Crystal Towers 2 - I'm doing it

[davidn]

And this hub level map is... quite big (it may be a spoiler, or alternatively some much-needed help).

I think it might be time to give it a last run through, touch up the graphics and annoyances, boot it out into the world, and try to stick to projects that are more feasible from now on.

Comments

[kjorteo]

Is that a Heavenly reference in the order selection? I'm going to assume it is, because the ZZT one is painfully obvious. And the color scheme and emblem picture for Royal Creed reminds me a lot of Masterspy, though I'm not sure what the name would have to do with that. And Recloaks is probably the biggest unintentional Order of the Stick reference (since I know you don't read it) since Girard Drake in my novel.

Actually, if the order selection is meant to be full of references everywhere like that, then I will mark the incredibly obvious missed opportunity to call the black one Midnight Crew one of the many reasons it's too bad you don't read Homestuck....

[davidn]

I didn't know what you meant at first, because it's been so long since I actually put this screen together (I deactivated it for the demo and forgot to put it back in for over a year) - but on checking, yes! As it happens, I got a Masterspy feel when doing that other icon as well, but I can't quite say why.

Midnight Crew is actually a better name than Night Shift, anyway, so I could change that one. I'm not starting reading Homestuck, though, because it's eight thousand pages long and I need to finish this first!

I also see, after however long it's been, that having it in screenshot form lets me suddenly see that the tooltip for that screen is wrong.

[kjorteo]

3,718 pages as of the two-year anniversary on 4/13, with a little more since then being added in at what mostly works out to a rough average pace of about three a day. Of course, the problem with an archive binge is the pages are so irregular in size--you could just as easily plow through hundreds of them in one sitting if relatively little is going on as you could get through about ten or twenty in the same time if the associated chat logs are particularly long, or one if you're exploring one of those particularly huge interactive ones. And it's definitely worth it, but I understand wanting to get other major projects out of the way first, so just take my recommendation and do with it as you will. :)

And I think what gives that icon the Masterspy feel is it's almost the exact same color scheme as the center hub room and almost has the same + shaped hallway intersection look to it (depending on how you look at it) which is why I asked if that was a deliberate, since it would be at least the third deliberate reference I see in that if it is.

Oh, and speaking of references, I hope you don't mind that everyone (including me) will be reading the info on the second third (I can count!) screenshot in a Solid Snake voice.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

Dammit, Teo, you beat me to the Solid Snake thing. :P

David, this looks amazing! The amount of work is evident just from a glance at the hub map. (I take it the... floating teal section in the upper right is how you handle places only reachable by teleport, so you don't have to make an entirely new map for it?) I've always loved looking at level designs like this; the first video game I ever played (Repton 3 on the BBC Micro, way back at the tender age of three) came with a level editor, so a large part of my formative years were spent looking at how different things look from far away compared to when you're immersed in them, and learning how co-ordinates worked so I could see how level maps fitted together, and so on.

Now... any chance of anyone you know doing a Linux translation so I can play it? :P

D.F.

[davidn]

Well, thank you :) It's often quite surprising to look at maps like this that you normally only see up close, with a very limited viewport - they can look very different when you can suddenly see all of them. I might have said before that I looked to the Sonic 2 levels for inspiration, to see how they were fitted together, and was surprised to find that they... weren't, really. But you as the player just don't see all the repeated tiles and tiles off in nowhere with nothing around them, because you have such a limited view of the area.

I think that my fascination with level editors (particularly for an Amstrad PC game called Construct that I'm yet to rediscover) fuelled my love for game design, and coding in general, today :) You're right that the roof section at the top right is only ever accessible by teleporter, and is part of the same layout to avoid having to swap between levels. However, all the other levels are in their own frames with their own sets of events - something which I can tell you from experience I will never, ever do again.

From what I can remember of MMF EXEs, it should work without issues under WINE. Otherwise, you're on your own (but you moved to Linux - you should be used to this by now!)