Racing on twitch with Beyond Chaos

Hey Abyss, doing a trial speedcave with the new randomizer and I seem to be learning all esper spells at 1 point per battle regardless of spell point gain or multiplier. You might want to look into that.

Actually what seems to have happened is that my max learning % of a given is equal to the multiplier I should be learning it at. Something is fucked.

I've been doing a run and the learn rates have been working properly. Is it screwed up on just one character or is it everyone? There's something glitchy with Umaro's spell list, it doesn't show learn rates properly (shouldn't matter though because Umaro will never have a Magic command).

No, I figured it out. I had misassociated which enemies were giving me spell points and there were a stupid number that weren't. Sorry.

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Jack says "eat a dick, Abyssonym"

you paraphrased. I dont like buttons.

I didn't paraphrase. You said to tell Abyss you said he was a dick. I remember distinctly. It was right before we both got too pissed off to finish the speed cave.

If you guys are still having trouble with the switches, just make sure to move your three teams in parallel. The first switch is always in the first zone and the second switch is always in the second zone, so if you make sure to hit the first switch before starting on the second zone, you won't have to backtrack very far.

You can tell when you move to the next zone because the music changes. Also, there's one rest stop for each team in each zone except for the fifth zone.

No, that wasn't the problem. We just have major issues with the rooms where you can't continue until another party finds a random switch. The 3 switch at the end is fine. We don't like the way the button rooms REQUIRE you to go through every damn door (and backwards through every damn door). Exploration is fun until it becomes forced.


Also, I just got into a pincer attack with no enemies on 1 side that I couldn't run away from and it ended a run. I was non-appreciative.

I mean, there's a storied history of dungeon design principles where the player is required to reach one part of the dungeon before being able to progress in another part. That's basically the foundation of Legend of Zelda and Metroid. There's not much difference between going to a room to get a key that opens a door, and going to a room to hit a switch that opens the path. Backtracking isn't fun, but I find forced exploration fun as long as there isn't much backtracking.

I'll concede that the one-way exits are annoying, but to be fair I did try to keep those to a minimum (they're only used to fill out an exit when there's no other exit to match it with). One-way exits have a purpose too; they can put you in a situation where either you have to flex your memorization skills, or you are totally unfamiliar with your surroundings. The problem in the BC ancient cave is that it's never clear when you've gone through a one-way exit.

I get why the one-way exits exist, but yea, that + big screens with tons of exits + random encounters, does not add up to fun. You do make a valid point about putting one's memory to use though.

Based on that, here's my suggestion (or compromise maybe?) for a future version:

ancientcave and speedcave as is, but maybe have a speediercave, which is the speedcave without the two buttons and the larger town screens.

EDIT: also, during our practice session today, we encountered an enemy group that had a bugged out script- the battle would hang for a minute before either the enemy or the player could act. You could have your guys try to run away, but the enemy was flagged as can't run. Was annoying. seed was 1443923637 and the enemy was called "wetteau"

Well, to combat the relatively larger size of the town maps, I did reduce the overall encounter rate by half. I'm reluctant to remove the town maps because they tend to come with nice pick-ups, and increase the branching factor of the dungeon, preventing it from becoming sprawling and linear.

I'll look into that enemy. It reminds me of a bug in earlier versions where TunnelArmr's AI would hang, but I haven't encountered anything like that recently.