I have absolutely no time estimates... it's possibly my main project at this point, despite the typical screenshot filenames reading sideproject, but I rarely actually have time to work on it...

...but finals are now over, so I can be on-topic and finally actually download and play this here episode! :D

Bumping this thread to say that episode 5 is VERY close to being complete, and that I'll be needing testers soon. I'm looking for people who are willing to give honest feedback. I want to know what works, and more importantly what doesn't.

All I have left to do is the music selection, and make the cutscene levels. Everything else is done, aside from one level which I decided to cut (it wasn't working the way I wanted it to).

This episode is very large, probably about as big as the last 3 combined in terms of gameplay. Maybe a bit bigger. Because of this, testing is going to take a while, and I don't expect testers to beat this in one sitting. This will either be released at the end of the month, or the beginning of next month, unless something horrible happens.

I'm going to update the first post in this thread with screenshots later. For now I just want to let people know that it's almost done, and that I'm looking for testers.

In other news, I'm also going to release small updates to the other 4 episodes a bit before I release ep5. Mostly just bugfixes and fixing oversights.

I'd like to test it. But I never created any level in JCS and don't know how JCS works.

But it isn't very clear to me what I have to do as a tester.

You don't need to know anything about JCS. All you need to have is a sense of what makes a level good or bad. And in most cases, that simply boils down to one question: "Is this fun or not?" It also helps to be somewhat good at single player levels (the difficulty is quite high) but easy mode should balance things, and really I recommend easy mode for most players.

In any case, once I think it's ready to start testing I'll private message the people who have offered to test.

Ok, then I'm in! :)
I finished the first 4 episodes so I can probably take the difficulty.

E: The site where you can download the music of your previous packs is down. I just wanted to download them again.

Thank you for informing me of that. I had no idea. People will just have to do without the music for now. When I release the updates I'm working on, I'll upload the music to a more reliable host, if I can find one.

You can also upload it to J2O if you want, there's a tool for admins to "merge" downloads now.

I volunteer as a tester. I've been familiar with single-player scenes for long now, and I've been a tester earlier as well. Ask for a contact if you like.

I'd love to test, to to be honest, I'd rather play it when it's done... I just love the suspence.

If you're still in need of testers in the end, I'll do it, but I'd rather pass the baton to someone else who's dying to test this.

I have lots of free time this summer and would be happy to test episode 5.

I'm waiting for the surprise. ;o

Here is the surprise: you are devan shell. it was you all along.

I logged onto J2O and read the first line of the news annocement, and got excited, thinking that it had actually been released already. I was a bit disappointed when I checked the downloads and didn't see it.

But anyway, I'd be happy to beta-test it if you still need more people. I hope I'll actually be able to beat this one on easy my input will be helpful. But I do agree with CrimiClown, that there is fun in the suspense, and I'll be just as happy to wait for the official version.

Sorry if your hopes got up. It's coming soon at least! I think I'll at least be able to set a release date within the next few days, and the newspost can be updated with that info.

I wanted to make the announcement before release, because this pack needs the best testing it can get.

About testers, I've got plenty of requests now so thank you. Sometimes it's hard to get people to volunteer, but it was pretty easy this time for some reason. I'll be contacting the various people as soon as I put it all together. What I usually do is I get 2 or 3 people to test it at first, and then once I get feedback from them, I send the updated version to a couple more people.

Hmm. It's going to be a bit difficult getting this on J2O. The zip file is 12 megabytes. Even if I split the upload into several chunks, use admin powers to surpass the 5 upload a month limit, AND use admin powers to merge the files, I still don't think I can do it. One of the songs is over 2mb when zipped, and I think that's the upload limit. I'd love to be able to host this on j2o as one download, but I don't see how I can, even using admin powers. I can upload the levels and tilesets fine... but for the music if I'm going to host it on j2o, the only solution will be FTP.

In other news, I'm now 100% done, have personally tested every level, played through the entire episode twice, and sorted out a number of very annoying bugs that made a couple levels unplayable. I bet you didn't know that "bees" events don't erase themselves when they go offscreen! A couple hundred of those and sprites start disappearing.

I'll be sending this to the testers shortly. Some will be getting it before others. Regular betatesting procedure applies: if you see a bug or a problem, report it. You can say if you don't like something, but you have to say why and how it could be better. Also, note that jj2+ has a bug with boss music: the levels will play fine, but "activate boss" events won't change the music. Nothing I can do about that.

The release date will be the 27th of June, assuming no huge problems arise and the testers reply before then.

If you upload a dummy file to J2O and then the "real" .zip via FTP (also to J2O), I can sort things out so it uses the correct files.

Alright thanks. I checked and there is actually only 1 music file that goes over the limit (Irealize.xm). Which is funny since it was your suggestion!

So that will be the only thing requiring the "dummy file" trick, when the time comes to upload the episode.

(-).

I'm planning to play through every episode from the first to the last as soon as you've released the final, on the hard level, without cheats. :p

That's possible?

I just realized that I'm going on vacation for 2 weeks, and leaving the day before Episode 5 is released. So I guess I'll have something to look forward to when I get back.

That was pretty much my reaction. If you have a level with too many of those events, you're going to either need to find a way of reducing them, or split the level. I was luckily able to cut the amount of events in half without impacting gameplay.

If you (or anyone else) feel like replaying the episodes, go and redownload them from J2O. I updated them a couple of days ago. I uploaded them as minor changes, because only a few minor things are noticeably different.

Some of the changes I made:
-The downloads on j2o now include the music
-General bugfixes and a few minor design changes to two or three levels with some sort of very obvious flaw
-Every episode now has 8 powerups (1 for every weapon except TNT). This isn't actually a huge change, I just added it because it's a fun challenge to try to find all of them.
-For episodes 3 and 4, there are now 20 green gems, 10 blue gems, and a gem ring in most levels. For episodes 1 and 2, there are 20 purple gems.

That's about it. As you can see it's not as big of a change as last time I did an update (where I pretty much did a total dialogue rewrite) but it's still worth getting the new version I think.

I'll be looking forward for you to beat it in hard. It hardly is possible I believe. ;)

:gabber:

You just don't like my use of urban slang, obviously.

haaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

It's now uploaded to J2O. Thank you to everyone who helped me with this.

Edit: Also, I THINK I managed to cover anything (updated the info on previous episodes etc) but I might have missed something. Also if there's an obvious bug, like a missing file or something, tell me right away! I am pretty sure nothing is missing, but with something this big, it's hard to tell.

I think I know what I'll be doing next week

I had eleven (Eleven!) lives (and two power-ups to boot) when I beat Deluge, and thought that maybe I might finally be able to beat all 5 episodes in under a minute, blindfolded, with my left pinky, using only gun3, and losing no health, on hard an episode without cheating on easy. Then I died 10 times before I could even beat the water on the first tower of Fortress of Floods once. And then I died again as soon as I started the next tower.

Bleargh.

Haha, yeah that's a hard one, maybe the hardest in the whole series. The main reason is it has a totally different type of gameplay, where you have to actually race against the level. That time limit puts a lot of pressure on the player and a lot of people wind up making mistakes because of that. It also puts way more emphasis on movement, rather than shooting enemies (the level has hardly any enemies, relatively speaking).

Balancing it was really weird too because some testers didn't have as much of a problem with it, while others had a ton of trouble (even if the rest of the episode didn't cause too much difficulty). Again I think it's because it requires a different type of skill than the other levels. People who are good at test levels will probably find this level to be easier.

For the first tower, all I can really suggest is don't go TOO fast. If the water catches you, you'll have a chance to swim up with it or past it. For the second tower, there's no real issue with falling behind, since near the end you'll be able to catch up to it. As for the rest of the level, just run as fast as you can and try not to get hit by anything... and use pepper spray.

Maybe it's a bit too... evil of me to throw in something so different from everything else, but I'm one of those weird people who plays old platformers and finds that one really evil level (and they all have one of those) to be the most fun.

I'm sorry I didn't send screens of the last 2 levels. I was a bit busy and didn't find any problems in the levels.

It was a great pack!

@Troglobite, you ain't seen nothing yet :P
Wait till the third tower and the levels after that.

There's no need to apologise, the fact that you sent screenshots of all the other levels was incredibly helpful and I made a lot of changes based on them. A lot of people give highly detailed feedback, but you're the only person I've seen who backs that up with pictures. It makes it much easier to find stuff. You've given some of the most useful feedback I've gotten, for this episode and the previous one.

Whew, done. Seven, eight continues? I lost count. Plus an access violation for some unknown reason.

Thank you, Mike. It's nice to hear that. :)

...wow this is... Hard. I play on Normal, 'cause, you know, I beat the last episodes on normal too... but this is a bit over my head.

Oh by the way, a small 'bug' I found... I had a Sugar Rush going and I fell into a pit... I think those are your everyday CTF-deathpits, but as long as the Sugar Rush was on, I just bumped up and down a lot, making squishy noises... Not much of a bug since you'll die after 20 seconds, but just saying.

It was in the Tempest level, by the way.

That's because EM used Bees for the hurt in the instakill... pity that I never thought that this situation could happen.

when is helldome 2 coming out :confused:

But why use hurts? Doesn't the CTF-flag thing sufficiently kill you?

Try removing the bees/spike ball/hurt and watch your lives counter go down (not)...

Well sorry for asking mister awesome.

I might finish this pack sometime later, for some reason I'm not motivated enough to watch myself die over and over.

:( I didn't mean to sound patronising..

Well, okay, never mind. Sand over it (haha a Dutch-ism).

Highlight block to show spoiler: By the way I LOVE the Tempest level... with the Frog routes and the bird route and such. I've never seen a 'non-attack' route be used to well. Chapeau Mike.