[Open Assets] Legacy Hinote

[Alice]

Thanks to Timeos' Treasurebox for taking the time to port Hinote into v2.2. This port would have not happened without his initiative to port and script Hinote's abilities. Thank you again!

It's been a while, and she's back! While it may not be the new updated Hinote, here's the old Hinote with some updates to her v2.0 version. With the lack of an official v2.1 version of Hinote, there were a few things I did wish she had at the time. The opportunity to port her into this new version gave ideas to improve her abilities and likeness. I have also created a few new pieces of art to keep things a little fresh.

Spoiler: Abilities

• Flare Jump: Hinote's staple jump ability. She can now hurt enemies as she spins after a Flare Jump.
• Fire Affinity: Hinote is now immune to fire with magma being the exception.
• Fire Trail: Hinote can create fire trails with any shield. This is disabled in multiplayer gametypes such as Match.
• Tip: Hinote's Flare Jump is stronger when equipped with a fire-like shield.
• Tip: Hinote now also drowns earlier making water her weakness.

Credit goes to:
Timeos' Treasurebox for porting and the main Lua code.
Kitoko for beta testing and bug fixing.
And myself for the character and art updates.

Thanks again to the people who kept supporting this character throughout the years!


Supporters / CoAuthors

• Kitoko
• Timeos' Treasurebox

 

[MellowJacket]

She's back. The updates are pretty sweet! I did a full campaign playthrough with her earlier and had a great, and pretty nostalgic, time.

 

[Logan8r]

Yay, Hinote returns!

 

[Goldenhog]

Something weird with her fire ability - her description says she's immune to fire but not magma, so she can pass through the flamethrowers and the fire balls but not the magma waterfalls or the magma level geometry, which makes sense, however she still takes damage from lit Pyre Flies. I'm assuming there's something strange going on with those enemies as the other character released here who's immune to fire, Flame, will go through lit Pyre Flies during jumps without damaging them.

But besides that, it's great to see Hinote again. Since she didn't show up for 2.1, I thought there was just no interest in her anymore, glad to see I was wrong!

 

[Chengi]

I'm absolutely ecstatic to see this character back.


It was a very sensible decision to retain the penalty for touching magma and treading water. And even then, the character feels just as fun to play as they used to be.

 

[Frostiikin]

Coming from someone who has never played the original hinote, this character is tons of fun. Despite how it stops a lot of momentum, she still has a lot of flow to her gameplay, and taking shortcuts with her doublejump feels amazing. The only thing about her that doesn't feel like a 2.2 character is the way her run cycle is animated, since it takes after the 2.1 run, but thats not a huge issue.

 

[Zeno]

New sprites or not, i'm just really glad to see one of my favourite custom characters make a return

 

[Professor Sheepkitty]

Always loved Hinote! Even if it isn't the (apparently unofficial?) one I was used to from 2.1, having her around again in 2.2 is a very nice treat.

 

[MK.exe]

Shes up there with another flaming feline we all know~

I've yet to do a full playthrough but i cant wait to give it a shot.

 

[Timeos' Treasurebox]

Intentional implementation

Something weird with her fire ability - her description says she's immune to fire but not magma, so she can pass through the flamethrowers and the fire balls but not the magma waterfalls or the magma level geometry, which makes sense, however she still takes damage from lit Pyre Flies.

You could say the the flash from the Pyre Flies while spawning their flames is hurting you, kind of like those flash flies you could encounter in KIMOKAWAIII. Hinote is immune to anything with just the MF_FIRE flag. Add the MF_PAIN flag and that immunity is gone. I kept it that way so that certain maps are still a bit of challenge and Hinote's skill does not feel too powerful.

 

[Rumia1]

AAAA SHE'S BACK! I absolutely love Hinote's design as a character and playing with her will be so fun, especially with her new features! Now to wait for the rest of the OC cast to be updated.

 

[Lamibe]

Seeing she's back that fast was a surprise. Was fun before and still fun. Hard to know what she is immune but not matters.

 

[Rapid]

Isn't this nostalgic!

 

[Charybdizs]

I hate to be a party pooper, but what's up with these changes?

Reduced air underwater? How is that supposed to be fun? Underwater levels are already a pain in the neck, and this just makes it worse. Of all things I've had thought to play around with as a gimmick, air meter is the last one I would have thought of. The placement of air bubbles can be really punishing and far apart in some levels, and I *know* there's some levels out there I've played that Hinote would not be able to complete because of the stricter time. Not everything is going to be as polished or forgiving as vanilla levels.

And speaking of water, it puzzles me that you'd go out of your way to fix flare jump's interaction with the surface of the water. Not only is that, like, "why bother," to me, it also is actually inconsistent with how water physics work in srb2. Yeah, it might be weird, but it's at least predictable.

Besides, weird =/= bad. Most of my fondest memories of playing Hinote in 2.0 days involved shooting around Chaos Domain fooling around flare jumping out of water in order to gain some extra height to make new paths. I booted up 2.0 again just now to test it and spent a while leaping around out of the water like a dolphin. Situational, sure, but that's what makes characters in srb2 so fun sometimes: the "oh man, can't I use this ability here to get over there?"

Overpolish like that gives me the feeling like I picked up brawl as a melee player. "We removed wavedashing, but we added pratfalling!" Whyyyyyyy
Taking away the fun meta and adding in cripples is always the most disappointing thing in game design.

Between one blatant cripple to the character and what I'll call an overpolish critique, Hinote probably won't see much use out of me anymore. I'd rather just pick up a whirlwind shield, tbh.

 

[Alice]

No worries, this is great criticism for Hinote's gameplay considering the whole underwater thing. I admit I wasn't too sure about the whole underwater thing and finding a way to "nerf" her while she was underwater. The whole launching self out of the water was indeed a bug back in v2.0, and initially was suppose to be fixed, but never got a proper update for it. If the whole drowning thing underwater isn't fun, I will probably remove it. The last thing I want is for her not to be fun, but also not make her too powerful.

If it is something people love and miss, I may think about putting it back with some changes. I'm glad though there are people who would rather have that back, despite it being a bug back then since it wasn't intentional.

I would like more feedback on her gameplay of course, this'll further help develop how the new Hinote would feel like. Thanks again for the thoughts! Feel free to personally message me as well if there's anything else in mind.

I hate to be a party pooper, but what's up with these changes?

Reduced air underwater? How is that supposed to be fun? Underwater levels are already a pain in the neck, and this just makes it worse. Of all things I've had thought to play around with as a gimmick, air meter is the last one I would have thought of. The placement of air bubbles can be really punishing and far apart in some levels, and I *know* there's some levels out there I've played that Hinote would not be able to complete because of the stricter time. Not everything is going to be as polished or forgiving as vanilla levels.

And speaking of water, it puzzles me that you'd go out of your way to fix flare jump's interaction with the surface of the water. Not only is that, like, "why bother," to me, it also is actually inconsistent with how water physics work in srb2. Yeah, it might be weird, but it's at least predictable.

Besides, weird =/= bad. Most of my fondest memories of playing Hinote in 2.0 days involved shooting around Chaos Domain fooling around flare jumping out of water in order to gain some extra height to make new paths. I booted up 2.0 again just now to test it and spent a while leaping around out of the water like a dolphin. Situational, sure, but that's what makes characters in srb2 so fun sometimes: the "oh man, can't I use this ability here to get over there?"

Overpolish like that gives me the feeling like I picked up brawl as a melee player. "We removed wavedashing, but we added pratfalling!" Whyyyyyyy
Taking away the fun meta and adding in cripples is always the most disappointing thing in game design.

Between one blatant cripple to the character and what I'll call an overpolish critique, Hinote probably won't see much use out of me anymore. I'd rather just pick up a whirlwind shield, tbh.

 

[time gear]

I have been having a lot of fun with this character, I remember playing her a lot back in the 2.0 days. I don't remember exactly how she was different then, but her gameplay is pretty satisfying right now.

I do agree however that the reduced air time underwater is a bit of a brutal change though. Perhaps an alternative balancing choice might be to nerf the height she gains underwater when using her flare jump? It makes sense logically at least, she can't create fire underwater so attempting to use her power in that condition would logically have diminished results.

Alternatively, perhaps you could script in some sort of timer after she gets out of the water during which her fire affinity and flare trail doesn't work? It makes sense that if water is her enemy, then being wet would be a problem until she dries off. Perhaps it could be like, 5-10 seconds. It would be a rather situational debuff and mostly limited to custom stages, that's probably the biggest reason I can think of not to go with this idea. Though, on the other hand I can imagine custom stages built around playing as her might be able to make great use of it with a little imagination, should anyone ever endeavor for such a thing.

 

[Jazzz]

First of all thank you a lot for bringing this fantastic character back to the game!

Now this may or not may be a biased opinion since I'm a masochist and a lover for water levels but I welcome the reduced air time feature for various reasons. The version that was running around during the 2.1 era (Hinote 3.2 If I recall correctly) was overpowered and made her not enjoyable to play, nor provide any sort of challenge to the player. I see this reduced air underwater as an acceptable "nerf" considering she kept the inmunity to fire. It also brings an interesting challenge to the table and makes the player manage their time in a different way underwater when playing as her. Also she's a feline with a fire affinity so it makes double sense to have water weakness. Making levels around this feature could be interesting.

Regarding the launching-out-of-water thing, she probably could have it back but maybe not making it as strong as it was back during 2.0 (And 2.1 for that matter), since it seems like something a bit exploitable (If memory serves right, the launch isn't that strong with Fang's tail bounce).

But overall a really nice character to have back that I recommend playing. I'm excited for the Rework!

 

[Goldenhog]

Frankly I see no problem with the lesser amount of underwater time either. I was able to beat Azure Temple as her, and that should say a lot.

Sure, there probably are some non-vanilla maps that don't space out their air bubbles properly but that's hardly Hinote's fault.

 

[Dimpsuu]

Seeing as you can beat Deep Sea Zone without really needing air bubbles but maybe once during any section that forces you to stop, the reduced time never seemed like a hindrance since most characters reach air bubbles long before the countdown even begins or just starts, Hinote no exception.

 

[Boost]

For some unknown reason Hinote gets a ridiculous boost in her Flare Jump if she is jumping off a rising platform. Given how Flare Jump usually works this doesn't seem intended although I might be wrong...