Did you ever play the X-Men game for the Sega Genesis? Thats what the sound effects remind me of. Lots of nostalgia there.
Also its an interesting game but I find the movement and combat unfun. The swings don't feel that impactful to me for some reason. Maybe I'm not the target audience but I did really like Dark Souls. Hard to say whats wrong about it though.
yeah I did, and genesis is exactly what I was going for there.
The combat may feel more impactful once there are actual weapon swings/ player animations instead of just attack hitboxes, but I feel you there and I’m trying to figure it out. Also what did you think was unfun about the movement? Is it too fast now?
Anyway thanks so much for playing and giving feedback!
When I spoke to the nutrient-giver, I didn't realize it was a conversation at first. I would put some kind of indicator that a conversation is taking place - maybe allow me to press the interact button again to go to the next line? Like others have said, it feels slow. I was rolling everywhere because walking felt too slow. That feeling may be magnified by the large field of vision. It seems cool so far and I'm looking forward to seeing it again. Your base is really solid!
Yeah the idea was to allow the player to skip the conversation in the demo but I didn't get it done in time. I'm definitely gonna increase the player speed, but the large field of vision won't be in the final version. I'm working on a kind of fog of war, so you can only see the room you're in. That'll probably help a little too.
Anyway thank you so much for playing! I learned a lot from this DD!
Thanks! Yeah most of the art/music is unfinished. I was just trying to fill in the blanks so I can get all of the core game out of the way. The player art was just a quick mockup; there'll be equippable armor that changes your appearance eventually, and each class will start with a different base set.
With the movement I'm aiming for like King's Field era fromsoft. Incredibly slow and chunky, making everything a deliberate action. But yeah, I've noticed that it's kind of unbearably slow from playing so much. I actually did increase sprint speed by like x3, and the dodge sends you significantly further than it used to. I'll probably end up making movement faster, but the movement is tied to the animation so I could make it feel slower on purpose: you only move forward on "step" frames, so that's why it feels so god-awfully slow. Each time I make the player faster it feels like I'm compromising what the original intent with this game was, but playability is the most important thing, and I'm sure there are other ways to convey the chunkiness I want.
watching right now. whoops i accidentally left the blood test on right click in, my bad.
Yeah a LOT of things were made intentionally very very slow, and the dodge mechanic is currently just an either/or kind of thing. I haven't decided which feels more natural so I figured I'd just add both methods. And yeah, the enemy's windows and timings are much more relaxed towards them and punishing towards the player. I'm still tweaking stuff and trying to figure out what feels the best. The dodge only protects you on the exact frames you're dodging. Once you land and the "stall timer" is activated you lose iframes, so you take damage. You can't move or do anything while the stall timer is active. This is also why you can't attack all the time, when something activates the stall timer you're locked. And you get locked for different periods of time depending on what you do; what weapon you swung, how heavy it was, how much stamina the attack took. That was purposeful to emphasize deliberation.
Thanks for pointing out the corner collision slowdown stuff, I really haven't figured out a good way to do it yet. I'm working on it now though!
There is a shield, it's CTRL, but it's completely broken and I haven't added it in yet.
Those are lil snakes, and they die randomly when you hit them. No actual HP values. I wanted it to be like that on purpose but yeah I need to add some feedback animation or something, showing them react. (There are other enemies you didn't encounter that die in the same way, but there's an animation to show them reacting to your hit.)
Enemies also have iframes so when your attack kind of misses a grabber it's because it's invincible. I learned that they're too easy though, so I'll make em tougher, thank you.
Yeah it doesn't buffer inputs, it's all direct. So if you're in a stall period it ignores the input. I'll probably change that to remember 1 input or something.
Axes don't go straight because there's an accuracy value for ranged weaponry. They actually have better accuracy than the daggers. You can upgrade your accuracy, and all of the other hidden stats, with those lil xp balls, but it's not implemented in the demo.
Thank you so much for playing! I got a huge list of stuff to change and tweak out of this. There's actually way more awful content to go through in the demo than what you played, but thanks for sticking it out for so long! You're doing god's work friend.
Comments
Did you ever play the X-Men game for the Sega Genesis? Thats what the sound effects remind me of. Lots of nostalgia there.
Also its an interesting game but I find the movement and combat unfun. The swings don't feel that impactful to me for some reason. Maybe I'm not the target audience but I did really like Dark Souls. Hard to say whats wrong about it though.
yeah I did, and genesis is exactly what I was going for there.
The combat may feel more impactful once there are actual weapon swings/ player animations instead of just attack hitboxes, but I feel you there and I’m trying to figure it out. Also what did you think was unfun about the movement? Is it too fast now?
Anyway thanks so much for playing and giving feedback!
When I spoke to the nutrient-giver, I didn't realize it was a conversation at first. I would put some kind of indicator that a conversation is taking place - maybe allow me to press the interact button again to go to the next line? Like others have said, it feels slow. I was rolling everywhere because walking felt too slow. That feeling may be magnified by the large field of vision. It seems cool so far and I'm looking forward to seeing it again. Your base is really solid!
Yeah the idea was to allow the player to skip the conversation in the demo but I didn't get it done in time. I'm definitely gonna increase the player speed, but the large field of vision won't be in the final version. I'm working on a kind of fog of war, so you can only see the room you're in. That'll probably help a little too.
Anyway thank you so much for playing! I learned a lot from this DD!
The movement feels very sluggish and unresponsive. I get that you're trying to portray the feel of heavy armor but it isn't fun.
The main character doesn't look very good.
I like the ambiance and the dark-souls-inspired level design.
Nice job, keep it up! The game has a lot of potential.
Thanks! Yeah most of the art/music is unfinished. I was just trying to fill in the blanks so I can get all of the core game out of the way. The player art was just a quick mockup; there'll be equippable armor that changes your appearance eventually, and each class will start with a different base set.
With the movement I'm aiming for like King's Field era fromsoft. Incredibly slow and chunky, making everything a deliberate action. But yeah, I've noticed that it's kind of unbearably slow from playing so much. I actually did increase sprint speed by like x3, and the dodge sends you significantly further than it used to. I'll probably end up making movement faster, but the movement is tied to the animation so I could make it feel slower on purpose: you only move forward on "step" frames, so that's why it feels so god-awfully slow. Each time I make the player faster it feels like I'm compromising what the original intent with this game was, but playability is the most important thing, and I'm sure there are other ways to convey the chunkiness I want.
Thanks again for playing, I really appreciate it!
_
watching right now. whoops i accidentally left the blood test on right click in, my bad.
Yeah a LOT of things were made intentionally very very slow, and the dodge mechanic is currently just an either/or kind of thing. I haven't decided which feels more natural so I figured I'd just add both methods. And yeah, the enemy's windows and timings are much more relaxed towards them and punishing towards the player. I'm still tweaking stuff and trying to figure out what feels the best. The dodge only protects you on the exact frames you're dodging. Once you land and the "stall timer" is activated you lose iframes, so you take damage. You can't move or do anything while the stall timer is active. This is also why you can't attack all the time, when something activates the stall timer you're locked. And you get locked for different periods of time depending on what you do; what weapon you swung, how heavy it was, how much stamina the attack took. That was purposeful to emphasize deliberation.
Thanks for pointing out the corner collision slowdown stuff, I really haven't figured out a good way to do it yet. I'm working on it now though!
There is a shield, it's CTRL, but it's completely broken and I haven't added it in yet.
Those are lil snakes, and they die randomly when you hit them. No actual HP values. I wanted it to be like that on purpose but yeah I need to add some feedback animation or something, showing them react. (There are other enemies you didn't encounter that die in the same way, but there's an animation to show them reacting to your hit.)
Enemies also have iframes so when your attack kind of misses a grabber it's because it's invincible. I learned that they're too easy though, so I'll make em tougher, thank you.
Yeah it doesn't buffer inputs, it's all direct. So if you're in a stall period it ignores the input. I'll probably change that to remember 1 input or something.
Axes don't go straight because there's an accuracy value for ranged weaponry. They actually have better accuracy than the daggers. You can upgrade your accuracy, and all of the other hidden stats, with those lil xp balls, but it's not implemented in the demo.
Thank you so much for playing! I got a huge list of stuff to change and tweak out of this. There's actually way more awful content to go through in the demo than what you played, but thanks for sticking it out for so long! You're doing god's work friend.