The Dink Network

ExDeathevn's Playthrough video's start cranking out once again, with I, Kara Gu by Arik.

I'll be doing a full playthrough, going after all four Endings, but starting off with choosing my own path as I see fit for starters.
As for a Topic Discussion/Awesome Points system, I'll be running a poll in this thread alongside a Topic Discussion of sorts.

Let's Play I, Kara Gu:

1st Playthrough
Part 1: Sleepy Derps
Discussion Poll 1: If you were a Gu, would you choose Fire or Water? And why?

Part 2: Fire, Water, Burn
Discussion Poll 2: Is it a boss fight or a show dance?
(PS: I forgot to add the DSPT intro, so, more derps).

Part 3: Fertilized Soil
Discussion 3: In what order do you think the elements belong, and why? Remember they're a Cycle, not a ladder.

Part 4: Cooking Airhead Ribs
Discussion 4: Why isn't the dude from Part 1 in with the Air/Earth Gu?

Part 5: Traptastic
Discussion 5: Why traps and no enemies?

2nd Playthrough

Part 6: Gubongey!

Part 7: What is this?

Part 8: Ending 1 of 4

Final Run Through

Part 9: 2 out of 2 - Joint Commented by Robj

Part 10 A (LEFT)
Part 10 B (RIGHT)

Fire! burning things is ever so fun to do

I'd choose water, so I can torture the cookies. Makes them easier to break - it's hard getting them to tell me what I want to know.

It's good, but you need a new microphone. I could barely hear what you said at certain parts.

New Episode and Discussion are up in the first post.

Would appreciate any and all feedback regarding either episode, as my Mic seems to be unruly at times. Will try and sort this out, but its better than out-of-sync audio and video.

Mic was a lot clearer this time, it didn't seem to drastically drop in volume like in the last part.

That wasn't a boss battle or a show dance, it was a group of trolls and ninjas. The blue pills were ninjas, sneaking in under distraction from the red trolls... and everyone knows you can't kill a troll, so when you tried to kill them they *FLAMED* you... OH SNAP!

that was a pillbig breeding dance as they tried to court the others too bad Kara just had to walk in poor her

New part recorded and ready for upload, just as soon as I get home.
I still haven't found out why Camtasia auto-adjusts the recording volume from the Mic though.

In other news, I've messaged Arik asking if he'd be interested in some Joint-Commentary part(s)

Hope he is interested as that always is fun and looking forward to next video

PART 3 is being uploaded, featuring the all new DSPT Outro clip! (still a prototype).
Check back here in 20 minutes.

PS: Arik, I found a bug in this episode

This episode's question: In what order do you think the elements belong, and why? Remember they're a Cycle, not a ladder.

A bug? Hahaha! Arik, you suck!

Upload complete, link now available.

I played I, Kara Gu a while back and that bug did not occur to me.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to reproduce it either, in 1.08 or Aural+. It looks like it happened in vanilla 1.08. I'll give it another download to see if anything weird crept into the downloaded version, but I'm not sure what's happening there

Not a problem. odd to have found it either way though, just seemed to be a weird freeze(1) bug for some reason.

Thing is, there shouldn't be anything on the screen that can freeze you - the hole is just a simple warp. I think something like that can happen if the properties on the warping sprite are set incorrectly, but as far as I can tell they're OK. I apologise - I genuinely have no idea what happened with it. Hopefully you won't run into any other issues.

Is it a type 0 sprite? I encountered a weird bug when I was working on my contest entry, where Dink would freeze when trying to go down the stairs. It happened after being on a screen with a lot of sprites, so I figured it was probably some kind of problem with going over the sprite limit... It only happened on warps where I'd set the sprite type to 0.

That's the issue I remembered - the warp is definitely type 2 though, and it's the only warp on screen.

Hey Arik Are you making CC3 with Sabre or is he making it himself.

I think this is a similar bug to the one Shevek was talking about in HH2. I also encountered it once. Seems weird that so many people have had this bug occur to them recently.

New episode/part and discussion available. AND NO-ONE TALKED ABOUT PART 3's DISCUSSION TOPIC

BECAUSE IT SUCKED LOL

Just so my only contribution to the thread isn't a moan about bugs: I noticed in part 3 you wondered a bit about Easy Mode. Easy Mode was kind of an afterthought - all the balancing was done around normal - but I wanted it there as an option to people. It gives Kara two full life bars (i.e more than double her health), and means that every level will, in addition to a bomb, permanently give her a point of defense. So at the beginning of the game she can take just over twice as much damage before dying, and at the end she can take around 4-5 times as many hits.

(In the first version I released Easy Mode simply gave Kara 5 defense and that was it, but reviewers correctly pointed out that this unbalanced the beginning of the game, making Kara pretty much invincible. I think for the people playing on easy mode it's the end game where you'd want more chances, so I changed it.)

Those changes are all about giving Kara more chances though, which probably wouldn't help less aggressive players. A more fully-featured easy mode would have cut down on some of the enemies and cut the bosses down to size too.

Fair enough.
Since I'm -not- playing on Easy mode of course and don't particularly want to constantly mess up and have to upload hour-long parts for each stage I've just been trying to speed things up.
I mostly want to show everyone everything I'm aware of in the game, including anything I (re)discover.

Ooh cheats next time when cheating do it god and g for i dunno OVER 9000 defense

I'm trying to -avoid- cheating. Unfortunately, because I'm also trying to NEVER EVER cut out any footage, and showing you every moment of failiure on my part, I add very slim advantages. I did remove them at the start of the stage (at one point, not remembering to maintain that removal).

Part 5 now available (finally), link & discussion in first post.
Part 6 has also been already recorded.

Stop with the cheating. You generally don't cheat in Let's Plays and we're supposed to be experts at Dink and show people how to play. Pisses me off cause I didn't even cheat off-camera when I pretty much needed to.

Other than that, good job.

This guy cheats? Lame.

it is quite possible to beat without cheats ex just stick to 1 element that'll make your life a LOT easier and the multihitting nature of water makes it stronger IMO

I've said multiple times I'm not a fan of cheating myself, but unlike others I don't do off-camera stuff; Everything that I've filmed has gone up as raw data, from alt-tabs to game crashes.
If you want me to completely re-do the final boss on Normal difficulty, it'll happen on the 3rd run-through. Already started the 2nd run-through on easy.
In Fact, if Arik's around, tell him to patch it with a Hard-Mode just for me.

Point is, don't immediately cheat after you find some parts difficult. I never cheat, because it takes away the challenge (which is the fun part), and I'd especially never cheat in an LP. If you don't want people to see you fail as much, then just cut off the parts where you failed. Or just simply leave them in. Cheating's just plain lame.

It depends on the kind of Let's Play, I think - there are ones that are all about watching the player suffer, and then there are ones that are about looking at a game in great detail. ExDeathEvn was specifically looking for the various notes and papers in this part, so cheating makes sense. The main reason I put those about was so that players who died, or played through multiple times would have something to try and look at on their return trips - it'd be very difficult to read through everything in one go without cheating.

I've avoided weighing in until the end - I hope you weren't too frustrated by the difficulty. I actually think I got the balance mostly right based on your playthrough, which surprised me, but I get that someone playing for the story would find it frustrating. I wish I'd been a little more generous with the bombs - you don't get too many and there's not much chance to experiment with them.

I might collect some more thoughts about it later, but just one note - IIRC if you shoot the final boss before you advance up the screen, it'll skip the dialogue and go straight to the boss fight

Regarding the bombs, Arik, I did make a test as I had talked about in this part on my next playthrough at the beginning; Adding then immediately removing and saying how horrid the sound was, 1k bombs/coins.
But I have to agree, the balance was perfect in this first attempt. Difficult but manageable with some skill, despite my occasional raging at getting so far only to fall so close. Much of my gameplay is bent towards storylines in the RPG genre. So confusing as the notes were, it was a nice challenge finding and reading them. Maybe if the traps fired a fraction less often though

Part 6 is now available, with our second run-through to complete an alternate-storyline!
Check the first post for the link.

Nice part, it motivates me to make more videos.

Thankyou for noticing this notice. Your noticing it has been noted and will be reported to the authorities.

Also, Part 7 added.

Part 8 added.
That's 2 endings down, 2 to go.

I must say, this D-Mod is seriously underrated. The end boss is arguably the best ever, in any D-Mod.

Best ever, I certainly agree. Finding out I could have her walk straight back into my charged Water attacks was something of a surprise though.
Definitely enjoyed the hell out of this mod though!

I really enjoy these playthroughs.

In terms of of scripting ingenuity and use of existing assets, I, Kara Gu is up there with anything else ever done in Dink.

Arik's design work is superb. You can see his uncompromising nature in I, Kara Gu but it's also clear which parts of CC2 he had the most impact on as well. Not just in terms of enemy/boss scripting, but also in the way he drives the narrative using rarely used techniques (like the stuff that happens after releasing the dragon and returning to the village in CC2).

Lovely stuff. Look forward to seeing more in the future.

Parts 9, 10-A, and 10-B added to the top post, and with that I hereby call this playthrough COMPWETE

Near the end of Part 9, I've annotated it so the viewer can decide which to view first; Left or Right (10 A or B). if you've watched this playthrough to the end, I hope you enjoyed!

Now, what DMOD do you want me to play next?

Borrowing this thread back to bring you Friends Beyond 1 - Part 1. See top post.
I'm also using a new microphone that I got a week or so ago.

EDIT: Moved separate series to it's own topic due to forum fix. Thankyou, Redink1!