Post by Vesuvius-Dev in Photon Blade jam comments

AGDG DEMO DAY 68 » Entries » Photon Blade

Viewing post in Photon Blade jam comments

Overall thoughts

i'm mixed. i love the art, the mood, the aestetic and music. But if this is a gameplay-first experience imo it needs a lot of work

played with xinput pad

played oh mah gawd justin wong mode

Imo it has a lot of potential, but players will throw the controller out very very fast. dunno how your "easy" mode is easy, and if solves my problems written below.

imo though, as this stands (wong mode) dosent seem an "hard but fair experiance for lvl.40 wizards", but just badly designed. you dont have much content so you stretch by making your players die in three hit. I get it. imo that kind of thinking is not something you should have ever, but expecially while testing.

Random notes

- "press start" screen (i could not even read the word at first lmao). You dont go forward by pressing start, but A. double lmao if this is intentional.

- in the first room, i interacted with neet chad by pressing up on d-pad, i also jumped on the same time and was stuck in mid air for the whole conversation

- neet chad's beard seems more peanut butter spread on his face. i'm a pixelshitter, but it's probably the symmetric highlight that made me see it as a liquid and not as hair

- walking is super slow for no reason, i really dont like it. since dash has not cd you wanna always dash. since you lose hp with time, walking is always a losing move. if you need a slow walk only to better postion and survive tricky jumps, imo rework it. this is a combat experience no?

- dash input in the tutorial screen seemed a combo, add something to make players see at glance that those are two alternative inputs for the same action

- also, putting a dummy near the tooltip for the dash is quite useless and confusing. it doesent make me think that you need to use the dash to pass that gap

- really like music, and that little animation when you change scenes

- while using sword stance (nice yamazaki reference) i got a crash:

___________________________________________

############################################################################################

ERROR in action number 1

of Step Event0 for object obj_actor_parent:

Variable oPlayer.bs_recovery(104915, -2147483648) not set before reading it.

at gml_Script_anon@3074@pState_sword_stance@pState_sword_stance

############################################################################################

gml_Script_anon@3074@pState_sword_stance@pState_sword_stance (line -1)

gml_Script_anon@177@StateMachine@State_machine

gml_Script_anon@1843@pState_sword_stance@pState_sword_stance

gml_Script_anon@353@StateMachine@State_machine

gml_Object_obj_actor_parent_Step_0

gml_Object_oPlayer_Step_0 (line -1)

- the special sword + gun tutorial dosent tell you how to exit those modes; the gated encounter of that tutorial room is ver hard for no reason. Since entering special mode and shooting/swording is a long procress, the hardship of that encounter is just a timed race to hit something before you get hit by a bullet. not fun, and not an interesting tutorial

- classic melee combat is assigned X Y for punches (Y strong); A B for kicks (B strong). you swapped contorls that are the same everywhere for no reason

- in the first real enemy encounter you place one enemy, and 1m after a stack of three. a first solo encounter is good to ck the moves ai etc; but the second needs to be more spread out. also if by putting three big enemies with aoe dmg in an enclosed space you wanna tell people that they can skip non-gated encoutners; imo that's very bad tutorialization. also you have for granted that people will dodge that aoe wind atk by jumping, so you put a low cieling; but you only give that opportunity for a player in the first enemy of that stage

- in the first gated encounter of that level (two pits on the side, and 2 enemies with signposts), the far right enemy shooter can be awaken if we get too close. that for sure is not intended, and if by chance it was intented imo it's a challenge for later levels

- overall i dont like that enemies kill you with three hit

- i dont think is "good design" to have infinite air dashes

- if you "are dyng" and life paticles ae coming to you, they should save you, and not not-heal your dead body

- in the last gated encounter of that level, second wave enemies spawn with a great deleay and you can die by "waiting". worst feel ever.

- i like that you can duck under the big puncher enemy, imo it should be introduced before the signpost enemy; not after

- problem with big puncher. since you can always dash behind him, and you can't attack while crouched (you are also vulnerable to aoe signpost wind atk), ducking is very rarely a smart move. i like the design of it, but imo you upgraded the movement too much, and made this solution almost obsolete

- i overall understand why big jump with LT is there (is the same action as quick crouch jump?), but your movement is on RT; your special atks are on LT. putting a movement move on LT is a "mistake"

Like Reply

photon_blade_dev8 days ago(+1)

Thanks for playing and for the extensive feedback.

Some things I agree with and some things I don't, but I wrote a few things down on the design doc and I'll respond here as well.

I wouldn't post something like this as a Steam demo. However; I will build a game that I have fun playing first, and scale it down properly after that. Until then it will be "Wong mode" and whatever concessions I can quickly cobble together for the "easy" mode. You are still welcome to criticize the game for what it is and I always appreciate it. I'll just have to figure out what feedback is actionable. And to be fair I'm at a point with content where the agenda for the next DD could be dedicated difficulty modes.

Tutorialization will likely remain bad for longer and I should probably just include a "How to Play" wall of text in the pause menu until the game is mostly built and the mechanics are locked in place.

Also I didn't "stretch" anything. The "Wong mode" is already toned down in many ways (including enemy damage) from what the game was just a week before this DD.

> in the last gated encounter of that level, second wave enemies spawn with a great deleay and you can die by "waiting". worst feel ever.

Yeah I agree. I'll stop health drain for those. The "easy" version has no passive health drain at all along with moves being cheaper.

> if you "are dyng" and life paticles ae coming to you, they should save you, and not not-heal your dead body

I agree that it's annoying. I think I'll do a grey health system where if you run out of energy completely, you'll die in one hit until You build it all back. I could also buff and nerf some moves and add a cool shader while in that state.

> walking is super slow for no reason, i really dont like it. since dash has not cd you wanna always dash. since you lose hp with time, walking is always a losing move.

I do feel like dashing is too strong and negates traditional footsies, but I also want to keep the walk speed slow and not add a cd to dash. I'll have to think about it.

> classic melee combat is assigned X Y for punches (Y strong); A B for kicks (B strong). you swapped contorls that are the same everywhere for no reason

Was not an arbitrary decision. I originally had that "standard" control scheme. I could setup the other one as a template at some point.

> overall i dont like that enemies kill you with three hit

I think I agree. At least I'll want to have more clearly weak enemies.

> i like that you can duck under the big puncher enemy, imo it should be introduced before the signpost enemy; not after

I had a better introductory enemy in the works, but it didn't make the cut. Would've made for easier enemy groups as well. And I try to keep the crouch relevant.

>(nice yamazaki reference)

Who?

Like Reply

Vesuvius-Dev8 days ago

>Also I didn't "stretch" anything. The "Wong mode" is already toned down in many ways (including enemy damage) from what the game was just a week before this DD.

but you say in the end of your reply that you agree that enemies killin you in three hits is bad. So i don't get what "tone down" means in this context. Overall for what i played this dosent seem a rage game, but an actual attempt at making a 2d beu: if this is the case having drain health and enemies that kill you with 3 hp is very drastic. you can tune this in multiple ways, from enemies dropping more health, adding some healing items drop etc. that's not the problem; my problem is if "that" is the first level, i don't wanna see what path of pain you will be making for the last level. And i am a beu/soul/stylish/nioh/big dick is back in town player. Moreover, for how punishing your game is, adding also a gameover + hard reset to the level like an arcade is really spiteful. that's also why i've written you streatched your content. also in testing phase imo give a bigger number of lives; if you were testing level balance and first time play with this build, imo your difficulty setting pov for what a player should expirience is completely out of wack.

>footsies

i can argue that "footsie" fights against your game design: if you want footise your gameplay is probably too fast. But this game needs to be fast because your health drains; and since wait and dodge it's a losing strategy, it's better to dash beyond any enemy that is not gated. And when you need health, you win by outmanuvering enemies by dashing on their backs and chain-stun them. in your current build "footsie" is not a good philosopy to follow. I'm basically playing megamen zero [melee edition]. if you say footises are well implemented and useful, i need to see how you play your game; because then the problem might not be footise on itself, but how you teached me how to survive in the tutoral.

>yamazaki

search yamazaki king of fighters; he has a counter move(tongue out); that pose it's very similar to one of your pg

GLfor your next build

Like Reply

photon_blade_dev7 days ago(+1)

> GLfor your next build

Thanks. Maybe it'll be more palatable next time. There's also a clip of my playthrough of the demo in the comment thread.

And I'll say this out of goodwill and respect:

>And i am a beu/soul/stylish/nioh/big dick is back in town player.

I cringed.

Like Reply

Vesuvius-Dev7 days ago (1 edit)