I updated the DKREMIX file on my web page.
I found a couple of bugs and had to fix them. One was pretty stupid of me - I meant to adjust the rate at which barrels get released on the spring+barrels level to make it easier, except I messed up and inverted the logic so what it did was reduce the rate on the *other* barrels stages and NOT the spring+barrels one.....ughh
I added a couple of ladders to a couple of the levels, hopefully to give the player more paths/options to avoid dying.
It seems pretty fair to me now except the 2nd pie stage, which I think might still be too brutal.
up2ng - Yeah, I'm thinking I'm not going to do any drastic changes to difficulty now, except maybe the 2nd pie stage.
Remix A was the way I first envisioned it should be. The game keeps the classic 1,4, 1,3,4, 1,2,3,4, 1,2,1,3,4, 1,2,1,3,1,4 stage sequence, except the first time you see a stage it'll be the original one... the next time that stage pops up, it'll be one of the remixed ones, and on... When it cycles back to an original stage again, it will reappear with a slight change in the layout to still mix things up a bit, but these variations currently end somewhere around L7 if I recall.
Remix B was intended as the easier option. It starts with remixed levels right away and since you see them at lower difficulties it's easier to see all the levels. The stage progression is more like the Japanese version, but not exactly. 1,3,4, 1,2,3,4, 1,2,3,4, 1,2,3,4... (I couldn't bear to put a pie stage at level 1..it'd just be too boring to play.)
"Easy" and "Hard" don't really change things too much. Easy is a reconstruction of the logic in the early release where the barrels won't kill Jumpman climbing a ladder, and maybe something else, I don't remember because I coded that 8 years ago. Hard is the equivalent of the later DK release that is supposed to be harder.
What I did not want to do was mess with the original game logic too much when it concerned the original levels. So there are still the same 5 internal difficulty levels, but there are additional internal values that are used in *new* features. So anything that already existed *mostly stayed intact. Anything brand new, was fair game to invent.
...but I do think you have a nice idea there.. I could make an additional internal difficulty level variable that stays at zero, until you play beyond level 5.. and from there it might be used to keep increasing difficulty of certain aspects of the original game mechanics between L6-L21.
(*mostly)... A few things did have to change a bit...
-Since the fireballs now have gravity, you can't trap them in mid-air in the original rivets stage by pulling a rivet out from under them.
-The new elevator+rivets stage depends on Jumpman being able to reliably *walk* onto and off of an elevator. The distance Jumpman can fall without dying is too unforgiving, so I had to ease it up a *little bit*. This means he can now perform a bit more recklessly without dying in all stages (wall jumps, elevator jumps..)
-Some of the new stages pack girders/floors closer together than they ever could be in the original game. There are 'player/background interaction' bugs in the original game that would get Jumpman stuck in floors when walking or jumping if floors/platforms are too close together. I had to change the interaction logic a bit to allow flexibility in level design. On a positive note, this makes it function more like Super Mario - no more slamming your head into platforms and dropping down to death. I'm not sure if anyone has even noticed this yet... but they will if they play this for a while and then go back to regular DK... and notice it's a lot less **forgiving.
(**Little known trivia - in regular DK, background collision physics are different on the girders stage than on the other stages. Jumpman's head *does* pass through girders there... but not in the elevators stage. So I made it more like the girders stage across all stages.)
-There is more vertical 'action' in the remixed stages. I tweaked the hammer collision detection to better hit things that are slightly above or below. It seemed silly that it failed to hit all sorts of things otherwise. It's more satisfying when you actually hit things with the hammer.
