Ascension - Stage 11

Lest you think I've been slacking off, due to this release being a couple days late, I've actually been hard at work day and night. There's a lot to do to get the end of the game all together, and it seems less logical to release these last bits separately, so that one week you have the final stage, and then the next week you get to see the credits, or what have you.

Non-endgame updates in this release:

I made some minor adjustments to the previous stage (Erebus), because the gargoyles on Hard Mode weren't giving the player very much freedom of movement.

I feared that Labyrinth might be too much of a challenge, but according to one of my testers, it may actually be too easy. The version that I've released didn't fully realize my (somewhat more complex) plans, so I may have to actually go back and rebuild the maze to make it even more unforgiving. I don't begrudge the opportunity to do this, just the work that's going to have to go into it. :p Look for that in an upcoming release.

I also changed some filenames around for some of the graphics, for economy of content (you can fit eight full character sprites or faces in a single file). I tried to fix all the parts in the game that use them, but if you come to a point where the game crashes (with an error that says such and such a file can't be found), let me know; it's an easy fix.

A little rant on cutscene choreography:

I have a lot of respect for the people who put together those half-hour long cutscenes at the end of classic RPGs. Like, I had this problem more while working on Dragonfaith. Ascension has a lot of long text-heavy passages, since it's inspired by a written story idea, but it doesn't have a lot of complex, choreographed cutscenes with different characters moving all around the screen. I wanted something a little special at the end, to reward the player for playing through the game, but this is a short (I can't call it simple) cutscene that will probably last all of a couple minutes when it's said and done, but I'm moving thirteen characters around at once, and getting the timing and positioning down is a challenge. Add to that the fact that you (as the developer) have to sit there and watch through the whole thing multiple times as you make little tweaks to the stuff towards the end, just to get it right... Yeah, I think I complained about this when I was working on Dragonfaith. It's daunting.

Notes on the ending:

The final stage is a breath of relief after 10 stages of hellish terrain. That having been said, there is still a challenge you must surmount, although it's more of a sit-back-in-your-chair-and-explore sort of challenge than the edge-of-your-seat-thrill-ride kind of challenge that is more typical of the stages in Hell. Once you beat it, the ending is not extensive, and may or may not be along the lines of what you're expecting, but I hope that it is in keeping with the theme of the game/story, and there are a couple of extra fun bits at the end.

To keep everything straight - and this is something I imagine the player can discover on their own, but for the sake of letting my testers know what's in the game to test - let me explain the different variations of the ending. If you play the game on Easy Mode, you won't be able to access the final stage - you just get the basic credits without the bestiary I put lots of work into. Normal Mode gets you access to all playable content (minus the secret ending I have planned but haven't created yet), and the "true" ending, complete with the bestiary. The Hard Mode ending plays out exactly the same as Normal Mode, except there's an extra scene at the end (which I totally think is worth challenging yourself to get).

You might notice that the endings are additive. The harder difficulty level you pick, the more content you get, and there is nothing worthwhile on an easier difficulty that is not available on the harder difficulty levels. The Normal Mode gets you a perfectly adequate ending (though you may feel it's a bit abrupt - that's intentional), so that you don't have to strain yourself to beat the game on Hard, but at the same time, I think the extra scene is worth it. Plus, I think I might make the secret ending available only on Hard Mode, because I want it to be a challenge.

But all this can change in the future, if I change my mind, or get some negative feedback on how it's currently all laid out. In the meantime, you have only to play it and let me know what you think!

14/08/14: Ascension - Stage 11b (5.71 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]

Edit: Remember when I mentioned filenames and crashes above? Well, in a true facepalm moment, I just discovered that I forgot to update each one of the gargoyles in Erebus. So, if you already downloaded Stage 11, you'll want to replace it with 11b if you don't want the game to crash every time a gargoyle catches you in Erebus...

Ascension - Stage 10

This release is a couple days late, despite being a relatively short stage. That's only because I was out of town and away from the computer for four days this past week. Although this is technically the last stage in Hell, I'm going to add a final stage in Purgatory - I probably said more than enough about that in the post for my last release. So this isn't the end, yet. But we're getting real close!

The final challenge in Hell is basically a determination of whether your soul is pure enough for Ascension. I've considered making the outcome dependent on actions you take during the game, but ultimately - and especially if you're not sure which decisions contribute to the purity of your soul - it might be a little too frustrating to make it to the end of the game only to be told, "you lose".

On the other hand, I want to reward players for not taking it too easy on themselves, and so this will, in fact, be the end of the game if you're playing on Easy Mode. To access the final level (and escape Hell), you'll have to defeat the game on Normal or Hard Mode. Otherwise, you just haven't suffered enough. :-p

For that reason, you can access (for the first time in this game!) the credits in this release, if you're playing on Easy Mode. They may not be in their final form yet, and I'm planning something extra in the form of a fun "cast" list a la Doom 2, but it's a pretty exciting start, I think.

14/08/07: Ascension - Stage 10 (5.86 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]

Ascension - Stage 9

I'm pretty much sick to death of mazes at this point, as I am sure you will be too by the time you finish this next stage. I'm worried that it's maybe a little bit too much, but then, that was kind of the point. I wanted to make a maze worthy of the name "Labyrinth", and one in which you could imagine a soul getting lost and wandering aimlessly for eons. At any rate, let me know what you think of it.

And I'm off to the next stage, which is the last one - officially. I hope you're getting excited as the story is nearing its conclusion! But I will say that I am definitely planning on putting something together for a kind of "epilogue", which will be at least as extensive as to be considered a stage of its own.

My original story idea was to mirror The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, in the sense of composing a trilogy - one section each for Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. But I have much less to say about Purgatory and Heaven than I do about Hell, and much of the Heaven stuff is prequel-ish, which I have mostly incorporated into the back stories of Lucifer's Generals already in this game.

And as for Purgatory, it actually made it into my original concept as one of the "13 Stages of Hell" (there are not 13 stages in my game because a couple of the stages were either combined or not playable), instead of a whole premise of its own. So I think I will just implement it as the real last stage, and then (spoiler) give Heaven a cameo in the epilogue.

But that's all to come. For now, enjoy an eternity of wandering down endless corridors!

14/07/30: Ascension - Stage 9 (5.49 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]

Ascension - Stage 8

Stage 8 turned out to be something of a colossus. Of course, I say that as the developer, and not as a player. Playing through it, you won't notice it to be particularly long or extravagant, although I do hope the atmosphere engrosses you.

I had similar trouble with the mapping as I had with Stage 3, Har Megido, although where in that case the map came together without too much fuss, I had much more trouble piecing this one together. I drew up innumerable variations on the placement of the geography, and began work on probably about ten different versions in the actual mapper itself, before things finally started falling in to place. I'm happy to say that I am very pleased with the end result, however.

I don't think I've ever had a map with this many events, though - between the bridge, and the animated tiles, and everything else on top of that. I actually had to split it in half (although you shouldn't notice that while playing), to get the bridge theatrics to sync with the passabilities of the appropriate tiles. Though it didn't really help much with the massive eventing. I hope the game doesn't lag during this stage.

I'm actually surprised it all came together in time for my weekly deadline, but I did put a lot of effort into getting it finished. The next stage was supposed to be the super difficult one to design, but now, coming off this last stage, I'm hoping it proves to be easier than I've been expecting. Only time will tell, and if I have to take a couple extra days to either work on it or take a break, so be it. It'll be worth it in the end.

And speaking of which, this project is beginning to draw near to its end. Which I'm very excited about. There are only two more stages, although I have plans for something special after that, so we'll see how that goes.

I almost forgot! I made an exciting modification to the game in this new release. Just as soon as you've had a chance to visit Nexus (I hope?), I've already nixed it. In its place, I've implemented my Paint drawing of the map of Dis (The Underworld), which functions as a trail marker and punctuates your playing experience between each stage. It also gives you a proper introduction to the names of each of the stages, as well as a visual guide to the geography of Hell (as I have envisioned it). It's fairly crude, and not as colorful as I'd like, but I'm otherwise very excited about being able to include it in the game, and I like very much how it fits in, both in the regular game itself, and as the device now intuitively powering the stage select function. Give it a try! (Just type "zharth", no caps, at the name select screen).

14/07/22: Ascension - Stage 8 (4.97 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]

Ascension - Stage 7

Stage 7 has shaped up nicely, and I am very excited to show it off. This is more of a domestic stage, like Pandaemonium - albeit with more chances to slip up - that demonstrates how some of the damned like to pass their time in Hell. Up next will be another adventure stage, and then there are only two more after that, so development is proceeding at a brisk pace!

I've made a couple small but significant changes to the rest of the game in this release. First, I've modified the gameplay slightly in the last stage - Chaos. Now, instead of the black wards acting as "base", so that the bats will ignore you only so long as you stand on them, I've changed it so that standing on them actually gives you temporary invincibility (or invisibility from the bats, at least), that wears off in a few seconds, even if you step off the ward. I think it makes gameplay just a little bit easier on what was proving to be a pretty challenging stage.

The other change I made is purely cosmetic, but I hope that it will improve clarity. You may have noticed that, although you don't technically have a "party" (RPG word for "team") in this game, extra characters are displayed in your save game file, depending on the stage your game is saved at. I did this to help the player remember where in the game they had left off when choosing to load a saved game. Up until now, I had used characters from the previous stage (since the game only saves between stages), but I thought it made more conceptual sense if the game file featured characters from the stage you're about to play, since you only really see them when you're loading the game. I hope that it's more logical now.

Apart from that, I'm in the process of working out some kinks on the way this game displays dialogue choices. From the start, I had installed a script to allow dynamic choice options, which you may remember from your first encounter with the Angel of Judgment in Limbo. That was actually inspired by the dialogue style in Realms of the Haunting (one of the best horror games ever released for PC, now available on Steam for five bucks!). I was planning to implement it more in later conversations, but I ended up deciding not to go in that direction, after all, and so I just got rid of it completely. But when I nixed the script, I had to change the way I was displaying choices, and now a couple choices that aren't attached to text boxes awkwardly appear on the side of the screen, instead of the center. I haven't decided what I'm going to do about that yet.

But otherwise, everything seems to be running smoothly. So, no more waiting - try out the latest stage!

14/07/15 Ascension - Stage 7 (4.15 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]

Ascension - Stage 6

As promised, this is a more straightforward stage, and I feel it offers welcome diversity when compared to the last stage. It's pretty short, but that's not to say that it's easy. In fact, I've found it to be a bit challenging. I've made some adjustments to pull back the difficulty, and of course there are variations on each of the difficulty levels, but I should like to have some feedback on how tough you think this stage is. On the other hand, we're more than halfway through the game, so you shouldn't expect it to be a walk in the park.

The next stage will be another fairly elaborate one, so I should get to work on it as soon as possible. By this point it should be obvious (assuming you've actually been following along) that replaying the game from the start with each new release is a bit tedious. Although I do sometimes make adjustments to earlier stages that you might consider worth experiencing, it's probably at least as true that you'd want to dive right in to the latest stage, having already experienced more or less everything up to that point.

Well, I'm happy to report that I've finally received feedback from some testers that have beaten Stage 2 (remember Stage 2? Yeah, neither do I, it was so long ago :p). So, as promised, I will reveal to you a [rather useful] secret I've programmed into the game. At the beginning, during the name select sequence, if you enter the name "zharth" (no caps), it will take you to a special stage select zone, where you can warp directly to the beginning of any of the stages that have been completed!

I call it "Nexus", for obvious reasons. It's pure coincidence that it has the same decor as the latest stage I'm releasing - it's actually been that way since several stages ago. I might change it in the future to make it a bit more unique, but that's beside the point. Use it to warp to any stage of your choosing, for testing purposes. And don't forget to try the game on different difficulty levels if you're feeling adventurous!

14/07/09 Ascension - Stage 6 (4.02 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]

Ascension - Stage 5

This was a pretty elaborate stage to develop, but one thing I've found is that having a clear plan for what you want to accomplish helps the work go a lot smoother. It's easier to be motivated and easier to be inspired, when there's a challenge ahead of you that you can confront, instead of wandering as if in the middle of a vast sea of possibilities, without a clear idea of what you're trying to create.

Anyway, this is another exposition-heavy stage, but it has more of a clear progression, and there's a lot going on. You also get introduced to a bunch more of Lucifer's generals, as in the last stage, leaving only a few left to encounter later in the game. The next stage after this one should be fun, being more gameplay-based like some of the earlier stages. But for now, I hope you'll find this stage very interesting. It's a long one!

14/07/02 Ascension - Stage 5 (3.93 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]