than on the upper settings.
Circuitry Man is up next, but like Jet Man is going to require lots of redoing to spice up his fight, especially in the special effects department.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Apr 11, 2015 0:33:41 GMT -5
So as Circuitry Man begins to shape up for his last build started some more pondering.
Think I'mma toss out nearly all the damage over time weapon effects and make dang near everything 1 and done regardless of historical behavior in the originals and here. Full screen attacks, explosions, and melee attacks would all just hit during their first frame or two of animation and the rest of the animation would just be fluff. Would quicken everything up by reducing effect spam of drawing hits every screen refresh for things that'd do 2 damage, the need to check for collisions every frame, and also eliminate the largest culprit of cheese damage against bosses. Was pondering over it after thinking that there's really no difference between Lion buster and the regular buster now that the damage was capped.
After playing around with the non-linear boss aggression based on difficulty think I'm going to apply it to their health too. The old linear way was like 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 health. Think it'd be nice as 1000, 2000, 2500, 3000 instead. Some tweaks here and there of course for the bosses like Gamma and Next given their mechanics.
Thinking I may do away with Auto's shop as a place to buy things too. The power up items I can just hide in stages, let the music for the jukebox be unlocked from the get go (since people can just go look it up anyhow why bother making it unlockable), and the other stuff you spend money on (unlocking older weapons for Mega and buying tanks) can be done from earlier in Dr Light's Lab and with Eddie. Making Eddie the source for buying tanks would also make it a tad easier to give the player access to them in the later stages when you can't go into the City so they have a means to restock before the crazier boss fights. Auto's shop would still hang around for scenery though.
More rambling out loud as I plod along with this... endlessly... >_>
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Apr 28, 2015 2:00:45 GMT -5
Robot Master #5 gets their last build done (outside bugs and tuning and all). Substantially increased his goodies to kill you with. His arm strike thingy now charges a side of the room, after it reaches 3 charges he can then make a shield which slowly heals him and must be broken by a max buster shot. He now has a floaty jump that allows him to pelt the room in shots. His ground tentacle thing is baseline and quite crueler. He can fire a large blockable shot to let proto get some shield charge loving. His good ol' teleport is slightly tweaked and plays into his desperation move which is altered now to set him a bit more apart from others. After teleporting out he can leave little orbs that can be picked up to get a small heal, but if you don't pick them up they charge the generator at the top which will eventually release 5 sparks around the room that need to be dodged along with all the other craziness going on.
Unrelated to that, think I'mma also get rid of continues in the game too for the final stages and let players keep on face planting against the later bosses until the opt to give up and exit back to the main stage select.
~~~ Edit
Think next round o' playtest after the original 8 bosses are up given the degree of change.
~~~ Edit Edit
Special Weapons freezing stage obstacles and shots is out among the other fat trimming. Things worked okay in the respective games, but no real place here >_> Got the fusion armors for stage wonkiness. Freezing baddies will still hang around.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on May 4, 2015 0:32:30 GMT -5
So ended up being unhappy with Mirror Man's original graphic so went and redid the entire thing along with all the extra frames of animation for his new moves. I have all of Mirror stuff in the game, just need to redo the code for it. That combined with lots and lots of other tweaks to the engine to change special weapons and try to make things quicker leads me to want to put it out there sooner than waiting for 8 bosses to be done. So think I'll guesstimate the next playtest as being around the end of this week (hopefully) as long as Mirror's new code doesn't give me a headache.
Would need Punch, Nunchaku, Jet, Arsenal, Circuitry, Mirror, Special Weapons, and stage interactions (such as jumping on a block and you don't fall through it lol) tested. Not counting those damn smasher blocks, still haven't implemented the next round of changes to those accursed things >.<
In theory the engine changes "should" make it perform better since some things that were being done in like 16 checks per frame before are now reduced to like 4 checks per frame.
Patch notes 2015-05-04 ========================= - Fixed Ride Armor idling graphic. - Fixed Power Up bar during Next's fight. - 3rd and final movesets for first 6 robot masters done (not counting bugs and tuning) - Made boss delay's based on difficulty non-linear and a tad more generous. - Did another pass of special weapons and got rid of pretty much all player based damage over time effects. - Removed some glitz and glamor from special weapons and consolidated some things to help performance. - Redid several block interactions to speed things up. - All stage freezing effects are tossed out from special weapons. - Busters redone to clean up more code and make effects like Mirror Man's reflect interact better with them. - Lion Buster changed given removal of DoT weapons.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on May 8, 2015 22:59:57 GMT -5
Robot Master 6 has their last build of moves done. He's picked up a mirror image dash, two different kinds of icicle moves, a mirror flash weapon of his own, and a desperation move. His prior moves have also been tweaked to be a bit more aggressive. All the insanity going on and you still get the slip and slide ice to dance on. Background colors should be getting changed when I go over stages again to see things a bit better.
Not shown is the billionth pass on special weapons removing pretty much all damage over time from players and tweaks here and there to improve their behaviors. A bunch more code cleanup and stage interactions redone to hopefully make the game run even faster too... because reasons.
Lastly next round o' playtesting will be opening up shortly for a length of time to try and make sure nothing super crazy aside from the difficulty and playstyle is broke. Those lurking around that are interested send me a PM and I'll get you the link in a day or two once I finish the last few things I want in this round.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on May 10, 2015 22:05:26 GMT -5
And next round of playtesting is live. Sent PM's to those of ye who've expressed interest with the goods. If others are out there lurking login in and PM me.
Two other lil tidbits to add on last ones patch notes... - Updated icy ground to lose momentum when you hit a wall - Updated Mega's Remote Mine explosion graphic
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on May 14, 2015 3:56:59 GMT -5
Update to the Playtest...
Patch Notes 2015/05/14 ========================= - Redid literally hundreds of instances of shot spawning code to try and reduce the missing shot/effect glitch that creeps up from time to time go away (Zues only knows if that's gonna create a disaster later on >.<). - Redid all of Mega various form firing function, more praying nothing crazy happens. - Corrected code for Mega's Burst Attack talent. - Corrected shot spawning issue with Tango and Rush. - Added a sound stop at the start for if right-click>rewind is used to hopefully stop run on audio. - More code changes to try and speed it up again (hopefully boss life bars on this one don't go looney since redid all the handling for them). - Made icy ground momentum last twice as long. - Realigned Jaguar's background which musta came unaligned when I redid the stage graphic handling a while back.
Fun thing to do since I don't have the script on the page to let it go full screen, use browsers zoom option (might be a few tile tearing issues depending on how it blows it up, but it'll be bigger).
That bit aside, other things that may prove helpful with this given all the encryption I crammed into it... - Reboot computer for a nice fresh start. - Be sure to be using the latest version of Flash if it's buggy (and being sure browser and java and other goodies are up to date never hurts in most cases either). - Try different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, etc). - Clear browsers cache and cookies. - Disable addons that could be trying to get their claws into the flash file that will drive it bonkers.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on May 23, 2015 1:55:23 GMT -5
Sandstorm Man's about to hit the programming phase and once done that he'll be plugged into the playtest as well.
Going to be adding a play stage to the playtest menu for when I get ready to start working on platforming issues like those %#$%&$^ crusher blocks. And probably a new weapon specifically for that stage that will be like a sup'd up icewave to test blocks out with.
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Post by theweapon2 on May 24, 2015 20:56:25 GMT -5
A play stage? you got me confused now, don't you mean sandstorm man's stage? A new weapon huh? will mega be able to use it?
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on May 25, 2015 2:06:19 GMT -5
Nope, a literal play stage. Just a place to dump a ton of different kinds of stage objects to see how things work with'm. Weapon will just be a tool moreso to test the stage with rather than something oriented to fighting with. Shoot it at a wall and watch what it does to see if stage code works or doesn't. Like if you shoot it at a platform, and it falls through the platform, you know somethings broken.
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Post by theweapon2 on May 25, 2015 15:56:52 GMT -5
Ahh a test stage then? looking forward to hearing more about this soon if users get the chance to test it out in the next playtest update
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on May 28, 2015 2:49:37 GMT -5
Playtest Patch Notes 2015-05-28
- Added a perk to sissy difficulty that when under 300 health you'll periodically get a 5 heal. - Fixed up weapon icons when switching to Jet, Marine, Ride Armor, and Fusion forms due to prior mentioned code changes. Hopefully that was the only real bug caused by redoing icon management code >.< - Fixed several movement based attacks like Charge Kick from not ending with their duration (I hope ;_; ). Added some missing hit sounds for them too. Though now seemed to have broken Sakugarne thing >.>
Punch Man - Able to uppercut without a dash. - Able to dive from his uppercuts instead of only his high jumps. - Has a chance to use his Fists of Fury on contact when ready and punching as well as with his Punch Dash (Still only if player under 50% health). - Has a chance to use his Burst desp move after a dive. - Slowed down his dive a tad. - Decreased his cooldown after landing from a jump a tad.
Nunchaku Man - Shortened the duration of the smoke flair after disarming a bomb and tightened it up a bit.
Jet Man - pre dash to have more visual flair and a tiny bit longer warm up and cool down. - desperation move no longer readily tracks player up/down after firing the two split missiles.
Arsenal Man - Made walls need to take 95 damage to go down so a good solid hit from some of the beefer special weapons can 1 shot them. - Wall respawn is a fixed distance from where it goes down rather than a fixed respawn spot. More punishing to those who don't drop them quick but more rewarding to those who do drop them quick.
Circuitry Man - Circuitry shield has a 250 duration. - Circuitry Man's desperation orb thing only hangs around for 25 frames instead of 60, but now Desperation only does 3 shots instead of 5. Still hunting for that sweet spot between to fast and to slow disappearing.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Jun 4, 2015 3:32:11 GMT -5
So Sandy's final makeover turns him into a very unconventional combatant. Most of his attacks now are like mini events going from one huge attack to another one. His new desperation is a sneaky snare that if you get caught in holds you in place to make you probably eat whatever the next attack he launches is.
Playtest Patch Notes 2015/06/04 ======================== - Changed code for managing players energy bar to try and milk a bit more speed out of the engine, inviting more disaster as always. Weapons - Fixed Sakugarne usage. Now to wait for the bug gnomes to break something else >_> - Changed Sakugarne to cost energy per bounce/jump rather than a constant slow drain. Jet Man - Some more tweaks and 1 fix to cooldown after Dash. Circuitry Man - Increases his lil orb things duration up to 30 from 25. Sandstorm Man - 3rd Draft up
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Jun 29, 2015 1:45:33 GMT -5
Gonna throw a quick and funny random idea I had today out here.
2 player mode where one person uses mouse to control pet.
Edit ~~~~~
So, Dramatic is getting a expanded band to accommodate his new desperation attack creating more time to stamp out graphics. Napalm Man and Snake Man will be joined by Metal Man, Bright Man, and Spark Man to jam. Stone Man gets to be the water boy.
Edit more ~~~~
About 3/4th's done Dramatic, making his desperation attack with his band was the equivalent of like designing 7 individual moves that have to work in relative harmony >.<
Next build will also have a few talent and camera changes to smooth out some areas and simplify others. There will also be a small change to the way the engine handles drawing shots, but it could potentially have a fairly huge performance impact (for the better probably). For better or worse though I can't readily tell on my system since it runs the game with no issue, but any of ye out there in cyberspace that it was running sluggish on before let me know if it's any better once this build goes live in another day or two.
Probably going to update the playtest URL with this build so anyone who has recently given feedback will get it.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Jul 1, 2015 2:57:54 GMT -5
- Began removing more PNG graphics in favor of GIF's. I liked the quasi glowy effect, but meh. - Redid camera control code, fingers crossed lol. - Small change (but potential huge effect) to the way shot drawing is done to try and get better performance out of this. Another one of those changes that could royally screw parts up though lol. - Scrapped the healing when low on health in Sissy difficulty, though sorta rolled it's effect in the talent below. Mega's Talents - Speed Boost changed to Steel Heart. Slowly restores health when under 300 and no longer get pushed back when damaged. - Counter Boost changed Counter Shot. Does a tad more damage than the original counter attack. - Absorb Energy changed to give a brief guard state until you're hit, it expires, or you get close to max buster charge. - Helper Recharge now makes your pets attacks gain a bit of weapon energy. - Hyper Charge now gives you 20 buster charge after attacking rather increasing the overall charge speed. Dramatic Introduction Man - 3rd Draft Up ================== New playtest link will be kicked out shortly to those who've recently given feedback and old link will be murdernatededed. Like mentioned in prior posts edit, let me know if it performs a bit better with these recent changes. Edit ~~~~ Pondering next direction to run before tackling Plasma Man which will be another problem child to redo.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Jul 7, 2015 2:09:23 GMT -5
Playtest update 2015/07/04 ======================== - More small, but potentially sizable, changes to guts managing shots and tiles to try and get even more performance juice out of it. Talents - Standardizing several talents between toons. Power Buster, Hyper Charge, Burst Attacks, Energy Restore, Steel Heart, Extend Guard, Hazard Buffer, and Heavy Armor. Proto Man and the other two.. - Updated Proto to work better with current engine and redid most of his talents. - Updated the damage parts so the other guys should be able to take damage again.
Edit 2015/07/05 ======================== - Redid several variable formats to a type considered faster to try and get more horsepower out. - Changed mouse listener behavior to also try and get more a few more pinches of horsepower out.
With those 2 most recent changes had one quirk with Protoman where I had to do the good ol' right-click and Play. Since my main computer with the i7 processer and oodles of ram and all has no problem playing the game, I dusted off my prior computer to try it out on. i3 processor, 8gb of ram, and some dinky graphics card. I had to update Flash, Firefox, and Java to the latest versions but afterwards it managed to run sorta reasonably. Going to need to practice with some of the encryption settings though since I believe it's them causing some stutters as functions go through decryption. Work work work...
Edit 2015/07/05 part 2 (11pm EST) ================= - Vehicle changing zones now remove your weapon charge. - Fixed Slash Woman's weapon Icons for when she's in Jet or Marine vehicle so they don't go bat-s*** crazy. - Fixed Slash Woman's page 1 pause screen's keyboard reads. - Removed particle effects from character charge ups and invincibility moments to try and squeeze some more horsepower out. - Fixed a few other bugs found from prior optimization patches that would cause some freezes.
Edit 2015/07/07 ================= - Reduced number of function calls per frame and updated many of the remaining ones to keep on working on the horsepower of it. - While trying to trim down the number of function calls also did some rearranging of stuff to try and reduce some platforming issues, fingers crossed no poltergeist creep in.
While tinkering on the game it still runs fine on new computer, but the ol' i3 one seems to hate on Firefox, chrome to a right-click rewind then play to get it to behave (and behave the best of the 3), but likes IE11 (compatibility mode) for some reason after this latest build start up wise (but had jump play). Mysteries of the world.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Jul 11, 2015 22:39:35 GMT -5
Playtest update 2015/07/11 ================= - Ongoing performance tweaks to continue trying to milk more horsepower, and probably breaking Zues only knows how many other things lol. - Corrected Mega Buster's damage from Power Buster talent. - Changed Dark Buster to no longer fire multiple shots when charged.
So all in all these last few updates should have improved the games performance by ~2000%. The amount of checks done, code for checks done, amount of function calls done, and variable types used have all been changed around and should have a pretty sizable impact on performance. Apparently some computers and browsers are still going to hate on it though. Tried it on my old computer with no crazy extra features on it at all and it still needed to have rewind hit and then played to make it start correctly in Chrome. After doing that it was fine, but means there is some poltergeist still in the game itself, not the extra encryption or so. So hopefully peeps playtesting it will have a smoother ride now *fingers crossed*.
Next patch should be back to the usual stuff focusing on getting Sandstorm and Dramatic's tweaks in as well as pushing for Plasma Man's overhaul, but since his overhaul is like a total one gonna be a bit again.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Jul 14, 2015 0:52:13 GMT -5
Few other brain'ing out loud here as next patch oozes into shape.
To make Mega's various armors flow a bit more competitively with the others planned movement modes as well as to put more emphasis on them not being the best for fighting in, they're going to get their extra weapons removed and quasi merged. So instead of using Special 1 and Special 2 for attacks, you'll instead use them to switch armors. Wind Wall and Yarn Ball I sorta like though so probably going to see about working them in.
Have a direction for Bass' specials now too. Since I wanted him to be a summoner type originally, but when trying to ponder ways to keep Treble out along with 2 others it got messy and spammy. So think I'm going to settle in on having Bass just have lots of "pet" types, but only the 1, not 3 at once. So instead of Treble, you could say call out Black Mage from Final Fantasy, and he would learn up to 2 different attacks from beating bosses. Question now is to brainstorm which 10 buddies Bass can get and what 2 abilities to give him from them to cover the spectrum of abilities.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Jul 15, 2015 2:45:02 GMT -5
2015/07/15 ================= - Continues are gone from the game as I lean towards a bit more kind to players. - Fixed shot disappearing bug from pausing (I hope). - Added same type of visibility changing stuff to blocks as shots use to try and keep getting more hosey power (and hopefully didn't break more things like the shots). Mega Man - Removed pet weapons from armors, armors now swap between each other instead. - Wind Wall and Yarn Buster survived the above change and are now rolled into the Mega Man EX menu as abilities. Sandstorm Man - Sand Whirlwind shot spawning changed and "should" no longer be able to spawn in the ground. Shots sped up to compensate for the safety. Dramatic Introduction Man - Rockstar baddy and player hit detection changed up. - Rockstar duration for player reduced, duration for boss increased. - Rockstar also heals boss a bit now. - 2nd wave of notes between singing shortened. - Guitar Smash damage increased.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Jul 18, 2015 22:21:41 GMT -5
After some pondering for Bass now that I have a direction for him, aside from Treble, here will be his 10 new (tentative) buddies. Expecting to do a bunch of crazy stuff with them >.>
Reggae (Mega Man) Black Mage (Final Fantasy) Bub (Bubble Bobble) Lum (Urusei Yatsura) Vic Viper (Gradius) Pac Man (Pac Man) Genie (Disney's Aladdin) Reimu (Touhou) Rutee (Tales of Destiny) Hard Hat (Mega Man)
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Post by WatcherCCG on Jul 24, 2015 16:05:12 GMT -5
As a Touhou fan I can say with relative certainty that Reimu, given her moral compass, would have very low odds of working with a wild card like Bass. The rest check out.
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Post by Wade Monroe / MaelstormM on Jul 24, 2015 18:27:16 GMT -5
You already forgot Dr Wily is building all these parody characters so perfectly normal for (robo)Reimu to work with Bass just like how (robo)Utsuho is reprogrammed to help Jaguar. Outside of people in Dr Light's stage at least, still pondering their excuse for being there.
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