Definitely improved since the last time! The new room layouts and traps makes the fights more dynamic, especially the exploding barrels can add some strategy to the rooms. Progression of unlocking spells felt like it had a decent pacing. And in general, the game definitely feels more fun than last time I remember.
- For the traps, might be interesting if they could push the dynamics of the room more, with traps turning on/off, laser turrets speeding up or changing direction, or something like that - might be worth experimenting with. - In one shop I came across two different upgrades with their description "faster shot" and "makes you shoot faster". I assume the former is about projectile speed? Might be good to make it clearer. - Boss HP bars always face the boss and are pretty small. Would make it easier to see if it'd always face the camera and perhaps if it were a bit bigger. - Right now the biggest thing that's missing in my opinion is a good feedback for your attacks. Enemies don't really react to getting hit other than a bit of blood splatter for some, and when they die their ragdoll just turn on and they flop with their already existing momentum. Same goes with the hand animations - they're kinda slow and small at the moment and don't really have any "punch".
Thank you for playing and for your feedback! I'm glad the new rooms and progression are more fun!
Good idea, I'll include more complex traps.
Yeah, "makes you shoot faster" is cadence and "faster shots" is the actual speed of the projectiles. I'll rename that.
I plan on eventually adding the boss HP bar to the HUD like in other games.
I've researched some gore and live dismemberment plugins, I might include that in future versions. It would gave some feedback and it looks really badass.
I've been struggling with the hand animations, do you have any concrete ideas? I want to add active items and scrolls with cool casting animations, but I'm really out of ideas for animations with the default weapon spells.
For the hand animations, speeding them up would probably do a lot. Personally for anything sustained I'd try adding some kind of shaking to the hand, while for spells that have individual shots I'd try either some kind of "recoil" to the hand or some sort of swift movement (up/down, side to side, a flick, stuff like that)
I played this a while back and the game feels a lot smoother and more fun than it did months ago. Some comments:
Maybe it's just because of how I play but boss balancing seemed a bit inconsistent, my first try I got to the first boss room and got oneshot by the mancubus guy with a rocket launcher. I got the same guy my next run through and was able to just barely scrape by with 3 health. Next run I got some wierd lava man with claw hands that jumped around and was completely non threatening. I also got the spider guy that jumps around at the end of the second cathedral who was similarly easy. Not sure if the mancubus guy is supposed to be harder than the others or if I'm dumb and missing something with that guy.
being able to kill enemies before they spawn feels cheap
I remember complaining about the dash last time I played but it seems alright now
The sword felt a bit OP because I could just swing into a big clump of enemies and get a bunch of health and armor, but I was only playing on normal mode so maybe it's fine as is
When the Cacodemon looking guys and the metal spider guys use the attack that splashes a bunch of projectiles around them all the projectiles making an impact sound at once is very loud
Random upgrade system is good, but I'm not sure what some of the upgrades do. For example I assume that luck has to do with item drops and maybe crit rates? but I'm not sure if it affects anything else.
Yeah, the bosses suck right now. I basically picked regular enemies and made them stronger. I plan on making real bosses with special attacks. The fat demon is actually pretty easy if you keep your distance and circle around him.
I'll do something about the spawn killing, this has been bugging me as well.
That's the point of the sword, but I'll see to make it more balanced. Right now it's only really strong in the cathedral floors. Later there are less and less cannonfodder enemies and using the sword is riskier.
Good point! Maybe I can fix the sound by changing the concurrency setting.
Hmm, I could make a short F1 or Help menu point where I quickly explain the stats. Luck only affects item drops, crit rate is another stat.
The sword does not have long reach, at least against wooden boxes.
Is there a bug in the map at the top right?
The arrow is not on top of the rectangles.
I dislike having to go around and smashing all the crates after a level is completed. Might it make sense to have all crates auto-destroy once finishing a level? And maybe also have all items auto-move towards the player, or would that prevent players from saving items if they are low on health and want to backtrack? Then again, the crates can be used for experimentation and training (like timing a sword swing). I just imagine that it can be bothersome in the long run.
I did not have an easy time seeing from afar the difference between regular "zombies" and armed zombies, apart from shots being fired, but it might not be important.
In the first boss room, I accidentally went to the next level instead of checking out the two side rooms.
For weapon three/shotgun weapon, the red crystals look a bit shaky when looking up and down.
After I bought a "crown of thorns", the helper text from the shop is still around in the subsequent levels.
I like the boss fights so far, I have completed two at this point. Nice introduction to concepts, weapons, enemies and counters.
I ended up dying at catacombs 1, I did not realize that the spike traps were traps, and they ended up killing me.
Fun enough game, very hectic, my usual tactic was to just run around in a circle around the room and shoot at prioritized targets.
Thank you for playing and for your detailed bug report, I'll make sure to fix them for the next version!
>I dislike having to go around and smashing all the crates after a level is completed. Might it make sense to have all crates auto-destroy once finishing a level? And maybe also have all items auto-move towards the player, or would that prevent players from saving items if they are low on health and want to backtrack? Then again, the crates can be used for experimentation and training (like timing a sword swing). I just imagine that it can be bothersome in the long run.
Good idea! I'll make items to auto-pull pickups and auto-destroy crates.
I was not aware that there is an itch.io player. I think the reason was the custom launcher I made. I reuploaded it with the correct manifest file, it should work now.
I like the setting and in theory the concept should work well.
But the combat isn't great, shooting a hail of projectiles until the enemies ragdolize just doesn't feel satisfying. imo enemies need painstates and maybe gibbing, something to give combat better feedback.
The hell arenas are more fun to traverse than the cathedral arenas, but the enemy AI has a lot of trouble navigating them, more than once I had to hunt down stuck enemies to progress.
When entering the first hell arena I spawned under the map and kept falling until the game teleported me back, I also saw some enemies falling with me. (screenshot attached)
Also are the enemies that spawn when you get a new weapon supposed to be bosses? The AoE mage guy in the hell arena kinda felt like one but the others really didn't. If that's the case, I'd put the healthbar on-screen
I had fun beating it, but the enemies need work. Only played desktop mode btw.
Looks like I'll spend the next 2 months improving the combat and enemies.
Yeah, that's the problem when spawning the enemies randomly. I plan on eventually handcrafting the enemy positions or at least make a smarter randomized solution.
The falling out of the map bug should be fixed now.
Well, they serve the purpose of a boss but they're just regular enemies with more HP. Eventually I want to give them all special attacks like the skeleton mage has.
Hmmm. Did you start the regular or the VR exe? Stereo rendering is only needed in VR. Can you try running Magic4.exe from Sunscreen\Magic4\Binaries\Win64?
glad i was able to play. my furthest run was until cathedral 3, a few rooms in. i got unlucky with some rooms that had very little space to move around in and i got rocketed to death by a fat guy. i think you could benefit from a gimmickless room type, without the laser pillar and water - just a big open room with plenty of space. some cathedral 1 rooms had it, but then things just get more cramped with bigger enemies making it difficult to maneuver. there were some small issues, such as
>enemy hitbox exists before they 'teleport' in, meaning i can shoot upon entering a room and hit them >barrels and blue .. things? exploding barrels? sometimes dont shatter >right click attack got stuck, needed to switch to to sword/board to reset it >sword and board feels completely useless. the range of melee is also too small to hit anything without being hit myself >mana meter for standard weapons lacks a purpose. i hold down LMB and RMB when i enter a room, and stop once everything is dead. my mana is well in acceptable ranges, even without any upgrades. perhaps mana should be 50max (perhaps this is a difficulty option? i played on normal) >the player's lightsource is weird when moving close to an object. pressing your face against your vatican-space-pod thing at the start of the game makes it dark, due to the lighting being blocked >enemy textures are too dark. all enemies feel like shapes without any details on them due to the texture colors. i can tell they're there, they show off once i'm closer, but during a fight i can only really see the details on the sword carrying enemy. everyone else is too dark to get a proper read. i get this might be to either cover up the AI textures, or some other limitation, but personally i'd up the brightness on all enemies by a lot of course, there are also plenty of positives >i like the atmosphere, style and design of things. i also like the rather abstract art and item designs >the weapon wheel and multiple projectile types are very fun. having "builds" with different left/right hand weapons is always a delight in FPS games >the enemy designs are very imaginative, even with the AI art on top of them.
either way it was very fun blasting things around. there is clearly a lot of improvement since my last playthrough. since ive read that you could use some motivation to continue on this project, let me tell you that it's worth it. i hope that you will continue developing it despite the hardships, because you have a fun game on your hands. keep it up.
Thank you for feedback and your kind words! Motivation has been an issue but after every break I picked the game up again and continued. I'm in so deep I can't just stop now.
Those are excellent points! I'll address every single one of them in future versions. I plan on including some new content (new catacombs level, new bosses) and completely overhaul the combat system for the next version. And yeah, the enemies are dark to hide the bad textures lol. I tried increasing albedo but they look better when they're dark.
I only focused on progression and balancing in this version. I split the first floor up into 3 floor and made a new one. Some new enemies, a new boss, cosmetics, traps, destroyable chests. I didn't do anything for VR, I'd advise you to play it in desktop mode. Multiplayer should work fine!
Comments
Definitely improved since the last time! The new room layouts and traps makes the fights more dynamic, especially the exploding barrels can add some strategy to the rooms. Progression of unlocking spells felt like it had a decent pacing. And in general, the game definitely feels more fun than last time I remember.
- For the traps, might be interesting if they could push the dynamics of the room more, with traps turning on/off, laser turrets speeding up or changing direction, or something like that - might be worth experimenting with.
- In one shop I came across two different upgrades with their description "faster shot" and "makes you shoot faster". I assume the former is about projectile speed? Might be good to make it clearer.
- Boss HP bars always face the boss and are pretty small. Would make it easier to see if it'd always face the camera and perhaps if it were a bit bigger.
- Right now the biggest thing that's missing in my opinion is a good feedback for your attacks. Enemies don't really react to getting hit other than a bit of blood splatter for some, and when they die their ragdoll just turn on and they flop with their already existing momentum. Same goes with the hand animations - they're kinda slow and small at the moment and don't really have any "punch".
Thank you for playing and for your feedback! I'm glad the new rooms and progression are more fun!
Good idea, I'll include more complex traps.
Yeah, "makes you shoot faster" is cadence and "faster shots" is the actual speed of the projectiles. I'll rename that.
I plan on eventually adding the boss HP bar to the HUD like in other games.
I've researched some gore and live dismemberment plugins, I might include that in future versions. It would gave some feedback and it looks really badass.
I've been struggling with the hand animations, do you have any concrete ideas? I want to add active items and scrolls with cool casting animations, but I'm really out of ideas for animations with the default weapon spells.
For the hand animations, speeding them up would probably do a lot. Personally for anything sustained I'd try adding some kind of shaking to the hand, while for spells that have individual shots I'd try either some kind of "recoil" to the hand or some sort of swift movement (up/down, side to side, a flick, stuff like that)
I played this a while back and the game feels a lot smoother and more fun than it did months ago. Some comments:
Thank you for playing and for your feedback!
Yeah, the bosses suck right now. I basically picked regular enemies and made them stronger. I plan on making real bosses with special attacks. The fat demon is actually pretty easy if you keep your distance and circle around him.
I'll do something about the spawn killing, this has been bugging me as well.
That's the point of the sword, but I'll see to make it more balanced. Right now it's only really strong in the cathedral floors. Later there are less and less cannonfodder enemies and using the sword is riskier.
Good point! Maybe I can fix the sound by changing the concurrency setting.
Hmm, I could make a short F1 or Help menu point where I quickly explain the stats. Luck only affects item drops, crit rate is another stat.
Not using the Itch.io player.
The sword does not have long reach, at least against wooden boxes.
Is there a bug in the map at the top right? The arrow is not on top of the rectangles.
I dislike having to go around and smashing all the crates after a level is completed. Might it make sense to have all crates auto-destroy once finishing a level? And maybe also have all items auto-move towards the player, or would that prevent players from saving items if they are low on health and want to backtrack? Then again, the crates can be used for experimentation and training (like timing a sword swing). I just imagine that it can be bothersome in the long run.
I did not have an easy time seeing from afar the difference between regular "zombies" and armed zombies, apart from shots being fired, but it might not be important.
In the first boss room, I accidentally went to the next level instead of checking out the two side rooms.
For weapon three/shotgun weapon, the red crystals look a bit shaky when looking up and down.
After I bought a "crown of thorns", the helper text from the shop is still around in the subsequent levels.
I like the boss fights so far, I have completed two at this point. Nice introduction to concepts, weapons, enemies and counters.
I ended up dying at catacombs 1, I did not realize that the spike traps were traps, and they ended up killing me.
Fun enough game, very hectic, my usual tactic was to just run around in a circle around the room and shoot at prioritized targets.
Thank you for playing and for your detailed bug report, I'll make sure to fix them for the next version!
>I dislike having to go around and smashing all the crates after a level is completed. Might it make sense to have all crates auto-destroy once finishing a level? And maybe also have all items auto-move towards the player, or would that prevent players from saving items if they are low on health and want to backtrack? Then again, the crates can be used for experimentation and training (like timing a sword swing). I just imagine that it can be bothersome in the long run.
Good idea! I'll make items to auto-pull pickups and auto-destroy crates.
The application closes instantly when I try to run it within the Itch.io player.
I have sandboxing enabled in the Itch.io player. Are you using features that would be stopped by the sandbox?
I was not aware that there is an itch.io player. I think the reason was the custom launcher I made. I reuploaded it with the correct manifest file, it should work now.
I like the setting and in theory the concept should work well.
But the combat isn't great, shooting a hail of projectiles until the enemies ragdolize just doesn't feel satisfying.
imo enemies need painstates and maybe gibbing, something to give combat better feedback.
The hell arenas are more fun to traverse than the cathedral arenas, but the enemy AI has a lot of trouble navigating them, more than once I had to hunt down stuck enemies to progress.
When entering the first hell arena I spawned under the map and kept falling until the game teleported me back, I also saw some enemies falling with me. (screenshot attached)
Also are the enemies that spawn when you get a new weapon supposed to be bosses?
The AoE mage guy in the hell arena kinda felt like one but the others really didn't.
If that's the case, I'd put the healthbar on-screen
I had fun beating it, but the enemies need work.
Only played desktop mode btw.
Thank you for your feedback!
Looks like I'll spend the next 2 months improving the combat and enemies.
Yeah, that's the problem when spawning the enemies randomly. I plan on eventually handcrafting the enemy positions or at least make a smarter randomized solution.
The falling out of the map bug should be fixed now.
Well, they serve the purpose of a boss but they're just regular enemies with more HP. Eventually I want to give them all special attacks like the skeleton mage has.
couldn't get it to run properly. most likely on my end, since i own an antique toaster
Hmmm. Did you start the regular or the VR exe? Stereo rendering is only needed in VR. Can you try running Magic4.exe from Sunscreen\Magic4\Binaries\Win64?
tried regular, not VR
magic4 has the same error message, no difference.
I made a new version where I disabled ISR. Hopefully that fixes it.
works. will reply with a review once ready
glad i was able to play. my furthest run was until cathedral 3, a few rooms in. i got unlucky with some rooms that had very little space to move around in and i got rocketed to death by a fat guy. i think you could benefit from a gimmickless room type, without the laser pillar and water - just a big open room with plenty of space. some cathedral 1 rooms had it, but then things just get more cramped with bigger enemies making it difficult to maneuver. there were some small issues, such as
>enemy hitbox exists before they 'teleport' in, meaning i can shoot upon entering a room and hit them
>barrels and blue .. things? exploding barrels? sometimes dont shatter
>right click attack got stuck, needed to switch to to sword/board to reset it
>sword and board feels completely useless. the range of melee is also too small to hit anything without being hit myself
>mana meter for standard weapons lacks a purpose. i hold down LMB and RMB when i enter a room, and stop once everything is dead. my mana is well in acceptable ranges, even without any upgrades. perhaps mana should be 50max (perhaps this is a difficulty option? i played on normal)
>the player's lightsource is weird when moving close to an object. pressing your face against your vatican-space-pod thing at the start of the game makes it dark, due to the lighting being blocked
>enemy textures are too dark. all enemies feel like shapes without any details on them due to the texture colors. i can tell they're there, they show off once i'm closer, but during a fight i can only really see the details on the sword carrying enemy. everyone else is too dark to get a proper read. i get this might be to either cover up the AI textures, or some other limitation, but personally i'd up the brightness on all enemies by a lot
of course, there are also plenty of positives
>i like the atmosphere, style and design of things. i also like the rather abstract art and item designs
>the weapon wheel and multiple projectile types are very fun. having "builds" with different left/right hand weapons is always a delight in FPS games
>the enemy designs are very imaginative, even with the AI art on top of them.
either way it was very fun blasting things around. there is clearly a lot of improvement since my last playthrough. since ive read that you could use some motivation to continue on this project, let me tell you that it's worth it. i hope that you will continue developing it despite the hardships, because you have a fun game on your hands. keep it up.
Thank you for feedback and your kind words! Motivation has been an issue but after every break I picked the game up again and continued. I'm in so deep I can't just stop now.
Those are excellent points! I'll address every single one of them in future versions. I plan on including some new content (new catacombs level, new bosses) and completely overhaul the combat system for the next version. And yeah, the enemies are dark to hide the bad textures lol. I tried increasing albedo but they look better when they're dark.
I only focused on progression and balancing in this version. I split the first floor up into 3 floor and made a new one. Some new enemies, a new boss, cosmetics, traps, destroyable chests. I didn't do anything for VR, I'd advise you to play it in desktop mode. Multiplayer should work fine!