Bounty Boys Past Updates

The following are a selection of previous updates that are still relevant to the current state of the game. Any of the following updates may have been altered since their original posting.

Major changes have been made to Starborn. The list is so long that it would be easier to note what hasn't changed! Going forward, Starborn and Bounty Boys were merged into the same game and will now be known exclusively as Bounty Boys. Everything has been improved, clarified, cleaned up, and made better in every way. However, this means that 100% of previous game art is now gone and the entire story is rewritten.

-SYSTEMS-

-A Tutorial has been added to briefly explain essential game functions.

-A Training Room has been added to test every possible aspect of Combat on "Punchy" the punching bag.

-A simple Menu system has been added for Playtesters who are unable to test Bounty Boys in person.

-Character Select: -The Player can now select from Bad Wizard, Gole, and Dregwhelm from the Ship Teleporter in the Main Hub.

-Bounty Select: -The Player can now select which Boss to fight from the Bounty Menu in the Main Hub.

"Hubris Mode" option added to Title Screen

"Hubris Mode": All Damage -Dealt- by the Player increased by 50% and all Damage -Received- by the Player increased by 100%.

***Playtester Options***

-Playtesters can increase Damage -Dealt- by the Player by up to 300%. -Playtesters can reduce Damage -Received- by the Player by up to 100%.

NOTE: The game is not considered balanced and these options will allow any Playtester to finish the game.

***Pausing***

Boss Rush Mode: Defeat every Boss in the game as fast as possible!

Story Mode events are disabled during Boss Rush Mode.

-One Character is selected at the start and must finish the Boss Rush on a single life.

-Normal Mode: May restore some Health in the Rest Area between Bosses.

-Bounty Boy Mode: Cannot restore Health at any point.

-Bonus Health and Damage are set to Maximum.

-Bosses are selected at random until every boss is defeated.

-Total time is displayed in the Victory Room

-Victory Room will now show how long it took to complete Boss Rush overall, and how long it took the Player to kill each individual Boss.

-Victory Room now has confetti cannons.

-Fastest Time overall is now recorded.

-Fastest Times for Each Boss are now recorded.

-Victory Room: "New Record" is now displayed next to the Total Time or Individual Times for each Boss if a new record is set.

-The Player may clear all Story Mode Progress at the Main Menu.

-The Player may clear all Boss Rush Records at the Main Menu.

You can now Pause and Unpause the game with a controller or keyboard while still accessing Menus.

WHY THIS TOOK SO LONG
  -My code uses state-machines which essentially open and close "pipes of flowing water" to make groups of things happen or stop altogether with a single command. When these "pipes" would open I would ask something to happen once upon opening. This had to change on a case-by-case basis so that pausing/unpausing wouldn't cause these events to happen far more than requested.

-Every time an object collided with another object, pausing/unpausing rapidly would detect the collision more than once. A special modifier of "PAUSE=0" had to be added to each line of code that I only wanted to happen once. This mostly applied to taking and receiving damage.

-Every object in the game that used movements that were built-in to Clickteam Fusion 2.5 had to be manually set to stop/start their movement when paused/unpaused.

-Sounds and Music are now controlled by Sound Volume and Music Volume in the options menu.

-All instances of hard-coded player controls have been replaced (except for debug controls).

-All animations are now stopped during Pause except Pause Menu animations.

-Increased the Camera Dead-Zone. This allows slightly more character re-positioning before the camera begins moving in the opposite direction that the Player last traveled.

-Tested several iterations of vertical camera sticking when jumping from platform to platform. Original camera left unchanged.

-Player Mobile Health Bar has returned. -Player Mobile Fury Meter has been added. --"-Low Fury-: Now appears when attempting to Meteor Punch as Bad Wizard without enough Fury --"-Low Health-" Now appears when attempting to Phantasmal Prison as Dregwhelm without enough health.

-Player Mobile Health Bar can be toggled on/off in options

-Player Mobile Fury Bar can be toggled on/off in options

-Enemy Mobile Health Bar can be toggled on/off in options

-Enemy Mobile Poison Bar can be toggled on/off in options

***

-Players can now restore default controls with a single button press at anytime in the options. -Fixed a bug which caused inputs to be lost when multiple buttons were pressed on the exact same frame. -Fixed a bug where the controller would not be recognized when being unplugged and plugged back in.

-Updated User Interface and game elements to greatly improve readability for color blind users.

-I have successfully implemented Input Buffering! You can press a button much closer to when the game will actually perform your input and it will do what you asked. This should greatly reduce the amount of button presses that don't do anything.

-Greatly increased visibility and effect of particles created when any Player Character takes any damage.

-Greatly increased visibility and effect of particles created when Enemies take Physical damage.

-Player and Boss Health and Meters can now be displayed Horizontally, Vertically, Mobile (follows the respective character or enemy), Off, or any combination of the above. NOTE: Non-Boss creatures may only have their Health, Poise, and Poisoned status displayed while Mobile Enemy Meters are active.

-Poise Meters have been added to every enemy Mobile Health Bar to indicate how much Poise they have left before being Stunned. NOTE: I decided that this information should no longer be invisible so that Players of all experience levels can make combat decisions based upon when enemies will be Stunned.

-Added numerical displays to indicate how many Meteor Punches and Phantasmal Prisons can be cast with the current amount of Player Fury/Energy

-Damage done to the Player now creates floating red numbers indicating how much Damage the Player has taken.

-Taking Damage while the Player has maximum Defense (i.e. while Godmode is active) will result in the text "GUARD".

-Dodging through any source of Damage to the Player causes no interaction and does not result in the "GUARD" text.

-The screen position of all Static Player and Enemy meters can now be adjusted from the Options Menu.

-Mobile Player Poise Meter can now be turned On/Off separate from Mobile Player Health Meter.

-Mobile Enemy Poise Meters can now be turned On/Off separate from Mobile Enemy Health Meters.

-Enemies that cannot be Stunned by any means will have their Poise Meter appear empty.

NOTE 1: Vulnerability to Stuns and the effect of Stuns may vary depending on the current Phase that a Boss is in.

NOTE 2: Bosses that cannot be Stunned can still be Parried.

NOTE 3: Terrorize will always have an interaction with a Boss even if Stunning is not an option.

-Added detailed descriptions of Characters and their Abilities during Character Select.

-"Parry" is now is statistic that is displayed on a Character's Status Sheet to show how easily a specific Character can Parry.

-GAMEPLAY-

-All Damage -Received- by the Player is reduced by 50% NOTE: Previous Damage values have been given to "Hubris Mode".

-"Ability: Dodge" no longer has a cool-down for any character.

-"Ability: Backstep" has been removed. Players only used backstep on accident and often messed up the actions they intended to take. Now pressing dodge while stationary will dodge you in the direction you are currently facing. Backstep was originally designed to give the Player greater positional control when the game was extremely slow and rigid at its very early stages. Freedom of control and the Player's overall movement capability have so far surpassed the original design that Backstep was only useful in rare circumstances.

"Ability: Backstep" may return in some form if there is a demand for it.

-Fixed an issue where melee attack combos could cause you to attack through to the other side of an enemy. This caused melee combat to be 50% attacking and 50% re-positioning. A result of this fix is that all melee combat is more powerful and effective.

-Melee attacks will cause the player to lunge forward if they are not already making melee contact with the enemy.

-Player Dodge duration reduced to 0.2 seconds from 0.25, dodge speed increased 16.5%. Distance travelled during dodge unchanged.

-More movement optimizations have been made to remove slippery movement at high speeds.        

-Improved movement responsiveness and reduced character slipperiness.                                                                     

-Improved deceleration of the Player Character several instances that could feel slippery, particularly after a dodge.                                       

-The second Jump during a Double Jump has been increased slightly to clear level geometry at specific height intervals.                         

-Ability: Stun Breaker has been removed from the game. Stuns now last only long enough to force the player to rethink their strategy and movement.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

-When an enemy takes 0 damage, GUARD appears above them instead of 0.

-Updated all sources of enemy attacks to now hit the Player in the direction of the attack received.

-Parry Damage Multiplier reduced to 1.5x (was 3x).

-Damage types from Player Characters and Enemies have been cut from 6 types down to 2.

-Control, Legion, and Power Damage and Defenses have been combined into Damage and Defense. -True Damage (ignores defenses) has been removed from the game.

-Poise Damage (stuns enemies when built up) remains unchanged.

NOTE: The scope of the game does not support or need the diversity of this many damage types. If a specific character is too strong or too weak against a certain boss then their damage will be adjusted accordingly for that specific encounter.

-Enemies are Stunned for a maximum of 200ms baseline (Stun times varied previously).

-Dodge-Cancelling a Special Ability will no longer lock the Player out of Jumping or using a Special Ability.

-Spell-Cancelling a Dodge will no longer reduce the duration of the next Dodge.

-Every Enemy Attack in the game is now normalized to safely allow a Parry for 5ms before any Attack that can be Parried.

NOTE: Dregwhelm's Parry potential has been drastically reduced as they could easily Parry while doing a normal Damage rotation. Parrying is intended to be one of the highest difficulty combat strategies in the game.

-Normalized all character dodges to be able to travel 96 pixels left or right before being vulnerable to damage. Dodge travel time and invulnerability duration for Bad Wizard and Dregwhelm lasts ~0.21 seconds. Travel time and invulnerability duration for Gole's Blink Dodge lasts ~0.10 seconds.

NOTE: Gole was found to be more vulnerable during a dodge than intended, which was made worse by having a much shorter period of safety during a Dodge.

NOTE 2: Dodge distance may be subject to change. Dodging is the core mechanic by which all combat is built upon and is incredibly powerful.

-All Player actions, abilities, and behavior are very slightly faster and are based upon more accurate timing.

-Damage Taken by the Player is rounded down to the next whole number.

-Player Invulnerability after taking Damage has been increased to 0.25 seconds from 0.1 seconds.

-Dodging resets Player Invulnerability after taking Damage so that Players cannot increase the time of Player Invulnerability beyond the intended amount.

NOTE: Examples of how often the Player can take Damage: 1) Every individual hit of a quick Enemy Ability 2) Every 0.25 seconds of a lingering Enemy Ability. 3) Every 0.5 seconds during a lingering Enemy Ability.

-PLAYER CHARACTERS-

Bad Wizard:

-Bad Wizard has the highest Damage Per Second (DPS) if played perfectly, but has the highest skill requirement. If played adequately, DPS should be comparable to other characters. He has the highest Burst Damage potential in the game.

-Bad Wizard: Fast Combo Damage Multiplier while an enemy is Stunned increased to 3x (was 2x).

-Drastically reduced amount of time spent Aerial Punching if the Punch button is not being held.

-Reduced the amount of time spent rebounding after an Aerial Punch

-Hitboxes for Aerial Punch and Down-Strike linger for 5ms after rebounding to ensure a connection.

NOTE: These changes greatly increase the Player's control during aerial combat without having to Dodge or Attack-Cancel out of an Aerial Attack.

-Added an invisible 32 pixel buffer to Fast Punch Combo. NOTE: This is to prevent the Player from lunging uncomfortably close to an Enemy upon approach while also maintaining a good range to deal Damage. If the Player is already closer than 32 pixels while using Fast Punch Combo, then this buffer will have no effect.

-Increased the speed of the 3-hit Combo by up to 50%, bringing it in line with the speed and responsiveness of other Characters and Abilities.

-"Ability: Falling Star" *NEW*: holding Down+Punch while airborne will cause Bad Wizard to strike down with tremendous force and repeatedly drill through Enemies until hitting the ground or releasing Punch. Falling Star builds Fury at half of the normal speed from Melee attacks.

NOTE: This is an enhanced version of "Ability: Down-Strike" which is capable of dealing more Damage before rebounding.

Dregwhelm:

Moderately difficult to play with the highest sustained ranged DPS. As long as an enemy is the same X position as Dregwhelm, they can take most or all of his DPS potential. Overall damage is lower than Bad Wizard and higher than Gole.

-Dregwhelm now deals double Damage on Uncharged Shots for a short duration after firing a Charged Shot. The duration of the double Damage bonus is based upon how long the preceding Charged Shot was charged.

NOTE:This change encourages Players to stay within a short-medium range of Enemies to deal maximal damage.

-All enemies and bosses can now be Terrified by Dregwhelm and in some cases have special interactions.

-Terror is now broken upon any damaging interaction.

-Charged Shot/Lash takes 25% less time to reach max charge.

-Charged Shots from Lash/Charge Shot now only last as long as it takes to charge the next Charged Shot of that type.
NOTE: Charged Shots could Cleave enemies indefinitely if they ran away while being cleaved. This behavior caused far too much damage for the time invested and multiple copies of the same Charged Shot affected each other's direction in some instances.

-Shots and Charged Shots from Lash/Charge Shot no longer get destroyed when colliding with terrain.

-"Special Ability: Phantasmal Prison": Enemies will only be afflicted by Terror for as long as it takes to reach a maximum Charge Shot. NOTE: Additional applications of Terrorize will refresh this duration.

-Phantasmal Prison now costs Energy instead of Health. 1 Energy per cast with a total of 5 Energy. Can only be restored upon death or between boss attempts.

-Damage reduced roughly 33% across the board.

-Uncharged Shot range reduced 40%.

-Parry Hitbox size reduced by 60%.

-Parry Hitbox duration reduced by 80%.

-Charged/Uncharged Shots no longer activate Hyper Speed.

Gole:

Easiest to play and lags slightly behind the rest of the characters in DPS. Poison can deal moderate damage with a single application without further input and as such Gole must deal slightly less damage overall. Poison that is already applied gains the 1.5x Damage Multiplier from a Parry.

-"Special Ability: Poison Splash" only ignores Gravity at the very beginning of the Splash, but the Ability may now be used again much faster.

-"Ability: Aerial Expunge" only ignores Gravity at the very beginning of the lunge.

-"Ability: Blink Dodge" no longer ignores Gravity, but is so much faster than a normal Dodge that it retains its intended usefulness.

-"Mobility: Wall Slide: has been removed from the Game.

NOTE: These changes prevent the Player from spending more time in the air than intended. Previously, the Player could Poison an Enemy and stay in the air for the duration of the Poison. This behavior could be exploited despite the low Damage output that Poison is capable of on its own. In the case of "Mobility: Wall Slide", this Ability was on a trial period and does not currently have a place in the game.

-All enemies and bosses can now be Poisoned by Gole --All enemy health bars also display a secondary bar for how much time is remaining on their Poison.

-Poisoning multiple Enemies will now always deal Poison Damage to all Enemies Poisoned every 0.25 seconds. NOTE: Multiple Poisoned targets were competing over who would take the damage.

-Melee range increased by 50%.

-Melee Attacks now grant Hyper Speed.

-Added an invisible 48 pixel buffer to Fast Expunge Combo. NOTE: This buffer behaves exactly the same as Bad Wizard's, but keeps Gole slightly farther away.

-"Ability: Blink Dodge": Gole will now fall faster immediately after a Blink Dodge so that he may not stay in the air longer than intended.

-"Ability: Down-strike" has been taken from Bad Wizard and given to Gole.

NOTE: I have been debating if Gole needed a proper attack that could deal direct Damage below him. With the release of the Seals of the Vault fight, it is mandatory that Gole be able to deal moderate direct Damage from above an Enemy.

-BOSSES-

Design Philosophy: -Certain Enemy and Boss Abilities were originally intended to punish behavior that made fights too easy. My design philosophy has since moved toward rewarding play that naturally puts the Player in harm's way. If the Player still chooses to fight a Boss or Enemy in a way that is too safe or too easy, these Bosses and Enemies will behave in ways that reduce their vulnerability to these styles of play.

-Removed Anti-Air Strike from "Boss: Fatshell" and "Boss: Powernaut". -Fatshell and Powernaut now attempt to escape being attacked from above by Spin-Attacking away from the Player.

NOTE: This behavior also increases the engagement with environment hazards that are present in the respective Boss Arenas.

Ebble and Floes:

-NEW BOSS ABILITY: In the final phase of the Ebble and Floes fight, Floes will rain down shards of ice on the upper platforms preventing the Player Character from using them safely. The platforms eventually break causing either the left or right edge of the arena to be too dangerous to fight in, followed by the other side. Which side breaks first is chosen randomly every time you fight Ebble and Floes.

-Frost Blossoms in the Ebble and Floes fight increase speed twice as fast as previously.

-Snow Particles now move in a flurry when the Player Character passes through them.

-Floes has 90% Damage Reduction until Phase 4

-Ebble can no longer be knocked out of his armor without first stunning and exploding Floes, then shattering Ebble's armor           

-Minimum Cool-down on Frost Grenades in Phase 4 reduced to 1 second from 1.5 seconds.                                                                                    

-Floes takes 50 damage per second while in phase 4.

-When attempting to poison Ebble while it is immune to all damage "Guard" will appear above its head.

-Ebble (Boss): Ebble can now be Parried which removes its invulnerability and sends it directly into a damageable state.

NOTE: This will Enrage Ebble and set Floes to Phase 3 early, increasing the capabilities of both bosses. Skipping to more difficult Phases is intended to slightly offset the benefits of allowing you to skip some Boss mechanics with a Parry.

-"Ability: Giga Frost Grenade": now creates an expanding ring of Ice Shards when exploded instead of instantly dealing Damage to the Player.

Powernaut :

-Lowered the ceiling in Powernaut's room by 20% to reinforce the idea of being in a pit fight.

-Powernaut takes reduced Damage during the Phase 2 to 3 and Phase 3 to 4 transitions.

-Charge time and frequency of most of Powernaut's attacks have been made easier to react to.

-Parrying, or otherwise knocking Powernaut into the bouncers on either side of the room no longer automatically stuns Powernaut. Powernaut is always capable of diving into you after hitting a bouncer.

-Powernaut no longer enters the dramatically harder phase 2 earlier than normal by being hit into the bouncers 3 times.

-Shade of Powernaut is no longer cast in phase 2 (NOTE: Shade is a Damaging Orb or Vertical Beam depending on the situation)

-Shade of Powernaut now moves left to right during phase 3, and double speed in phase 4. PREVIOUSLY: Only moved during phase 4.

-Shade of Powernaut will move in the direction of Powernaut's Eye Beam when caught in the beam. NOTE: This makes the combination of vertical and horizontal beams more predictable and avoidable while maintaining the level of danger.

-Powernaut can only cast Supernova once and always casts Supernova when transitioning from phase 3 to 4.

-Phase 1 and 2 duration reduced by 5% each.

-Phase 3 and 4 duration increased by 5% each.

-Abilities activate 50% slower in Phase 1.

-Abilities activate 25% slower in Phase 2.

-Powernaut will no longer turn to face the Player for the 2nd hit in its 3 hit combo.

-The Player can now safely stand directly next to Powernaut during Double Punch and the Ability takes 50% longer to Charge.

-Screen-wide Area of Effect Damage at the Phase 2-3 transition has 25% more safe area to stand. This Ability takes 100% more time to Charge.

-Decimate during the Phase 3-4 transition can no longer be stopped, takes 80% less time to Charge, but no longer deals Damage while the Player is Stunned.

-BUG FIXES-

-Fixed a bug that would cause the player to be stuck in a dodge while dodge attacking under specific circumstances.                              

-Powernaut can no longer be frozen during his death sequence or while flying.                                                                                                                           

-Fixed a timing issue where Dodge Attacking too quickly would result in an unintended extra dodge.

-Players should no longer be able to jump infinitely with creative use of Jump Kick.

-Fixed a few instances of enemy A.I. going into infinite loops due to changes made for the Pause update.

-Enemies will now properly display 0 Poise when Stunned or Terrorized.

-Floes (Boss): Floes will now cancel whatever attack she is currently in when transitioning to her final Phase.

-Powernaut (Boss): Powernaut is no longer permanently Stunned when transitioning from Phase 2 to Phase 3 while Stunned.

-Powernaut: You can no longer be permanently Stunned by being Stunned while touching a Bouncer on the edge of the arena.

-Enemy projectiles may no longer move while the game is paused.

-"Boss: Fatshell": no longer gets hung up on walls or the environment while continuing to Spin-Attack after hitting the Player.

-The Player can now Dodge-Cancel out of a Down-Strike and Poison Splatter.

-Doors now finally close behind the Player when entering the room of a Boss that is still alive. -Some Hitboxes no longer linger when Dodge-Cancelling.

-Fixed a bug where the Player could escape the camera at the very start of the game by taking an action that would move the Player without pressing Left or Right.

-Fixed a bug where the Player could change direction in the middle of attacks that should have disabled their directional control for the duration.

NOTE: The worst outcome of this bug was the ability to deal double (or more) Damage than intended by rapidly changing direction during an attack. This would force the highest skilled Players to perform this bug to maximize their Damage output.

-Fixed a bug where the Player couldn't Dodge-Cancel to the left out of most Abilities. NOTE: This existed but had no effect until the above bug was fixed.

-Removed a lot of deprecated code.

-All Platform and terrain types have consistent collision.

-Fixed an issue that caused the Player to enter a standing State when moving against vertical walls of a certain type.

NOTE: This issue was caused by redundant code that has been in the game engine since the very first day of working on the game. I used to think that coding for multiple edge-cases was good enough to cover any problems. I've since learned to just fix the core problem in the first place.

-Hitboxes no longer linger when enemies die under certain circumstances.

-Bosses will now always properly spawn in Boss Rush Mode when they have already been killed in Story Mode.

-Teleporters back to the Rest Room will now always properly spawn in Boss Rush Mode when their respective Bosses have already been killed in Story Mode.

-Players may no longer be able to avoid Damage by Dodging again on the exact same frame that the Player has completed a previous Dodge.

-The platforms in the Fatshell fight will no longer spawn if Fatshell has already been killed in Story Mode.

-Powernaut will return the background to normal if Powernaut dies during "Ability: Decimate".

-Ebble and Floes will return the background to normal if Floes dies during "Ability: Flash Freeze".

-Players can now Dodge while rebounding after "Ability: Down-strike" and "Ability: Falling Star".