#Slothy Oskoure Jr - Harbinger Of The End

1351 messages · Page 2 of 2 (latest)

vivid crest
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Edgy shit grLUL

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Twose two sound nice and edgy, but don't really fit in my opinion

dusky charm
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Mad Ouch Alien

somber mural
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Pow Quack Eek Zonk 7, perchance?

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Nest of the Alien?

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(Adjective) alien nest, rather

vivid crest
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Maybe something with "Awakening" or "Summon" because you wake up / summon the alien in the intro cutscene

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Nest kind of implies that it's a bird or animal

somber mural
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Lair isn't in the combobulator, sadly

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How about Garden Of Awakening?

vivid crest
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Sounds too tame, in my opinion. It doesn't have the boss ring to it package

somber mural
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(that's the name of an infamous saltbearer level)

vivid crest
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Right, I didn't get that joke then

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Alien Awakening? Awakening Of The Destroyer? Watcher Awakening?

somber mural
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Awakening of the watcher or something similar sounds good to me

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Not too edgy, either

vivid crest
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What does the alien watch? TV?

somber mural
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You.

vivid crest
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Right, in the simulation

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Interesting

somber mural
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No, not you, I meant YOU.

dusky charm
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Maybe something with final or end, like Harbinger Of The End or GR18 & Final Battle

vivid crest
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Harbinger Of The End sounds epic to me

somber mural
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Sounds good to me also

dusky charm
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The base campaign had a bunch of titles with gr18

somber mural
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The base campaign didn't have dark and grim 2000's edgy names, cool 1980's funky names, or whatever the trend was in the 2010's

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It sucks

dusky charm
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Stop The Devious Alien

vivid crest
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It's gonna be rough to fit all your names into the mod level title because it would be the longest string by far:
"Harbinger Of The End" by JeanneOskoure, Slothybutt & Noob Jr

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I think I'll have to shorten your names somehow

tawdry robin
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I mean we all have shortenable names. Jeanne, Slothy, and Noob

vivid crest
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Yeah

dusky charm
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by Noobutt Jeanner

vivid crest
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JeanneO., Slothyb. & NoobJ. grLUL

somber mural
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Jeannoobutter

vivid crest
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JeanneSlothJr

dusky charm
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Jean No Butter

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my first suggestion is still the best

somber mural
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Let's rename the level to "butter"

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I don't even know if it's in the combobulator, but if it isn't I'll fly to the US to complain to the BS bros

vivid crest
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"Buttery" is

tawdry robin
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But we can name the level whatever we want since this is modded, right

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Aren't you doing that to add the creator names to the levels in the first place

vivid crest
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Yes

dusky charm
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I think the base campaign uses legal names so we should stick to that

vivid crest
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And the web versions of levels too, so we have to

dusky charm
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So are we unanimous on Harbinger Of The End by Noobutt Jeanner? packagesmirk

vivid crest
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Are you being serious about Noobutt Jeanner?

dusky charm
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Seems like the smoothest amalgamation. Not sure if Jeanne, Slothy & Noob is too long

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Hmm, Slothy Oskoure Jr doesn't sound bad either

vivid crest
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Slothy Oskoure Jr - Harbinger Of The End

tawdry robin
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lol

tawdry robin
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@dusky charm Found some cheese in testing my phase that also got into your phase. You can grab the bombs from the eyes exploding before they blow up, and you can instakill the entire phase by using the bomb as a projectile.
I think you just copied that from my phase, so the cheese is in both. Anyways, you can easily just switch out the bombs for rockets and it'll work fine

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I'm sure you don't need advice on how to implement that, but this works perfectly

image.png
dusky charm
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get your darn cheese off my lawn

tawdry robin
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Also uh, do we have to have the healthbar? I mean, in general I don't think we need it, but your implementation of it is also somewhat ugly and in-your-face

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I would rather some hardlights on the edge of the screen, or some visual that changes over time

dusky charm
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I don't care for it, I just put it to the side because I didn't want it in the way of the other paths

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You're free to incorporate it aesthetically however you prefer

tawdry robin
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put it to the side? it's, like, right in the middle (unless this is an old version of the level?)

image.png
dusky charm
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uh yes that is old

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I think

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still has spike chainers

tawdry robin
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oh yeah this is pre-death animation

dusky charm
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One idea I had was making the floor lead be the healthbar, but there's 5 of it

dusky charm
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This should fix the bomb cheese, hopefully without other problems.

📎 -152.lhs
tawdry robin
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I have a list laid out of like 4 things I need to add which are all easy to implement, then it should be done
haha they took forever! I have no clue how I spent.. 4 hours and 33 minutes making edits when I feel like barely anything got changed.

This is not a finished product, and needs improvement in multiple areas. I just want to have something to show, and I need some advice on some stuff.

📎 -rebound.lhs
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Things I think I need help sorting out:

  • The hands phase is, for the most part, terrible. I didn't know how to implement it at all because the rebound flings you all over the place and I have to open up the arena by opening the boss's mouth.
    • Opening the boss's mouth poses multiple problems like being able to idle in the mouth and the fact that the mouth needs to return back to normal afterwards.
    • I also need advice on what kind of stuff they should fire, because spamming steel everywhere is kind of boring and makes it a PITA to hit.
    • How do I make it clearer that you need to hit the hands? Fitting anything inside of them kind of sucks because the spike chainers draw over everything.
  • How do I animate the boss's face a little bit while I have everything else going on in there
  • How should I transition from the hands phase back to the harder normal phase (with the floor gone and the attack rate upped a bit) more smoothly
  • Glaring issues I missed, or just some feedback specifically on how things feel right now ignoring all of the issues I just said and all of the things I still need to fix below

Things I know about and need to do but I need to sleep:

  • Make the floor disappear after the hands go away. My brain is fried right now and I don't want to think about the one relay I need to add to trigger the tempswitches that make it disappear
    • that whole transition period from hands -> no hands is probably going to be terrible to implement
  • Make the attack fire rate increase a little bit after the hands phase
  • Remake the hand spike chainers so that there's not a platform on top that blocks vertical rebound shots
  • Compact the level down after everything's done
  • Increase the rift channels up to the 500s
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I think most of the issues with the old version of the level have been fixed if you ignore all the new issues. And I genuinely think that the pre-hands is pretty fun right now, at least

vivid crest
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My feedback/opinion:

  • The hands phase is interesting. There is enough room to jump and move around without touching the boss, so I would leave the mouth as it is and keep it as the weakspot, which is clear, cheese-free and less awkward to attack than the hands rifts. Also bigger steel projectiles that aim lower would help to make it easier to dodge and jump on them. Why does the left thorn beamer disappear during this phase?
  • The boss doesn't need any distracting animation at this point, the hands are already moving and it's complex enough
  • The transition needs a warning that the floor disappears, revealing the enclosures over hardlights before they deactivate should work
  • Three homing missiles at a time are too much, one would be better
  • I'm still not a fan of the fire cannons close to the lizumi thorn, because there's always a random chance that they activate right when you use rebound to move there and then you can't properly dodge them
somber mural
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In the uploaded version, I added signs near the placeholder CPs with the order of the incoming phases, should I keep it in the final version or not?

vivid crest
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They are pretty meta, so I wouldn't keep them. Besides, you ideally only get to see them for a few frames

somber mural
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I added the better phase transition to the zipper section, now I only need to do it for rebound

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the level should soon be review-able

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(also I still need to change the indicators for the whizzblade in the tiptow phase)

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oh yeah, we'll also have to do something about the performance, with slothy's updated phase, the FPS dropped by 10% due to the increased complexity

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they were already quite low to begin with, so we'll have to find ways to improve performance

somber mural
dusky charm
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So can we reuse boss components between phases or something? Those are expensive.

somber mural
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Probably not

dusky charm
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Can't move parts of the boss face from the zipper arena to the rebound arena?

vivid crest
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The zipper phase face has some animation and it would have to move very quickly because rebound is the next phase

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So I assume it's not doable

dusky charm
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Maybe simplify the tiptow sequence?

vivid crest
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That's what I was thinking too

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The most important question is: What has the biggest impact on the performance? Because removing things with almost no impact wouldn't be efficient

dusky charm
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We can theoretically move things fast with a CHeaty path...

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Flyblocks usually add a lot in my experience

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Madels has an old post in the workshop with some experiments

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I can't use my search-fu at work

tawdry robin
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Jeanne, could you drop the level file in here with all the sections in it? I want to see what I can do

somber mural
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I'm going to sleep, I'll do it tomorrow after work

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So in about a lot of hours

tawdry robin
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okay, that's fine

tawdry robin
# vivid crest My feedback/opinion: - The hands phase is interesting. There is enough room to j...

Okay, that's exactly what I needed, thanks for responding. (and I haven't been at my computer so I couldn't respond properly until now)

so I would leave the mouth as it is and keep it as the weakspot
Yeah, that's a lot better idea than what I had. So I think I'll have the left hand shoot a bunch of bullets so that there's a constant stream you bounce on, and the right hand will be the phase's hazard while you keep shoveling carrots into its mouth.
The transition needs a warning that the floor disappears, revealing the enclosures over hardlights before they deactivate should work
I mean, I didn't even implement it for this version, but it already is configured with a transition and warning signs
Why does the left thorn beamer disappear during this phase?
I meant for both of the thorns to disappear so that you use your rebound balls to do damage, but I forgot to add it for the right thorn beamer, and it also doesn't work at all since the thorn beamer breaks after it disappears

As for the other things, I can tune those

vivid crest
tawdry robin
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That'd be great, if you could

vivid crest
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Sure, I'm on it

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You know I'm referring to the published version, right? It's not the most recent one so any changes would be only for testing purposes

tawdry robin
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yeah, that's fine for right now

tawdry robin
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Okay, I don't think there's all too much optimization that can be done. It's gonna be hard to squeeze out more than maybe 5 fps

vivid crest
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I can let Icerov test the framerate on Switch to tell whether it's playable or not

vivid crest
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Thanks for the optimization check, Slothy

tawdry robin
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I guess while I'm here I might as well comment on the other thing too.

Three homing missiles at a time are too much, one would be better
I personally think that the homing missiles are the most well-tuned and fun attack, they can be dodged from everywhere and I find them really fun to dodge. A lot of the time they're a non-issue, for example when you're falling after getting a thorn, but when they get you in the middle of the screen it takes some quick thinking to bound around them and get out of the way, so I would like to hear your take on them a bit more

somber mural
vivid crest
vivid crest
vivid crest
vivid crest
# somber mural

So the rebound phase appears to be broken here, the hands aren't doing anything, but I guess that was expected

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Also currently it's possible to sprint-zip your way to this area:

image.png
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Hey @river hound, can you please do us another favor and check the performance of this level on Switch? You don't have to beat the boss, just try out the first zipper phase and see if it's playable, especially while there are lots of flames on screen. package
Level code: v0bmwvb

river hound
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i'll see later if i can reach that part

dusky charm
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  • I see a little camera jank when going out of the entrance and meeting the boss
  • The tentacles around the zipper arena can potentially be replaced with something simpler to save frames
  • The camera dips before leaving the zipper area so you can see below the ground
  • I got into the damage rift for rebound
  • Rebound beamers are borked
  • The hands are bigger...? And I'm not sure what their purpose it.
  • Couldn't beat the rebound phase after 16m
tawdry robin
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I don't know if the rebound phase has the end trigger in it

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well, it'd stop all the attacks at some point, I guess. It's being reworked a bit anyways

dusky charm
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  • The intro and zipper phase have taller eyebrows
  • Maybe we can move the intro flyblocks and eyebrows to make the rebound boss face?
  • In rebound I could stand on the boss face while the hands were down, not sure if intended
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  • I see the rebound phase has static blopfush for cannon aim, it could be made to reuse blops or cromblers from the ripcord phase
tawdry robin
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Okay, for the rebound phase I think I only really have one thing left to do. I need to give some kind of attack pattern to the right hand.
Then I just need to do the housekeeping tasks like moving stuff together and it should be done

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but I need to get some sleep, I'll do that tomorrow

somber mural
river hound
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testing on switch, and btw you can zip from the mouth of the boss into the backrooms of the fight

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anyway for performance, it seems to stay between 30 and 25, there is still some seconds with each respawns but i think it matters less since this is a bossfight and not a kaizo.
while it does move not as smoothly as most levels, it doesnt affect the fight much (at least in this First phase)

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also for some reason, in the first phase when the mouth goes down the music's volume lowers, but no sound seems to be made

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also switching from First to second phase has some camera jank

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also in the rebound phase, its not very easy to see the rockets, i stood there for 30 seconds clueless

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so thats all, the furthest i arrived at was the second part of the rebound section, would say add a armor plate between phases but its the final level so

vivid crest
vivid crest
vivid crest
vivid crest
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Thanks for testing! Looks like the low framerate ist just high enough to be acceptable, so we don't desperately need performance improvements

vivid crest
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I just noticed that during the ripcord phase, closing the boss' weakpoint rift can be cheesed by throwing a flapsack upwards on it, then the flapsack will stay there and enter the rift as soon as it opens...

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After all this, I think we need a clear to-do list:
@somber mural

  • Place a few jems at the intro because the map doesn't handle jemless levels well
  • Prevent the zipper cheese during the intro
  • Fix the camera dip at the end of the zipper phase
  • Add an automatic transition from the Rebound phase to the Tiptow phase (still blocked by the Rebound phase completion?)
    @tawdry robin
  • Make the lizumi thorns easier to see, highlight them like in the ripcord phase
  • Adjust the rift IDs
  • Your other planned fixes/improvements of the rebound phase
    Of course you can delegate some stuff to Noob Jr and me, but that requires more organization/file-sharing.
river hound
river hound
dusky charm
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Oh, you mean after 2 hits

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It's OK that sounds like brain tech, nobody will do it

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I feel like we really need some cuts to improve performance, the boss is already really hard without lag

somber mural
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Everything is fixed now (except the transition from Rebount to CP2, I'll wait for the final rebound version before doing it)

vivid crest
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I still have a feeling playtesters will ask for more checkpoints, I know I would because I'm struggling a lot more with the rebound and ripcord phases than the other ones, which after a while feel like a chore just to get to the other phases

somber mural
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I simplified the tiptow section by turning the falling 1x1 saws into 3x3 to save on FPS by removing paths, we gained 5 FPS

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yay, 5% more framerate

vivid crest
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That alone saves 5%? Strange. Would removing the tentacle spikechainers in the zipper phase help that much too?

somber mural
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paths are performance hogs

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but removing two paths and a couple of chainers wouldn't do much, I'm afraid

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we get like 2 more FPS at best

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(for comparison, I removed 10 paths, 10 saws, and a dozen arrows with the tiptow section change)

tawdry robin
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(that didn't really need to be a reply, it's just a general comment)
I think it's worth taking a pass over all the phases and checking for things that could remove paths

dusky charm
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I can try making a few perf tweaks once there's another up-to-date release out

somber mural
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We may have to add a checkpoint in between each phase instead of one every two phase then

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And if so, the we need to reconsider whether to have armor or not

dusky charm
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The rebound phase felt very long for not having a checkpoint

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To improve FPS, maybe change the zipper -> rebound transition to a single rift inviting the player to go in? Or something else cheaper than a lot of rifts getting pathed.

somber mural
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there is a single path, and I guess I can merge the 1x1 rifts into 3x3 to reduce their numbers

vivid crest
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We could have a single rift in the published web/Switch version and multiple rifts in the mod version

dusky charm
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That pathing method might also risk the player avoiding the rifts by jumping to the side. Maybe path them partially into enclosed ground so they're invisible and just turn them on?

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With that method you can afford using fewer rifts, too

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2/3 of the rifts are needed by spacing them half a tile apart, but you can make it even more efficient

somber mural
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I'm not sure you're saving performance compared to having a few 3x3 rifts on a single path

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So, how are we gonna handle the checkpoint/armor situation of the level?

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If there is lag and delay on respawn due to the lower FPS, I'd rather have a checkpoint for each phase, even if it means removing armor plates to keep the difficulty on a similar level

vivid crest
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As stated earlier, I'd advocate checkpoints over armor plates

tawdry robin
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I'm fine with that

dusky charm
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You can still use the space saving trick with 3x3s

tawdry robin
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Jeanne, would it be more helpful if I fit my contraptions around my section or do you want to move them elsewhere across the level like you did when you put the level together last time?

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from my point of view, I think we should/we would be better off keep the contraptions as packed as possible in their sections so that we can fit everything into the least amount of level tiles possible, because even empty level tiles cause some lag

somber mural
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If you can fit them in the arena without causing issues, then feel free to do it

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Regardless, I'm not going to tweak your part of the level because I don't know what the contraptions are supposed to do (and I don't want to spend time figuring it out either), so if you can do it without it causing organizational issues, then it'd be better

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If they're not in the arena, I'll just move them around so I don't mix them with contraptions for other phases and don't break something if I have to update a phase

vivid crest
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@tawdry robin We have 4 days left to keep the promise of releasing the campaign this month. Apparently it comes down to your unfinished Rebound phase. Can you please finish it by Wednesday afternoon so it's all ready for quick testing?
Since there hasn't been much feedback overall from beta-testing, we will probably make a patch that also improves the final boss, so let's not worry about perfection now

dusky charm
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Edit the announcement to say July packagesmirk

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We need some thorough cheese-proofing against escaping the arena. I was able to just jump right of the intro cutscene.

river hound
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work overtime, you still have 100 hours at least packagesmirk

vivid crest
somber mural
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I broke the zoom in this one, will fix it

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(and the hands in slothy's rebound phase by moving some paths, which makes it look very weird, but I didn't bother fixing it because it's still a placeholder anyway)

vivid crest
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Nice!

somber mural
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(zoom should be fixed in my workshop version, btw, I haven't tested it but it should work now)

dusky charm
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Y not send file

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What r ur scretz

somber mural
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tons of peanut on peanut pornography

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I'll send the file in a few minutes

vivid crest
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How many minutes left? grLUL

dusky charm
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"A few"

somber mural
dusky charm
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you can still jump to the right of the intro? confusion

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I can also jump from the intro boss head to the left cliff and zip back into the intro area

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What's the revealed signs+input+tempswitch supposed to mean...?

vivid crest
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It's a hint to skip the intro cutscene: Hold grab

somber mural
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oh, to the right

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this time i fixed it grLUL

vivid crest
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Oops, I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about the left

dusky charm
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We need to make the eyebrows consistent between phases

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right...?

somber mural
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yeah, it should be pretty quick to change

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also, I have messed up some of the saw timings in the tiptow section while switching the 1x1 to 3x3, will fix that later

dusky charm
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The intro and zipper eyebrows use chainers in different tiles, rebound and ripcord have them all in the same tile

somber mural
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do you think you'll change something in the ripcord phase? If not, it will be quicker for me to edit it directly

dusky charm
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Nope

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But I'm gonna test my rift thing on the switch

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wtf i get like 0.5FPS less

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that don't make no sense

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unless collision computation is slower when there are objects placed outside exact tiles

somber mural
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It's hard to say if it actually has an effect on such a small scale

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I also suspect that editing a level for a long time lowers your FPS due to some caching or stuff like that. At least, that's how it feels to me

dusky charm
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I kept switching back and forth and consistently got the same result

dusky charm
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Reusing half the boss face for rebound doesn't seem to change much... but it should be safe to replace the static blops in the bottom right with the cromblers from my section

tawdry robin
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I have removed those blops entirely since

dusky charm
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oh, combined version still doesn't have rebound updates

tawdry robin
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(that's because I haven't posted any)

tawdry robin
vivid crest
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Very good, thank you! happy

vivid crest
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Would you like to meet and stream in the VC?

tawdry robin
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Is that directed towards me?

vivid crest
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Yes

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I'm playing your phase right now and struggling with it

tawdry robin
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I can't, I gave that 30 minute estimate because I needed to go in 30 minutes, which is now up

vivid crest
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Okay, never mind

tawdry robin
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sorry

vivid crest
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It's fine. I asked because I now have more feedback to share since I played the whole phase in action. I guess I can describe it in screenshots

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Or we meet tomorrow, maybe?

tawdry robin
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The former would be better for me. I'd like to finish it earlier rather than working on it tonight and the having to fix stuff after

vivid crest
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Sorry, something came up and now I have to go to bed because it's very late in my time zone. I'll post it tomorrow

somber mural
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Just in case you're wondering, difficulty wise, rebound and ripcord are similar (at least they are now that I've removed armor plates)

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I've spent the same amount of time on both phases when I uploaded it

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Ripcord is shorter due to being able go one-cycle it, though, and of course the hand section WIP of Rebound is still... Eh.

tawdry robin
vivid crest
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Will try

vivid crest
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@tawdry robin So I'm partially repeating myself, but here's the full phase feedback (my opinion):

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  • I changed my mind about the homing missiles, they are alright
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  • I'm still having the most trouble with the cannons that are close to the lizumi thorns. The player is technically forced to use both rebound shots to get up all the way to the thorn, which leaves them vulnerable to all projectiles on the way back down because there is little chance to dodge. It's already problematic during the slow attack patterns and gets worse during the fast attack patterns. My suggestion to mitigate this is to place the lizumi thorn platforms lower, which I tried out in my workshop and it improved my experience by a lot (see screenshot). Of course that makes it easier, but the overall phase could really use some nerfs
image.png
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  • The hand phase is still a cool idea, but there are several issues:
    The hand rifts as weakspots are not obvious at all
    They are very awkward to hit because of the missiles coming out
    They can be shot with two rebound projectiles in one go and sometimes if you miss the projectile will still land there
    Deactivating the spikes in the boss' mouth enables way to many cheese opportunities that I have no idea how to fix
    So I would just keep the thorns and mouth rift for the hand phase, it works decently to rebound back and forth over the hands to get the lizumi thorn
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  • If you really make the floor disappear after the hands phase, it would probably be way too hard with the attack patterns speeding up. Also I would place the safe platforms more centered, further away from the cannons
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  • Shooting projectiles very close to the player is problematic in general because there you get very little time to react and plan your next move through all the other bullets on screen, despite the short warning. Maybe it would be best to cycle through the attack patterns instead of them being random? If the player can predict the shots, it would be much fairer
tawdry robin
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I'm still having the most trouble with the cannons that are close to the lizumi thorns
I've never really had trouble with them, but I think that they are probably the trickiest attack since the angles the fire comes in at can be really annoying and take up a lot of the center of the arena, but I see that challenge as a good thing. I've never had them be in an undodgable state even when bounding up to them -- though I would say that they're probably one of the more difficult attacks and they do need a nerf.
I don't particularly like moving the thorns closer as a solution to the nerf for multiple reasons, but I also haven't figured out anywhere else I could move them to nerf them when you last mentioned them. I might just remove them and try to either redesign that attack as something new (but I'd rather not do that this late in, though it shouldn't be that hard) or completely rethink where they could be while still posing a threat, or maybe even set them to fixed angles, having the lookcannons lock onto enemies instead. If you have preferences on that, let me know

The hand phase is still a cool idea, but there are several issues
All of these are already fixed with the rework. I took your advice last time and made the hands basically just spew a platform to bounce around on.

If you really make the floor disappear after the hands phase, it would probably be way too hard with the attack patterns speeding up
I have scrapped the post-hands phase, it dragged the fight way over 30 seconds and making a fair transition into it was a pretty difficult task that I didn't really want to do

As for the last point, that's the whole point of the indicators. Maybe I'm in over my head with creator advantage but I think the indicators give way more than enough time to figure out what attack is currently going, where you need to be, and to plan a route even given the other projectiles everywhere.

vivid crest
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I don't have any preferences on the lookannons. I guess we disagree about the dodging aspect. Let's see your newest version and get some feedback from other testers

tawdry robin
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Nearly done with it, but I can't get myself to give it the final few touches it needs right now.
All roads seem to lead to wikipedia browsing. Maybe that's because it's 4 in the morning

vivid crest
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@tawdry robin Can you upload it with the final touches today, please? Time is running out

tawdry robin
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It's done right now but this one pair of indicators isn't turning on when I want them to and it's requiring a surprising amount of brain power to do this without another tempswitch

vivid crest
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Okay. If you can't fix that today, please just upload the current version file so we've got something to test tomorrow

tawdry robin
vivid crest
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Nice, thanks lhthumbsup

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@somber mural Can you please integrate the rebound phase today (thursday), if possible?
Otherwise I can try doing it for you. I suppose I just have to replace the current contraption and add the transition rifts, right?
Would be good if we could have this playtested by Green0ne or someone else ASAP

vivid crest
tawdry robin
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What time zone are you in, maoy?

vivid crest
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Central European Time

somber mural
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I'll do it as soon as I can

somber mural
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Known issues:

  • Lizumi thorns get rifted from the rebound phase into the tiptow phase.
  • Contraptions are visible in the tiptow phase
  • I still didn't fix the saw timing in the tiptow phase after messing it up while changing them to 3x3
  • Ripcord phase still has the signs for the health of the boss
  • Need to add environmental tile below the ripcord phase for the end screen after beating the level
vivid crest
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Thank you

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Do you mean it's possible to bring lizumi thorns into the tiptow phase?

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The saw timing is the only thing that impacts the gameplay, right?

somber mural
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yeah

vivid crest
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I remember being surprised by it, I'm not sure if we can release it like this

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Lemme check later

vivid crest
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It's funny. Doding the timed saws has become harder, but the rifted lizumi thorn makes it easier again grLUL

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Furthermore

  • The music doesn't stop after the fight ends
  • The "Short Happy" jingle triggered by the boss death sounds too short, I would use "Crashlands Happy" instead
somber mural
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good catch, I hadn't thought about that

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also, this is just a "ready for testing" version, I'll fix all of the issues mentioned above for the final release

vivid crest
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I see, very good

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Also I noticed the framerate is now even better, apparently

somber mural
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I did not notice any difference while uploading, but I did reduce the level size (now under 10k tiles!) and slothy's contraptions for the rebound phase are smaller and more compact, so I wouldn't be surprised

vivid crest
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Noice

vivid crest
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Bruh, all my testers are offline right now packagestare

vivid crest
somber mural
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Shouldn't be an issue

vivid crest
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Since no testers showed up, I did some more runs and didn't find any further issues

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The release is prepared, the only things missing are the level itself and its code

somber mural
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@vivid crest dis good?

vivid crest
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Thank you, I'll take a look soon

vivid crest
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Just now I found out that it's still possible to zip out of the introduction area and go to the zipper phase contraption. Doesn't seem like real cheese though

image.png
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Also the rifts are slightly visible above the intro area, but barely noticeable

image.png
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I guess these things are not worth a re-upload, so I'll just make a quick edit in the mod to prevent the out-of-bounds experience

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We can fix it in the polishing patch

dusky charm
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I flagged that start area zip too. I think just raising the left cliff should fix it

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I need to test still

somber mural
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I did raise it, but not enough apparently lhfail

vivid crest
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It's barely possible by 1 tile. I fixed it in the mod now

dusky charm
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why does the green hand during tiptow have an extra spike chainer on top

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The arrows still seem excessive to me, it might be easier to read without them and improve performance too

vivid crest
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Without the arrows the saws move down on you without any warning though

somber mural
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the arrows are an indicator of where the saws are going 5 tiles ahead of time

vivid crest
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Anyway, thanks again for your work, guys

dusky charm
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With how the sequence is laid out, I don't think that indication is needed? There's no unexpected moves...

somber mural
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the first and 3rd set definitely have unexpected turns

dusky charm
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I think the 1st is fine since the player starts in the middle, and it's right after the checkpoint

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For the 3rd, the player was funneled into the only possible move, ceiling grab

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Apart for that, my only nitpick is the endscreen being unremarkable

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and the ripcord phase should have 6 HP it's too easy

vivid crest
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I find the ripcord phase the hardest of them all

vivid crest
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PureKnix unknowingly skipped the intro cutscene when playing this level for the first time. Looks like we need some clearer indication at the input switch

dusky charm
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I figure that was added for speedrunners. Maybe it should require both grab and another key?

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For a while I didn't know what that switch meant.

tawdry robin
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When I first played I also just held down grab, since there's an input switch on screen I kind of just assumed that I needed to hit it

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I don't think adding more abstraction (ie, another key) would help with the fact that it's not immensely clear what that button does

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Wait, does "accidentally" in that context mean he didn't know what was going on and followed the indirect instructions from the input switch, or like he was holding down grab for some reason while walking into the cutscene room and didn't realize it

dusky charm
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Maybe we can just remove the skip? There is a checkpoint after it, so it doesn't matter much if speedrunners can't skip it once...

somber mural
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Waiting??? In my Levelhead???

dusky charm
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Don't worry about flowart, it's a boss level so the shoe is already worthless packagesmirk

vivid crest
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The skip saves about 8 seconds, not sure if it's worth it

dusky charm
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Yeah, I don't think it's going to matter. It's the end of the run anyway, so runners wouldn't be seeing it a lot.

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Waiting is more obnoxious at the start.

dusky charm
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Oh wait, I was only thinking of full campaign runs, but for ILs this would be annoying

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Could we have some other way to skip that isn't an input switch? Maybe letting the player go under the boss and zip into the rifts?

somber mural
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hiding the input switch may work

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if it's made for speedrunners, they'll probably know about that, while casual players don't need to

dusky charm
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Eh it kinda sucks to have this hidden devswitch you can't even see in a speedrun video

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Zipping into the rifts early would be cooler

dusky charm
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If we add floor like this, it's possible to zip through the boss and reach the rifts, although the zip distance is annoying and the music doesn't start. Those can be tweaked.

boss_cutscene_skip.png
vivid crest
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On PK's stream I saw that during phase 3 (not 2...) the last jump at the bottom between the moving whizblades is way tighter than it used to be. I think that needs to be nerfed

tawdry robin
dusky charm
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Yeah I think it's the tiptow phase

somber mural
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So, tweak the sawblade timing a bit more and fix the wall/intro skip

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Is there anything more?

vivid crest
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Oops, I meant phase 3 of course

dusky charm
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Make the clear screen prettier?

somber mural
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maybe a throw indicator on the rebound/ripcord phase until you've scored the first hit?

dusky charm
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From PK's playthrough, he also seemed confused by the tiptow arrows while using trial and error to get through

somber mural
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in case the player doesn't see the rift in the mouth

dusky charm
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I think maoy suggested adding weather when the ripcord phase gets 2 hits since it's closing its mouth now. Maybe that?

somber mural
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did everything except making the end area pretty because I'm a lazy bum

dusky charm
vivid crest
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The cutscene skip usability still needs to be improved, right?

dusky charm
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It's pretty tight but probably not undoable if someone is doing ILs I guess. Others are way better at precision than me.

somber mural
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The rift skip killing you is something I'm aware of, but it would have been annoying to fix and would have required a few more tweaks to that camera (because if it gets disabled before, the player can just zip back through the boss to get OOB onto some back stage setups)

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and the zip is kinda tight due to being from off screen, but I'm not going to make the boss uglier for speedrunners

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they should be grateful to even have a skip in the first place >:(

dusky charm
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I've struggled with this weird kind of rift camera death before, I don't know why it happens sometimes. Like I rift players outside the undertale bosses just fine...

somber mural
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I think I'll make a last update on this to try and fix that rift skip issue and tweak a last couple of things if needed

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Anything to fix you have in mind?

vivid crest
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Yes, I have some things left that I wanted to point out earlier, will do that soon

dusky charm
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make endscreen prettier

somber mural
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No suggestion?

image0.gif
vivid crest
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I wanted to play through all phases one more time, but here are the points I had so far

  • The current cutscene skip seems way too inconvenient to me, I couldn't pull it off after about 20 tries. I suggest you make it skippable with the input switch like before, but just hide the switch completely. I'm sure word will get out that the cutscene can be skipped by holding grab
  • The rifts above the intro area are still visible and need to be moved up one tile
  • I think the zoom at the end of the tiptow area should be removed, because it causes you to get killed by camera if you go with the first cycle of the spike walls
  • The endscreen could indeed be prettier