Yeah i've heard the UI buttons bug is still there which is a pain on my back tbh.
You are indeed a woman in the demo, though that armor set in particular changes very little between genders.
I noticed a bug in your stream where not locking onto enemies made their healthbars go away and never come back after a while, i'll fix that.
I also noticed a small bug where the attack hitbox remained enabled on your weapon when you got hit by the miniboss as you killed him, noted.
It was unfortunate that you wanted to practice parrying on the enemy with the PARRYGOD personality lmao.
Stealth is not supposed to give you instakills, you hit that enemy from behind and it did a crit just like hitting them after a parry would, you can charge the attack to get the most out of it. But yeah a backstab instakill is not the idea for the game at all.
Sad to hear it didn't feel much different for you than the last demo but trust me the behind the scenes stuff is so much less spaghetti it's unreal.
Anyway, thanks for the stream and the feedback man!
played with controller. very solid from a game-mechanics-design perspective. kinda had to figure out stuff like what healing was and what button opens doors etc. but the combat was all very intuitive and functions like you'd expect if you ever played a souls-like. lack of feedback makes it feel bland, but i guess making it function and balanced was for dd65 and the particles and feedback will be dd66.
i do feel some enemies are very overly passive only to immediately block when i then decide to do something about it. there's a button for that i guess, but for that to work i need to anticipate the npc going to block my next would-be attack. a solution for this would be to implement a tell/animation that signals "i will attempt to block your next attack" or maybe you can animation-cancel your attack with your shield-break so i'm not wasting stamina on a (i assume) input-read block.
overall good improvement over last time since could (and wanted to) figure stuff out. maybe next dd i'll figure out what the b button does?
I know you changed a lot from the last demo (with the state machine and animations) but it seems pretty similar to the last demo for me just more polished. I don't think I saw the enemies reacting to each others' attacks like in the last demo. Nice different footstep sounds for different floor types.
Here are some things I noticed while playing that may need some fixing up:
1. Same bug from before with controls menu not showing up correctly when first brought up but working second time (was using controller). 2. NPC's still break when trying to lead them off ledge (in library). They'll stop at the ledge and then never attack again afterwards (only blocking). 3. Noticed some odd occlusion culling happening on the first door at certain angles. 4. No water...
Still looking forward to the demo where we get to see the water and CRT filter you worked on.
The buttons didn’t show up correctly when first opening the menu, and the stealth worked a little too well (10:40). Other than that, everything felt and looked great.
god fucking dammit that button prompt bug showing up again i'll fix it next DD i swear.
Oh man yeah i'll add a little tiny range around them in all direction in which they just see you even if you're not making noise, you shouldn't be able to slam against their ass like that.
-Would be nice if the 'pause' menu remembered the last thing highlighted, rather than reset to Inventory each time. Or idk, maybe the position is better for muscle memory you think? Also, putting end demo next to the controls review is downright devilish.
-I can't do a normal attack then hold to do a strong attack next. That's okay I guess, but I was hoping to have the choice of attack chaining. If the main problem is the animation(sword on wrong side of body), then it could be done on the third strike instead?
-Dodging automatically unsheathes your weapon, intentional? Big deal either way, it's faster to attack from sheathed if you dodge, since the unsheathe animation is so long.
-Camera stairsteps with the stairsteps... ouch my eyes. If you don't plan on foot ik, then a ramp will do much better for you. I mean idk I've seen some stairstepping algorithms and they don't do that so ehhh.
-An enemy and I hit each other at the same time, not sure if you want to allow that or not. Was funny though.
-These guys in the house seem to dodge strong attacks, but with the second guy I attacked him in the chokepoint of the door way, his AI seemed to bugger out and he just stood there as I was strong attacking him. Though he got out afterwards. And yes I did the darksouls bait and fought them 1 on 1 outside. If you wanted a duo fight, consider locking the door or using a trigger to aggro both at once.
-The inner window of the house having a fake godray is very RTX ON of you. However, you forgot to do it for the other window too. Or is that the RTX OFF window?
-Nice that I can shut the door. Can't remember that last souls like that let me do that.
-Managed to sneak on an enemy by the window, I nearly forgot about it.
-There's z fighting under the pickaxe in one of those bedrooms with no doors, from the courtyard room.
-Also in this room was a dodgy enemy. I may be going crazy, but it looked like he was straight up dodging through my attacks, despite what was said earlier about dodging. Maybe the hitbox doesn't align or some such.
-Did a real duo fight in the library. It was janky, and I mostly whittled down the floor guy before the staircase guy followed.
-Beat the knight and all I got was this chapel to some eldritch being. Big whoop.
-Falling off a short ledge like the one on the alter is too sudden, I half teleport to the ground. Not a big deal on a higher one like the library.
-Visuals are nice, I quite like the UI too. Though the seams on the pillar textures are quite obvious, and on top of that its texture is mirrored across the seam, so it's even more obvious and I can't unsee it... Not sure if the metal crosses on the outside windows means this was a converted building, or if it was just a random texture thing and you meant nothing by it(place was built for the god it currently worships).
-Controls felt fine, with the occasional miss press, though I also ignored half of them since they do nothing. Combat is quite one note, enemies basically never fall for the strong attack, so I either parry or push then stab. Though, I also had infinite heals so I wasn't trying very hard.
Fun little prototype, but I'd hope a lot more of the planned features are there next time. Keep up the good work.
- thanks for using controller, i hope the controls themselves were agreeable, and if not in the future there will be full rebinding.
- yeah sorry about the order of the menu options it's just thrown there semirandomly for the demo. I will implement a memory feature for that one though, so it opens up in the last one you selected, thanks for the idea.
- I've given it some thought and i'm going to yet again expand how attacking works, you will be able to hold attack from any position but doing so after your first swing (so when your sword is to your left) will lead into a unique double swing animation rather than a single big strike. Doing either of the charged attacks will end your combo though and reset you back to idle. I think it'll feel much better.
- Yeah dodging unsheathing your weapon is by design like that, it's like a tiny trick that i put in to skip the unsheathing if you're in a hurry.
- Yes, stairs steps have been fixed on my modular assets for a long time but this demo level is built out of outdated parts and has shitty step colliders instead of a smooth ramp, sorry.
- Yeah you and the enemy hitting each other is not something i'm gonna prevent, most games let it happen and it's fine.
- It's fine if you figure out how to aggro a single enemy at a time, i will have a few instances of group aggro triggers in the final game but i mostly prefer not resorting to that.
- That fake godray window was for testing and it was going to be much more prevalent in the level that i didnt finish in time lol.
- Most doors in fromsoft games can be closed again, at least the normal sized ones, but yeah a lot of them will be like that in my game too.
- glad you used stealth succesfully.
- yeah again z fighting and jank stuff is because it's an old test environment
- the enemy may have been dodging through your attacks if your sword was skipping through his body between frames, it's a classic collision problem and i'll fix it soon.
The controls feel better but I couldn't really tell how without playing the previous build. less recovery frames/transition time between states?
Enemies feel somewhat op with their perfect parries(give them a whiff %) and dodges, it feels closer to elden rings input reading than I'd like. not as bad, but it does feel like I'm not allowed to take the initiative but instead should wait until they do something I can react to.
The parry frames are probably quite tight, maybe too much so. I think the GS should have slower swing times and better poise break+damage stats overall, it feels too close to the scimitar.
When trying to use GS against the strong dude I tried staying out of the range of his sword and graze him with the GS, it didn't work great, but it somehow felt like it should've hit. Maybe DS has chunky hurtboxes for enemies or weapon hitboxes that extend past the weapon?
I like the souls ui and the item ui but I'm still a HP/Stamina spiral hater and still think it hurts readability.
- Yeah the game controls much better, the characters have an almost entirely new custom state machine with input buffers and stuff like that, it's quite good now. glad you noticed.
- This isn't really communicated but almost every enemy has custom combat behaviour parameters, some of them never block, some of them block but never parry, the one that probably gave you trouble is internally labeled parryGod lol. You can just shove him, he can't parry those.
- Interesting you mention the greatsword being too fast, i'll consider making it slower, or maybe making the regular sword faster.
- Yeah no the problem currently with hitboxes is not that they're too small but rather that, with the speed of the swing, and the range of the greatsword, the hitbox is passing through enemies sometimes BETWEEN frames so the game doesn't register a collision. I will build a custom solution for it soon but it'll probably be a lot of work hence it not being in this demo already.
Controls were alright on controller, but I think the camera needs a bit more smoothing. Some areas that seemed problematic was just circling the left stick when locked on, and walking up and down the long stairs.
Combat feels less difficult than it is tedious. Not so much in an annoying way, but in the sense that if all I can do is swing/shove/block for the next couple of hours there's not a lot of options for dealing with groups who have basically the same options and can parry to stop me from hitting the others. At the very least, I think the turn rate on some actions should have some end lag to allow for a little bit of circle strafing, since at the moment it just feels like they can always just track perfectly. I think being able to hold your thrusts for a bit longer to wait for enemies to come in or overextend could be good? Could even do something like thrusts > blocks/parries and parry > normal attacks and normals > thrusts in a kind of rock paper scissors arrangement.
- interesting point on circling the stick when locked on, i'll test that out. As for stairs, all steps in my modular assets have included a ramp for collision for months now but since i rushed this demo out and couldn't complete the new level we're stuck with the shitty janky stairs that torture the camera.
- I will be playing around with how tracking works and when it's disabled during animations. I'll point out that as it is currently wheneve an enemy does the charged attack you just strafe to any side and they never hit you lol, I don't want the game to be fully strafeable though. And while you're dodging you don't get tracked by enemies, my plan is to fiddle with that until it feels good basically.
- I'll have that rock papers scissors arrangement you described in mind. I don't want the game to work exactly like that, but it's a useful way to think about things, thanks.
Controls worked fine on controller for me, nothing out of the ordinary other than dodge not being on "B." It would be nice if i didn't have to stop to sheath and unsheathe my weapon and if swinging carried my momentum even just a little bit.
There's a lot of potential with this, glad I got to play it. I do gotta admit the combat at the moment is too shallow for me to want to do anything but abuse the infinite healing nothings when fighting the "boss". I have no idea what the absorb command is supposed to be or if there's even a use case for it in the game yet, but I wish it and the dodge button were swapped. Not sure why you would want to sheathe your sword but I'm assuming you'll actually get to see a real civilization for once in these kinds of games? The other biggest things on my wishlist are that you can hold the dodge button to run and being able to shoot with the gun. I really can't wait to use the gun.
Aesthetics kinda have that Runescape/Morrowind charm that grew on me the more I played. Can't wait for the next one.
- Yeah i'm working mostly on the combat itself for now to get it into a nice place before building the rest of the game. The infinite healing is mostly there for testing purposes.
- Absorb does nothing at the moment and thanks for the ideas you threw at me about it on discord
- The dodge button will remain as it is as default because i really like it but once i get around to adding settings rebinding controls will be the first thing.
- Sheathing makes you move much faster, like a lot, but the current run animation looks almost the same lol. No there won't be an actual functional civilization.
- No need to hold dodge to run since sheathing is a perma-sprint that doesn't deplete stamina (you take more damage sheathed however).
Comments
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2616331268
Controller works, but button prompts in the "controls" screen are a bit borked.
Fighting also works, though I accidentally switched to 2-handed sword and had a very rough time with the boss enemy. Kinda prefer single-handed one.
Managed to parry a couple of times, so that works too. I don't think I managed to sneak up onto an enemy, so I dunno if that mechanics works or not.
Also didn't feel any different from the DD64 demo.
Yeah i've heard the UI buttons bug is still there which is a pain on my back tbh.
You are indeed a woman in the demo, though that armor set in particular changes very little between genders.
I noticed a bug in your stream where not locking onto enemies made their healthbars go away and never come back after a while, i'll fix that.
I also noticed a small bug where the attack hitbox remained enabled on your weapon when you got hit by the miniboss as you killed him, noted.
It was unfortunate that you wanted to practice parrying on the enemy with the PARRYGOD personality lmao.
Stealth is not supposed to give you instakills, you hit that enemy from behind and it did a crit just like hitting them after a parry would, you can charge the attack to get the most out of it. But yeah a backstab instakill is not the idea for the game at all.
Sad to hear it didn't feel much different for you than the last demo but trust me the behind the scenes stuff is so much less spaghetti it's unreal.
Anyway, thanks for the stream and the feedback man!
played with controller. very solid from a game-mechanics-design perspective. kinda had to figure out stuff like what healing was and what button opens doors etc. but the combat was all very intuitive and functions like you'd expect if you ever played a souls-like. lack of feedback makes it feel bland, but i guess making it function and balanced was for dd65 and the particles and feedback will be dd66.
i do feel some enemies are very overly passive only to immediately block when i then decide to do something about it. there's a button for that i guess, but for that to work i need to anticipate the npc going to block my next would-be attack. a solution for this would be to implement a tell/animation that signals "i will attempt to block your next attack" or maybe you can animation-cancel your attack with your shield-break so i'm not wasting stamina on a (i assume) input-read block.
overall good improvement over last time since could (and wanted to) figure stuff out. maybe next dd i'll figure out what the b button does?
glad you found the combat intuitive!
noted on the lack of feedback, i already added a lot of extra audiovisual stuff since last demo day but i will add even more (like screenshake).
i agree enemies are feeling too passive right now and will probably adjust all their behaviour settings to make them more agressive.
I'm probably going to overhaul how blocking works both for the player and enemies.
Heh the B button will probably still not be functional in the next demo sadly. but the gun might!
looking forward to it
it's ok. felt a little slow and clunky.
I know you changed a lot from the last demo (with the state machine and animations) but it seems pretty similar to the last demo for me just more polished. I don't think I saw the enemies reacting to each others' attacks like in the last demo. Nice different footstep sounds for different floor types.
Here are some things I noticed while playing that may need some fixing up:
1. Same bug from before with controls menu not showing up correctly when first brought up but working second time (was using controller).
2. NPC's still break when trying to lead them off ledge (in library). They'll stop at the ledge and then never attack again afterwards (only blocking).
3. Noticed some odd occlusion culling happening on the first door at certain angles.
4. No water...
Still looking forward to the demo where we get to see the water and CRT filter you worked on.
- i'm malding that the UI buttons bug showed up again.
- I'm aware enemies pathfinding can die under certain situations.
- This occlusion culling thing is something i haven't heard or seen myself before, i'll try to recreate it later.
- Sry the water is in the new level that didn't make it to this DD
thanks for leaving feedback!!!
The buttons didn’t show up correctly when first opening the menu, and the stealth worked a little too well (10:40). Other than that, everything felt and looked great.
god fucking dammit that button prompt bug showing up again i'll fix it next DD i swear.
Oh man yeah i'll add a little tiny range around them in all direction in which they just see you even if you're not making noise, you shouldn't be able to slam against their ass like that.
Thanks for playing and leaving feedback!!!
-Using controla.
-Would be nice if the 'pause' menu remembered the last thing highlighted, rather than reset to Inventory each time. Or idk, maybe the position is better for muscle memory you think? Also, putting end demo next to the controls review is downright devilish.
-I can't do a normal attack then hold to do a strong attack next. That's okay I guess, but I was hoping to have the choice of attack chaining. If the main problem is the animation(sword on wrong side of body), then it could be done on the third strike instead?
-Dodging automatically unsheathes your weapon, intentional? Big deal either way, it's faster to attack from sheathed if you dodge, since the unsheathe animation is so long.
-Camera stairsteps with the stairsteps... ouch my eyes. If you don't plan on foot ik, then a ramp will do much better for you. I mean idk I've seen some stairstepping algorithms and they don't do that so ehhh.
-An enemy and I hit each other at the same time, not sure if you want to allow that or not. Was funny though.
-These guys in the house seem to dodge strong attacks, but with the second guy I attacked him in the chokepoint of the door way, his AI seemed to bugger out and he just stood there as I was strong attacking him. Though he got out afterwards. And yes I did the darksouls bait and fought them 1 on 1 outside. If you wanted a duo fight, consider locking the door or using a trigger to aggro both at once.
-The inner window of the house having a fake godray is very RTX ON of you. However, you forgot to do it for the other window too. Or is that the RTX OFF window?
-Nice that I can shut the door. Can't remember that last souls like that let me do that.
-Managed to sneak on an enemy by the window, I nearly forgot about it.
-There's z fighting under the pickaxe in one of those bedrooms with no doors, from the courtyard room.
-Also in this room was a dodgy enemy. I may be going crazy, but it looked like he was straight up dodging through my attacks, despite what was said earlier about dodging. Maybe the hitbox doesn't align or some such.
-Did a real duo fight in the library. It was janky, and I mostly whittled down the floor guy before the staircase guy followed.
-Beat the knight and all I got was this chapel to some eldritch being. Big whoop.
-Falling off a short ledge like the one on the alter is too sudden, I half teleport to the ground. Not a big deal on a higher one like the library.
-Visuals are nice, I quite like the UI too. Though the seams on the pillar textures are quite obvious, and on top of that its texture is mirrored across the seam, so it's even more obvious and I can't unsee it... Not sure if the metal crosses on the outside windows means this was a converted building, or if it was just a random texture thing and you meant nothing by it(place was built for the god it currently worships).
-Controls felt fine, with the occasional miss press, though I also ignored half of them since they do nothing. Combat is quite one note, enemies basically never fall for the strong attack, so I either parry or push then stab. Though, I also had infinite heals so I wasn't trying very hard.
Fun little prototype, but I'd hope a lot more of the planned features are there next time. Keep up the good work.
Hiii!
- thanks for using controller, i hope the controls themselves were agreeable, and if not in the future there will be full rebinding.
- yeah sorry about the order of the menu options it's just thrown there semirandomly for the demo. I will implement a memory feature for that one though, so it opens up in the last one you selected, thanks for the idea.
- I've given it some thought and i'm going to yet again expand how attacking works, you will be able to hold attack from any position but doing so after your first swing (so when your sword is to your left) will lead into a unique double swing animation rather than a single big strike. Doing either of the charged attacks will end your combo though and reset you back to idle. I think it'll feel much better.
- Yeah dodging unsheathing your weapon is by design like that, it's like a tiny trick that i put in to skip the unsheathing if you're in a hurry.
- Yes, stairs steps have been fixed on my modular assets for a long time but this demo level is built out of outdated parts and has shitty step colliders instead of a smooth ramp, sorry.
- Yeah you and the enemy hitting each other is not something i'm gonna prevent, most games let it happen and it's fine.
- It's fine if you figure out how to aggro a single enemy at a time, i will have a few instances of group aggro triggers in the final game but i mostly prefer not resorting to that.
- That fake godray window was for testing and it was going to be much more prevalent in the level that i didnt finish in time lol.
- Most doors in fromsoft games can be closed again, at least the normal sized ones, but yeah a lot of them will be like that in my game too.
- glad you used stealth succesfully.
- yeah again z fighting and jank stuff is because it's an old test environment
- the enemy may have been dodging through your attacks if your sword was skipping through his body between frames, it's a classic collision problem and i'll fix it soon.
thanks for playing and leaving feedback!
I played with controller.
The controls feel better but I couldn't really tell how without playing the previous build. less recovery frames/transition time between states?
Enemies feel somewhat op with their perfect parries(give them a whiff %) and dodges, it feels closer to elden rings input reading than I'd like. not as bad, but it does feel like I'm not allowed to take the initiative but instead should wait until they do something I can react to.
The parry frames are probably quite tight, maybe too much so. I think the GS should have slower swing times and better poise break+damage stats overall, it feels too close to the scimitar.
When trying to use GS against the strong dude I tried staying out of the range of his sword and graze him with the GS, it didn't work great, but it somehow felt like it should've hit. Maybe DS has chunky hurtboxes for enemies or weapon hitboxes that extend past the weapon?
I like the souls ui and the item ui but I'm still a HP/Stamina spiral hater and still think it hurts readability.
I've had a similar pathfind issue where an enemy got stuck on the other side of the fence last time, this time I took a screenie.
Also yes pathfinding has become WORSE since the last demo, I am very aware
Hey! thanks for playing.
- Yeah the game controls much better, the characters have an almost entirely new custom state machine with input buffers and stuff like that, it's quite good now. glad you noticed.
- This isn't really communicated but almost every enemy has custom combat behaviour parameters, some of them never block, some of them block but never parry, the one that probably gave you trouble is internally labeled parryGod lol. You can just shove him, he can't parry those.
- Interesting you mention the greatsword being too fast, i'll consider making it slower, or maybe making the regular sword faster.
- Yeah no the problem currently with hitboxes is not that they're too small but rather that, with the speed of the swing, and the range of the greatsword, the hitbox is passing through enemies sometimes BETWEEN frames so the game doesn't register a collision. I will build a custom solution for it soon but it'll probably be a lot of work hence it not being in this demo already.
- Sorry the spirals are staying lol
Controls were alright on controller, but I think the camera needs a bit more smoothing. Some areas that seemed problematic was just circling the left stick when locked on, and walking up and down the long stairs.
Combat feels less difficult than it is tedious. Not so much in an annoying way, but in the sense that if all I can do is swing/shove/block for the next couple of hours there's not a lot of options for dealing with groups who have basically the same options and can parry to stop me from hitting the others. At the very least, I think the turn rate on some actions should have some end lag to allow for a little bit of circle strafing, since at the moment it just feels like they can always just track perfectly. I think being able to hold your thrusts for a bit longer to wait for enemies to come in or overextend could be good? Could even do something like thrusts > blocks/parries and parry > normal attacks and normals > thrusts in a kind of rock paper scissors arrangement.
Hi kemo!
- interesting point on circling the stick when locked on, i'll test that out. As for stairs, all steps in my modular assets have included a ramp for collision for months now but since i rushed this demo out and couldn't complete the new level we're stuck with the shitty janky stairs that torture the camera.
- I will be playing around with how tracking works and when it's disabled during animations. I'll point out that as it is currently wheneve an enemy does the charged attack you just strafe to any side and they never hit you lol, I don't want the game to be fully strafeable though. And while you're dodging you don't get tracked by enemies, my plan is to fiddle with that until it feels good basically.
- I'll have that rock papers scissors arrangement you described in mind. I don't want the game to work exactly like that, but it's a useful way to think about things, thanks.
Controls worked fine on controller for me, nothing out of the ordinary other than dodge not being on "B."
It would be nice if i didn't have to stop to sheath and unsheathe my weapon and if swinging carried my momentum even just a little bit.
Hi! thanks for the feedback.
- Dodging will remain on X rather than O as default but when i add settings the first will be rebinding so people can do whatever they want.
- I might speed up the sheathing/unsheathing animations in the future
- I don't know what you mean by swinging carrying momentum, it's the standard in almost every single action game ever to stop you when you attack
There's a lot of potential with this, glad I got to play it.
I do gotta admit the combat at the moment is too shallow for me to want to do anything but abuse the infinite healing nothings when fighting the "boss".
I have no idea what the absorb command is supposed to be or if there's even a use case for it in the game yet, but I wish it and the dodge button were swapped. Not sure why you would want to sheathe your sword but I'm assuming you'll actually get to see a real civilization for once in these kinds of games?
The other biggest things on my wishlist are that you can hold the dodge button to run and being able to shoot with the gun. I really can't wait to use the gun.
Aesthetics kinda have that Runescape/Morrowind charm that grew on me the more I played. Can't wait for the next one.
Hi!
- Yeah i'm working mostly on the combat itself for now to get it into a nice place before building the rest of the game. The infinite healing is mostly there for testing purposes.
- Absorb does nothing at the moment and thanks for the ideas you threw at me about it on discord
- The dodge button will remain as it is as default because i really like it but once i get around to adding settings rebinding controls will be the first thing.
- Sheathing makes you move much faster, like a lot, but the current run animation looks almost the same lol. No there won't be an actual functional civilization.
- No need to hold dodge to run since sheathing is a perma-sprint that doesn't deplete stamina (you take more damage sheathed however).
- Gun soonish i promise
zanzibart... forgive me