Labyrinth Mod Released

[Aristobulus]

It's true, you do have to swim fast and do a LOT of dodging until you find shield and two of the costumes!  

That's not really fair to ask of the player if you want difficulty at all similar to the main story, though. They only placed obstacles in your way you could fairly deal with - Home Waters is a safe area not just because you're new to the game the first time you're there, but because you simply do not have the tools to reliably deal with the enemies you face.

The main Aquaria mode never throws you into situations that you simply can't handle.

I understand that you're expecting people to be more knowledgeable in the game than they are the first time they loaded Aquaria, but that doesn't mean you can just say, take enemies from the Veil and place them in the starting area because you know the player has already encountered those enemies before - yes, you can expect the player to know how to deal with these enemies, but you're not giving them the tools to deal with them as they know how from main Aquaria.

I feel like, a lot of the mistakes in design here are probably due to just how much time and effort you spent on making it - it's a double edged sword, basically. You were *so* invested in this, and you clearly did care - the time and effort you spent on this does show through - but you spent so much time on it that you got used to the map. You knew it by heart, you knew were everything was, and you likely forgot what it's like for a new player to be thrust into your map, that doesn't know where everything was.

It's the same kind of mistake old dungeon crawlers and text adventure games made all the time. Things like King's Quest and such - there's a solution, that the devs were thinking of, and it makes sense, but it's not really something that might come naturally to a player that doesn't have the knowledge the devs do, so the player can spend a lot more time, with a lot more trouble and frustration, than the devs did or expected or intended.

Also, I edited my other post with some more thoughts.

Edit - And I'm writing so much on this because the mod so far seems to have a lot of sheer effort and thought put into it, it has a lot of potential and it's not just some garbage mod I want to discard. Since it's very clear there was a lot of effort put into making it, I want to put effort into criticizing it. Something with this kind of potential I really would like to see be as good as it possibly can be.

[False.Genesis]

Also found the Shield song, but I don't know where I picked that up - I only noticed I even had it because I was looking through my menu. If I was supposed to get a notification that Naija had just learned the shield spell, I didn't. That might be a glitch - if it isn't, if possible, you might want to put in a notice somehow to alert the player they just got a song?

Arg, so it's indeed a glitch - there's a comment when you find a song. Don't know which version you used, but I got a reports for my version as well. So it's a glitch in loading savegames, that automatically adds shield on load (because the main game does so).

Oh, also, a possible glitch or just a bit of sequence breaking you might want to fix - I traveled up the tunnel to this path of bubbles that eventually led me to the Mithalan pot treasure, but my first time through I missed a bubble and fell - but I fell down into a cavern where the only way in and out was blocked by a rock I would've had to lift with the bind song, except I didn't have the bind song. I had to use the editor to get out. Also, when I fell in there, I landed in a part of the water absolutely consumed by anemones and almost died before Naija just got richocheted into a part of the water I could actually control her - she would hit one, bounce into the air, land on another, and repeat.

This isn't a glitch - this is intended. The rock is blocking that passage from the left, but you can still enter from the right. There's something imporant to find in the pond near the anemones...
Might thin out the anemones a bit, though...

Also with the bubble path, there's one bubble about midway through you're in, where you simply can not see the next bubble you have to jump to, and it's a leap of faith. You should probably move the bubbles slightly closer together so that you never have to make a blind jump, especially if you're careful.

Which resolution do you use? Wide or 4:3? Because the mod was designed on widescreen, maybe that's why. I'm also using widescreen, so if there's anything related to this I haven't noticed during testing.

EDIT: I'll make some minor changes today; Frances is fine with that. Haven't gotten much criticism yet, so there wasn't much to change so far, except a few bugs.

[Aristobulus]

I guess I use 4:3, I'm not actually sure.

[False.Genesis]

So, done a bit of tweaking, reduced anemone density in that specific place, and added partial world maps. Just have to talk to Frances to if everything is fine or if she isn't happy with my changes.

I also checked the bubble jumping part; set my resolution to 1024x768 (which is 4:3) and managed to do the full path from right to left and back, without ever falling down, and never had to do a blind jump anywhere (hint: use middle mouse button/wheel to look!).
The shield song bug is also fixed; but it's not a mod problem, so you'll get your fix as soon as i've made a new updatepack (will do tomorrow). You may wish to wait descending into the labyrinth until you have the update, because you won't have the shield song anymore as you've technically not learned it. I will also add a little hack to the mod to fix it for older versions.

EDIT: Nevermind, I can't add this hack because it would break other people's savegames. So just in case anyone runs into the problem that the next update takes shield away while you are in the labyrinth  you can send me your save and i'll fix it up.

[Aristobulus]

Ah, I figured some things out from your post. My resolution is 1280x1024. That might still be 4:3 not sure. Anyway, my issue is a simple one - I forgot about the look function and was trying to see more bubbles by inching as close to the edge of a bubble as I could. I will point out that if you do this, there is a bubble where you can't see the next one.

I forgot about the look function because I don't think you ever really need to use it in the main Aquaria game.

How does a partial world map work, compared to the world map in the main game?

[False.Genesis]

Hey nice, thanks to this question I found another bug - it didn't load world map data when loading a mod's saved game. Fixed - in next updatepack.

The world map looks like this right now:



Not sure, maybe i've hidden too much... the first map is almost mapped out, and the other maps have some points that help orienting, but nothing of interest is in the mapped out locations. Thoughts?
You'll have to use map markers then, if you need to remember specific locations. That's what they're good for.

[FrancesF]

Your feedback has been good, Aristobulus.  (I'm especially glad you pointed out the glitch with the shield song automatically appearing after a save.)  Here's a little info about the mod:

The Main map was the first map I made when I was learning how to use the editor.  The map kept growing larger as I wanted to try things out.  At first I had no idea that there would even be other maps in the mod and as I was just learning, the main map has a little bit of many things that were in the main game - safe areas, dangerous areas, secret caves, hidden items, cliffs and water bubbles for jumping, and of course a variety of entities.  When you start out, you are in the central area of the map near the central save point and close to the entrance to Naija's home.  If you explore carefully, replenishing your health as needed with the save point and the strategically located health plants (which you can replenish by going in and out of the Garden warp point at the back of Naija's kitchen) you'll soon learn your way around.  And if you want to find all the hidden items, of course you have to go everywhere, look at everything, and do a certain amount of backtracking.  Especially if you're stocking up on food items, just as in the main game, there is backtracking.  As far as it's being aimless, I suppose it is.  This mod is all about exploring new environments and finding things, and your purpose in the Main map is to find the two songs and the costumes, and to stock up on food.  There is a bit of a story later in the mod, but there's a lot of exploring to do first.

Spoilers:

The wurms:  You can entice them away from the wurm caves, lead them to a neighboring area, and swim quickly around another way, leaving them behind.  Then you are free to explore the wurm caves in peace.

The anemones:  I agree that this area is obnoxious and you can die, and that's one of the things that will be made easier if another version of the mod comes out.  But in the meantime, if you make a good leap off the top of the right-hand cliff into that cave, you should land cleanly between the two clumps of anemones.  Once in the cave you can get out again even if you haven't yet found the bind song by climbing up the left hand cliff.  Jump over the anemones, jump over the crab when he shows up, climb to the top, and you're out.

Other harmful entities - sharks, swordfish:  Once you find the urchin costume you can kill them.  Otherwise just dodge.

Believe it or not, I did try to put myself continuously in the place of a player while I was making Labyrinth mod, so it's good to hear what things worked for people and what didn't…  Thanks!

[Daxar]

Wait, there wasn't THAT much dangerous stuff in the beginning, was there? All I remember that was particularly hard to avoid were sharks and swordfish. Swordfish are easy to dodge, and sharks don't have the best homing AI either. I think I got hurt when I was playing through the area in my LP some, but I'm a terrible player. And the area with worms was optional; I just avoided that place on my first time through.

I guess that is a good question, though: is this mod targeted at people who never played Aquaria before (Or at least never finished it), or at people who've played before? Because if it's for total newbies, it's fairly hard, but I personally was never able to get past Mithala without cheating, and I played through this mod in only a couple days, with 0 deaths. Ok, maybe 1 death. But it wasn't that hard for me.

[False.Genesis]

Uploaded new version with minor fixes.
And it has a world map!

The main area is almost completely mapped out, for an easier start, and the following areas almost not at all, with one exception.
This way you can use map markers, but no secrets are given away.

(@Aristobulus: Better now? Moar feedback please? )

[Aristobulus]

Sure. How do I get the newest version?

[KS-10]

Download mod from link in first post and use

[archy]

Hey, I also completed this mod now, and wanted to leave some comments.

First of all, thanks for creating it... I really enjoyed it!

As for the above discussion about the intro map enemies being too difficult, I disagree. I found it quite easy to simply swim and jump around in such a way that they could not hit me. (And I don't even consider myself a good player...) Yes, swordfish can be annoying, but you can easily see when they're going to jump at you (they stand still for a second or so right before), so that's when you know that you need to dodge. Sharks aren't all that difficult, as long as you don't stay in the same horizontal line as them. And the giant wurms can be intimidating, but since you're faster than them I don't see the problem. (Also, once you find the bind song, you can fight them by dropping stones on their heads...  )

Aristobulus, is it possible that due to the original game you had become so accustomed to energy form that you had forgotten how to survive by simply dodging stuff?  
Also, if you're having trouble here, wait until you reach the "Depths" map (see below)...  

I do agree that the anemones can pose a challenge though. The first time I jumped off that cliff into the unknown, I landed right on the anemones, and got bounced off of them (without being able to do anything about it) ... right into some more anemones. Outch.

Anyways, the feedback I wanted to give about this mod:

1) What I especially liked

• Naijas's home. It's small and cozy, and actually feels like a home. In the original game, I was always annoyed by how big the home cave was - especially with all the extra rooms (or should I say halls) that got unlocked as you advanced in the game - and the treasures got spread out over all this vast space, which denied the player the satisfaction of seeing an overview of all found treasures close together. Not so in this mod.
   
• The "Rapids" map. I thought this was a really innovative and fun puzzle. And thanks to the strong currents and wormholes, each "try" through it was relatively quick, so it didn't become obnoxious to do many tries.
  (Although I am wondering whether I missed anything useful, since one time I ended up in a dead-end that had a song plant, so maybe there were more songplants or costumes there that I missed?)
   
• The "Strange" map. This was simply awesome. Beautiful graphics, lots of fun jumping opportunities, an abundance of strange "fish" (they dropped fish meat and oil, so I think I can call them that...  ), and an interesting boss fight (where it's not immediately clear how you can even have a chance to defeat him, but once you figure it out it's quite doable). Also, this map really put the fun in wearing the Urchin costume (which I never found much use for in the original game)...
   
• The zoom spots in the main "Wheel" map. Great idea, and well executed.
   
• The background graphics in the "Pearlmine" map. Various places in this map gave a really cool "depth" feeling, like you're actually in a big 3D world. No place in the original game achieved that so well.

2) What I found (positively) surprising

• Ok, this is not so much about the game itself but rather about my experience with it. When I first started exploring the central "Wheel" map, I thought I would never be able to find my way around it, and it would be one long, tiring journey of trial and error 'til the end. But by the end of the mod, I suddenly realized I had come to "know" that area quite naturally and could quite accurately find my way to specific points of interest without even putting much thought into it. A rather nice learning experience...

3) What I found a little irritating

• The rukh nest in the intro map - because it did not leave a "rukh egg" ingredient like the two rukh nests in the main game do...  
   
• The section in the main "Wheel" map that was filled with Nudibranchs. Ok, maybe I'm simply angry at myself because for some reason it took me quite some time (and several deaths) to solve that "puzzle". But even once I had figured out how to do it, it was a tedious  task to actually execute (a long way of swimming back to various earlier points, and returning) . Couldn't that puzzle have been more locally confined? I.e. only a short tunnel section filled with Nudibranchs, with both sides of it easily reachable without having to swim for 10 Minutes (accounting for getting lost along the way)?
   
• The Octopus boss fight. In most boss fights in Aquaria you 1. need to figure out how you can damage him, 2. plan how exactly your'e going move and what steps you're going to take (e.g. jump back and forth between specific spots, swim around him in a specific direction, damage him at very specific times etc.), and 3. execute it three or so times until he gets mad, then 4. blast his eyes. If you didn't follow your well-planned steps for how to move/act, you would usually get killed fast. If you did, you would win.
  In this mod's octopus fight, on the other hand, I couldn't figure out any such steps - the octopus simply moved around and used his weapons too erratically. On the other hand, he seemed to have much fewer hit points and would do less damage with his lasers then the Aquaria-bosses. So it degenerated into just a messy close-range hustle between me, my bound rock, and the octopus - with me simply accepting his laser damage and offsetting it with health recipes. When he died, it just wasn't the same feeling of satisfaction as after a carefully planned and successfully executed Aquaria boss kill.

4) What I found a little irritating, but in a way also kind of fun  

• The "Depths" map.
  The sheer number of nasty enemies in this map was just... crazy :-) I found it completely impossible to do any systematic exploration of the map - I became so preoccupied with dodging missiles and running from predators that I pretty much lost my sense of space and just jumped across caves, tunnels and wormholes aimlessly (often ending up in the same spot repeatedly)... When I came across an energy shot door and associated "ball", I was actually beginning to think I had made a mistake and should have found energy form before entering this map... It took quite few more minutes of frantic swimming around before I reached a savepoint, and yet more before I at last found the "magic wormhole chamber" that would allow me to solve the map...
  (Btw, once I had energy form, I systematically cleaned out the whole map, leaving no monster alive, just out of revenge...  (ok, also for the song plants))

5) What I found a little cheesy

• The "recipe refill" room at the bottom of the "Wheel" map.
  You could just go back and forth between that room and the jelly fish room right outside it, and they would both restock everytime so you could easily get as many leafs, eggs, red bulbs, jelly oil, etc. as you want. The kitchen was also near, making it possible to make full use of those ingredients... Of course I couldn't resist (I even took a trip back to the "Strange" map, to stock up on meat and oil (and recipes based on them), just so I could make use of all those leaves and eggs...) but in retrospect it made the game a little cheesy.
   
• The last boss fight (after getting energy shot).
  Maybe I am myself to blame (for having stacked up so many recipes), but this wasn't so much a fight, as it was me eating some Energy shot +2, Speed +2 and Regeneration +1 items, and then jumping around and continually hitting the [CTRL] button like crazy without much tactical consideration. After some time I got blinded (screen turned into rainbow spiral) - I don't even know what caused it, I guess I was hit by some projectile - and when the screen turned normal again, I noticed all enemies had already died in the meantime and I could stop hitting [CTRL]...  
  

Again, all things considered I really enjoyed playing this mod, so thanks again for creating it!

[FrancesF]

Wow, thanks for this really thorough feedback, archy.  It was so fun to read about the parts you liked!   And it's good to know about the parts you found irritating or cheesy…

I'll comment on a couple of those:

The Ruhk egg:  I did want an egg to be available there, but the ruhk has to be killed to produce the egg, and without energy form I'm not sure that's possible.  However, it occurred to me while walking my dog this morning (a good time to think about games and mods) that perhaps with hot soup and the urchin costume Naija could jump high enough to hit the ruhk enough times to kill her.  The other possibility would be some additional scripting.  By the time False.Genesis started helping with scripts I was working on the Pearlmine, and never thought about going back to the ruhk and asking him to modify that script.  Spoiler:  There is a ruhk egg elsewhere in the mod, in the Rapids map. Directions are not given in the Aquarian notation; it's a reward for exploring everywhere.

The "nudi" section of the Wheel map:  You make a good point about it being a pain to backtrack once you figure out what you have to do.  The other thing I wished I had done here, but didn't think of in time, was to have one of the scrying lenses right by the nudies so you could see the whole thing at once and plan your strategy.

The Depths map:  One of the testers (@achurch) told me he had a great time setting it up in each area so that the enemies pretty much eliminated each other...

The recipe room at the bottom of the Wheel map:  Well, yes, that is a bit "cheesy" or "leafy" or something!  I just like to make food, and I thought like-minded players could have fun here. I guess I did overdo it a bit. 

Thanks again for this thoughtful feedback!

[FrancesF]

There's a puzzle involved in finding energy form, and once you've found it, you have the means to leave the map.  Be sure to search everywhere; you'll know the puzzle room when you see it.  Beast form is your friend on this map - you can eat many of the enemies. 

[archy]

The Ruhk egg:  I did want an egg to be available there, but the ruhk has to be killed to produce the egg, and without energy form I'm not sure that's possible.

I don't think I ever actually killed a ruhk in the original game. I just shot at it until it would flee and drop an egg. (In this mod, I simply jumped at it, which also successfully scared it away but did not cause it do drop the egg.) You might be right though that it is the damage you give to the ruhk, not the fact that you scare it away, which causes the egg to be dropped...

The Depths map:  One of the testers (@achurch) told me he had a great time setting it up in each area so that the enemies pretty much eliminated each other...

Beast form is your friend on this map - you can eat many of the enemies. 

Interesting... I didn't try either of those things very much while in that map. Might have to go back and give it another try...

The recipe room at the bottom of the Wheel map:  Well, yes, that is a bit "cheesy" or "leafy" or something!

Come to think of it, the original game has a similar spot:  In the north-eastern Kelp Forest map, there was a large rock at the center with a (somewhat hidden) cave inside in which you could get many many leaves and red bulbs, and outside of the cave, there was a cove with two jellyfish nearby, so you could go back and forth between the two similar to the room in this mod. Although, of course...

• you wouldn't get many eggs there - you'd have to travel to a completely different map (open waters) to restock on those
• the cave was more convoluted and a longer, so it would take longer to "harvest" all the ingredients
• there was no kitchen nearby
• there were several enemies right outside of the cave, which would respawn each time as well... so you'd have to be more careful (although the sea dragon could actually be seen as part of the food-restocking system, as he was afaik the only way other than song plants to get a special bulb  )

On the other hand, there were additionally some fish swarms nearby for meat and oil.

I just like to make food

So do I, which you can probably deduce from my own contribution to the Aquaria community...