Wow! Thirty minutes worth of feedback, you're doing all of our entries a great service, thanks a lot!
In no particular order, let me address most of the points you brought up. Before I start, I want to say that inertia and "smoothness" (hence the delay between clicking and firing) are key features I've got in mind, so if something doesn't work, I'll look for workarounds before touching those.
-Yes I mixed up the RMB and LMB in the little menu prompt screen. I might be dyelsxic.
-Slowing down time briefly clearly isn't the best feedback for getting hit. I'll admit I'm not entirely sure, but in theory the player speed is slowed down as much as everything else. I'm definitely going to look into a speed boost during the effect, in order to dodge other bullets better.
-Since viewing your video I will experiment with:
Making the aim "lag" only when firing. It also isn't working exactly as I want it to at the moment. I want it to lag behind the mouse's movements only, and ignore the player's movement.
Stunning enemies briefly when struck by an explosion.
Work on better camera prioritization. It does take into account where you're aiming at the moment, but only while actual firing.
Change whether getting hit resets your shield cool-down, and what the ring drawn around means, probably a cool-down indicator instead of how much time the shield's got left before disappearing (as it is at the moment).
-You mentioned that all you can do is run around in circles. The demo definitely does a non-existent job at explaining how to not do that. A well-timed shield deployment into a hail of enemy fire will charge the overclock meter (which otherwise charges absurdly slowly on purpose), and send the bullets back with extra damage applied, and they're now homing. This ties into why the weapons are unreliable, the blaster is difficult to aim and the laser's range is short. The numbers definitely need tweaking at this early stage, but that's the design idea at the moment.
-Overclock is meant to make you more powerful, yes, but it also increases the risk/reward ratio somewhat: everything slows down, but the player (again, hoping my code is up to scratch) retains full mobility and firepower, but takes double damage in the process. Future character tweaking will accommodate for less glass-canon-like play styles, should this project ever get that far.
-Yep, enemies are pretty basic for now. I got some cool ideas on the pipeline to help with that. Should also address having a lot of small annoying enemies on screen issue you mentioned.
-Free/Open source voice synthesizer software is hard to come by. I've since found a slightly better version and have make some tweaks that are slightly easier to understand (keyword: slightly). If it still proves difficult to make out (which it will), the console on the bottom-left displays their phrases too, which I've already increased the screentime duration of.
-And last, and certainly least, you can only switch characters in the menu screen. You'll notice the text changes color when doing so. You didn't miss much, since for now all characters are identical except in looks and barely comprehensible voice lines.
Again,thanks a lot. Your feedback has definitely given me some great ideas to tweak and pursue. I'd implore you to boot up the demo just one more time and deploy the shield as I'd mentioned before and notice how there's a bit more to it than kiting enemies.
Fun game - movement is fluid, deflection system is great, graphics are nice.
But voiceacting is grating. Even if she is supposed to be no-nonsense type the voice should be at least bearable, now it sounds like a boy pretending to be a woman.
Thanks for the feedback. I wanted to make diving into enemy fire fun or interesting, at least. High risk-high reward gameplay I've always been fond of.
I had the feeling the fake voices would fall onto the love/hate category. I will admit I can't quite shake off the uncanny... ness myself. I do intend to find better voice synth software or tweak what I already got in the future. Again, proof-of-concept stages and whatnot.
Comments
Wow! Thirty minutes worth of feedback, you're doing all of our entries a great service, thanks a lot!
In no particular order, let me address most of the points you brought up. Before I start, I want to say that inertia and "smoothness" (hence the delay between clicking and firing) are key features I've got in mind, so if something doesn't work, I'll look for workarounds before touching those.
-Yes I mixed up the RMB and LMB in the little menu prompt screen. I might be dyelsxic.
-Slowing down time briefly clearly isn't the best feedback for getting hit. I'll admit I'm not entirely sure, but in theory the player speed is slowed down as much as everything else. I'm definitely going to look into a speed boost during the effect, in order to dodge other bullets better.
-Since viewing your video I will experiment with:
-You mentioned that all you can do is run around in circles. The demo definitely does a non-existent job at explaining how to not do that. A well-timed shield deployment into a hail of enemy fire will charge the overclock meter (which otherwise charges absurdly slowly on purpose), and send the bullets back with extra damage applied, and they're now homing. This ties into why the weapons are unreliable, the blaster is difficult to aim and the laser's range is short. The numbers definitely need tweaking at this early stage, but that's the design idea at the moment.
-Overclock is meant to make you more powerful, yes, but it also increases the risk/reward ratio somewhat: everything slows down, but the player (again, hoping my code is up to scratch) retains full mobility and firepower, but takes double damage in the process. Future character tweaking will accommodate for less glass-canon-like play styles, should this project ever get that far.
-Yep, enemies are pretty basic for now. I got some cool ideas on the pipeline to help with that. Should also address having a lot of small annoying enemies on screen issue you mentioned.
-Free/Open source voice synthesizer software is hard to come by. I've since found a slightly better version and have make some tweaks that are slightly easier to understand (keyword: slightly). If it still proves difficult to make out (which it will), the console on the bottom-left displays their phrases too, which I've already increased the screentime duration of.
-And last, and certainly least, you can only switch characters in the menu screen. You'll notice the text changes color when doing so. You didn't miss much, since for now all characters are identical except in looks and barely comprehensible voice lines.
Again, thanks a lot. Your feedback has definitely given me some great ideas to tweak and pursue. I'd implore you to boot up the demo just one more time and deploy the shield as I'd mentioned before and notice how there's a bit more to it than kiting enemies.
SFX is grating, enemies are simple. Neat graphical design though.
Fun game - movement is fluid, deflection system is great, graphics are nice.
But voiceacting is grating. Even if she is supposed to be no-nonsense type the voice should be at least bearable, now it sounds like a boy pretending to be a woman.
Thanks for the feedback. I wanted to make diving into enemy fire fun or interesting, at least. High risk-high reward gameplay I've always been fond of.
I had the feeling the fake voices would fall onto the love/hate category. I will admit I can't quite shake off the uncanny... ness myself. I do intend to find better voice synth software or tweak what I already got in the future. Again, proof-of-concept stages and whatnot.