egomassive's Knytt Stories Plus mod

@Ultigonio: I better fix that. Even I refer to the help tips sometimes.

@VG: How didn't I notice that? Then again, I updated the selection box before adding preview panels. It appears it's off by a pixel, which makes me think it wasn't adjusted for the extra pixel between the preview panels and the canvas.

Get KS+ and Level Editor+ version 1.2.3

These updates fix all the bugs found since the last updates.
I adjusted the color of the purple disappearing block. The color it had until now didn't draw well on my screen. I didn't add a new block/button combination as suggested. I wasn't happy with any other colors I tried, and I really want to stop adding new things to this game. I really wanted to make the mouse wheel work on the images in the Bank/Object selection areas of the level editor, but since there was no easy solution I decided not to.

It seems this mod is very succesfull. It is well done and has a lot of useful features.
Think the most of people use it instead of original KS, not just to play KS+ levels, but also for the original ones.
On the Nifflas homepage, there is link to rrc2soft's website with DS homebrew version.
I think there could be a link to egomassive's website to download KS+. What do you think about it?

Sorry, I never responded to this. It sounds reasonable to me. I remember Nifflas saying something like he might even make a mod the official version if it was good enough, but I don't think Nifflas pays any attention to KS anymore. I can't remember him ever commenting on a 3rd party level he liked expect for in an interview from the very early days of KS. As far KS+ becoming the official version, I don't think that should happen. If you compare KS+ to KS on an old level full of waterfalls you'll see that object-flash in double-pass rendering is worse in KS+. Switching to single-pass eliminates flash, but screen transitions take variable amounts of time. So, although you may rarely notice it, original KS plays old levels better.

I like the new color for the disappearing blocks, but I think the "flash" that it does when the player first touches it should be a bit brighter - in its current state, it's a bit hard to see that there's been an effect.

Found a bug. I thought it might be in the original KS too, but it doesn't seem to be. When you win a level while there is still a visible shift effect, that effect will reappear in the same spot as soon as you select and play another (or the same) level. The ending of An Excerpt from Silence is good for reproducing this.

A few shift/trigger related issues I've run into:

* When I set a trigger to go off while a sign is being displayed (using the "Sign Trigger" property) and said trigger is used to delete the sign object, the text keeps being shown and doesn't disappear until you leave the room.

* When using a delayed shift that also triggers a cutscene, the shift is executed even if the player dies or CTRL+R is pressed while the timer is running. After the transition, the character is revived and can continue the game. This only happens when the shift is set to display a cutscene, though.

* If two shifts are triggered at the same time (both placed in the same position, in different layers) and only one of them has a delay, the delay is cancelled and both of the shifts are executed immediately.

I've noticed a few times, while working on my level, that the script for a screen will just completely vanish - everything else remains perfectly intact, but all the script completely disappears.  Initially, I thought that this may be because sometimes the level editor thinks its still in focus, and maybe I cut and pasted a screen when trying to cut and paste something else, but cut-and-paste doesn't remove a screen's script, so that can't be it.  I feel like this is me doing something dumb rather than a bug - any idea what it could be?  It's only occurred three, maybe four times while I've been working on Deep Freeze, and for a large-sized level that has script in all but approximately 10 screens, that's not especially detrimental.  It'd be great if I could squash that bug before it really hurts someone's level, though.

I think I had something else to report, but I've completely forgotten it.

* If two shifts are triggered at the same time (both placed in the same position, in different layers) and only one of them has a delay, the delay is cancelled and both of the shifts are executed immediately.

Weird.  This seems like it only occurs when they're in the same position.  Are these both on-touch shifts?

Quote from: Vegetal Gibber on February 24, 2016, 17:36:50

* If two shifts are triggered at the same time (both placed in the same position, in different layers) and only one of them has a delay, the delay is cancelled and both of the shifts are executed immediately.

Weird.  This seems like it only occurs when they're in the same position.  Are these both on-touch shifts?

Indeed, it only happens when they share the same position AND activation method. Here's an example I tried:

* Shift A: 2000ms delay, gives the player the Yellow Key. Placed on layer 5.
* Shift B: No delay, gives the player the Red Key. Placed on layer 4.

Normally, with immediate shifts, this would cause Shift A to be executed while Shift B is ignored. In this case, the 2000ms delay is ignored and the player gets the Yellow Key (but not the Red one) immediately.

This is probably not worth fixing at all, as it can be easily avoided by not putting multiple shifts in the same tile (which seems to be a bad idea in general, because of the semi-unpredictable results).

Ah yes, this situation reminds me of the other thing I wanted to report (which may already be known): you cannot activate two triggers at once - one will always take priority (based on layer, I believe).  This is not a huge deal, and prooobably isn't worth digging into the trigger code to fix, but it may be good to have it under a "known issues" readme of some sort so players can know to work around it.

Wow, that's a lot of bug reports.
@Sergio: I've been noticing shift effects after cutscenes and wondering if it's always been like that. Nope, this needs fixing.

@Vegetal: When you delete a Sign object you delete the controller for the Text-bubble. Solution A, only give the player access to Sign-Area objects and delete those instead. Solution B, have another Sign object on screen. Example, put Sign C in a wall somewhere so that when Sign A is destroyed there's still an object that can control the Text-bubble.

@Vegetal: Shifts keep working after you die. Sounds like this is a different problem related to the same issue Sergio reported. This needs fixing.

@Vegetal and Ultigonio: You shouldn't be able to activate 2 Shifts at once --same for Triggers. It's not so much a feature as it is just something that happens because of the way the engine works. So, 2 Shifts messing with each other is a problem.

@Ultigonio: I've experienced similar occurrences while level editing. Usually I realize I had the wrong piece of the editor highlighted. If I leave the editor window open behind another window, I'll quite often find it on the expanded map screen, so there's no telling what other things might have happened when it should have been in an unfocused state. So, be careful, and if you discover that something bad is happening to your screen data let me know. As far as I know, there is no way that the level editor can remove a screen header from the World.ini unless you write it into the script pad and then hit Ctrl + Z.

@Sergio: I've been noticing shift effects after cutscenes and wondering if it's always been like that. Nope, this needs fixing.

I suspect it could be related to the soft reset changes, in case you were looking for a lead... unless that's related only to F2/reset, and not how the game treats restarting overall.

Here's a beta of KS+ 1.2.4. This only addresses the game breaking bug discovered in the making of a community level to honor LPChip's 100th hidden star. I'm still scratching my head over the exact cause of the error, so I'm not confident this is a bullet proof solution. It merely deactivates the Shift logic handler on the first render pass. This may have the side effect of making animated Shift sequences behave slower but more playable. It'll give you an extra frame to move before the the next screen appears, which is similar to how they work in Original KS.

Anyway, please test it for me if you are familiar with the bug this fixes. It seems to have fixed it on my machine.

Wow, that was fast!

Tested the beta with both my demo level and the part of LPChip's level where the bug was discovered. I couldn't trigger the bug at all after 5 minutes of non-stop jumping, so this looks very promising. Great job!

^That's reassuring. It is so mind blowing that the objects weren't being made, but COs were. I thought maybe the objects were being destroyed or moved off screen, but I didn't find evidence to back those theories up.

Time to fix these other issues.
Edit: OK, I believe I've fixed everything now, but the changes to the Shift logic might affect Ultigonio's forthcoming level. So, I've updated the beta link above. I'm going to hold off making an official update until Ultigonio has vetted it against his level.

Before when you activated a stack of Shifts, they were all activated. If any of them were not timed Shifts then the delay function was switched off. Then the information attached to the last one created would take precedence.

Now, if you activate a stack of Shifts, there can be multiple Shift events. There can only be one in any moment, so 3 instant Shifts will act as before. However a mix of timed and instant Shifts will allow multiple events.

It has been vetted!

Also, this isn't a bug report so much as it is a note of sorts: when you spoof a screen's coordinates (even if the screen already has the coordinates you're using to spoof), it won't appear on the map until the player has entered that screen, even if they have the map item.  After this, the room will appear on the map like normal.  I'm not certain if this was an intentional thing, but even if it's not, it should definitely stay, since it allows level designers to make secret or otherwise potentially optional screens visible to the player who checks every nook and cranny (and then they can still see where they've been, which can be really helpful!), without confusing players who are just following the path (or spoiling any super-duper extra secrets for said player).

I just figured that little tidbit may be valuable to some creators, since it's not immediately obvious.


Okay, now, this is a bug report: "Disable Screen Tint" never seems to uncheck - it can be turned off/on, but the check will always be highlighted after it first becomes highlighted (and I've noticed that it'll sometimes highlight when a totally different option is messed with, although I don't remember which option that was).  This is an entirely cosmetic bug, as far as I can tell.  Not a big deal, but kind of weird.

Get Knytt Stories Plus 1.2.4

Note: If you downloaded the beta after I updated it for testing by Ultigonio, then you already have this version.


@Ultigonio: Thanks for testing it. I'm not having any luck recreating the Tint-disable thing. The Map power will not reveal any room with spoofing coordinates. The "Show-On-Map" button was created to make an unvisited room appear on the map even if it contained spoof data, but I never thought of this. Having a room point to itself to keep it hidden from the Map radar, that's brilliant! Though you could certainly frustrate players if you used it badly.