Another Jenka's Nightmare remake

Apr 23, 2013 at 3:12 AM
Amaya
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Really Dunc, please calm down.

If you don't like the way ZarroTsu's going with this remake, simply stick with the original Jenka's Nightmare. At any rate, he isn't changing his mind anytime soon.
 
Apr 23, 2013 at 3:19 AM
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Well on the one hand feedback is good, but it is going a bit overboard when the same argument is repeated over and over again.
 
Apr 23, 2013 at 3:41 AM
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All I can say is that I love you all and I like most any mod and oh yeah this too:

 
Apr 29, 2013 at 6:30 PM
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Update of the Week

Distractions distractions distractions.

In any case, the Labyrinth is mostly done, and I have a few general questions for the topic regarding it.

(1) Should getting the Blade from the Sanctuary affect the number of enemies in the Labyrinth? (You can one-shot all the non-armor Gaudis with it at level 2, so it kind of trivializes things)

(2) Should missile upgrades be much more abundant or a higher quantity? Due to some of the enemy buffs, and with the Blade coming -before- you get the missile launcher (If you get the blade at all, anyway), even starting with 20 ammo, it's quickly expended with a lesser effect. (Not to mention I'm not even sure where I'll be putting the super missiles yet.)


Aside from this, most of the item graphics are done, the face set is done, and several other minor tweaks have been done. I'll try to actually finish the damn labyrinth this coming weekend.

diph.php

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4j72frhl9ocep16/Suto's Theme.org
(Yes this is just a shitty Balrog's Theme remix overtop 'people of the root'. Shush.)
 
Apr 29, 2013 at 7:49 PM
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Regarding both (1) and (2), it seems to me like those questions might be dependent upon level design and enemy placement. I'm not sure I could give a meaningful answer without having played through the areas to know exactly how things flow together (or not). Nevertheless, my initial reactions are as follows:

(1) Would increasing the number of enemies really make a meaningful difference in the level, or would it just amount to fake difficulty? If it's just fake difficulty, I don't think I would see a need to add more enemies.

(2) It seems like you are concerned about the missiles losing their effectiveness, is this correct? If that's the case, perhaps instead of increasing the magazine expansions, would it be more effective to make the missiles more powerful? That way you wouldn't need as many missiles to get the job done in the first place. Since you would only be modifying the missiles you wouldn't be "debuffing" the enemies, but rather you would only be making the missiles a more valuable weapon.

If you are still concerned about making missile upgrades more frequent versus of bigger quantity, I would ask you about your level design. Does difficulty increase slowly but steadily? If so, maybe smaller, more frequent expansions would be in order. If difficulty ramps up significantly from one area to another, larger boosts to your missile stores might be more helpful.

Screenies are always nice. :)

Re: the org: I like it! It's pretty cool and I like how you've mixed up elements from music from different parts of the game. Some things to consider (these are just comments/suggestions—if you don't change anything, the music is still good).

You have doubled a lot of instruments, and I think this is mostly for timbral effect. I really like the timbre that you get when tracks 3 and 6 blend together. Very cool! With tracks 2 and 7, they often overlap, but I'm not as blown away by the timbral combination here. In some ways, I think you might be able to put track 7 to better use by making it more complementary to track 2 rather than a fairly strict imitation starting around pickups into measure 24. I like how you use tracks 4 and 5 pretty complementarily (is that a word?), and the echo effects are very effective. One thing that I think my ear would like, though, is some more long notes or pads sustaining through all of the other driving parts. You could use either tracks 1 or 8 for this, or you might be able to use track 2, 3 or 6 since they double other parts already (even though I really do like the combination of sounds on tracks 3 and 6).

Regarding percussion, I would encourage you to be careful with track R. The open hi hat sometimes seems to wash over the rest of the sounds. Specifically, I'm thinking around measure 7 and the section starting around 24. Maybe you could bring down the hi hat's volume after half a beat or so? That might keep the sounds from washing together quite as much. You've done that a bit in the section at 24, but I think you might be able to do more here. Like I said, though, I dig it already, so I'm being nitpicky. Even though I'm supposed to be writing a paper that's due tomorrow. I should probably get to doing that.
 
Apr 29, 2013 at 8:08 PM
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As I said, it's the track 'people of the root' with a crummy balrog theme mix overtop of it. So your post is really just complementing Pixel himself and pointing out the flaws in what I did (aka 'add track 7 to give it a melody').

Of course, the original theme is really bland and uneventful, hence the addition to it in general. I dunno, I made these changes like a month ago and the theme's still stuck in my head. The only thing I can't figure out is which instrument to use for track 7, so I wind up changing it occasionally in an attempt to make it more indicative of Balrog's Theme.

Although I'll probably ultimately scrap it, I'm sure. No big loss in just using Balrog's Theme for Suto too.

If I add enemies to the labyrinth for the blade, the differences would be fairly sparce. Really I'd have to test it a good thousand times after I'm finished with the Labyrinth so I can fine-tune things; not to mention the eventual demo letting you guys complain about it so I can fix it.

As for 'make missiles more powerful', I thought of that too, but I'm not sure how. I'm sure there's a value somewhere for the damage, but I don't think it's tied directly to the basic weapon editors bopping around.
 
Apr 29, 2013 at 9:52 PM
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yeah the missiles are fucked up unless you're doing heavy asm hacks where you actually know what you're doing they're not the best weapon to mod
 
Apr 29, 2013 at 10:17 PM
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"More ammo" it is. I'll buff the missile upgrades to 10 instead of 5 and add two more (totaling 100 missiles at end-game, excluding the obvious bonus ones from NG+).

Super Missiles will be available actually rather soon in the game, but beefing them will half your maximum ammo on the spot, and make future upgrades incompatible.
 
Apr 29, 2013 at 10:50 PM
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More explosions sounds pretty great. I say take out the cooldown, double the ammo capacity and nerf the attack
 
May 2, 2013 at 3:39 AM
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diph.php

Any suggested changes?
 
May 2, 2013 at 6:14 AM
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It does seem that the shading is inconsistent between the bulbs and the body. I think it would look great if you changed either one.
 
May 5, 2013 at 6:20 AM
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Could someone remind me what substance critter bulbs are made of?

Double post:

Oh, whatever.

diph.php

(This would look a lot less dorky if I could have the critter use its standing sprite without starting the battle.)
 
May 5, 2013 at 12:37 PM
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Oh jesus christ that facepic scared me
I don't really think that's a good color for bagrlo but other than that it looks good. The critter is awesome.
 
May 6, 2013 at 1:34 AM
Amaya
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Looks good, ZT. You're making some nice progress :D

MagicDoors said:
Oh jesus christ that facepic scared me
Suto is just disturbing. I'm not sure if he's some sort of demon possessed Balrog, but I hope not...
 
May 13, 2013 at 3:29 PM
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Polaris said:
I'm not sure if he's some sort of demon possessed Balrog, but I hope not...
Ew, no. That would be retarded.


Update of the Week:

Labyrinth is done! *partyhorn sound*

There's still a bunch of minor other things to take care of before I'm going to finish off the demo. Tons of second-loop dialog from NPCs, many of the NG+ capsules become openable, and the ability to get the Spur more or less becomes immediately available.

I've given the super missiles to Dr. Gero, and as I've stated before you will receive it at the cost of half your ammo, while all other missile chests will conspicuously empty themselves at that moment. Obviously the best thing to do is come back after you find them all, but the regular missiles become less and less realistic to use. You'll be able to max them proper before Plantation.


And as for people wondering about the Snake...

Hidden text highlight (or click) to view:

If you ignore it when you start the game, you can just pick it up after the Labyrinth. There will be more ammo drops later as well.


"Update" of the week:

I've honestly been under the weather lately, and haven't put forth as much of an effort into the mod this past weekend as I'd have liked. I did a few dialog tidbits, but they feel underdone and I might redo them at some point, whether before or after the next Demo.

I suppose I can point out some minor things in spoiler that will differ at around this point from the original JN. The spoiler-within-spoiler contains actual spoilers in this case:

> People in Grasstown will also have differing dialog after you're done the Labyrinth.
> The door in the cemetery still exists, and still leads somewhere. Just not Genesis:Spirit.
> I'm going to make the Chimney and Conduit have a "stormy" background by giving the clouds a more greyish blue color. I'll try to make it look neat, but it sucks I can't really have a "rain layer".

> I've added some chests to Grasstown. These will only be accessible with the Booster.
> The Life Pot will require a fetch-quest for ingredients. Not a very hard one, mind you: You can get all of them within the scope of the demo.
 
May 14, 2013 at 4:18 AM
Amaya
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Hm...feeling under the weather, huh?

Well, I hope you feel a bit better soon
p163111-0-emotshobon.gif
 
May 18, 2013 at 10:01 PM
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Alright, I buckled down the past few hours and wrote a bit of epic. Consider the following screenshot the 'of the week' one, but it is IMMENSELY spoiler heavy. Suffice to say, this was something I planned to do from the start.

diph.php

Double post:

I think I'm done finalizing the weapon exp. See chart below. (Chart is for total exp amounts. Just subtract the previous value to see the true level requirement value)

diph.php

EDIT: Made the chart better.


Triple Post:

Here, have a hacked Organya.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6digf3e8tz9uy8k/JenkaOrganya.zip
 
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