Shadows of Dawn 2.5 Demo

Looks amazing, I'm stumped on the dungeon, though. On a side note, in the room on the second floor where you have to snake around to the left in order to get past rising blocks if you step on tiles from the two doors. It's where you have to go to the left past the moving warps. It's possible for you to snake around the tiles that activate the blocks by pressing up against the statue on the left.

Played it and beat it. Impressions below.

The bad:

1. Please, turn on the "Smooth Vertical Scrolling" rule.

2. I don't know if this is a general ZC bug, but I get a very short blip at the end of each custom sound effect. This happens after every slash of the sword, for instance.

3. Should be obvious enough:

4. The highlighted tiles are solid and shouldn't be:

5. Take a gander:

The door tile two tiles directly south from Link is wrong. This door tile uses a purple floor, but it should use the gray "entrance mat" floor.

6. I'm not sure exactly what I did, but I think I pressed the down key after defeating the Level 1 boss (at the end of the Elite guy's speech). When I did, it took me directly to the beginning of the boss battle. I beat it again, pressed up at the end, and it was fine.

7. Level 1 just drags on and on and on for the first dungeon of the game. I would have fallen asleep in the tunnels if I hadn't accidentally pressed the Windows key (which minimized the game in order to bring up the start menu). Level 1 would be great without the tunnels in my opinion (even so, it would be the size of a normal Level 3). It honestly felt like you were trying too hard to make Level 1 "perfect."

8. I found that the blocks for the block puzzle before the ladder (I believe) have different combo types. Some are "None" and some are "Push (Wait)". Pick one and apply it to every push block.

The good:

Very colorful and detailed, good music, plentiful SFX, and a good variation of enemies. I found no game-ending bugs. I really like the interconnection of the dungeons and overworld. Excellent first boss.

Although the "bad" section is far longer than the "good" section, do be aware that you put out a good, quality demo. The "goods" easily outweigh the "bads" (so you should be happy with yourself). 😊

Now that's what I'm talking about for a review. I see a majority of my flaws involve graphic and warp bugs. Now how am I to improve the Side Dungeon Area so it doesn't get boring? And for some reason all my MC SFX always ends with a "click".

I gave it a try and really liked what I played. I liked the way the tunnels were set up. It made a change from being in a room where you have to kill monsters in order for keys to appear.

Will there be uses of scripts in this quest?

TriMaster001 wrote:Now how am I to improve the Side Dungeon Area so it doesn't get boring?

Hmm.... good question.

1. Shorten the tunnels by a few screens.

-OR-

2. Make the tunnels a little flatter.

-OR-

3. Nix the tunnels altogether and put them in a later dungeon.

Yeah, you can't really do much with side-scrollers in ZC unless you script heavily, or you give the player the Roc's Feather and turn on the gravity flag.

I've been too busy with Brawl to finish playing through it, but I'm almost to the end of level 1. Honestly? It feels really really linear and that you're just being shoved through the areas. It's nice to see that you at least made an attempt by giving most screens alternative paths, but really, it feels like all of the paths except for 1 on any given screen leads to a dead end, and there's really nothing you can do but just keep charging through, and to go back and take the other way if you hit a dead end. It also feels like you used backtracking as means purely to extend the dungeons. I mean, backtracking is an essential part of good dungeon crawling, but it really feels more like "I have to walk all the way back just to get a stupid key!?" more than it is giving you the feel of exploration.

More complete criticism later after I finish it.

Revfan9 wrote:Yeah, you can't really do much with side-scrollers in ZC unless you script heavily, or you give the player the Roc's Feather and turn on the gravity flag.

I've been too busy with Brawl to finish playing through it, but I'm almost to the end of level 1. Honestly? It feels really really linear and that you're just being shoved through the areas. It's nice to see that you at least made an attempt by giving most screens alternative paths, but really, it feels like all of the paths except for 1 on any given screen leads to a dead end, and there's really nothing you can do but just keep charging through, and to go back and take the other way if you hit a dead end. It also feels like you used backtracking as means purely to extend the dungeons. I mean, backtracking is an essential part of good dungeon crawling, but it really feels more like "I have to walk all the way back just to get a stupid key!?" more than it is giving you the feel of exploration.

More complete criticism later after I finish it.

You know, I do have a side scrolling script, but it doesn't seem to work. If only if I got it working. 😞

Anyway, I'm planning to make newer enemies as well as fixing all the bugs that this forum and PureZC have found. (There's quite a lot) Finally taking in all the criticisms I got and use them to try to fix them.

This is pretty detailed, I also like the title screen.