Context: I have played Moku before some months ago, and almost completed it. I am playing on a Linux system, using 'wine', a Windows emulator. And some sandboxing.
I like the introduction cinematic.
I decided to play through the tutorial again, just for fun.
Like before, the tutorial is good.
I played a tiny bit around in the settings, and changed the magic points to purple and the player color to green, just for fun. It is rather flexible and nice.
I think completing the tutorial is giving me XP points.
I think I got this error when a poison shooter died from poison that it or another poison shooter shot:
The game does not seem to save in the tutorial. Or, are you supposed to save manually? (I later found out that I misread, and that saving is on the "todo" list).
In the pause menu, the button "Quit" quits to desktop. Might it make sense to give some way to quit to the menu instead of the desktop? And name them "quit to main menu" and "quit to desktop"?
I am going to try to play through the tutorial again, this time not sticking around for the poison enemies, since the tutorial does not seem to save (which I do not think is a major issue, but might be nice).
It is nice that you can skip the introduction cinematic with Esc.
I love the music.
I find it a bit annoying that you have to manually reload your crossbow by first selecting the bolt from the item consumable UI and then press 'Q'. It makes the section where you have to fight 4 poison shooters at distance much harder, since you might have to juggle both reloading your crossbow, selecting the poison-curing item, and selecting the health-restoring item. Could it make sense to let the crossbow be reloaded automatically whenever it is empty? Or, if the crossbow is empty and you try to shoot? As long as there are bolts in the inventory? Or, a hotkey like 'R'? It might just be me, but it feels bad when the main source of challenge comes from juggling item handling. It feels like a regression from the previous version - I like that you have to carry bolts with you, but I dislike having to manually reload the crossbow by selecting the arrows first.
Nitpick: I encountered a deadlock for two enemies. I do not think it is important or easy to fix this, so you can ignore it if you want. Itch.io does not accept videos in the webm format, so I tried to convert to mp4 format. But itch did not recognize the mp4 file as a valid file for inclusion in this post, even though it lists mp4 as a valid format. So I uploaded it here: https://streamable.com/j8ovba
Is it possible to maximize the number of carried bolts by restocking all your bolts, then reloading your crossbow, and restock again? The answer seems yes, you just have to go from for instance 9 to 5 bolts, and then from 5 to 10 bolts.
The tutorial feels much harder, given that you cannot just spam the crossbow all the time. In part since the combination of claw enemy and grabber enemy makes the shield much less useful - if you block with the shield, and get grabbed, you might just end up dying in one go. It also feels like enemies see you from much further away, though I might be mistaken on that.
Nitpick: Enemies getting stuck on each other again.
My items are not always restocked when reaching a camp. When it shows "Restocked", it works correctly, but "Restocked" is not always shown, and when it is not, my items are not restocked, I believe. Is it when you first visit a new camp? But, I tried to go out and into the camp again, and then it showed "Restocked", but my items were not restocked.
Nitpick: In the level up screen: "Effect" is a noun", "affect" is a verb. They cover the same meaning, but 'e' should be used when it is a noun, and 'a' when it is a verb. Like, "The 'wet' effect can affect your resistance to fire positive and your resistance to shock and cold negatively".
I have decided not to use the level and experience system, since I think I can beat the game without it, and I dislike the concept of experience systems in games a bit.
Wait, the game notes said that a difficulty system has been added, but where do I select? I do not remember selecting it when starting the tutorial or after the end of the tutorial.
Does the game auto-save? I do not see it saving, and I am a bit afraid of going out and into the game again. Oh, a save system is still on the "todo" list. I misread.
I am still trying to find and collect as many armor pieces as I can.
I found the MP3 player, but I tried to equip it while I had a full inventory, and I got this error:
I do not know whether I should stop here or not. Are these errors due to me running the game on Linux? Or are they genuine bugs? The first bug is bad, while the second bug is a bit weird and a bit the player making a silly mistake.
From what I remember of GML back in the day, there is no static typing in GML. And that does not make it easier to program in GML in regards to avoiding bugs. And GML is also a bit primitive and limited from what I remember. Have YoyoGames considered looking into adding support for another language than GML? Or, adding optional typing for at least a bit of static typing for GML? Or is that beyond YoyoGames' budget or specializations? Do you know if any other language than GML can be used? GML is one of the main weaknesses of GameMaker from what I hear from people, and while I liked it many years ago in some ways, GML was still primitive and not easy to use for the purpose of developing larger and more complex games. And your game seem rather complex and nice. Do you know if GMS2's development is in stand-by mode or active and going strong? Or if YoyoGames has a good and stable revenue income or not? (You may want to NOT answer these two last questions here, but do it elsewhere anonymously (agdg), since these questions might be a bit sensitive).
I do not feel like I gave you a full and good review, even though I spent a fair bit of time on this. Once you have added loading and saving to the game, I would very much like to complete it and give a full review. There are a lot about your game that I really like, and I enjoy playing it.
I think completing the tutorial is giving me XP points. Just killing enemies.
I think I got this error when a poison shooter died from poison that it or another poison shooter shot: Very weird. I have an idea what could have caused that, but there's some oddities in the error shown, so that might be because of Wine??
In the pause menu, the button "Quit" quits to desktop. Might it make sense to give some way to quit to the menu instead of the desktop? And name them "quit to main menu" and "quit to desktop"? Probably a good idea. I'll add that to my todo list.
I find it a bit annoying that you have to manually reload your crossbow by first selecting the bolt from the item consumable UI and then press 'Q'. It makes the section where you have to fight 4 poison shooters at distance much harder, since you might have to juggle both reloading your crossbow, selecting the poison-curing item, and selecting the health-restoring item. Could it make sense to let the crossbow be reloaded automatically whenever it is empty? Or, if the crossbow is empty and you try to shoot? As long as there are bolts in the inventory? Or, a hotkey like 'R'? It might just be me, but it feels bad when the main source of challenge comes from juggling item handling. It feels like a regression from the previous version - I like that you have to carry bolts with you, but I dislike having to manually reload the crossbow by selecting the arrows first. Yeah, this was kind of an opposite extreme test. My current plan for next time is to make it so you select how many bolts you want to carry when equipping the crossbow, and then having it manually reload like it used to.
Is it possible to maximize the number of carried bolts by restocking all your bolts, then reloading your crossbow, and restock again? The answer seems yes, you just have to go from for instance 9 to 5 bolts, and then from 5 to 10 bolts. Huh. I thought I coded it so it rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 up first. I'll have to look into that.
The tutorial feels much harder, given that you cannot just spam the crossbow all the time. In part since the combination of claw enemy and grabber enemy makes the shield much less useful - if you block with the shield, and get grabbed, you might just end up dying in one go. It also feels like enemies see you from much further away, though I might be mistaken on that. It's definitely more difficult since you can't spam the crossbow. As for enemies being able to see you from further away, that's not the case. They previously had no cap to how far away they could see you, and could even see you through walls, all so long as you're on the same screen as them. That's no longer the case.
My items are not always restocked when reaching a camp. When it shows "Restocked", it works correctly, but "Restocked" is not always shown, and when it is not, my items are not restocked, I believe. Is it when you first visit a new camp? But, I tried to go out and into the camp again, and then it showed "Restocked", but my items were not restocked. The way it should work right now, is it only restocks when it actually says you've been restocked. If you enter a camp that's not your current respawn point, it shows a different message, and thus doesn't restock. I'll likely change this whole system in the future.
Nitpick: In the level up screen: "Effect" is a noun", "affect" is a verb. They cover the same meaning, but 'e' should be used when it is a noun, and 'a' when it is a verb. Like, "The 'wet' effect can affect your resistance to fire positive and your resistance to shock and cold negatively". Ah, my bad. I always mix those up.
I have decided not to use the level and experience system, since I think I can beat the game without it, and I dislike the concept of experience systems in games a bit. In its current state, it's completely possible to beat the dungeon without leveling, and the difficulty was designed as such. I'm sure it'll be possible to beat the final game without leveling as well, but it won't be designed for it.
Wait, the game notes said that a difficulty system has been added, but where do I select? I do not remember selecting it when starting the tutorial or after the end of the tutorial. It's in the options menu. If you go to individual gameplay options, you can set some damage modifiers for yourself and the enemies. It's built this way so that when playing multiplayer, if one person sucks, they can give themselves a handicap so they don't die as much, or have an easier time killing enemies.
I found the MP3 player, but I tried to equip it while I had a full inventory, and I got this error: I do not know whether I should stop here or not. Are these errors due to me running the game on Linux? Or are they genuine bugs? The first bug is bad, while the second bug is a bit weird and a bit the player making a silly mistake. Once again, a weird error. Might have to do with Wine. I think recent versions of GMS allow for exporting to Ubuntu natively from Windows, so I may try that in the future.
From what I remember of GML back in the day, there is no static typing in GML. And that does not make it easier to program in GML in regards to avoiding bugs. And GML is also a bit primitive and limited from what I remember. Have YoyoGames considered looking into adding support for another language than GML? Or, adding optional typing for at least a bit of static typing for GML? Or is that beyond YoyoGames' budget or specializations? Do you know if any other language than GML can be used? GML is one of the main weaknesses of GameMaker from what I hear from people, and while I liked it many years ago in some ways, GML was still primitive and not easy to use for the purpose of developing larger and more complex games. And your game seem rather complex and nice. Do you know if GMS2's development is in stand-by mode or active and going strong? Or if YoyoGames has a good and stable revenue income or not? (You may want to NOT answer these two last questions here, but do it elsewhere anonymously (agdg), since these questions might be a bit sensitive). Yeah, GML doesn't have static typing, which at least for me is something I'm very used to, since GML was my first language. More recent changes to GML have made a push for some static typing if you set instance parameters in a specific window for objects, but I don't know if that's enforced in code if you modify said parameters. I'll add, the language has come a long way and isn't nearly as primitive as it used to be, but it's still not up there with typical enterprise languages. So far as I'm aware, Yoyo Games isn't planning on adding support for other languages, but that could change since they were recently acquired by Opera (the web browser.) The development of GMS2 is still active and strong, and gets fairly regular updates. As for their revenue, they recently switched to a subscription model for their license rather than a one time purchase, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is causing their finances to improve, though I don't actually know. I personally was grandfathered in on the perpetual one time purchase license.
Huh. I thought I coded it so it rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 up first. I'll have to look into that.
I meant, you can effectively carry 11 bolts instead of 10, by loading the crossbow and filling up the inventory with 10 bolts, such that there is one bolt loaded in the crossbow and 10 in the inventory.
Just killing enemies.
Sorry, my bad, I meant that you get to kill enemies during the tutorial, and thus can get more experience relative to just starting normally. But, you can also grind after starting normally, so it does not matter.
On the errors: If it is only because of Wine, then I am tempted to try to run it on Windows and see if I still get those errors. But, I would still like to wait for the game to have saving and loading, just in case the game crashes for whatever reason. Will you submit to demo-day 50? And do you think you will have saving ready by then?
On the other hand, I can reproduce the bug with the MP3 player, if your inventory is full, and you try to equip the MP3, the game crashes, with the same error message.
I like the art in the intro a lot, but the animation was somehow smearing ? I don't know the right term, maybe it's just me. The art in the game looks kinda different and simplistic, I wish the characters would be more detailed somehow, I still liked it overall.
Combat is fun, I like the grab mechanic. Nice touch you can lock on a target, well implemented too. Tutorial was well done, but I didn't understand how to use the crossbow and I just died in the room with the poison dudes spamming their poison. It was also pretty challenging, I died a lot which was good to learn the combat, it's challenging and rewarding when you get it right, well done!
I liked the exploding sound when a enemy dies, but I didn't vibe with the music too much.
I'm unsure what the smearing you're talking about would be. Do you mean the monster under the water? It does fade in and out a little bit. Or are you talking about the cruise ship once it's broken? The cruise ship was just cut in half and rotated in GIMP, so that blurred it a little bit.
I'm happy you enjoyed the combat. The current crossbow implementation is a kinda wonky experiment, and I'm going to change it. Right now bolts are in the consumables, meaning you apply them same as you do healing.
All of the music in the game right now is free use, and will likely change in the future.
Almost got destroyed on my first encounter, it was a guy with a giant axe, i had to flee
I got killed by an alone poison thing that flees from you when it sees you and almost couldn't hit it, it was blocked in trees because my sword was hitting the trees instead of the enemy, if that's the way they are supposed to behave that's pretty clever
playing without the shield seems impossible against some ennemies, like the clawed ones
it feels like it's too easy to get the drop on an ennemy when you go behind his back
i didn't figure out how to shoot the crossbow
It's funny to be able to fall off cliffs
It looks like you can't die from bleeding + poison outside of fights since your health regens too fast
Details like the sword being blocked by obstacles really makes the game interesting, it could be cool to have a secondary attack to thrust with it to add variety
Hey, thanks for playing. I take it you skipped the tutorial?
Almost got destroyed on my first encounter, it was a guy with a giant axe, i had to flee Yeah, he can be tough for new players. He's also the boss of the tutorial.
I got killed by an alone poison thing that flees from you when it sees you and almost couldn't hit it, it was blocked in trees because my sword was hitting the trees instead of the enemy, if that's the way they are supposed to behave that's pretty clever They're not as intelligent as they seem, but running away from the player is the intended behavior. They'd just get lucky if they ran into a position you struggled to deal with them in.
playing without the shield seems impossible against some ennemies, like the clawed ones Definitely possible, but difficult for new players.
i didn't figure out how to shoot the crossbow The tutorial teaches you how. You need to equip bolts and then use the bolts, using the consumables button, which the default controls for are Q on KB+M and X/Square on Xbox/Playstation controllers.
It's funny to be able to fall off cliffs I'm glad you found it funny.
It looks like you can't die from bleeding + poison outside of fights since your health regens too fast You likely weren't bleeding or poisoned enough for it to be a major issue. The various tiers of status effects is something I'm trying to figure out how to communicate better.
Details like the sword being blocked by obstacles really makes the game interesting, it could be cool to have a secondary attack to thrust with it to add variety There is a secondary attack to thrust, and it doesn't bounce off walls like the swing does. The controls for it are taught in the tutorial, but default wise, for KB+M it's Shift+M1, and for gamepad it's RB/R1 for Xbox/Playstation.
The game was pretty fun to play I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. If you ever get the opportunity, try out the tutorial.
First time playing, with controller. Played thirty minutes, up to obtaining the crossbow.
Here's a bunch of things I noted down while playing: Good responsive UI, good settings, but lacks character. Needs a dash sound, dash feels very lifeless. Punching feels useless, I can't connect any hits with it, probably teaches bad habits. It also makes it hard to see the grab concept. Needs an earlier explanation for the lock-on mechanic, first fight is very difficult for a new player without it. Nice day-night cycle animation. HP regen is in a strange place. Not fast enough out of combat, but not slow enough that I would prefer drinking soup. I first thought the goal indicator was a sun of some sorts. Could be clearer. Very high initial levelup cost (800) normally such games allow you to level up more earlier on. Also, I must be missing something since I never figured out how to actually increase my stats in the menu. The ambush got me, nice enemy placement all around. The UI of the chest is very unclear. It took me long to figure out the way it worked, and that I could equip a lot more soup. Poisonlads just go for a swim and drown. I ran past the other ones, because fuck those guys.
All in all, it's a pretty fun game, but not my thing. I don't think I got far enough to give a decent critique.
Good responsive UI, good settings, but lacks character. Definitely right about it lacking character.
Needs a dash sound, dash feels very lifeless. Good idea.
Punching feels useless, I can't connect any hits with it, probably teaches bad habits. It also makes it hard to see the grab concept. Hmm, I definitely need to rework both at some point.
Needs an earlier explanation for the lock-on mechanic, first fight is very difficult for a new player without it. Roger.
Nice day-night cycle animation. Thanks!
HP regen is in a strange place. Not fast enough out of combat, but not slow enough that I would prefer drinking soup. This will likely make more sense later down the line when staying out until dark has consequences.
I first thought the goal indicator was a sun of some sorts. Could be clearer. There is no goal indicator. You were likely looking at the time indicator, meaning it was in fact a sun. I definitely need to give it a better graphic.
Very high initial levelup cost (800) normally such games allow you to level up more earlier on. Also, I must be missing something since I never figured out how to actually increase my stats in the menu. This might be subjective, but it's relatively easy to get that amount once you're out of the tutorial. That and you can only level up once you're out of the tutorial.
The ambush got me, nice enemy placement all around. Thanks.
The UI of the chest is very unclear. It took me long to figure out the way it worked, and that I could equip a lot more soup. Yeah, I need to improve that some more.
Poisonlads just go for a swim and drown. I ran past the other ones, because fuck those guys. That's the right way to do it.
All in all, it's a pretty fun game, but not my thing. I don't think I got far enough to give a decent critique. It's all good. You gave me a few ideas on what to work on next.
Comments
Context: I have played Moku before some months ago, and almost completed it. I am playing on a Linux system, using 'wine', a Windows emulator. And some sandboxing.
I like the introduction cinematic.
I decided to play through the tutorial again, just for fun.
Like before, the tutorial is good.
I played a tiny bit around in the settings, and changed the magic points to purple and the player color to green, just for fun. It is rather flexible and nice.
I think completing the tutorial is giving me XP points.
I think I got this error when a poison shooter died from poison that it or another poison shooter shot:
The game does not seem to save in the tutorial. Or, are you supposed to save manually? (I later found out that I misread, and that saving is on the "todo" list).
In the pause menu, the button "Quit" quits to desktop. Might it make sense to give some way to quit to the menu instead of the desktop? And name them "quit to main menu" and "quit to desktop"?
I am going to try to play through the tutorial again, this time not sticking around for the poison enemies, since the tutorial does not seem to save (which I do not think is a major issue, but might be nice).
It is nice that you can skip the introduction cinematic with Esc.
I love the music.
I find it a bit annoying that you have to manually reload your crossbow by first selecting the bolt from the item consumable UI and then press 'Q'. It makes the section where you have to fight 4 poison shooters at distance much harder, since you might have to juggle both reloading your crossbow, selecting the poison-curing item, and selecting the health-restoring item. Could it make sense to let the crossbow be reloaded automatically whenever it is empty? Or, if the crossbow is empty and you try to shoot? As long as there are bolts in the inventory? Or, a hotkey like 'R'? It might just be me, but it feels bad when the main source of challenge comes from juggling item handling. It feels like a regression from the previous version - I like that you have to carry bolts with you, but I dislike having to manually reload the crossbow by selecting the arrows first.
Nitpick: I encountered a deadlock for two enemies. I do not think it is important or easy to fix this, so you can ignore it if you want. Itch.io does not accept videos in the webm format, so I tried to convert to mp4 format. But itch did not recognize the mp4 file as a valid file for inclusion in this post, even though it lists mp4 as a valid format. So I uploaded it here: https://streamable.com/j8ovba
Is it possible to maximize the number of carried bolts by restocking all your bolts, then reloading your crossbow, and restock again? The answer seems yes, you just have to go from for instance 9 to 5 bolts, and then from 5 to 10 bolts.
The tutorial feels much harder, given that you cannot just spam the crossbow all the time. In part since the combination of claw enemy and grabber enemy makes the shield much less useful - if you block with the shield, and get grabbed, you might just end up dying in one go. It also feels like enemies see you from much further away, though I might be mistaken on that.
Nitpick: Enemies getting stuck on each other again.
My items are not always restocked when reaching a camp. When it shows "Restocked", it works correctly, but "Restocked" is not always shown, and when it is not, my items are not restocked, I believe. Is it when you first visit a new camp? But, I tried to go out and into the camp again, and then it showed "Restocked", but my items were not restocked.
Nitpick: In the level up screen: "Effect" is a noun", "affect" is a verb. They cover the same meaning, but 'e' should be used when it is a noun, and 'a' when it is a verb. Like, "The 'wet' effect can affect your resistance to fire positive and your resistance to shock and cold negatively".
I have decided not to use the level and experience system, since I think I can beat the game without it, and I dislike the concept of experience systems in games a bit.
Wait, the game notes said that a difficulty system has been added, but where do I select? I do not remember selecting it when starting the tutorial or after the end of the tutorial.
Does the game auto-save? I do not see it saving, and I am a bit afraid of going out and into the game again. Oh, a save system is still on the "todo" list. I misread.
I am still trying to find and collect as many armor pieces as I can.
I found the MP3 player, but I tried to equip it while I had a full inventory, and I got this error:
I do not know whether I should stop here or not. Are these errors due to me running the game on Linux? Or are they genuine bugs? The first bug is bad, while the second bug is a bit weird and a bit the player making a silly mistake.
From what I remember of GML back in the day, there is no static typing in GML. And that does not make it easier to program in GML in regards to avoiding bugs. And GML is also a bit primitive and limited from what I remember. Have YoyoGames considered looking into adding support for another language than GML? Or, adding optional typing for at least a bit of static typing for GML? Or is that beyond YoyoGames' budget or specializations? Do you know if any other language than GML can be used? GML is one of the main weaknesses of GameMaker from what I hear from people, and while I liked it many years ago in some ways, GML was still primitive and not easy to use for the purpose of developing larger and more complex games. And your game seem rather complex and nice. Do you know if GMS2's development is in stand-by mode or active and going strong? Or if YoyoGames has a good and stable revenue income or not? (You may want to NOT answer these two last questions here, but do it elsewhere anonymously (agdg), since these questions might be a bit sensitive).
I do not feel like I gave you a full and good review, even though I spent a fair bit of time on this. Once you have added loading and saving to the game, I would very much like to complete it and give a full review. There are a lot about your game that I really like, and I enjoy playing it.
Hey, thanks for playing.
I think completing the tutorial is giving me XP points.
Just killing enemies.
I think I got this error when a poison shooter died from poison that it or another poison shooter shot:
Very weird. I have an idea what could have caused that, but there's some oddities in the error shown, so that might be because of Wine??
In the pause menu, the button "Quit" quits to desktop. Might it make sense to give some way to quit to the menu instead of the desktop? And name them "quit to main menu" and "quit to desktop"?
Probably a good idea. I'll add that to my todo list.
I find it a bit annoying that you have to manually reload your crossbow by first selecting the bolt from the item consumable UI and then press 'Q'. It makes the section where you have to fight 4 poison shooters at distance much harder, since you might have to juggle both reloading your crossbow, selecting the poison-curing item, and selecting the health-restoring item. Could it make sense to let the crossbow be reloaded automatically whenever it is empty? Or, if the crossbow is empty and you try to shoot? As long as there are bolts in the inventory? Or, a hotkey like 'R'? It might just be me, but it feels bad when the main source of challenge comes from juggling item handling. It feels like a regression from the previous version - I like that you have to carry bolts with you, but I dislike having to manually reload the crossbow by selecting the arrows first.
Yeah, this was kind of an opposite extreme test. My current plan for next time is to make it so you select how many bolts you want to carry when equipping the crossbow, and then having it manually reload like it used to.
Is it possible to maximize the number of carried bolts by restocking all your bolts, then reloading your crossbow, and restock again? The answer seems yes, you just have to go from for instance 9 to 5 bolts, and then from 5 to 10 bolts.
Huh. I thought I coded it so it rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 up first. I'll have to look into that.
The tutorial feels much harder, given that you cannot just spam the crossbow all the time. In part since the combination of claw enemy and grabber enemy makes the shield much less useful - if you block with the shield, and get grabbed, you might just end up dying in one go. It also feels like enemies see you from much further away, though I might be mistaken on that.
It's definitely more difficult since you can't spam the crossbow. As for enemies being able to see you from further away, that's not the case. They previously had no cap to how far away they could see you, and could even see you through walls, all so long as you're on the same screen as them. That's no longer the case.
My items are not always restocked when reaching a camp. When it shows "Restocked", it works correctly, but "Restocked" is not always shown, and when it is not, my items are not restocked, I believe. Is it when you first visit a new camp? But, I tried to go out and into the camp again, and then it showed "Restocked", but my items were not restocked.
The way it should work right now, is it only restocks when it actually says you've been restocked. If you enter a camp that's not your current respawn point, it shows a different message, and thus doesn't restock. I'll likely change this whole system in the future.
Nitpick: In the level up screen: "Effect" is a noun", "affect" is a verb. They cover the same meaning, but 'e' should be used when it is a noun, and 'a' when it is a verb. Like, "The 'wet' effect can affect your resistance to fire positive and your resistance to shock and cold negatively".
Ah, my bad. I always mix those up.
I have decided not to use the level and experience system, since I think I can beat the game without it, and I dislike the concept of experience systems in games a bit.
In its current state, it's completely possible to beat the dungeon without leveling, and the difficulty was designed as such. I'm sure it'll be possible to beat the final game without leveling as well, but it won't be designed for it.
Wait, the game notes said that a difficulty system has been added, but where do I select? I do not remember selecting it when starting the tutorial or after the end of the tutorial.
It's in the options menu. If you go to individual gameplay options, you can set some damage modifiers for yourself and the enemies. It's built this way so that when playing multiplayer, if one person sucks, they can give themselves a handicap so they don't die as much, or have an easier time killing enemies.
I found the MP3 player, but I tried to equip it while I had a full inventory, and I got this error: I do not know whether I should stop here or not. Are these errors due to me running the game on Linux? Or are they genuine bugs? The first bug is bad, while the second bug is a bit weird and a bit the player making a silly mistake.
Once again, a weird error. Might have to do with Wine. I think recent versions of GMS allow for exporting to Ubuntu natively from Windows, so I may try that in the future.
From what I remember of GML back in the day, there is no static typing in GML. And that does not make it easier to program in GML in regards to avoiding bugs. And GML is also a bit primitive and limited from what I remember. Have YoyoGames considered looking into adding support for another language than GML? Or, adding optional typing for at least a bit of static typing for GML? Or is that beyond YoyoGames' budget or specializations? Do you know if any other language than GML can be used? GML is one of the main weaknesses of GameMaker from what I hear from people, and while I liked it many years ago in some ways, GML was still primitive and not easy to use for the purpose of developing larger and more complex games. And your game seem rather complex and nice. Do you know if GMS2's development is in stand-by mode or active and going strong? Or if YoyoGames has a good and stable revenue income or not? (You may want to NOT answer these two last questions here, but do it elsewhere anonymously (agdg), since these questions might be a bit sensitive).
Yeah, GML doesn't have static typing, which at least for me is something I'm very used to, since GML was my first language. More recent changes to GML have made a push for some static typing if you set instance parameters in a specific window for objects, but I don't know if that's enforced in code if you modify said parameters. I'll add, the language has come a long way and isn't nearly as primitive as it used to be, but it's still not up there with typical enterprise languages. So far as I'm aware, Yoyo Games isn't planning on adding support for other languages, but that could change since they were recently acquired by Opera (the web browser.) The development of GMS2 is still active and strong, and gets fairly regular updates. As for their revenue, they recently switched to a subscription model for their license rather than a one time purchase, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is causing their finances to improve, though I don't actually know. I personally was grandfathered in on the perpetual one time purchase license.
I meant, you can effectively carry 11 bolts instead of 10, by loading the crossbow and filling up the inventory with 10 bolts, such that there is one bolt loaded in the crossbow and 10 in the inventory.
Sorry, my bad, I meant that you get to kill enemies during the tutorial, and thus can get more experience relative to just starting normally. But, you can also grind after starting normally, so it does not matter.
On the errors: If it is only because of Wine, then I am tempted to try to run it on Windows and see if I still get those errors. But, I would still like to wait for the game to have saving and loading, just in case the game crashes for whatever reason. Will you submit to demo-day 50? And do you think you will have saving ready by then?
I really like the combat in your game.
I'll try to have saving ready for DD 50.
I tried out the game on Windows, and for the poison shooters, I did not get a crash. It might be specific to Wine then.
On the other hand, I can reproduce the bug with the MP3 player, if your inventory is full, and you try to equip the MP3, the game crashes, with the same error message.
Huh, that might be something I over looked. I'll take a peak at it again.
I like the art in the intro a lot, but the animation was somehow smearing ? I don't know the right term, maybe it's just me. The art in the game looks kinda different and simplistic, I wish the characters would be more detailed somehow, I still liked it overall.
Combat is fun, I like the grab mechanic. Nice touch you can lock on a target, well implemented too. Tutorial was well done, but I didn't understand how to use the crossbow and I just died in the room with the poison dudes spamming their poison. It was also pretty challenging, I died a lot which was good to learn the combat, it's challenging and rewarding when you get it right, well done!
I liked the exploding sound when a enemy dies, but I didn't vibe with the music too much.
Hey, thanks for playing.
I'm unsure what the smearing you're talking about would be. Do you mean the monster under the water? It does fade in and out a little bit. Or are you talking about the cruise ship once it's broken? The cruise ship was just cut in half and rotated in GIMP, so that blurred it a little bit.
I'm happy you enjoyed the combat. The current crossbow implementation is a kinda wonky experiment, and I'm going to change it. Right now bolts are in the consumables, meaning you apply them same as you do healing.
All of the music in the game right now is free use, and will likely change in the future.
Things i've noted also :
Almost got destroyed on my first encounter, it was a guy with a giant axe, i had to flee
I got killed by an alone poison thing that flees from you when it sees you and almost couldn't hit it, it was blocked in trees because my sword was hitting the trees instead of the enemy, if that's the way they are supposed to behave that's pretty clever
playing without the shield seems impossible against some ennemies, like the clawed ones
it feels like it's too easy to get the drop on an ennemy when you go behind his back
i didn't figure out how to shoot the crossbow
It's funny to be able to fall off cliffs
It looks like you can't die from bleeding + poison outside of fights since your health regens too fast
Details like the sword being blocked by obstacles really makes the game interesting, it could be cool to have a secondary attack to thrust with it to add variety
The game was pretty fun to play
Hey, thanks for playing. I take it you skipped the tutorial?
Almost got destroyed on my first encounter, it was a guy with a giant axe, i had to flee
Yeah, he can be tough for new players. He's also the boss of the tutorial.
I got killed by an alone poison thing that flees from you when it sees you and almost couldn't hit it, it was blocked in trees because my sword was hitting the trees instead of the enemy, if that's the way they are supposed to behave that's pretty clever
They're not as intelligent as they seem, but running away from the player is the intended behavior. They'd just get lucky if they ran into a position you struggled to deal with them in.
playing without the shield seems impossible against some ennemies, like the clawed ones
Definitely possible, but difficult for new players.
i didn't figure out how to shoot the crossbow
The tutorial teaches you how. You need to equip bolts and then use the bolts, using the consumables button, which the default controls for are Q on KB+M and X/Square on Xbox/Playstation controllers.
It's funny to be able to fall off cliffs
I'm glad you found it funny.
It looks like you can't die from bleeding + poison outside of fights since your health regens too fast
You likely weren't bleeding or poisoned enough for it to be a major issue. The various tiers of status effects is something I'm trying to figure out how to communicate better.
Details like the sword being blocked by obstacles really makes the game interesting, it could be cool to have a secondary attack to thrust with it to add variety
There is a secondary attack to thrust, and it doesn't bounce off walls like the swing does. The controls for it are taught in the tutorial, but default wise, for KB+M it's Shift+M1, and for gamepad it's RB/R1 for Xbox/Playstation.
The game was pretty fun to play
I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. If you ever get the opportunity, try out the tutorial.
First time playing, with controller. Played thirty minutes, up to obtaining the crossbow.
Here's a bunch of things I noted down while playing:
Good responsive UI, good settings, but lacks character.
Needs a dash sound, dash feels very lifeless.
Punching feels useless, I can't connect any hits with it, probably teaches bad habits. It also makes it hard to see the grab concept.
Needs an earlier explanation for the lock-on mechanic, first fight is very difficult for a new player without it.
Nice day-night cycle animation.
HP regen is in a strange place. Not fast enough out of combat, but not slow enough that I would prefer drinking soup.
I first thought the goal indicator was a sun of some sorts. Could be clearer.
Very high initial levelup cost (800) normally such games allow you to level up more earlier on. Also, I must be missing something since I never figured out how to actually increase my stats in the menu.
The ambush got me, nice enemy placement all around.
The UI of the chest is very unclear. It took me long to figure out the way it worked, and that I could equip a lot more soup.
Poisonlads just go for a swim and drown. I ran past the other ones, because fuck those guys.
All in all, it's a pretty fun game, but not my thing. I don't think I got far enough to give a decent critique.
Hey, thanks for playing.
Good responsive UI, good settings, but lacks character.
Definitely right about it lacking character.
Needs a dash sound, dash feels very lifeless.
Good idea.
Punching feels useless, I can't connect any hits with it, probably teaches bad habits. It also makes it hard to see the grab concept.
Hmm, I definitely need to rework both at some point.
Needs an earlier explanation for the lock-on mechanic, first fight is very difficult for a new player without it.
Roger.
Nice day-night cycle animation.
Thanks!
HP regen is in a strange place. Not fast enough out of combat, but not slow enough that I would prefer drinking soup.
This will likely make more sense later down the line when staying out until dark has consequences.
I first thought the goal indicator was a sun of some sorts. Could be clearer.
There is no goal indicator. You were likely looking at the time indicator, meaning it was in fact a sun. I definitely need to give it a better graphic.
Very high initial levelup cost (800) normally such games allow you to level up more earlier on. Also, I must be missing something since I never figured out how to actually increase my stats in the menu.
This might be subjective, but it's relatively easy to get that amount once you're out of the tutorial. That and you can only level up once you're out of the tutorial.
The ambush got me, nice enemy placement all around.
Thanks.
The UI of the chest is very unclear. It took me long to figure out the way it worked, and that I could equip a lot more soup.
Yeah, I need to improve that some more.
Poisonlads just go for a swim and drown. I ran past the other ones, because fuck those guys.
That's the right way to do it.
All in all, it's a pretty fun game, but not my thing. I don't think I got far enough to give a decent critique.
It's all good. You gave me a few ideas on what to work on next.