So, I've pretty much finished up on "Donkey Kong Remix" (was called Donkey Kong Remixed) and am now in talks with a hardware guy to get plug-in boards created in order to get the new game into DK hardware.
But if there are any improvements or revisions I could do, I've still got some time before the game gets "locked down".
Here's a video of some gameplay. (I died stupidly several times on the same board, but eh, I didn't want to record again.)
This is what the game is:
It's the original Donkey Kong, with the original stages, but also a bunch of new additions.
-4 Original stages
-6 Brand new stages
-3 Bonus stages (which appear after a rivets stage)
Most of the stages *also* have several variations, so when you see them the 2nd or 3rd, or sometimes even the 4th time around, they will have changed slightly.
New gameplay mechanics:
-Collapsing floors on the new rivets stages, which can crush firefoxes underneath.
-A spring on one of the new barrel stages, which can send barrels back to the top.
-Gap in the center of a new barrel stage where barrels will fall down and then either go left or right.
-Elevators on a new rivets stage.
-Hammers on a new elevators stage (and you can hammer the springs).
-The rivets+elevators stage has a switch to change the direction of the elevators.
-Blue hammers - Jumpman can *JUMP* while using a blue hammer.
New AI processing:
-Because floors can fall, firefoxes can now fall too.
-Because floors can pile up on top of each other, Jumpman can now walk *in front* of a platform - and also jump up onto it.
-Firefoxes also can jump up onto a platform..and jump back down.
-Yes, the fireballs can get to the top conveyor on the Pie stages...But, they are set not to do it often. And, they are able to come back down.
-Jumpman can fall slightly further without dying.
-Jumpman can jump without bashing his head into platforms or elevators, stopping and falling to his death.
-There is new logic for things involving situations that could/did not happen in the original game. New logic for deciding which way a barrel goes after falling down the center gap, new logic for deciding which barrel/which side the fireballs spawn from in the new conveyor stage... Um, so tricks can be learned, but they'll be different.
Expanded difficulty range:
-Some aspects of game difficulty keep increasing right up till level 22. But it ramps pretty gracefully.
-Barrel frequency slowly increases as level goes up.
-Elevators have more speeds and can get slightly faster than Classic DK.
-"Pie" frequency slowly keeps increasing as level goes up.
-Springs now do *not* hit maximum frequency on level 4! Levels 4 through 7 have spring frequency gradually increasing from old-L3 speed until hitting the old-L4 max on level 7. (I did this to balance out the difficulty.)
-selectable Normal / Hard DIP SWITCH.
-On Normal, internal difficulty does not go beyond 5.
-On Hard, internal difficulty goes up to 7. Fireballs/firefoxes eventually get even faster & spawn faster. Barrels go to 100% controllable. Barrel/Pie release rates get slightly faster than Normal. Elevators reach a higher top speed. And... there is a new type of wild barrel that can change wild mode each time it bounces (less predictable).
I tried to be very careful about difficulty. On "Normal" it does not really get insane and should be roughly of similar difficulty to the original Donkey Kong. "Hard" is for folks who enjoy a bit of extra chaos.
It is harder than classic DK, but I'm trying to keep that level 22 attainable.
But most importantly.. The gameplay is a *lot* more varied, more interesting.. a bit more chaotic. I've been playing it for months as I've been working on it and I'm really happy with it.
But, I'm not a super expert at playing it.. So I'm making a call out to the experts. If there are things that shouldn't be the way they are, or things that should be tweaked/changed a bit - I'd love to know so I could make this as good as I can make it. (Small, easy to change things/details, hopefully, please)
Thanks.
