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riksweeney / edgar

A 2D platform game with a persistent world. When Edgar's father fails to return home after venturing out one dark and stormy night, Edgar fears the worst: he has been captured by the evil sorcerer who lives in a fortress beyond the forbidden swamp.
https://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/games/edgar
117 stars 28 forks source link

Defeating Chaos without the dragon fire shield #10

Open yarnweaver opened 8 years ago

yarnweaver commented 8 years ago

Defeating Chaos without the dragon fire shield is difficult - but not impossible. If Edgar stands behind Chaos's mouth when Chaos breathes fire, Edgar will take damage, but will not die unless his health runs out.

However, if you defeat Chaos before you have collected the protection ring and escaped the dungeon, then, upon returning to the study to confront the sorcerer, the sorcerer will simply stand there and do nothing. So the game becomes unwinnable.

riksweeney commented 8 years ago

Was this quite easy to achieve or did it take a lot of attempts?

yarnweaver commented 8 years ago

Thanks for the quick response. I have played the game through lots of times already - and it was only in the past few days that I decided to try defeating Chaos without the dragon fire shield, just to see what would happen, and as a little extra challenge. :)

Once I had reached the dungeon, I think it took me about four or five attempts to do it. I went in with seventeen hit points, a resurrection amulet, seven health potions, fully charged lightning sword, 20 spike balls, 20 arrows and a bomb - which I believe is the most weaponry and health it's possible to have upon entering the dungeon for the first time. So far, I have only succeeded once - and I used the amulet and all seven health potions in the attempt.

So I don't think that defeating Chaos without the dragon fire shield is something that players are likely to stumble upon by accident; the only issue is that the sorcerer encounter cut-scenes don't deal with the fact that it's a possibility.

Great game, by the way. Easily knocks spots off several much higher profile indie platformers, such as Braid, Trine, and Cave Story in my opinion. And it's good to see that you're still looking in on it.

yarnweaver commented 8 years ago

I just want to add a related issue, since I guess there's a design decision about fixing this.

You might change the mechanics somehow so that it's impossible to defeat Chaos without the dragon fire shield - for example, by making it impossible to dodge the first fire-breathing attack. Or you might change the sorcerer cutscenes, so that if Edgar encounters the sorcerer a second time without the protection ring, Edgar is simply sent back to the dungeon - although extra dialogue means extra translation work.

Or you might set the Chaos defeat cutscenes to teleport Edgar back into the Dungeon rather than the Fortress Ground Floor in the event that Edgar doesn't have either the protection ring or the disintegration shield.

Which is why I want to bring up a related issue. Many years ago, in a previous version, there used to be a bug whereby if Edgar stood under a door when it closed, it became possible to jump through the walls above the door into the higher floors. That bug got fixed - but a side-effect of the way that bug-fix was implemented was that it became possible to use the ice tortoises to pop some of the doors open in the dungeon, which meant that some of the puzzle pieces could be collected without destroying the red centurions that went with them.

But I think there are only two puzzle piece doors in the dungeon that are affected by this - and one of them is the one beside the dragon's lair trapdoor. My point is that even though it would no longer be possible to destroy the red centurion once the trapdoor is sealed, it's still possible for Edgar to collect the puzzle piece anyway, by using an ice tortoise and the extend-o-grab. As such, I think that as long as Edgar can still re-enter the dungeon after defeating Chaos somehow, the game should still be winnable.

yarnweaver commented 8 years ago

I've had an idea. Suppose you want to make it impossible for Edgar to defeat Chaos without the dragon fire shield, but without making changes that significantly alter the battle when Edgar does have the dragon fire shield - I guess one way to do it is to start the battle with a weak wall between Edgar and Chaos, which Edgar can't jump over, and which can only be destroyed by Chaos breath. That way, Edgar can't get behind Chaos's mouth before the first breath attack, and has to block it to continue the battle, but the rest of the battle is unaffected.

There's other ways the issue could be fixed, but it involves a design decision.

Sturwandan commented 3 years ago

I was wondering, what about going up through the fires without a fire shield? You will need purifier and ice or slime potion though, but should be possible to visit the sorcerer, though melting the metal doors will be harder.

yarnweaver commented 3 years ago

I was wondering, what about going up through the fires without a fire shield? You will need purifier and ice or slime potion though, but should be possible to visit the sorcerer, though melting the metal doors will be harder.

It's been a while since I checked but the dragon fire shield and the non-dragon fire shield are not to be confused - and visiting the sorceror without the non-dragon fire shield is (was) prevented by the fact that between the fireballs and the study door, there's a door that can (could) only be opened if you have the spanner from the Evil Edgar boss fight. As far as I'm aware, it's impossible to leave that boss fight area without going past the machine with the fire shield outside it (but this may have changed since I last checked).

As such, I'm not conviced that visiting the sorceror without the non-dragon fire shield is really a sequence-breaker. But being able to defeat Chaos without the dragon fire shield, that's a bit more of a sequence-breaker. Don't know if it's been fixed but it would take me several days just to set up the test.