Quint's Revenge - First Public Release

[ACESpark]

UPDATE - Version 36d added to thread. Redownload! No longer considered a BETA!

Download:
http://sprites-inc.co.uk/files/Game/QR/QRBuild36d.zip - 16meg



a) What is this?
A fan game based around Quint, like the title implies.

b) Huh ... why?
Why not? We were in the middle of waiting out the contests for Revolution, and I wanted a break from SIBRE.

c) This has sort of come out of nowhere.
Yeah, it sort of has, hasn't it?

d) Wait, you made a full game during the contest period of Revolution?
Yes. Yes I did. Well, technically the game has been in development for a bit longer than the contest period of Revolution - but basically, yes.

e) What's the concept behind this?
My initial goal was to remake Megaman 2 for the Gameboy, if it was a more competent game. But as I made it, I added twists in the stages and boss fights not present in the original game or the NES counterparts. With that came the idea that the game should star Quint in order to stand out. With abilities based on what Quint should have been. The game should play at a quicker pace than most Mega Man games.
Obviously, since the game is no longer a remake of Megaman 2 GB, expect some surprises.

f) What exactly is the storyline?
The game follows Mega Man 2 for the Gameboy Timeline-wise, and makes the assumption that Wily's meddling in time created a predestination paradox - basically - Dr Light knew about Wily's trip through time in the future and prepared future Megaman - i.e Quint, for that eventuality.
And as the title implies, Wily's control over Quint is broken - and Quint wants revenge. Or at least to stop whatever Wily's plan is this time.

g)... does the game really star Quint?
Yes. And why not? He's Mega Man from the future, and I built the game to reflect that.
His abilities are as follows:

1. Sonic Dash - Hold the dash button to move at incredible speed.
   
2. Dash Jump - A hyperspeed jump - used for clearing larger gaps and even enemies.
   
3. Ledge Jump - You can jump after walking off a ledge.
   
4. The ability to duck - What it says on the tin. Quint's hitbox is reduced significantly when ducking.
   
5. Magnetic Gloves - Quint stays attached to ladders even when hit by an enemy.

Since Quint is the future Megaman, and Megaman 9 and 10 strips Mega Man of the charge shot and slide functions, Quint doesn't have those. His other abilities more than make up for that shortcoming.

h) How long is the game?
8 robot masters, a intro stage, and 6 fortress stages. Standard Megaman game length.

j) Is the soundtrack permanent?
Apparently not. I've asked someone if he's up to redoing the soundtrack, so we'll see. Consider the current music placeholder tracks.

THIS IS STILL AN BETA - PLEASE REPORT ANY BUGS YOU ENCOUNTER - as well as any thoughts on stage design/aspects about the game.
This is no longer considered a "Beta", but please report any issues regardless, so I may fix them for either a future release of this game, or for it's sequel.

Download:
http://sprites-inc.co.uk/files/Game/QR/QRBuild36d.zip

Big thanks to the Beta Testers Blackmore, Loyana, Damona, Drax, Rhythm and Joseph Collins for their contributions and help getting the game bug free - we hope anyway.

[Jexulus]

Ah, but you forgot the most important question:
How does painting him green help him overcome Dr. Wahwee?
But seriously, I'll be sure to try this out tomorrow. I can't today since I have work. This is a pretty cool surprise.

[ACESpark]

Just an update, the current soundtrack should be considered a beta placeholder. It's getting replaced in some form or another.

[Samario]

so as for bugs and spelling errors*...

"His command protocals..."
should be "His command protocols..."
"Can only take out this robot when it's eye is open"
should be "I can only take out this robot when its eye is open" or something along those lines

You can walk in the left shutter in boss corridors
You can open the right shutter in boss corridors without entering the boss room

if I find any more bugs, I'll edit this post.

*yes I know you didn't mention spelling errors, deal with it

EDIT: you can, with dexterity, climb up and over the ceiling at the beginning of Metal Man's stage; there's an odd enemy offscreen above, and if you go left you fall to your death

EDIT 2: <may not be a bug> Bosses have no invincibility frames, allowing you to damage them as fast as Quint fires instead of having the "flashing" that normal MM bosses have

[CHAOS-FANTAZY]

I have to say, ACE, it feels like you made this game while lying in a hospital bed to appease a hypothetical raging fanbase that will assume you're dead-for-real if you don't release anything the minute you're out of surgery.

Quint feels really sluggish and unresponsive to walk commands, so I feel incentivized to dash for literally every movement, but dashing travels over a disproportionately long distance, so it's hard to stop precisely where you want to, which often leads to you dashing straight into an enemy and you can't do anything about it because you can't shoot while dashing.

Air-jump is also useless except for the three arbitrary instances where the game goes "Oh, and remember you can air-jump, or you can't pass!"

I did manage to defeat most of the RMs, and I do see some interesting ideas (Snowball-chucking Wood-Man, the Zeus miniboss in Air-Man's stage), but I'm not really interested in continuing unless Quint's general slowness gets fixed.

[DarkSamus993]

-I Found a few bugs-

Boss Door Shutters:
1) If you go through them and hold left (sometimes you have to jump as well) you get stuck behind the shutters and have to reset the game. (I first found this in Needle Man's stage at the Met Miniboss, tested elsewhere and it seems to be a problem for all the shutters.)
2) If you touch the shutters but stop holding right to go through them, they go up but you don't get sucked into the boss room. You are free to stay in the previous room until you actually walk through the doorway.
3) You are able to jump during the door transition.

Other:
1) The bees followed me up the ladder and into the next screen at the beginning of Hard Man's stage.
2) I died to the first moving vertical spike wall in Needle Man's stage (the part where you have hide behind the glass) by it being all the way to the right and I tried to drop down quickly. I died, but the camera still scrolled to the next screen before restarting me at the checkpoint.
3) The double-tap forward dash is a single dash, while the quick dash is infinite.

-EDIT-
I beat the game now, and have some more bugs to report.

1) In Wily Stage 2 the grasshopper enemy committed suicide on the spikes at the beginning of the level.
2) Falling into a pit while using the pogo stick continues to drain it's weapon energy, even though you are dead.
3) Dying while being carried by the magnets/moving platforms causes the camera to continue to follow the magnet/platform (not exactly a glitch, but it looks kind of weird).
4) You can double KO the frost walrus in Wily 2 (all bosses for that matter), but it still counts as you winning.
5) You can pause during a boss intro, however their life still fills up, and the fight immediately starts when you unpause.
6) Pausing while being teleported (boss rematches) causes the game to replay the teleport animation again (you can keep repeating this until you let the animation fully play). This also works anytime the teleport animation is played (beating a stage/boss and the boss rematch capsules).
7) Double KO during boss rematches lets you win and teleports you back to the main area twice (first just the camera, since you are dead, then again for your respawn). And as stated before, the boss is still counted as dead.
8) In Wily Stage 5 the enemies that come out of pits and the blue hammer joes had a projectile malfunction a couple of times (not sure what caused it, it seemed to be random, but it happened more than once). Their projectiles spawned so many instances at once it formed a line of bullets across the entire screen.
9) During the Wily Stage 5 Boss fights, after beating form 1, if you jump through the screen transition Wily will fire projectiles at you before the boss intro starts.
10) As others have noted, the lack of invincibility frames for bosses makes them go down too easily.
11) In Wily Stage 5 after the checkpoint, you are climbing upwards and fighting blue hammer joes. At the second one there is a ladder to its back. If you dash jump just right you land on the platform of the next screen (it doesn't scroll though). I was about to reset until I tried pressing down, this caused the screen to move up to Quint, and I was able to continue play.
12) With good timing you can pause just as you die (using an E-Tank doesn't bring you back to life though).

[ACESpark]

Bosses have no invincibility frames, allowing you to damage them as fast as Quint fires instead of having the "flashing" that normal MM bosses have

They have invincibility frames, just not many of them. I'm not sure I necessarily want to change how many they get too much. The fortress bosses having no invincibility frames was completely intentional, as the early MM games didn't bother giving their fortress bosses invincibility frames. (See how fast foes such as Mecha Dragon go down to the Buster.)

Quint feels really sluggish and unresponsive to walk commands,

In defense of my own engine, I timed the game against Mega Man 3, and Quint moves exactly like Mega Man did in that game. The "Unresponsive" walk you feel you are experiencing is a part of the series as the "little step". Quint moves on the same frames that Mega Man does.
I don't think my previous fangames had the little step, or at least didn't have it programmed correctly, and the Christmas Carol games actually had Mega Man and the gang's movement faster than the original games.
Check out the comparison. It should be noted that this was done in real time, with the same button inputs. Megaman Classic has always had somewhat laggy controls.

Air-jump is also useless except for the three arbitrary instances where the game goes "Oh, and remember you can air-jump, or you can't pass!"

The air jump was intended as a safety net, precisely because you're dashing everywhere.

7) Double KO during boss rematches lets you win and teleports you back to the main area twice (first just the camera, since you are dead, then again for your respawn). And as stated before, the boss is still counted as dead.

Double KO's still counting is somewhat intentional, as the actual games also did this, (see the Bright Man battle.) The double teleporting is something I'll look into fixing.

Thanks for the bug reports guys, I'll be fixing what I can.

[GoldwaterDLS]

This is a really fun game, and so unexpected too (not the quality, I mean the release itself). I'm glad to have it among my growing collection of Mega Man fan games, even if it doesn't star Mega Man in a technical sense. =P Though, my initial impression of the game was a bit sour because, just my luck, I started out with two of the most difficult Robot Masters in the game. It's surprising, despite his fight being very similar to his MM2 fight, Wood Man gave me a lot of grief in this game. As for Top Man, I never did find the proper timing for jumping over him while avoiding those last two tops he throws. However, once I moved on to the other masters, things really started picking up for me. Also, it helped when I figured out that using the extra key to dash is far superior than using down + jump.

I never did play the Game Boy Mega Man titles, but if they're anything like this I think I'm missing out. Even though I prefer when fan games introduce all new robot masters, the creative additions you gave these stages offered the perfect blend of nostalgia and novelty. Even the tilesets reflect this using both old and new set pieces. The only stage feature I felt was a tad forced were the beams in Top Man's stage (pun intended); they just didn't really seem to fit for the overall theme of his stage. However, I find it amusing that, with Day in the Limelight 2 and Super Danny 2, we now have three wildly different variations of Top Man's stage.

The end game was my favorite part of this experience, despite also being the most frustrating part. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'm just going to say it was a very creative and climactic final battle(I'm glad you see you found use for that particular machine). I also found the scene afterward to be quite humorous.

Most of the glitches I found have already been noted by others, such as Quint's ability to face left when a Robot Master battle is starting and the ability to trigger doors without actually entering. Though, a small thing, I noticed that when the Mechakkeros land they don't always land consistently; sometimes they'll be above ground and sometimes they'll have sunk a few pixels into it. Also, I notice that Quint doesn't sink a pixel into the ground like Mega Man does in the official games. I'm not saying this is a big deal to me, because Mega Man does the same thing in my game, I'm just surprised that, with Joseph Collins on your testing team, he didn't call you out on that.

Anyway, this was a really fun game. I'm amazed you managed to put something of this quality and scope together in such a short period of time. I'm interested to see what the updated soundtrack will add to the experience, though I'm completely fine with the one that's currently in place.

[Zynk]

After defeating Metalman in the Teleport Room, Quint didn't leave the room. Stuck.

[ACESpark]

Can you give me some more details on that Zynk? Like what you were doing, which in the order of robot masters you fought was Metal Man, etc.

I've just gone through the stage about 20 times and can't remotely replicate anything like what you've experienced.

[Zynk]

Just checked again and found it. It is when you're using the Crash Blaster in rapid successions then after picking up the energy ball, Quint doesn't teleport out. But when using it moderately, the game is okay.

EDIT: Seems that bug only triggers only when finishing Metal Man with Crash Blaster :/
But finishing him with the buster is okay.

[ACESpark]

Alright managed to replicate that bug, and then fixed it by putting a failsafe in the battle. - That fix will be in the next version. Thanks for the report!

[Murphmario]

I found a bug with the Mega Met miniboss in Needle Man's stage. The Magnet Missile will move up and down in the middle of the eyes, while in the game, it heads to the shootable target.

Also, those orb guys in Needle Man's stage are most likely a reference.

Edit for more bugs:
-You can duck in a corner while fighting the First Big Hot Dog to avoid it's fire, but you can shoot at it.
-The second Big Hot Dog can be killed easily with the Magnet Missile
-Top Fiends fire their tops too quickly
-There is an exploit with the cat miniboss duo. Once you kill the lower one, you can easily take out the upper one with at least the Magnet Missile
-If you pause before you teleport and unpause, Quint will appear without teleporting down
-The Giant Air Tiki's spikes will detract if you pause and unpause
-You can pause while going through a boss gate
-If you die while on the cloud platforms in Air Man's stage, the screen will still scroll until the clouds hit a wall or you respawn

[Yog-Jaceoth]

Telly Head

That is all

[Samario]

-dying to Wily 1 boss restarts boss music
-leaf shield SE continues playing if you begin shield, pause, and switch weapon

[Entity1037]

Incoming problems I have with the game. Nothing game-breakingly major, but just some things I think should be improved.

#1) For starters, the dash has a lot of problems. You have to hold down the dash button to keep your dash in mid-air, and you can start dashing in mid-air after you're already in the air. This is way different from Mega Man X where once you start an air dash, you can let go of dash and you will keep your momentum, and starting a dash in mid-air just doesn't feel right to me. It's not bad per-say, but I often find myself getting a little messed up by it sense I'm so use to the way it handles in Mega Man X. And I think the way it handles in MMX feels better, though that's just my opinion.

#2) You can't stop your movement while dashing in mid-air. If you want to stop while dashing in the air, you have to let go of dash in order to stop all of your speed, or else Quint keeps going forward regardless if you're holding down a direction or not. This keeps tripping me up, and is giving me bad flashbacks of Sonic 06 *shudder*. It's yet again different from Mega Man X, and I think that it would be better if dashing only increases your movement speed in the air instead of canceling out normal movement in favor of just making quint uncontrollably move forward quickly in whatever direction you're facing. And also, have dashing speed be constant after dash-jumping off the ground even if you let go of dash, and make it impossible to initiate a dash mid-jump (unless it's an air dash ala MMX). I think that would be great.

#3) Another thing is that when you get hit while dashing, you will pick up your dash again after your stun frames finish. This often find this throwing me right into danger. It is, once again, different from Mega Man X in that X's dash stops after getting hit, and you have to let go of dash and press it again in order to dash again.

If you're going to take something from a Mega Man X game and put it into a setting similar to Mega Man X, then you should probably copy the mechanics of what you're taking. I mean why fix what isn't broken?

Those 3 are just my opinion though. Who knows, I might get use to the dash, but I think it would be better if he just controlled like X instead. X just feels more polished, and I feel like you have more control over X's movement than Quint.

#4) This next one is not just my opinion though. You can initiate a dash by just quickly tapping forward after letting go of it, instead of having to double tap it. Why is this bad? Because precise platforming, that's why. I let go of forward so I stop moving, and then quickly press it again once, and then I dash into a pit. Just brilliant.

#5) Here's a glitch. The mini-boss in metal man's stage keeps playing its SFX of when its sucking its body parts back up when you kill it while its sucking its body parts back up.. It's a minor annoyance, but it's still odd.

#6) The ice section at the end of Wood Man's stage feels very out of place. I can understand the water section, but just a random ice section out of nowhere like that in a wood-themed level is just strange.

#7) The Metal Catcher is a blatant rip off of the Spark Gauntlet from Mega Man Rock Force.

If I have any more problems with this game, I'll be sure to say them here.

---

OH MY GOD YOU BROUGHT BACK ENEMIES THAT INSTANTLY POP OUT OF PITS WITHOUT WARNING AND KNOCK YOU INTO THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOW COULD YOU?!?!?!?! THEY ARE LITERALLY THE WORST ENEMY TYPE EVER CONCEIVED!!!!!

[DoomManFTW]

I also found a bug,after the first big hot dog section if I like dash in some way and jump I go through the wall and go all the way up and get stuck with no way out,I will record a video so you understand easier.

EDIT:Here it is:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQDwFw8bICg

[Entity1037]

I swear if you try to stop dashing in the air after descending a ways, Quint doesn't stop for a little while after you let go of dash. This has killed me so many times it's not even funny, sense, you know, you can't stop moving in the air while dashing (I already complained about that).

[DoomManFTW]

Oh look at that,found something even sillier:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdAQRmvUhvw

[Smedis2]

It's not bad, but certainly rough. I can excuse it for being in beta, though. Perfection is something that comes slowly.

Here's a few things you could fix.

- Intro Stage can be skipped through the game over screen (intentional?)
- The controller support is a bit slippery and weird. It might just be what I'm using, though.
- There's a lot of offset-based animation errors here and there that kind of drive me nuts. It's my OCD speaking, but still.

I certainly like the stage gimmicks and stuff. There's certainly a LOT of potential for the final release to be brilliant.

Remember, perfection comes slowly. That's not just towards ACE, that's towards everyone.