UNITY'S PROFILE

I think its cute! :D

I got through the dungeon with no problems now and moved forward! There was a really touching part and also we met Yvette, who is awesome and hilarious. (Her courtroom scene is too funny!)

I've gotten stuck in the holy ruins where the lights turn on and off. I got past the first area with the lights just fine. Then there's the next area, that adds pits, and spikes on the lower floor. I spent 2 and a half hours trying to navigate the area. I even went so far as writing down step by painful step what directions I need to take when the lights go off. But even then I couldn't find an exit.

I had to cross spikes so many times that Mint ran out of MP for healing, and I ran out of restorative items. A random encounter was able to easily finish me off and I'm too frustrated to continue for today.

I've really loved the dungeon mechanics in the game so far, but the lights off part is really frustrating to me. First off, and it may just be me, but I get a headache when the lights have to keep being switched off an on. Also, having to navigate in near-complete darkness without even a circle of light around your sprite is very frustrating. You have to completely memorize your surroundings when the lights are on and the holes in the ground mean you must be exactly precise. You also have to be staring at the screen in darkness to tell when you hit a wall and your sprite hasn't moved. The way you're supposed to go isn't made clear, and the green pillars that block your path when the lights are on prevent you from getting a good grasp of the direction you should be traveling.

Am I missing something? Is there some trick to get by this part?

I have what's probably a newbie question: I see people mention "Parallax Mapping." What is that, exactly?

author=Housekeeping
That's something that you have to decide for yourself. Either way would work fine, but it depends on the themes and intent of the story. If your game is about morality, then giving the player the option would work into that. That's not to say it has to, especially if you haven't been giving moral actions that impact the story/gameplay prior to this. Forcing your game to give the player a moral choice out of the blue could just end up seeming out of place and irrelevant. Think about the intent of your story and what would be best for it.

author=zacheatscrackers
I'd personally prefer if the player him/herself gets to choose which is better, but either could work depending on the story's conflicts and whatnot.

Again, though, whether or not you decide it's necessary is up to you, like Housekeeping said.

Great food for thought. That helps a lot. Thanks to both of you! ^_^

author=pianotm
Okay, I'll come clean. I'm working on two projects. A big one and a little one. Both of them have multiple endings. Here's the thing, my story lines branch...drastically, so that depending on the choices you make or how well you deal with circumstances, you literally follow a different course in your game. You go through maps and get items you ordinarily wouldn't get making all the right choices, and by the same token, there are maps you would have gone through and items you would have gotten, but now won't because you failed an objective here, or made a different decision there.

That is incredibly cool! Sounds like a lot of work, but with really big potential payoffs. I definitely want to see what you do with those games!