The Queen Of Light (SNES Mod)

[Shauing]

I see. So, no "test-levels". I did that on my mods, twice. Like that, we'd make some challenge to beat your mod without get them.
I got there within 15 minutes. I thought I'd making in time, but then, I realize that the time thing didn't show up each 5 minutes. "Now I make it" I said or something, heh.
Yes, indeed!

I don't understand what you mean with ''no test-levels''. If you mean that I didn't do any main levels that serve as training, I must say that at least the first two serve as introduction to what will come up throughout the game.

Indeed. Since I didn't beat the game within time. Also, since you were planning to make another version, I didn't play it till now. That's why.
Hahaha, yeah, sure thing. He like, went through some wall to make it there

That explains why you didn't play it again until now!

Yeah, that's right. This one was good enough!
Good to know you've more ideas! I don't play those Kaizo Mario, but I do something alike or probably, the same thing in my mods, heh.
That'd be cool, but I'm too lazy to make them. I've ideas for 2 more, but creativity to make 40 levels, ins't gonna happing that easy, hahaha.

I don't play them either, but I have seen them enough to know what to avoid in order to not make a rage-quitting-controller-throw game.
I wonder if someday we could expand beyond 20 levels (27 if you count the training levels, demo and final stage). It would be a pretty long game if anyone dares to go beyond that limit.

[Shauing]

HooHoo……I like the title screen music very much!play again and Look forward to another challenging mod which you made!Thanks again!

Thank you for playing it and enjoying it! I hope to see (if you are willing) a video of you playing this one!

[NITM-T]

I don't understand what you mean with ''no test-levels''. If you mean that I didn't do any main levels that serve as training, I must say that at least the first two serve as introduction to what will come up throughout the game.

By that, is like, a level which the player could only beat it if he/she has a certain amount of HP. You said that we can finish your mod with 3 HP only. In my mods, there're levels where, if you don't has enough HP, you can't beat it. Unless you find something to skip it that I didn't notice (isn't hard to happen), hahaha. So, "test-level" that I use to say, is a level to test your strength, to see how much damage you can take to keep going. But, you also could say that I'm just forcing you to find Life Potions. But this was one more idea that I got from The Quiet Levels.

I don't play them either, but I have seen them enough to know what to avoid in order to not make a rage-quitting-controller-throw game.
I wonder if someday we could expand beyond 20 levels (27 if you count the training levels, demo and final stage). It would be a pretty long game if anyone dares to go beyond that limit.

That won't be a problem for me. I really like to play those SNES PoP mods. So, more levels, more fun for me

[Shauing]

By that, is like, a level which the player could only beat it if he/she has a certain amount of HP. You said that we can finish your mod with 3 HP only. In my mods, there're levels where, if you don't has enough HP, you can't beat it. Unless you find something to skip it that I didn't notice (isn't hard to happen), hahaha. So, "test-level" that I use to say, is a level to test your strength, to see how much damage you can take to keep going. But, you also could say that I'm just forcing you to find Life Potions. But this was one more idea that I got from The Quiet Levels.

Aha, I think I understand. I want to avoid doing levels where you are forced to take damage in order to continue; however, some shortcuts could be possible by doing this, though again, nothing was planned to force you to do that.
I remembered a Kaslghnoon mod where if you didn't have enough life potions, you wouldn't be able to hit a open door tile enough to continue to the next level. It was so frustrating.

That won't be a problem for me. I really like to play those SNES PoP mods. So, more levels, more fun for me

Haha, if I ever get to do the third mod, it might be a 3-hour time limit one, though I prefer to do levels that are well crafted but not eternal to get through

[David]

I remembered a Kaslghnoon mod where if you didn't have enough life potions, you wouldn't be able to hit a open door tile enough to continue to the next level. It was so frustrating.

I think that's The Quiet Levels mod, which NITM-T also mentioned.
On level 10 you can press buttons only if you have at least 5 empty HP bottles.
Which means that if you don't have at least 6 HP, you need to restart from an earlier level and get a big potion that you missed.

I've mentioned it here and here.

[Norbert]

Might be interesting for Shauing to see visually the automatic prince moves of his mod.

[Shauing]

I think that's The Quiet Levels mod, which NITM-T also mentioned.
On level 10 you can press buttons only if you have at least 5 empty HP bottles.
Which means that if you don't have at least 6 HP, you need to restart from an earlier level and get a big potion that you missed.

I've mentioned it here and here.

Yes, ''The Quiet Levels''. I was actually enjoying it, until puzzles became counterintuitive and cryptic to solve. If training levels had teach the basics required to beat the game, then I would have loved it. I think I got up until Level 8 legitimately before giving up.

That mod has some interesting hacking features to avoid cheating your way to end the game (unless you re-hack it of course).

[Shauing]

Might be interesting for Shauing to see visually the automatic prince moves of his mod.

It is interesting to actually see in a more graphical form those automatic movements I modified for the Prince in the demos.

The demo level has a lot of empty space, as I originally did the changes by constructing the level in a way where the Prince will be forced to do different stuff, depending of the inputs he was doing at that moment. It was brutal, and it was only after I finished and couldn't clean some useless actions he still kept doing, that I asked here if it was possible to manually decide which inputs the Prince would do in the demo level.
Afterwards, I had to find what numbers I had to modify without altering crucial parts I had already inputted. Then, decided to expand the demo level a few more rooms until I had no more rooms left. I decided to not extend the prince movements to make the demo even longer, as I felt it would have become boring to see.

I originally didn't plan to modify the recap scenes, but when David wrote where to modify them as well, I just went to do it.

[Shauing]

Last saturday I released the mod on romhacking.net, mainly to see if more people play and comment about it, after the overall good reception over here and YouTube.

It has been doing well in terms of downloads, and a first review appeared there today. Somewhat surprised, it was a negative one.

I was expecting that eventually someone wouldn't like it, but reading through the review, it makes me think he just didn't like one of the new mechanics implemented here and stopped playing at Level 3.

I would love to see more reviews of it, just to know what I should and shouldn't keep doing, based on what are the pros and cons of this mod.

If you want to leave a review there, here's the mods page:
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4456/

[Norbert]

Somewhat surprised, it was a negative one.

Hm... Their review reads to me like that player was primarily frustrated by the softlock.
I too reached a dead end in level 3; apparently missed several raise buttons (see attached screenshot).
This, combined with the broken room links, makes the level a bit mazy.
Mazes don't really require any mental (e.g. problem-solving of actual puzzles) or physical (e.g. reflexes/training required for tricks) skills.
It's primarily exploration, which requires investment of time before new content is revealed.
Levels 1 and 2 are far more straightforward.
By the way, without a save state or level editor, that one guard in level 1 will always kill the player during their first run.
Of the first three, I enjoyed level 2 the most. (I got a softlock, but a save state got me out of it.)

[Shauing]

Hm... Their review reads to me like that player was primarily frustrated by the softlock.
I too reached a dead end in level 3; apparently missed several raise buttons (see attached screenshot).

Hmm, perhaps I should have left an alternative switch or a longer path to reach the exit in this case? Level 5 does have a similar situation but has an alternative option to continue.
This puzzle is a ''must learn'' though, as it is necessary for a couple situations later.

This, combined with the broken room links, makes the level a bit mazy.

I only limited this type of levels to only two, Levels 3 and 8.

Spoiler: show

The latter is even mazier, as there is only one correct path (for most rooms), and if you take or fall to the wrong direction you are returned to the first room; a few rooms later, there is a new checkpoint room, so if you take the wrong direction in the rooms after it, you will be taken back to said checkpoint room. Nevertheless, I did left indications as what direction you should go next, both in this level and Level 3.

Mazes don't really require any mental (e.g. problem-solving of actual puzzles) or physical (e.g. reflexes/training required for tricks) skills.
It's primarily exploration, which requires investment of time before new content is revealed.

I did try to introduce stuff with the training levels and optional/alternative paths, as well as make people observe rooms more carefully (the final training level is even titled ''Patience''), but I might have taken the wrong approach here.

Levels 1 and 2 are far more straightforward.
By the way, without a save state or level editor, that one guard in level 1 will always kill the player during their first run.

Unless you have the sword. I think people is pressured by the time limit and so they try to do the levels quickly. Should I actually do a playthrough video of the mod?

Of the first three, I enjoyed level 2 the most. (I got a softlock, but a save state got me out of it.)

Hmm, I might definitely need to add alternate paths or a few tiles to avoid these unintentional softlocks on these levels.

[Shauing]

Well, I fixed the possible softlocks (Levels 2 and 3), changed positions of a few guards (Level 1 and 6), and added a new background graphic to cover the out-of-place Prince sprite when near a mirror on Level 6.
Link is the same one as it appears on Page 3 of this thread.

[Shauing]

Here's the arrangement I did of the Menu music for this mod. I wrote it and exported the audio on Finale 25, and did minor audio tweaks on Adobe Audition 3.

[Norbert]

Short review by a YouTuber (Retro Raider).

[NITM-T]

Wow, that was cool! Don't you think, Shauing? It's seems you were disappointed with that review there in romhacking, but this one here seems pretty nice! I mean, I know people like to do reviews about some romhacks, mods, fangames and stuff, but, is that the first time about a SNES PoP mod?

I thought to put my mods there once, but I also thought something like that might happen. I believe people there who plays our mods has no knowledge about tricks and hacks we put on them. You see, besides yours, only Remix III has a review and it's also a no... The only one who has 2 yes is that Restoration. Well, that's something which that site has more, improvement, like Retro Raider talked about. Those guys likes to fix things that devs didn't and to restore canceled things on USA versions like was with SNES PoP Japanese version. Or course, there're mods, as well. But those mods brings the same gameplay, but with a new tileset and stuff. No new hacks which are necessary tricks or glitches.

About the person who did a review about your mod, said somethig like that: "I discovered you had to push the guard down the hole, and then dip into the hole to see him fall… but it doesn’t feel good".
See? He didn't ever notice that the song victory wasn't played after the guard fall and that it was replaced by that SE from skeleton. So, our mods may be too hard for them since it's seems they ever understand the original one.

Retro also said that the story it's not a big deal. I mean, all PoP has the same story, I believe, heh. But for us, we don't have enough room for that like those guys do for Super Mario World and Super Metroid. They put stories in places which the original ones doesn't has (already talked about this) and I think I saw something like that for DOS version, once. I think is one from Norbert that he didn't finish or something.