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Episode 1 Release Candidate

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SAJewers
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Episode 1 Release Candidate

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Axon
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Axon »

In the tutorial:
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I would highly recommend adding a reset pipe in case the player doesn't have a key.
Furthermore, I would also recommend that you make the key a stationary, respawning object. Otherwise, the key can just float freely to the left, and at some point things become more complicated; getting the key back on top of the pipe structure is not impossible, but not intuitive either. You're almost compelled to use a flying yoshi to carry it (I assume this defeats the purpose of the two ghosts you would otherwise spinjump on).
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by SAJewers »

Oh right; i forgot to fix that.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Axon »

On the world 1 overworld:

While the path after Remakes Are So Cliche is building (first time you beat the level), some spaces with no tiles (a black spot) are briefly visible in the bottom left corner.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Voltgloss »

Should a new Google Doc be created to log bugs/issues found for this release candidate? Or should we continue to use the Google Doc from beta testing? Either way, perhaps we should link to what we're using in the intro post for this thread.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Voltgloss »

I see that the Tutorial no longer has you automatically run right to the finish in its final segment, nor does the victory jingle play. Is that intentional? If so, perhaps the level's music should still continue in that final segment? As it stands now, without the victory jingle, the final "congratulations you completed the tutorial" segment is in dead silence, which is weirdly offputting.

EDIT: Not only does the victory jingle not play, but because the final segment isn't automated, the player can exit the tutorial by going off the right side of the screen - not entering the castle. The result? The prologue cutscenes never play.

Also, I see that the tutorial plays one note of its music - a low "bzrt" sound - right when the intro text about configuring controles (sic) is shown. But then there is silence until the level proper, and music proper, starts up. That never used to happen before - is there a way to revert so the music doesn't try to start until the level gets going? As it stands, that single low "brzt" is, again, weirdly offputting (especially as it's the very first thing a new player experiences from the game).
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Voltgloss »

Immediate thoughts on the Castle of No Significance:

- "no" should be capitalized on the overworld map

- Music is broken and doesn't play

- Do we really want to make all the hub areas from ASMBXT still available in the CoNS? They don't lead anywhere and risk thoroughly confusing a player who isn't familiar with ASMBXT. I suggest instead that all of the pipes in the CoNS, except the one relevant to this game, be closed off for various humorous reasons mentioned in the ancient text - perhaps callbacks to memorable spots in rao's ASMBXT playthrough. (For example: "World 1 - Closed due to rampant vine racing.") I'm happy to write such reasons for the other "worlds."

EDIT: The door to "A Terrible Level" in the CoNS World 2 zebraspace still works. And by "works" I mean "causes a runtime error and crashes the game."
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by SAJewers »

Voltgloss wrote:I see that the Tutorial no longer has you automatically run right to the finish in its final segment, nor does the victory jingle play. Is that intentional? If so, perhaps the level's music should still continue in that final segment? As it stands now, without the victory jingle, the final "congratulations you completed the tutorial" segment is in dead silence, which is weirdly offputting.

EDIT: Not only does the victory jingle not play, but because the final segment isn't automated, the player can exit the tutorial by going off the right side of the screen - not entering the castle. The result? The prologue cutscenes never play.

Also, I see that the tutorial plays one note of its music - a low "bzrt" sound - right when the intro text about configuring controles (sic) is shown. But then there is silence until the level proper, and music proper, starts up. That never used to happen before - is there a way to revert so the music doesn't try to start until the level gets going? As it stands, that single low "brzt" is, again, weirdly offputting (especially as it's the very first thing a new player experiences from the game).
That's definitely not intended, though it worked when I last tested it.
Voltgloss wrote:Immediate thoughts on the Castle of No Significance:

- "no" should be capitalized on the overworld map

- Music is broken and doesn't play

- Do we really want to make all the hub areas from ASMBXT still available in the CoNS? They don't lead anywhere and risk thoroughly confusing a player who isn't familiar with ASMBXT. I suggest instead that all of the pipes in the CoNS, except the one relevant to this game, be closed off for various humorous reasons mentioned in the ancient text - perhaps callbacks to memorable spots in rao's ASMBXT playthrough. (For example: "World 1 - Closed due to rampant vine racing.") I'm happy to write such reasons for the other "worlds."

EDIT: The door to "A Terrible Level" in the CoNS World 2 zebraspace still works. And by "works" I mean "causes a runtime error and crashes the game."
Music works 100% fine here. As for the other suggestion, that's why I mention it in an NPC.
Voltgloss wrote:Should a new Google Doc be created to log bugs/issues found for this release candidate? Or should we continue to use the Google Doc from beta testing? Either way, perhaps we should link to what we're using in the intro post for this thread.
Someone can make a new one.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Axon »

Stuff:
- No music in castle of no significance (intentional?)
- The swimming sound has not been changed?
- When you enter the world 1 overworld for the second time, the player sprites is not well-aligned with the paths. This just looks weird, and lets you see a black space to the far left when on the tutorial & prologue level spot.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Doctor Shemp »

I can't confirm it myself due to the Episode 1 level pack refusing to download past 50% on my end, but previous sound problems have been caused by SAJewers choosing tracks with nonstandard sample rates. Make sure all sounds that are used are sampled at 44.1 kHz (44100 Hz). SAJ has previously used rips from old games that used lower sample rates to save space but not every codec can play them. If they're MP3s, they should also have a constant bitrate of 128 or 192 kbps. Nothing else will work on every computer.

As I may not be able to download the level pack, if someone could host the offending files in question somewhere else I could resample them at the correct rate.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by SAJewers »

That shouldn't be the case because I reconverted it. It is a 44.1kHz mp3.
Axon wrote:Stuff:
- No music in castle of no significance (intentional?)
- The swimming sound has not been changed?
- When you enter the world 1 overworld for the second time, the player sprites is not well-aligned with the paths. This just looks weird, and lets you see a black space to the far left when on the tutorial & prologue level spot.
Swimming sound should be changed. It was changed on my end.

Are you sure on the third one? I didn't see any problems when I tested it. Maybe I forgot to copy the changes over?
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Joseph Staleknight »

Okay, I downloaded the RC and went through the map's pathing, stopping by some levels casually (since I want to get a feel for this edition before playing it legit). I thought the implementation of switch blocks for the worlds was very neat, since it reduced the visual clutter and made it more intuitive where you were going to head. However, the end-cutscene check messages got a little annoying with each super leek gained. I hope that wasn't intentional, otherwise I can imagine the player's frustration dealing with those messages. In other affairs, I really appreciated the implementation of the life farm pad in the hub since it's very much needed when stepping outside without guarantee of coming back without the super leek.

Now then, there's a couple issues I found while tracing the map's pathing:
  • In worlds 5, 6 and 8 (and maybe 7?), Demo's doesn't land on the right tile when entering the world, meaning the previous world's music plays until the player finds the actual start.
  • When I go back to world 1 after going through Zebraspace, the PC is no longer aligned to the tile grid. (I'm pretty sure Axon had the same problem as well.)
Finally, I noticed that a few of the songs were broken in the levels (probably for the reasons Dr. Shemp said previously). At the moment, I only checked my own levels and CoNS (and found Curtain Tortoise was one of the levels affected), but I plan on going through the others to see where else the music won't play.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by SAJewers »

OK, it's plainly Obvious that I didn't copy over the changes to the HUB. Here's an update that should address all the mentioned problems: http://www.mediafire.com/download/wf6nw ... _Update.7z

JS: I just checked the music for your level, it's a 44.1kHz, 192kbps song.

Axon: I'll upload a fixed Base Game with the new swim sound some time later.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Voltgloss »

Doctor Shemp wrote:I can't confirm it myself due to the Episode 1 level pack refusing to download past 50% on my end, but previous sound problems have been caused by SAJewers choosing tracks with nonstandard sample rates. Make sure all sounds that are used are sampled at 44.1 kHz (44100 Hz). SAJ has previously used rips from old games that used lower sample rates to save space but not every codec can play them. If they're MP3s, they should also have a constant bitrate of 128 or 192 kbps. Nothing else will work on every computer.
The music file for the CoNS has a bitrate of 123 kbps. I'm guessing that's the problem? Never mind. SAJewers' update has a new music file with 192 kbps bitrate. Going to test now.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Voltgloss »

Just found an amusing bug: If you clear World 1's intro level while wearing a cape, the cutscene immediately afterwards never ends (because wearing a cape messes with the automated script bringing Demo out of the level). This can be fixed by using lunadll to filter you to big Demo (no other powerups) when the cutscene starts.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Axon »

In Nice and Easy, the two boxes near the "Get Leaf" sign don't actually give leaves, making the level unbeatable unless you already have a leaf.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by SAJewers »

Thanks, I'll fix that later.
Axon wrote:In Nice and Easy, the two boxes near the "Get Leaf" sign don't actually give leaves, making the level unbeatable unless you already have a leaf.
I knew stuff like this would happen. I made it so that LunaDLL would force those boxes to give powerups. That got reverted because sturg was working with old copies of lunadll.txt. I'll fix that.

EDIT: OK, I made those fixes: http://www.mediafire.com/download/wf6nw ... _Update.7z

EDIT2: If someone want to make a trailer, go right ahead.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Voltgloss »

Even with both updates, the music in the CoNS still does not play for me.

EDIT: I've gone back to check, and the music in the CoNS worked in all other versions prior to this release candidate. I see that's because an entirely new music file has been put in to replace the old Giana Sisters music that was being used (up until now). Can we go back to the music that was in place before this release candidate was issued?
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Doctor Shemp »

The music in the CoNS doesn't work for me either.
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Axon »

More stuff:
-typo: on the world 4 overworld beginning spot, "difficulty" is spelled with 2 "l"s
-for the world 4 intro level: This is really weird; the game triggers what sounds like a Windows sound effect every few seconds (when the game is not paused). Maybe something is wrong with the lunadll file.
-during the "Loading" screen after Johnson McCain and the Communists, if you jump repeatedly and try moving around, there's a certain chance that you won't get the leek. This probably also applies to all super-leek level where the player is not frozen.
-during the eow4 cutscene, when Demo & friends get abducted, the reserve powerup drops, causing Demo to disappear (if it's a fire flower or a christmas tree).

Also, is it just me or are the volumes of the music of The good, the bad and the stupid and Johnson McCain and the Communists (outside) a bit low compared to the default music and sounds?
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Kil »

Apparently that intro4 level is trying to play rain.wav, but there is no rain.wav in the folder. I guess it's letting windows play whatever rain.wav it wants, which is a really bad idea because it's going to be different for everyone
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Doctor Shemp »

It's odd that some MP3s aren't playing when they're in standard bitrates. Could their incorporation in that M3U file be messing with the system in some way?
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by SAJewers »

Axon wrote: -during the "Loading" screen after Johnson McCain and the Communists, if you jump repeatedly and try moving around, there's a certain chance that you won't get the leek. This probably also applies to all super-leek level where the player is not frozen.
It's set to repeatedly run that event every fraction of a second. Odd.

See if this fixes the music in CoNS: http://www.mediafire.com/download/wf6nw ... _Update.7z

EDIT: If it still doesn't work, here's the original song, if someone can make it work: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Chris ... seed64__19#
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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by Willhart »

SAJewers wrote:See if this fixes the music in CoNS: http://www.mediafire.com/download/wf6nw ... _Update.7z
This one works for me.

The postgame door text makes it a bit dificult to enter the pipe above it. It's in the first room of the CoNS.

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Re: Episode 1 Release Candidate

Post by raocow »

tomorrow will be the last vide of a2mt, followed by 8 days of something. If you guys would like a few extra more days please tell me!
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