Post by D31M05/90C215 in Leaden Sky - Official comments

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D31M05/90C2152 years ago (2 edits) (+3)

Helghast_95, I personally commend you for creating in what is, the only word I can find, a masterpiece.
i'll start off with what I noticed, liked, and loved from what i've seen in this game so far.
The Music, absolutely beautiful soundtrack that nails the atmosphere, and even in itself tells a story.
The visuals, they are absolutely stunning, and made me feel immersed inside the world that i'm surrounded in.
I want to give major props to the voice acting.
Kyle's tone fits his character, a raspy low broken soldier.
Joanna has a gentle, innocence to her, but you can tell she also lowers herself to kyle's level. and I appreciate it.
The beginning cutscenes were extremely emotional, and the relationship they hold together I personally felt, which is extremely hard for games to accomplish sometimes.
and the level design is astounding, grimy, dark and beautifully grotesque.
the psychological aspect of this game is what hooks me the most, and it is a perfect blend of Horror.
(now for the combat oriented stuff.)
the guns look, and feel perfect.
they have a crisp and punchy sound with each shot and the reloading is simple, and clean. I sat there for a few minutes admiring the reload animations.
I really enjoyed seeing the bulletproof vests "dust" or "powder" shoot out when i hit it, gave a sense of realism and again, weightiness to everything.
the grenades, well would it be cringy if i said it was explosive? (it's awesome)
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now the thing I was unsure about and it doesn't have to be seen as a bad thing either, I know how early this update is, and I know for a fact things are bound to change.
The Gore.
now this isn't the usual comment saying "I need more gore to fuel my psychotic tendencies"
the reason I say "gore" is because I believe from what i've seen, is it lacks in some areas.
I'll include a few, blood spilling, bullet holes and interactability.
I do not by any means, mean amping it up to 11 like the earlier updates.
the reason I mention these specific things, is because it because without them it feels very "stiff" in a way in my opinion it doesn't compliment the surroundings and atmosphere, again, this is something i'm unsure about and not a complaint at all. Just something I noticed and would love to see the direction this takes.
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now I want to talk about pacing and general firefights (with humans) that occur.
what i've noticed is it has taken almost a "turn based" feel, where before it felt more like "push-combat" personally I found hiding behind boxes and simply uncrouching for 1 headshot too quick to be engaging, there were a few times where multiple would push forward, allowing me to unload a few shots, but other than that it just felt disconnecting.
again, this could change in the future.
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(combat with anomalies and monsters)
these fights have that "push-combat" feel to them I was talking about before, where you almost gotta charge through them to get to your goal.
the designs are amazing, the effects are great and it compliments the surroundings very well.
can't wait to see more of these as the game continues to develop.
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There is so much I could write about this Demo, and even if i'm unsure about certain things, I can move past it and accept what the game is, and it is one hell of an experience.

Thank you, Helghast_95
for sticking to this, and making it into what it is today.
I cannot wait to see the future of this game.

-DeimosNoctis

Helghast_952 years ago(+2)

Hello there, thanks for playing the game, I'm really glad you enjoyed mentioned aspects such as the atmosphere and storytelling.

It's been a great focus here so delivering a proper feel was very important.

I plan to expand on those ideas and concepts as well as going in depth with various pieces of the story, likely through various means often related to

environmental storytelling and secrets you can find around the game world.

While I know the game isn't perfect, I will have to disagree about the "stiffness" you mentioned. In my understanding stiffness comes from the lack of proper animations and those have been improved compared to previous updates as well as the ragdoll physics that are now much heavier and more consistent compared to the old ragdolls which were constantly freezing in weird positions, had stiff movements etc.

Previously during combat, hit animations didn't play correctly and sometimes they just didn't play at all, but in new update this problem is solved and now the hit animation appears on every hit. Additionally an animation of character being knocked back has been added which helps to add more weight to the shooting feel itself.

As for the gore, we do see bullet holes, shrapnel wounds, blood pools, blood spilling on every hit, blood dripping down walls, brain chunks and even dismemberment, while it's obviously not the main focus it's definetely still brutal and looks pretty realistic in my opinion. I might still get some improvements, but as I said, it won't be anything major.

As for the human combat I aim for a slower and more tactical feel, currnetly the levels were pretty simple just to get player used to the basics of combat, but later I will be greatly expanding on those ideas, adding more variety to environments and maybe you will even see mercs fighting anomalies, which should be pretty cool sight.

I'm glad you enjoyed combat with monsters, this kind of combat will be the main focus of the game, so many more types of those enemies will be added and their combat abilites will be expanded for even more enjoyable gameplay.

Aside from dynamic enemies running at you, you will also experience more passive environmental hazards and anomalies that will be interactive with the use of special weapons.

Thanks for taking time to write your comment, it is a pleasure to have you here.

D31M05/90C2152 years ago(+2)

Hello again thank you for your reply, regarding your points of the stiffness and body gore, you are correct, on the gore side of things, after some testing, it seems my monitor was darker than usual, only affecting the models(?) and i was unable to see the finer details in the models themselves.
for the stiffness, I was wrong in my point and yes, what you said was also correct.
thank you for bringing this to my attention and correcting me.
I also have a question I meant to ask during my previous comment about being able to skip cutscenes for replayability? if this will be added in the future at some point, or if there is a button I have not found yet, thank you! -DeimosNoctis

Helghast_952 years ago(+2)

No problem, always happy to reply. Unfortunately brightness or gamma correction doesn't work correctly in Game Maker so I didn't implement it yet, which is why the game might appear too dark sometimes when your screen settings are darker than designed. I'll likely have to implement a custom DLL for that.

Cutscenes are only unskippable on a first playthrough but when you complete the demo you can skip them few seconds after they start playing with "ESC" button, the hint should appear on top-left corner of the screen

D31M05/90C2152 years ago(+2)

Awesome, Thanks so much, i'll be replaying often so that's good to hear.
Thank you for your time, i'll be posting any questions that arise in the future!
-DeimosNoctis

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