Sister's wedding
Dance With Me as performed by Paul Wilbur
Hi all. There's been one big event in life for me this month, which was of course my older sister's wedding (the above song was used for the couple's first dance). She arranged the ceremony and the reception as basically a single event, with the guests sitting at tables and getting a buffet dinner right after the I-dos. I myself was tasked with running a game room after the dinner to keep the little kids occupied, and that turned out quite chaotic. X) I had about a dozen kids in there, and I kept having to move from one station to another as they finished rounds of whatever they were playing and wanted help starting the next one. One of the stations I set up was a Dance-Dance Revolution-like that lets you use your own music CDs, which proved much beloved by a few of the kids, although I don't think they were matching the steps as well as they thought. X)
This month in Forgotten Gates progress has been mostly about filling out the battle banter system. Some of that was coding -- importantly, I updated the system to check for some common constructed key name possibilities like 'AubreyFightAnyBerserk' so that I don't need to write special code for every skill and situation that might crop up. Mostly, though, it's just been a matter of coming up with the texts, and I'm still nowhere near done -- I've only written banter for 5 of the 12 currently playable heroes, and it's only been what they say/do when they act, not reactions they have to being attacked or getting buffed by their allies. Surprising how long it can take on average to come up with a bunch of little quips. X) Xu was an especially big (though rewarding) challenge because her Song ability involves 6 songs * 5 effects/song = 30 effects, and I decided to do little 2-line poems for them. Here's a few gems for example:
Sacred Verse:
Xu sings, o/~ Be purified by sacred song,
O you who devise to do wrong! o/~
Explosion:
Xu sings, o/~ Fire's good for simple doom,
Just make your target go BOOM! o/~
Thorn Lash:
Xu sings, o/~ Thorny branches, whip and rake,
Ambush like a striking snake! o/~
Healing Rain:
Xu sings, o/~ Wash over us, O gentle rain,
Cleanse away our battle's pain. o/~
Fleeting Shadow:
Xu sings, o/~ Fleeting shadow, soft and swift,
Lend us your unnatural gift! o/~
Mental Clash:
Xu sings, o/~ Push 'till one side goes insane,
Let's see who has the stronger brain! o/~
On Zelda RPG, Gatu is displaying a little reluctance to give up the Master Sword now that he's done the whole cleansing of Lake Hylia thing. e.e; There was some OOC discussion about it, and he said he'd like to be the one to give it back to Link. Not sure where this will go from here.
Toodee and Topdee:
Yet another Humble Bundle game. This one came from a platformer bundle, which is a slight stretch because the main conceit is that you're constantly switching between 2D platforming and top-down free movement. Toodee and Topdee is a puzzle game about getting two video game characters designed for different worlds to the goal point when their worlds merge. Toodee is a platformer hero who runs side-to-side and jumps, while Topdee is a top-down hero who walks on what appears to Toodee to be the background wall of the stage. Together, they fight crimesearch for the missing semicolon!
It's kind of hard to describe much more than that about the game. X) Topdee can pick up blocks or push them around, which often is useful for creating platforms for Toodee. Toodee can walk straight past chasms in Topdee's world (they're just background to him after all) and get rid of crumbly platforms that are impassible walls to Topdee. There's plenty of other special mechanics that get introduced throughout the game of course, but it would be quite a chore to catalogue them. Story-wise, there isn't too much going on; you're told a tale about a creator making a bunch of (game) worlds, with a semicolon in the center to keep everything in harmony, then the creator's assistant stealing that semicolon when he realized there'd be no use for him anymore once the worlds are working properly. Lots of programmer in-jokes -- a missing semicolon is a common source of difficult-to-understand bugs, for example.
While I like the premise and I think there are plenty of clever puzzles in this game, I do think the action requirement in the later stages gets a bit too strict. Toodee and Topdee are each intangible and thus invulnerable while you're not controlling them, which is good, but it means you have to be careful not to switch to one when they're in a hazardous situation -- a fact that is increasingly exploited as a source of difficulty in the boss fights. The final world of the game consists of stages where you're pursued by a devouring void, and thus you not only need to figure out how to solve the puzzles, but execute your solution with very little time to spare, and make sure you don't leave one of your heroes too far behind. I'm okay with a little bit of tricky execution in an action-puzzle game, but stacking an unforgiving time limit on it such that you end up having to rush through it and you don't get to see the full stage at once takes it too far.
Bottom line? If you like action-puzzle games with original mechanical twists, Toodee and Topdee may be worth checking out, but be forewarned that it gets quite difficult toward the end, and not just in a cerebral way.
Click to viewHi all. There's been one big event in life for me this month, which was of course my older sister's wedding (the above song was used for the couple's first dance). She arranged the ceremony and the reception as basically a single event, with the guests sitting at tables and getting a buffet dinner right after the I-dos. I myself was tasked with running a game room after the dinner to keep the little kids occupied, and that turned out quite chaotic. X) I had about a dozen kids in there, and I kept having to move from one station to another as they finished rounds of whatever they were playing and wanted help starting the next one. One of the stations I set up was a Dance-Dance Revolution-like that lets you use your own music CDs, which proved much beloved by a few of the kids, although I don't think they were matching the steps as well as they thought. X)
This month in Forgotten Gates progress has been mostly about filling out the battle banter system. Some of that was coding -- importantly, I updated the system to check for some common constructed key name possibilities like 'AubreyFightAnyBerserk' so that I don't need to write special code for every skill and situation that might crop up. Mostly, though, it's just been a matter of coming up with the texts, and I'm still nowhere near done -- I've only written banter for 5 of the 12 currently playable heroes, and it's only been what they say/do when they act, not reactions they have to being attacked or getting buffed by their allies. Surprising how long it can take on average to come up with a bunch of little quips. X) Xu was an especially big (though rewarding) challenge because her Song ability involves 6 songs * 5 effects/song = 30 effects, and I decided to do little 2-line poems for them. Here's a few gems for example:
Sacred Verse:
Xu sings, o/~ Be purified by sacred song,
O you who devise to do wrong! o/~
Explosion:
Xu sings, o/~ Fire's good for simple doom,
Just make your target go BOOM! o/~
Thorn Lash:
Xu sings, o/~ Thorny branches, whip and rake,
Ambush like a striking snake! o/~
Healing Rain:
Xu sings, o/~ Wash over us, O gentle rain,
Cleanse away our battle's pain. o/~
Fleeting Shadow:
Xu sings, o/~ Fleeting shadow, soft and swift,
Lend us your unnatural gift! o/~
Mental Clash:
Xu sings, o/~ Push 'till one side goes insane,
Let's see who has the stronger brain! o/~
On Zelda RPG, Gatu is displaying a little reluctance to give up the Master Sword now that he's done the whole cleansing of Lake Hylia thing. e.e; There was some OOC discussion about it, and he said he'd like to be the one to give it back to Link. Not sure where this will go from here.
Toodee and Topdee:
Yet another Humble Bundle game. This one came from a platformer bundle, which is a slight stretch because the main conceit is that you're constantly switching between 2D platforming and top-down free movement. Toodee and Topdee is a puzzle game about getting two video game characters designed for different worlds to the goal point when their worlds merge. Toodee is a platformer hero who runs side-to-side and jumps, while Topdee is a top-down hero who walks on what appears to Toodee to be the background wall of the stage. Together, they fight crimesearch for the missing semicolon!
It's kind of hard to describe much more than that about the game. X) Topdee can pick up blocks or push them around, which often is useful for creating platforms for Toodee. Toodee can walk straight past chasms in Topdee's world (they're just background to him after all) and get rid of crumbly platforms that are impassible walls to Topdee. There's plenty of other special mechanics that get introduced throughout the game of course, but it would be quite a chore to catalogue them. Story-wise, there isn't too much going on; you're told a tale about a creator making a bunch of (game) worlds, with a semicolon in the center to keep everything in harmony, then the creator's assistant stealing that semicolon when he realized there'd be no use for him anymore once the worlds are working properly. Lots of programmer in-jokes -- a missing semicolon is a common source of difficult-to-understand bugs, for example.
While I like the premise and I think there are plenty of clever puzzles in this game, I do think the action requirement in the later stages gets a bit too strict. Toodee and Topdee are each intangible and thus invulnerable while you're not controlling them, which is good, but it means you have to be careful not to switch to one when they're in a hazardous situation -- a fact that is increasingly exploited as a source of difficulty in the boss fights. The final world of the game consists of stages where you're pursued by a devouring void, and thus you not only need to figure out how to solve the puzzles, but execute your solution with very little time to spare, and make sure you don't leave one of your heroes too far behind. I'm okay with a little bit of tricky execution in an action-puzzle game, but stacking an unforgiving time limit on it such that you end up having to rush through it and you don't get to see the full stage at once takes it too far.
Bottom line? If you like action-puzzle games with original mechanical twists, Toodee and Topdee may be worth checking out, but be forewarned that it gets quite difficult toward the end, and not just in a cerebral way.