Some notes:
1. Glad you guys like it, in general.
2. Yes you can turn of music, or sound, or both, as in all our games.
3. When it comes to the jumping animation being the same every time, or the casting animation for that matter, I find it really odd that some folks expect variance there. I can't think of a game that I've played that was 2D that had variance for that, but maybe I'm old school. But even the newer Mario and DKC games, etc -- it's the same every time. Samus always had two different jumps, spin jump and regular, but those were literally different functions, they weren't just two different visuals for the same thing. I just don't understand where the expectation of duplicate-but-different animations is even coming from, in complete seriousness.
4. All the sound effects from the spells are different from one another at the moment. No two ones have the same one, and I think they've come out really well; we just finished redoing a lot of them, actually. Youtube munges up the sound a fair bit, as the visuals, I should note. Some of the sounds were sounding downright squeaky in the video, but that's not at all how they really sound. Not sure why that happened.
5. In terms of all the platforms in the surface tunnels, yes other people have lived in these things, which is part of why this makes sense; they are meant to look kind of ladder-y. Not only are their abandoned homes and things on the surface, but you'll find those sorts of things in the surface tunnels as well, and there are also evil homes and towers and hides and the like underground. This is a much more vertical and underground society than in a lot of games, so I think it fits. That said, there are some areas that will use fewer platforms. But that makes it harder to get around, substantially so.
6. Bats, and some various other flying enemies, are able to fly on a different z plane than the ground. Same as in a lot of games, including most Castlevania games, etc. With the intricate way that the grounds are set up, and the limited turning radius intentionally built into bats, it's the only way to really make them function in a way that looks organic.
7. When turning in a spellbook, no you cannot come back out and get another shot with the same book. If you come back out, you'll notice the "retort" next to the guardian. Your book is gone, but the retort remains. You can talk to the retort to get the same options again and choose which one you want. The retorts solve some multiplayer challenges with these, as well as preventing re-rolling (which would kind of defeat the purpose of their being a limited set of choices in the first place).
8. In terms of accidentally damaging an ally, I don't plan to make any consequences. If you accidentally do something like that and everyone reacts like you're Satan, I really hate that in games. "Look, dude, it was an accident! ACCIDENT!"
But if you KILL the ally, then that will have various consequences that are not in the game yet and which I don't want to reveal. But the game will keep track of killed NPCs, etc, for your current character, and other characters will start thinking they are a real... problem... if they are just this wandering murder machine.
9. Good point on the esper health bar, it should go red instead of green. It does go to zero, but maybe that's not clear in the video. It stays up while the esper dies as a convenience so that you can see what you killed when you one-shot weaker stuff.
10. Sometimes background objects have things in them that you will want. Only specific types of objects, so you'll learn to recognize them and won't just bulldoze everything everywhere you go. But beyond that, they have benefits such as with the seize spell letting you block enemies with them, etc. Some others will have some special effect on dying, like tanks of gas exploding, etc. In terms of hanging lights, they block spells even without your using the seize spell, but they don't block enemies or characters. So that makes them pretty different from most other things in the background, in an interesting way; you can use them for cover against ranged foes without expending MP to do so.
11. Yes, chunk transfer invincibility happens whenever you change chunks, no exceptions. Through doors and whatever else. That way you don't get insta-gibbed by a rhino or a boss if you're playing on a higher region level than you should be, unless you do something stupid like I did.
12. Regarding the youtube comments, I posted more responses there to that line of topic, but I've run out of time now and have to run.
Later!
