Kiss Psycho Circus "deep dive" (Dreamcast): Optimizations, "skyfluff" exploring, some PC music added
8🟣 Edit (08/30/2025): I found a better way to maintain the original "SkyBig 1 & 2" for the Water Realm levels Cathedral and Freak Show like at the 2:03 mark, while still maintaining the unused "SkyFluff_B" (Blue) for the Air Realm levels Acropolis and Midway. Originally, those two levels blatantly reused that same "SkyBig 1 & 2", which was always a pet peeve of mine like at the 10:57 mark. 🙃 I think my new way will be better than making the whole Water Realm "SkyFluff_P" (Purple) in hindsight like at the 10:18 mark, and my new way will strike a balance between the used & unused content without having to sacrifice the usage of "SkyBig 1 & 2" in the Water Realm. After all, this is a work-in-progress and usage mistakes are bound to happen, but now I can use both of these skies when needed. 🙂
It's also been a while since I played the PC version, and the sky is in fact quite light in the Cathedral and Freak Show levels (similar to "SkyBig 1 & 2"), plus I notice a hint of "SkyFluff_O" on PC (might toy with that):
• 🇪🇸 KISS Psycho Circus: Juego PC en español...
While the sky in Acropolis and Midway on PC, my memory is correct in them being dark blue, and "SkyFluff_B" being the closest look-alike:
• 🇪🇸 KISS Psycho Circus: Juego PC en español...
//end of edit
Discovered a number of nice little things (which were rather technical), so I decided to do a "deep dive" type of video. This one will set the tone for what I have planned for my "Enhanced Edition" 1.02, yet it might actually take me a long time to get it finished given how crazy things are getting with trying to optimize the enemy counts & placements (constant trial-and-error-testing). 😋
Thankfully, I'm getting a bit more lucky than before when it comes to receding the Headless spider counts per spawn point, so I'm quite happy. I'm trying to limit the spiders by 5 per screen to get a better framerate, and also have the enemy Spawners spawn 1 or 2 enemies each time (rather than 3 to 5 at once from the same Spawner). This will not only improve framerate a bit, but make those Spawners less annoying. I often see "let's players" get mad at how many enemies the Spawners throw at you, let alone trying to fight the endless swarm with the Dreamcast controller. 😅
My optimizations are trying to keep the Dreamcast controller & more casual players in mind with how the game balance will be. Things like the keybind commands, character switching, Hawkeyes, cheats, etc. will still require the keyboard, however.
Music that I used in the video is from "Railroad Tycoon II", another Dreamcast game developed my Tremor Entertainment (the makers of Kiss Dreamcast): • Railroad Tycoon 2 II Dreamcast Game Music ...