This took a while, but I think I've managed to come up with the necessary changes to ensure that Mariovania will work on all filesystems. I triple-checked the code this time with a bunch of "find" searches for things like "name", "File", and "Dir". The game seems to load everything correctly and I was able to enter the first stage, no problem (I didn't go further than that because I want to stream this game on NCFC, and I want to go into the game blind). Here is a source-only distribution that should work on Mac OS X and any GNU/Linux or BSD distribution, also with instructions in the readme for how to run the game on these systems: https://www.sendspace.com/file/dyn2zv Can you please incorporate this into your distribution with the next release? I made sure to keep it as easy as possible for you; you can just use my distribution as a drop-in replacement for what you're currently working with. The only change you'll need to make to your build process is to use "mariovania-win32.rb" to make the EXE. (You could also give my mariovania.rb a special name instead, if you prefer.) Other than that, just make sure you always use lowercase file names in the future and you should be good.

Thank you for your contribution, onpon! ;) The new version is being uploaded right now. Seems like you used the newest files and made your changes, so everything should still work. I also fixed a crash that would happen if you exit config menu without changes and removed unnecessary sprites, saving 1MB.

I finally did it! I beat Mariovania and got the "good" ending. If you're wondering why it took me so long to finish this game, I've been busy with my grad school studies the past week, which means I haven't been able to play much lately. Also, it's a fairly lengthy fangame, and I took the time to get all of the enemy drops. That can take a while, but I enjoyed experimenting with all the different weapons and equipment. I played the boss rush. The battle with [ispoiler]Death[/ispoiler] has a quick-time event that can defeat you instantly. That's rather annoying for a boss rush. It would be better if that attack was survivable if you're at a high level. I might try it again now that I remember what I need to do again, though. I explored 98.96% of the map. I probably missed a few rooms, even though I'm having a hard time finding unexplored territory on the map. It looks like there might be a room near the bottom-center of the [ispoiler]distorted Abyss[/ispoiler] that I missed - I couldn't figure out how to enter that area. Is that where the last Relic is hidden?

Congratulations on being probably the first person who completed the game, Vinny! That quick-time event can be survived with [ispoiler]Mirror[/ispoiler]. This might be bad idea to have it in Boss Rush, but most people will only die on first try, as they might just probably forget that it happened in first battle. Peeping Eye helps to find secret rooms, because the ones you missed are behind destructible walls. Although you probably need to run around the castle with hope of finding the marks. That's a problem in Castlevania games too, and I always find the missing rooms, by looking them up on map from Internet. Talking about maps: [spoiler][img]http://i.imgur.com/JeNzJa1.png[/img] Also, the last relic is up there: [img]http://i.imgur.com/kaa6FKX.png[/img] (yes, the Abyss is a bizarre place)[/spoiler]

Thanks. I've finally covered 100% of the map. Seems I had missed out on a couple of secret passages in the Catacombs, including one that leads to the [ispoiler]Shadow Flower[/ispoiler]. I successfully beat the Normal Boss Rush in about 12 minutes. It's funny just how easy the early bosses are once you have a higher level and top-tier equipment. I actually tried looking there for the last Relic, but apparently the "door" is a little higher than I realized. This particular Relic isn't that amazing once you have the [ispoiler]Warrior Emblem[/ispoiler], but at least I have everything! What was your favorite weapon in the game? I ended up fully leveling up most (though not all) of the mana-based weapons I found. I found the [ispoiler]Bolt o' Lakitu and Bomb[/ispoiler] to be great against stationary and slow-moving enemies, like the [ispoiler]Cores[/ispoiler]. It took me a while to get a [ispoiler]Magic Wand[/ispoiler], but that was another fun weapon to use.

[quote="VinnyVideo"]What was your favorite weapon in the game?[/quote]On my last playthrough, I also used the [ispoiler]Bolt[/ispoiler] pretty much all the time. I think I made it too OP XD As for star weapons, I used Roto-Disc on few occasions, some shells in early game, but mostly the [ispoiler]Mirror[/ispoiler] and [ispoiler]Magic Shield[/ispoiler], which don't count as weapon. I made a variety of different magics and weapons, and I didn't want to force using one of them, to make players create their "builds", by trying different combinations. Seems like your "build" partially matches mine, but you also used some of the items I didn't, so that's nice. Um, that actually brings a question. Did anyone else played the game and has some in-depth feedback to share?

Alright, I've finished playing the game. I ended up getting the good ending. Just want to share my thoughts. First thing's first: I really enjoyed this game. There were parts that frustrated me to no end (we'll get to that later), but overall, it was a great experience. You have done a great job capturing the essence of Symphony of the Night and making that into a Mario game, as a general rule. I would rate it 8/10 overall, and I highly recommend anyone who hasn't already to try it out. I also highly appreciate that this game saves your progress after you beat it, so that you can continue to explore, level up, or just enjoy wandering through the castle. I find it perplexing that a lot of major commercial games of this type don't do this. However, I did have some gripes. From here on out, I'll be including spoilers (without spoiler tags), just to warn anyone else who might be reading this. Firstly, it's a bad design for Mario to automatically change his facing to the direction that he's pushed into either by attacks or by moving platforms. It takes control away from the player and frequently caused me to miss shots that I otherwise would not have missed. The only time Mario's direction should change is when the player presses a direction, as a general rule. Secondly, I found the treasure card blocks to be a bad design. Here's the thing: when I see a strange blue block that makes a noise when I hit it, I don't assume that it has an item in it; I assume it's a switch of some kind. Additionally, and this is the important bit, I'm not going to remember the locations of all of these. For the most part, if I didn't already have a treasure card to unlock it when I found it, I would need to exhaustively search the entire castle for it after I've explored every single area. I also don't see the point; why not just have the items in the regular blocks that are currently used to hold the treasure cards? That makes more sense to me. I suppose being able to use the treasure cards on the blocks of your choice lets you prioritize certain ones, but this is only relevant if you know what each treasure card block has, and where they all are (you're not going to have that knowledge unless you're already intimately familiar with the game). Thirdly, there were a couple secret areas that I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get past, even though I explored the entire map. This might be related to the previous point; I ended up with 3 spare treasure cards, so that tells me I'm missing 3 special items from those blocks. For reference, I will attach my combined map with those areas I couldn't figure out how to get to circled. Two of them are in distortions, while one of them is on the main map. The obstacles I couldn't figure out how to get past were the red spikes, the black vortex thing, and something that kind of looked like a door with a red outline. The black vortex thing, however, has some sort of bug that allowed me to fall into that particular room twice, getting me stuck there and forcing me to reload a save file, so I was able to see what is in it. Fourthly, some of these areas are annoying to navigate. Other than the enemies (which I'll get to in a bit), this mostly is a result of spikes, lava, and/or tight spaces. As an example, though I don't remember exactly where this was, there was an area where I had to do a triple-jump within a one-screen space, and I was surrounded by those annoying Dry Bones that ghost out in intervals. The worst offending area was the distortion at the Bowser's throne area, mostly because of all the lava and tiny platforms everywhere combined with tons of enemies that inflicted huge amounts of damage. When I found out that one of the areas had nothing more than coins in it, I made a conscious choice the next time to not go into that room, and that's why there's a fourth unexplored area on my map. Fifthly, I found that there were several items that were totally useless. Elemental protection was useless because no one element seems to be particularly prevalent in any given area or boss. Petrification resistance was useless because enemies that caused petrification were few and far between, though this might be a good thing considering how annoying it is when it happens. Almost all of the weapons are useless once you can use magic because they cost too much and don't do enough damage to make a particular difference in boss fights or have any special properties that make them useful in other areas; the only "weapon" I found to be generally useful was the magic shield. The only magic that was any use toward the end was the magic wand, the Lakitu bolt, and occasionally the Magic Beetroot for the specialized purpose of hitting blocks and breaking walls. Everything else sort of fell by the wayside due to being slow and unwieldy. The worst of the magic was the Shadow Flower; I actually tried to use this against some enemies, and it was utterly useless because of the randomness of how it fires, even against enemies it should be strongest against. The only suits I found to be generally useful were the Life Suit, Magic Armor, and Thor's Cloak, while the Luigi Suit was helpful for a couple areas where you had to jump high (most notably the vertical passage leading to Kamek's arena, where you can't reliably do a double-jump). Sixthly, I found many abilities obtained from relics to be entirely useless beyond certain designated uses: the ground pound, the spin jump, and sliding, in particular. Also, the spin jump comes so late, I completely forgot it was a thing. I think it would be better to remove the useless "spin" key and replace it with a dedicated "weapon" key, since being the same as the magic key makes it really easy to waste stars because you happen to be doing a lot of raccoon tail floating. But the biggest problem I had with this game was the enemies, and especially the bosses. I'll go through all the gripes I have about each of them individually: The various swimming enemies all relentlessly charge at you when you attack them. This was really annoying and difficult to deal with in the beginning, especially combined with the fact that you would instantly turn away from them when they touched you, making it difficult to shoot fireballs at them. I would have preferred if they gave up chasing you at some point. The piranha plants that shoot projectiles are a real problem when all you have to defend yourself are fireballs and iceballs, especially when they're all clustered together like they frequently are. Not to mention, all piranha plants come out of their pipes regardless of the player's proximity to them, which typically means you [i]have to[/i] kill them (and given the number of projectiles shot, any plant that shoots projectiles has to be killed anyway). I suspect these would probably be a lot easier to deal with if they didn't come out of their pipe when you were right next to them and had less of an effective range for their projectiles. The laser plants are extremely deadly when you first meet them. Because they shoot in whatever direction you were in when they started and continue shooting for a few seconds, they can cause a situation where you can't stay away from the laser. Worse, they have a ridiculous effective range, and when you have multiple laser plants firing at you at the same time (which can easily happen if you go forward too fast in some areas), it can almost be impossible to get away from all of them, not to mention retaliate with things like fireballs. The Sniper Koopa is far too deadly when you first encounter it, mostly because it's hard to know how to dodge it once a shot is lined up due to their wide range and how the weapon works. I know this would be less realistic, but I think it would be far better if the weapon could only damage you at the specific point aimed at. That way, the attack could be avoided just by jumping or running out of the way at the right time, rather than also having to figure out and take into account where the attacker is. The chain chomp's attack range is ridiculous. He can sometimes go all the way across a sizable room. I guess this might be a bug, though. The Holy Goomba's movements are random, as far as I can tell, and I never figured out a reliable way to deal with him. Luckily, they're not terribly dangerous and often just ended up falling into an abyss, so they didn't cause any problems in practice. The Necrokoopa's attack is practically impossible to dodge, and they give you "curse" status, preventing you from using magic. These were the bane of my existence before you pointed out that the Holy Pants are protective against curses, at which point I started making it a habit to switch to Holy Pants any time I saw him. It wouldn't be such a problem if the attacks just went in a straight line or even if they worked like the Koopa Priest attack, but instead they curve around seemingly randomly in a way that makes no technique a reliable way to dodge it. The Clear Dry Bones is practically impossible to deal with. I don't understand why you are even allowed to stomp it since stomping it while it's in ghost form hurts you. All I was ever able to do with them is jump over them, treating them more as annoying obstacles than enemies. "Fuzzy" (which I tended to call "metroids", since that's what they act like) are almost as annoying and deadly as metroids, though not quite as bad as I later found out, since you can get them off you just by jumping a few times. I hate this enemy design as a general rule, but worse, a lot of the time they're right at the entrance of a room. This is a bad idea and should be avoided; you need room to be able to run away from it and deal with it from a distance. Reznor seems to have infinite range and it's very difficult to dodge his attacks. The only way I was able to reliably deal with them before I was strong enough to beat them in a war of attrition was to hide behind a wall, and that was sometimes impossible due to the level design. Novaboo isn't too bad in general, but has ridiculous defense that made it impossible for me to realistically kill them at first with anything other than the Magic Beetroot. The Hammer Giant. Oh boy, the Hammer Giant. This enemy, but even moreso its evil golden twin the Hammer Master, are the worst enemies in this game by far. These are [i]impossible[/i] to deal with in anything other than a war of attrition or blind luck because of how huge and fast they are, and to add insult to injury, the damage they inflict is tremendous, especially the Hammer Master, which still kills me in only a few hits. Here's an interesting story: in one of the later distortions I played through, there was a Hammer Master a couple rooms away from the core. It was a late core, and I had very little problem defeating it. Which was a good thing, because I [i]did[/i] have a problem getting past this single Hammer Master that was blocking my return trip. I think it's a sign of a serious problem when it's not the boss I'm worried about dying from, but one random enemy a couple of rooms away on my return trip. For the record, I didn't get past it by defeating it; I had to fly over it with a P-wing. Ptooie's spike ball is constantly at your height, and Ptooie doesn't move when this happens. So if the Ptooie is below you and you need to get across where he is, possibly even just to go down and kill him, you are forced to take damage. I don't understand why it's like this, either, because it's not at all how he behaves in SMB3. Mecha-Plant v.2.6b has all the problems of the original Mecha-Plant, but the added bonus of the laser constantly facing you, making it literally impossible to dodge as far as I can tell. To add insult to injury, many of these are in rooms where there aren't even walls that could protect you from the lasers. Zombie Yoshi is way too fast, way too agile, and inflicts way too much damage. Worse, he is often right at the entrance, like the metroids are, which gives you no room to dodge; all you can realistically do is start shooting at it with the magic wand and hope for the best. On a side note, when you see him in-game, it looks like he's wearing sunglasses. The Dark Star inflicts a huge amount of damage and is annoying to deal with. Worse, it's difficult to dodge the main component's "disappear and reappear right next to you" attack because it requires such precise timing. It's nowhere near as bad as the Hammer Master since you [i]can[/i] dodge it, but I feel like it should give you more wiggle-room. The Sorckoopa is generally fine, but the poison attack gives you only a really subtle visual and auditory warning, so I tended to not notice he was using that attack until it was too late. Boom Boom Boom was almost impossible to dodge when I encountered him at the beginning of the game. My memory is a little fuzzy, but I think I also found it to be practically impossible to safely stomp him; I only beat him when I later found the green koopa shell and was able to use that, and even then it was much more difficult than it should have been. Being the first boss, this gave me a very bad first impression. Orobunagi's fast, random movements were difficult to dodge. Twomp Destroyer inflicts way too much damage when you come into contact with it, bullets are all over the place making it unreasonable to even attempt to dodge them, and I think it's a terrible design to make it have an instant-kill attack. I got the impression that I was supposed to hide inside that little crevice of the Tox Box Max, but when it moved, I didn't move with it (and it moved too fast for me to reliably get in there anyway), so I ended up fighting a war of attrition instead, which turned out to be easy since I faced this boss fairly late in the game. Someone watching the stream at the time commented something about the game where the enemy comes from that I didn't really understand, so maybe the problem is just that I'm not familiar with how it works in that game. Goombfalloon was ridiculous simply because of the sheer amount of damage it inflicts and the difficulty I had avoiding taking damage. I don't know where you were going with the Omnisledge Bro. All he does is constantly spam random projectiles, so I can't think of any real strategy that you could use against him. The little platform out of reach from most of his attacks is the only thing that prevented him from being a total nightmare. Death's entrance where he instantly kills you if you don't jump is bad design. Other than that, he was underwhelming, thankfully. Luigi was, surprise, practically impossible to dodge because of how fast he moved, and his attacks were all over the place. This was yet another war of attrition. Kamek was the straw that broke the camel's back for me when it comes to the bosses, but ironically, he's probably my favorite boss now that the arena has been fixed. If anything, I think you nerfed him too much with regard to his stats. I still don't think the lava below the arena should be there at all, though, and he also still inflicts more damage than he should from touching him. The Chaos Core was really hit-and-miss. Some of them were absurdly easy, while others were absurdly difficult. One thing I think is particularly worth mentioning: the last core had an attack where the screen went black and then red, and you just got damaged no matter what as far as I can tell. I think this is very bad design, especially considering it was one of the most damaging attacks. The way I ended up dealing with it was using the Enchanted Mirror whenever this happened. But the worst of the cores, and the worst boss in general, was the one that has the giant spiked thing come at you from the side. That thing kills you so quick, I had to focus all of my attention on it. And as if to make fun of you, it has a laser circling around the core, as if you're expected to perform circles around the core too, something which is realistically impossible if you have any intention of dodging that death spike thing. Bowser was really annoying to fight against. Firstly, he teleports randomly, sometimes even on top of you, and inflicts a huge amount of damage when he touches you. Secondly, the fireballs are extremely difficult to dodge. Thirdly, the poison hammers are practically impossible to dodge if you don't happen to be far away. Fourthly, it's very difficult to predict what attack he is going to use. Then there's his charge attack, which as far as I can tell is impossible to dodge; I ended up using the Enchanted Mirror for it. With all of this added up, I was only finally able to beat him in a war of attrition once I had leveled up enough and gotten the full Triforce set, and even then it took several attempts and some luck. Mega Bowser had projectiles all over the place. I didn't even try to fight this boss properly; I just did another war of attrition, using the healing items I had stacked up, because I had just finally beaten Bowser and didn't want to have to start over again on him. This boss also has the dreaded lava beneath the arena thing that Kamek has, another reason I didn't even try to learn how to dodge his attacks. In general, the bosses seemed to have two common problems: Firstly, I found it to be a very common problem where there was one attack, or possibly the boss itself, that inflicted a ridiculous amount of damage. I also found that bosses tended to have a range of attack types, so no particular outfit would protect you from all of their attacks. This was easily the most annoying common thing about the bosses, and I think it's the number one thing that needs to be worked on. Especially, protection from magic is easy to come by while protection from regular attacks is not, so for most bosses, I was encouraged to ignore the bullets I was supposed to be dodging and focus my attention on avoiding the boss itself, because the bullets would inflict only 10 damage while the boss itself would inflict 200 damage. This shouldn't happen. If a boss uses mostly magic attacks, then its magic attacks should inflict far more damage than touching the boss, to the point where a player equipped to defend against magic really well will still not take significantly more damage from touching the boss than from getting hit by the magic attacks. And if a boss has multiple attacks, they should generally inflict the same amount of damage. Secondly, and this is the main thing that made the bosses so frustrating, every single one of the bosses has attacks that are basically impossible to dodge. This is sometimes caused by the attack itself (e.g. from being a homing attack or laser), sometimes caused by the sheer number of bullets on the screen at once (The Omnisledge Bro comes to mind), and sometimes caused by the attacks just being random and all over the place (Luigi is a great example). This makes even trying to figure out the bosses' patterns completely pointless; it's better to focus on dodging the one or two attacks that inflicts ridiculous damage and rely on your stats for the rest. I suggest doing some radical changes to the bosses to address this. For an example of a good boss, I would point to the current version of Kamek, who only uses one attack at a time in a consistent pattern, with very little randomness applied. Anyway, that's my review. My apologies if it's a bit scattered. Like I said, while all these problems bugged me, I still very much enjoyed the game overall. I hope this review inspires you to make the game even better. :)

Now, that's a lot of feedback O_o [quote="onpon4"]Firstly, it's a bad design for Mario to automatically change his facing to the direction that he's pushed into either by attacks or by moving platforms.[/quote]Mario is facing the whatever direction he is running, so it's impossible to run backwards. However, this can be changed, especially if it will make the game less annoying (I wasn't bothered by this actually). [quote="onpon4"]Additionally, and this is the important bit, I'm not going to remember the locations of all of these.[/quote]So, I was thinking about this, and I'm going to make a Metroid system of marking on the map uncollected items you encountered. There's one Castlevania game that did this, and it's actually a very neat feature. [quote="onpon4"]Thirdly, there were a couple secret areas that I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get past, even though I explored the entire map.[/quote]See the spoiler I posted for Vinny on guide how to get there. I think I should make it more obvious somehow, but I also don't to make a literal Guide with hint about it. It should be more... subtle. If you played SotN, you should know what you need to get past spikes, but it's... well hidden. You'd need to try to kill every enemy to eventually get the clue. [quote="onpon4"]The black vortex thing[/quote]It opens after defeating all cores. If it didn't well... (but I tested it) [quote="onpon4"]bug that allowed me to fall into that particular room twice[/quote]I hope it's not like this bug with switch after the first teleport ;_; [quote="onpon4"]When I found out that one of the areas had nothing more than coins[/quote]You seem to not like coins. The reason I have put so much coins (and partially, made the treasure card thing) is that there are too many item boxes. I didn't want to leave an useless corners, so I've put a box in each of them. Now, this game suffers from insufficient amount of items anyways (though it still gives lots of choices), including enemy drops. But I didn't want to make a ridiculous amount of items too, and filling these boxes with something interesting would mean doing this. Second reason for coins is the Ring'o Drop. It's so expensive that I didn't want players to grind for money too much, so I added these coins, and also made the Most Precious Ring later (funny thing is that it replaced Thor's Cloak, which was found in two boxes). I know these are bad reasons. Forgive me ;_; [quote="onpon4"]Elemental protection was useless because no one element seems to be particularly prevalent in any given area or boss. Petrification resistance was useless because enemies that caused petrification were few and far between[/quote]I wanted to make an protective item against every element. The problem is however that many of these items are available after the part they would be most useful. E.g. Thor's Cloak and Lakithunder, or Cobra Pants and Magic Shield, which is available at the same time. I'm not sure how should I change this. That would mean going over all item boxes and tweaking contents ¬_¬ [quote="onpon4"]Almost all of the weapons are useless once you can use magic[/quote]So, I didn't want them to be too strong, and there are items that help you use weapons. But since stars are so limited resource, I probably should buff all weapons damage. [quote="onpon4"]Sixthly, I found many abilities obtained from relics to be entirely useless beyond certain designated uses: the ground pound, the spin jump, and sliding, in particular. [...] dedicated "weapon" key[/quote]Yea, each of them has actually use in only one place (with Spin being useless with Iron Boots). Other than that, they are more an attack utility. E.g. Butt Stomp deals double STOMP damage and lets you pass through enemies. As for weapon attacks, it's more a legacy thing, as pretty every 2D Castlevania has Up+Attack for subweapons and such. I might add an option for dedicated button though. [quote="onpon4"]The Sniper Koopa is far too deadly when you first encounter it, mostly because it's hard to know how to dodge it once a shot is lined up due to their wide range and how the weapon works.[/quote]It's actually easy to dodge. The crosshair blinks for a while when targeted and all you have to do is jump. The problem is when he catches you off-guard. [quote="onpon4"]The Holy Goomba's movements are random, as far as I can tell, and I never figured out a reliable way to deal with him.[/quote]Yes, they are random. But they are also minor threat at the same time. They are just designed to be annoying little quirks ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) (there's very few of them also) [quote="onpon4"]Ptooie [...] because it's not at all how he behaves in SMB3[/quote]I actually don't know how they behave in SMB3, I'll change it probably. [quote="onpon4"]Mecha-Plant v.2.6b has all the problems of the original Mecha-Plant, but the added bonus of the laser constantly facing you, making it literally impossible to dodge as far as I can tell. To add insult to injury, many of these are in rooms where there aren't even walls that could protect you from the lasers.[/quote]So, you are actually supposed to kill them on the first sight. For some reason I thought it's a good idea ¬_¬ [quote="onpon4"]Zombie Yoshi is way too fast, way too agile, and inflicts way too much damage.[/quote]They used to be even harder ;_; [quote="onpon4"]Orobunagi's fast, random movements were difficult to dodge.[/quote]He actually follows a fixed path. You just need to find safe spots and move between them along his movement. It's the easiest boss if you know the pattern. [quote="onpon4"]Twomp Destroyer ... ...[/quote]He is my favorite. The battle is very intense as you need to keep running, while watching out for sniper rifle and flying projectiles. The projectiles are very slow, so you have much time to react, unless you are caught in a spot you can't escape. [quote="onpon4"]Goombfalloon was ridiculous simply because of the sheer amount of damage it inflicts and the difficulty I had avoiding taking damage.[/quote]You are supposed to fight it later in game. I should probably block the boss with some !-block to avoid confusion, as the reward is disappointing before you unlock the better one. [quote="onpon4"]I don't know where you were going with the Omnisledge Bro.[/quote]Me neither. I thought: "Wow, it would be cool to have a Sledge Bro. boss with all the Bro. powers." And then this thing happened. ... um, nevermind ;_; [quote="onpon4"]Death's entrance where he instantly kills you if you don't jump is bad design.[/quote]Why? You get a red, flashing text telling you to jump and then suddenly you are sliced in half. That's the best possible entrance a Death could have XD There's a save room next to the boss so it's now like you go unprepared and lose a hour progress. [quote="onpon4"]the last core [...] The way I ended up dealing with it was using the Enchanted Mirror whenever this happened.[/quote]That's what you were supposed to do. (as for previous core, nerfing Skewer damage might be a good idea, but it's not an impossible challenge) [quote="onpon4"]Thirdly, the poison hammers are practically impossible to dodge if you don't happen to be far away.[/quote]In latest patch I added a delay before hammer attack, so you have time to avoid it. I might also make it so he throws them in a fixed direction. [quote="onpon4"]Then there's his charge attack, which as far as I can tell is impossible to dodge[/quote]I just... thought that a standard Dracula's meteorite attack would be too boring, so I added an epic charge animation and made it move with "supersonic" speed. I know it's too much XD It is actually possible to dodge if you jump in the right moment, but I'll make it more forgivable. [quote="onpon4"]using the healing items I had stacked up[/quote]I know it's bad design, but it's final boss = last chance to use these items. Well... when I fought him, he seemed manageable. As for enemies and bosses in general, it turns out that exploration and experience system don't go in pair very well. Typical Castlevania games are more "linear", because there's a fixed path you are supposed to take. In my Mariovania, you gain to much freedom at some point. So if you find enemies/bosses too strong or to weak in damage, that's because you have taken a different path than I "predicted". For example, Catacombs are supposed to be completed after Library. Well, at least enemies are balanced this way, because there's nothing stopping you to go opposite. As for magic/physical balance, I just made the Magic Armor too strong. To the point that it makes any magic attack pathetic. So I tried to balance bosses to not make it feel like you are invincible. And during final revision, I though for some reason that Magic Armor is good as it is. Just... ... ¬_¬ And for the attacks. I think I'm just... hardcore(?) player, because I nerfed them to the point I actually though they are fair. I wanted them to pose a challenge. Probably I did it wrong. And the randomness. I actually like the randomness. I prefer Lakithinder over Kamek. Kamek has a very fixed pattern of attacks he follows in sequence. I find that boring. Lakithinder, on the other hand, has his patter random, but he does a charge before every attack and they are predictable (you seemed to have problem with red explosion. You just need to move away when he does this). The problem is, I'm probably bad at balancing these things, so these attacks mostly feel like impossible to avoid. I tweaked like twice each one of them, and they apparently aren't good enough -_- [quote="onpon4"]Anyway, that's my review. My apologies if it's a bit scattered. Like I said, while all these problems bugged me, I still very much enjoyed the game overall. I hope this review inspires you to make the game even better. :)[/quote]Thanks for all the feedback! :) Watching your streams and reading your thoughts were very valuable to me. Surely I'll try to improve the game, before the mainsite release (which will happen when I get all new sprites). I might post some important/balancing patches here, before that arrives.

[quote]Mario is facing the whatever direction he is running, so it's impossible to run backwards. However, this can be changed, especially if it will make the game less annoying (I wasn't bothered by this actually).[/quote] You should have a distinction between running and movement. Running should be triggered only by the player's input. A gear that pushes you to the right does not mean you're running to the right, and a bat knocking you to the right does not mean you're running to the right. These things just cause you to [i]move[/i] to the right and thus should not affect what direction you're facing. [quote]So, I was thinking about this, and I'm going to make a Metroid system of marking on the map uncollected items you encountered. There's one Castlevania game that did this, and it's actually a very neat feature.[/quote] That would work. (Though it wouldn't be a "Metroid system" as far as I'm aware; none of the Metroid games I've played have such a feature.) [quote]See the spoiler I posted for Vinny on guide how to get there.[/quote] Well, seeing that, that is... convoluted. Why not just put the items in item blocks rather than have some kind of arbitrary sequence of steps to perform to kill an otherwise unkillable enemy and then find a special item randomly dropped by that enemy? Or if you really want it to be difficult to find, at least make it some sort of puzzle. There's absolutely no precedent to expect such an innocuous enemy as the Titan to drop such a useful item. [quote]It opens after defeating all cores. If it didn't well... (but I tested it)[/quote] Ah. I didn't think to check back after beating the final core. I assumed I needed some kind of special item. Going back now, it's gone, like you say. Perhaps there ought to be something to make that connection more obvious. [quote]You seem to not like coins.[/quote] I don't dislike them, but they're essentially useless, so a room that only exists to house a block with coins in it is useless. The thing about that room that annoyed me was simply that this particular distortion was hard to navigate, and though I don't remember exactly why, getting into that room that just had coins seemed to make it even harder (or maybe it was that it was hard to get into that room). I think that room should just not exist, and I also think the underneath passage on the room above and to the left compared to that should not exist for the same reason. [quote]The reason I have put so much coins (and partially, made the treasure card thing) is that there are too many item boxes. I didn't want to leave an useless corners, so I've put a box in each of them. Now, this game suffers from insufficient amount of items anyways (though it still gives lots of choices), including enemy drops. But I didn't want to make a ridiculous amount of items too, and filling these boxes with something interesting would mean doing this.[/quote] What about the weapons? Currently they are just randomly dropped by enemies, but personally, I think this is a bad design choice anyway. (I know SotN does this, but it should be noted that SotN does this with swords, and those would be more akin to boots in Mariovania than Mariovania's "weapons", which are more similar to SotN's subweapons.) [quote]I wanted to make an protective item against every element. The problem is however that many of these items are available after the part they would be most useful. E.g. Thor's Cloak and Lakithunder, or Cobra Pants and Magic Shield, which is available at the same time. I'm not sure how should I change this. That would mean going over all item boxes and tweaking contents ¬_¬[/quote] That's fine, but if you're going to have the elemental differentiation at all, I suggest that it should be something that the player can reasonably exploit. That means making enemies in a particular area generally consistent with regard to their elements, and it especially means making absolutely sure that bosses' attacks are consistently the same element. Otherwise, the only way to take advantage of the elemental system is to constantly go into the menu and change your pants, and this is annoying. On that note, the same goes for status effects, though in a different way: I think you should not mix together different status effects in the same area. For example, it's very mean to have enemies that poison you in the same room as enemies that curse you. [quote]So, I didn't want them to be too strong, and there are items that help you use weapons. But since stars are so limited resource, I probably should buff all weapons damage.[/quote] Maybe, but I think that more to the point, most of these weapons should use far fewer stars than they do. 2 stars is a high cost, and 5 stars is very high, but most weapons have costs that are much higher than even that. One other thing that's worth noting, there's an artifact that causes stars to be restored any time you save. This should appear much earlier in the game than it does. It's not something that makes you more powerful; it's just something that makes grinding for stars unnecessary. [quote]As for weapon attacks, it's more a legacy thing, as pretty every 2D Castlevania has Up+Attack for subweapons and such.[/quote] Oh, I'm well aware of that, but it's a bad legacy. :) More to the point, none of the Castlevania games have you holding the "up" button so you can float down more slowly. This aspect of Mariovania makes it extremely easy in the heat of combat to waste stars using your weapon when you actually wanted to do magic. [quote="Ulquiorra"]It's actually easy to dodge. The crosshair blinks for a while when targeted and all you have to do is jump. The problem is when he catches you off-guard.[/quote] Right, but what I meant is that the bullet travels toward you rather than the spot just becoming a designated damage zone like e.g. the Koopa Priest. That means you have to dodge in the right direction. I think the latter would be better. [quote]I actually don't know how they behave in SMB3, I'll change it probably.[/quote] In SMB3, he just moves back and forth and the ball hovers just above its mouth, then shoots up really high at consistent intervals. [quote][quote="onpon4"]Twomp Destroyer ... ...[/quote]He is my favorite. The battle is very intense as you need to keep running, while watching out for sniper rifle and flying projectiles. The projectiles are very slow, so you have much time to react, unless you are caught in a spot you can't escape.[/quote] The only problems I have are the usual "bullets all over the place" problem, and the sheer amount of damage it inflicts when you touch it. The basic functioning of it is perfectly fine. [quote][quote="onpon4"]Death's entrance where he instantly kills you if you don't jump is bad design.[/quote]Why? You get a red, flashing text telling you to jump and then suddenly you are sliced in half. That's the best possible entrance a Death could have XD There's a save room next to the boss so it's now like you go unprepared and lose a hour progress.[/quote] It might [i]look[/i] cool, but it's really not a great experience to just be killed instantly because you didn't follow on-screen instructions that only show up twice in the game. [quote="onpon4"]the last core [...] The way I ended up dealing with it was using the Enchanted Mirror whenever this happened.[/quote]That's what you were supposed to do.[/quote] This seems to me like a bad idea since stars are limited. It means once you run out of stars, you're forced to get hit. [quote][quote="onpon4"]using the healing items I had stacked up[/quote]I know it's bad design, but it's final boss = last chance to use these items. Well... when I fought him, he seemed manageable.[/quote] I'm sure he probably is, but I didn't even bother trying to fight him properly mostly because the boss fight immediately before him was so aggravating. However, I do think that lava beneath you in that arena should be done away with. [quote]And the randomness. I actually like the randomness. I prefer Lakithinder over Kamek. Kamek has a very fixed pattern of attacks he follows in sequence. I find that boring. Lakithinder, on the other hand, has his patter random, but he does a charge before every attack and they are predictable (you seemed to have problem with red explosion. You just need to move away when he does this).[/quote] Randomness is fine when it's used to vary the experience and keep it from getting dull. The problem is when the randomness can catch you off-guard and cause you to take more damage than you otherwise would have. I didn't have any particular problems with Lakithunder that I remembered. Actually, I think both of the problems I said apply to all the bosses don't apply to Lakithunder, and I just forgot because Lakithunder just didn't leave an impression on me. I see you didn't say anything about the Hammer Giant and Hammer Master. I just want to stress that there is nothing in this game that I hate more than the Hammer Master, and I would feel the same way about the Hammer Giant if I had encountered it when I was supposed to. These two don't just need tweaks in my opinion, but radical change to their fundamental design, or complete removal from the game. [quote]Surely I'll try to improve the game, before the mainsite release (which will happen when I get all new sprites). I might post some important/balancing patches here, before that arrives.[/quote] I'll be looking forward to it. :)

[quote="onpon4"](Though it wouldn't be a "Metroid system" as far as I'm aware; none of the Metroid games I've played have such a feature.)[/quote] I mean the dots and circles on the map. They are in every 2D Metroid since Super. [quote="onpon4"]This seems to me like a bad idea since stars are limited. It means once you run out of stars, you're forced to get hit.[/quote]It's not a problem in end-game and with Star Talizman. You have lots of stars, and the attack is executed, like 5 times, during the fight. Unless you are slow to kill it. [quote="onpon4"]I see you didn't say anything about the Hammer Giant and Hammer Master.[/quote]Yeah, nothing interesting to say. I'll move that particular Master out of the way to the Core. I'll try to fix this enemy, but... I already "fixed" it once or twice. As for Hammer Giants, they are easy to avoid if you jump over them, also have rather predictable movements (they try to get close and hammer you, or jump if you get too far). And later they are mostly harmless.

[quote]I mean the dots and circles on the map. They are in every 2D Metroid since Super.[/quote] Oh, I don't know if that would help. I thought you meant actually showing on that map which item blocks you had already collected. [quote]It's not a problem in end-game and with Star Talizman. You have lots of stars, and the attack is executed, like 5 times, during the fight. Unless you are slow to kill it.[/quote] Perhaps, but it doesn't feel very nice to be forced to be stingy with stars. Even the distant possibility of an attack being impossible to dodge is not very nice and feels unfair. [quote]I'll move that particular Master out of the way to the Core. I'll try to fix this enemy, but... I already "fixed" it once or twice.[/quote] That's why I say the change needs to be radical. As in, they can't behave even similarly to how they currently behave. If you can't do that, I think you should just remove them. [quote]As for Hammer Giants, they are easy to avoid if you jump over them, also have rather predictable movements (they try to get close and hammer you, or jump if you get too far). And later they are mostly harmless.[/quote] They are often right next to an entrance, so what you suggest is impossible in these cases. Going into the room with the Hammer Giant in Bowser's throne area from the right is a great example. As for being mostly harmless [i]later on[/i], that's true of any enemy. You could have an enemy that just unconditionally damages you by 200 every 2 seconds and it would become mostly harmless once your defense stat is high enough. That does not excuse bad design. An enemy needs to be fair no matter what your level is, i.e. it needs to be feasible to avoid its attacks altogether. The thing about the Hammer Giant and the Hammer Master is that they combine ridiculously fast movement (I think they're one of the fastest enemies in the game) with gigantic size. Yes, you [i]can[/i] dodge a Hammer Giant, but it requires a very specific movement and doesn't lend itself very well to actually fighting the thing, which you typically need to do if there's anything else in the room. Here's an example of a radical change that would make the Hammer Giant and Hammer Master acceptable: don't make it run towards you. Instead, make it stand in place and swing its hammer at regular intervals. If it does that thing where it jumps at you, give a charge-up time and make it so that the player can react just by running underneath him while he does it. When he lands, stun him for a bit to give the player a chance to counter-attack from behind. The key points common to all enemies are: * There must [i]always[/i] be a way to dodge, no matter what the circumstances, and it should be a realistic expectation for the player to be able to dodge almost everything. * Very strong enemies and bosses must leave openings at pre-determined points so that the player can counter-attack effectively without sacrificing health.

UPDATE TIME! Patch: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s24dgq9ejychp36/Mariovania%20Patch.zip?dl=1 (you need the previous version to use this, download whole game otherwise) Bonus blocks, power ups and relics will now be marked on the map until you collect them. They all have a different icon (sealed block too). I also added save versioning, so saves get converted upon load if the format changed. For this release, whole map gets scanned for missing items, so expect a huge lag if you use old save. I also added a fun item combo to help finding breakable walls you might've missed ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Mario now turns only when you press the direction key. Plus new sprites for Venom Spiny, Shy Guy and Snift. Weapon button, enemy tweaks and item placement changes will come later. As for The Key "sidequest" thing, the problem is getting the Lucky Hammer. When players get it, they should know where it would be useful. But the beginning of sequence is what's the least obvious. My idea is to put a "wanted" poster into the shop when you first time encounter Sky Cheep-Cheep (and maybe some dialogue). This will make players actually notice this enemy and think about how to kill it. Also, it can give a reason why killing it triggers another event. This was kind of rushed patch, as I'm a bit "busy" doing something else with higher priority. I need to wait for the sprites anyways.

I applied this patch to my game and loaded up my old save. There seems to be a bug where trying to enter or leave a golden pipe room crashes the game. EDIT: Nevermind, just had to apply the earlier update. Carry on.

Looks like sprites will take a long time until all of them is done. But it's worth waiting. New update in the meantime: -Changed Tail description, so it explains usage better -Moved Star Talizman. It's now in a formerly useless secret in first area, so you can get it just after first boss -Added new cap to old talizman location -Astral Sword now deals physical damage -Nerfed ring combo from +100% to +50% -Koopa Giant had damage nerfed. His jump was adjusted, so when you run at him, you can safely run below. Also his hits are slower and he no longer stands on pits -Hammer Master has slower jump and hits, and his damage was nerfed -Also, one particular Hammer Master was moved to the opposite side of the area, making path after boss safer -Spin and Tail locations were swapped, so you can get Spin before you encounter Boos -Barret damage now scales with level, previously it was always 500 -Most of weapons got damage buff and star usage decrease -There are now dedicated keys for using weapons and running (run with shoot can be retarted sometimes). Old controls can be toggled in options. ON by default, but OFF for old saves -First boss is now much easier to avoid -Some fixes to a certain cut-scene involving Luigi -If you for some reason suspend your game at the very beginning, continuing won't crash it now -Bunch of new sprites from bigpotato, including Piranha Plants, Ninjis and Thwomps

[ispoiler]Oh look, the link's generating too much traffic for some reason.[/ispoiler] EDIT: Didn't see the mirror link at first...

I decided to start a new game and give the beginning a run. Everything is much better at the start than before now. In particular, Boom Boom Boom has a pattern that can be dodged without unreasonable effort, which I was able to learn my first time fighting him. That's how all bosses should be. :) (It's worth noting that I still used the koopa shell to beat him, mostly because jumping on him to inflict all the damage takes so long when you're at level 1 or 2. I think the problem here is actually the fact that you're so likely to get the Koopa Shell at this point, though. Maybe adjust those weapons so that they require a significantly higher luck stat, so that you're probably only getting them after you've already got the dagger?) On a side note, I didn't find the Star Talisman in the first area, and I don't seem to have missed any blocks other than that treasure card block (which of course you can't get until near the end of the game). Which room is it?

[quote="onpon4"]Maybe adjust those weapons so that they require a significantly higher luck stat, so that you're probably only getting them after you've already got the dagger?)[/quote]I can of course make the drop rate negative, so you need to pass a luck threshold to get it. But it's supposed to be a common item. Maybe could be less common though. [quote="onpon4"]On a side note, I didn't find the Star Talisman in the first area, and I don't seem to have missed any blocks other than that treasure card block (which of course you can't get until near the end of the game). Which room is it?[/quote][ispoiler]It's in the bottom room, below the room with blue block. You need to break the floor and it's possible to do with shell.[/ispoiler] I forgot to put some suspiciously placed candles to make the location more obvious :whoops:

Oh! I didn't know that the shell could break walls. Honestly, though, I don't think suspicious candles would make it any more obvious. It's not normal for Mario games to have blocks disguised as walls, and at this point the player hasn't been told about the possibility of breaking walls. Did you intend for the Star Talisman to be collected early? Because if so, maybe it would be a good idea to move that info block about breaking walls next to this secret room. Otherwise, I suspect new players would just forget about it and never find the item. EDIT: Just fought Orobunagi again, and I have a suggestion: there are times when it speeds up to a huge extent. I think it might be a good idea to not do this. The thing is, unless you've entirely memorized the exact pattern he swims in (which takes a few attempts at least), that speed gives you no time to react. The normal speed is perfectly fine, though. EDIT 2: Hey, here's an interesting bug: in the shop, when you sell an item, it returns to the "Buy/Sell/Exit" menu, but keeps your selection the same. So for example, if what you sold was your fifth item, you have to move the selection up 2 times before something valid is selected. Actually, come to think of it, the bug is probably that you're brought back to that menu rather than kept at the "Sell" menu.

[quote="onpon4"]Oh! I didn't know that the shell could break walls.[/quote]As said in the guide, anything that does bashing damage can break them (except stomping). This applies to hammer too. [quote="onpon4"]Did you intend for the Star Talisman to be collected early?[/quote]No, it's supposed to be available early, but being a secret thing. [quote="onpon4"]The normal speed is perfectly fine, though.[/quote]Maybe I'll make it increase the speed only if it's lower on health. [quote="onpon4"]Actually, come to think of it, the bug is probably that you're brought back to that menu rather than kept at the "Sell" menu.[/quote]So, this happens only if you sell the last item XD I made it so if you sell all items, you return to main shop screen and it happens when nothing is selected. But if you sell last item, selection stays at the same position and nothing is selected when the item is sold. Will be fixed for next update.

[quote="Ulquiorra"]So, this happens only if you sell the last item XD I made it so if you sell all items, you return to main shop screen and it happens when nothing is selected. But if you sell last item, selection stays at the same position and nothing is selected when the item is sold. Will be fixed for next update.[/quote] I guess that's two bugs in one, then. :) For me, it returned to that menu regardless of whether or not that was my last item I sold. EDIT: actually, it's if I sell the last item on the list (regardless of how many are left). [quote]No, it's supposed to be available early, but being a secret thing.[/quote] Ah, alright, that's OK then. [quote]Maybe I'll make it increase the speed only if it's lower on health.[/quote] That's one thing I was thinking. If it went super-speed only when it was about to die in a few more hits, it wouldn't be a problem at all. EDIT: Went a little bit further, and I have some more comments: I see you've improved the plants quite a bit, though since you didn't mention this I guess the changes must have been subtle. I remember having a lot of trouble with these when I first played, but I didn't this time, with the only exception being the passage to the CF Sandals. I think that the room leading to that path is still a bit too spammy, though (it just wasn't a problem because it's with fireballs and those only inflicted 1 damage). I also think the ice plants should be nerfed a bit (make them shoot fewer bullets each time, maybe more like the medusa plants' frequency).