Post by soursop in The Darkness Below comments

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Played through and enjoyed the demo (windows). I'm very excited to see more, and have followed you/the project.

Feedback:

Quicker Turns. When a party member finishes their action, I have to wait a couple of seconds before the next party member can start their turn unless I hit the end turn button. The workaround, however, does not function when an enemy finishes their turn. I'd prefer no delay at all, but even just reducing it would be nice.

Retreat! That doppleganger got me good, hah. Would be nice to have a way to flee.

Hotkeys. You already mentioned this in a comment below, but hotkeys please!

Bug:

I noticed 1 bug while playing... If you choose a premade cleric with a bow + staff, they're able to use the staff/cast spells even though it is grayed out in the UI due to the bow being held in both hands.

Great work, Vlzvl!

vlzvl4 years ago (5 edits)

Hey, thanx man!
I'm glad that you liked this short demo, more to come for sure :)

I appreciate for taking the time providing the feedback, they're extremely helpful to fine-tune the game and trimming down the annoyances. There's only so much that can be done when you're solo :)

Quicker Turns. Yeah, I've already been provided with a number of feedbacks about the slow times on combat and it's already on my fix list, pretty high for that matter.
Retreat. I've to think about that & check my dusty D&D library for a good & intuitive way to handle that :) Not any promises though.
Hotkeys. Worry not! This is what I'm currently implementing. The game can also be played by WASD+QE plus F5/F9 for quick save/load (at the moment; more keys to add for a smoother mouseless experience). Those keys can be changed as well through game settings and saved.
Bug. Great! Its on way to fix.

That was a super helpful feedback and I already copied it to my pile of things to kill! Expect a number of these to be addressed by the next update. Thanx!

soursop4 years ago(+1)

Sweetness! Looking forward to seeing more.

As for retreat/flee... I'll give some unrequested feedback, hah! Feel free to ignore.

Why not make it a dice roll that is affected by party variables (weight/types of items equipped, total party quickness/technique/perception, and status ailments)?

On a successful roll the party can be warped to the entrance of the zone. This isn't ideal, but I can't remember a turn based blobber that did fleeing well. However, I have found myself wanting it in many titles.

And on an unsuccessful roll the party loses a collective round and is more vulnerable to attacks since they would have their backs turned (ie, no shield bonus and increased chance for attackers to land attacks); I believe this is actually the ad&d behavior but you'd have to find a manual to confirm.

vlzvl4 years ago (1 edit)

Thanx!

In my resources (mostly D&D) there's just not many rules about fleeing from a battle. I will certainly look into that but in the case that functionality gets in, it will probably use some combination of abilities (quickness?) and some skill (survival kind of). I will probably use the average of 2 party members with the highest skill or something like that. I'm all about providing simpler mechanics, which in turn are dumbed down versions of D&D.

This mechanic would be pretty good for turn-based games where monsters are spawned immediately before you (wizardry? final fantasy?). But this game have a fixed number of monsters and placed in specific position, which makes the flee-to-where question difficult to answer. Moving to the start of level still doesn't seem intuitive enough (run through other monsters?)

There's still the difficulty of fleeing i.e. against a boss entity that would be extremely hard and/or impossible. Skill checking is still under development..

Against a monster such as Doppelganger (level 10), which still needs some fine tuning to be more lethal, that would seem difficult as well and trying to flee would probably be proven more fatal than trying to battle.

All in all, not an easy feature to add especially on a time of usability tuning, bug fixing and stuff :) I 'll still look into it. I have to check what other RPGs do on that department as well, especially games closer to this one.

itch.io

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