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[Kamani]

Great! I better get working more on my current project so I can start taking advantage of this.

Edit: You now get a memento at the end of the treasure dungeon. Still won't take you anywhere, but at least you will be able to use it in the future?

And, more serious issue. In my Shadow Mage fight, kind of randomly, my Shadow Mage will stop teleporting. When it casts the duplication spell (which force teleports it), then it starts again as normal. On the bright side, I got the multiply skill done, so I probably just need to rebalance then test it. I'm probably going to put it into an easy to access public world, so that other people can try it. But that stop teleporting issue is kind of ruining it. Any clue what could be wrong? I just can't figure it out.

[IndigoFenix]

Pretty nice boss there.  I didn't have a chance to go over it thoroughly, but it looks like whenever the bug occurs its tx and ty values point to a solid tile.  So probably something's wrong with the update function that is supposed to make it avoid solid tiles.

Also it looks like you have safe.solid where it should be safe._solid.  That's probably the problem.

Since you have a function for warping, you might want to just point the update to that function instead of having two copies of the same thing.

In general, it's a good idea to put movement functions as techniques - if a sprite tries to use two movement functions at once, it will likely go very glitchy.  Techniques are programmed to automatically cancel other techniques when used, and you can force an object to use a technique inside a function.  Fortunately since the only movement the Shadow Mage has is teleporting, and all of its functions take place in a single frame, that probably shouldn't be an issue.

I've made a few minor changes.  Fixed an issue with hitbox conditions, added max values for items, and added in TP (tech points) in addition to MP; they're pretty much interchangeable but the basic intent is for TP to regenerate more quickly and be used for physical abilities while MP regenerates more slowly and is used for magic abilities.  The main reason for this is to add custom magic abilities (through items) without interfering with the player's base movement.  I'll make a few basic items and spells for coherency's sake.

[Kamani]

Thanks!

Oops.

Doesn't really matter in this case, but I'll remember it going forward. Edit: Ended up changing it anyways.

K.

Cool!

Sorry for the slow response. I posted earlier, but it crashed and I didn't notice.

Edit: Hmm. Still not working.

[IndigoFenix]

I looked it over again.  After a bit of fiddling, I did the following:

1. In the Warp function, placed the tx and ty calculations inside a _floor function.  {tx = _floor(@._tx - 15 + _rand * 30)}
2. Made the jump in the Warp function 0 frames.
3. Instead of calling the warp function directly, created a self-targeting technique that calls the warp function instead, and made the update function call the technique instead of the function.  The technique can be disabled if you don't want it to be used at random as well.
4. In the update function, made the health variable set to _hp only after using Warp, instead of every frame.  To set health initially, I also set health to _hp if health = 0.

All of these combined seem to fix it.  I'm not sure exactly where the issue is, if it's a logical error or something buggy in the program itself, but there you go.

Trying to fix up the sidescrolling/top-down physics again.  Not fun.  Not that programming is especially known for being particularly exciting in general, but I think I may have bit off more than I can chew with the whole blending two different physics systems together vision.  I may hold off on it for a while, since as cool as it might be in theory it isn't really the main point of the game, and world builders can just avoid the issue for now.

Thinking about a stacking status effect system to handle variable changes better.

[Kamani]

Okay. Thanks. Once dark Mage is done, that means I have a good amount done.

[IndigoFenix]

Added a feature that will make debugging much easier.  You can now edit an object's variables directly during gameplay through the info console.  This works the same as if you set it through a function.

[Kamani]

Cool!

I have temporarily added a public room that has a gate to go to the boss (or 6 other gates to use as a really lazily done warp hub, so people won't blunder into it and get trapped), so if anyone could tell me what they think of the boss, that would be extremely helpful (although they are designed to be very difficult without the sword (which will replace the slings for the duration of the fight. No easy wins). After I get some feedback (or after about two days), I am deleting the room and making the world closed until it is ready to actually be released. Thank you.

[IndigoFenix]

Nice!

So on the Shadow Mage.  Quite a challenge, took me several tries to beat (though to be fair, there's no way of getting the sword or the sling in its.  Definitely some nice concepts for a "trickster" type boss.  Teleporting is nice, shadow clones are cool.  Turning the player black as well is a nice touch (although, if the player doppelgangers are copies of the original doppelganger object that may be a problem later - the player's graphic may change structure in the future).

I like the way that all of the copies turn black until only the real one is left alive, though there isn't much incentive to do so since by the time you kill all the clones he just makes some more, and it's always easy to tell which one is real once you've hit him once.  Maybe if he took extra damage when all clones were destroyed, there'd be a reason to hunt them down.

Were you planning on making a "boss HP" bar when that's implemented?  Fighting a boss with no way of knowing how close you are to winning can be frustrating.  Also, with the damage numbers hidden, there's no way for a new player to even know that he's taking damage.

The "everyone randomly teleports" effect is pretty frustrating.  It's easy to get hit there without any means of avoiding damage.

Also a small graphical effect for teleporting would make it look cooler.

All criticisms aside, it's a pretty nicely made boss.  Is he meant to be the final boss of the dungeon, or were you planning on a second half?

[Kamani]

Thanks!

I’ll change the shadow doppelgangers as needed.

I’ll do that. Making them take more damage (and possibly enabling a healthbar? It would be interesting if the health bar only showed while they were weak) with no clones would give that a reason (excepting the already present reason of ending up with like 14 clones (although, for lag concerns, I might make them max at 7 (possibly by making old copies self-destruct, potentially damaging the player)).

I’ll add one, once implemented, possibly in the way of the idea listed in the previous text block.

Is there a way to set present mp instead of max mp? If so, I could set present mp to 0 on create, causing a ~2 second pause (can’t recall the exact numbers). Either that, or I’ll just set skills to be delayed by an update timer.

What kind of graphical effect would work well? I haven’t used really any so far.

There will be a second half, I think. Shadow Mage is the over dramatic second to the actual guardian, Spids (Yes, I am a pretty awful at names). The final boss will be longer (so it will also do less damage), and use a greater variety of skills. Also, I need to look for a giant spider sprite (because upsizing too much will look bad.

[IndigoFenix]

You can set starting mp by simply setting _mp in the _create function.

Not much point in only showing a health bar when weak.  The point is so that the player can feel that they are progressing.  Any form of progression will do though - changing color or becoming noticeably more difficult can give a sense of progress if you don't want to do health bars.  Maybe increase MP regeneration as the boss takes damage, letting them throw more fireballs?

By the way, if you're trying to limit on-screen objects the "max spawns" parameter helps.  Every object has a "spawn value"; projectiles and created objects with the "create as spawn" box checked add this value to their "parent".  By setting the max spawn value for the tech that creates the projectiles, you can make sure that they won't use the technique if they still have a given number of surviving "children".

[Kamani]

Okay.

That would work. Although I think it might also show a healthbar that switches color when it is weak (to indicate the increased damage).

That would work, but I want some kind of effect for not defeating them.

Edit: Realizing that I forgot to add the item to treasure dungeon after making it, I went back, but whatever changes I made instantly unmade themselves even after I turned BoundWorlds off and on. Also, I can't determine why it isn't working. The former issue will probably go away by a few hours (like last time), but the latter makes no sense. The Checked function checks a variable, and, if it is 0, displays one set of text (otherwise, it displays a different one), and the Create function sets the variable to 0. I would check it using the new variable in game testing thing, but with the annoying glitch, testing doesn't seem reliable. In other words, I'll check in a few hours to see if I can figure it out, but currently, it makes no sense.

[IndigoFenix]

I'll check out the issue.

I added persistent rooms, that save when you exit and return.  Leaving a world (or opening the world builder) resets all persistent rooms.  You can also unload them through a function.

Use them sparingly though.  Storing large amounts of data may cause bugs on some computers.

I also made it possible to resize the bounding box for images by clicking and dragging its corners.  Should make it a bit easier to set item images.

EDIT: Okay, it seems that the issue with not saving is related to the persistent rooms.  Did you make the rooms persistent on purpose?  None of them have any reason to be.
To get or set an item of the player, use {@.$itemname} (seems useless for now, but other entities will be able to use items later.)
Also, I accidentally forgot to make -1 max infinite for items.  That's fixed now.
You might also want to give Elan and Alend unique textbox colors to serve as their "voices".  Don't know what's up with the all-white textbox... Oh, also you can make a textbox transparent by just typing "transparent" into the color selector, if that's what you were trying to make.
I'll figure out the issue with saving persistent rooms.

[Kamani]

Thanks!

I thought that the persistent room button in the room menu made rooms persistent?

Good to know.

Edit: Okay, the issue is different than I thought. I loaded the Treasure Dungeon world in the world editor, edited an object, exited the object menu, saved, checked the edit menu again (the changes were still there), loaded the room with the testing button, and my changes weren't present. I checked the object menu again, and the changes were gone. The issue is still present for me, at least in the treasure dungeon map.

[IndigoFenix]

The persistent room option basically means that the room will not be reloaded when you exit and return, unless you go to a different world.  Useful if you want enemies to stay defeated, items to remain collected, or puzzles to stay solved.  Oh, I guess that's why you wanted the rooms to be persistent.

I guess I'm just a bit paranoid because my computer is prone to crashing when memory use is strained.  It probably won't be an issue for most people.  Even so, making rooms persistent should be considered a less-than-ideal situation in most circumstances; it's better to store persistent information as items or _world variables.  I'll probably make a better option for individual objects at some point (like an option that automatically stores whether or not a particular object was destroyed, so you don't have to store the whole room).

Yeah there's something weird going on with the Treasure Dungeon and I don't think it's just persistence.  Still working on it.

EDIT: Turns out it was persistence after all.  (Even after turning off persistence, the "stored" room still was persistent so it was loading that instead.)  It's fixed now.

[Kamani]

Okay. Thanks! Glad I should be able to finish that for now.

Edit: Done.

More problematically, spring jumping in front of things like the smaller rock in chicken rock leads to some annoying visuals.