No news to most of you, but I finally got into the Graveyard, and oh my what BS. For how hard it is, you shouldn't have to wait for friggin midnight to get in there.

I think that's supposed to be the idea, though. ;)

No worries though man, once you're in (and you at least make it back to the Ante Room II by teleporting, even if you're empty-handed), you can always get back there (for practice, anyway) if you use the demo record function. And it'll let you play the level that way as long as it's nighttime (i.e. you can start playing earlier than midnight). But yeah, you have to wait until midnight if you want to save your progress there. I personally think that's the hardest area of the game, no contest.

These aren't spoilers, are they? :P

The tombstone-jumping is the only tricky part and can easily be mastered. And you can 'save' when you're about 2/3rds of the way into the level...especially if you're fully stocked.

Crap, good call TBone, I didn't even realize!

mutters something incomprehensible

Seriously, the graveyard isn't a big deal - take you time; you get a huge amount of it. I never even heard of the banshee/ghoul until people started talking about it. Then I went and sat in the graveyard to wait for it...

In truth the first time I went there, I just did the spire and came out again; but since then I haven't had any problems doing everything required in the one night. Just make sure you have no need to go into that dead-end spider's nest room... ;)

It's all about getting into the zen moment - once you breathe deeply then take those jumps in a deep state of calm - they seem so easy :) It's mostly about starting the first jump from the right spot, I think.

I think more my frustration is that I can no longer bust into a level with 25 lives and just get it down...that's really where it comes from. I miss my BDC save games :(

Hacked 99 Lives FTW....


jk...

I'm confused. I thought you could only save your progress from the Ante Room areas?

I think he means going into the Crypt. Then if you die, you come back at that entrance.

Ah, I see. I was hoping against hope that there was a way to jump to the graveyard without having to stand around outside the entrance, tapping my toes and playing catch with the mutants.

What I did was wait until a few minutes before midnight (use the clock in the library), then I went into the ante room.

Afterwards I went to the graveyard and when I got down to "0" lives left I simply quit without saving, and went back to the ante room (a few minutes before 12) by starting a new game. Waiting is one of my pet peeves about life in general :)

yup, that tactic works well, and if you quit out without saving, you can also "record" starting in the graveyard (assuming you have completed it once) and practice that way. The recording won't ever save (even if you go back to the ante room) - so you can practice that way for as long as you like.

Of course, you'll still have to do it properly once too.

Well I figured out a large chunk of my problem. I am still having a problem adjusting to what I perceive a "down jump" should be. In DC/BDC, my feeling is that Duncan BARELY moved, and just kind of bounced a little farther ahead. Anything else was a regular jump. Here, his low jump looks to me to be more like nearing the regular jump. That's why I always get messed up. When I saw the spacing between the rocks, my head said "oh, just jump" and not low jump, because in my perception, a low jump of the DC/BDC style would have been so short as to land me in between the grave stones instead of on the next one.

Yeah, that one took me a few tries, too. The tricky thing is, if you're towards the back of the tombstone, the regular jump is what you want, and if you're on the front of the tombstone, you want the down jump. You just have to make a quick decision based on where you land.

Zack can correct me if I'm wrong, but the down jump seems to me exactly the same as it was way back when.

Or you can get to the Graveyard and 'potion home' That way you can practice it even before you have beat it

I did this to look for secrets.

The down jump is about the same length from what I can see. It looks further given that everything has been scaled up in RtDC.

Yeah, a lot of the jumps, areas, ect. look a lot bigger.

I thought about that, but I play most of my DC/BDC on my MBP in full screen mode...

For BDC? Do you find it better to set the emulator to full-screen mode? or change your screen resolution to 640x480 or whatever? It seems a bit to sharp and chunky to me, using the former method.

I do both - change to 640x480, and then use full-screen so it properly captures the pointer.

Also, for recording purposes, it looks worse and gives you a larger file (as you are capturing the scaling effects) if you record it full-screened in anything higher...

I haven't tried running the originals in 640/480, but DC3 looks a lot better.

I have figured out that the official name for it is the banshee

Here is a video that might interest you.

In it I do the graveyard jumping part 9 times in a row, purposefully killing myself at the end to try again. Then when I'm at life 0 I finish the level without using an elixir or taking damage.

***WARNING, FULL INVENTORY***

http://www.mediafire.com/?4djlwfyctjd

Here's mine...I refuse to get caught by the banshee.

Bonus Feature:

Curious (not completely sure what the point of the Graveyard Master video was... but still)

I've managed to fall through the floor on two levels - Forest Guard Tower (you end up in the Cave Dungeon) and The Courtyard - when I got hit by a guard's arrow and fell through the bottom of fountain! That ended up leading nowhere but being dead (I had armour, so the arrow didn't kill me outright). I suspect both are bugs.

I was just showing that the jumping is not at all random or too difficult, by accomplishing it 9 times in a row. In most demos if you just do something once it doesn't necessarily mean to much. I also tried to emphasize the place to start jumping - if you're not on that place, you may die. :blink:

I found the forest Guard Tower bug way back in the demo, and let Zack know.

Well...you may die if Bryant doesn't readjust a bit while on the grave stones. But if you readjust by a single step if you realize that you're a bit off (on the left edge of a stone) then (as you know) it's fairly easy...just a combination of long jumps and short jumps.