Portrait of Strange Relic: Beta 5.9 (updated 11/29/10)

[Iryan]

I can't draw with a mouse at all D:

Are you kidding? Your character portraits are nothing short of awesome! (not to mention that your graphical effects and pixel art are also great...)

[Stuffman]

Key word "with a mouse". All my cutins are drawn by hand and scanned; also, making small pixel art like sprites and such is a bit different from drawing proper, some different skills are applied there.

Whenever I try to draw something with my mouse I get really wobbly lines and stuff.

[Nimble]

I'm using tablet since december last year and nearly complete lose my mouse skill.
I really like MSpaint-shape and trying to devolop to true pixel-art style, so I drawing in MSpaint and paint some color in photoshop instead :V

I'm also trying to draw in paint bomb too, everytime I playing Josette and success cast paint bomb. Then .....

[Stuffman]

FINISHED

IT'S STILL THE WEEKEND. PRESIDENT'S DAY MADE IT A FOUR DAY WEEKEND AND I HAVEN'T GONE TO SLEEP YET.

See first post for download.

Please to note: Stuff might be kinda buggy! This was a bit rushed!
Okay it's REALLY buggy, I'm getting crash reports after the stage 1 end dialogue. Please wait warmly while I figure out what the fuck went wrong.
Check the first post for a sort of haphazard patch. The lag caused by deleting large graphics in events seems to be causing the Windows errors. I have no idea why but commenting them out made it stop happening. Will look for a more proper solution later, for now it'll probably just eat a little extra memory (assuming they don't have their own scope and get deleted anyway. who knows).

[Chronojet ⚙ Dragon]

YES!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!! I WAS WAITING!!
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU

EDIT: Is waiting impatiently warmly for Stage 6 and Extra.

[Chaore]

Oh very yes.

I just went through 5 last night and was wondering when you'd get to updating this.

I shall not be disapointed.

[Suikama]

"Unexpected end of archive"

._.

[Stuffman]

"Unexpected end of archive"

._.

Hmm, Prime got it to work last night. I just tried downloading it myself and the download crapped out, probably mediafire's fault. Lemme get it on Megaupload.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CPZIDOL0

[Furienify]

 :* :* :*

[Helepolis]

Well done stuffman, you completed your full game before we could complete Iji or I could complete Dcs. Downloading this.

[DgBarca]

Crash on stage 2 for me...

[Furienify]

Constructive criticism to be updated over time:

-Being able to display the features of each shot in the menu would be neat.
-Beautiful menu music~ <3 <3 <3 but then it did a really awkward loop :<
-Eeehhhh? Crash on the end of stage 1 just after we beat LeiLei. Patch~
-Love the music all around, here.
-Stage 2... Ginny vanished? Dx I think I know where she went.
-Her shotgun is much prettier and much less rage-inducing than Cirno's.
-Stella is great when she got promoted out of midboss-status, I absolutely LOVE Cygnus Sign. That was really creative of you.
-Stage 2 itself seems to have been buffed, Classicist Yellow seems to be fairly weak against most stages now.
-Stage 3... Edna has perfect music.
-Still can't figure out Parlor Trick for the life of me. Orz.
-Is Last Waltz a new card? It's a perfect finisher for Edna.
-Can you reset the #/### score counter whenever the player continues? As is, it becomes impossible for me to ever acquire another 1UP from gathered score items because only the 'current' number resets to 0, the latter/'maximum' just stays at wherever it was before.
-Made it up to the end with no problems, great job.

[Stuffman]

Well done stuffman, you completed your full game before we could complete Iji or I could complete Dcs. Downloading this.

Uh I still need to make Stage 6...and Extra  :V

Crash on stage 2 for me...

Did you apply the patch?

[DgBarca]

Uh I still need to make Stage 6...and Extra  :V

Did you apply the patch?

Re-Downloaded, it works now

[Suikama]

Oh god impossible mode is D: D: D:

And it has nothing to do with the difficulty D:


Oh hey you gave Orion's bow a warning =D

[Prime 2.0]

So, when are you going to plug in a custom shot sheet to make the bullets less ugly, Stuffman?

[Suikama]

So, when are you going to plug in a custom shot sheet to make the bullets less ugly, Stuffman?

:V

Aisde from that though, it's really polished now! I only played easy mode, but the difficulty felt perfect. No cheap shots, no overly done gimmicks, just simple yet characteristic and fun spellcards, attacks, and stages all around.

Now there are still a few little issues. The number of lives given out at the beginning is rather small. Usually Touhou games give lives at increasing numbers of points (ie 50, then 100, then 200, then 500 etc), but for this you only give a life every 200 points so you dont get any extra lives on stage 1 and like only 1 on stage 2 (well at least one easy modo).
Also Kotohime's nonspells lag a lot thanks to the heavy background processing :x

But yeah overall it gets a

-Still can't figure out Parlor Trick for the life of me. Orz.

It's just aimed silly :V

[Nobu]

Ok, this is just too awesome Stuffs. \o/

I seem to be having a little problem with DMF crashing at the end of any stage though.. started arcade mode and it happened at the end of s1, and did stage practice on stage 3 and it died at the end again. :<

[Stuffman]

-Being able to display the features of each shot in the menu would be neat.

The current menu is very lacking in effects and graphics. It will be improved as such. (Actually, I want to try to make pictures of Josette in each shot type's respective art style for the menu, but I might not be a good enough artist to pull this off. We'll see)

-Beautiful menu music~ <3 <3 <3 but then it did a really awkward loop :<

It's by Sensitive Heart, who makes really great soft tunes. I almost used their version of Ghostly Eyes for Stage 3 way back when. However, being a remix also means it's a placeholder, so it's gonna get replaced later. :V

Also, I cannot be held responsible for Danmakufu having asinine problems with looping.

-Still can't figure out Parlor Trick for the life of me. Orz.

Try getting close to her and playing it horizontal-only. It gets harder the farther away you are from her, because the knife lines take up more space. STAY OUT OF THE CORNER. When she throws yellow knives, it's possible to switch across them, or you can just go around Edna in a circle if you don't want to deal with that.

-Can you reset the #/### score counter whenever the player continues? As is, it becomes impossible for me to ever acquire another 1UP from gathered score items because only the 'current' number resets to 0, the latter/'maximum' just stays at wherever it was before.

This was brought to my attention earlier but I'm still trying to figure out how to fix this, since there is no way for Danmakufu to tell if it just continued, only if it has continued at some point. So any solution I can come up with offhand will only fix it for the first continasfsdfajdadf nevermind I just figured it out, I'll just restore the point items instead of resetting the counter.

So, when are you going to plug in a custom shot sheet to make the bullets less ugly, Stuffman?

Last time I tried this I used shot_all and didn't like it at all, but there are some more interesting shot sheets to try now, so maybe I will.

The number of lives given out at the beginning is rather small. Usually Touhou games give lives at increasing numbers of points (ie 50, then 100, then 200, then 500 etc), but for this you only give a life every 200 points so you dont get any extra lives on stage 1 and like only 1 on stage 2 (well at least one easy modo).

I just made it a flat 200 per life and made enemies drop more points (or just made more enemies...) in the later stages, so that you gain lives faster as the game goes on, since you'd be using them more often. I want to finish the game before I decide how many lives I want to give out over the course of it. Also, there's still no way to replenish bombs in the game besides dying, which I'll address at some point.

I seem to be having a little problem with DMF crashing at the end of any stage though.. started arcade mode and it happened at the end of s1, and did stage practice on stage 3 and it died at the end again. :<

Is this with the patch? I'm going to rage if it's still happening with the patch.

[Helepolis]

I cannot provide you unfortunate any constructive criticism yet because my new PC is coming alive slowly so I am both busy with that and trying to finish my homework assignment. But I will play this for sure soon. Also probably plenty of other people are probably better at providing such information.

Uh I still need to make Stage 6...and Extra  :V

Oh damn it, you got my hopes up pretty a lot Stuffman :V. Never less, you will still finish it before us.

[Stuffman]

Oh damn it, you got my hopes up pretty a lot Stuffman :V. Never less, you will still finish it before us.

It's called Beta 5.5 and not Beta 6 for a reason!

Also honestly it's incredibly embarrassing that I'm not done already. It'll be horrible if Ijjy-yutsu finishes before me.

[Pesco]

The Man of Stuff . I only saw the pic of you yesterday since you posted it in a thread I never botthered looking at. Let's work out some way for me to buy you a case of coke. Good enough motivation?

[Helepolis]

Also honestly it's incredibly embarrassing that I'm not done already. It'll be horrible if Ijjy-yutsu finishes before me.

Iji didn't yet enter the rapid development waters. We are still busy creating a shell that handles everything. So you don't need to be afraid of that.

[Naut]

Iji didn't yet enter the rapid development waters. We are still busy creating a shell that handles everything. So you don't need to be afraid of that.

We're totally building stages and enemies, but that doesn't count as rapid development apparently.

Also, I'll heading home from uni now and am going to spend the better part of today testing PoSR beta 5.5, expect heavy criticism at some point.

[Iryan]

So, after 10 or so failed download attempts, I finally got it and played through the hard mode with Green!Josette on hard.

Thumbs up:

Alternate bosses. I love the battles, especially Kana's.
Although I have to say Stella's "Swan Dive" looked more than familiar, what with the white bullets forming a wing like pattern while the boss moves frantically over the field shooting some random bullets as well as homed attacks.  :V

I also like the music your friend as composed.
Am I to assume that all the new music tracks are made by your friend as well? If so, hell yeah for a well done Lost Dream remix. 

Problems:
When I finish a stage, be it in regular story mode or in stage practice, danmakufu crashes. (Apparently I am too dumb to read posts) Also, some of the music loops don't sound right. Trimming them to a length of sligthly less than an integer number in seconds should fix this, although I don't know how difficult may prove on each song.

So much for now, I may test a little more later on.

[Solais]

That Megaupload link doesn't work for me, and I really want to see this, because at least I can play it without slowdown this time. :V

[CK Crash]

Actually I did the Lost Dream remix while messing around with the TH soundfont, and WAS going to fix it up (to at least fix broken loop, if not redo it in the new music style). However, my hard drive is completely dead, so it might take me a while. All the new stuff is awesome, but I don't get how to do Kana's birdcage spell at all.

[Stuffman]

Although I have to say Stella's "Swan Dive" looked more than familiar, what with the white bullets forming a wing like pattern while the boss moves frantically over the field shooting some random bullets as well as homed attacks.

I actually got the idea for a flapping wings pattern from the Stage 3 boss opener in Banshiryuu, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody's already had the same idea. D:

Also, I forgot to publicly thank Onthenet for the Lost Dream remix. Thanks Onthenet! My composer said he wants to save all the remixes for last, so it'll be a while before we see his interpretation of it.

[Helepolis]

wouldn't be surprised if somebody's already had the same idea. D:

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

* Helepolis takes note of trying to find a possible different approach.

[Naut]

Right, so I've played Nightmare and Hard mode (mostly with Josette R and G). Not quite as much to say as I initially thought, so I'll just get right to the thoughts in list form:

• Josette needs a bigger graphical hitbox, I routinely lose track of where my hitbox is on her just because I can't see it with so many bullets flying around.
• The stage portion of stage 4 hard is much more difficult than stage 5. You might want to look into this. However, Rikako is much easier than Kotohime, who remains the hardest boss in the game so far (barring Nightmare LeiLei, whose last spell is practically impossible unless you've got horseshoes and rabbit feet up your ass).
• Speaking of Nightmare mode -- lol. The sound effects need to be disabled when enemies are deleted by moving off-screen, it sounds really wierd when you haven't killed them. Also, the midi track you have playing overlaps Lei Lei's music producing an unbarable cacophony. And, like I mentioned before, LL's last spell is impossible because the lasers are Xbox heug.
• Stella's Draco Sign "Star Sea Serpent" can be beaten by staying perfectly still at the very bottom of the screen. Even slight movements to dodge the random assortment of slowly moving small stars will almost always lead to an easy capture.
• Kotohime's last card is garbage
  Spoiler:

  pun very much intended
• You need new sound effects for all shots, these current ones are ear bleed tier. Try lowering their volume too.
• Please use custom bullets instead of Danmakufu's original ugly ones :V
• All the new music is great, save for the looping. I suggest looping the song once (in Audacity or a similar program) so that you can at least give the illusion that the song is looped in game. Ups the file size, but it's better than the sudden halt in the music that Danmakufu invariably gives.
• I regret not mentioning this earlier, but I think you should try to rely less on reusing enemies to fill up stages. Right now I have absolutely no idea what's coming at me at anytime, save for the very start of a stage or after a midboss. There is just nothing indicating how far you are in a stage other than the midboss, since all the enemy waves look the same. Now I know they're not, and I do notice the differences occasionally, but right now it feels like you're heavily reusing 4 or 5 enemies and it makes for kinda boring stage design. My personal opinion would be to add more larger fairies with intricate patterns that you wouldn't send in waves. Something to distinguish where you are in a stage, as well as mix up the "mostly small enemy wave spam" motif you have going right now. I'd specify a stage, but they all suffer from it unfortunately.
• Having said that, I do really like stage 3. I really wish there wasn't as much dustball enemy spam though, it feels overused. The rest of the stage, however, I rather enjoyed. It looked much cleaner than the other stages (probably due to a combination of a sexy background and a good choice of bullet colors), and it didn't feel as spammy, save for the "streaming" sections. EDIT: I meant to say "Stage 3 is my favorite". There are elements from all stages that I like, but Stage 3 stands out to me the most :V
• Bosses are cool and varied, I've got little else to say but praise for their designs and spellcards. Good job.
• Nightmare mode is cool, but I wish it was more "difficult" as opposed to "lol big wave of bullets hope I luck through it". :V