Freaky Forest
Well, a’least OpenShot worked ’nough for me to be able to make this video… But then YouTube decided it didn’t want to understand how to process videos anymo’, & also decided that it should just completely erase the uploaded video, too ( wouldn’t e’en show up in “Video Manager” as a “…” video, like usual ).
Part o’ me wanted to do mo’ with this level, but then ’nother part o’ me reminded myself that these levels are s’posed to be 15 – 30 second romps without midway points. As the video shows, the speed challenge is 22 seconds, but if one goes after all the collectibles ( the gem challenge for this level requires you to get all o’ them ) & messes up the final part a million times like I embarassingly did the 1st recording, one can take as long as a minute & 40 seconds or so. I s’pose that’s a good balance.
Like usual, the main gimmicks are ripped off from ’nother game — in this case, both are from Wario Land 3: dodging & hopping off birds is from “Forest of Fear” & the ghostly fading in & out is basically just the fading in & out clouds in this game’s “Cotton Candy Clouds”, which came from Wario Land 3’s “Above the Clouds”1, though I’d say “Ghostly Grove” ( which is a much better name than “Freaky Forest”, but I didn’t want to be too much o’ a thief ) from Donkey Kong Country 2 was mo’ an inspiration.
I do kind o’ like the pathway this level goes through. Looking through my other levels, I was shocked by how oft they are just straight horizontal lines going from left to right. Though, now that I recall, I think I used this same general pattern o’ going right a li’l & then going leftward the rest o’ the way in “Milky Mountains”. I think I originally planned to have a key up on that cliff to the left & then have you come back down & go farther right past the underground hole to use the key, perhaps to enter a mansion or something, but decided that’d o’ercomplicate the level. I also had the idea o’ having rapidly spawning zombies like in Ghosts ’n Goblins, but rejected that for the same reason. There are a lot o’ things I could do with a halloween theme, & I’m still thinking ’bout making it its own theme, if not for the fact that I already have too many themes.
Finalizing the art for what are s’posed to be crow enemies was odd. As mentioned, they’re clearly based on Wario Land 3’s bird enemies, but I didn’t want to ripoff their entire graphics, too, so I looked @ other sources, including real crows, & in doing so I noticed how bizarre it is to have birds just floating in air, without e’en flapping their wings ( 1 thing I did ripoff from Wario Land 3 is that the crows raise their wings to indicate that they’re going to charge forward ). So I added a li’l 2-frame propeller ’bove the crows’ backs, which I found somewhat amusing — winged, flying animals that also have redundant propellers.
The ghosts in the underground section, which are basically just larger Eeries from Super Mario World, are based on a creature from Boskeopolis Stories: a “kappa-obake”, which is a pun off kasa-obake. While the latter is a 1-eyed umbrella ghost with a large tongue & a human foot, “kappa-obake” is the same, but a raincoat ( 合羽, pronounced “kappa”, is an archaic word for “rain cape” or any similar clothing one wears in the rain ) ’stead o’ an umbrella ( ’cept I forgot the foot ).
I have mixed feelings ’bout the background. You can tell it’s handdrawn by how tacky it looks. I also think I resized them a bit, which probably didn’t help. Then ’gain, they have a kind o’ Commodore 64 look to them that I like. I also thought ’bout filling in with black the outlines & inside o’ the trees so that the flashing lightning doesn’t show through them or the farther-back trees don’t show through the nearer trees; but then, I also kind o’ like the look o’ the flashing background going all the way into the trees.
The flashing background involved a li’l code change that was surprisingly easier than I expected. Originally, the flashing backround was some hardcoded thing for any map that had a bg_color # o’ 7; now I changed it so that there’s some mathematic formula used on any bg_color 7 or larger, allowing for flashing ’tween any 2 colors o’ the palette. So bg_colors 7 – 12 have color 1 as the background, but flashes to colors 1 – 6, 13 – 18 has color 2 as the background & flashes to colors 1 – 6, & so on. Or something like that; ’twas actually a while since I changed it. I believe getting these 2 backgrounds colors from that 1 # uses the same 2 formula I usually use: “x = n % w” & “y = floor( n / w )”, ’cept “x” is the 2nd background color & “y” is the 1st, & “w” is the color limit ( 6 ). So 13 would flash from color 2 ( round down 13 / 6 to 12 / 6, 2 ) to color 1 ( since 12 / 6 evenly, 13 leaves 1 remainder ). That sounds ’bout right. Color 0 should be ignored, since it’s always just transparency.
An extra graphical detail ( you could call it a hack ): in the underground section, the bottom-most ladder block isn’t actually a ladder block, but uses a BG block with a ladder o’er the rocky background so that the grass block can go o’er it. That way the grass still goes o’er Autumn, but the ladder is still ’hind her. This works fine since it’s impossible for Autumn to grab a ladder without standing, so she has to be touching the block ’bove that, too, & thus will always be interacting with the ’bove block when touching the bottom block & able to climb.
Speaking o’ the rocky background, you’ll probably notice that that’s just a copy o’ the inside rock walls o’ the mine tileset, but with only 2 colors.
1 final interesting note: the tall tombstone @ the very end is actually a sprite, simply ’cause ’twas both easier for me to make & mo’ efficient. It’s easier since it meant I just needed to make 1 immensely simple sprite class, rather than 24 block types; mo’ efficient not only ’cause it doesn’t bog down any other woods levels with 24 extra block types only used for this 1 particular level, but also ’cause 1 sprite is mo’ efficient than 24 blocks.
Your blood will curdle @ how inefficient & buggy this horrifying code is
