[Dr Lancer-X]

Pandora's Gate: Mortalia Facta Peribunt
>>> Download from the archive <<<
(The original version that was attached here is "1.0a" in the archive and can be applied like a patch to the final release, if needed. -Lachesis)

This is a rerelease of DoZ entry 80741. Chief changes are:

• Many bugfixes
  
• Redone AP system (staying put at the start of battle may not necessarily be ideal now)
  
• New actions available in battle
  
• Experience system
  
• Two new explorable locations (the game is now approx. 3x the length)
  
• New ending
  
• Story is now longer and more pretentious (the game script totals 58.6kb and over 10,000 words) - generally speaking I haven't rewritten much of what was in the original, just added new stuff.
  
• Can use CTRL to skip text blocks

This post has been edited by Lachesis: 25 April 2023 - 09:21 PM
Reason for edit: Replaced attachment with archive URL.

[Lachesis]

. . . D O W N L O A D I N G . . .

[Lachesis]

oh jeez the summoner battle in level 1

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

...why are you two so amazing?

[Lachesis]

My job was using the MZX char editor and utilities, as wells as a bit of coding (some graphics generation and level graphics stuff)

GIMP (title screen and all 7 iterations of ending splash) (Lancer-X wrote and ran the converter)

LayerEdit (level layouts that I'd then write code to generate real graphics over)
(not available in the Vault because it runs in GIT Debytecode builds of MegaZeux)

An MZM3 -> MZM2 converter so the generator could interpret the LayerEdit output

A utility that made files for variable dimension sprite animations.

I'm not awesome, I just have a bunch of toys that make me a lot more productive than I'd otherwise be.

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

I'm really liking the music here. Where are they from?

Lachesis, on 17 August 2011 - 04:52 PM, said:

I'm not awesome

Says the one who made a MZX version of Labrynth.

[Exophase]

Good game! Too bad during the (presumably) last battle I overwrote my save instead of loading from it :< So I guess I'll play through it again some other time.

EDIT: Okay, did that.. and this last battle is much, much too difficult. I doubt I'll be able to beat it.

[Exophase]

Never mind, that wasn't even the final battle (was Pandora's gate).. I hope this was harder than the DoZ version that was lambasted as being too easy, because otherwise I just suck. Anyway, did manage to beat the game now. Was nice to find that I beat the real last boss without having to resort to eventually filling the screen with lesser summons >_>

That was quite the dissertation near the end. Interesting for a while but really dragged on (I guess I have no attention span anymore?).. nice use of Satie's Gymnopedie though. I guess that makes this the third game I've heard it used in.

I'd try to beat it with less than the full party but I'm kind of afraid of just how difficult that'd be.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Exophase, on 23 August 2011 - 03:13 PM, said:

Never mind, that wasn't even the final battle (was Pandora's gate).. I hope this was harder than the DoZ version that was lambasted as being too easy, because otherwise I just suck. Anyway, did manage to beat the game now. Was nice to find that I beat the real last boss without having to resort to eventually filling the screen with lesser summons >_>

Yes, it's quite a bit harder than the DoZ version- the difficulties are fairly similar in the first level but after that it's a lot harder.

Quote

That was quite the dissertation near the end. Interesting for a while but really dragged on (I guess I have no attention span anymore?).. nice use of Satie's Gymnopedie though. I guess that makes this the third game I've heard it used in.

It's actually one of the reasons I added the CTRL key. It's only 2000 words or so but 2000 words in a tiny text box certainly adds up. And yeah, I love Gymnopedie. It was going to be menu screen music for something else but... (A bit of End Sky's story ended up being recycled into this game- not so much the stuff done during the DoZ but certainly the stuff I added after)

Quote

I'd try to beat it with less than the full party but I'm kind of afraid of just how difficult that'd be.

It upsets the difficulty curve a bit- the early levels are much harder but it gets easier later on. The reason is none of the battles are adjusted in terms of difficulty for a smaller party- however XP is divided among party members so a smaller party means more XP and faster levelling, which really helps. Add that to the stat gain orbs in the final level which also divide gains between party members and things become a lot easier.

[Exophase]

Yeah, in the last level I got most of the stat gain orbs and fought a good chunk of the battles with just Celia. So I got somewhat of a taste of that. If you're going to do an incomplete party run do you recommend killing off the party member(s) in the first battle?

[Dr Lancer-X]

Yes. The party members can even assist in the first battle because once they are dead their 'work' values that that determine how much XP to allocate are nullified at the end of the battle. As long as they are dead by the end of the battle all XP will go to the remaining members.

[Exophase]

Lancer-X, on 23 August 2011 - 03:17 PM, said:

Yes. The party members can even assist in the first battle because once they are dead their 'work' values that that determine how much XP to allocate are nullified at the end of the battle. As long as they are dead by the end of the battle all XP will go to the remaining members.

Good enough, but I guess what I was really asking is if you get the most out of plot changes this way. Or if most of it comes down to the later scenes.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Yeah, the larger differences mostly come later on. None are super significant though- you won't find the story being that crucially different on a playthrough with a lesser party. If you want to see the alternate bits of ending you can just look through the different script files (evepilogue etc.). The game doesn't quite have the variety in story branching to make it worth playing the game through with every possible party. I mostly advise killing off the other party members early simply because it makes the game much easier.

It's probably easiest to do a solo run through with Basil who has excellent all-round skills, can freeze enemies and at the end of the game quadpower+moon-cut is absolutely devastating and can end the final boss in a couple of rounds.

[Exophase]

Wow, I didn't even know "strength" got an upgrade. Seems like it's worth trying the solo runs just to see all the skills. I figured playing as Basil would be hard since she doesn't have heal or shield..

So is there a different ending for every party permutation?

[Dr Lancer-X]

Exophase, on 24 August 2011 - 05:38 AM, said:

Wow, I didn't even know "strength" got an upgrade. Seems like it's worth trying the solo runs just to see all the skills. I figured playing as Basil would be hard since she doesn't have heal or shield..

So is there a different ending for every party permutation?

Every action gets at least one upgrade save for MOVE. ATTACK and FIREBALL/FREEZE/LIGHTNING get two.

Yeah, there's a different ending for each permutation, but they aren't very different. If you play the game multiple times chiefly to see the different endings you'll be quite disappointed- that's why I advise just reading the script files instead. The main files to read are the evoutro and evepilogue files.

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

You know what sucks?

Celia getting frozen.

Are Ultraheal and fire attacks really the only way to unfreeze someone?

[Dr Lancer-X]

Healing/Ultraheal, fire attacks and time. That's it.

[Exophase]

Is doing a full solo with Celia even possible? I don't think there's a way to beat the enemies on the bottom of the screen in the second battle.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Doesn't seem to be possible, no. I guess you need to keep Basil alive for that battle to do a Celia run.

[Exophase]

Alright. I made it to Pandora's Gate with Celia, but the odds of me beating it seem close to zero. Have you done it Lancer?

[Dr Lancer-X]

I haven't, but I guess I'll give it a shot! I've only done a solo playthrough with Basil during testing.

[Exophase]

The thing with Celia is that plasma to supercell is kind of a hard trade-off, or at least it has been for me. Probably worse when you're soloing (I thought so when I was playing the final level with just her as well). It does a lot more damage, yes, but it takes nearly twice as much AP, endangers the player, and often plasma can actually hit more enemies. Speaking of which, there's a bug - if you kill off the party with an area of effect spell you don't get a game over, the battle just stalls.

(actually, while we're on the topic of bugs, another one is that at the right-most part of the second level you can walk off the edge of the board and are unable to come back.. probably best to just seal off that area or something?)

[Dr Lancer-X]

The latter I've already fixed (in several places) by customblocking the region off. The former I will fix- thanks for spotting this.

Fixes so far are basically that, looping the battle music properly and a couple of other things- these will be present in the version I submit to the archive.

As for plasma->supercell, yeah, I was worried about that. But on the other hand supercell is extremely powerful and you have a lot of AP in the late game. If you don't want to endanger the player I'd just use Inferno instead (although both endanger allies)
The other big thing with Celia is that she has no teleportation ability which means she loses access to a number of orbs in the final level and also can't get away from enemies as effectively. I am pretty sure she's the hardest character to solo- she was designed from the start to provide a support role after all.

[Exophase]

Yeah, I had a pretty easy time with Celia in the final level and figured she'd be a good solo candidate but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I actually never teleported to get those orbs, although I did figure that would be the way to get them but I just didn't bother trying. And I didn't think about teleportation with Avelia, I guess Typhoon does the trick? Maybe I'll try soloing with her, but she always seemed like the least useful character to me.

[Exophase]

Like I expected, couldn't even make it that far with Avelia..

[Dr Lancer-X]

I've gotten up to level 5 with Celia. I expect the rest of the game to be a cakewalk from here on- level 4's boss was by far the hardest part of attempting a Basil run.

EDIT: Finished. Final boss was very easy (Inferno, S-Cure every round, sometimes Inferno, Inferno, S-Cure)- it's not quite the same as killing the thing in 3 rounds with Basil but nothing could really touch me.

[Exophase]

Sorry for not posting this before the re-release, but I found another bug. Animations that cross the edge of the screen result in junk on the other side that doesn't go away until the battle is over. Or at least that happened on the battle to the left of the left gate on the third level.

Sure would like to know just how you managed to beat Pandora's Gate with Celia. I presume this is before you made the battle easier.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Heh, whoopsy. I figure I'll probably leave that since it should have minimal effect on gameplay and I'd rather not go through resubmitting it just for that.

Yes, this was before I made the battle easier- I did save a number of times because a freezeray can pretty much ruin the whole thing but otherwise my strategy was basically to just use Inferno and potions a lot. The creatures do not have great range (speed of 8) so I pretty much made sure I had enough extra AP to go up close to the enemies (so Inferno can do maximum damage- preferably be right next to the enemy horizontally) and then get away from them so they couldn't surround Celia.