prjames on 20/2/2016 at 17:58

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I've been playing HeartCliff islands with Ricebug's walkthrough and picking off all the secrets I missed, two bonus objectives I missed, and so far, I've added the I and S endings to the G ending.

Question: Where is Secret #12 in Ricebug's walkthrough?

(It's described as being on the west island, we see a screenshot of a single coffin with glowing eyes and a "different" texture of wall behind it. The comment is "This panel is also opened by the 'eyes' potion." (I've long since drank the 'eyes' potion.)

If you could describe it in terms of other landmarks in the various "heart" areas (various signed doors, the ritual room, etc.) that would be helpful. That's the last secret I'm trying to find.

Another question: I'm trying to get to the "R" ending and find after I use the first "Holy Ash" and hit the red witch with a Holy Ash Arrow, nothing happens when I click "Use" on my 6 other Holy Ashes. How do I get around this? Can she be defeated with sword hits? Do the hits that damage me (including my own sword hits on her) actually transfer HP to her? This is driving me nuts.

- prjames

prjames on 21/2/2016 at 02:54

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I had been already using the white beams, I used 'em some more and that allowed me to kill the red witch and get the "R" ending.

Regarding secret #12, Unfortunately, I don't think there are any explosive devices at "Normal" difficulty, and fire arrows aren't enough. I have memories of blowing up that area when I played it last August, probably at "hard" difficulty.

- prjames

qolelis on 26/6/2016 at 18:37

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The time has come to slightly lift the veil of secrecy, but first of all, thanks for playing and and an extra thank you to those in this thread who even enjoyed it. I also want to again thank my betatesters for helping people out in this thread when I was away. So, where were we? Oh yes, the slight lifting of a "piece of fine material worn by women to protect or conceal the face":
- The thick rag can be used the same way a certain arrow can be used.
- The putty knife can be used to cancel the effect of a certain arrow.
- The brace and bit can be used if you want to see more when hiding (I had plans to allow it to be used also on doors, but eventually skipped it).
- Trickster's breath is a reference to a real life drug, called Skopolamine, but also sometimes referred to as "Devil's breath", which is said to have been used as a truth serum some fifty+ years ago, because it allegedly makes the victim very open to suggestion, hence its nickname. Although the most fantastic stories and urban myths involving this drug are supposedly not true, I thought it could make for an interesting reference and a clue as to what Borin did to Gwen.
- The ring Thomas was about to present his beloved Esther with is so well hidden that it in fact doesn't exist (from the player's point of view). It was once a proper piece of loot hidden in the electrics room, but, when seeing how happy Thomas and Esther were together, I didn't have the heart to let anyone steal it, so I let Thomas hide it where it would literally be impossible to find.

The mission was not always as dark as it is now; I once had it lit by moonlight, but, due to a bug in the engine and some unfortunate circumstances, I had to make the mission a lot darker (on the other hand, this made the lighthouse more interesting).



:)

Hehe, no dark side for me (although it would have been great to get a chance to work with it; it seems like an amazing toolset/achievement, judging from Fen's playthroughs of some of the equally amazing missions created with it). The reason for abandoning DromEd (which I came to really enjoy working with over the years) is that I'm working on Something Else (TM), but it's still in its infancy and also a little secret, so I'm not allowed to talk about it in any detail (other than it being a game project and has so far involved lots of coding (in C++) to get the key feature working before the next phase started).



:)

I also still like the stock resources very much even if I've already seen them a thousand times. Time was also an element, so I decided to stick with the stock textures (if I had gone the custom route I knew I would have had to probably add a good few weeks to get it to a state I could be proud of -- and I just didn't have that kind of time, making it a question of releasing with stock resources or not releasing at all). There are still a good few custom things, though, but they pretty much follow the aesthetics of the stock ones, and hopefully blend in well enough to not get noticed. There were so many things I wanted to include, but had to skip.

With the custom stuff out of the way, I could instead spend time on coding lots of new scripts for various features (and interesting machinery) and really try to make them blend in and seem like a natural part of the world around them, so some might not even be noticed (there are also a few custom dialogs that will only show up if the player does very specific things in a very specific order), and also build a world that could kind of work in real life (although parts of the architecture is probably not structurally sound, but in a game world I thought I could allow a bit of extravaganza to get everything to fit) -- or at least give the impression of working in real life, so I spent quite some time planning how everything and everyone on the main island would connect and work together to form a self-sufficient world (although I had to skip a few things, like those underwater plants that thrived on sewage to avoid polluting the ocean).

I could have mainstreamed the mission more, but, since it's free, I decided to make exactly the mission I wanted to make (selfishly enough :/ ) -- and could only hope that at least someone would enjoy playing it. In hindsight, I suppose I could have tweaked the lower difficulties and made them more mainstream without having to compromise my vision, but ran out of time, so I had to leave it as it were. I could also have split the mission into two parts (one part per island), but in that case I would most likely have added a lot more architecture (especially the missing prison parts (which I had to skip after hitting almost every limit DromEd could throw at me)) and delayed the release indefinitely. There were also many things I wanted to add, but had to skip.



:) I'm glad you enjoyed the readables; I tried my best adding backstory for most of the characters, because that's something I enjoy myself in a mission.

I'm just like you in that regard, so getting someone to proofread everything was an important part of testing.

Ricebug on 26/6/2016 at 21:13

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qolelis functions on a high mental plane. I'd guess his IQ is pretty high. So you can't fault him for arrogance. He is not. The mission reflects his thinking. You either have to go with it or play a Ricebug mission. :p

qolelis on 27/6/2016 at 03:28

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Oh, I'm not faulting anyone for not getting it, although I did think someone might come along and make the connection, so let's say it was sort of a wink to that person, like an extra bonus if you will.

Scopolamine has medical uses too (even where I live, which is pretty far from Colombia ;) ) -- for example for common things like motion sickness -- although in much smaller doses one would assume, so I don't find it too unlikely that more than "almost nobody outside of Colombia" would know about it -- and about its non-medical uses. Still, it was a bonus, not a vital clue.

This mission has lots of bonuses, but none of them are required to finish the mission. If one wants to experience everything (or close to everything), then yes, maybe one needs a brain similar to mine, which some then actually seem to have had (I'm not that much of a unique snowflake :p ).