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Message: 5931

Author: Alexandra

Date: 13/10/2006

Subject: Re: Death TV v0.3... Andrew's fourth playtest

 

[64] "teleportation manifestation": The cyan VG looks as though its
sprite-page were unintentionally overwritten. You can't take the
lower-left exit because you can't jump between the two stationary
guardians.

[65] "what's that smell?": It's nice to see the skeletons from
Willy's Afterlife making an appearance! A vicious challenge of HGs
which go beyond the edges of their platforms, so you can't just
stand in at the very edge of the platform to avoid them - you have
to jump up, at the risk of collision with the HGs above!
You can reach this room by going left from "teleportation
manifestation" [64], but I guess the intention is that you enter at
the bottom-left and exit at the top-right (although the toughest
challenge is to cross the lower half of the room from right to left).

These rooms have all been copied in the raw straight out of the JSW128
version of Death TV.

[66] "nightmare world": An atmospheric reinterpretation of "moorhtaB
ehT" from _ylliW teS teJ_! :-) Not much point to it as it stands
though, and the unidirectional fish looks out of place.

The fish will eventually be a flickering ghost and the wobbling
floor-guy is meant to be a red toilet with a claw coming out of it,
making this room more of an atmosphere-definer than anything else.

[68] "thirty-one seconds..": What does the room-title mean? The
bottom can only be crossed from left to right, but it's actually
more interesting to cross it from right to left - except that you
cannot avoid the leftmost HG.
The sloshing-water sprite is probably unintentional, but I
actually think it looks quite good just as it is!

31 seconds is a soundbyte/sample used in some old hardcore/rave tune.
These room names are all from "Where's Woody" since DTV was written
over it.

And no I'm not leaving the water sprite in there :) It's too abstract
since I'm going for some degree of (sur)realism in this game.

[69] "you're going down": An atmospheric room. In the DTV2_taster
revision of 13th May 2005, the blue VG sprite is most intriguing -
is it some weird creature playing a harp, or just random data
interpreted as sprites?

The latter I'm afraid.

I like the way you have to jump into an overhead Earth-cell to
walk left into the ground...

|..--||

---|..--||
----WW|--|
||--WW---|
||--||--||
...but there's no reward for this (such as an item at (13,12) or
(13,13)). The items didn't get copied over :) [70] "barrier": Is this a prequel to "barrier 2" in strangel?
This room kills you on entry because the stationary guardians
collide with Earth-cells.
Using a harmless-guardians POKE reveals that quirky stop-start
guardians effect that I still can't explain: it's not Rigor Mortis,
nor is it triggers, stoppers or switches (there are none in the
room), nor is it patch-vectors (both patch-vectors just point to
#869F: RET for this room and, I guess, all other rooms in DTV).

The start-stop effect is created when you have guardians after a
diagonal guardian. The successors in the list stop and start depending
on the direction of the DG.

[71] "dingefest": The colour-scheme for this room certainly isn't
dingy - it's very attractive apart from the corrupted guardian-
sprites! Guardian 4 is a green-ink VG with blank sprites (there are
also blank guardian-sprites in Rooms 64 and 69).
But you have to sacrifice a life after collecting the item:
......||
......||
......||
......||
..-..$||
.....-||
......||
........
........
......||
----||||

I can't remember what's up with that. I've revised it several times in
the past. Needless to say the final revision will be what I consider
the best solution :)

Since the majority of this world is set around a pyramid, perhaps
"Pyramid World" would be a more appropriate name. Radiohead renamed
"Egyptian Song" to "Pyramid Song" before its gamma-release, after
all!

That's a distinct possibility.

This is a very simple, yet hugely atmospheric world, which works
well on the outside edges of the pyramid, but the interior
definitely needs a lot of work. Yes - it's just empty :) In Rooms 79, 80, 81 and 89, the way the palm-tree cells (Cell-
classes 6 & 7) turn white when Willy passes through them is
unattractive. This could easily be rectified by changing the cell-
type from Air to Trap (JSWED v2.3.1 doesn't allow you to set a cell-
class's cell-type to Trap, but v2.2.9 does), if you don't mind the
quirky effect this has on Rooms 80 & 81 (viz. you fall through Traps
even if you're on a stand-onable cell).

Good idea with using traps, that's certainly something to bear in mind
in future. To prevent the quirky effect, I could just move some trees
so the strange interaction never arises.

Trap is a useful alternative to Air in aesthetic terms when the cell-
graphic contains INK-pixels.

That should go in my notes.

[79] "Egypt World": Is this supposed to be the start-room of Egypt
World? To my mind, that river is just crying out for a boat
(horizontal lift)!

If someone manages to endow me with horizontal lifts I will be more
than happy to incorporate some :)

Yes, this is intended to be the starting place for Egypt/Pyramid world.

[81] "Egypt World": Will the big hole inside the pyramid be
reachable, or is it just Forbidden Holy Ground? (to the right
is "What game is this from? I DONO" [90]).

It's all supposed to be reachable but this whole clump of rooms is
simply my first attempt at getting a good cluster of rooms for the
pyramid defined. As it is, a lot of space seems to be wasted with sky
and I'm tempted to replace the pyramid with a more sensibly shaped tomb.

[82] "Egypt World": I like the contrast of the 'hot' colours (bright
red and yellow) on the outside to the 'cool' colours (dull yellow
and black) on the inside, but the item is unreachable (to the right
is "Snooooop, bad doggy dogg!!!!!!!!" [91]).

Those little chambers aren't set in stone (despite appearances ;).
Eventually of course there will be a way to explore the inside of the
pytamid - I was thinking of making the player have to climb over the
'mid first and enter it from the right :)

[83] "Egypt World": The fast-crumbling cells are deceptive (thanks
for the invisible Fire-cells in the top-row that prevent infinite
death!). They're a bit blocky and unattractive, though - a cell-
graphic such as the following...
########
########
........ INK 2
........ PAPER 0
######## BRIGHT 1
........ FLASH 0
########
########
...would make the screen both more attractive and more deceptive (it
looks the same as Water, but an observant player should spot that it
is two pixel-rows lower) upon entry, if you don't mind the look of
the ghosts (which have the same colour-attribute and behaviour as
Air once the bottom two pixel-rows are gone).

Personally I can't stand ghosts but it's a real shame because it
eliminates some initially very attractive cell-patterns (i.e Willy in
Transatlantic Cruise).

[84] "Egypt World": Clearly this room needs a lot of work before the
items in Room 85 will be reachable. As it stands, I think it's
unattractive that the Water-cells have the same PAPER-colour inside
the pyramid as outside.

Very much so! Looks like I'll have to use cell class 7 which is
currently an unused Air as another type of platform. But then I will
not be able to have any ramps on the interior here, or any other types
of cell like Conveyors or Fire. This is what is trying to lead me to
the idea that this whole Pyramid thing is untenable.

[85]
I don't like the way Willy inverts over the Ramp BBBBBB cells, which
aesthetically should have the same colour-attribute. I've faced this
issue several times already with Ramp / and BBBBBB cells in Advanced
MM/JSW Trainer (AMJT), and my patch to reset cells' FLASH-bits (see
Message 5757) has proved to be a useful solution.

I've come to accept this little graphical problem. It's certainly not
as evil (to my sense of aesthetic justice) as things such as
crumble-ghosts and the like.

The patch to reset FLASH-bits, as presented in Message 5757,
has the disadvantage of overwriting the "extra-life colour-cycling"
(used by JSW64 when collecting items in bonus-rooms). AMJT doesn't
overwrite this code - it calls a subroutine instead, which you have
to find space for in your memory-map. But AMJT's patch also draws my
chequered cell-grid, which is more than you'd want for DTV, i.e.
half the solution is in Message 5757, the other half in TECHNICA.TXT
of AMJT.
You probably wouldn't want to apply this patch /globally/ in
DTV, because of the flashing Fire-cells in Rooms such as "Miner
World" [16]. So you could use the room-setup patch-vector to 'poke'
the call to the subroutine on or off on a room-by-room basis (cf.
Message 5783). (Note to self: Or would the subroutine actually work
as a main-loop patch-vector?)

That sounds highly desirable. There are other rooms in this and other
games where this would be very useful!

Unless you're hell-bent on not slowing the game down at all in
rooms which don't need to call the subroutine, you wouldn't even
need a default room-setup vector - just one subroutine to turn the
patch on in rooms such as [85] which have flashing cell-classes (or
portals), and another to turn it off in rooms such as [16] where
FLASH is to be reset.
I'd be happy to help with coding this up - it's just a matter
of when I could find the time.

Thanks for the offer. I'll let you know when I've started working on
DTV again, which should be soon.

[89] "Egypt World": Going right takes you back to [84], which is
geographically inaccurate, and gives you a way back up the pyramid
which wouldn't be possible otherwise. Perhaps this room is where
you're supposed to leave Egypt World?

I'm undecided but that seems likely.

To be continued...

Sendy

 

 

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