itch.io

I have made multiple posts elaborating on my constructive criticisms and my design proposals

Yes, i also think a way to tutorialize it is to make it visually clear that you can't possibly make the jump without a dash jump and also put the dash button by default on the right button

Yes, this is exactly what i'm talking about, sometimes the beam just takes a long while to damage many enemies and in the original MMX games the upgraded buster did at least as much damage as the regular one. Although the X3 buster was quite annoying because if you threw the combined shot from far and the smaller sorrounding shots hit the boss before the big shot they would have priority and only do the same 2 damage as the regular lvl2 charged shot instead of the 3 damage of the big lvl4 shot, so you wasted time charging the whole thing where you could have dealt more just by spamming lemons

It's optional, but it's an upgrade for levels and a couple of bosses (Fortress 2). It's a bummer that i have to choose between a better buster for the levels and 2-3 bosses and a better buster for bosses (fortress bosses don't have weaknesses aside from sigma 2) with no way to revert the choice. An upgrade should be an upgrade. You also need it for the hadouken.

I like the game, I care deeply about this game and this franchise, and because I care about it i'm constructive because i want it to be the best it can be.

Suggestion:

Consider modifying the sprites of the flames from the flamethrower enemies so that their length matches closer to their actual hitbox. As you can see, i'm right outside the flames' hitbox range but the sprites go from covering half the length of X's sprite to covering the whole length

Also consider positioning those two flamethrower enemies in such a way that if you stay centered the flames don't hit you. Other than that, you have enough time to lemon spam one of them until they die, but there's one thing MMX2 made in a very similar scenario in the Wheel Gator level with one shield boomerang enemy at each side, and the way it handled it was by offsetting the timing of these two enemies so one would shoot early and the other one late, it also tutorializes the situation by doing it right before with only a single shield boomerang guy.

Some thoughts on the level changes on 1.00.3:

I like changes in the Vulpine, Squirrel and Axolotl levels, although i think you didn't need to completely remove the mett on that first jump on vulpine's level, maybe just moving it a little further beyond the vertical line traced by the right wall on the top would have been enough. 

I do think, however, that maybe you overcorrected a little on the Axolotl level with the bridge of crumbling platforms at the start (i think the cable's destruction animation gave you enough time to see the fish enemies on the water, maybe placing the cable a little further down so you see 2 fish would do the trick) and the Primate level with those first 2 two jumps with the countdown blocks guiding towards the wall opposite of where the enemy is... until they don't. On their own, maybe the new guiding blocs are defeating the challenge too much? but then the guiding the blocks also give you a false sense of safety and predictability because then on the 3rd jump the gap now leads you straight into one of the 2 enemies, so earlier the challenge was consistent and you at least learn the lesson if you failed the first jump, but with this change, initially, there's no challenge, then the level trolls you.

On the Squirrel level things get more interesting. So what I see is that you signal the wrong way by blocking it with destructible blocks, if you go in the direction of the block, you're punished with an offscreen enemy. This is more the case in the new layout, in the older one this is true for the first fall, but for the next you fall into an enemy either way. It's definitely an improvement, however, the choice of making the wrong direction be blocked by destructibles is a little weird in my eyes. In the Mega Man series the convention is that the path that requires more work, more upgrades, weapons, etc. is the one that contains a reward for your effort and skill, so, according to this historic convention that is present in many other games, the player is psychologically enticed to go down the direction of where the destructible blocks are, which sends them into the enemy traps.

As you may notice, my issues are with consistency and intuitiveness 

In general, to me, the problem with the blind jumps and the offscreen enemies or instakills at the end of a fall are most of the time more of an issue of the things being visible in the screen before you jump (or early reactable with the tools you're expected to have at that point) and of consistency on what to expect when jumping down things, rather than an issue of instakills and enemy placement on themseves. When you fall into a platform, the camera doesn't follow X until his sprite is centered, it stays a little above his sprite, leaving more screen space above than below (naturally, the opposite is true for climbing), and this results in the player not seeing an enemy, platform, bottomless pit or spike floor by just a little. This is how the camera behaves in the snes games, no problem with that, but the thing the snes games did most of the time with the level design and the enemy placement is to layout the things in such a way that the platform you need to jump to, the threats, the traps and the enemies would be readily visible, at least partially, from the platform the level is hinting you to make the jump from and with the camera dragging behind. The games breadcrumb you into your next move. Also, when the only way forward was jumping down a long fall, you knew that you were going to be safe by staying close to the wall. The games would typically reserve more hardcore jumps for the fortress stages when the developers could expect you to have your air dashes and whatnot, while keeping reaction times more viable for no armor on the regular levels. Right now, i find some inconsistencies on what's the right guess on jumps of the same type in this game.

Obviously, the classic games weren't perfect and sometimes they pulled these troll moments, but my point is that there's more potential for improvement on adjusting the visibility of the obstacles and the consistency of the traps rather than eliminating them altogether.

Regarding Vulpine's level, I really like the health drop hinting you towards the capsule, very clever. The downwards dissapearing block section, now that i think about it after 3 playthroughs, is not so bad. However, even on my 2nd or 3rd attempt in my first playthrough I didn't feel positive of where the second dissapearing block was when i made the jump, and i believe it's because the rails they're on blend a little too much with the background, and with the anxiousness of the situation I didn't registered it. I also believe I didn't guide myself by the rails because the rails tell me there's a platform at that X coordinate, but i don't know if the one spawning next is going to be on that rail. I believe there needs to be more contrast between the background and the rails where the blocks are and the blocks that are just barely below the camera need to be visible from the one above them. You already do this with the last 2 floors, you can see the next block's position from the one you're standing on, so maybe the solution can be to place the blocks above the out-of-sight ones a bit lower, just enough to see the next one.

Yes, the smart strategy here is to just slide down slowly, that is the exploratory casual approach and it's very good that the level design allows for a casual, paced down walkthrough. However, the greatness of the Mega Man level design lies on the skill layering: working for multiple legacy skill levels of playstyles so that on your first playthrough you can walk around and slowly slide down walls but you can also dash around and trust on your reaction skills as a veteran MMX player.

Again, this is just my take, I don't hold the absolute truth on the solutions. Thank you for your time if you actually read this.

Yeah, but the thing is that once the buster is charge up to level 3, I no longer have a choice, what if i want the +50% extra damage instead and don't need to place the shot in the path of the boss at expense of said damage? I gotta make my time playing harder than it would be without the upgrade and time my charge so it doesn't get up to level 3 by the time i have an opening. The advantage the persistent hitbox gives is really not that big to offset the lack of damage. I consistently find myself finishing a boss faster and with with more spare life when i mostly land lvl 2 shots than when i mostly land lvl 3 shots.

Some more issues I have found:

1. Primate's and Snapper's charged weapons keep draining during the death animation of bosses, wasting a lot of energy
2. Triggers have some crazy rebound sensibility. If i press them, release a tiny bit, then push them again ever so slightly, they register in the game as a press. They seem to be son sensitive they register multiple times even when pushing them quickly all the way down. I might be wrong on what's the cause of these ghost inputs with the triggers.
3. haven't further tested it, but after getting the hadouken and beating the 1st Sigma level, I exited the game, then open it again later and started the 2nd Sigma level and X no longer had the hadouken or the bandana

P.S. Thank you so much for taking into consideration the feedback on the level design, the ride armor and the weapon damage

Some opinions on the lvl 3 charge buster:

It's a straight downgrade for bosses. For what i managed to tell in 2 playthroughs, the regular charged shot does 3 damage, while the upgrade does 2 damage per tick. It makes sense, is to balance out the continuous damage, however, it seems to take a little while until the initial tick and a lot more time until the second one. This is a Mega Man X game, there's barely any instances where you can consistently get the two ticks of damage on these high movement bosses. With Snapper is easier because he doesn't jump around and even then, but most of the time you have to time it perfectly right when a boss is right about to start an attack that makes them stand still in place for a while in order to pull it off, but if you shoot a little early or late either the beam's active time finishes early or the boss moves away or gets into an invulnerable state. Even then, there's bosses that will just never get the 2 ticks of damage like Ride Armor Vile or Fortress 1 (to my knowledge).

My proposal is this: The beam does damage right away and on its first tick it does the same 3 damage as the regular charged shot. Then I got two additional options: 1. The beam ignores the bosses' recovery invulnerability and deals 1 0.5-1 damage each subsequent tick; or 2. The bosses' recovery invulnerability gets reduced a little for the buster beam and the subsequent tick does 2 1.5-2 damage, so you get that second tick more reliably on most bosses and, in those that you don't, at least you did the regular 3 damage.

Currently, what my mind is most busy with during boss fights is with timing the charge so i shoot the lvl2 instead of the lvl3 shot, rather than the bosses's attacks themselves.

Edit: Looks like the time the beam takes to start doing damage to some enemies might be a bug

Edit 2: changed the suggested damages

"Once you learn", that's the problem, that you have to learn the stage first, and you can't learn it just by looking around from the platforms the level gives you, you can't react to it with normal gameplay and play the platforming game of dissapearing blocks the game is putting in front of you, you have to ignore it and very slowly slide down of all walls. It's cheap design, and that's just for the dissapearing blocks part, because if you try and keep close to the right walls in the following crushing walls section you fall straight into lava, and if you fall on top of the last wall, the one above the lava, you can't see the lava so you either guess correctly and jump far right or you assume you're still in the crushing walls section, jump into the lava and only see it when you can't save yourself from falling into it unless you have above average reflexes, a low latency controller and either the uppercut or the double jump.

On sigma fortress 1 then you have a section with a blind jump with spikes at the bottom that you can't see from the top where there's enemies on the walls, so sliding down is not even the logical guess there.

You only really need the uppercut for this. In this game, thankfully, you can dash wall jump simply by holding the dash button like in the zero/zx games, you don't need to press the dash button each time. Once you jump from the ride armor into the first block, try dash jumping away, don't release the dash button, uppercut or double jump, move back into the second block, don't release dash button, then dash jump away and ignore the third block altogether and go straight for the taller wall, uppercut and into the taller wall

Where's the save data store at?

Bur Report: It's possible to get stuck in a dissapearing block if it spawns in when part of X's top part is on top of it

Bug report:

1. On Arson Vulpine's capsule as your first one, if you press start immediately to skip the dialogue, the first dialogue will close but the game will get stuck fight there.
2. If you Double KO a maverick, you will respawn on the boss corridor, then when you enter the boss room the boss will be already registered as deafeated an you will not get the maverick's weapon, nor a score screen

Please consider:

1. Increasing the maverick's weakness uncharged damage by 1, for a total of 3 bars. You can then balance by decreasing the charged weakness damage by one as well on the 8 mavericks. (For Hunter difficulty).
2. Decreasing a little bit the bosses' damage dealt, it's on the X3 side of excess in some cases. (For Hunter difficulty).
3. Making the subtanks refill more energy, half a full bar feels to little with the current damage dealt by some bosses. (For Hunter difficulty).
4. Slowing down the ending text a little and giving the option to speed up the scrolling by holding a button.
5. A confirmation dialogue before exiting from the stage select screen to the Main Menu. i exited accidentally my first time after finishing the intro level.
6. Manual saving
7. A 1-2 bar damage weakness for sigma 1, maybe? For Hunter difficulty.
8. A rework on the leap of faith jumps on Vulpine and Axolotl levels, as well as sigma 1
9. Adding weapon tanks
10. There seems to be no way to avoid getting hit eventually on the 2nd sigma fortress when you get it to low health and it fires its shots much faster without using the charged shot of Stellar Primate's weapon. That doesn't come off as good design in my opinion.
11. Allowing mapping inputs to the triggers.
12. If you end up adding double tapping dashing, please add an option in the settings to enable/disable it.
13. Changing the default dash button to B, since that's the default position in the other X games.
14. Changing the way jumping out of ride armors work to how it is in the official games. Currently, you have to press Up and Jump simultaneously, while in the official games you only need to press Jump while holding Up. It took me a lot of time to understand how this worked and many here never quite figured it out.

As bug/issues reports:

1. You can get hit by nothing on the first fortress boss, I'm not sure if when the eye opens or when the platforms move, but it happened to me frequently.
2. Also on that boss, you can get stuck after striking the last hit on it with the game advancing one frame each 10-15 seconds
3. The boss door transitions are weirdly slow
4. The dash jumps are particularly inconsistent. So many times the input missed for some reason
5. There's something funny about the wall jump that i can't quite put my finger on

As additional feedback, unlike some people have said here, I don't think you should narrow the jump gaps on the intro level, if anything, I think you should make one jump even larger so that you can only make it by dash jumping. I think that by making these big gaps in the opening you teach the players that there's a dash button and a dash jump. I also believe the dialogue at the beginning of the levels is fine as is, you can just press Start to skip all dialogues. Maybe add a text prompt that tells you that you can sip it with Start.

Also, thank you for avoiding Spark Mandrill syndrome with the weaknesses.

We aren't talking about big distances in jumps, leap of faith jumps means those areas where you can't or it's very tricky to know what's at the bottom before you have just a few frames to react, like that one jump on Commander Yammark's level or at the beginning of Phantom level in MMZ1

The snes games aren't at all like this with the leaps of faith. This is even more abusive than mmx6 and mmz1

Uncharged weaknesses only do like 2 to 3 damage. it seems to be pretty much tailored for charged weapons, which i don't like as, apart from the fact that it makes it visually harder to pinpoint the weakness, the head parts require either the uppercut or the double jump and Stellar Primate's weapon, while the dive kick and the subtank in Stellar Primate's stage require beating Tundrion Bear

Level design faults is not skill issue

Same thing happened to me

Please consider allowing to map the controller's triggers. Feels weird that they are completely useless, they're ideal for swapping weapons.

chimba de nombre de perfil 👌

how did you even get that far

thank you this is one of the most painful experiences i've ever had i will never do it again

Basically what the title says. I want to buy the game through the ukraine bundle, but since steam adapts prices to my country's economy, the dlc would cost me half the price there. Is it possible to download and install the dlc through steam and then copy that data into Itch's version directory and make it work?

Edit: This also applies to GOG since both game and dlc are straight up cheaper there