Sorry, but The Trepasser requires at least OpenGL 4.0 Core Profile, which has been out for 12 years now. Going back to OpenGL 3.3 is not an option: all my post-2020 games use the same engine, whether 2D or 3D, and are built upon "modern" rendering features (we're still talking a decade old here). OpenGL 4.0 is the best compromise I can do, and if I were to rewrite this part, it would be to switch to Vulkan anyway. I'm a lone developer working on my spare time to create free games, it's a bit unreasonable to expect me to support 15 years old hardware.
Many modern games work great on my laptop. The new Shovel Knight Dig and many other brand new games that are just released
all work fine. I could understand if the game required more advanced features but there are games that are far more graphically demanding that work fine.
Some programmers are always upgrading to the latest engines even if the game
doesn't need it, forcing upgrades that aren't necessary.
I understand the desire to want to learn the latest and greatest but it's a shame
when done on a game where it shouldn't be needed. I really loved The Lighthouse.
Tresspasser's control seems way more clunky than Lighthouse's on my big system
also, which is a GTX 1060 6GB with 16 GIGS ram and an i5 quad core.
Part of what I loved about Lighthouse was the speed and the control.
Is this just because this is still an early alpha/beta version?
Trespasser just doesn't seem as polished, smooth or fast as Lighthouse.
I love the fact it's in the same world though! 8)
I love my old laptop and am one of those people who really think most hardware
today is totally overkill, especially for the kind of games I like which are mainly 2D.
Even in 2022 I'm still able to run most of the stuff I want.
I'm against the idea that we need to just keep buying and buying new hardware
just because it's "old". Like people who keep buying new phones, etc. I don't get it.
I understand for playing big modern 3D games but I really don't like many of
those and my big system is for the few of those that I play but what I really like
are the Axiom Verge 1&2, Lighthouse, Alwa's Legacy/Adventure type 2D
Metroidvanias that my laptop can easily handle.
Many modern indie games could theoretically run on a PS2, but everyone understand why they target the PS4 instead. The same reasons apply here. Supporting a platform is a lot of work, supporting multiple ones even more, and as the oldest ones become less and less common, they are phased-out. The latest Steam Survey mentions that 91% of players have a DX12/Vulkan GPU, and I'm not even requiring that (yet). Again, I offer the result of years of effort free of charge, so I get to decide where I stop.
Now, there is indeed one last update planned for The Trespasser, that will add new content and some polish (mostly to the graphics, but to the controls too). I don't think it will change anything for you, though. The Lightkeeper is inspired by Metroid, but The Trespasser plays a lot more like a Castlevania game. As a melee-focused game, it's meant to be slower and more deliberate. I welcome more specific feedback, but the slower pace is by design (and I encourage the use of a gamepad, as it's more complex to control than The Lightkeeper).
I don't understand why you're mentioning consoles unless you plan on releasing this on consoles?
In that case then it wouldn't be a free project anymore and you should want to
satisfy the most people. I would have paid for The Lightkeeper, it's that good. 8)
I don't think making a game require extra hardware makes sense at all if it
doesn't actually need it. New hardware can always run old things but old hardware
can't run new things. If you want the game in front of as many people as possible,
then it makes the most sense to have it run on the largest variety of hardware,
from a PC perspective. Of course with consoles you write for what is out.
The specifics of the control issues in Lightkeeper vs. Trespasser should be obvious.
The control in Trespasser is clunky, Lightkeeper's is very responsive and fast.
That's not the same as the game being slower paced, it's the control
responsiveness, hit boxing, movement, etc. It's very glitchy.
Maybe you were more used to the older language that you coded Lightkeeper
in and Trespasser simply doesn't run as smooth because you haven't learned to
tweak things to be as smooth as in the old language yet?
I understand wanting to learn new languages and I understand this is free, it's your
personal project and you can do whatever you want. Absolutely.
But the things I am noticing are there, nevertheless.
I'm a musician and sometimes when I get a new instrument, I think everything
sounds great just because it's new. It takes a while for the newness to wear off
before I'm able to objectively judge things and get to know it as well as I knew
the older hardware and become as picky, critical and fluent as I was with it.
The same goes for consoles, etc. 1st generation games are seldom as good as
the games that get made years later as people get to know the hardware and
really start pushing it to it's limits. The same with new languages, etc.
Sometimes everything we do on something "new" can appear great because it's
shiny and the newness factor hasn't worn off yet, or you work to overcome an
obstacle and once you finally get it, you're so happy you aren't looking at things
objectively from a 3rd person perspective.
I hope you don't take me wrong, I think you have a ton of skill and I absolutely
loved The Lightkeeper, but all of the reasons why I loved it are gone in this one.
This just seems unpolished and glitchy, I assume this is due to the new
language.
Also, regardless of whether it is "preferable" to use a controller or not, some
people prefer keyboard and rock on keyboard better than controller.
What is the point in having keyboard support at all then if you don't want
people to use it? And if you offer the option, why not let us rebind all keys?
Not everyone plays the same way.
Key rebinding should allow every key to be rebinded, it isn't hard to do, I don't know what the big deal would be and why there should be a problem with not
limiting the keys allowed to be binded to?
In most languages, there are different methods you can use to grab keyboard
input at a lower hardware level (like look at keyboard interrupt memory location
to check if key is pressed rather than use scanf, etc). Switching to a method like
that is an easy solution.