Castle of Fire - A tribute to the Atari 2600 game, Dragonfire

[Snake]

CASTLE OF FIRE v1.2

You are a thief who has traveled to Castle of Fire to achieve where many Knights have failed;
To steal those evil dragons' treasures!
How high of a score can you get?

What's new in version 1.2?

• All new Practice Mode - now players can practice their weak points
  
• All new mini game with Costume Select screen for play within Castle of Fire dungeons
  
• PAUSE (finally got it working)
  
• Earlier bridges are now easier to pass
  
• Put some extra lives back into the game
  
• Treasures are now animated
  
• When all rooms are completed, the player is rewarded, and can now
      face the Black Dragon over and over again (random music and treasures)
      instead of being sent all the way back to the beginning (so now it's more
      like Dragonfire)
  
• Brightness now saves - When you adjust the game's brightness it now
      saves itself so you don't have to constantly adjust it when launching the
      game externally or reseting from within the game.
  
• You can now skip the scene when Thief walks up to the door in the intro
  
• Each line of dialogue is now skippable (takes place of skipping the whole conversation)
  
• When getting Game Over it now plays the Game Over music instead of
      the music that was playing when you lost your last life
  
• The Highscore Screen has its own music when being viewed from the title
      screen (unused Hammerblade track from v1.0/1.1)
  
• Raised the volume of the SFX
  
• Added "foot stomp" SFX for Dragons
  
• Added "fry" sound effect when killed
  
• No longer get killed by spikes while invincible
  
• Adjusted the walkable area around the entrances and exits of all dungeons
  
• Changed the first room with FireGuys a bit
  
  Download link #1: From my site...
  Download link #2: RapidShare...
  Download link #3: MediaFire...
  Mirror #1: Provided by Dualnames
  Mirror #2: Another provided by Dualnames
  Games Page
  Black Dragon Video
  
  
  Please read the ReadMe for KNOWN BUGS
  
  POST YOUR HIGHSCORES HERE!
  
  Current Highscores:
  
  Mintymint  ------- 12010
  TwinMoon -------- 6710
  Arthur ------------ 5000
  Blueskirt ---------- 4000
  Ector: -------------- 3000
  
  
  I hope you all enjoy the new updated version.
  If you played the past versions, please give this one an honest chance. It has much improved.
  
  
  --Snake

[Indie Boy]

FANTASTIC!! Downloaded and playing now.
I've died quite a few times already... so it will be a long night

[Ghost]

Awesome game, snake. With a big AWE!

[TheJBurger]

Congrats on finishing it. 

I just had a chance to play it for about 30 minutes and I love it. The style is awesome, and the gameplay is fun. Thanks for adding the brightness feature. My screen was pretty dark, and it helped a lot, but if there was a way to make it permanent, that would be nice.

Comments:
- I would have liked spacebar/jump to have worked in the first screen, so I could get familiar with the controls. Without that, I wasn't even sure if spacebar was jump anymore.
- The difficulty curve is a bit on the hard side. For the bridges, you're thrown to the mercy of the second half seeing as how you can't dodge fast enough, so it took me a while to figure out that you must dodge in the middle and then advance before the fireballs can respawn. The game is pretty tough, but I'm going to try and get better before I beg for a health bar.
BUGS:
- Pressing Escape in the high score screen gave me the error: "Unable to restart game. File not found"

I guess I'll post my highscore in the other thread now...!

[nihilyst]

Great and addictive game, although very hard.

I don't know if this is a bug or not, but just a moment ago I went game over, and on the high score screen the keyboard didn't work. I couldn't type in a name, couldn't press ESC, I couldn't even get out by pressing ALT+x.

EDIT: After the level with the flashing boxes it gets quite easy. Before that I found the levels very hard. It should be the other way around, I guess. Or maybe I'm just too dumb to play. The hardest levels in this game are the destroyed bridges; I always jump into the water.
But great game, nonetheless.

EDIT2: Oh, and a question: Why is your highscore lost when pressing ESC after you beat all the levels?

[egamer]

I tried to play this game, but the screen was almost completely dark, and I couldn't adjust the brightness through the game.  Adjusting the brightness of the monitor didn't help.  I could not see my character, so I was unable to move him.  The mouse cursor was invisible.  Why is everything so dark?  I could see some stars in the sky but nothing else.

[TheJBurger]

EDIT: After the level with the flashing boxes it gets quite easy. Before that I found the levels very hard. It should be the other way around, I guess. Or maybe I'm just too dumb to play. The hardest levels in this game are the destroyed bridges; I always jump into the water.
But great game, nonetheless.

Yes, I found that too. The difficulty of the game is like this:

                            Point of No Return
                          ^                             v
                        ^                                v_____________ >
                       ^
__________^

Now I'm happy to say that I don't find the difficulty too hard any more! Yay.

[Radiant]

I tried to play this game, but the screen was almost completely dark

Yep, I had the same problem. The game is unplayable for me because the very first level consists of a black character against a black background with specks of dark blue. Adjusting brightness didn't help. Why not make it a sunset instead of darkness, or give the main character a lantern? Or, you know, put torches in front of the castle, since it's a castle of fire.

Furthermore, please fix your interface to simply use the keyboard. It's weird to have to use the mouse for two or three menus, and the keyboard for everything else. You can e.g. code your own "quit" GUI.

If the down key is duck, why isn't the up key jump?

[Gamer_V]

Fun game! Minor complaint: I got a whopping amount of 0 points on my first runthrough. 

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Lovely game, no doubt about that. My personal gripes -

*"Brightness" doesn't set the game bright enough, I had to adjust my own monitor GAMMA settings. Don't be afraid to let the player choose between 0 and 200.

*No way to save a game, not even a password system. Yes, I know, adds to the challenge, part of the old arcade games, and whatnot, it's just a personal thing.

*Wish UP arrow would jump, instead of/as well as the SPACEBAR.

*I knew there are few of them, but - no way to skip speech text?

Movement is fluid, which enhances gameplay. Graphics are spot-on style wise The fireguys' levels reminded me of that game, Jewel Thief. Basically, you've got a great game here, congrats! Pity that, as a bad player who can't save, I'll be forced to start over every time I feel like I want to play it, only to play the first 4 or so levels and then either be bored and quit, die, or have to do something in real life with no way of coming back to the level I left.

[Rocco]

agree nearly 100% with Rui's gripes,
but nevertheless big congrats, absolutly great game. 

[Snake]

Hey, guys,

Thank you for downloading

I'm glad you guys are making it through all the levels. I was dreading that it was going to be outrageously hard. I have no problem going through it myself at least once. I haven't tried to honestly see how far I can go yet - usually just testing.

Okay, let's get to the bugs and complaints
(this is cool... this is my first experience with people playing anything finished by me and telling me what they hate about it!)

Brightness
Hmm. I don't know what to say about that. The brightness slider is infact set to go all the way to 200 (if your system allows you to move it) - don't know why it isn't working.
As Radiant has suggested, how many other people would like this to totally change? I'm not opposed to the idea.
I could:
1. Change it completely
2. Make it an option to play at sunset or at night
3. or Make it a whole seperate download

Highscore room trouble
The only thing I can think of is the "Score.txt" file not being in the folder. I deleted it before zipping. Seems wierd though since I've deleted it several times before and never had a problem with it. I'll look into it.

I don't know if this is a bug or not, but just a moment ago I went game over, and on the high score screen the keyboard didn't work. I couldn't type in a name, couldn't press ESC, I couldn't even get out by pressing ALT+x.

Was the background still animating?

Jumping
For those of you who would like that option to jump using the UP arrow instead, I'm pretty sure I can change that. I'll definately try it.
The reason why is because I never thought of it. I've always hated games where you had to press UP to jump, it bugged the shit out of me. I've always liked a seperate button to take this action.
Oh, and I will definately change the first room (intro) to be able to jump and get a feel for the controls. What's funny is that was one of the things I wanted to make sure I put back in before I released it, but I forgot Don't know why I even wanted it out in the first place...

All keyboard control
I didn't make a customized PAUSE/QUIT gui because it wouldn't pause the game, I did indeed try so I am sorry. I did NOT want to use the default QUIT thing, but that's the only way I could get the game to hault all scripts. I could get it to pause, but you could still run.
I can try again since, come to think of it, I never put any coding in the module used for the bridge scenes.
I'll give this one another shot.

Skip Speech
Press ESC Everything in the beginning is skippable:
*SPE Presents...
*Quote from John Quincy Adams
*Very first room (Thief running to castle) except when the thief reaches the door...
*Initial Conversation with Green Dragon

Oh, and a question: Why is your highscore lost when pressing ESC after you beat all the levels?

I'm a simple coder - don't know many flamboyant moves. I tried making it go to the highscore screen, but it wouldn't reconize your score as high enough to make the list. I'll talk to Colxfile about it.

Thanks again, everyone!


--Snake

[Radiant]

All keyboard control
I didn't make a customized PAUSE/QUIT gui because it wouldn't pause the game,

If you set the GUI as a "popup" rather than "regular", it should block everything else.

If not, put something in your repeatedly_execute to the effect of "if (GUI is enabled) { don't do anything } else { do regular stuff }"

[TheJBurger]

Brightness
Hmm. I don't know what to say about that. The brightness slider is infact set to go all the way to 200 (if your system allows you to move it) - don't know why it isn't working.
As Radiant has suggested, how many other people would like this to totally change? I'm not opposed to the idea.

I know this might be alot of trouble, but I would suggest this:
Raise the brightness of everything by about 25-50% (not the slider, manually). Then you can have the brightness slider go down for anyone who has it too bright, and up for anyone who needs a little more. If it's possible to make the brightness changes permanent in the game, as I said before, that would also be great.

All keyboard control
I didn't make a customized PAUSE/QUIT gui because it wouldn't pause the game, I did indeed try so I am sorry. I did NOT want to use the default QUIT thing, but that's the only way I could get the game to hault all scripts. I could get it to pause, but you could still run.
I can try again since, come to think of it, I never put any coding in the module used for the bridge scenes.
I'll give this one another shot.

Please also make the brightness control keyboard controlled! It was odd to have to use the mouse after selecting it, and tedious.

[nihilyst]

Hm, about the brightness thing.

I played it on two computers, one having a normal monitor, one having an LCD. While all was very bright and clearly visible on the LCD, I had trouble recognizing everything with the normal monitor, even with all the setting of my monitor and the game set to max.

And yes, the highscore screen still animated, while nothing else worked. I don't think it's a bug, it's too untypical. Must have fucked up something.

[HammerBlade]

My brother tried playing it and using the brightness adjuster, and it turns out that he could only get the slider to work in full screen mode.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

That is standard AGS behaviour - Gamma adjusting doesn't work in Windowed mode.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Don't mean to stray too far from the topic, but couldn't one create a screen-sized GUI which just resembles a white rectangle, make it appear first, over everything else, and then fade that in. That should give a brightness control that works on everyone's system, in full and windowed mode. Shouldn't be too hard to implement either.

[Radiant]

Don't mean to stray too far from the topic, but couldn't one create a screen-sized GUI which just resembles a white rectangle,

That wouldn't work, as the problem is lack of contrast (both character and background are essentially black).

[Snake]

That is standard AGS behaviour - Gamma adjusting doesn't work in Windowed mode.

Yes, I made sure that I said this in the ReadMe.

Tomorrow, guys, I'll working on an updated version - I'll do my best.
Until then I hope you all enjoy what you can, if you can.

The reason why I didn't make the brightness brighter before releasing it is because if anybody's monitor didn't support gamma control, then they couldn't play the game at all - thus leaving it to be an option. I'll take note of making it controlled by the arrow keys too.

Radiant:

If you set the GUI as a "popup" rather than "regular", it should block everything else.

If not, put something in your repeatedly_execute to the effect of "if (GUI is enabled) { don't do anything } else { do regular stuff }"

I believe that I did infact try all of that to avoid doing it the way it is now but nothing worked to stop the character from being moved. Trust me, I didn't want it that way. But I will try anything again - got an idea or two up my sleeve...

A question before I go:

All of you that had experienced problems with the highscore screen, can you explain to me exactly what happened to get an error or no keyboard responce? Can you recreate the problem? This will help me a lot in trying to fix, since I did not experience any of these problems.

About the LCD monitor idea:
I've got one of those and everything works fine for me too, so it makes sence. I'll work on getting this fixed.

Thank you for your input,


--Snake