Neat concept to put into 2D, though I've never played a swat game before to compare. Audio, menus, and animations serve their purpose decently. Arresting takes too long, especially when contrasted with how a fire fight killing 10 people can happen in a second. Enemies wandering into the swat team within 5-10 seconds of loading is way too fast, maybe undesirable to happen at all. It makes sense for them to wander since they don't know the swat team is there, but I think it's a bit off putting to be surprised as swat, instead of surprising them if you wait a short while to gather your senses.
I was also able to see the doors swing open though the fog of war, which allowed me to know where an enemy was walking, if you can it should be preferable to hide the position of the door unless it's in sight. If you want to be fancy, the fog of war preview could update its position to where the door was when last in line of sight, so it stays accurate until someone interacts with it out of view.
Patrolling is rather rudimentary for now, later on I will add room exceptions so enemies won't patrol spawn rooms. I made it unlikely for it to happen this demo (only the goblin enemy can patrol and he only does so 33% of the time) but I guess it can still happen.
Seeing doors moving in the FoW shouldn't be too important, but I might experiment with it later on.
I had (and am having) a lot of fun playing this. Kind of reminds me of classic Ghost Recon in a way, with how swift and intense the fights are. I don't have a lot of useful feedback to give at this point due to the amount of content available but I'm gonna be keeping my eye on this.
now, this is pretty interesting concept however, shit happened so fast that i could not react fast enough and basically my squad would just win. so i played a run where i basically just set behind the wall giving them the `go there and clear` command.
wish i could tell which way the door opens before actually trying to open it. maybe some dorrs could allow you to peek. i tryed to open slowly but then it`s just a near instantaneous firefight where my guys kill everyone and maybe i get caught in the cross fire and die lol.
flashbang stuns even when facing the opposite direction
if i`m already using the mouse, then probably zoom with wheel
There's definitely a lot of balance changes to be had, I agree that the pace is too fast right now and there will definitely be scouting tools later on.
Really cool gameplay. I wish the gunshot sound effects were punchier. Seconding the request to interact with what’s nearby, rather than what’s moused over. I found the menus to be serviceable.
Thanks for playing and I'm glad you like the game. I don't know about interacting with what's nearby since I can see a lot of situations where different intractable things are close to you, but I'll try to get rid of the door interaction menu for sure, thanks for the feedback.
These menus when interacting with doors or giving orders are a nightmare to use.
Instead of this clunky system where you have to put your cursor over something to interact with it, have the character interact with whatever is in front of him when pressing F. If something can be interacted with in multiple ways, make it so that tapping F performs the default action (like opening a door), while holding it down opens a menu.
Put kicking and warning suspects on their own keys. Zooming doesn't need to take up two of the most valuable keys.
Accidentally blew myself up with the C2. I think the charges and the clacker should be equippable like weapons instead of it being context-sensitive.
Same goes for the grenades. Moving your thumb over to G while moving is really awkward, and having to use one key on your keyboard and one button on your mouse to throw a grenade feels incredible unintuitive. I know you can throw them with just G, but that just makes it feel inconsistent.
The camera needs to be able to move further from the player. Enemies can shoot you from off screen in some areas.
Got killed several times by my squadmates shooting me in the back.
The most reliable tactic I found was to kick doors to see where enemies were and then blowing up the door to stun them when they came to investigate. Grenades are useless most of the time since enemies are so fast. There's no penalty for killing alerted enemies or getting injured, so running and gunning seems to be the most effective way to play.
It took me way to long to notice that you can only use TAB while in the RMB menu. I first thought you could swap characters with TAB, and was going to complain that it didn't work. Then I though the menu was broken since it didn't do anything when I unpressed RMB while hovering a command.
Anyway, not a fan of the RMB menu, having to hold RMB and scroll doesn't feel good in a game which (I at least) play completely by mouse.
The concept seems good though, I just didn't like the controls.
I wouldn't call losing an officer Masterful, kinda contrasts with the Game Over.
I will actually experiment with being able to switch officers later on just in case getting a game over when the squad lead dies is too punishing.
I agree that the UI needs work, but I'm not sure what I could substitute the drop-down command menu with. I'll see if there's any better alternative but this style of menu is what most tactical games with controllable AI use, unless they just give you hotkeys without even giving you the option to scroll with the mouse.
Also yeah the rating system was made with the rules of engagement in mind, it's just a different string based on your score % It definitely needs some tuning, thanks for reminding me.
The goblin enemies can actually patrol but I set the chance at 33% because I didn't want playtesters to be forced into fights while they're still figuring out the controls, but yeah good point, I definitely need more variety in their behavior. I shouldn't be too far off from the stage where I can just add content so hopefully it will have a lot more stuff by next DD.
Comments
I recorded playing games with commentary, and your game is one of them.
Here's the link to the whole DD50 folder:
https://mega.nz/folder/GclCXISL#gwE9S1kRTbe6amYLH2RiYA
It's nice to see goblins as good guys.
Neat concept to put into 2D, though I've never played a swat game before to compare. Audio, menus, and animations serve their purpose decently. Arresting takes too long, especially when contrasted with how a fire fight killing 10 people can happen in a second. Enemies wandering into the swat team within 5-10 seconds of loading is way too fast, maybe undesirable to happen at all. It makes sense for them to wander since they don't know the swat team is there, but I think it's a bit off putting to be surprised as swat, instead of surprising them if you wait a short while to gather your senses.
I was also able to see the doors swing open though the fog of war, which allowed me to know where an enemy was walking, if you can it should be preferable to hide the position of the door unless it's in sight. If you want to be fancy, the fog of war preview could update its position to where the door was when last in line of sight, so it stays accurate until someone interacts with it out of view.
Looks promising.
Thanks for playing!
Patrolling is rather rudimentary for now, later on I will add room exceptions so enemies won't patrol spawn rooms.
I made it unlikely for it to happen this demo (only the goblin enemy can patrol and he only does so 33% of the time) but I guess it can still happen.
Seeing doors moving in the FoW shouldn't be too important, but I might experiment with it later on.
I had (and am having) a lot of fun playing this. Kind of reminds me of classic Ghost Recon in a way, with how swift and intense the fights are. I don't have a lot of useful feedback to give at this point due to the amount of content available but I'm gonna be keeping my eye on this.
Thanks for playing and I'm glad you like the game!
Hopefully I will have a lot more content by the next DD, progress is going well.
now, this is pretty interesting concept however, shit happened so fast that i could not react fast enough and basically my squad would just win. so i played a run where i basically just set behind the wall giving them the `go there and clear` command.
wish i could tell which way the door opens before actually trying to open it. maybe some dorrs could allow you to peek. i tryed to open slowly but then it`s just a near instantaneous firefight where my guys kill everyone and maybe i get caught in the cross fire and die lol.
flashbang stuns even when facing the opposite direction
if i`m already using the mouse, then probably zoom with wheel
Thanks for playing!
There's definitely a lot of balance changes to be had, I agree that the pace is too fast right now and there will definitely be scouting tools later on.
Really cool gameplay. I wish the gunshot sound effects were punchier. Seconding the request to interact with what’s nearby, rather than what’s moused over. I found the menus to be serviceable.
Thanks for playing and I'm glad you like the game.
I don't know about interacting with what's nearby since I can see a lot of situations where different intractable things are close to you, but I'll try to get rid of the door interaction menu for sure, thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for the feedback!
I'll try to get rid of the door interaction menu entirely, good suggestion.
Hopefully the other keys will be fine once I add the option to rebind them
It took me way to long to notice that you can only use TAB while in the RMB menu. I first thought you could swap characters with TAB, and was going to complain that it didn't work. Then I though the menu was broken since it didn't do anything when I unpressed RMB while hovering a command.
Anyway, not a fan of the RMB menu, having to hold RMB and scroll doesn't feel good in a game which (I at least) play completely by mouse.
The concept seems good though, I just didn't like the controls.
I wouldn't call losing an officer Masterful, kinda contrasts with the Game Over.
Hey, thanks for playing.
I will actually experiment with being able to switch officers later on just in case getting a game over when the squad lead dies is too punishing.
I agree that the UI needs work, but I'm not sure what I could substitute the drop-down command menu with.
I'll see if there's any better alternative but this style of menu is what most tactical games with controllable AI use, unless they just give you hotkeys without even giving you the option to scroll with the mouse.
Also yeah the rating system was made with the rules of engagement in mind, it's just a different string based on your score %
It definitely needs some tuning, thanks for reminding me.
Its very much missing Content, especially more Missions, but its nice.
Soundeffects seemed fitting from what I've heard, music gets repetitive after a while tho.
NPCs only seem to have combat behavior and just stand around otherwise, some Idling Stuff like patrols etc. would be nice.
Took a bit to get used to the Squad Controls, but not long. Needs better UI, but works as is.
Overall for the few Minutes I played it was Fun, will be interesting to see where it ends up.
Thanks for the feedback Tomodev!
The goblin enemies can actually patrol but I set the chance at 33% because I didn't want playtesters to be forced into fights while they're still figuring out the controls, but yeah good point, I definitely need more variety in their behavior.
I shouldn't be too far off from the stage where I can just add content so hopefully it will have a lot more stuff by next DD.