Re: Magic of Aquaria SPOILERS!!!!!!! new pics Feb 15

[Lady-Succubus]

Freedom of choice is a great factor in Aquaria's succes. Forcing people to do a level or gauntlet in a forced certain way would take most fun out.

Okay, well, they could put some routes with more currents and more monsters and some routes with less currents and less monsters. And maybe even some with more currents and less monsters! =^.^=

[Sindhi]

There are some fun currents in the Sunset map, and a mini-Abyss area we will pack with monsters. And the urchin cave is pretty packed with monsters...and the snake cave. Lots of tricksy evil spiders...

 The problem with making more monsters is scripting the fights, and since our bosses are a bit more complex, I think, than most of the Aquaria bosses they are a pain in the butt to script, Yogoda tells me... we are just too perfectionistic and picky, I guess, which is why this mod may take us another six months to finish... sometimes I just can't believe that Alec and Derek made all of Aquaria in two years, just the two of them (plus the third guy for a little while), and here we are doing just a little mod and it takes us soooooo long to make stuff and script stuff. Especially since we are doing so many of our own graphics. The learning curve seems more like a corkscrew than a curve sometimes.....



 Here are the new tree trunks Yogoda worked on (hey, Alpha, no white edges!!!) and Sindhi made new greenery for four kinds of trees and did a tree with stretching tiles to make branches, so the forest maps will look better all around.This is in the middle of the first forest map.

[Lady-Succubus]

Oohs! =^.^=

I wish I could help more, but I'm not smart enough to come up with "original" puzzles. ._.

[Sindhi]

You know, we create our reality with words. "I'm not smart enough..." creates that reality. I know from reading your posts that you are very bright; don't sell yourself short, Lady. Obviously Yogoda and I are not coming up with clever puzzles either, or we wouldn't be asking for help. It's not easy! And it is tougher because we are still working on the story. And next week we are taking a helicopter tour of Seattle and going to the San Juan islands to see the Orcas, porpoises, seals, bald eagles and so on. There aren't enough hours in the day.... and as many games as Yogoda and I and all of you guys have played isn't helping any of us even steal and adapt someone else's puzzle to our mod, so we will just keep putting it out there... and maybe we will get lucky and find someone who has a puzzle up their sleeve. I am attaching another photo I worked on last night while exposing Yogoda to American movies (ah, the Swiss are so sheltered; they don't have Netflix); his first time seeing Galaxy Quest, hehe. Am almost done with a lemur.  Will show you the finished product; we can cheat and use the monkey script from Aquaria to animate it in the Secret Garden. Also want to  make some gigantic mosquitos of death (since I came back from Mexico covered in bites... I want revenge) so we can kill, kill, kill those nasty monsters...

[Lady-Succubus]

Those trees look like a shaft jumping challenge. =^.^=

[Sindhi]

Actually, the trees will be climbable on the left side and the right side; Yogoda is working on creating the nodes right now in the Secret Garden map which he will also do for the two other Forest maps. We will have wall-jumping maps, the snake caves, which will provide all the wall jumping your heart could ever desire. Here's a close-up of the left side of Forest Map 1 so you can see the nice transitions Yogoda made and the foliage I just arranged. I'm a perfectionist, what can I say?



By the way, I love using shift-c and shift-v to stretch and shrink tiles for making branches in this case (press at the same time over a tile and stretch or shrink away), but the technique has a multitude of uses.

[Lady-Succubus]

The editor has too many "secret" buttons. ._.

[Yogoda]

No secret buttons any more 

http://aquariawiki.ryanballantyne.name/wiki/index.php/Editor_controls

[Lady-Succubus]

Funny how F and P aren't listed there...

[Yogoda]

Now they are

I don't know if you are the one that did add them right now, but thank, forgot those ^^

[Lady-Succubus]

It wasn't me. ^^;

But thanks anyway, whoever. :3

[Sindhi]

Yogoda just put my new mountains (done totally in My Paint) on the parallax layer so that when Naija walks by, the mountains scroll behind the trees; it adds a lot of realism to the scene. He darkened the mountains because it was night.



We will work on the story when we go to the California redwoods late this month.

[Lady-Succubus]

I live in California!

[Sindhi]

This Dancing Goddess tree is based on a silk tree, or mimosa, which has purple leaves and pink blooms. And yes, all you shy people out there, she is TOTALLY NAKED!!! Deal with it...

[Lady-Succubus]

Actually, she appears to be covered in bark.