Vampire: Curse of the night completed.

[Gzegzolka]

Originally Posted by nobody

Updated version 2 links in the first post. Play test done by hipoonios.

Changes:
Intro screen
Main tune
Some graphic touches
2 new enemies
Some bugs removed
Level 2 got bigger
Harder mode, less life, harder enemies
and more

New intro screen looks very professional and moody Nice use of colors. Old one feel like it was not best choice for NES-like style.
I do not mind main tune, I think it's okay.
I have noticed those graphic touches, great work Level 2 is now more colorful with new sections. Also new enemies are nice addition to bestiary.

I have noticed that it is possible to get improved knives on first stage and keep them to end of level 2, but on level 3 I have again my basic knives and need to search for this power up again.

On level 3 it is possible to take shortcut. Was it planed?
Nice solution to those pits with spikes.
I do not mind changing energy bar to lives counter. It's not hard because zombies and other demons, but because of backbone engine and how it affect control and collision detection. If You do not mark perfect jump You can be sure You will slip from edge and fall down. Also throwing and jumping is bad idea.
I hate those floating medusa heads, they are too hard to hit and I often just crouch and let them pass above me.
It was good idea to add bats to boss fight rooms now it feels bit more dynamic. In my opinion first boss Medusa got too much health.

Do You have more plans for improvements? Like add some story description between levels and change those pictures to something that would better fit color palette. Maybe add picture to game ending so it will feel more rewarding.

[nobody]

Originally Posted by Gzegzolka

New intro screen looks very professional and moody Nice use of colors. Old one feel like it was not best choice for NES-like style.
I do not mind main tune, I think it's okay.
I have noticed those graphic touches, great work Level 2 is now more colorful with new sections. Also new enemies are nice addition to bestiary.

I have noticed that it is possible to get improved knives on first stage and keep them to end of level 2, but on level 3 I have again my basic knives and need to search for this power up again.

On level 3 it is possible to take shortcut. Was it planed?
Nice solution to those pits with spikes.
I do not mind changing energy bar to lives counter. It's not hard because zombies and other demons, but because of backbone engine and how it affect control and collision detection. If You do not mark perfect jump You can be sure You will slip from edge and fall down. Also throwing and jumping is bad idea.
I hate those floating medusa heads, they are too hard to hit and I often just crouch and let them pass above me.
It was good idea to add bats to boss fight rooms now it feels bit more dynamic. In my opinion first boss Medusa got too much health.

Do You have more plans for improvements? Like add some story description between levels and change those pictures to something that would better fit color palette. Maybe add picture to game ending so it will feel more rewarding.

glad you liked the changes.
about questions:
-there is no way to get the good weapon in level 1, i think you finished it and restarted so you keep the weapon. In level 3 i had to put a weapon in start because of a bug that player was not shooting but i solved it.
-about shortcut i know what you mean you fall from the platform that you have to make a perfect jump and went to teleport. It was not made in purpose but i found it ok so i left it.
About level of difficulty i could make it much harder by making the bats faster and energy less and only 1 chest per level or nothing. But the fast bats break the gameplay in later levels so it was better keeping slow and was very short on disk to add more objects.
About further improvements maybe something will happen later, we will see. But is extremely short on disk space to add more things, i would have to remove enemies or some screens completely (or compress?)

PS as Koji Igarashi said some time a good balanced game/boss is a game where is possible to finish without loosing
this means maximum difficulty until a very good player can finish without loosing

[Gzegzolka]

My bad I get better dagger by killing one of flying medusa heads on swamp level. Hipponis kill it too, but do not pick it up on his video playthrough. I manage to kill it on platform.
Fast bats (or even dogs and medusa heads too) could be cool idea if only player could toss his daggers fast too and controls were better (but it's backbone so I have no hope for fixing that without someone re-write backbone engine).
For me difficulty is okay, I wouldn't change it. As I say most problems got source in backbone, not Your work and design with is superb in my opinion

Have You think about leaving disk version and focus on only HD one where You will not be restricted by limited disk size? Or break game and make every level per one floppy disk?

[nobody]

Yes i noticed it is possible to take the dagger in lvl 2 but very hard to. Consider this a mistake.

It could be possible to redesign the game from the scratch as a HD version with better music, much more enemies - different per level and 15-20 levels or so but not anytime soon. Of course if i had a better engine i could do better things without slowdown because of 100 frames playing to fake a feature that is not there.

[viddi]

Fantastic work! Thank you very much.

[Predseda]

I hate those flying heads

[nobody]

Originally Posted by Predseda

I hate those flying heads

i like them it was a must import from Castlevania 3

[Predseda]

Not easy to avoid and almost impossible to shoot. I am looking forward to a trained version

[nobody]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Not easy to avoid and almost impossible to shoot. I am looking forward to a trained version

i can stop them and pass a version to you

[Predseda]

No, just gimme a better weapon, preferably a rapid spreadshoot

[nobody]

the idea is to be there to make the game harder, when you think you make a walk in the park these guys appear and make your life hard. But totally possible to kill them or pass them

[Lemming880]

Totally missed this. Nice to still see another BB game. Great graphics style.

[nobody]

not bad but not good enough because of backbone limitations in game mechanics. Hope you didn't missed Blocky Skies too, the best game the Amiga has seen this millenium

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?threadid=83205

[Lemming880]

I think I kept up with all pd games lately but this one slipped through. I like blocky skies but I'm pretty bad at it. But nice to see that indie retro graphics also get respect on the amiga.

[nobody]

Tested it on ACA 500+ 14Mhz, very playable. Scrolling is equal to Ruff & Tumble on my setup.
It was surprising because minimum A1200 was the target really. I guess backbone is not total crap, it just lacks features.

[saimon69]

You should give this game the Scorpion Engine treatment and expand it

[nobody]

The "source" was lost on a bad crash of my setup back then.

[coldacid]

That sucks! I'm sure that all the assets can be extracted out of the released game though, and used to make "Vampire Redux"

[saimon69]

Someone was working on a Castlevania-style game on scorpion some time ago...

[Pyromania]

@nobody

Does Vampire:Curse of the night have features that support the enhanced power of the Vampire V4 series of stand alone computers and the Vampire V4 add-on cards for Amigas.