Aquaria: Sacrifice v1.12

[SpiritOfNikopolo]

Keep us informed events

[TheBear]

Long post incoming...as usual.

Thanks for the continued interest SpiritOfNikopolo! Let me know when you want an update and I'll let you guys know what I'm working on. As I've previously stated I graduated college about a week ago and I've been relaxing for the last week. This allowed my brain to clear out and now I'm ready to continue working on Sacrifice. I played through Sacrifice from start to finish yesterday and today and jotted down 2 pages worth of notes on things I want to change. I haven't read through the story in a while and in a way it allowed me a fresh set of eyes. The story is often pretty vague and makes large bounds in logical story progression a bit to often for my liking. As soon as I finish this post I'll be sitting down to start rewriting and adding to the story. Below is a list of some possible additional content I've been contemplating adding.

More Conversations
Alphasoldier made a suggestion after playing through Sacrifice that I should add small conversations to non "key" characters instead of having them just stand there. I disagreed at first but I've changed my mind and will be adding 15 or so interactions with various creatures.

Semiotics
Semiotics is a fancy term for symbols. I've become frustrated playing other "talk to character games", such as Mass Effect, where it's difficult to tell when that character has something new to say. One of the things I want to add to Sacrifice is a symbol that shows when a character has something new to say or has a quest for you.

More Vendors?
The one vendor I've thought of adding recently is a recipe vendor instead of linking recipes with the flowers. This brings up an issue of what to use as currency? I'll probably tie the recipe vendor in with a character in the world who has some past issues with a certain enemy in Aquaria. Killing that enemy would then give "1 currency" with that person that could be used to buy a recipe.

Tale of the Turtles?
The transit turtle graphic was what initially drew me to Aquaria and from the start of Sacrifice I wanted to give them a story. At the moment I've placed a book in Mithalas, I think, that tells a bit of their story but I had originally wanted to incorporate them more extensively. My original plan was that after obtaining Beast Form you would be able to talk to the transit turtles and hear their tale and learn why they are assisting you in traversing Aquaria. Later in the game I was going to have a sequence where you rode one of the turtles in a manner identical to the seahorse.

Difficulty Adjustment
The number of boss battles in Sacrifice is much fewer than the main campaign at the moment but I always found Aquaria a bit to hard for my liking. I know that it's geared towards a somewhat hardcore audience but I've been enjoying less difficult games over the last year. Unless you guys disagree I'd like to return to what this project started as, over a year ago, and adjust creature stats to make Sacrifice more casual friendly. On the other hand I know the few people who will play this were able to finish Aquaria and as such I should probably keep the difficulty the same. I think I could pull off a difficulty selector that would modify creatures through an include file but it would require a decent amount of work to do so.

Doing all or many of these systems will of course prolong the development of this mod but I think this will provide a solid portfolio piece in the end. I wasn't expecting the transit turtle menu and vendor systems to be so well received as they kinda break the cinematic feel Aquaria has. The above changes and the possibility of going into an experience system seemed like a bad decision to me but perhaps these are things I should explore to differentiate this mod.

[Hiro]

Well, although Aquaria is very beautiful as a game, it is still a game. So removing any small annoyances with the interraction, like having to ride 3 turtles to get to where you want to go, is a good thing.

I think all of your ideas sound epic-awesome~~
As for difficulty I think you should make it how you enjoy it, and think about making a harder or easier version later. That way we can all play it, and give feedback on if it should be harder or not. It doesn't sound like its supposed to be a hardcore mod..but I guess there could be like, a hardcore version that has a ton more monsters with more HP and stuff.

'Grats again on graduating. And good luck for your future endevours (both on the mod and elsewhere).

[Godort]

Semiotics
Semiotics is a fancy term for symbols. I've become frustrated playing other "talk to character games", such as Mass Effect, where it's difficult to tell when that character has something new to say. One of the things I want to add to Sacrifice is a symbol that shows when a character has something new to say or has a quest for you.

This idea is the best idea ever. Hiro's right, you should only make this mod as hard as you want it to be. Bi-weekly or weekly updates are nice to see and easier than on demand updates I find. Smoother flowing story is always a plus and it always makes for a better read. Cant wait to see what the final product looks like, but take your time, I would rather a quality release over a speedy one, and I'm sure most others would agree.

oh, and congrats on graduating

[Alphasoldier]

Pff, I'm late to respond, congrats on graduating man.
I just had all my exams myself and I hope I'm getting my diploma soon too, though I don't think I'm NOT gonna get it.

The new ideas sound amazing, if you need some simple brainless work, like modding difficulty multipliers into every entity, do tell. Stuff like that just takes time.

[Zeke]

I just want to get it out there that I really appreciate all the effort that you're putting into this mod.  I haven't played Aquaria since my third playthrough; while that has a lot to do with school workload, the game also does have limited replay.  Seeing that there are people out there, willing to make the game keep going with skill and effort that are beyond me, is thrilling.  Thank you!

Also, I am stoked  at the idea of a difficulty setting (do people still use stoked? I do.).  If you do end up putting one in, or having someone else do it, I would opine in favor of an Exceedingly Hard option.  I've only ever played the game with a USB game controller, and it always struck me as quite easy.  Seeing something as hard/ harder than Hiro's Big Energy-Form Battle mod, with the extensiveness of a miniature Aquaria Proper, would be incredible.

[Hiro]

Haha, what, you want some hard attack spamming through the whole game? XD

You know, you can do that to the main game by editing the Native mod. Its not hard to add more enemies to places.

[Doctorpeter]

I find a good idea first making it as you like and then having feedback about it.(some people may say they would prefer dificulty being hard and other in other way) but some people testing would draw you  amore specific vision of where is the problem.
So far is look FANTASTIC.Other thing i would like to ask will the mod explain something also about mia and his motivation this mod? It's something i always thougt was kept very vague in the main game(which is cool: valkirya profile also kept things vague sometimes and i was ok as it was)

[RobertWalker]

Tale of the Turtles?
The transit turtle graphic was what initially drew me to Aquaria and from the start of Sacrifice I wanted to give them a story. At the moment I've placed a book in Mithalas, I think, that tells a bit of their story but I had originally wanted to incorporate them more extensively. My original plan was that after obtaining Beast Form you would be able to talk to the transit turtles and hear their tale and learn why they are assisting you in traversing Aquaria. Later in the game I was going to have a sequence where you rode one of the turtles in a manner identical to the seahorse.

I don't know if you were aware of this, but there is an unused piece of dialog in Aquaria that touches exactly on that:

I found that I could communicate with the turtle in Beast Form. He told me a sad tale of his lost brothers, who had been seperated (sp?) by Aquaria's wars. In exchange for finding the lost kin, they would provide me with transportation between the regions of Aquaria.

[TheBear]

lol nice. I have 4 bookcases in the Mithalas library containing optional lore with one of the bookcases containing a 2 paragraph summary by Drask on the history of the transit turtles. Without going into to much detail, the turtles were captured and infused with great power by the EnergyGod of the Krotites. They were then essentially used as cavalry by the Krotites until they were freed by Prince Drask. I've developed a fairly detailed set of ideas for the Krotites annihilation of the Erulians and the subsequent war that grew out of this with the Mithalans. In the current alpha version this story is only loosely discussed but I think I'm going to make it a bit more prominent as it ties in with so many characters.

[SpiritOfNikopolo]

So that would be desirable to try that is already ready....
It is possible testing, to look that that already is?))))
Forgive for transfer with help programm - PROMT

[TheBear]

I'm having difficulty discerning PROMT's translation of your post. Alpha has done some alpha testing (har har puns) but I've decided to hold back releasing a alpha/beta until I'm more satisfied with the state of the mod. I'll post another update sometime this weekend on my ingredient/recipe system once I get the code ironed out.

[Hiro]

I think he (or she) wants to try out what you have already. But yeah, I can understand why you'd want to hold off on releasing a beta version.

Looks like we'll have to wait.

[SpiritOfNikopolo]

Thank you I all have understood

P.S.:
I - "He"
Man (Boy)

[TheBear]

Recipe/Ingredient System
Despite having already created the framework for a food vendor with the item vendor I showed previously this has taken a lot of time. I worked on the first vendor over the course of 2 days while this one has taken 5. There's some more complicated stuff going on under the hood but creating a database of all items in the game for me to work with externally took a good chunk of it.

There will be 2 recipe/ingredient vendors in Sacrifice. I'm only showing one of them but I assure you they work exactly the same except that they sell different items. Items can be purchased by exchanging memory crystals. I'm not completely sure how these new crystals will be obtained but it will most likely be from completing quests, found in breakeable items, and/or from killing creatures (not sure about the last one). Also, I'm thinking of changing the large blue crystals, from the item vendor, and simply granting a large amount (say 5) of the smaller crystals so that all 3 vendors use the same currency.

Recipes can only be bought once but they will also yield one of that item. You can buy as many ingredients as you want. The vendor is not the most courteous of creatures and as such you will have to collect your purchased food after exiting the menu. The colored plants you normally get ingredients from will now only yield bulbs, leaves, shrooms, and occasionally oil or fish meat from a trapped creature. Ingredients continue to drop off killed creatures but breakable crates/urns will house odd items (possibly small crystals).

vendor_food.wmv(4.98mb)
- "replay intro" confirm image is placeholder (no blank confirm image I can put text over unfortunately)