I'm working on an update for devres - looking for feedback
 

This is something I have been planning on doing for a while. Bascially the original plan, dating back to 2008 was to update all of the levels in The Resurrection of Devan shell to work with jj2+ and use its features, where appropriate (death pits and fast level transitions in cutscene levels, basically). This update would be uploaded separately to j2o as a patch, so the original uploads remained compatible with non-plus jj2.

As I looked over the levels though, I realized that there are a lot of things I don't like in them. Many of them have unfair enemy placement, or too many enemies, or an uneven difficulty level. Some of them seem amateurish. I want to fix all of these things.

Here is a nice list of what I have planned:

• rebalance difficulty, moving some enemies to hard mode, deleting some entirely, and adding a few in places where it's appropriate (usually in clever positions)
• some areas are simply too hard or unfair - these need to be addressed (hard mode will likely stay as it is, normal mode will be a little bit easier). Ep5 is the worst offender here
• many levels have too many enemies. Extraneous enemies (ones that add nothing to the difficulty and just make the gameplay slower) will get deleted. For example, I used way too many float lizards in a lot of places.
• some levels have too many pickups (a few in ep5 are particularly egregious). These will also be removed
• JJ2+ death pits will be used. Also, in cutscene levels or ones with no real gameplay, "fast" exits will be used instead of normal ones. This update will be plusonly
• Will probably rewrite some dialogue, some of it might use reworder to use more than 128 chars. Story won't change - I'll just make things worded better and more clearly.
• Remove painful purple place as a standalone, and make it a secret level somewhere. Probably hidden at the beginning of one of the episodes, since the level requires you to start with no ammo.
• Polish. I'm a better designer than I was all those years ago, or even two years ago when I made the last episode. Also, time allows me to look back and see my mistakes more clearly. I want to make each and every level as close to perfect as I can.

With that said, there's more that I can do. For example, I've thought about splitting the larger levels into smaller ones, to make saving a bit less likely to crash. I probably won't do this though, since it's too hard and messes up the gem collection system I have. There is one level in ep5 I might split though.

Another possibility is to add a few secret/bonus levels, just to make things interesting, and give people something to look for. JJ2+ makes this really easy.

Anyway, now that I've said all of this, I want your feedback. Specifically, if there is anything you want me to change, what is it? If there is something you want, this is the best time to suggest something. Be as specific or as vague as you want to. Or, of the things I've mentioned, are there any you object to? I'd like to know that too! Also, what do you think of this in general? I'm making this update mostly for myself, but it would be interesting to know what other people think.

(As for an ETA, I can't give you one yet. This is part update and part revamp... I'm basically playing each level and making edits as I go)

turn painful purple place into devresminusone.j2l and have western barricade start with "Phew, it was all a dream! Good thing that the war noise from the other side woke me up."



Serious part of the post: An update to devres is a good idea, and I'm glad to see you're still interested in it. My biggest gripe with the whole series are probably the EP4 ending levels because of how anti-climactic they are. The best option would be to ditch the War Torn set and make a new level with a less annoying tileset, but I don't know if you're motivated enough to do that.

Some changes in music choices might be in place, too. I've only recently realised how unfitting the Deserto music in devres02 is.

Fun observation: When I randomly get an itch to play some devres levels, I most often load Ep4 and play it till the finish. This might be because it's shorter and easier than the others, and thus more "accessible" than them. Which is funny because Ep4 is not as good as the rest!

For the pits, I'd suggest that on easy difficulty they could just take one heart instead of killing you instantly. Just change the lines of Bees events you already have so they're on easy difficulty only, and then put a line of Warp events right over that with the same setting.

ep4 does end on a bit of a meh note ("I finally reached the city! And it's just an easy boss fight!"). I'll have to think about this. The problem is part due to the fact that war torn is simply the best "destroyed city" tileset available. If I added anything (and it's a big if) it would probably be a level after that - right now you jump into a sewer and the episode ends. But the resistance base isn't just inside a hole... that sewer is just supposed to be the start of the path to it.

I'm open to changing music, but only if people give me specific suggestions. I'm conflicted about devres02 though. On one hand, the music is a bit too upbeat for the scene. On the other hand, it's deserto! At least the music is also used in 01.

Hmm. I don't think it's actually *that* much shorter than some of the others although it could be the shortest one (I never timed it). ep2 for example was basically one gigantic level, one large level, a normal sized level and a small level. The thing about ep4 is that the levels themselves are shorter, and it's the only episode with no gigantic levels. The difficulty is also a major factor, one of the reasons why I want to "tone down" some of the levels (ep5 especially).


Excellent idea! I will have to do this. The boss levels in ep5 that have death pits will need to keep them though (technical reasons).

A tip for the secret level of PPP: Make it a dream, and when the player wakes up, he realizes that all his stuff is stolen!

Seeing this word I got really, really scared it's going to be a language patch.

I don't really like the idea, as it mainly sounds like making it all easier. I liked the current difficulty level, at least in Episode 5. Good to hear the "pointless" enemies will get removed though, it should work in the opposite way, making it harder. Hmm, I think I'll have to play them once again to check what exactly would I change. At the very moment I remember only a bug in Devan's Fortress level, where flying inside the castle was possible when entering through that destruct scenery thingie next to the spikes shieldrun.

Are you going to correct the "bugs" that let some players bypass hard areas?
I mean, for example, in devres07.j2l, the castle level of the 1^st Devres pack:

• On each of the lowest platforms on the left and on the right of the big building there's 1 extra life, so if you pick them up and then fall off, in all you earn a life. The worst part is that you can repeat that as many times as you want, so this process could be repeated virtually eternally by some not-so-smart people. Such as me. :D
• Inside the castle you can activate the save point behind the wall, so that you can skip searching for all of the crates, you just have to die then.
• In the last part you can jump directly on the upper floor if you play with Spaz.

(taken from a previous post of mine)

In my opinion you should take care of glitches similar to those on the first and third ones on this post, because otherwise you reward metagamers than true players (1^st) or players using some specific characters (3^rd). The others reward clever players, so there's usually nothing bad on this.

Personally, I'd keep stuff like that. Sequence breaking adds an interesting kind of replay value and I even deliberately leave it in my levels, or sometimes even do it by design, sort of like in Metroid: Zero Mission. It's always exciting for the players to discover stuff like that, and it's like a sprinkle of fairy dust over the game or level pack.

In fact, I agree, because it's like putting multiple ways to solve the puzzle. I just think they should be carefully planned before being added.

The only thing that bugged me when I played through devres, that comes to mind at the moment, is one of the cutscenes had text like "Some people thought Jazz's war was overly genocidal", or something, which made me think they would have been fine if he was only a little genocidal?

I'm pretty sure I beat Ep1 with Lori, just because Mike said it couldn't be done... but now I can't be sure because it was a long time ago.

In case there are places really impassable for Lori, you can always use a Lori start position and trigger something that would help her pass.

I suggest replacing most of the tube turtles in The Fortress of Floods with spike balls. "RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN" is great, "RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN (but dont forget to mash your fire key)" is not so great. It might also be a good idea to make the tubes faster.

Thanks for all the feedback so far, I wasn't expecting to get this much.

I won't do anything drastic. In fact you probably won't notice most of the changes. In general the focus is towards removing "unfun" difficulty. For example, if there is a blind drop that can put you on top of an enemy (there are a number of these, especially in earlier episodes) this will get made hard mode-only. Another example is in ep5, in the level Tempest: there is a very difficult jump to make with the frog (some people have asked me if it's even possible)... this can be adjusted by moving a single tile, and again it is hard to notice. And finally, if you still don't like the changes, I'm not going to remove the original versions from j2o.

This one has always annoyed me. I often like to leave "helpful" bugs in, when they don't damage anything, but this one is pretty bad, I think. Thank you for reminding me.

Most of these, even though they are unintentional, are things I like. A good example is the 2nd one you mentioned - I've known about this even before I uploaded ep1, and I think it's a pretty clever shortcut for those who can discover it. The only one that bothers me is the infinite lives issue you mentioned.


Lori is a bit of an issue yeah. Originally, the intention was to make the whole thing 1.23-only, so lori isn't given any thought at all. However, I do acknowledge that some people might want to play as her. I will look at levels which lori can't beat and try to address the issue. However, I won't make it so she can access all areas. If she can reach the exit, that's good enough. Anything more than that will be too much of a redesign. As for the cutscene issue, I'm thinking of making it so all cutscenes are in separate levels (most of them are already). This way, if you want to skip them you can just jjnxt with them. I think this is the best solution.

It's been years, but if I remember, I wrote that whole thing at like 2 in the morning, and I might have been drunk too. It's not very well written. It even has spelling mistakes! It would be a bit of a pain in the ass to redo that since I'd need to remake the tileset, but it's something I'm strongly considering. Good to see I'm not the only person who thinks it's bad. I did have *something* in mind with that line though - basically the idea was that the empire wasn't exactly founded on what you would call "strong moral principles" and that line is supposed to convey that its supporters don't care all that much.

Note that you can easily deal with most of the tube turtles if you use pepper spray. This aspect is a fair criticism though, and I do think the level too hard on normal mode. As for the tubes, they are about as fast as they can be. JJ2 has this bizarre quirk where horizontal speeds can be fast, but vertical speeds are capped (I dont know the exact number, but its around speed 20).

How about a different intro for ep3? Or at least change the music to m5v-mars, as that seems to be the 'intro theme'. Battleships (at least I think that's what it was) didn't sound as good when I played ep3.

Hm, first time I've heard that suggestion.

Neither ep3 nor ep5 have "scrolling" intros, or use that theme for the intro, because I didn't feel like it was necessary in either of them. Also, those episodes have plenty of scrolling text in other levels. I chose to use battleships at the start because I think it's a better theme for levels in a spaceship.

Basically, I used those intros when there was information the player needed to know that happened between the episodes (or before, in the case of ep1), or I wanted to give some backstory.

ep2->ep3 and ep4->ep5 just has you flying in a ship from one place to another. Nothing happens to you in that time, and so there is nothing to be explained.

Personally I didn't mind the ep3 intro or the Battleships music. I liked that Martian Lovesong (the 'devres theme') wasn't used until the final scene level, otherwise it'd feel overdone - for me, at least. One thing I'd change about the ep3 intro, though, is removing the autoscrolling stars from layer 1 that weren't seen in the ep2 finale. That always bugged me (I complain about the most irrelevant crap)

Making the ep5 intro stand out from ep3's would be beneficial, and something as simple as changing the tileset (like to BattleshipsBL) might work.

By the way treylina, do you have a list of the levels which are impossible to beat with lori? I think I have an idea, but you're the resident lori expert here.

Note: I only want to fix cases where it's really impossible to win. If it's difficult but still possible (eg if you need to golden jump, rf jump, or get hit while coptering to win) I consider that still acceptible. Main goal is just to make it *possible*, as a bonus challenge.

I know that tube speeds are capped, but you can supplement them with wind/belt events. I'm a very impatient person, though, so it probably isn't actually an issue.

edit: this is too minor for a new post, but I loved that frog jump :(

I'd suggest replacing the newer gem collection system (20 green, 10 blue, 1 ring) with the older purple gem one. Enemies and crates sometimes drop red, green or blue gems when shot, which messes up the gem count, but purple gems are an exception. The old system was fine, so I don't see a reason for having different types of gems. You could simply replace each green gem with one purple gem, each blue one with two and the gem ring with three, or something like that.

Thanks for reminding me of this. This is yet another thing jj2+ allows me to improve.

The reason why I did this in the first place is because in older versions of jj2, having more than 100 gems made the gem counter stop displaying. In ep1 and ep2 I didn't use many gem pickups, which let me use 20 purple gems and have the counter at the bottom of the screen work properly.

Starting with ep3 I started using more gems... and this made it impossible for purple ones to display properly. So, I switched to a system that would at least display (imperfectly) in the end of level screen (note that purple gems aren't counted at the end, hence the problem).

The good news is that jj2+ fixed the gem display bug, which was the reason why I stopped using purples. This means that I can actually add purple gems and have them work properly.

I have a few options, but here is the one I like the most:

Go through every level and replace 5 blue, 10 green, and add 5 purple. Thus, the gem collection would be (any number)x red, 20x purple, 10x green, 5x blue, 1x ring. I think this is fair, since the old episodes also had 20x purple. What do you think?

(There's also a more radical option where I can make ep1 and ep2 use this system as well, which would make all the episodes stylistically unified. But I don't think that's too important)


It's definitely staying as it is on hard mode. The magic of triggers saves the day yet again.

Seriously, which frog jump is that? I can't recall any especially hard one. Could you give me the coordinates please?

Wanna know the funny part? I just played "Deserto City" (devres02.j2l - ep1) again and I collected 26 purple gems out of 20.

If you die, everything respawns, but you keep the gems you collected.

The true way to collect all 20 is to do that, and also beat the level without dying!

It's at 95, 19. You're not the kind of player that is challenged much by this kind of jump though.

I beat all the levels in Ep1 and Ep2, collecting all the purple gems and not dying a single time (meaning I used saveload until I succeeded). The tunnel level was quite annoying.

Oh, ok then.

I think an update to this would be a great idea! I'm thoroughly enjoying the pack already, just having started it earlier tonight (I started it once or twice years ago, I think, but gave up haha), but I can imagine where you would improve the quality.

I am stuck, however, and since I see this is an active devres-related thread I thought it may be a good place to ask. I asked in a review too, so I'll just copy it.

The exact place I’m stuck is in episode one, the castle level, right after the part where you hit the trigger crate and all the little helmet dudes fall from the sky. I hit that crate as well as the crate behind the wall above, but there is still trigger scenery blocking a descent into a certain area that I assume I’m supposed to be going to. I can't see anywhere else to go... I thought about cheating past it, but I haven't had to do that yet, plus I’m not sure that’s where I’m supposed to go next. Can anyone give me some advice?

To get the 4th crate: Highlight block to show spoiler: Head left from the area with the 4 main doors, and jump down into the hole with a chain holding you above the spikes. Go to your right, but go down instead of up, and destroy the gargoyle. Take the sucker tube, and voila!

Haha, I literally say "aaaahhhhhhhh!" outloud as I was reading that (in a revelatory way, not a terrified one). Thanks! :)

This is actually one of the things I've changed (the gargoyle is still there, but it's more obvious there's a tube underneath it).

Also, an update: I'm still working on this (slowly), and have basically combed through every level and fixed things I don't like, up to ep4 now. 5 is going to take a lot of work still. I've also put in a bit of work on various scraps that didn't make it into any of the episodes, and will probably include them as secret levels. One of them is a rocket turtle prototype level that didn't get used, one of them was the original Fortess of Storms (except it's called Fortress of Clouds), one of them is an alien planet that was supposed to be the original ending to the series (planned way before ep1 was even an idea, and made at the same time as the ep1 and ep2 levels) and the last one is just a short bonus level where you fall and grab some coins. That would give every episode a secret level. (these are far from the only leftover levels I have, but these ones are actually complete, unlike most)

I'm still thinking of adding another level to the ending of ep4, but it probably won't happen. Partially because I don't have anything to recycle that would fit there. Maybe if I can muster up the patience I'll just extend the city level, even though I hate using that tileset (war torn). We'll see.

I forgot to mention that I also love the music! Some of it sounds like legit Alexander Brandon, but stuff I've never heard. Do you have any of his pieces in there? (actually I just got to a level with a UT track, if I remember right, haha, but that's not what I'm talking about.)

Edit: Also, if you're done with eps 1-4, you should release those! I wanna play through your new, improved and more self-appreciated versions as I play for the first time. :)