XGA: updates I guess...

[Dinar87]

Hey guys. It's been a while since I last updated my forum posts. I had to make a new account event!

The game is complete but I want to keep adding to it.

[Dinar87]

https://youtu.be/qqsW-zGs4Is

[Dinar87]

Redid my pause menu to be better. Now you can change music and sfx volumes, and exit the game here too.

https://youtu.be/oPgyMbP5Rtc

[Dinar87]

https://dinar87.itch.io/xga/devlog/624022/new-version-released

[DramaticMarquinh0svi]

Nice, until when i tried it a virus was detected

[Dinar87]

People have told me before that they get a virus notification. It's a false positive. I haven't heard of anyone playing my game actually getting infected.

[Dinar87]

Nice, until when i tried it a virus was detected

People have told me before that they get a virus notification. It's a false positive. I haven't heard of anyone playing my game actually getting infected

https://help.gamemaker.io/hc/en-us/articles/360031016592-What-to-do-if-your-game-is-false-positive-detected-as-a-virus

[Zhs2]

Oh good, I found the topic where the creator is actually active. So, I gave this game a try today and it seemed really cool... from the outset. It plays well, feels slick, sounds good, and seems finished - you can get pretty far and gather quite a few items before you start running headlong into strange and unrecoverable situations where all of your fun falls apart and the game becomes completely unbeatable. Played the XGA.Windows.exe link from itch.io btw. So here's the first big warning: DO NOT OPEN THE MULTIPLE LOCKS ROOM IN SECTOR ZERO (the one with the charge plant, shockwave gate, and triple beam door) AND ENTER THE PASSAGE AFTERWARDS UNTIL YOU HAVE EXHAUSTIVELY EXPLORED THE STATION FOR ITEMS. If you do this before you open every door and gather absolutely every item you can find, your save will be COMPLETELY RUINED. Once you've spoken to Mark Taylor every single mark disappears from your map, and every single gate you can blow up to gather items behind them becomes buggy or non-interactive but the collision remains. This seems to specially affect purple nuke gates (they stop being visible and cannot be blown up but still act like they exist) and gray shockwave gates (these are interactive, but they fail to remove their collision when opened after the Mark Taylor event.) I'm convinced it's impossible to find the stealth upgrade if you haven't found it before the Mark Taylor event and you REALLY REALLY NEED THIS to survive after the Mark Taylor event. Not a great look for this game, sadly, and I did not finish because I was too annoyed to restart from the beginning.

Other bugs that I have found include:
- Using Nuclear Blast on butterflies causes an abort:
[spoiler="Butterfly Crash"][/spoiler]
- There is a spot in Sector 3 where you can collect the first Nuclear Blast expansion before earning Nuclear Blast from I believe the red boss to the very right of Sector 1. You can continue to collect Nuclear Blast expansions from then on, but that boss won't drop anything at all. It confused me until I realized what he must drop out of all the items I've found.
- Running yourself out of Nanoshield in lava after the Mark Taylor event makes you immune to lava whether Nanoshield is active or not until you die. (On a lesser note, Nanoshield makes you immune to lava anyway and this enables quite a few early items like the above Nuclear Blast expansion, not sure if that's intended.)

EDIT: Attached save in case it's useful for testing. Forgot to do that last night.

[ShadowGodzilla1954]

When I try to create a world, it says variety is important, and will not generate a world, is there anyway i can find which rooms are giving me this problem?

[Dinar87]

Oh good, I found the topic where the creator is actually active. So, I gave this game a try today and it seemed really cool... from the outset. It plays well, feels slick, sounds good, and seems finished - you can get pretty far and gather quite a few items before you start running headlong into strange and unrecoverable situations where all of your fun falls apart and the game becomes completely unbeatable. Played the XGA.Windows.exe link from itch.io btw. So here's the first big warning: DO NOT OPEN THE MULTIPLE LOCKS ROOM IN SECTOR ZERO (the one with the charge plant, shockwave gate, and triple beam door) AND ENTER THE PASSAGE AFTERWARDS UNTIL YOU HAVE EXHAUSTIVELY EXPLORED THE STATION FOR ITEMS. If you do this before you open every door and gather absolutely every item you can find, your save will be COMPLETELY RUINED. Once you've spoken to Mark Taylor every single mark disappears from your map, and every single gate you can blow up to gather items behind them becomes buggy or non-interactive but the collision remains. This seems to specially affect purple nuke gates (they stop being visible and cannot be blown up but still act like they exist) and gray shockwave gates (these are interactive, but they fail to remove their collision when opened after the Mark Taylor event.) I'm convinced it's impossible to find the stealth upgrade if you haven't found it before the Mark Taylor event and you REALLY REALLY NEED THIS to survive after the Mark Taylor event. Not a great look for this game, sadly, and I did not finish because I was too annoyed to restart from the beginning.

Other bugs that I have found include:
- Using Nuclear Blast on butterflies causes an abort:
[spoiler="Butterfly Crash"][/spoiler]
- There is a spot in Sector 3 where you can collect the first Nuclear Blast expansion before earning Nuclear Blast from I believe the red boss to the very right of Sector 1. You can continue to collect Nuclear Blast expansions from then on, but that boss won't drop anything at all. It confused me until I realized what he must drop out of all the items I've found.
- Running yourself out of Nanoshield in lava after the Mark Taylor event makes you immune to lava whether Nanoshield is active or not until you die. (On a lesser note, Nanoshield makes you immune to lava anyway and this enables quite a few early items like the above Nuclear Blast expansion, not sure if that's intended.)

EDIT: Attached save in case it's useful for testing. Forgot to do that last night.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try and fix those bugs, though I will need some time to do this. For now I'm going to update my itch.io page again so that it stops installing game maker studio 2 instead of the game.

UPDATE: I'm unable to make progress fixing the bugs because the engine (Game Maker Studio 2) is refusing to work. The debugger is completely broken, breakpoints don't work at all, the entire engine freezes literally every 15 seconds, everything is incredibly slow....tbh if this keeps up I might just give up on updating the game. This POS engine is a goddamn nightmare to use!

[Dinar87]

EDIT: Attached save in case it's useful for testing. Forgot to do that last night.

Sorry I don't know how to use this. So as a result I can't play your save file.

[Zhs2]

lol... The Windows version of XGA I played creates this save file in the folder '%localappdata%\XGA_16_07_23_ProjectName'. Should be able to drop that in the Windows run dialog to be taken straight there. Unsure about other operating systems, and I'm not at all versed in Gamemaker to assist beyond that unfortunately.

[Dinar87]

lol... The Windows version of XGA I played creates this save file in the folder '%localappdata%\XGA_16_07_23_ProjectName'. Should be able to drop that in the Windows run dialog to be taken straight there. Unsure about other operating systems, and I'm not at all versed in Gamemaker to assist beyond that unfortunately.

Thanks. I've loaded the save file and I'm in sector 4. XGA is activated. Where do you want me to check specifically?

I tried going to the reflect beam upgrade room, and as you say the pink door blocker respawned when it shouldn't of. I was able to destroy it again and pass through like normal though.

[Zhs2]

There isn't much of "specifically" for my file. I found purple nuke and silver shockwave after XGA activated - you can visit any purple nuke gate location to see that they are merely invisible as you can't pass through the space they sat in, or you can visit any silver shockwave gate (I might have "opened" the only one I remember seeing) to see that you can visually open a silver gate using shockwave but its collision will not remove itself either and you can't move past where it was.

[Dinar87]

There isn't much of "specifically" for my file. I found purple nuke and silver shockwave after XGA activated - you can visit any purple nuke gate location to see that they are merely invisible as you can't pass through the space they sat in, or you can visit any silver shockwave gate (I might have "opened" the only one I remember seeing) to see that you can visually open a silver gate using shockwave but its collision will not remove itself either and you can't move past where it was.

I'll look for them later. Currently I'm working on making the text look right as currently when you collect an upgrade (like a nanoshield extension) the description text is completely off centre and it looks odd.

[Dinar87]

Ok I've fixed the text issue for the ammo extensions.
https://ibb.co/8MFjFDt
https://ibb.co/tYC83rg

Also this was the purple door blocker I was talking about previously. I'll try and find the other ones once I've fixed the pause menu (suddenly broke on me....don't know why).

[Zhs2]

Oh, yeah, beam doors work perfectly fine. It's specifically the late room obstacles which are meant to be removed by your upgraded active modes that permanently block your path while XGA is in play.

[TobiMikami]

This game looks good as hell man nice work! This project looks promising for sure. Look forward to future updates, keep it up!

[Dinar87]

Oh, yeah, beam doors work perfectly fine. It's specifically the late room obstacles which are meant to be removed by your upgraded active modes that permanently block your path while XGA is in play.

So like the gray door blockers then? I'll try breaking them when I test it again.

I'll also check out the purple nuclear blast blockers and the silver shockwave gates too

[Dinar87]

This game looks good as hell man nice work! This project looks promising for sure. Look forward to future updates, keep it up!

Thank you  :grin: the game is technically finished but sometimes it's fun to keep updating it

[Dinar87]

Oh, yeah, beam doors work perfectly fine. It's specifically the late room obstacles which are meant to be removed by your upgraded active modes that permanently block your path while XGA is in play.

I've gone to these upgrade gates but they were already destroyed when I got there, not even any collision. Sorry I don't know what to do about this.

[richardba]

I am stuck, I got Purple Beam, Reflect Beam, Purple Radiation and Gray Field

The shock plugs are active (they are emanating electricity), but I have no idea what to do with them

I would appreciate some help

/edit

I found my way through (there is a room that allows progression back in the main Hub), however I'm stuck again after acquiring Impact Shot and Volt Engine, I'm not able to get anything, is the volt engine supposed to activate the energy plugs? Is Impact Shot supposed to destroy gray doors?

I'm so clueless right now

BTW I found a bug where the snail crashes the game when you dash over them with Volt engine, it seems they lack some death sprite sequence.

[Dinar87]

I am stuck, I got Purple Beam, Reflect Beam, Purple Radiation and Gray Field

The shock plugs are active (they are emanating electricity), but I have no idea what to do with them

I would appreciate some help

/edit

I found my way through (there is a room that allows progression back in the main Hub), however I'm stuck again after acquiring Impact Shot and Volt Engine, I'm not able to get anything, is the volt engine supposed to activate the energy plugs? Is Impact Shot supposed to destroy gray doors?

I'm so clueless right now

BTW I found a bug where the snail crashes the game when you dash over them with Volt engine, it seems they lack some death sprite sequence.

Yeah the volt engine is supposed to activate the plugs and give you access to the final boss. I'll have a look.

OK I'll try dashing into the snails and triggering the bug.

[Dinar87]

BTW I found a bug where the snail crashes the game when you dash over them with Volt engine, it seems they lack some death sprite sequence.

Volt Dashing into the snails is normal for me.

[Dinar87]

Ok so for now I'm holding off on developing again because trying to use game maker studio on a 10+ year old pc is too annoying. I'm probably going to upgrade later this year.