I don't play FPS games. It seemed to me that with all the dive mechanics and shit, that your intention was to play really fast. But the few times I tried I died miserably. So instead I just peeked at every corner and slow-moed, and finally managed to die a bunch of times more and quit. Not sure if I would try it again. But I did honestly have a good time with it.
So yeah, the main thing I'd say is that the way I played it isn't particularly interesting. But I didn't know how else to play the game. If that makes sense. Again. Not a FPS player. So perhaps my opinion doesn't matter. At any rate, you have the stream if you're curious to see how I fared.
Clearly in an early stage, but the gunplay is fun.
If you want to keep things frantic there's no reason for sprinting to consume your bullet time meter, it's not a big problem but imo there's no reason for it. guns-wise the starting pistol is fine, shotguns were great, automatic weapons felt like you're exposing yourself too much when it comes to the tougher enemies. Some sort of suppression mechanic where enemies stop shooting at you straight if they're being shot at would help keeping the pace fast. That or health packs: individually they're easy to deal with but they do chip away at your health unless you're playing very carefully, and from what I gather you want flashy plays rather than methodical corner peeking.
Pressing retry from the menu does not reset your health to 100%.
I'm curious to see this with proper enemies, looking forward to playing more of this!
There's a lot of juice in this one, the firefights are cool, the ammo UI is peak (even if for the shotguns it isn't technically accurate, but that's a minor nitpick), and I love the way the guns are their own separate entities instead of them being just a HUD element and how you can still somewhat manage the recoil with the mouse. The difficulty in general felt right for the most part with enemies having trouble locking you in as long as you keep moving, except for the shotgunners that pellet you instantly with pinpoint accuracy from moment one. I also wish the shotguns had less spread, as they are not really useful at the moment, especailly compared to all the other options.
The way you charge up your slow-mo meter is neat as it encourages you to stay in the fight instead of staying away, the only issue is that the moment I haven't found any way to get more health/armor so ended up having to play more tactically instead engaging with the action. I'm also not in favor of sprinting using the same bar as slowmo, and the fact that sprinting runs forward by default instead of going to the direction pressed threw me off a good amount of time.
It seems a lot more challenging than last time, in particular you seem really dependent on the slomo now and pretty much need to have it turned on every time you round a corner. I’m not sure if that’s a good way to do it, considering the main mechanic is building up slomo juice you reach a point where you’re just using it all the time. At that point I’m questioning why you wouldn’t just have the agility benefits of slomo as a default. I say this because I’m comparing to playing FEAR which I usually play on hard without using the slomo at all and the difference in your game seems much more prominent.
I swear you used to be able to powerslide because I remember having way more mobility the last time I played. Now if you don’t focus down on shooting someone if they’re in the same room you’re pretty much dead.
You can hear Fate’s VA stifling a laugh after she says “maintenance closet”, lol
I kept going back and looking for the starting gun, not realizing you pull it back out if you drop your current weapon. That’s probably on me.
You need to put in walls extending down and possibly up outside the level. Also, definitely need to make the outside glass breakable, just be careful of physics costs. It may make more sense to just do it with mostly particles.
The man himself! Thank you so much for giving it a try again.
In my dev testing, I absolutely agree with you that it's kinda leaning into reliance on slowmo. I think part of it is level design, since it's sparser and open rooms in some cases, and others it's tight corners. Most importantly, it basically feels like the previous AI challenge is double-downed. With the AI rework, I'm hoping to make things feel a little better. I'll keep your comments in mind though, because they perfectly sum up my own thoughts too! Thanks. Going off of your FEAR experience, I'll be doing some test runs without slowmo as well to see how it goes.
Oh right. I totally messed up the tutorial, because I forgot to say that you can powerslide with a dedicated key. It's Alt.
For Fate's VA, you can blaim Haid's SO lol. It's all placeholder stuff though, so I'm more than grateful that it's even there and not some ElevenLabs slop.
The new test level is way closer to the kind of overall look that I want, but I'm both dissatisfied with some of the unfinished components. In particular, the floors above and below you need to be present as well. I agree, the floating floor without anything around you when you look out just plain looks odd. But the level's basically going to be reworked because the current GridMap approach is not scalable anyway. So I hope I'll have more than primitives to work with soon.
Oh, the glass being able to break and then something like a blowing wind sound playing, as well as falling to your death is definitely on the "priority fluff" list. I think that'll be in my next DD (59?) submission.
Thanks again. Knowing your thoughts and opinions, I rate this super high and I really appreciate it.
By the way, I swear I'm gonna play your game tonight too, but trying to manage a family at the same time is pushing my limits. So I'll give my thoughts soon!
Holy hell, my man left me an essay. Thanks so much for playing! I'll say up-front that I really appreciate all of the comments you left me.
I totally understand some of the gripes you've left me with. I wanted to make sure that sprint would drive you forward, but with the level changes I want to tune it a little more to be more suitable to the level. It's not where I want to be. Same with the aiming while jumping. I have it on a list somewhere to turn it into a recoil multiplier along with an initial recoil kick, rather than the weird aim modification that it is right now. Thanks for pointing it out. It's a super valuable reminder. The glass is *definitely* going to be breaking soon. It's one of the points I really want to work on, and is gonna be a step into the more immersion level features I'd want for myself.
You're right. Aim is only a single FOV slider along with a modifier for when you are in slowmo. A hidden combo variable determines how much it will zoom in, but adding a separate aiming FOV sounds like a pretty interesting option. The test level wasn't this big before so it's starting to become a small problem.
I feel your satisfaction and frustration with the ninja guys. I made them work out a little more but they're still kind of pushovers, until they really get up close. After a lot of feedback, I made it so you could pick up the sword, but the full melee system isn't really working yet, so you only get a single swing. Kinda bad, but I'd agree, a couple of extra moves would be cool. Unfortunately, you're still a cop.
For the AI in general, honestly it's a recurring comment but I totally agree with you. They need a full rework because they're currently either complete pushovers or extremely brutal. Especially the shotgunners just instantly react and perforate you in seconds. Don't worry, things are going to be overhauled soon. I'm glad you like how they track you. They're meant to be smarter than that, but right now they don't do much else. Currently unfinished, unfortunately. But that will change soon.
I'll take a look at the keybinds issue, but I've noticed that some configs don't change or reset properly *sometimes* in the export builds. I'll play around with it. But thanks, you're one of the few that actually tried to rebind the keys, so I really appreciate it!
There are going to be some future changes regarding ammo pickups (it won't be infinite forever ;)), health and armour pickups, and even other special items like grenades. I hope you'll stay tuned for that! There's other things like trying to hone the feel for features like the slide and vault, because I'm also noticing it feels a little clunky (e.g. if you want to jump over a box instead of vault along it). I'll be tweaking those in time too.
Thanks again for putting the effort into this comment and feedback. Hope you'll stick around for next time. Cheers!
The concept for this game is really really cool, and there's some very fun ideas in there. However, I couldn't figure out a way to power slide really, and crouch jumping didn't feel right for it? The level design needs a lot of work.
You're right. Level design, and some of the core features really aren't coming together, although a lot has changed since my last DD. But I'll be iterating on this in the coming weeks for sure. Hope there'll be more substance there. Things are always in flux, so as the AI and other content pieces come together, so too will the level design. Thanks for raising this. It's really valuable to me.
By the way, to do a basic power slide, just run and hit the Alt key. It's a dedicated button. I sadly forgot to include it in my rush job tutorial.
Really cool game! I liked it! I do have one thing to mention, even though you have all the movement mechanics my preferred way to kill the enemies was from a distance without them noticing (if possible). I don't see it as a negative, I just wanted to point that out that at least for me, the most effective way of playing was that, so I never used any of those mechanics at least when i realized that.
You're absolutely right. AI has been such a poor and broken implementation for long, that it's fast becoming one of my highest priority reworks soon. With a few more level design changes (especially when I have doors, more props and other stuff that adds dynamics to the level), I'll be leaning into more up-close combat. The AI will be reflecting that at the time.
But thanks for pointing it out. Hope you'll be able to see it in the next one!
Weird because the gameplay seemed fine and I even went to the settings and managed to customized them with no problem.
But yeah, there's cool stuff going on.
But are there any lean controls? Because the camera does seem to kinda rotate to either left or right, as if there could've been some peeking-behind-corner mechanic.
I've noticed that the game is periodically closing during the export builds I've been making, but not in dev builds. Rest assured, I'll be looking into it. I have a sneaking suspicion it's Jolt causing troubles. Sorry about that.
I'm so happy you found it interesting. Right now, you're just seeing the Quake lean that I added in. With the way the control scheme is going now, I'd probably want the lean to either be contextual, or just not present, to be honest. With AI reworks, I'd be happy with face checking corners. But you definitely made the neurons fire with your comment. I'll give it some good consideration.
-Nice music -Very nice main menu -shotgun and SMG have a nice feeling, Carbine seems underpowered, lacking a scope, smaller levels favor faster weapons -Letting go of crouch under the barrier made me get stuck -Neat reloading animation with the shells flying off(boltgun inspired?) -I think there's an input buffer which if you shoot while reloading, the shot releases after you're done reloading. I don't like that. Jumping and shooting makes the gun shoot way off at the ceiling. I suggest resetting aim instantly if the user shoots(also from sprint). try to remember games where you enjoy jump shooting around corners, COD, Max Payne etc
After getting demolished instantly by red shotgunners a few times I'm putting it down I went near a door, the enemy instantly went at me from ambush, I shot a bunch while retreating but died right away. (I had the SMG) Those enemies in particular are a bit too strong. Their design being placed in tighter places is almost like a precision platformer putting Gotcha moments where you have to get hit to learn the level. The thing is.. shooters levels aren't typically replayed to perfection until you learn every enemy's location. Still, the core experience is enjoyable, good job.
Thanks for getting aroudn to playing it. I really appreciate all of the points you raised. I'm glad there was stuff that you liked.
There is definitely a polish issue in many of these cases, simply because of how much there is to do. Things like balance tweaking, and that pesky input buffer (which works fine in many cases, but as you pointed out, shooting after a reload is really weird). I'll be taking your feedback and addressing them. I really appreciate it.
Regarding the shotgunning enemies and some of the level design, I totally agree with you. The level is around what I'd like the game to play with, but AI is super rudimentary, and is one of the next features I'm going to be reworking. Your frustrations are valid, and they're not behaving how I want them to. So stay tuned and I hope you'll enjoy it again once I've sorted them out.
There was a recent critical bug that made restarting a level break the game. If you downloaded a previous version, please give the new build a try. Thanks!
i did a crouch dive and ended up under the area where you needed to crouch, and got stuck. had to restart. on the first mission after the tutorial, whenver i died and respawned the game was bugged and unplayable. no sound, i couldnt shoot anyone. i restarted the game and the same thing happened when i died again. i like the aesthetic, music fits nicely. but i cant really say much other than that at this time.
I think I know what the issues are for these. I'm busy working now, but I'll be fixing these in the next few hours. Especially the sound issue being related to multiple levels being around now. I hope you'll try it again when it's fixed.
I made a fix for the sound issue. I know there's still issues around (like with the crouch), but testing the new build seems to run fine. Please give it a try if you can and let me know if it's working fine for you. Thanks again!
Comments
I played your game, good sir:
I don't play FPS games. It seemed to me that with all the dive mechanics and shit, that your intention was to play really fast. But the few times I tried I died miserably. So instead I just peeked at every corner and slow-moed, and finally managed to die a bunch of times more and quit. Not sure if I would try it again. But I did honestly have a good time with it.
So yeah, the main thing I'd say is that the way I played it isn't particularly interesting. But I didn't know how else to play the game. If that makes sense. Again. Not a FPS player. So perhaps my opinion doesn't matter. At any rate, you have the stream if you're curious to see how I fared.
Good luck with the game!
Great presentation. I had stutter and lag issues on my Linux craptop.
Clearly in an early stage, but the gunplay is fun.
If you want to keep things frantic there's no reason for sprinting to consume your bullet time meter, it's not a big problem but imo there's no reason for it.
guns-wise the starting pistol is fine, shotguns were great, automatic weapons felt like you're exposing yourself too much when it comes to the tougher enemies.
Some sort of suppression mechanic where enemies stop shooting at you straight if they're being shot at would help keeping the pace fast.
That or health packs: individually they're easy to deal with but they do chip away at your health unless you're playing very carefully, and from what I gather you want flashy plays rather than methodical corner peeking.
Pressing retry from the menu does not reset your health to 100%.
I'm curious to see this with proper enemies, looking forward to playing more of this!
There's a lot of juice in this one, the firefights are cool, the ammo UI is peak (even if for the shotguns it isn't technically accurate, but that's a minor nitpick), and I love the way the guns are their own separate entities instead of them being just a HUD element and how you can still somewhat manage the recoil with the mouse. The difficulty in general felt right for the most part with enemies having trouble locking you in as long as you keep moving, except for the shotgunners that pellet you instantly with pinpoint accuracy from moment one. I also wish the shotguns had less spread, as they are not really useful at the moment, especailly compared to all the other options.
The way you charge up your slow-mo meter is neat as it encourages you to stay in the fight instead of staying away, the only issue is that the moment I haven't found any way to get more health/armor so ended up having to play more tactically instead engaging with the action. I'm also not in favor of sprinting using the same bar as slowmo, and the fact that sprinting runs forward by default instead of going to the direction pressed threw me off a good amount of time.
It seems a lot more challenging than last time, in particular you seem really dependent on the slomo now and pretty much need to have it turned on every time you round a corner. I’m not sure if that’s a good way to do it, considering the main mechanic is building up slomo juice you reach a point where you’re just using it all the time. At that point I’m questioning why you wouldn’t just have the agility benefits of slomo as a default. I say this because I’m comparing to playing FEAR which I usually play on hard without using the slomo at all and the difference in your game seems much more prominent.
I swear you used to be able to powerslide because I remember having way more mobility the last time I played. Now if you don’t focus down on shooting someone if they’re in the same room you’re pretty much dead.
You can hear Fate’s VA stifling a laugh after she says “maintenance closet”, lol
I kept going back and looking for the starting gun, not realizing you pull it back out if you drop your current weapon. That’s probably on me.
You need to put in walls extending down and possibly up outside the level. Also, definitely need to make the outside glass breakable, just be careful of physics costs. It may make more sense to just do it with mostly particles.
The man himself! Thank you so much for giving it a try again.
In my dev testing, I absolutely agree with you that it's kinda leaning into reliance on slowmo. I think part of it is level design, since it's sparser and open rooms in some cases, and others it's tight corners. Most importantly, it basically feels like the previous AI challenge is double-downed. With the AI rework, I'm hoping to make things feel a little better. I'll keep your comments in mind though, because they perfectly sum up my own thoughts too! Thanks. Going off of your FEAR experience, I'll be doing some test runs without slowmo as well to see how it goes.
Oh right. I totally messed up the tutorial, because I forgot to say that you can powerslide with a dedicated key. It's Alt.
For Fate's VA, you can blaim Haid's SO lol. It's all placeholder stuff though, so I'm more than grateful that it's even there and not some ElevenLabs slop.
The new test level is way closer to the kind of overall look that I want, but I'm both dissatisfied with some of the unfinished components. In particular, the floors above and below you need to be present as well. I agree, the floating floor without anything around you when you look out just plain looks odd. But the level's basically going to be reworked because the current GridMap approach is not scalable anyway. So I hope I'll have more than primitives to work with soon.
Oh, the glass being able to break and then something like a blowing wind sound playing, as well as falling to your death is definitely on the "priority fluff" list. I think that'll be in my next DD (59?) submission.
Thanks again. Knowing your thoughts and opinions, I rate this super high and I really appreciate it.
By the way, I swear I'm gonna play your game tonight too, but trying to manage a family at the same time is pushing my limits. So I'll give my thoughts soon!
Holy hell, my man left me an essay. Thanks so much for playing! I'll say up-front that I really appreciate all of the comments you left me.
I totally understand some of the gripes you've left me with. I wanted to make sure that sprint would drive you forward, but with the level changes I want to tune it a little more to be more suitable to the level. It's not where I want to be. Same with the aiming while jumping. I have it on a list somewhere to turn it into a recoil multiplier along with an initial recoil kick, rather than the weird aim modification that it is right now. Thanks for pointing it out. It's a super valuable reminder. The glass is *definitely* going to be breaking soon. It's one of the points I really want to work on, and is gonna be a step into the more immersion level features I'd want for myself.
You're right. Aim is only a single FOV slider along with a modifier for when you are in slowmo. A hidden combo variable determines how much it will zoom in, but adding a separate aiming FOV sounds like a pretty interesting option. The test level wasn't this big before so it's starting to become a small problem.
I feel your satisfaction and frustration with the ninja guys. I made them work out a little more but they're still kind of pushovers, until they really get up close. After a lot of feedback, I made it so you could pick up the sword, but the full melee system isn't really working yet, so you only get a single swing. Kinda bad, but I'd agree, a couple of extra moves would be cool. Unfortunately, you're still a cop.
For the AI in general, honestly it's a recurring comment but I totally agree with you. They need a full rework because they're currently either complete pushovers or extremely brutal. Especially the shotgunners just instantly react and perforate you in seconds. Don't worry, things are going to be overhauled soon. I'm glad you like how they track you. They're meant to be smarter than that, but right now they don't do much else. Currently unfinished, unfortunately. But that will change soon.
I'll take a look at the keybinds issue, but I've noticed that some configs don't change or reset properly *sometimes* in the export builds. I'll play around with it. But thanks, you're one of the few that actually tried to rebind the keys, so I really appreciate it!
There are going to be some future changes regarding ammo pickups (it won't be infinite forever ;)), health and armour pickups, and even other special items like grenades. I hope you'll stay tuned for that! There's other things like trying to hone the feel for features like the slide and vault, because I'm also noticing it feels a little clunky (e.g. if you want to jump over a box instead of vault along it). I'll be tweaking those in time too.
Thanks again for putting the effort into this comment and feedback. Hope you'll stick around for next time. Cheers!
The concept for this game is really really cool, and there's some very fun ideas in there. However, I couldn't figure out a way to power slide really, and crouch jumping didn't feel right for it? The level design needs a lot of work.
Thanks for giving the game a try!
You're right. Level design, and some of the core features really aren't coming together, although a lot has changed since my last DD. But I'll be iterating on this in the coming weeks for sure. Hope there'll be more substance there. Things are always in flux, so as the AI and other content pieces come together, so too will the level design. Thanks for raising this. It's really valuable to me.
By the way, to do a basic power slide, just run and hit the Alt key. It's a dedicated button. I sadly forgot to include it in my rush job tutorial.
But thanks again! Hope you'll see more next time.
Really cool game! I liked it! I do have one thing to mention, even though you have all the movement mechanics my preferred way to kill the enemies was from a distance without them noticing (if possible). I don't see it as a negative, I just wanted to point that out that at least for me, the most effective way of playing was that, so I never used any of those mechanics at least when i realized that.
Keep it up!
Hey, thanks for playing!
You're absolutely right. AI has been such a poor and broken implementation for long, that it's fast becoming one of my highest priority reworks soon. With a few more level design changes (especially when I have doors, more props and other stuff that adds dynamics to the level), I'll be leaning into more up-close combat. The AI will be reflecting that at the time.
But thanks for pointing it out. Hope you'll be able to see it in the next one!
For some reason, the game closed at some point.
Weird because the gameplay seemed fine and I even went to the settings and managed to customized them with no problem.
But yeah, there's cool stuff going on.
But are there any lean controls? Because the camera does seem to kinda rotate to either left or right, as if there could've been some peeking-behind-corner mechanic.
Thanks so much for playing!
I've noticed that the game is periodically closing during the export builds I've been making, but not in dev builds. Rest assured, I'll be looking into it. I have a sneaking suspicion it's Jolt causing troubles. Sorry about that.
I'm so happy you found it interesting. Right now, you're just seeing the Quake lean that I added in. With the way the control scheme is going now, I'd probably want the lean to either be contextual, or just not present, to be honest. With AI reworks, I'd be happy with face checking corners. But you definitely made the neurons fire with your comment. I'll give it some good consideration.
Really appreciate it!
damn, pretty hard. took me like 5 tries to go through the building, press the button and take the elevator.
i'm glad to see the restart issue solved.
well done, snake.
Love you bro! I'm glad you managed to get to the end. I gave you a shoutout in my credits :D
-Nice music
-Very nice main menu
-shotgun and SMG have a nice feeling, Carbine seems underpowered, lacking a scope, smaller levels favor faster weapons
-Letting go of crouch under the barrier made me get stuck
-Neat reloading animation with the shells flying off(boltgun inspired?)
-I think there's an input buffer which if you shoot while reloading, the shot releases after you're done reloading. I don't like that.
Jumping and shooting makes the gun shoot way off at the ceiling. I suggest resetting aim instantly if the user shoots(also from sprint). try to remember games where you enjoy jump shooting around corners, COD, Max Payne etc
After getting demolished instantly by red shotgunners a few times I'm putting it down
I went near a door, the enemy instantly went at me from ambush, I shot a bunch while retreating but died right away. (I had the SMG)
Those enemies in particular are a bit too strong. Their design being placed in tighter places is almost like a precision platformer putting Gotcha moments where you have to get hit to learn the level.
The thing is.. shooters levels aren't typically replayed to perfection until you learn every enemy's location.
Still, the core experience is enjoyable, good job.
Thanks for getting aroudn to playing it. I really appreciate all of the points you raised. I'm glad there was stuff that you liked.
There is definitely a polish issue in many of these cases, simply because of how much there is to do. Things like balance tweaking, and that pesky input buffer (which works fine in many cases, but as you pointed out, shooting after a reload is really weird). I'll be taking your feedback and addressing them. I really appreciate it.
Regarding the shotgunning enemies and some of the level design, I totally agree with you. The level is around what I'd like the game to play with, but AI is super rudimentary, and is one of the next features I'm going to be reworking. Your frustrations are valid, and they're not behaving how I want them to. So stay tuned and I hope you'll enjoy it again once I've sorted them out.
But thanks for all of your points. Much love!
There was a recent critical bug that made restarting a level break the game. If you downloaded a previous version, please give the new build a try. Thanks!
M'bruh you forgot to enable to download link
One sec bro. Itch deleted my links after I was putting up the new build. Can't believe I never noticed. Thanks brew.
It's done bro. Feel free to try again.
i did a crouch dive and ended up under the area where you needed to crouch, and got stuck. had to restart.
on the first mission after the tutorial, whenver i died and respawned the game was bugged and unplayable. no sound, i couldnt shoot anyone. i restarted the game and the same thing happened when i died again. i like the aesthetic, music fits nicely. but i cant really say much other than that at this time.
Hey, thanks for giving this a try!
I think I know what the issues are for these. I'm busy working now, but I'll be fixing these in the next few hours. Especially the sound issue being related to multiple levels being around now. I hope you'll try it again when it's fixed.
Stay tuned. Thanks!
I made a fix for the sound issue. I know there's still issues around (like with the crouch), but testing the new build seems to run fine. Please give it a try if you can and let me know if it's working fine for you. Thanks again!