Massive Update - Version 2.2 Launch : Donkey Kong 64 & Diddy Kong Racing

So it's finally here ...
Performing for you ...
It's the Serket Tracker ...
Version 2.2 ...

Taking a break from the Zelda franchise, I wanted to do something relatively quick and easy.  Donkey Kong 64 is another popular randomizer (the "Switch Kongs Anywhere" ability is amazing, btw).  It's been on my list from the start and I know people who have been itching to play it.  Existing trackers out there seemed pretty basic so I tried my hand at improving upon them.

I wanted to keep the feature of having all moves trackable, but updated the look a bit with better sprites and color coding.  Obviously, the collectables would need to be tracked for each area, but it didn't make sense to force the user to click colored bananas 100 times, so I made those input fields and you can keep track of them yourself as often as you wish.  I really liked how I was able to arrange the totals such that it's possible to view the entire tracker on one screen without the need for tabbing unlike in the Zelda mods.  However, I wanted to give players the ability to track on a per-dungeon basis as well.  A problem I ran into was these two methods couldn't communicate with each other.  Having the totals track the counts of each level was simple enough, but it's not so trivial getting it to work the other way around, so I just left them separate.

I'm sure that, given enough time, I could figure a solution; but I wanted to get this project out the door in a timely manner.  So the decision was made to give the player the option to track totals OR track on a per-level basis, but not both simultaneously.  Or rather, you can track both, you just have to do it manually as the totals don't auto-update.  I found that, having the totals be an option is useful for randomizers in which items can appear outside their levels and it's not exactly clear which level they belong to, you just know you got your 69th Gold Banana.  Nice.

Another heavily-requested feature were maps.  As mentioned in my previous log, I can't do auto-tracking, but the next best thing I could do is give you maps like the WW-TP ones that show the locations of key items.  I'm getting better at making them, so that part didn't take too long.  No more than a week, really.

What took the most time is research!  In making this app, I've come to learn that the available resources online are pretty terrible.  In the case of DK64, they were so bad I had to resort to actually scrubbing through gameplay footage for each zone to find all the major items in order to accurately mark them on the map.  This process was so awful I became vindicated in my decision not to include Colored Bananas or Coins among them from the start.  Just as well since the maps are already packed to the brim.  I suppose I could make a separate layer just for coins and colored bananas ... and by I, I mean someone else can undertake that Herculean effort as I'm done and moving on to the next thing.

But for what it's worth, I'm really happy with how the maps turned out.  Hopefully someone will take them and upload them to the official DK64 wikis.  You can see what the final results look in the screenshots above.  For comparison, this is the sort of "official" material I had to work from:

So far, I've wanted to make all these in pairs to take advantage of the extra tab.  A natural go-with was a childhood favorite of mine: Diddy Kong Racing.  One of the few racing games I actually enjoyed.  I have fond memories of it and apparently, people still play it.  Again, it was relatively straight-forward to add.  Collecting all the sprites and turning them into item slots probably took me two days tops.  Three if you count prototyping.  And then another couple days to make all the track maps.  Thankfully, unlike the DK64 maps, I was able to find decent resources online to help me out.  There were also far fewer collectables.  However, I couldn't find anything in a reasonable amount of time to show all the locations for silver coins in Adventure Mode 2, and I'd already been put off from having to sift through over 10 hours of DK64 footage that I just wasn't having it.  Maybe in a future update.  Though at least you get a tab for silver balloons too.

One thing I went back and forth on was whether to make these their own separate solo mods from the level select screen.  In the end, because I was able to cram everything from Diddy Kong Racing into a single panel (including the maps), I decided to keep them together.

Whereas, my team sent me new equipment, I'm gonna be spending some time putting all that together and so the next update might not be for awhile.  At least not before I've settled into my new set-up.  So for now, enjoy.

Also, leave a comment if you read the opening lines to the tune of the DK Rap.