Okédoké! La Leyenda Mexicana

I vote for the optional area. But then I've seen the outside of it, so I'm biased.

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Well, it's looking like I'll just barely get Chapter 5 done in time.

I've gotten a pretty big chunk of it done already. Map-wise, there's only one room that isn't finished (the floor of the prison where El Garbanzo's dad is being held), so even if I don't finish the events of the chapter, the prison should at least be fully explorable. I still have a handful of small scripts left (the initial "breaking in" scene, and some "get the party into formation before a boss battle" scripts), and the stats and graphics for a minor optional boss.

Probably the one thing that will take the longest is the scene where El Garbanzo finally finds his father, only to be interrupted by a couple of the guys who've been behind everything from the beginning. Lots of text (that finally reveals a few things about the story) and a two-in-a-row boss battle, followed by an "escape the prison" scene where the guards are running around everywhere and the inmates are going nuts. And then, finally, I still need to make the last boss of Chapter 5 (who you'll be able to skip if you returned some valuables to a certain person in Chapter 4.)

I should be finished with the whole chapter before today's over, though I'll most likely have to cut off with another "END OF DEMO" message when you leave the prison and try to get back in the van. Unfortunately, this means I won't get either the optional area of Chapter 4 or the start of Chapter 6 done in time. Of course, they'll both be in the final version, whenever I get that done.

EDIT: Really underestimated how long bugfixing would take, especially with that annoying "randomly corrupt your NPC's" glitch still running around. Looks like I'm going to have to submit my demo for the contest a day late...

EDIT EDIT: ...and then didn't expect how long school stuff would take yesterday. It'll be in before the end of the week, at least...

I'm going to be adding in Burger King (and the big optional area that it's connected to) before I post the next demo release. So it might not be done until the end of September... unless I happen to get one of those random bursts of not-laziness again.

Also, I'm thinking about adding a real brown to the palette, instead of just using the dark red... I've noticed that it looks a little TOO red on some computer monitors, especially when it's used for things that are supposed to be brown (mostly a couple of characters' hair.) I'll probably leave the rocks and stuff red, but I might change tree trunks and some of the dirt tiles to brown.

I actually like the red that passes as brown.

What if you released two versions of Okedoke: The finished 8-bit version and a re-colored no-holds-barred version?

I was considering doing this for Entrepreneur: The Beginning.

And I'm glad you're gonna finish Burger King first. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the secret area.

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Using the red for brown was originally to add more "8-bitness" to the game--a lot of NES games (I remember Zelda 2 and all three Super Mario Bros. games did) had "brown" things that were actually just dark red, but could pass for brown pretty well on old TVs.

I'm still not sure whether I really want to add a different brown in or not; Sarah Palin and one of the optional area's bosses don't look quite right with red hair, but most other things in the game look fine with the red. And I don't really want to put a hold on new stuff in the game to go back through the game and recolor a ton of maptiles instead...

I might do a "more colors" version sometime later, but I'm definitely planning on finishing the game in its 8-bit form first.

The main map for the optional area is done! And it is incredibly huge, as this screenshot will tell you. The city itself is maybe a "Frogbucket and a half" in size... but if you count the entire surrounding area, it's even bigger than either Wrongside or New Hamster.



Tilemapping, wallmapping, and foemapping are 100% done, and I've got all the doors in place (though only one goes anywhere--the portal that takes you back to the main part of Chapter 4.)

I still need to add a handful more NPCs (I've got the labeled map sign, some hidden and not-so-hidden treasure chests, and a bunch of townsfolk done... but one of the optional bosses still needs to be placed, as do some plot-event related NPCs and a handful more townsfolk.)

Now that the biggest map of the optional area is done, it shouldn't be too long before I get it into a playable state (with working doors, inside-house maps, the castle, shops, etc.) and then go on to finish the "dungeon" parts of the optional area. You can probably expect a 5-Chapter Demo to appear on the Internet sometime mid-October, or possibly earlier.

And here's a couple more screenshots, so it's not just the super-huge map up there:

Hmm, there's something suspicious about that ball pit in the corner. I wonder if it's hiding anything.

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I'm finally done with all those damn research papers I had to do for school, so I should be able to get some more work done on Okédoké sometime soon.

There will probably be a new demo (with Chapter 4, the optional area, and Chapter 5 all done) sometime this month, though at this point I can't say for sure whether it'll be mid-October or late-October. And if a relatively stable/non-buggy nightly version with the new chain conditions comes out before then, you can probably expect at least a handful new attacks to use them.

After not doing much of anything with Okédoké during the later half of October (and pretty much all of November), I'm finally getting back to work again.

I just got started working on the game again today. So far, I've finished the last chunk of maptile work I had left for Chapter 5 (along with the NPCs to make the unlockable prison doors work, and some hidden items), and I've also finished up the scripting required to get an item from the optional area to work.

All that's left of Chapter 5 is the "El Garbanzo finds his father" scene and the three (or just two, if you helped a certain person out in Chapter 4) boss fights that come after it.

The optional area in Chapter 4 needs a lot more work before it's done (maps for the castle and three "dungeon" areas, one NPC graphic, six face graphics, and some NPCs/scripting/textboxes for the five optional bosses)... but what's left of Chapter 5 shouldn't take all that long. So I'll hopefully have plenty of time left to finish up the optional area before December is over and finally bring out a new demo.

I've finally uploaded a new demo on here. Haven't gotten it up on Castle Paradox just yet (my crappy dial-up is terrible at uploading files on CP, for some reason... always crashes right before the upload's done,) but it should be there too before tomorrow's over.

It's got two new chapters (well, just one totally new one if you happened to write an Okédoké preview article for Hamsterspeak... but two for everybody else), lots of enemies use the fancy new death animations now (bugs get squished, and gooey/undead things melt!), a few attacks use the new chain conditions, the "three random targets" attacks like Heck Flame actually are random now, and so on.

I've tested everything out pretty well, but there's always a chance that the dreaded "randomly screw your NPCs after map editing" bug has messed something up (I actually caught one screwed-up usable-only-once tag setting just before loading the new version into its ZIP file and preparing to upload it.) If anything goes horribly wrong, let me know... I'll try to fix it and get a bug-free demo uploaded as soon as possible.

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Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish Chapter 4's secret optional area just yet, so the building that leads to it is (still) blocked off by a couple of closed doors and a "Re-opening in 2010" note.

There is one good thing about this, though: it means that the next demo version (or would that be the first complete version?) will basically have two chapters worth of new stuff, instead of just Chapter 6.

Been a while since I've posted anything in here... but since I've finally gotten started on Chapter 6, I guess this is a good time to post a few more preview screenshots.

I've also added some stuff to Chapter 5 (two optional areas, plus changed some NPCs around a bit and made it so that the Front Tower isn't completely pointless), but for now I'll just be posting some previews of the earlier parts of Chapter 6.

The van ride out of Chapter 5 is done, and the map of the Canadian town of Beaverfoot and the surrounding area is pretty close to finished too. Of course, Chapter 6 still has a long way to go before it'll be done, since Beaverfoot is just a short detour before the main part (and it's mostly optional, if you happen to have enough of a certain item by the time you get there.)


Bug Bran: the only cereal that's ever killed someone's grandma.


Some enemies you'll see pretty often...


...and one you won't see quite as often.


This seems like a good time to mention that all of the "Meaaaah!" textboxes now come with a goat sound effect.

Goat Woman? Long-lost distaff counterpart to Sheep Man?
I get the feeling this is more than a random cameo.
And I get the feeling I'm gonna see a certain hamster somewhere in this northern wonderland.

Now that I'm pretty much done with Puckamon (for now, anyway--I'll probably be uploading a rebalanced version once the RGC voting is over, and I will continue to work on the game after that), I've gotten back to work on Chapter 6 of Okédoké!

Still haven't finished Beaverfoot yet, but I've got the mayor's quiz minigame almost done. It's actually playable (and winnable) already, though I haven't yet scripted the "you win! here, have some items" part yet.



Like he says, it's pretty much like Jeopardy: you pick a category, then pick a point value, and then answer a question. The three categories you have to choose from are "Quest for Soap," "The Kirby Lands," and "Other Stuff." If you get 1000 points, you win... and if you win, the mayor gives you the items you need to get out of Beaverfoot and go onward to the rest of Chapter 6.

Minor progress update here; the semi-optional (depending on how much of a certain item you have with you at the end of Chapter 5) town of Beaverfoot is completely finished.

Of course, even if you can skip Beaverfoot, you might want to explore it anyway--it's the last place in the game where you can buy healing items, there's a new spell for Schnee hidden in there somewhere, and there's an odd little mini-sidequest that may or may not be completely pointless.



Where's Schnee? What's got Señor Rialgo so confused? What the heck is going on here...?

oh dear
That gives me concerns on how survivable the remaining chapters are.
But for all I know, this could be near the end of the game, so that would make more sense.

Also, hey, question here. Does every chapter serve as a Point of No Return? Once you pass Bigfoot Beaverfoot, perhaps by accident, is it gone forever?
Also there's the question of how I can get those weird hobocrafted items from Wrongside.

EDIT: The gameshow host there reminds me an awful lot of this guy.