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[MMD] Touhou: Gathering Reverie's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Graphics | #9 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Audio | #17 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Overall | #18 | 2.958 | 2.958 |
| Fun | #20 | 2.500 | 2.500 |
| Gameplay/Design | #20 | 2.667 | 2.667 |
Ranked from 6 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
What would you like feedback on?
Overall combat and combo system, how the gameplay feel so far.
What did you update?
Bug fixes, new mechanics and moves, revamped controls and menu navigation, new sound effects and music. Check the patchnotes and devlogs for full info.
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Comments
I haven’t been in the Touhou space in a long time, so it’s nice to see a game where I’m not blasted by a billion bullets at once. Unfortunately my gamepads all seem to be D-Input and didn’t work, so I don’t know if I can offer much feedback. I tried playing around a bit with the keyboard and couldn’t seem to get more than a couple of combos to string together. Perhaps my poor coordination or even my keyboard?
The moves seemed cool from the list, and especially with the few that I was able to trigger it seemed really nice. I liked the addition of the hitboxes in training, and the cute interstitial screens. I’d say style and feature wise it’s looking good. Only thing I would suggest is a different visual on the menu buttons that don’t do anything (but that’s incredibly minor).
Oh actually, it crashed my computer when I loaded it the first time. My laptop is almost a decade old at this point so it’s also entirely possible that it’s just straining my old laptop and that’s having an impact on playabililty? Since everything seems to be moving slower than I’d anticipate for a fighting game. My apologies, since neither of us can really do anything about that. This seems like great grounds so good luck with future updates!
Good Grief! I have to investigate more about performance issues. Have you experienced a Framerate drop below 60 FPS? If you have, what screen/biome/menu were you on when it happens? Also, can you tell what your hardware is? System requirements of this game are: Windows 10 64-bit; IntelCore i7-7700 3.6GHz; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6Gb; 16Gb RAM. 1Gb Storage.
D-Input gamepads sucks. Sony has an exclusive copyrights for D-Input technology, so Epic Games company is not allowed to implement the support of D-Inputs into the basic setup of Unreal Engine.
About different visuals for the disabled Menu Buttons - I could do it, but it is no sense to waste the time for making something like this and remove it later when the menu option be implemented.
I didn’t see any framerate drops, it was mostly just slow overall. I looked up your channel and compared to the video the game moves slower but doesn’t dip.
I’ve an i7-6700 2.6, so that would certainly explain it (other requirements seem fine). If you’re curious about the crash it was likely just an overheat problem so may have been coincidence. It’s really just old hardware so I don’t think there much to prioritize with performance concerns, unless you’ve heard about similar problems on supported hardware.
Yeah that sucks with inputs, there’s nothing to do about it. And that totally makes sense about the menu buttons!
We use Linux, so had to rely on Lutris (Wine) to play. Unfortunately, it was very slow to respond to inputs. Load times were also slow, though once things loaded they did display well enough to watch. It was just the input lag that made it hard to really get a good feel for the combat system. We got through one round and tried what moves we could, including some special moves. I'm not sure what move it was, but we used a move in the middle of the battle that paused the action to play a video/scripted animation of the move. We thought that was a finishing move, but then were returned to combat. This was a bit jarring. We did finish with an ultra move that also played a scripted animation, but being the end it felt more fitting. We are also not familiar with the source IP, so can't comment on how well it fits. We did like the parody logos and ratings.
Thanks for your response! I take it as an opportunity to learn. It took me a bunch of time, installing a needed toolchain and rebuilding the solution in Linux configuration. Now uploaded an experimental build for Linux (Desktop, Default Configuration). Please DL the new build and try to play again. Note that it is an experimental build, there is no guarantee it will work as expected. Keeping Up the Great Work!
Thanks for taking the time to do a Linux build. It definitely runs better.
I don't do many modern fighting games having mostly played SNES/Genesis era ones, though my wife plays modern Soul Caliber, so those will be the baseline for our thoughts.
I pulled up the practice mode and messed around a bit, trying various moves from the move list. The moves seem good. We like that some have combos or secondary moves you can trigger while the primary is active, such as launching the spinning spike wheel. The biggest thing that stands out is that it still feels a bit laggy. Its like the characters pause just a little too long between moves. I'm not sure the best way to fix that feel. Maybe there is a way to trim down any final delay at the end of the move, or if there is another input ready at the end of the current animation, create a quicker transition from one move into the next. The thing that comes to mind is Coyote Time. Letting the player jump even though they have actually already gone off the edge. It isn't realistic, but in many cases it makes the player feel better and makes for a more fun game. It feels like the characters don't react fast enough, and that feeling is something we think is important for an enjoyable experience with a fighting game.
I'm obviously not an expert, but I'd say there is potential for a good fighting game. If you can just fix that bit of feeling like it has a slight pause. I know the final polish and balancing of speed/responsiveness for the right feel is tough, but getting the right feel is the thing that stood out the most in our play testing.
An excellent answer! The combat mechanic here is quite similar to Street Fighter V (Light->Medium->Heavy rotation with any move except the final one in the same-button sequence is cancelling into Special/EX/Super/Ultra) plus Mortal Kombat (Breakaway, Button Hold to Block) plus MvC (Pushblock, Counter). For Training, you can try to set a Dummy to repeatedly Attack, Blocking, Breaking, etc. to hone your skill in various situations. The characters with Eclamation Mark on CharacterSelect Screen can be selected, but not all moves are implemented for them. But you can try some moves, like Meiling's Ultra or Lucius' Forward Special, just for interest. About jumping after a move - some moves are jump-cancellable. For example, you can jump immediately after Cr.Heavy Uppercut successfully connects. Cr.Medium always hits a knocked character (it is a feature), Super/Ultra is the only moves those can connect during opponent is Waking Up. The combo system has its own rules and limits, you can learn more in this old video, which is still relevant.
About "long pauses": this is a common feature of all modern Fighting Games. A Framedata. The mostly Damaging moves that you can easily combo off of should have the long startup, so other player can react more easily, and long recovery, so it will be dangerous and punishable, like this flying knee into the Block. Light attacks with low damage and greater scaling are much faster. Risk vs Reward. The more you can get - the more you lose on fail. Don't forget that you can immediately cancel the majority of basic moves into Special, EX or Supers.
It would be absolutely amazing and super helpful if you be so kind and make a recording of your PvP duels. It helps me to understand how a common players are playing, how successful they are in combos, how hard or easy the game is for them. It is mostly important when I'll try to implement various levels of Difficulty, from Casual to Godlike, based on how the players actually play. Also, it will let me see how the game runs in Linux Build, and are there any real lags, framerate drops, etc.
Since I have not played Street Fighter V, I looked for a YT video of it, and watched this one: youtube.com/watch?v=btWQBO6awaU .
The slow feel could certainly be an issue with it running on Linux. Here is a short video of me in Training, so you can see how slow everything feels, compared to the fast paced fight I linked to above. I did not do any particular moves and mostly just tried to do some basic moves, which, from my understanding, should be the quickest. The feeling of a long pause I was talking about was not after or when starting bigger moves, but for all moves. Everything just feels like there is a bit too much of a delay between the moves. I like your inclusion of details for debugging, such as showing the inputs, as we can see that it is getting the inputs as they are pressed. Seeing the inputs showing up right away is why I assumed it was the game pacing, but there could be something else in there that prevents getting that faced paced feel I associate with fighting games. https://www.dragonsisle.com/other/TouhouMusouRoku-SamplePlay.mp4
OK, let's go back to one here. Please check out my Windows version. Is this close to Street Fighter in terms of fast pace?
I think I figured out what the problem is. Your laptop surely just cannot handle the game overall, or the Linux build in particular. System requirements of this game are: Windows 10 64-bit; IntelCore i7-7700 3.6GHz; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6Gb; 16Gb RAM. 1Gb Storage.
I'm also not aware of what is wrong with the scene rendering - everything is covered by "black ink" and thick outlines. Probably some rendering features and/or settings are not compatible. I have to repeat again: Linux build is experimental and may not work as intended. It was just my first try to make it for Linux platform. My sincere apologies for your bad experience... I hope it won't hurt the rating score of my game too dramatically. Feel free to refer the video above for rating, if you be so kind.
That video looks much better than what we experienced, so it is likely an issue with something about it not working with Linux, including under Wine. I'm playing on a desktop with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800XT, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660, 64 GB RAM, and plenty of drive space. I am also using a 4K screen, so that could be part of it. I took it out of full screen, but it would not resize down to 1080p.
We normally skip Windows download only due to this kind of potential problem, but also try to play the games of those who comment on ours. I also saw that you had been very active commenting on a lot of games as I was commenting on them, and like to support others who put forth so much effort. I always consider the use of Wine as a potential issue on our end when rating. If a game is not meant for Linux, then it is on us to get it working, and I appreciate you trying a Linux build. We've mostly been doing a jam that requires supporting all 3 major OSes, so it is still fairly new for us trying to get Windows only jam games working for testing, without dedicating too much time. At some point I need to look into it more so we can do better at dealing with situations like this.
I've pulled the game up on another computer. Similar specs, though a 1080p monitor, and an AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT GPU. It is playing much better. I'm not sure why it did not like my dev system. We will play a bit more later and see if we can give better feedback.
We've played a bit more on another computer. It still feels a bit sluggish to respond, but that could certainly be from being an unoptimized Linux build. It was playable on that system and only had a slight feel of lag, compared to the initial tests which were too slow to really be playable. Thinking on it more, I'm betting that the issue with my initial tests was it being on a 4K screen, and wouldn't let me reduce it down much, even when not in full screen. With the system only having a 1660 GPU it likely wasn't up to the 4K resolution.
After being able to actually do a bit of fighting at a decent speed, our overall opinion is still that it has potential, but needs refining. We only played with the complete character. There is a nice variety of moves overall, a good selection of directional attacks and counters, and we like that some can have multiple followup options. The moves list and practice mode were helpful. We were surprised that the time limit is for all rounds. We had not been paying attention to that, and assumed it reset per round, so had a round 3 fight end pretty quickly after starting due to time running out. Once you know that is how it works you can plan around it, and it will be less of an issue for those who are familiar with the game and their character's moves, but as we were still learning we messed up moves and had other slow downs to gameplay. The lag is something that should get sorted with more optimized builds, and adding some video settings to adjust resolution and quality to match the GPU it's being played on. Since the only modern fighting game we play is Soul Caliber and that is not in your mentioned list of the games you are basing this on, we are not the best at judging how well those aspects work for the kind of gamer who knows and likes those systems. It feels like a good start for a fighting game.
I only played this by myself so far so I can’t judge the gameplay too well yet, but I gotta say: the style and presentation are pretty next level! The animations were awesome in particular. The combos also felt very good to execute even by yourself and I really like the idea of the finisher move power meter.
I felt like the voice-line got pretty repetitive tough, especially since some of them were pretty long. I know spammy voice-lines are a thing in a lot of fighting games, but if there was a small pool of different voice-lines that could play for the same move it would really help make it less annoying. Also, while the overall look was great, I found that some of the environment had some very low-res textures that didn’t fit super fell with the other assets.
Overall: really great work! I’m really looking forward to try this out with a friend. :)
The presentation/visuals are impressive! It looks and feels like an actual Sega game. Nice work!
I was able to play versus mode with two controllers, but unfortunately didn't have anyone to play with so I just played by myself taking turns with each character. Reimu seemed to have a full set of attacks, but for Marisa I could only do one basic attack, throw, and block; the other basic attacks do not seem to work and the LB button seems to do a basic attack instead of a special.
The moves/attacks are nice, for Reimu there was a good variety of moves/attacks and it felt fairly satisfying to play, even alone.
Please take this with a grain of salt since my experience with fighting game is basically Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 3; it felt like the animations were too prolonged and the fighting was not super responsive. I feel like it could be played at double speed to make the game feel more responsive. My only other criticism is the voiceovers for the different moves/attacks can get repetitive pretty quickly. Maybe not every attack needs a dialog line? Or perhaps there needs to be a variety of lines for each attack.
Other than that, great work! It shows you've put a lot of effort into this passion project.
Feels like an actual SEGA game? Oh, You're reffering to the startup logos and stuff. Note that all the startup logos (Squire Penix, Uebisoft, etc.) are parody, and should be threated as such!
Yes, I still haven't finished any other character. While Reimu has a full moveset, others only have a basic jab, back/forward throws, breakaway, and blocking. Meiling has cool cinematic Ultra (LT+RT), Lucius has a Crouching Jab, Super (Right Stick press) and Forward Special (->+Y). Surprisingly, the Moveset is designed prior for every character. You can read the Move List of all characters in game, but only Reimu has been completed so far. Maybe I will make some more moves in the future, maybe not. I feel tired of making this game already.
That would be great to see the combos you have succeed to execute. It could help with understanding what the players are able to do and how easy or hard the game is for a common player, especially if they have to experience in Fighting Games.
Everyone says the animations are slow, but no one understands that with a higher animation speed the moves will be unreactable. The combat pace is similar to actual modern 2D fighting games. Mortal Kombat 11 has even slower animations, with their fastest attacks matches the speed of my Medium ones. The combat mechanics are very responsive in concept: the game remembers every button press, and once a move is completed and/or the action is available, the character will perform a new move no matter what. For example, Marisa doesn't have any aerial attacks implemented, but if you jump and press a button, she will perform an attack as soon as she landed, since the game remembers the button press and the condition for performing the attack is met.
About voiceovers: there was a time I was asking for help via crowdfunding for hiring a real professional voice actors from voicing/dub studio. I have raised zero, lol. Doesn't matter, I will just keep using the Voice Bot. No one cares anyway. By the way, I have ordered the song instead, and they have that done. It can be heard in the Credits. Real voice, no AI. They could voice up the entire roster if I had more money, but alas.
Overall, I truly have put a lot of effort into this project, but most certainly v0.033 will be the last update. I have burnt out. Sorry.
Thank You for your feedback!