I can't believe this...

[windlesszephyr]

Really hopin' this isn't something that's meant to happen.

https://youtu.be/g5Kv53BEVZM

[Mánagarmr]

You got hit by a chase shot by the looks of it.

[TheVampire100]

You got hit by a chase shot by the looks of it.

Exactly. It's hard to notice but you DO notice it if you look carefully. It's some yellow bullet sprite. It's from the viper shots. The bigger ones will lock on you and follow you if you move too close.

[Draco18s]

Here's the one that took our your shield point.

The other yellow bullets each dealt 2 damage to you, although a few got absorbed because you were in the brief invulnerability time.

[ptarth]

Yeah.

Sorry about that (its Craig's fault!). The homing shots on the Vipers are really powerful and fast. When I made them I always fought them by themselves and knew what they were packing. With your mech's setup (i.e., with all those bullets happening) the homing Snakes are really hard to see. I had to slow it down to 25% speed and rewatch it a few times to see what happens. They tracked you for around 800 pixels and at about 500 speed. They are slow enough to avoid if you keep moving away, but if you don't notice, they are lethal. They also tend to stack up, so you had around 5 shots chasing you. The Lilliputian Incredibility also made things rougher by shrinking the size of the shots (but keeping the speed the same).

We'll turn down the tracking on those guys, especially with the amount of snakes they fire these days. Looking at the code they should only follow you if you are within 200 pixels and at a max speed of 300 (versus 500 speed for the mech).

To make it up to you: Boomerang Energy Weapon or Boomerang Primary Weapon?

[Misery]

Yeah.

Sorry about that (its Craig's fault!). The homing shots on the Vipers are really powerful and fast. When I made them I always fought them by themselves and knew what they were packing. With your mech's setup (i.e., with all those bullets happening) the homing Snakes are really hard to see. I had to slow it down to 25% speed and rewatch it a few times to see what happens. They tracked you for around 800 pixels and at about 500 speed. They are slow enough to avoid if you keep moving away, but if you don't notice, they are lethal. They also tend to stack up, so you had around 5 shots chasing you. The Lilliputian Incredibility also made things rougher by shrinking the size of the shots (but keeping the speed the same).

We'll turn down the tracking on those guys, especially with the amount of snakes they fire these days. Looking at the code they should only follow you if you are within 200 pixels and at a max speed of 300 (versus 500 speed for the mech).

To make it up to you: Boomerang Energy Weapon or Boomerang Primary Weapon?

Hmm... you might wanna slow down the speed at which the homing shots are able to move once they enter that mode.  Part of the problem is that whenever they do this, they *really* look like they're glitching out with the way they move.  I'd actually thought it WAS some sort of bug until.... right now.   The only reason I didn't make a change to it is that I kept forgetting.  An attack the player can barely see is definitely an issue, too.

Homing shots though really shouldnt be used often at all on normal enemies. Even on bosses I really hesitate to use that attack type much.  This is part of why the "Persistence" shots move the way they do, with that screwy, stilted motion (slowly) instead of a smooth curve. 

Why do those things have homing to begin with though?  They're already a proper threat without that.

[ptarth]

Originally the snake density was 10% of what it is now, so you wouldn't be fighting a billion snakes per second, you'd see 1-3 at a time. The homing, then, was a special shot on the dangerous striking BurningRed-headed snakes. With the increased shot density the striking snakes are harder to see.

I made an update separating the colors of the snakes more. Red=bad. I reduced the speed and homing distance (100 range, 50 speed). I added a snake egg to the shot, so that the snakes no longer appear to come out of nowhere.

Additional changes to consider are enlarging the snakes by 25-50% and removing gravity effect completely.

[Misery]

Enlarging the snakes might be a good move, definitely.

Just for those whose vision isnt very good.  Tiny bullets do have that issue.  Making them bigger would definitely help with that.

There's also the issue of the game's glaring backgrounds in later stages (which can make any bullets harder to see, particularly the tiny ones)...  we REALLY need to do something about that, by the way.  On my own copy of the game (well, my development version anyway) I actually took those image files out of the game entirely.  They just make it way too hard to see what's going on in later levels.  That's just in my copy though.  However in the public version, I *did* remove all of the windows from Terminus's room, because that complaint from people kept repeating, since that fight is much harder than normal rooms.

Sorry, that's a bit of a tangent and a side issue, but this reminded me of it.

[Draco18s]

BTW, thank you for those changes.  I ran into a room recently where I had to eat about 8 damage from various sources due to so many snakes.

[windlesszephyr]

I think what irked me the most about this whole thing is that the shots that stuck around while I was in I-frames... well, they stuck around. Looking back, it seemed like completely unavoidable damage, where once they've got me in their sights there's nothing I can do :/

I'm glad this sparked some discussion, because I always find it tough to work around homing bullets with so much else going on in the room, in the later floors in particular. (also, are the enemy bullets really smaller with Lilliputian? I didn't realize; that explains so much about this run.)

Also:

To make it up to you: Boomerang Energy Weapon or Boomerang Primary Weapon?

If I had to pick, I'd say a Boomerang Energy Weapon would be cooler. It'd probably make a little more sense to do it that way

[Misery]

Hm, there actually IS something like a boomerang energy weapon in the game; I cant remember what it's called.  It has piercing, it's one I've always liked.

But it doesnt really LOOK like a boomerang.  It could look so much cooler.

Maybe use that as a base, Ptarth?  I dont remember what the thing's name is though.  Uses a purple hook shot.  Or did you have a completely different idea in mind?

[Logorouge]

Hm, there actually IS something like a boomerang energy weapon in the game; I cant remember what it's called.  It has piercing, it's one I've always liked.

But it doesnt really LOOK like a boomerang.  It could look so much cooler.

Maybe use that as a base, Ptarth?  I dont remember what the thing's name is though.  Uses a purple hook shot.  Or did you have a completely different idea in mind?

Boomerang Needler. Doesn't look like much at first, but that thing is amazing! It's like a two-way highway of pain.

[ptarth]

Zharmad made an awesome boomerang shot for the Anagu warriors. WindlessZephyr raves about it in his videos so I was going for a direct bribe strategy.

[Misery]

Bribes, eh?   I approve of this tactic. 

[ptarth]

Further notes from watching the video.
SalvoUponSalvo does increase enemy shot speed by 20%. It actually applies a 20% time dilatation effect, which has consequences of everything going 20% faster.
Lilliputian does not increase shot speed.