Topic: Simon's Quest Revamped version 1.1

[metroidquest]

I can make pretty much anything in gamemaker. Did you use a dll for joystick support or native functions? The native functions blow and are really lacking. Also...

I didnt buy a white crystal (never do til after I leave the first mansion) so I of course checked to see if you could use the invisible platform without it and you can just like in the original. The problem is your code moves you outside the platform if you get hit by it. I tried to jump on it and go stuck in the edge of the blocks above it. I could change directions and I could whip and stuff but I couldnt move. Only thing I could do is quit and start over.

And I know you say its 'feature complete' as far as your concerned but now that its out you can add some lil stuff just for completeness and I think continues should be the first

Hey thanks for discovering that. I had a lot of issues with the moving platforms as well and got it to a point where getting stuck was rare. You must have hit it in just the right spot to get stuck. I can keep playing around with that. The big issue with collisions is that when on thing gets solved some other problem arises. Ha.

I am using the native joystick support (yes I know it stinks). Think you can make a config screen? Thanks!

[darkmanx_429]

The level design is actually very good for the game. I just wish that some of the stages of the game stayed a little more accurate to the original NES material. Overall it's very well put together! I always have a minor gripe with everyone always using Richter's Sprite for a CV2 remake and not changing it to match Simon's original color's from the NES game. Personally preference though. The inventory screens seem to be put together quite well though. Good job on the coding for everything!

[X]

Hey metroidquest, I also played your game and I've hit a particular glitch. It happens during movement. I'll be walking back and fourth from screen to screen earning hearts and exp, when for no reason, the character moves on his own and I lose virtually all control of him. He just keeps on walking till I press 'UP'  then it stops. But then it happens again shortly afterwards and so-on. I definitely want to play this game with a controller as crossing my arms just to use the keyboard is doing a number on my wrists T_T; Or at least a button config so I can have the D-pad and control buttons in their proper and respective places. And yeah, having no continues is brutal.

-X

[MRSKELETON]

So I figured I'd download and try this out

It's definitely Simon's Quest, and that's not really intended as a 'compliment'
I played it for a little bit, and there's quite a bit of stuff that even in the beginning is fairly grating

I can see how making Richter's whip animation 'faster' and more responsive is your attempt at making the game play faster, but
it's really only a good idea in prospect, Richter plays faster but the game still has the exact same layout and flow problems that Simon's Quest does. Now it just feels like you can plow through the game even easier, with the monster difficulty being toned up not really being any measure of actual difficulty scale, besides making the game pretty unbalanced.

Also, ditch the music and go for something that sounds either more 'powerful' or more ambient. The music doesn't really match the tone at all.

[metroidquest]

So I figured I'd download and try this out

It's definitely Simon's Quest, and that's not really intended as a 'compliment'
I played it for a little bit, and there's quite a bit of stuff that even in the beginning is fairly grating

I can see how making Richter's whip animation 'faster' and more responsive is your attempt at making the game play faster, but
it's really only a good idea in prospect, Richter plays faster but the game still has the exact same layout and flow problems that Simon's Quest does. Now it just feels like you can plow through the game even easier, with the monster difficulty being toned up not really being any measure of actual difficulty scale, besides making the game pretty unbalanced.

Also, ditch the music and go for something that sounds either more 'powerful' or more ambient. The music doesn't really match the tone at all.

Boy! Well I guess that sums it all up. My little project was a failure. I guess I'll go rethink my life and become a monk.

[metroidquest]

ooh hey! thanks for the award! maybe I won't be a monk after all!

[Successor The Cruel]

I tried it out and didn't really care for it, either, for kind of the same reason as MRSKELETON, but kind of not. Mainly because it's Simon's Quest... except really awkward. It doesn't look, sound, or play nearly as well as the original and playing as Richter Belmont is very strange... this is much too strong a word, but the best thing I can think of is blasphemous. I just can't play as Richter and pretend he's Simon. That's asking my brain to stretch reality a little too much.

It doesn't aspire to be anything more than what is already available in the (better looking, playing, and sounding) original or show me much that is exclusive to it, so there isn't too much incentive for me to play it when I can go to the original. It's kinda' like, beyond weird curiosity, why play the bizarre PC-Engine Golden Axe when you can play the Genesis or arcade versions?

That said, I don't think that necessarily means there is anything inherently wrong with doing this. I guess your vision on what you want to do just does not link up with what I want to see, and I'm not saying it has to, but since we're on a discussion forum, I'm just offering my input.

[metroidquest]

Sorry folks, I just never got attached to ANY of the characters. It wasnt about the characters so much as it was about the NES game itself that could maybe benefit from a 'mario allstars' type facelift. It was made for people who may have never played anything after CV4.
In my eyes, a Belmont is a guy with a whip and they are pretty interchangeable. If you never played any of the Richter games and compared the Richter sprite to the NES sprite (not the tacky box art... come on.. look at the Megaman box art some time) you'll notice they are pretty darn similar.
Again, my apologies to this community for being 'blasphemous'. I just wanted to see if I could remake one of my childhood favorites. That's all.

[Dengo vlad tepes]

If your dying after 3 hits it means you are in an area that you are too low-leveled for. I've beefed up alot of enemies compared to the original

Not sure what u mean by invisible objects. Can you elaborate?

sorry for late dude and yeah you made the game much harder and much cooler 

forget about the invisible elevetor cuz it doesn't make a big deal but if ur curios then check ur pm

[MRSKELETON]

Sorry folks, I just never got attached to ANY of the characters. It wasnt about the characters so much as it was about the NES game itself that could maybe benefit from a 'mario allstars' type facelift. It was made for people who may have never played anything after CV4.
In my eyes, a Belmont is a guy with a whip and they are pretty interchangeable. If you never played any of the Richter games and compared the Richter sprite to the NES sprite (not the tacky box art... come on.. look at the Megaman box art some time) you'll notice they are pretty darn similar.
Again, my apologies to this community for being 'blasphemous'. I just wanted to see if I could remake one of my childhood favorites. That's all.

I think a remake implies a re imagining of the ideas that made the game/movie/book whatever popular in the first place. It's as much about making the game 'look' better as it is making the game play better. It might have had a graphical facelift, but ultimately it's still boring as fuck to walk back and forth through a still dull-looking and dull-designed world.
I think a good example here is Metroid: Zero Mission. It's as much a straight remake of the original Metroid as it is a re-imagining, it updates all of the classical mechanics that made the game popular in the first place.

[Beowulf]

I get a message saying "no sound detected" lol

[Esco]

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[Esco]

First, let me say that after playing thru your game that I thought it was just as much fun as the original Simon's quest. And honestly, that's what really counts. So if you were trying to make a 16 bit version of the game that is to the original, what super mario bros all stars was to it's series, then you truly succeeded.

However, like some people pointed out this game should have been tested further. Here's a list of the bugs/mistakes that I found:

• When you die in the mansions, you get sent back to the start of the mansion. While this DOES make it harder, it is also very annoying, and was not in the original game
• in the towns, when it goes to night, if you are standing in the spot where a zombie appears, it appears right on top of you
• The whip up close does not hit: this is a HUGE issue
• In the 3rd castle, in the upper left corner where the scroll is, it seems impossible to hit the 3rd block with holy water that the scroll is in. You can hit the top two, but he 3rd appears to be unhittable. Also if you shatter the top two blocks and drop down onto the third, you are now stuck and must reset the game. If you try ducking and attacking you become even further stuck here
• I believe that the movement bug where your character keeps moving left or right has already been mentioned; pausing and moving the controller left and right, THEN unpausing stops this. This LITERALLY ended my game and caused me to lose 30 minutes of progress. This is a MAJOR bug.
• the dramatic effect when an orb is stabbed with a stake was not put in.
• There is no confirm on escape; this coupled with no continues, can easily cause you to lose a TON of work if you or a pet/friend accidentally touches the escape key by accident.
• Richter's colorpal when he climbs UP stairs is WRONG
• Some enemies like really pixelated at times, and other times look perfect
• While speaking to NPC's, if you wait, they will turn away from you; I assume this is because their movement is timer based rather than position based?
• At deborah cliff, if you grab the scroll the tile underneath is not solid. So you fall to your death.
• slimes outside are worth 1 heart instead of  half a big one at night; two headed beats are always wowth half a big heart
• The body of the stone rose and bone dragon will still hit you even if the head is killed
• If you jump down quick as the water level is lowering, you can see that it just vanishes; freezing the player in place until it is down could avoid this.
• The hitboxes for the bosses and some enemies are not right (the darkwing bat boss is the first and most OBVIOUS one, as is death)
• For the minotaur, you can just stand all the way on the right or left and he cannot hurt you but you can still hurt him
• The heart counter goes over 999 even though there is obviously only space for 3 digits
• the skeleton's bones and bone scimitar's bones do not work properly when they are killed
• The werewolf can get stuck in the upper corner of the screen, in the spot where you enter the town of jova, if he jumps towards it

I also have a few small pieces of advice:

• You may want to notify people that if something blinks GOLD it is not taking damage
• You shouldn't use the colorize feature in paintshop for palette swapping enemies... it looks messed up (lol)
• An indication that level 7 is the max level would help; I got to it and wasted MAD time getting 700 more exp so I could go up again and I obviously never did
• Having a merchant that says meh, and one that says if I can't pay go away, that both sell NOTHING in a game where if you don't have enough to pay for the item, the ones that actually DO sell something will act like they can't help you at all is a BAD IDEA! On the merchant in the town before the last I saved up over a 1000 hearts and wasted a ton of time, thinking he had something to sell.

I also saw that you did not seem to want to put out another updated version of this to possibly fix bugs, which is a shame. But if you don't want to do that, might I at least request that maybe a month  down the line that you put out the source code, so that maybe somebody else will do it, or possibly even IMPROVE on your game? You might learn some neat things from what they come up with too.
 

Anyway,after that long list please don't think that I was bashing you, or that I am acting like some of the people here who are just hating on you (when they KNOW they couldn't make something 1/10th as good as this, or instead talk about how HARD making an 8 bit Castlevania is.... yet here is a 16 bit one, and they act like it is a walk in the park to do. Yeah, right, Lol

I LOVED playing this, and I thought you did an AMAZING job with the stages. The tiles are obviously mostly from Dracula x, but there are quite a few that I didn't recognize, and they all looked great! The stages look either 99% close, or EXACTLY like the original ones, as did the enemy placement. I also liked how the enemies used updated gfx from newer games, and almost all of them looked great (the exception being the flame man, which looks like you use a chosen unes frames for him). It was also nice to see a few things improved upon like there being a boss in every stage (a HUGE PLUS), and that you can carry more hearts, and that the enemies at the end areas are more dangerous now, the fact that you can no longer carry a stake from one mansion to another, the laurels being tweaked, etc.

I honestly think that if you had waited a bit longer to put it out, and just put in a bit more effort here and there (especially in the dracula fight; I was expecting something amazing, and I was truly disappointed with it; also using death's voice for him absolutely DOES NOT WORK! We all know it's death's voice, and not his, lol) the game would have been ever better. You obviously have some serious talent and skills.

As for the people talking about how it looks repetitive, and they don't like the music, and how the controls don't feel right... well no disrespect to any of them, but they have no idea what they are talking about.

• The music is all 16 bit remakes of all the classic tunes and they sound good and fit in perfectly.
• The controls feel WAY more loose and updated than the originals, and are great; my only gripe is again no key config, but from what i saw in the thread you may be working on fixing this, so no worries there (let's face it though, you KNEW that was a must when you put this thing out, lol)
• The original simon's quest was a VERY repetitive game tile wise, background wise, enemy wise, etc.. I have no clue how someone can complain that your version is not like simon's quest, and then complain about the repetitiveness. That just makes no sense.

In closing let me just say that this thing could use a liiiittle more polishing (that is what revisions are for ), but it was a LOT of fun to play. I am actually about to start another game, and try for the best ending now!

[metroidquest]

• Having a merchant that says meh, and one that says if I can't pay go away, that both sell NOTHING in a game where if you don't have enough to pay for the item, the ones that actually DO sell something will act like they can't help you at all is a BAD IDEA! On the merchant in the town before the last I saved up over a 1000 hearts and wasted a ton of time, thinking he had something to sell.

LOL. That's because he probably sold laurels/garlic and if you had max laurels you could not buy any more. But good point!

I enjoyed your thorough analysis and you have inspired me to go back and make some important changes. I will make sure to address those things. Perhaps we can talk more in PM and get some cool ideas going.

[Flame]

a Belmont is a guy with a whip and they are pretty interchangeable

To be honest, while in early Castlevanias they may have been somewhat interchangeable, (I mean, they never really cared enough to stick to ONE design for Simon alone,) But somewhere around Rondo and Symphony, they started giving each Belmont their own unique designs. they were no longer interchangeable after that. And Richter is no exception. his Rondo design is as infamous as his kojima design. Especially considering he is one of the most famous Belmonts (IRL AND in story) and his design(s) in relation with previous Belmonts is pretty distinct. So using him for a Castlevania 2 remake, isnt the best of ideas, even if you recolor him red.