Maidens of the Kaleidoscope

~Hakurei Shrine~ => Rika and Nitori's Garage Experiments => Touhou Projects => Topic started by: namohysip on December 16, 2016, 06:29:20 AM

Title: [COMPLETE] Phantasmagoria Trues Marathon Mod
Post by: namohysip on December 16, 2016, 06:29:20 AM
(New update because I saw someone streaming this, and got feedback from them. I'm so happy and humbled to see someone play something I made!)
WARNING: If you have downloaded previous versions of this mod, the 1.7 update may make those old saves incompatible. Not that it matters, since everything is already unlocked from the beginning, but spell history may reset.

 It's finally here!  (https://mega.nz/#!1uJ0UBQA!7SZrFc8kZmXfnUYnUY1CPKbu-2ljqPTl60cHKXl2guM) But please still look below for background information or, at the VERY least, check the new readme doc (it's the one in English) within the Phantasmagoria script. Also, if you use a Windows 10 machine, there's a secondary readme on the top level in all caps. Can't miss it.
 Also, here's a link to just the script only if you want to drop it into your already-working Danmakufu 0.12.  (https://mega.nz/#!t3Q3kLTI!YrnhgnkcNndQeCOXYII20GjdlY40dCaFm5C6kxAZX-U)

This is a little passion project of mine, and it holds a little nostalgia in my heart for being my favorite fangame in the Touhou series (that's a bullet hell, at least.)

Main features:

-A single run on any difficulty will send you through the gauntlet of all 10 stages.
-Split-path stages have been consolidated.
-Spells have been translated to English using the wiki.
-All bosses use all of their spells across all difficulties (For example, Aya is ~3x as long compared to the normal game, because she had three sets of attacks for the three difficulties).
-New music that is more in-line with the respective characters' themes (credits in the readme)
-Bosses now have defense at the beginning of attacks (no more bomb-cheesing your way through spells by bombing before they begin!)
-Life cap removed; if you have more than 10 lives or bombs, it will display as a number instead of stars.
-Invincibility cap for "White Point" items raised from 1 second to 2.
-the Extend system was changed due to the increased length of the game. It's easier to get more lives/bombs, when applicable for the playmode being played.
-A TINY number of bosses have extra spells/attacks.
-Lots of little surprises in stage Terminus.
-All non-boss enemies behave as their Unlimited versions (Unless there is no Unlimited version, in which case they behave like their Advanced versions. Terminus, internally, has enemy AI placed in their Advanced AI category as well.)
-Probably a bunch of other minor changes that I don't remember.

Play modes:

-Standard difficulty gives you infinite lives, but keeps track of how often you died (your Player counter goes up!). Also, you can't graze break. It's pure dodging skill in this mode to see how well you can do!
-Advanced difficulty makes it really easy to get extra lives, but bombs are totally disabled.
-Unlimited difficulty is... basically the standard way to play.
-Terminus difficulty gives you lots of bombs... but no lives! One death and it's all over!

Also, by default, Practice mode has everything unlocked, so you don't have to play through the whole game (which takes ~3 hours from playtesting) to get to the parts that you like.

Extra commands:
To play the Terminus stage in practice, just hold the Bomb button while selecting stage 1.
To play the Terminus difficulty in practice, just hold the User button (usually C on the keyboard) while selecting any stage in practice.
Also, when playing on Standard difficulty in either practice or the main game, holding certain buttons/directions will fix the RED meter at certain points.
Hold right: 0% red, enemies are always at their standard shot rate.
Hold left: 50% red, enemies shoot about twice as much.
Hold focus: 80% red, enemies shoot about thrice as much.
Hold focus + left or right: 100% red, enemies shoot at their max, four times as much as normal.
As far as I can tell, RED does not affect bosses. Just enemies. But this means a lot in Standard, where Graze does nothing.

Any comments are appreciated! I'm very proud of this as a pet project, even if potentially nobody plays it aside from me and my friends.
Title: Re: Phantasmagoria Trues Marathon Mod (and some other tweaks)
Post by: namohysip on May 25, 2017, 03:03:40 AM
Oh, and one more thing that I wanted to add. No, two things:

New subtle feature: a pre-loader! Basically for enemies, you know how the first time Danmakufu wants to load an enemy, the game lags briefly when it grabs that script from disk? Well, I did a thing to spawn them out of bounds right at the start, so there's no lag for the rest of the stage (aside from loading bosses, but that's less annoying compared to the random stutter from enemies)

Known bug: I don't know why this happens, might be engine-based, but during prolonged play, some sprites get 'stuck' as non-interacable artifacts. For example, a point item just... floating there, not doing anything. It's normally just visual, but some Players might get their familiars in this state (such as CtC's Marisas) resulting in those familiars no longer functioning. I have seen instances where Marisa only fires with her right familiar, while her left one is floating near the top of the screen where she had died before. No way to fix it except for restarting the game, super annoying, but only some scripts seem to be affected more than others.

If anybody knows why this happens... let me know?

EDIT:

Well, I finally finished it! It took me two years of on-and-off work, and many hours of work overall dedicated to every aspect of the mod that I put into, but here it is! If you guys are short on time and just want to see the biggest changes made, play stage 5, Unseen 2, and Terminus. I added a little something to stage 5, and Terminus is quite different (dedicate an hour for Terminus) but all the stages were changed at least somewhat due to the nature of the mod.

How far were you able to get in Terminus mode? My personal best is the stage 3 midboss before I got careless and died.
Title: Re: Phantasmagoria Trues Marathon Mod (+ other things + Windows 10 Compatibility)
Post by: Danmakugamer on May 31, 2017, 07:01:59 PM
OMG, it's amazing! I see, you added many other tweaks, huh? Judging by them, playing PT will be even relaxing~ (edit: No, totally not relaxing ;-;)
I wonder now, how long is "maingame" 8 hours and what "lastword integration" means...
Gonna playtest it right now ;w; Finally PT gets good attention ;w;
P.S. Everything is... okay, I guess, but timers are too short because of that preattackarmor, and preattackarmor is too long, imo. Also, I enjoyed old music MUCH and MUCH more ;-; And everytime you get a bomb or a life, its "price" increases by 50/100/150. You should do something with it~
And clear spellcapstory :V
Title: Re: Phantasmagoria Trues Marathon Mod (+ other things + Windows 10 Compatibility)
Post by: namohysip on May 31, 2017, 10:50:30 PM
Whoops, must've forgotten to clear data before uploading the previous version after testing!

But yeah, the music in the OG PT was fine, but it wasn't... Touhou, y'know? That and linking things together was the first thing that I wanted to do as part of a personal project two years ago. It had snowballed into something bigger after that.

If you want to know more information about how long the main game is, check out the readme as I said. Near the bottom it gives you time estimates on how long the game should take, as well as how to access Terminus right from the start.

Timers are too short? I balanced the game using one of the weakest shottypes (default reimu-homing) in terms of DPS, going for ~1.5 cycles on each attack. I actually decreased the HP of a lot of spellcards to compensate for the armor (meant to stop bomb-cheese) but didn't touch the timers much since I've always been aiming for one-cycle attacks.

Which attacks need to have their timers adjusted? I'm sure I missed a few. I already found one that I changed--Daiyousei's encounter in Terminus needed some extra time.

Oh, and the "price" of bomb and life always increases by that amount, even in the original. I actually changed it here! Did I mention that in the changelog? Basically, instead of increasing by a linear amount (in playtesting, lives became far too scarce due to the game getting longer, esp. for Terminus) that I instead gave a lower growth rate, but also made it exponential. But only by a small amount.
If you're playing Unlimited mode, pricing goes up by 1% per extend / bomb. In other words, the first one costs 500, but the next one is 505, etc. It's pretty low. For Advanced and Terminus mode, the growth rate is even lower, at 0.5%. This is because in those modes, you either have no lives or no bombs.
Title: Re: Phantasmagoria Trues Marathon Mod (+ other things + Windows 10 Compatibility)
Post by: Danmakugamer on June 04, 2017, 02:26:17 PM
Well, it was so fitting and good, that (literally) I can't play PT without it ;-; (+can't say that those 2huremixes are good, sadly. Tastes, I think)

Daiyousei's midboss encounter in S1 has too short timer, imo. If you are not going to speedkill her, it'll probably be timeout.

About growth rates, I just wasn't sure, so, I asked you...
Title: Re: Phantasmagoria Trues Marathon Mod (+ other things + Windows 10 Compatibility)
Post by: namohysip on June 04, 2017, 08:55:07 PM
Hmm, well, I won't be doing anything about the music, but I'll do some quick playtesting on the midboss to see what an appropriate amount of extra time would be for her.

If you feel so strongly about the soundtrack, you can change it to what you see fit, though the file replacements aren't 1-to-1, as I added and took away a few tracks. For example, Stage 4 and 6 both don't have "stage" themes anymore, since it's right to the boss theme. Too bad that you don't enjoy the music as it is; those are pretty highly rated mixes, too...

EDIT: Hmm, I see what you mean. While I can beat Daiyousei pretty easily in stage 1 without running out of time and only giving a halfhearted effort, I'm pretty consistently getting 6-8 seconds left on the timer. I'll upload a new version shortly with her and her Terminus encounter with 10 extra seconds. That will definitely be enough for normal play.
Title: Re: Phantasmagoria Trues Marathon Mod (+ other things + Windows 10 Compatibility)
Post by: Danmakugamer on June 06, 2017, 10:40:42 PM
Can I change everything back? :3 That new music is high-rated only because it's 2hubased, lmao (imo) At least I can still play original PT, lol
Title: Re: Phantasmagoria Trues Marathon Mod (+ other things + Windows 10 Compatibility)
Post by: namohysip on June 06, 2017, 11:42:47 PM
I mean, if you want, you can certainly do that yourself and "mod the mod." Music replacement was the least technical aspect of the mod, just some file switching with the same name. But it won't be easy to do a full replacement. You'll have to go into the code and modify the lines that work with the BGM as well. And then you'll have to figure out how to deal with Stage 4 in particular, thanks to how heavily modified it was. Oh, and Unseen 2 is a bit different as well with music layout. But all the others are pretty in-tact in terms of the general order things are encountered.

Sorry that your tastes aren't into the Touhou themes put into the mod compared to the original generic music, but that's a mod project for yourself!

Edit: Oh, or if the problem is the TYPE of arrangements used, why not use your own preferred arrangements instead? That would make the music replacement much more trivial, since you wouldn't have to go into the code. Maybe sprinkle in the original soundtrack, too.
Title: Re: [COMPLETE] Phantasmagoria Trues Marathon Mod
Post by: namohysip on September 14, 2017, 04:15:47 AM
Well! It's been a while, but I decided to make one final update, since it seems that feedback for the game has come to a stop for now. I changed Standard difficult to be a little more meaningful than an infinite-lives bomb fest. I made bombs finite again, and instead of hiding your lives, I made the lives count UP--in other words, it tracks the number of times that you died. A little better than losing track of those misses.