I would like some indicator when im picking up something that requires two hands and will make me drop everything else
I also wish i had a separate button for each hand, i ended up juggling weapons and shields a couple of times because i tried to pick up something new when a weapon broke
I really think you should be able to stash 1 set of weapons on your back, its a bit awkward dropping everything when im e.g. on a ladder or want to bring out my bubble gun. Im assuming you're doing this so you can have some control over the arena? But at the same time i dont think it will break anything since it's not (currently) that room based.
I got a bit lost in the castle not knowing what to do but understandably it's wip.
Nice immersiveness, it was great burning the door and i accidentally burned the starting table. But then i kind of forgot about it. More of this.
Now here's the big one, I LOVE the bubble gun. I think that's your USP in this game and I would tbh go all in on it. It's cool that you can pick up weapons and brooms but all i wanted to do was to bubble people and kick them around, it was super fun. I would love to see this expanded with tools that lets you combine actions.
Maybe i can also spawn traps, e.g. a fire pit or a small spike. Bubble enemy and kick them into it.
More bubble puzzles, the one you had with the barrel flipping the switch is such a cool "ahaaa" moment
More ways to interact with: jump on the bubble, stack them, be able to fly around in it, shoot at speed knocking stuff over etc
tl;dr i loved the bubble gun, would love to see it mixed together with the physics.
Great round of feedback, thanks for taking the time! Few things I'd like to respond to:
The whole "picking up" weapons thing is going to get an overhaul at some point, with things like
Loadout slots to store 2 (one for each hand) or 1 that goes on both hands
UI or some sort of indication of durability
Every weapon will have charging attacks but will still be throwable
A button to swap which hand it's using or a way to equip it in the opposite hand by holding the interact button or something
The design of the castle is indeed pretty whack, I rushed it, I've just uploaded a revision that at least makes one room make more sense but it doesn't quite fix it.
Now as for the Bubble Gun while I think it's a good starting point and something that will be relevant through the whole game I do have plans to make a few magic weapons that might not be as memorable but will be decent counterparts and complements to it.
Enjoyed myself quite a bit, physics fun abound. Pacing felt great and the hat showed up just in time to add the spice of the bubble mechanic. Though it felt a bit weird that the fire mechanic never comes up again after the first area, at least that I recall. I also like the scale of the environment, really makes you FEEL like a small child, as well as make the tower more domineering.
Only negative I can think of is that at several points it felt like you could softlock yourself, especially when dragging crates and bubbling them up, if you fell back down while they stay on the higher level. Though I didn't try, maybe you already have a system to ensure that doesn't happen.
Wow. This feels great to play. The assets are phenomenal and the bubble gun is a really cool mechanic. I had a ton of fun just playing around on the farm after the tutorial level kicking and bouncing around- I think you're really onto something here. I don't have too much to criticize since it is already such a polished experience- just wanted to say great job and I'll be on the lookout for more.
I really like this. There is not much I can actualy criticise since the entire thing is very well made. Here are some little nitpicks.
I kept throwing my weapons because I'm used from other games to hold attack button to do heavy attack instead of throwing it.
Personaly, I would like if enemies ragdolled or rolled a bit backwards. after getting kicked. While it doesn't really make much sence for them to do so, dying light and dark messiah both make enemies ragdoll after getting kicked, which makes kicking them into traps much more satisfying. However, it also makes kicking overpowered.
Picking up things like crates and barrels needs some work. If you press E to pick something up and quickly look away, the object you wanted to pick up just slighly jumps towards you and you drop it.
And that's pretty much it. Everything else is great.
It's totally annoying indeed, I want to overhaul the whole picking up weapons thing so you can keep one or two around in your weapon slots until they break and each should have charged attacks, I still want to have the option to throw them though so I'll have to figure out how, thinking of making it so you can hold attack and then use the drop button to throw it
The game is already pretty unbalanced so that would totally suck ass, one thing that happens sometimes is that it's inconsistent how far they get pushed back so that needs work still
Yea that was bad already but after doing some CPU optimization it works even worse because physics used to update more frequently, gotta fix that sometime soon.
Really wanted to play this, it looks fantastic but I'm on Linux and Proton doesn't like Unreal Engine, at least not whatever version you're using. The game seems to work but it stutters frames as if interpolation was getting turned off every time there's a physics update.
Linux support is getting better and better (going into the cloud is forcing their hand) so it could be enough to package for Linux and have it just work.
Are you trying to play it by adding it to steam as a non steam game? A friend of mine tried to run it through proton and failed but then through steam it worked, dunno why but
I was running it with a shell script using Proton externally. Adding it as a non-steam game though totally worked!
I like how you can light the arrows by shooting through the braziers.
Really need a nice serif font and some appropriate menu UI.
I also really like the speed up in the animation and footsteps when you're on stairs
I couldn't rebind the keys, the button didn't work. I am a zealot who insists having E as the interact key is heresy. That said, I like how you have both the toggled and held versions of a crouch key.
Also, in technical terms, what does Camera Smoothing do?
You've got sprint/dash set up by default the way I set it up in Darktide. Nice. Very intuitive. The combat in general is really natural, I had no trouble dodging and weaving and kicking.
The weapons have enough durability to be useful without feeling like they're made of paper. Though it would be good to have some way to tell how much use a weapon has left, I didn't see anything at least.
I noticed the bad guys in the test area have trouble picking up the big pickaxe. They sprint up to it and kick it away from themselves before they have a chance to pick it up.
Stacking boxes around is very intuitive, that's hard to do, kudos!
The ladders and chains are also very intuitive to use. Good job! I just didn't see if there was a way to drop straight down from a chain, do you have to jump?
The starting prison area just ended with a black screen when I was near a minecart track
The big hub area (the second level?) could use some optimization. I have a mid-range computer and I always turn AA off, but that big multi-level hall was the only area where I noticed the framerate dip significantly. Especially the big carpeted hallway junction next to the tower with the tree in it. You can take advantage of the windows being practically opaque to have them just actually become opaque if you're 10m or so away and that could allow you to occlude more stuff.
The shading looks really bad if shadows aren't set to max. Is there baked lighting or only dynamic?
Other than that though, the environments look absolutely gorgeous. I love it.
The buttons used for dropping held weapons don't work if holding a crate or barrel.
Is there any food in the barrels painted with apple and drumstick symbols?
Arrows stuck to the player is a great touch. Though they don't quite match your movement animation. Should apply the camera bob animation to them as well because otherwise they look much more obviously like a distinct entity.
The sound design is really good. Hearing the clomp of the MC's heels echoing all around really sells the massive interiors, and then it's super comfy to thud around on the carpets.
This game is shaping up to be really excellent, I was absorbed for hours. I got stuck where there were two big grates at either end of the great hall. I could see more automatons behind each but couldn't find any switch to open the doors with. I saw there was a side way in from the kitchen but couldn't see a way to open it either.
Gee that's a long comment, thank you so much for taking the time, a round of feedback like this is something I can only dream of having, let's go through it.
👍
Indeed, making UI is a chore and I've slacked there
👍
Yea that feature is just not done and I forgot I even put the button there on the first place, sorry
It adds a little delay when you move around so it takes a little while to pause, I don't think it's quite "smoothing" and it's something I need to rework, oh well
👍
I want to be more clear about weapon durability so you can plan your attacks, I just never got down to do it, not sure yet if I'll have a little UI with an icon of the weapon that changes color as it degrades, or somehow express it in the weapon visuals themselves
The whole "picking up" weapons logic needs quite a lot of work indeed 😩
👍, I'm not quite happy with the handling of physics as of yet, they get stuck really easily if they collide with something but, well, needs work
👍 If you crouch + jump while in a ladder you do drop down, I'm thinking on adding little control tips depending on player context so I can tell them stuff like being able to sprint while in ladders, sprint while swimming, dropping down, remind them which is the interact key when they can interact with stuff (a LOT of people by instinct click on stuff instead of E)
👍, the prison level should go for a while longer before entering the game proper but at the moment I wanted to make like the first proper level of the game so I left it unfinished
The thing with performance at the moment is that the graphics part of the game should be running fine, I haven't optimized certain things so I'm not saying there isn't work to be done there but the game is mostly bottlenecked by the CPU because of physics and AI. I did some last minute optimization so the AI is ticking slower if far away and their physics aren't activated but chances are that in that part the enemies nearby are activating and using up more resources than in other parts of the map because there is a fair bit of them.
Once again I've been slacking off, the sunlight is dynamic as well as the fire sources in the levels, by lowering the lighting quality shadows from the sun as basically deactivated because I found out a way of using really cheap really sharp shadows with this thing called Distance Fields, the problem is that that's the only quality option that exists is basically on/off but I think I can get more options going on
👍
🤔
Yea some apples should be dropping
Ah yes they should attach to the camera or something
👍👍
I'm still figuring out how to design the levels and I kind of rushed to get this one ready for demoday so the objective is absolutely not clear, but well, still figuring out.
If you want to play the whole thing though, you just have to go upstairs and next to the bell and the dormitory there is a lever that opens the gate that leads to the outer patio, but you might want to wait to the next iteration once the level is more proper.
Once again thanks for the comment, insightful stuff!
Comments
Still really solid, few things here and there need polishing but I'm excited to see where it goes!
Great stuff with a lot of existing polish :)
here are some points
tl;dr i loved the bubble gun, would love to see it mixed together with the physics.
Great round of feedback, thanks for taking the time! Few things I'd like to respond to:
The whole "picking up" weapons thing is going to get an overhaul at some point, with things like
The design of the castle is indeed pretty whack, I rushed it, I've just uploaded a revision that at least makes one room make more sense but it doesn't quite fix it.
Now as for the Bubble Gun while I think it's a good starting point and something that will be relevant through the whole game I do have plans to make a few magic weapons that might not be as memorable but will be decent counterparts and complements to it.
sounds all good, i assumed most of it was WIP. Looking forward to seeing future iteration!
Enjoyed myself quite a bit, physics fun abound. Pacing felt great and the hat showed up just in time to add the spice of the bubble mechanic. Though it felt a bit weird that the fire mechanic never comes up again after the first area, at least that I recall. I also like the scale of the environment, really makes you FEEL like a small child, as well as make the tower more domineering.
Only negative I can think of is that at several points it felt like you could softlock yourself, especially when dragging crates and bubbling them up, if you fell back down while they stay on the higher level. Though I didn't try, maybe you already have a system to ensure that doesn't happen.
Excited to see what you add next time.
Wow. This feels great to play. The assets are phenomenal and the bubble gun is a really cool mechanic. I had a ton of fun just playing around on the farm after the tutorial level kicking and bouncing around- I think you're really onto something here. I don't have too much to criticize since it is already such a polished experience- just wanted to say great job and I'll be on the lookout for more.
I really like this. There is not much I can actualy criticise since the entire thing is very well made. Here are some little nitpicks.
And that's pretty much it. Everything else is great.
nicee
thanks for playan!
Really wanted to play this, it looks fantastic but I'm on Linux and Proton doesn't like Unreal Engine, at least not whatever version you're using. The game seems to work but it stutters frames as if interpolation was getting turned off every time there's a physics update.
Linux support is getting better and better (going into the cloud is forcing their hand) so it could be enough to package for Linux and have it just work.
Are you trying to play it by adding it to steam as a non steam game? A friend of mine tried to run it through proton and failed but then through steam it worked, dunno why but
I was running it with a shell script using Proton externally. Adding it as a non-steam game though totally worked!
This game is shaping up to be really excellent, I was absorbed for hours. I got stuck where there were two big grates at either end of the great hall. I could see more automatons behind each but couldn't find any switch to open the doors with. I saw there was a side way in from the kitchen but couldn't see a way to open it either.
Cute MC.
Gee that's a long comment, thank you so much for taking the time, a round of feedback like this is something I can only dream of having, let's go through it.
I'm still figuring out how to design the levels and I kind of rushed to get this one ready for demoday so the objective is absolutely not clear, but well, still figuring out.
If you want to play the whole thing though, you just have to go upstairs and next to the bell and the dormitory there is a lever that opens the gate that leads to the outer patio, but you might want to wait to the next iteration once the level is more proper.
Once again thanks for the comment, insightful stuff!