Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

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na_th_an
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by na_th_an »

You appear to have left out two temples. I assume Rainwarrior and Konami are handling those :p
Oh, forgot to tell, those will be included in the DLC ;)

About the minimap, honestly, it was more of a "where am I, more or less" rather than a proper map you can follow, so I didn't put much attention to detail. Temples and objects are dynamic, though, so it serves its purpose as a progress indicator, as "broken" temples will show as an "X" and objects won't appear if you have already taken them.

Maybe I should make the player prosition blink or something like that, I agree it's less than noticeable.

Of course, I'm all ears. If you have any suggestions I'll be glad to work on making a proper map from this. I have to make a further revision, so I'm up for it.

As for a full, proper map, I have this (attached) (click to expand to real size).
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mapascrn.png
tepples
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by tepples »

First I scaled the map from 5120x768 to 240x48 pixels, making each screen 12x12 pixels, and color-reduced it. Then I redrew each icon.
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goddess-new-map.png
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goddess-new-map-bg.png
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na_th_an
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by na_th_an »

Well that's great, seriously.

Give me a couple of days ;)
na_th_an
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by na_th_an »

It took more than a couple of days, but anyways, here's my implementation of tepple's suggestions. Thanks, I would never have come with this on my own and I think it makes the game better and more enjoyable.

Still want to do more testing before submitting the (hopefully final) v1.3

This is how it looks (some sprite faces are off but that's sorted out)
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Broke Studio
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by Broke Studio »

That's a very nice update ! Congrats !
My first game : Twin Dragons available at Broke Studio.
M_Tee
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by M_Tee »

Looks great. I love that weathered stone layout. Good bit of visual polish there.

Just a thought on word choice for the game:

Rock, Paper, Scissors is the common grouping that's being referenced, but the term Stone has a more serious connotation (at least in the fantasy genre), but it breaks the parallelism of referencing the children's game.

It might be better to choose equivalent terms (and symbols) to replace scissors and paper with as well, such as:
Stone, Blade, Parchment (or Scroll)

This would make the rock/paper/scissors a little less on-the-nose (more subtly referenced).

If an obvious connection is the intention, it might be better to go with Rock instead of Stone to parallel Scissors and Paper.
na_th_an
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by na_th_an »

That makes sense. I'll think about it. Thanks.
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Myask
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by Myask »

na_th_an wrote:
You appear to have left out two temples. I assume Rainwarrior and Konami are handling those :p
Oh, forgot to tell, those will be included in the DLC ;)

About the minimap, honestly, it was more of a "where am I, more or less" rather than a proper map you can follow, so I didn't put much attention to detail. Temples and objects are dynamic, though, so it serves its purpose as a progress indicator, as "broken" temples will show as an "X" and objects won't appear if you have already taken them.
Perhaps in the "revision" round of Action 53.

A full in-game pre-filled map defeats some of the purpose of an exploration game. Consider Zelda 1's map, where you had which screen you were on, but not how terrain would obstruct exploring it (though a moderate amount of the map around the start was "full"-mapped in the manual, with space for you to fill in)
na_th_an
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by na_th_an »

That's why my original design was sparse, a mere progress indicator. But I've been reached by several people asking for a proper map (not just tepples). I decided to change it albeit killing exploration a bit 'cause, nowadays, players are not as dedicated as we were in the 80s. I would have struggled with a 200 screens labyrinth when I was a boy, but that wouldn't work nowadays.

When I was designing this game, I thought all the exploration, traversing, and backtracking would put some players off. The original game, as planned, was more dificult. You couldn't continue, the location of the objects wasn't in the map (just the temples) so you actually had to find them, charging stations where sparse, there were more enemies... But we decided to tone the game down quite a lot as we wanted players to be able to experience as much as possible without feeling the frustration of not being able to get past the first peril in the first 10 goes... Because they would probably give up by the fifth.

If this was a commercial release and not a compo entry, the game would be harder, most definitely.

Maybe if you started with an almost covered map and you'd uncover it as you advance would be better, but I don't have the time nor the energy to add that to the game at this point.
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mikejmoffitt
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by mikejmoffitt »

na_th_an wrote:That's why my original design was sparse, a mere progress indicator. But I've been reached by several people asking for a proper map (not just tepples). I decided to change it albeit killing exploration a bit 'cause, nowadays, players are not as dedicated as we were in the 80s. I would have struggled with a 200 screens labyrinth when I was a boy, but that wouldn't work nowadays.

When I was designing this game, I thought all the exploration, traversing, and backtracking would put some players off. The original game, as planned, was more dificult. You couldn't continue, the location of the objects wasn't in the map (just the temples) so you actually had to find them, charging stations where sparse, there were more enemies... But we decided to tone the game down quite a lot as we wanted players to be able to experience as much as possible without feeling the frustration of not being able to get past the first peril in the first 10 goes... Because they would probably give up by the fifth.

If this was a commercial release and not a compo entry, the game would be harder, most definitely.

Maybe if you started with an almost covered map and you'd uncover it as you advance would be better, but I don't have the time nor the energy to add that to the game at this point.
Why don't you have the map show a super-simplified version of unexplored regions, and show more detailed tiles once the area has been explored? Think of a less extreme version of Metroid or Toejam and Earl's discovery system; in those games, unexplored areas are totally blanked out. Maybe that system would actually work better for this game than you initially expected as well.
na_th_an
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by na_th_an »

That would have been definitey more feasible if the feature was planned from the beginning. The size of the map makes every screen 12x12 pixels which is something hard to work with taking in account you just have 256 patterns. At this point, a crude, not aligned blanking would be the only solution I can think of without having to redesign eveything. And I'm not sure I will be able to get that in time.

Taking in account that there's pattern reuse in the minimap, what you propose would be quite a daunting task at the moment. Although I agree that would be great to have such a feature.
tepples
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by tepples »

na_th_an wrote:That would have been definitey more feasible if the feature was planned from the beginning. The size of the map makes every screen 12x12 pixels which is something hard to work with
But not impossible. Zoop draws 12x14-pixel tiles using software compositing, as does the menu 2x8 to 8x8. Then with a short pause, you get your fog of war except for visited screens. If you want help implementing a software-composited minimap for the remix compo, I might have time to pitch in.
taking in account you just have 256 patterns.
You have 256 patterns per scanline, and a fully composited minimap is 30 by 6 tiles, or 180 patterns. Then a sprite 0-triggered write to $2000 could swap in a different set of tiles used for the map's key.
And I'm not sure I will be able to get that in time.
I wouldn't blame you for leaving the final minimap for the remix compo.
na_th_an
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by na_th_an »

I have an idea I could do without much assle and which would work, but I won't have time before the deadline, that I'm sure.

I still have to test the last v1.3, and I don't seem to find the time.
na_th_an
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by na_th_an »

v1.3 is out. Didn't have the time to do anything else to the minimap, sorry. This will have to do for the time being.
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JRoatch
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Re: Progress Thread: Cheril the Goddess

Post by JRoatch »

As I was testing thoroughly the latest action 53 v3 multicart build, I found a thing I wanted to tell separately on this thread.

It doesn't matter what temples you clear to beat the game. You only need to grab and place the end key and all the gates get open.
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