@8bitgentleman Oh also, I just saw your Sword of Duquesne pull when I was making this new pull. I absolutely loved your puzzle level and the pickaxe stuff, but I'm not sure if the Sword of Duquesne fits at all. Maybe we could have the secret entrance go to Oriental Mountains, I was planning on putting the entrance to it inside the mines where the laser lotus cult is.

I agree, the sword Doesn't really fit There. Another option would be to hide an item there that would help You unlock The Epic. We started to discuss something like this in #2273 If the player collects all of the required items the chamber with The Epic would open.

I played through this version of the game and to me it seems like a hugely impressive amount of work that you've done. I like all of the new level designs and puzzles individually. But I suppose the main thing to critique is the design of the quests. So my thoughts:

It's too long to complete each individual quest. Going through 2 or 3 maps to get to the destination and then backtrack is a pretty big time sink, and gets worse if you are an awful player like me and die a bunch and it puts you back to the start of the map you died in.

And for the overall story line, I don't super like the idea of giving Hilda a sister, or having to rely on keys for different maps. For overall accountability to the episode, I don't like the acorns in any of the forest maps (even though they have been in the game pretty much since the onset). Putting in an Acorn King that you have to get a bunch of keys to even get to is very random and feels like a big deviation from the sketch of a video game that was presented in the original episode. Connecting it to Cornelius through magic is a pretty tenuous explanation.

I definitely don't think getting to the Valley of Laziness should be predicated on forcing the player through this quest. If I couldn't get to the Valley and I had to keep going through the same levels 4 or 5 times to find a small thing and then backtrack and give the thing to a guy and have the guy make me go somewhere else I would just close the game at that point and never open it again.

I do like the quests in the game and it's really exciting to see it implemented further than giving flowers to Hilda - however, I think to have a fully realized set of platform puzzles, and a full set of quests, and a full town in each level feels like too much and feels unfocused, and makes the whole game feel way too long.

I hope this comes across as constructive. A lot of the elements are well done and I appreciate the thought process behind it all but as a whole I feel like it all kind of goes in a random direction.

@didory123 I think the quest and levels need some further tweaking/rearranging to make them more cohesive but overall it's almost there. We should set a time to all be on IRC to discuss this

Ok this is going to be long, everything I write is so long winded. but i want to be thorough:

I'm sorry I didn't offer any direction to go in my earlier post, but I have thought of some ideas that hopefully should outline a clear plan for the forest levels.

Adding new levels to the forest levels (like the treeline, or acorn stuff, or the mines) I think should accomplish a few things:

-should be optional (story line does not hinge on making the player go through too many different maps)
-should have no consequence to failing, eg, it shouldn't derail them from the main story line.
-should feel like the player is making a cool discovery of their own
-the layout of the extra maps should be circular in a sense, so that the player ends where they started and can continue through the main map where they left off.

I liked the way that you enter the treeline in the currently released version of the game. I don't like having the sign indicating the two different paths that the player can take. Having a fork in the road leads to annoying backtracking that just takes time with no reward. Having a main path with optional circular offshoots feels more like you are discovering a new thing that you didn't have to see, so that makes the game feel expansive. I don't like how the mine levels and the hippie levels are nested in the mountain levels. From the main pathway of the village forest, I think max we could go one layer deep just for the sake of avoiding confusion as to how to get to the next island.

I think if possible, convert some of the new mountain levels to just be trees, and it could go above the village-treeline map. Like the mountains could be treetops instead, at the very top of the treeline, so it makes sense as a progression. I think it actually makes more sense for acorns and squirrels to be among the trees instead of on mountains. Also, I think in the forest and village forest, we need to remove the acorn enemies and focus on puzzles with moving platforms and fish rather than literally having 400 acorns getting pissed off when I walk past them in every single level. All of the acorn enemies, eg, the acorns, large acorns, and squirrels, should be all within the village-treeline offshoot level.

At the very top of the treeline could be the acorn king, and it doesn't have to be explained in a quest. A shift in the music is really all that classic platformers offer to indicate that you are now in a boss battle. After you defeat the acorn king, then maybe he drops a sweet weapon, or some other reward that is proportional to the amount of effort expended. Maybe it could be like a parachute so that you don't take damage on freefall. And to exit the map without backtracking you could use the parachute to fall all the way down to the normal ground level and continue on the main path.

For the mines, it needs to be in its own offshoot from the main village-forest maps. I don't know if I can explain this adequately in words, but basically, the entrance to the mine is behind a very short but ridiculously difficult puzzle that looks very intimidating, and at the end is the entrance to the mine. So going through a really hard puzzle makes the player feel like they earned it without having to find a key or have a back story. But it is optional, because the player maybe could get a wing hat like in super mario and fly over the whole thing and do a cute, easy sky-based puzzle instead.

For the hippie levels: maybe instead of being an offshoot of the forest, it could be an offshoot of the hallway in greendale. ie, maybe there is a vent in the hallway that is slanted, and if you straighten it (like the slanted painting in the house) it reveals a hidden door, and it has some more hippie puzzles. But it would all take place within the vents and maybe boiler room of the school. And then you could exit to the outside, and continue on to the forest as is originally intended.

i quickly drew some things to make it more clear how I think the forest levels should be strutctured, and i have some suggestions for the beginning forest levels.:
https://imgur.com/a/6CyHO

main theme for everything is that the reward for doing something has to be equal to the effort of the player. So we have to come up with really sick rewards for taking the hard route over the easy route. I think weapons are good, but we can only design and give so many distinct weapons. maybe a huge sum of coins is good, but then it makes every cool weapon and armor too easy to get. Or maybe it could be a way to earn costumes, like the player can only start off with the base greendale 7 and earn random outfits in the game. Costumes are good because they don't really offer any real advantage to the player, but make the game seem more fun. And when you choose an outfit at the beginning the novelty wears off very quickly that you are wearing a costume, so letting the player discover new costumes and change often in the game is a pretty cheap way to inject frequent novelty to keep the player highly interested.

@kcig Thanks for the suggestions! Those were exactly the kind of constructive criticisms I wanted to hear. I agree with you whole-heartedly that the quest right now sucks, I'm gonna admit to it. The biggest hurdle I've had with this project was the quest part. I've always had trouble figuring out how to write a cohesive and engaging story that ties into the game nicely, which was honestly the main reason it took so long for me to finish these levels.

I loved your ideas for restructuring the levels as well. I'm still not really sure about making the quest optional because otherwise the player can breeze through the levels really easily, but I see your point about the player exploring and discovering cool things on his/her own. The costume thing is a good idea, it's honestly one of the best incentives we have in the game for players to try and unlock all the different features in the game.

@8bitgentleman You are absolutely right, we should gather together and try to discuss how to tackle this. I could really use input from others on these levels.

Ok I've played through the current version and I have comments. Hold onto your hat cause there's a lot!

Mountains
-Squirrel sfx sounds sound strange and are very loud compared to everything else.
-Mountain music could be looped better ( there's a second of silence at the end )
-'Great Even More Acorns' doesn't have a response
-Hidden door in the mines entrance level goes to top of treeline and then you end up looping down and to the exit towards VoL. It's a bit of a strange progression.
-Big acorn sprites need to be revamped to look less like scaled up small acorns. I'm thinking a subtle color change, maybe some scars or something to make it look like they've been altered by spending to much time around the acorn king.
-When talking to tilda the player doesn't freeze
-There's some weird text scaling in the town

• I know there's no real place for him but I love this sprite so I'll put in a plug for him
  

Mines
-The floor level of the 'Cult room' should be lowered, npc text is obscured by the hud and the quest text.
-Instead of 'I do not take commands' maybe the laser lotus people could say something crazy about only listening to the laser Buddha
-The laser lotus inventory should be weird items only. Maybe use every single recolored Buddha statues so they're selling like 10 useless Buddha statues of different colors and a banana or something.

-In general the laser lotus areas should be weirder weirder weirder!
-Clicking 'I am looking for a quest" makes the female laser lotus npc unresponsive instead of giving a quest.
-The leaf in the chest next to the mine cart key gets stuck in the wall
-Running up or down the stairs in the mines make you fall through them.
-In the mines the Hidden door sprite covers other sprites in the background
-The Door to mines-3 cannot be unlocked
-The laser lotus boss just disappears when you kill him - no dying animation and no key
-There aren't any enemies ( ignoring bats ) in the mines. Most areas have unique enemies and the mines don't. That's fine since there are other obstacles: the moving platform, the falling spikes and the shooting things. A comment on the shooting things, what are they? I kind of expected some abandoned mining equipment in the mine is that what they are?
-If you want more bottles for the laser lotus storage areas I have some laying around.

Stoner's Peak Area
-Explosion noises in the cannon area are very loud when they all fire together.
-I've revamped the birds cause it bothered me that there was no inbetween sprite for their wings lol ()

-The sounds for the hemp plant are the same as the frogs, it's a bit strange.
-Random Idea: On the other side of the vertical line of flying hippies maybe they fly out at you instead of throwing stuff at you again.
-Stoner's peak is not using the track labeled stoner's peak. I'm not convinced with using that track for the cloud level anyway, it seems clunky and more of a ground level song. Maybe switch the stoner's peak track with the mountains one, it seems lighter to me and more cloud like.
-Talking to old man crashes the game
-Can the pot next to the old man be used to brew potions? Maybe when talking to the old man if you give him some 'special leaves' he'll make you some potion.

-The suspicious door in the bushes won't open
-It might be funny to add doors all along the bottom of the level so if you do fall you get thrown down to the level below. Similar to nicko21's original pitch for the forest levels http://hawkthorne-story.wikia.com/wiki/Forest_Levels_Overview Maybe you find a parachute that slows the player's decent and can jump off the edge of the mountain!

-Where would the oriental levels fit into this? There should be a place where we can put them in the future. One potential option is to use the breakable block code from the Sword of Dunesque pull that I submitted a while ago ( it doesn't really fit with the levels now ) and add in a blocked off area right at the top of the stairs when you enter the mine.

Random Thoughts
@nicko21 was working on a way to add dynamic shaders to levels to simulate darkness. That way a torch would actually illuminate the level as it moved as would any light nodes added to the level ( such as the lanterns ). Could be a cool addition to the mines.

-The backtracking to the town took the most time. Could you add a oneway shortcut so you end up in the treetops right next to the town?

Overall it's looking great and it was a lot of fun to play through.

Starting this off by saying I've been testing the levels individually rather than playing through properly and I haven't done any of the quests. I think I've said some of what I'm going to say before but obviously not on this pull request.

Please could you draw a map showing how all the levels are connected to one another? Even with the signs, I'm not always sure where I want to be headed or if I've been to all the levels. Also, what's with the "return" levels?

What's happening with reddfawks' oriental levels? You've touched some of them. What about the old village forest levels? I liked them, especially the cave one with the spikes.

I assume acorn boss is still a work in progress and in the wrong place (is he going in the far left of acorn peak with the cute little acorns - I love those bushes)? His health bar is wrong and he starts twitching if you jump up and down on his head. Did we generalise the boss hud yet? I had code for it somewhere.

I don't like the big acorns but if we're keeping them, can we fix their outlines which at the moment are too thick.

Tilda has a spelling mistake in her dialog - "gong" instead of "going". I haven't read through all the npcs' text yet. Some I think are still a bit long but since I'm not sure what information is important I'll shut up about it.

The green mushroom sprite is a bit rough and floats off the ground. What's it for?

In village-forest-3 there is a bit of background missing behind the bottom bridge

In the mines, some of the slopes are acting up, there's half a lantern missing (might be covered by hidden door sprite) and I think there's something causing a bit of lag somewhere. I'll be less vague when I work out what's causing it. The level names also seem to be getting ridiculously long in these levels. Wasn't there a level with a bear in a pit?

In stoners peak, the npc looks the wrong way when you talk to him and crashes if you ask about quests. Is that the end and you just backtrack after that?

I still hate the laser lotus - looks and functionality is fine (except the guy with glasses, he looks weird) -. I don't think it makes any sense to have Laser Lotuses in the game (Cornelius wasn't even a Buddhist - he has a regular funeral). Any chance he would just be a regular cult leader/alchemist or something? I don't like the wall of text before the boss battle - you shouldn't have to explain why he's there. I'm very happy it only shows up once and not every time you die. If you open inventory and try to change weapons, he'll attack you two or three times before you've got your weapon out, could be I'm playing 1 level at a time but I can't get out once I've beaten him & maybe move the floor down a bit?

Sorry for the moaning, overall this is really awesome.

@8bitgentleman @edisonout Whew, thanks for the detailed playthroughs!

1. Laser Lotus boss - if you're using an invincible cheat to kill him, you can't exit the door. You have to physically grab a weapon and beat him senseless.
2. @edisonout @8bitgentleman The entrance to Oriental Mountains will be through the cult cavern. I thought it made sense because Laser Lotus has Asian elements and would be a good transition.
3. @edisonout The map looks something like this:
   

Thanks again for the suggestions guys, and I'm gonna try to get to all the bugs tonight.

Ooh, thanks @didory123

Finishing the boulder quests crashes the game.

@niamu Merged with master!

There are still items that need to be addressed. Added to the first post.

@niamu That is one hefty list, I could probably take a crack at the Acorn King code soon and work on some dialogue soon.
Do you think we might be going a little too ambitious? I'm fine with the boss battle just taking place in town, with none of the fancy fire-building stuff because we might not have enough time.

I whipped up a working acornboss enemy, if anybody would like to test it out.

@didory123 It's very ambitious, that's for sure. We'll do all of those items in order and see what we can manage by June 13th. @8bitgentleman and I are focussed on getting boss related stuff done by this weekend so even if Cornelius takes an entire week to polish, I'll still have about a week to work on this.

Having a working Acorn King is a huge step to all of this. Burning building is also pretty easy. Should only take about 2 days. to be able to burn down the entire town.

Having NPCs flee before the battle will probably look the best as not all of them have running sprites so they can all start to walk off screen as the player is waking up in the town. That's only another day of work.

If someone could manage to make a few more sprites for the Town Knight to pull out his sword and swing it, we could make him be the final line of defence for the Tavern building. If that can't be done, we'll scrap that idea and work around it in some other way.

@didory123 I've rebased everything here and made some fixes on my village-forest branch. I think we should keep this pull request open and I'll show you how to integrate my changes into this pull request so we don't lose the conversation thread here.

@niamu Hey sorry, I'm not sure if I'll be available in the next couple of days, would it be possible for you to just open another pull if you wanted to merge anything soon? If you don't feel that village forest is ready to go in the next couple of days I could do it when I come back, but if it's good to go I think it'd be better if you just merged it on your end.

Active Town Knight sprite. It's not perfect but I'm done putting time into it.

@didory123 I sent you a pull that makes the hermit drug you and send you to the town.

The more I play with it the more I hate the knight attacking. I think that should be removed.

I sent a pull request to you that finishes up most of this quest.

Also I'm going to rebase this and the QFO for you, unless you want to, and we can do a handoff like you did with niamu

@8bitgentleman that sounds great, thank you! Yeah, I don't have any confidence in my rebasing skills right now.

I've rebased this on my own branch. Jump onto IRC if you want to do the handoff.

Ok So the stuff that still needs to be done is:

• Add ivory wig drop to acorn boss
• Remove the stuff about the mines map and replace it with stuff about cornelius's wig giving the acorn power
• fixing the locking doors
• killikg the laser lotus boss made him fly upwards and throw this error
  He also sometimes flies away and you're stuck in the level.

A few bugs:

• When talking to the hermit, he asked if I wanted to drop the current quest for his, upon pressing yes this error occurred:

• When talking to the hermit, there is an issue with the dialogue switching between its line constantly because of the cursor. These are the two states:

Edit:

• When climbing down the ladder in the final part of acorns peak, the bird that flies past the ladder has an egg infront of it that does not fall, and the bird continues to drop eggs and fly. This egg stays infront of the bird, as though it is releasing it every time. Here is an image, note that this egg moved with the bird and did not fall.

@NicolausVanSchie

1. That's an existing issue with quest.lua not this branch I believe
2. Resolved
3. That's how the enemy was coded. I think it was meant to look like the bird was carrying the egg.

@8bitgentleman I fixed the hermit crash. It's hacky, but at least there's no blue screen.

https://github.com/bucketh3ad/hawkthorne-journey/tree/village-forest

Anything else that is a MUST fix before we merge?

@bucketh3ad We have to make the mine entrance unenterable unless you got the quest from the old man.

Sorry I couldn't work on this tonight, something came up

Closing due to #2446