Bell of Chaos Development

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Bob the Hamster
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Bell of Chaos Development

Post by Bob the Hamster »

I would like for <a href="http://www.slimesalad.com/forum/viewgam ... 3450">Bell of Chaos</a> to be a bigger game than it is right now. This thread is for suggestions, and bugfixes, and if anybody wants to offer to help :)

==BUGS==

* If you kill a Peon while he is holding a purple Lion Beast, and you are standing too close, you can grab the chain before it evaporates. The chain and Lion beast get merged with the bell's chain, which is hilarious. I need to really clean up the chain grabbing/dropping code.

* Use Fury of Gibil on an Owl Pillar and it freaks out, bounces around the room, and probably kills you.

* Meatballsub found that if you climb a ladder and save with the bell hanging off the screen, and it will be missing when you reload.

* I got a few complaints that the controls are bad for walking and jumping. Newbie Power suggested a quick sliding stop of you press in the opposite direction that she is running, similar to what Sonic and Mario can do.

* [Many more to be discovered]

==PLANS==

* Tower size. I can make the tower about 40 floors tall without having to deal with transitioning between maps. That might be big enough.

* Bosses. I want at least 3. Humbaba, Enkidu, and Gilgamesh. I haven't worked out quite yet how they should act.

* Checkpoints. I have heard some comments about the Save/Load system being pretty exploitable, so I might want to change it. I like being able to save anywhere, but I am thinking that loading should take you back to the last checkpoint you touched.

* More abilities. There are actually a couple already in that can't be learned yet without cheating with the F4 tag debug screen. (Double-Jump and Bell Summon.) I also plan to make one that transforms the bell temporarily into an animal that will run around and attack enemies on its own. I'm also going to make one that causes the bell to ring and create a shockwave that pushes enemies away from it. I also want to make one that will cause you to teleport and swap positions with the bell. I am open to other suggestions too. Abilities are fun to make.

==ARTWORK==

I got a lot of compliments on the art so far. Thank you! Although the art is the part I would most like to commandeer volunteers to help me with. *hint hint* ;)
Last edited by Bob the Hamster on Wed Apr 07, 2010 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Twinconclusive
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Post by Twinconclusive »

Combat in the game is puzzling to me.
In trying to get enough momentum to swing the bell with enough force to actually hurt an enemy and then coming to a halt so that the bell will swing into a target, any enemy that moves pretty much finds a way to hurt me.

This might be alleviated by having things get knocked-back after being hit by a bell?

I'm also not very good at chucking bells at people.

After a while, I just ended up running past all the enemies, trying to receive as little damage as possible.

The enemy animations were really neat and I feel like I missed out on a lot of the game.
It was visually and mechanically amazing, but the difficulty in getting used to the bell kind of takes away from the fun.
(Random things like the random name generator were very nice. :))
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Post by Newbie Newtype »

Newbie Power suggested a quick sliding stop of you press in the opposite direction that she is running, similar to what Sonic and Mario can do.
As well as quicker deceleration if you're not pressing left or right (should help air control), but yeah.
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Bob the Hamster
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

Twinconclusive wrote:Combat in the game is puzzling to me.
In trying to get enough momentum to swing the bell with enough force to actually hurt an enemy and then coming to a halt so that the bell will swing into a target, any enemy that moves pretty much finds a way to hurt me.

This might be alleviated by having things get knocked-back after being hit by a bell?
I experimented with a knockback at one point, but it worked so badly that I gave up on it (it often knocked the enemy into you) but I may take another stab at it.

I do like the fact it difficult to fight while holding the bell, although I wish the bell did move more intuitively. The chain physics are very kludgy, which is a big part of why it is hard to control the bell.
Twinconclusive wrote:I'm also not very good at chucking bells at people.
Yes, that part is hard too. Sliding it across the floor works best for me (and needs a satisfying sound effect!)
Twinconclusive wrote: After a while, I just ended up running past all the enemies, trying to receive as little damage as possible.
A good and wise strategy!

I do need to add some barriers that can only be broken with the bell, to discourage ditching it when doing this.
Twinconclusive wrote: The enemy animations were really neat and I feel like I missed out on a lot of the game.
It was visually and mechanically amazing, but the difficulty in getting used to the bell kind of takes away from the fun.
I would like to improve it, although I want to keep it hard (and I realize those goals might be mutually exclusive)
Twinconclusive wrote:(Random things like the random name generator were very nice. :))
It is actually a pretty short list, and credit for them being cool goes to the various mythologies that I ripped them from :)
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Fenrir-Lunaris
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Post by Fenrir-Lunaris »

The boss fight with Enkidu should start out with Gilgamesh, then Enkidu should jump in halfway to finish the fight (While Gilgamesh runs away). Gilgamesh also needs to speak in horrifying puns.

Also, I'm requesting an alternate, hidden boss battle with Tiamat. This game is excellent, despite some obvious control issues.
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Post by Spoonweaver »

Glad to hear that this may one day become an even better game. The graphics are stunning ( as, I see, you've been told ) and the concept is unique. I had a lot of fun playing around with this game, but ultimately fell into a lot of the same kinks that Twin mentioned. I found the bell control very random, but assumed that was on purpose, since the game is in fact called "Bell of Chaos". My major grief was the lack of reaction things showed after being hit. I mean this for both enemies and myself. It really does lead to the run past everything strategy, which I'll admit was fairly entertaining. Having the bad guys stop you or having you stop the bad guys would make the game world seem a little more interactive.
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Post by Newbie Newtype »

Knockback with the bell & chain will be interesting.
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Post by Shizuma »

Yes, refining things like knockback (or lack thereof) are what is needed in sidescroller games, everything needs recovery frames to be activated and such, because as is you kind of scramble around not so sure what is going on. There's also quite a bit that can be accomplished with sound effects, which I think are essentially tied to control. Clearer and distinct sound effects after things such as hitting, being hit, and jumping will go a long way.
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Bob the Hamster
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

Maybe I can just cheat on the knockback. Normally it will be based on the usual physics, but if the player is holding the bell, and the enemy is in between the player and the bell, the enemy will always be knocked away from the player no matter what.

I think making the bell's chain one link longer could also make a noticeable difference.

Part of the difficulty in getting the controls really nice are a pair of engine limitations.

(A) The OHR's frame rate is 18.2 fps. I couldn't find any reliable documentation telling me what the NES's frame rate is. Searching around variously suggested 30, 50, and 60 fps. At any rate, the OHR's frame rate is too slow. The frame rate should be customizable in a future release. Just now I used the debug keys to speed it up to 30 fps, and it was interesting.

(B) No floating point number support. All we have to work with is integers. So when I want to raise the floor friction level when not pressing a key, my only option is to go from 2 to 3. I can't try 2.5 or 2.25. This also will be fixed eventually, since floating point numbers will be a part of TMC's planned improvements to the script interpreter.
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Post by Newbie Newtype »

(B) No floating point number support. All we have to work with is integers. So when I want to raise the floor friction level when not pressing a key, my only option is to go from 2 to 3. I can't try 2.5 or 2.25. This also will be fixed eventually, since floating point numbers will be a part of TMC's planned improvements to the script interpreter.
You could probably add a delay between integer increases so that it takes longer to get from 2 to 3.
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Bob the Hamster
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

Newbie Newtype wrote:You could probably add a delay between integer increases so that it takes longer to get from 2 to 3.
I actually do a few tricks like that already, like one-pixel events that only happen on even ticks. That works, but it can get awkward.
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Post by TwirlySocrates »

Wow! A whole new forum?
Is this just a secret place that people go when not at castle paradox?

Anyways: I got pretty good at attacking by learning where the bell would swing if I jumped in such and such a way.

If the bell was behind me, and I hopped straight up, the bell would flick up and forwards.
To attack an enemy in front of me, I would jump close in front of them, and then jump back - the bell would connect, while I escape harm.

By the way: It's kinda cool how the bell attaches to those background bell rings. If you had it so that the bell swung more easily on those rings, that might be a neat attack. I could only ever get *maybe* 2 hits with that tactic - then I would have to retrieve the bell to get it swinging again, and it never seemed worth the effort/risk. If you could push the bell, or if it swung for longer, it would be worthwhile.

Sometimes I let an enemy follow close behind me, and I'd drag the bell into it. This felt like cheating.
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Post by The Wobbler »

TwirlySocrates wrote:Wow! A whole new forum?
Is this just a secret place that people go when not at castle paradox?
This forum's been around since 2007, it's not really new. It was created partially because Castle Paradox is slow as dirt and has terrible uptime.
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Post by Skullduggery Studios »

@Surlaw and TwirlySocrates: :D

@Everybody else: Bell of Chaos was pretty good, but I got a little irritated by a few things:

1. As Meatballsub mentioned, the bell disappearing with save/reload.

2. Enemies hiding right at the edge of the screen just out of view (I don't know if that's a bug or if they're supposed to do that, but it got on my nerves)

3. I still don't know what the golden rings at random places on the walls are for. My brother said he hung the bell on one once, but he's got no clue how he did it. A little more description would be nice.

4. Maybe you could make more than one temple? (think Mario: 'The princess isn't here, mario. Try another castle!'... Just, not as irritating)

And maybe a few more enemies. If you can't do this, that's fine. I think the game is awesome anyways. But it would be nice...
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Only One In All
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Post by Only One In All »

It took me a while, but I found that tossing the bell and then jumping over the enemy and tossing it again worked best as far as attacking goes.
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