Responding to Semi-Native's post:
Rob, I like the changes you made, especially taking out those extra blue zapper rooms and making the zapper rooms easier. Very nice! Still challenging but a lot less frustrating.
Thank you
That's helps me feel better about it.
I admit that I felt a small pang when I went in there with a machete, but it didn't last long. I was at a point where I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it suddenly winked out. I went through that area ruthlessly chopping out a lot of stuff in desperation.
16700 Map and shield don't fall to the ground when trap door opens (rose already reported this above). A quick experiment that should have been cleaned up. One thing I find irritating is that most sprites have no sense of gravity which I think is too bad. I think it ought to be optional on most objects.
15303 See pic (and rose reported this above, also). Jack can jump up to go left into the next room, but a gray door is closed. When he jumps to get back where he's standing, he gets zapped. I let my Jack fall down and he triggered the zappers to turn off.
Heh.. I've fixed this, and I've removed the shut-off for this room. It no longer makes sense. All of the zappers can be progressively shut off. It was an accident that Jack couldn't come back into this room - remember, he used to come this way by ladder and wouldn't have need to jump or step down.
15103 Jack Stuck (see pic). Zapper hasn't been turned off so Jack can't jump right. When he climbs down the ladder to get back to 15303, tiles block his head from getting to a different ladder. (I just removed those tiles.)
I'm a little puzzled how you get to this location with the zapper still engaged. To get to that point you should have turned the zapper off.
16504 When Jack arrived on the blue bat platform which started in 16508, he hopped off to get the money and Save pedestal in 16503 instead of riding it up to get the red key in 16304. If that happens, a player might not realize he/she was supposed to go up and now has to backtrack to 16508 to ride it again. Also, while riding from right to left, Jack got hit by an eyeball in 16506.
I'm a bit at a loss as to what to do about some of the issues here.
1) What to do about jack jumping off...
There are a number of rooms here where Jack could jump off the platform, and any one of which will cause him to retrace his steps. As I player if that happened, I would have instantly hit abort, and restarted from the save point in that room. What I'm probably going to do is add a BBB that warns Jack of the consequences of jumping off, and let Jack do it at his own risk.
2. Timing of the eyeballs dropping is indeterminate. The timing of the vanishing platforms is probably set up from the system clock, at least that's the way it appears to me. If nothing else, it's independent of any individual thing. The other rooms I've tweaked the timing, but that can't be done for this room.
The other thing that frustrates me here (in a few other places) is the inconsistency in which creatures expire. In some cases they're gone for good, and in others they come back. I really dislike this. For all the trouble Jack went to get rid of the eyes in this room I wanted them to stay dead.
Just like I wanted the trolls in the first room in section 4 to stay gone once they flee down the ladder. (rant over)
Anyway... I'd always thought that the eyes in the room below this one had fallen from the room above - a silly idea. I think what I'm going to do is put acid under those trapdoors if I can, to ensure that the eyes are dead and gone when Jack finishes this room. He shouldn't run into them then!
I only got 83% secrets this time, and I missed a yellow key somewhere (and it wasn't the one you get by riding the gray bat platform down - I can't figure out which one it is). Oh well.
I wonder if it was the one on the far right in the blue rooms in the secret ladder that can you can take down. That's one I've almost forgotten, because there's not a whole lot of build-up around it. It could also be the one I moved around in area 2 (that used to require a lot of back-tracking to get to.).
Anyway... let me get to the fixes. Thanks as always. You've been an incredible help throughout all this.
