Release Candidate 1 now up at same link as always. Includes boss. Feel free to move the game start up to the boss in the editor. Comments most welcome.

Comments:
I have no idea what all is going on with the door in front of the Green Gun. First, it's parent, the switch, is out of culling distance when the door comes on screen, so the door appears and vanishes ans the player flies around. I'm not sure if it's possible to fly through it before opening it, though. Second, parent-child links are not how you connect doors to switches- you do that by giving them both exactly the same name. Third, the switch can only be triggered by the thing that is behind the door that it is apparently supposed to open. Fourth, the door is apparently still actually opened by an Extra2 link with one of the tanks in the area. Basically, the whole mess is confusing.

The door in front of the Green Gun is apparently a child of something that is out of culling distance when the player first encounters the door- that is, the door appears to be open until the player gets quite close to it. I have not gone through the door when it is "open" like this, and I am not certain it is possible, but it might be possible for the player to get trapped inside by this bug. I'd recommend switching to an Extra2-based link between the tank and the door, with the tank's Extra2 causing a small Pick-up type sprite near the door to vanish, which pickup is the parent of the door.

You should change the Boss3 Bullet sprite that is involved in your green switch chain to have any solid type other than Enemy, or any other Extra2. As-is, it is getting destroyed instantly by contact with a solid object (see the last couple posts in my Guides thread for an explanation of the exact cause).

You ought to have the chain of "wires" leading from the first Blue boss to the door it opens turn black when the boss dies- use an Extra2 link for this.

The blue Sketchfighter boss works very oddly (although it is quite nasty indeed). Mostly, this is because the fighters move much faster than their parent, but vanish when the parent is out of culling distance. Also, the door is very obvious before it closes, and its force field is placed badly enough that I was able to turn and run back through the door when I first saw the boss.

The Colour King can blow open its own boss door. I think I'll also need to revise my theory of why leaving a boss arena is so lethal to the framerate- I now suspect that the game simply keeps in memory every object that comes within culling distance during a boss fight, not just those that are currently within culling distance. This would explain both the ability of every boss in the level to start chasing after me when I abuse the "no clipping mode", and why the many-spiders boss in one of the Abandoned Factories is so appallingly slow. Back to the subject of this level- I think that the Colour King's boss arena is at about the upper limit of how large a boss arena can be, at least on my system (1.33GHz iBook G4, 1.25GB RAM). I'm just barely starting to notice an abnormal slowdown.

Anyway, overall a very nice level, quite fun to play. Good job!

Edwards

@edwards, on Feb 15 2007, 09:12 PM, said in [level] Coloured Caves:

Back to the subject of this level- I think that the Colour King's boss arena is at about the upper limit of how large a boss arena can be, at least on my system (1.33GHz iBook G4, 1.25GB RAM). I'm just barely starting to notice an abnormal slowdown.

Dual 450 Mhz G4, 1GB RAm here, and you don't want to know how these bosses act on my machine... (-> freezing SF)

However, just completed everything beside the last boss, looks like a fun level, but most of the bosses are too easy, for example the pre-boss of the last one, the Guardian, can be killed with two missiles, the same for most of the corridor enemies. Oh, and one of things which enable you to kill everything that fast is probably the huge amount of upgrades, with, say, the half of them it should still be possible to complete the level, but it'd be a lot more challenging.