Yes, it's another An Untitled Story update. I'm putting these together while taking breaks from homework (it's that time of the year). This time it's up to v1.14 and I've done some difficulty re-balancing and added one new feature.
- Added random ghosts. After encountering the ghosts in the story, they will occasionally chase you in your travels. The frequency of them appearing will increase with difficulty and gold orbs collected.
- Added a very slight delay after bouncing on something where you can't double jump (should make jump timing more forgiving).
- Made the secret passage in DeepTower more obvious.
- Made the first room of MountSide much easier on all difficulties.
- Made the second and third rooms of MountSide easier on Simple and Regular.
- Made the fourth room of MountSide easier on Simple.
- Removed one crusher enemy from a room in FireCage on Regular, two on Simple.
- Replaced blue energies with red in a room in CloudRun on Regular and Simple.
The random ghost appearances was something that came to me the other day for no apparent reason. I like the idea of a random event that can suddenly change the player's short-term goals completely. In this case, there is a very small chance that a ghost or two will appear and force you to flee from the room. The frequency is pretty low, and it can only occur in about half the game's rooms, but it should add a bit more variety to exploring the game world.
Note that the ghosts can only appear once you've encountered them in the story (which can be quite late in the game for some players), and they'll never chase you on Simple mode. The formula for the odds of the ghosts appearing in a room is:
P(ghosts) = 0.015 + (diff * 0.005) + (gold * 0.005)
So if you're playing on Regular (diff = 1) and you have 5 gold orbs (gold = 5), the chance of a ghost ambushing you in a room is 0.045, or 4.5%.
The other major change is the addition of a delay after bouncing on something (an enemy, energy cluster, etc) where you can't double jump. When observing people playing (particularly those not good at platformers), I noticed that they'd always tap jump just as they bounced on something, expecting to get a higher bounce because of it. The correct method for maximum air is to
hold the jump button as you bounce - so the "noobs" got mixed results. If they happened to press the button the moment before the bounce they'd get full lift, but more commonly they'd tap it the moment after the collision. In this case, they would bounce off the enemy and then immediately use their double jump, resulting in a tiny hop rather than a huge bounce. This was definitely the single biggest source of frustration for my less-skilled play-testers. The delay allows pressing and holding the button just after a bounce to give full vertical momentum.
Labels: An Untitled Story, updates
