Inner Demons

Dec 23, 2016 at 5:23 AM
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Inner Demons
As you walked out of the storehouse, you heard Balrog’s signature “Huzzah!” from above. Looking up, you saw the rectangular robot hurtling downwards toward you. You had no chance to dodge, so you could only stare as he smashed into you. Everything went black.

After what seemed like an eternity of floating in a pitch black void, you finally came to your senses in a familiar cave. Something felt… off, however.


Note: Did not want to spoil much, so please bear with these less-than-exciting screenshots.
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v1.1
  • Official release.
  • Improved first boss’s arena.
  • Baby Frog HP Change: 2 > 1
  • Frog HP Change: 10 > 8
v1.2
  • Fixed Gunsmith’s chest not saying open.
  • Fixed Map System not visually crumbling into dust.
  • Darkened most enemy sprites.
  • Added <MYBs to first boss.
  • Added more Mannan shenanigans.
  • Made changes to ending dialogue.

Download Link:
Inner Demons v1.2
 
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Dec 23, 2016 at 6:28 AM
War criminal
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Join Date: Jun 27, 2013
Location: Phoenix
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Age: 29
How long have you been working on this mod, about five months? You have definitely shown you have put those 5 months to good use on this mod! I do have a couple thoughts that I had about the later parts of the mod.
- Was that Crow at the end of the Sand Zone supposed to be there? It just feels very out of place in contrast to the other enemies in the level.
- I knew there was going to be a secret if I didn't interact with a certain object in the Sand Zone. I was just half-expecting that the reward would happen after the boss.
 
Dec 23, 2016 at 6:54 AM
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How long have you been working on this mod, about five months? You have definitely shown you have put those 5 months to good use on this mod! I do have a couple thoughts that I had about the later parts of the mod.
- Was that Crow at the end of the Sand Zone supposed to be there? It just feels very out of place in contrast to the other enemies in the level.
- I knew there was going to be a secret if I didn't interact with a certain object in the Sand Zone. I was just half-expecting that the reward would happen after the boss.
Yup, this was in the works for a while. I believe I got the idea for it sometime last year.
- The Crow was there to make the final stretch feel wrong. In the original Sand Zone, that corridor was packed with Crows. Now, there's a lonely Crow fluttering at the very end of the corridor. I guess one thing I could do is try to recolor it or redo the sprite to help match the other enemies, but I'm hesitant to do all that for one enemy.
- My reasoning behind that was that the boss would have been masochistically difficult if you ignored the object even if you played perfectly. It also helped give it a bit of an Eleventh Hour Superpower feel.
 
Dec 23, 2016 at 2:49 PM
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The return of Seasons just in time for the holiday season. Although, would I be wrong in saying that this mod seems more Halloween themed? The music? The name? No?
-Oh look it's Halloween 2 but slowed and transposed down. Couldn't you have changed the melody a bit or something? It's not like this track was particularly great to begin with.

-I suppose some people don't like the 60FPS hack as much as I do.

-Wasting my time with a useless Life Capsule.

-Great now I'm being haunted by the ghost of weapon theft past.

-And the chest is closed again upon leaving and re-entering.

-Oh free wep. energy... it's not like you could actually let there be any enemies here of course, that would make this fun instead of boring scary.

-For some reason the exp you get near the door made some smoke on the ground next to the eye-door, rather than where the wep. energy actually spawned.

-No wep. energy from the door? You fuck'n what?

-"Something isn't right" Yeah no shit the music is slightly different... oh wait and the level design might be slightly different maybe.

-You know what happens when you <TUR/<CAT/<SAT all your text? I accidentally skip all of it.

-Maybe you could show dust on the ground when items turn to dust?

-Oh come on, you're telling me any of them actually saw me quietly march the shack, but they somehow ignored Balrog repeatedly smashing into the door? And wouldn't even recognise that he was there from his outline on the door?

-OK this music is pretty nice.

-Couldn't you just have cracks on the pots and then make them shootable?

-Alright so I guess it's more about using your shots wisely, because of how weak the bosses are but how easily they dodge you.

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-This spike and the solid rabid mimiga are begging to be used for damage height-boosting.

-Oh great the roves aren't solid. That's fun, except it's not and I would have much preferred some kind of reward for thinking outside of the box, but apparently you don't believe in that kind of level design, and all you want is linearity. And you can just make the roof one tile higher if you think it'll interfere too much with the boss fight.

-There's no <MYB for Jack's fight OR King's fight?

-Come on King wouldn't look like that if he were to become enraged by the red flower.

-"Defeated Vengeance" Vengeance for what? Or, wait, vengeance is capitalised so it must be an entity created by... the souls of the four mimiga?

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-NO FUCKING SHIT.

-Use <RMU next time.

-You don't think you might want to make the enemies any darker as well? Not so dark that they don't stand out at all, but as it is it appears as if they're glowing, which was fine with the mimiga, but these enemies aren't special are they? The wep. energy is significantly darker (to the point where it doesn't stand out and it's hardly as noticeable), so why not the enemies?

-Might wanna consider making all of these enemies significantly weaker like the bosses, because of the fucked Polar Star.

-OK the Grass-town-slow-down music is just boring.

-The lvl3 Polar Star sound effect isn't fun.

-So, the Fireball is defective, but you couldn't at least put it in one of the weapon slots? Without much effort you could've actually made it fire the non-lethal sparks you talked about.

-Game questions your logic for collecting Life Capsules even though they've proved to be useless.

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-Oh look, it's great fucking tiling to the rescue.

-"supported by columns of vines." They don't look like they're supporting the wall at all. You know that you could have easily bodged together some tiles to make it actually look like the vines are actually supporting the wall, right? And with quite a bit more effort you could've made it look more like vegetation, rather than dirt.

-That whole burning down the wall thing could've been done better.

-I forget shit all the time. What of it?

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-OK fuck off please.

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-We're back to the tiling issues again. Also stop trying to make Egg Corridor-like shapes--like the boxes for the eggs--with one kind of tile.

-"if I put it out of my mind" Eh?

-I like the way you've mixed up this familiar boss fight. But, are you going to use this music for every fight?

-Distraction? You're sure you don't want to have more distracting things in the boss fight? Sure the chest noise was distracting, but it was useful, implying that listening to distractions is the way to defeat them.

-Oh great it's another one of the same tunes again.

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-IS THIS A FUCKING TRICK QUESTION?

-For some reason that's how you get the Machine Gun (even though nothing really implies that, and it just seems like you're fighting not to lose your Polar Star, rather than it being a trade), but I prefer the nature of the Polar Star more.

-*Cursed blocks move automatically* Thank Christ.

-*Cursed blocks move back* Fuck you Christ you cunt.

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-Oh great, more good tiling. You should really make some custom tiles to fix this.

-I just automatically shot like 10 of the Torokos in mid-air, but I kinda feel like I'm not supposed to, so... ESC+F2.

-There, I fucking made it. But now my weapons are in ruins. Also you missed the chance to have flying angel Torokos that turn into crows.

-You might want to make the crows drop 11 wep. energy instead of 9, just to make farming off it a little less tiring.

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-Honestly, no.

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-ARE YOU TELLING ME I JUST SPENT ALL THAT TIME FARMING FOR NOTHING? GET FUCKED.

-Oh COME ON, why'd you have to give her so much health?!

-When Toroko throws a block at the wall the angry Toroko NPC gets stuck in the wall.

-There's a bit of a ridiculous difficulty spike here. =\

-Turns out the best tactic is just to stand right next to her and spam for dear life.

-"Defeated Acceptance." Shouldn't it be 'Defeated Guilt'?

-Oh, and that's the end. Yeah, OK that was pretty fun. The mod is a comfortable hour long, but I feel like some more payoff after defeating Toroko would've been nice. I guess this is supposed to be what Quote sees when he's knocked out by Balrog in the Sand Zone before waking up in the Labyrinth with all the other robots by your side.
I would have liked it if I could have had it out by Halloween, but with college classes it just wasn't meant to be.
-Oh look it's Halloween 2 but slowed and transposed down. Couldn't you have changed the melody a bit or something? It's not like this track was particularly great to begin with.
Not the best at working with ORGs. Also h*ck off Halloween 2 is good.

-Wasting my time with a useless Life Capsule.
There's a reason why I did this. Take a look at your health and think back to how much you had when you got to the end of the vanilla game's Sand Zone.

-And the chest is closed again upon leaving and re-entering.
You would think I would've noticed that after testing this for so long. :muscledoc:

-Oh free wep. energy... it's not like you could actually let there be any enemies here of course, that would make this fun instead of boring scary.
Again, there's a reason to this. To help make the cave feel empty and wrong along with lampshading how First Cave tends to be, I used H/V triggers to spawn poofs of smoke and XP crystals where the enemies used to be.

-For some reason the exp you get near the door made some smoke on the ground next to the eye-door, rather than where the wep. energy actually spawned.
May want to look at that more closely, friend. ;)

-No wep. energy from the door? You fuck'n what?
I mean, if you didn't forget that the door was alive, you should have a Level 2 Polar Star by now. I was trying to avoid the first boss becoming a curb stomp since I was already pushing it close to Level 3.

-You know what happens when you <TUR/<CAT/<SAT all your text? I accidentally skip all of it.
Maybe you should mash through text less?

-Maybe you could show dust on the ground when items turn to dust?
Noted. I already have this happen for one of the Life Capsules, but I know what you're talking about here.

-Oh come on, you're telling me any of them actually saw me quietly march the shack, but they somehow ignored Balrog repeatedly smashing into the door? And wouldn't even recognise that he was there from his outline on the door?
Pretty sure figments of Quote's imagination or glitches in the system couldn't care less about who broke in when Quote's there and Toroko is gone.

-Couldn't you just have cracks on the pots and then make them shootable?
The sparkles are more eye-catching, in my opinion.

-Oh great the roves aren't solid. That's fun, except it's not and I would have much preferred some kind of reward for thinking outside of the box, but apparently you don't believe in that kind of level design, and all you want is linearity. And you can just make the roof one tile higher if you think it'll interfere too much with the boss fight.
See, JD noticed that when he playtested the mod yesterday, and I decided it was better to put those spikes there to prevent cheesing the boss in a corner and to make the roof NPC only to keep the player from camping up there. In the case of the latter, there isn't really any benefit to it either; the boss can't get you but you can't get the boss. I also wanted to avoid touching the house itself to stick with the original design.

-There's no <MYB for Jack's fight OR King's fight?
Aside from using H/V triggers to keep track of the player's position, I can't really do that. Though, now that I mention it, it doesn't actually sound too difficult to do.

-Come on King wouldn't look like that if he were to become enraged by the red flower.
I wanted King to be a bigger boss in the fight given how protective and reckless he's proven himself to be. Red flower has nothing to do with this fight in particular, either.

-"Defeated Vengeance" Vengeance for what? Or, wait, vengeance is capitalised so it must be an entity created by... the souls of the four mimiga?
This boss used to be called Vengeful Memories until I settled on something simpler. In case you haven't died up until this point, it becomes increasingly obvious that this is happening in Quote's head.

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-NO FUCKING SHIT.
Unnecessary overreaction count: 1

-Might wanna consider making all of these enemies significantly weaker like the bosses, because of the fucked Polar Star.
Assuming that you didn't break the pots until after the fight with Vengeance, it's enough to get back to Level 2. I'd say the HP values are okay as they are unless more people have issues.

-The lvl3 Polar Star sound effect isn't fun.
That's quite literally the base game's fault. I don't know how I would go about making it sound more "exciting".

-So, the Fireball is defective, but you couldn't at least put it in one of the weapon slots? Without much effort you could've actually made it fire the non-lethal sparks you talked about.
I didn't think it was worth the effort to try to ASM hack it (or have someone help me ASM hack it) when it would really only be useful in this part. Plus, it would make switching between weapons a little more annoying.

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-Oh look, it's great fucking tiling to the rescue.
It matches the description given, plus it also prevents mobs from converging on the player when they try to burn it down. Ditto for the other wall.

-"supported by columns of vines." They don't look like they're supporting the wall at all. You know that you could have easily bodged together some tiles to make it actually look like the vines are actually supporting the wall, right? And with quite a bit more effort you could've made it look more like vegetation, rather than dirt.
Doesn't look like dirt to me. Anyways, I'll consider it, though spriting isn't necessarily a strong suit of mine.

-That whole burning down the wall thing could've been done better.
How so? I thought I did a pretty good job showing it burn down. Fire starts > Fire strengthens increasingly quickly > Entire wall gives way.

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-OK fuck off please.
:mahin:

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-We're back to the tiling issues again. Also stop trying to make Egg Corridor-like shapes--like the boxes for the eggs--with one kind of tile.
With the idea I had in mind (blending the two levels into one, with the level design of one and the tiles and enemies of the other), I had to make do with what I had available.

-"if I put it out of my mind" Eh?
Quote tries to forget what happened back in Mimiga Village, but it doesn't work out so well.

-I like the way you've mixed up this familiar boss fight. But, are you going to use this music for every fight?
Pretty much, yeah. It's a pretty good theme for bosses, and I didn't think it was necessary to bug Cool for more than one track.

-Oh great it's another one of the same tunes again.
I'm not too experienced in ORG work either. It was either this or silence unless I wanted to ask someone else for help.

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-IS THIS A FUCKING TRICK QUESTION?
Unnecessary overreaction count: 2

-For some reason that's how you get the Machine Gun (even though nothing really implies that, and it just seems like you're fighting not to lose your Polar Star, rather than it being a trade), but I prefer the nature of the Polar Star more.
That's where you got the Machine Gun in your "original" run through Sand Zone. I just wanted to pull some more mind/memory shenanigans.

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-Oh great, more good tiling. You should really make some custom tiles to fix this.
Not sure how worth it making custom tiles for almost every kind of Sand Zone tile would be to reinforce the feeling of an expanding void or hole in Quote's memory a teeny bit more.

-I just automatically shot like 10 of the Torokos in mid-air, but I kinda feel like I'm not supposed to, so... ESC+F2.
I mean, as long as they're not hitting you I guess it's a valid strat.

-You might want to make the crows drop 11 wep. energy instead of 9, just to make farming off it a little less tiring.
I didn't intend to have the player farm on the Crow in the first place considering that it's flying over a death pit.

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-ARE YOU TELLING ME I JUST SPENT ALL THAT TIME FARMING FOR NOTHING? GET FUCKED.
Unnecessary overreaction count: 3


-Oh COME ON, why'd you have to give her so much health?!
Last thing I wanted was people to take their shiny new Blade and blend the final boss over the course of a few seconds.

-There's a bit of a ridiculous difficulty spike here. =\
A bit, but once you get used to using the Blade it isn't so bad. Plus, you can force Toroko to jump into the air if you shoot her with missiles before she aims a block, helping you catch her in a pattern.

-"Defeated Acceptance." Shouldn't it be 'Defeated Guilt'?
Funnily enough, that was the original name for the fight, but I thought Acceptance fit better given the talk you get after you defeat Toroko.

-Oh, and that's the end. Yeah, OK that was pretty fun. The mod is a comfortable hour long, but I feel like some more payoff after defeating Toroko would've been nice. I guess this is supposed to be what Quote sees when he's knocked out by Balrog in the Sand Zone before waking up in the Labyrinth with all the other robots by your side.
I was worried that you wouldn't get the mod's message/point, but I'm glad to see that you hit the nail on the head. Also, I was considering having Quote run through a crumbling version of each part of the mod up until this, but I couldn't find enough in-game reason to do so.
 
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Dec 24, 2016 at 8:55 PM
The "C" in "college" is for "crippling debt".
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Join Date: Nov 12, 2014
Location: East Coast America
Posts: 759
Age: 23
This was very well done. I enjoyed playing it; a little morbid for Christmas tho
I have to disagree with zxin on a few things:
The plot wasn't stellar but it was at least interesting. Although this sort of thing has been done before, the atmosphere was good and I enjoyed playing it. Also, the tiling is perfectly fine, it may not be the way I or zxin would do it but it still looks good. Admittedly the empty egg boxes are a little lackluster - perhaps you could add a sprite/tile for an egg wrapped in vines?

On some other notes:
The ending is... incredibly similar to the way my Halloween mod ended. I always get really sad when I create something that I think is original and then someone else comes up with the same idea around the same time... I'm 100% sure that this is a coincidence, since you've been working on this for a long time, but it still bothers me.

Speaking of the ending, it's anticlimatic. You fight Toroko+ and then she just says "oops sorry". It would be more rewarding if as her sprite collapsed you had dialogue about her rage and it slowly dying away as she reverted back to her original form.

The thing with the green Manannans genuinely spooked me. That was a nice touch.
 
Dec 24, 2016 at 11:10 PM
Deliverer of Sweets
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Location: Under sea level or something
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Age: 25
This is pretty cool, and I can see you've put quite the effort in it.
First of all, the atmosphere is well done. There clearly feels something wrong quickly, and i kinda wanted to see what.
Seeing egg corridor and grasslands getting combined was pretty interesting to see, and the sudden mannans when leaving the missile launcher's room was pretty neat.
Although the balfrog boss was a bit long, it was pretty cool to see how the chests let you refill when pass over the boss. And the way the weapons were redone was pretty cool.
Can confirm the ending felt a little lacking though, especially after an atmosphere like that.

All in all, i really like it, although it felt a bit empty here and there.
 
Dec 25, 2016 at 6:36 PM
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I have to disagree with zxin on a few things:
The plot wasn't stellar but it was at least interesting. Although this sort of thing has been done before, the atmosphere was good and I enjoyed playing it. Also, the tiling is perfectly fine, it may not be the way I or zxin would do it but it still looks good. Admittedly the empty egg boxes are a little lackluster - perhaps you could add a sprite/tile for an egg wrapped in vines?

On some other notes:
The ending is... incredibly similar to the way my Halloween mod ended. I always get really sad when I create something that I think is original and then someone else comes up with the same idea around the same time... I'm 100% sure that this is a coincidence, since you've been working on this for a long time, but it still bothers me.

Speaking of the ending, it's anticlimatic. You fight Toroko+ and then she just says "oops sorry". It would be more rewarding if as her sprite collapsed you had dialogue about her rage and it slowly dying away as she reverted back to her original form.

See, I would normally be tempted to give that a try (the vine-covered egg thing) but it clashes a little with my vision for the area: the eventual blending of the two areas, with the use of one's level design and the other's tiles and enemies. I tried to make up for that with the Mannans in the egg chambers. They both symbolize the inhabitants of the eggs and serve to add to the atmosphere by constantly looking towards where the final transformation happened.

Yeah, I noticed that when I played through All Hallow's Eve. You're also right in that this was a coincidence; I've been working on this in secret for months and not once did I reveal anything substantial. Same goes for All Hallow's Eve, too, though I suspect you didn't spend as much time on it. Nothing to worry about, though.

Been hearing stuff about the ending a lot, so I tried to fix it (or at least make it better) in the most recent update.


I very much appreciate everyone's feedback. It seems like there was a general consensus on a few things needing fixing, so here is the next update:

Inner Demons v1.2

  • Fixed Gunsmith's chest not staying open.
  • Fixed Map System not visually crumbling into dust.
  • Darkened most enemy sprites.
  • Added <MYBs to first boss.
  • Added more Mannan shenanigans.
  • Made changes to ending dialogue.
 
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