Hart-Hunt

You forgot the most important part - All teams are controlled by the AI.

But I look so handsome!

My stance is the exact same as Bauglir's. Excellent post there. Both ID and NG+ have a history of being a self regulating community, and what you say proves it and encourages it, and it's the healthiest and most mature way a community can act.

Mods or not, the community simply points that guy out, it's our main strength as a small, close community. And I agree, the content you soeal of is the same as we did back in the dau in what we called "ID late night chat".

It's unfortunate we run with tiny bumps like this, but we are blessed with an intelligent community, which in the nqme of NG+ is still very young. We have time to polish the edges where it's needed, like in this case.

I'd love to read other people's opinions on this.

dis gon b gud

I find it hilarious that a user named Squaresoft asks about a mechanic that comes from vanilla. The irony is so real.

Hey hey hey, I remember you. Welcome! Well, I'm sure we can find a spot for that! We don't have a designated challenge forum like in ID, but the Let's Play forum should do well for discussing that!

Hey! Welcome - kinda, since you'll find a lot of familiar faces from ID here.

If you liked Requiem and FFVII NT, then I think you'll be hyped to hear that NT's modder, Sega Chief is brainstorming to make FFVIII New Threat! I know I am stoked about that one. Be sure to post your feedback there!

Downvoted because light theme

I don't get exactly which types of jumps you mean Augestein, and I'm interested. Which jumps there (and maybe in the old Hard Type?) are you talking about?

Exactly. The upgrades will have different locations and orders (haven't decided on the specifics yet), but the whole habing Dash from the beginning is meant ro tell the player about the non linearity of the game. The stages will try to keep a more homogeneous difficulty as well (that doesn't mean easy though) instead of the old Hard Type, where difficulty varied quite a bit more. Bosses will be as tough as they come, though. You will have to earn every single thing.

Update time! This is going to be a somewhat lengthy post.

Something that's helped me get back and started was to replay vanilla's levels and analyze certain aspects of their theme and design. This is all for personal reference and it's not supposed to be "right" or "wrong", but it's just what I was trying to analyze within the stage.

Chill Penguin:
Theme: Infiltrate base of Chill Penguin in the mountains. Enter a back entrance to the Maverick's factory within the base of the mountain, which leads to a main ascending path leading to Chill Penguin.

First section:
- Exterior
- Horizontal
- With small hills, playing around with enemy combinations and types of attacks
- Enter Cave

Second section:
- Cave
Little room to menuver
- Descending, bats chasing you slowly
- Combining bats and spikeys, ascending with falling spikeys
- Tight wall jump and ascending section to make sure the players knows the mechanic well
- Get capsule

Third section:
- If you die, you get to do the whole level again: To re-experience the level again with dash, or to change levels and use dash in them if you Game Over
- Horizontal section
- Small jumps to learn how to dash
- Combining dash with enemies you already know (Jammingers)
- Introduce Flammingers
- Use them with elevated platforms to get in their range
- Descend with combination of Flammingers and Jammingers
- Checkpoint

Fourth section:
- Get Ride Armor
- Branching path: Either jump off the Ride Armor mid-air, or get into the lower path
- Higher path rewards you with no enemies
- Lower path has pits that require dashing
- Ride Armor awaiting after a pits: If you don't dash jump, you get punched into the pit
- All combined with firefly enemies
- Get into ascending mountain

Fifth section:
- Ascending horizontal section
- Jumps get harder
- Introduce snowballs
- Introduce snowball thrower. He has a blind spot under him
- Introduce combination of the two
- Get to boss room

Now! with that said, and after doing the same for another stage (which I'll post some other day) I decided I had a solid idea for what to do on Chill Penguin's stage. In New Hard Type, I'm thinking the theme will be to climb a smaller mountain, get to a cliff at the end, then make a leap of faith jump to a second mountain, which you'll climb, either from the exterior of the mountain or by going through caves. At the peak of the second mountain, Chill Penguin waits.

Here's an alpha preview of the second, bigger mountain. This would be after making the leap of faith jump, and there would be a checkpoint after said jump. You'll notice the cave in the middle that gets you further up. Note the red tiles are spikes.

Tell me your thoughts, and let me know if that gives you ideas like these for this stage or any other in the game! Your ideas help me create better stages!

I was actually given a very similar idea, I want to say it was by Yuyu or Nowea in chat, for Flame Mammoth's stage. A stage that's about descending, starting as a factory, and transitioning into a lava filled volcano (Very Mega Man X / Mega Man Zero like). And it could end up as you propose, in the "core" of the volcano / factory.

Quick edit with mouse all over the place to make you all cringe, for bonus points.

Prepare for a guy who's never played FFV to destroy, or be destroyed by your mod.

I applaud Kyrios decision to share it.

Given the nature of how ID went down abruptly, if any of you see someone ask for ID, I'd ask anyone reading to reach them (with prudence) anf spreading the word on NG+.

This hack is independent from"Old" Hard Type, but I don't mind (and would be neat) if some of the new designs are sort of inspired by Old Hard Type. Same deal with vanilla, it would be cool to take a concept for a stage from vanilla and expand on it. There are literally no preferences there.

It sounds lame, and it kind of is, but figuring this out in a way that the whole game wraps and explores all of the cool ideas is my main roadblock at the moment.

That's really good to hear. I didn't actualy know that, about the uncommoness of several landfalls.

Let's take the intro stage in New Hard Type. As it is an introductory stage of the hack, I wanted to include a handful of elements (or you could call them tropes) that would be present in the stages, while retaining the original theme of the stage. The tropes to include were: Horizontal linear platforming, Multiple pathing, Expanded, detailed world, Claustrophobic sections (with enemies enhancing the idea), Vertical climbing sections.

So I took the original concept of the highway and expanded onto it. I made a highway, in which you end up falling to the underground area of the city, traveling around the area to get back to the surface to get to your original destination. It conveys into a theme and results in both an open stage with a more claustrophobic interlude, with even a vertical section.

In this case, what did I design first? Did I slap together platforms and enemies and call it a stage? Or did I design entire sections and mesh them together? Or did I instead design the tropes that would be included and explores? Or did I design the entire theme of the stage and then explore and expand onto it?

Basically, an unexperienced designer will do from the former to the latter, while the more experienced designer will try to go from the latter to the former: From the theme to the details, from the design tropes to be explored to the individual jump lengths and enemy positions to be adjusted.

So, what I propose in this topic is to discuss what could be explored in each stage! We have the following map to work with (zoom in the image):

If you don't remember where each stage occurs within the map, load your old MMX game and check it. What I want to discuss here, is different ideas to brainstorm. An example of something I could work with would be something like:

"Intro stage: Highway like the original. Horizontal stage, possibly exploring multiple paths after falling from an individual jump (should probably include visual cues to let the player know you can fall safely there). After finding the bee miniboss, the floor falls and suddenly you're in an entirely new area, an underground where you need to find your way back up. Then you reach the end of the stage".

That's a bit convoluted. How about something more friendly, more fun to imagine:

"Storm Eagle: You start at the airport, then you jump from ship to ship. Maybe the background moving suggesting that the ships are in movement? In each ship you infiltrate from the rear to the front while fighting the defenses, until you infiltrate the main ship of the maverick army, where Storm Eagle is hiding."

"Flame Mammoth: Slowly descending into a volcano. Etc."

Use your imagination and help me start the designing process!

The reason to not have all buffs be party-wide is related to character sinergy.

For these things you have to consider that you play with a full party, each one fulfilling different roles. Zidane, for example excels at speed, which makes him useful for quick reactions to different situations. When your party is pushed, he can quickly recover the team with item spamming.

Then you have to consider that in FFIX, you have two basic acts in a battle: You either deal damage to be closer to ending the battle, or you heal or buff or debuff the enemy, to gain tempo to theb do the former. Every action fits in one of those two categories. Considering that the White Mages in this game are not really White Mages, but Red Mages (because they can fulfill every role that is not tanking: Damage, Healing, Buff and Debuff to an extent), then having party-wide buffs offsets their role, makes them too powerful. The balance of a jack-of-all-trades cones when each action loses power. Also, garnet is crazy fast. Even more powerful.

My solution? Keep Dagger as is, lower her damage. Lower slightly her HP. Lower slightly her speed. Consolidate her as a Red Mage

Have Eiko be equipped with party wide spells. Protectga, Hastega, Shellga, and so on. Make her really squishy. Make her really slow. Consolidate her as a pure White Mage.

In conclusion, whenever you're discussing a certain character design in a RPG, you always have ti consider its role in a battle. Vanilla FFIX did it wrong, where they made two identical characters with the same role. Which is terrible if yoy consider the richest thing about FFIX is that it forces you to play with vastly different clases.

I approve of this. I might google the games and see how they play, so if I join I know what to do to play them correctly. Cheers.

25 minutes ago, SharmatOfLove said:

I haven't been around on this site or ID to really be familiar with the regulars, but welcome in any case

Thank you! I'm a long time regular, so you'll be seeing me around. And I'm the maker of the Mega Man X: Hard Type series. Welcome to you to NG+!

As you might know already, the bad thing about romhacks, is that the creators have to do this on their spare time. These past few months were filled with a lot of adulting for me. School, job and my family took a lot of time from me and from being on the site.

With that said, I will be catching up, slowly on this. Thanks for understanding, and I hope you all have a good day.

It's been months, and this post was so well made, I feel bad for not having answered it. Thanks Lock, it's great to read this and it gave me a much needed feedback about the design.

Given the structure of the game (Intro Stage -> 8 Stages -> Sigma 1, Sigma 2, Sigma 3, Final Battle) the intro stage was designed to have a lower raw difficulty than the rest of the stages. That said, you described it just as I intended it to be. More involved design, no more tight jumps, smaller threats slowly chipping you instead of big ones (Mega Man has a life bar, right? Otherwise it'd be something like Mario). There will be times to have different approaches, but this overall felt good to read.

About the two things you mention. The one you mark at 12:16, the Spikey actually spawned from the right because you scrolled the screen a bit to the right, you simply missed it because you were moving left and right and thought the left scroll caused it.

The non-linear part is there to introduce the concept of less linearity, as you figured, so the player thinks "Oh hey, levels might do this". And since I thought about the player "getting lost" I put a consolation health pick up. I might at some point in the future put an arrow or something that points to the right, so the player knows which way to go. That should easily solve the issue.

Again, thanks for the feedback Lock.

On 5/7/2017 at 3:43 PM, NotMeGaming said:

Is a new SOFT type variant also in the works?  Though I played through the original HARD type, I think including an option for letting newbies get their feet wet first would help attract fresh blood.

BTW greatly enjoyed Hard Type 2.2.2 (with the exception of the Spider boss and the very last sigma portions)

Short answer: It's not in my plans, but it might happen in the future. Only time can tell.

Long answer: NHT is supposed to have a more reasonable difficulty, simply because of the superior design (all of this compared to HT). So, New Hard Type, despite its name (which I love because 1 Tradition, and 2 to make it clear it's not easy) should be more than enough to attract fresh blood to the scene. However, the non-linearity of Mega Man games is always an issue for a difficulty mod, because it's a lot more difficult to make a good difficulty curve when the game is not lineal. If the game ends up being too difficult, be might see. One last thing, NHT is supposed to be easier than MMX2HT and MMX3HT. So again. Time will tell.