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tlomdev1 year ago

Thanks for playing the game.

  • The way the ocean on the main menu freezes on two nearly identical frames between waves looks bad.  The water needs to recede more and with more frames.

It could use few more frames.

  • Add a proper options menu instead of just two buttons on the pause menu to change resolution (what exactly does "low resolution" even mean?

All the menu staff is still not final, but I'm trying to come up with a solution where I can keep it all in one page.

  • Pressing X should close the pause menu.

I can implement that.

  • Only enable vibration when detecting controller inputs, and disable it again on keyboard inputs. Don't make me unplug my controller.

It checks keyboard and controller inputs simultaneously  atm, I've not been bothering with controller for a long while since for some reason it doesn't work on mac but it is on my list.

  • I don't like these shadows originating from the center of each screen. That's not how sunlight works. Why don't the braziers cast shadows?

I thought it'd give bit of a dramatic feeling to entire thing.

  • Fade out the HUD if it overlaps the player.

Maybe I can make it a little transparent if player walks around top left but I didn't think it was that big of an issue, usually there's always a wall there or something. 

  • If a flying enemy drops an item in a non-navigable location, it should be teleported to the nearest navigable location.

I could maybe magnetize them to player but you can pick them up with your weapon as well, unless it's too deep in the walls.

  • Left/right door collision is still wonky.

Do you mean in dungeons or certain specific room? I don't know what's wonky about them but I remember you or someone else telling me something.

  • Are you meant to have to use the lightning spell for the genie boss? That kind of attack doesn't really work when fighting him in melee, and there's no telegraph. What if you run out of crystals? Do you expect the player to go farm some more before letting him retry the boss?

Genie boss only takes damage from the eye, you can actually spam attack and win fast. His body doesn't have any collusion.

  • The HUD icon for the ring is too small to be useful. Add a sound and/or particle effect to indicate when it's ready again.

I thought in the end ring is either up or not, and after a few uses you get the gist of it, little sparkle animation or something could work but maybe could be a bit distracting, sound might be too annoying imo.

  • Who's the trickster the water fairy's talking about? Is it the genie? Does she give you the sword just for killing the frogs, or does the dialogue not update?
  • Fade out/fade in subtitles between lines. It helps a lot with readability and ensures that you can't miss when a new line appears.

It's the genie, you get the sword after you defeat it and return back to the pond but I don't think dialogue updates after that. Textbox stuff is all really recent so there are some issues I've overlooked.

  • The charge attack seems pretty useless.

It attacks in a wider area and sends tiny projectiles that goes through shielded enemies. Although I've been thinking about putting something in the game that lets you upgrade the projectiles into something more convenient like sword beam attack. 

  • I managed to keep a charge after letting go of Z, but I couldn't replicate it. I think it happened when I got hit by an enemy.

I know about that one, I think it happens if an enemy pushes you out of the room.

  • I don't like how the carpet boss's bullets block yours. I just circled around her the entire just so I could hit her. It doesn't add any challenge; in fact, it undermines any attempts at making the boss challenging, because if the bullet density was high enough that you couldn't dodge them in your sleep, you'd never be able to hit the boss.

The flying bosses are just wip bits I put to show how it's going to look, I should've tried to make it more fun tho. They're just spam button to see how long it takes right now, I do want to implement different type of projectiles and sequences in those fights. 

  • Does the carpet that lets you cross lava need to be aligned to the grid? If you're inbetween two tiles (like you'll always be when entering a screen), it spawns too far to the side for you to cross.

It is on a grid based alignment so for the sake of keeping it consistent it does need to be like that. But there's probably be a better solution I've not thought of yet.

  • Enemies need to move around less. It's really annoying trying to hit an enemy with the long windup when it could instantly change direction at any moment. A lot of the time you end up taking contact damage because the enemy decided to go towards you with no warning.

I think it becomes easier once you get the swift attack upgrade but I've been thinking of starting with fast attack and using that upgrade for something else since slower attack can feel sluggish when you're just out of reach sometimes.

  • There's no indication that the ring only works with the star spell other than the description. 

Every item works with the same page spell except the crystal and summoning circle, which isn't finalized still.

  • The walk back to the volcano dungeon is really fucking annoying.

I was hoping finish the flying broom witch carry you to the dungeons of your choice, ofc the ones you've been before but I couldn't finish it in time, but you will be able to fly to those dungeons after you rescue her.

  • Stunned enemies shouldn't cause contact damage.

I probably can do that. I'll try and see how it works.

  • The blue ring projectiles in the room with the laser statue shouldn't be able to spawn right next to you. Sometimes they even spawn inside you and you take damage for seemingly no reason.

Those are invisible enemies, they get visible once you dash through the star spell but the item isn't in the game yet and you need to unlock it from the menu before you die. But there are enemies that's shooting the blue rings so you can hit them even if you can't see them.

  • I ended up leaving and re-entering certains screens until no enemies spawned rather than bothering fighting them.

Yeah enemy spawn rate does fluctuate a lot, I've been meaning to change how it works but I couldn't come up with a nice solution yet.

  • Couldn't figure what I was supposed to with the laser statue, and the bottle, candle, and item that lets you push blocks all seem to have vanished, so I had to stop there.

If you got the candle you've been using the bottle, once you pass the laser statue with the invisible enemies there's a mini turtle boss that drops upgrade item for you where you can bottle the lightning spell and release it again for teleporting around. Other than that you can capture fairies and heal up and use it for few other side quests in the game. I'm not sure what you mean by item that lets you push blocks, the crystal that creates pushable block? If that it should be still in the game.

Again thank you for playing and letting me know all these issues, I will try to tackle some of those until next dd!

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Qwott1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

>I could maybe magnetize them to player but you can pick them up with your weapon as well, unless it's too deep in the walls.

It kind of breaks the sense of depth and perspective when an item overlaps the walls.

>Do you mean in dungeons or certain specific room? I don't know what's wonky about them but I remember you or someone else telling me something.


The collision extends too far down. You can't pass through doors all the way down to this height, while the character overlaps all other objects. The trigger zone is also too far in; you have to go almost entirely off-screen before it switches screens.

>Genie boss only takes damage from the eye, you can actually spam attack and win fast. His body doesn't have any collusion.

No, I know about the collision. I'm saying there's no way to avoid his projectiles when you're in melee range, or even any way of knowing when he's going to do it. Also, you probably don't want to encourage or enable DPS racing. What's the point of bosses having mechanics if you can just ignore them and stand in place while mashing Z?

>It attacks in a wider area and sends tiny projectiles that goes through shielded enemies. Although I've been thinking about putting something in the game that lets you upgrade the projectiles into something more convenient like sword beam attack. 

Pretty much everything about it needs fixing. The charge time is extremely long; It's just not worth using it when you could do more damage by just attacking normally. A long charge time also encourages a passive hit-and-run playstyle where you wait for it to charge far away from enemies and only get close to hit them once and then back off again. The random spread makes it keep missing; either make the angles fixed or have it home in on enemies. The range is so short and the projectile speed is so slow I'm not sure if I ever managed to actually hit anything with it. The sword hits the enemies before the projectiles and knocks them out of reach.

>Those are invisible enemies, they get visible once you dash through the star spell but the item isn't in the game yet and you need to unlock it from the menu before you die. But there are enemies that's shooting the blue rings so you can hit them even if you can't see them.

That's a bad way of introducing invisible enemies. Put just one or two of them in a room with nothing else to distract you.


Some more things:

  • The animation before the main menu appears should be skippable.
  • Just let me pause the goddamn game. Not pausing while the menu is open adds nothing to game.
  • The pose the character does when picking up an item lasts for slightly too long.

I somehow managed to miss the path to the snow area entirely.

  • Wouldn't let me give the pearl to the guy in the cave.
  • You should be able to switch spells while moving. For example, if I'm moving left, I should be able to press Space and up to switch to the star spell while still holding the left arrow key, and then continue moving left.
  • The page flipping animation should only play once instead of repeatedly flipping to the same page.
  • The frost giant's contact damage hitbox is too big.
  • Some areas are too dark. The woods where the cat is are pitch black when playing in daylight.
  • Sacrificing the fairies to the altar didn't seem to do anything.
  • You should be able to attack at the end of a dash.
  • Don't make it seem like the turtle miniboss is taking damage from attacks if he's not actually taking damage.
  • It's not that obvious when the octopus boss is vulnerable and when he isn't.
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tlomdev1 year ago

About collusions, I'll widen the doors once I draw the new dungeon tilesets, which size wise will be same with starting tower doors. I'll have to remake most of the dungeons but I've been planning to anyways so it might take some time. But there's still going to be a difference in feeling since character collusion mask is taller than it's wider, so even though the doors have 160pixel opening when you walk up or down into them you don't feel it because of the collusion mask.

About the genie boss, I was thinking of making an almost screen wide projectiles in a row attack for the genie to teach that you can dash through them with the ring, and putting some sort of indicator then, but most of the bosses are just looping sprites atm and they need few more frames of chargeup animation or something to indicate an attack.

>It attacks in a wider area and sends tiny projectiles that goes through shielded enemies. Although I've been thinking about putting something in the game that lets you upgrade the projectiles into something more convenient like sword beam attack. 

Pretty much everything about it needs fixing. The charge time is extremely long; It's just not worth using it when you could do more damage by just attacking normally. A long charge time also encourages a passive hit-and-run playstyle where you wait for it to charge far away from enemies and only get close to hit them once and then back off again. The random spread makes it keep missing; either make the angles fixed or have it home in on enemies. The range is so short and the projectile speed is so slow I'm not sure if I ever managed to actually hit anything with it. The sword hits the enemies before the projectiles and knocks them out of reach.

About the chargeup weapon, it was passively charging before this demo and I didn't get to try it all that much, I thought charge timing was ok with it being not too fast and with possible sword beam upgrade it'd be powerful enough. I'll try around with timing and maybe even double damage after you charged it enough, I tried the double damage before the demo but thought it was too powerful but maybe if the chargeup feels slow double damage would work.

I agree with you on the invisible enemies, like I said dungeons are bit of a sketch for me right now like I'll introduce this enemy before that room and so, I'm kinda putting them on another time since there's bunch of tilesets need to be drawn but it's starting to catch up I guess.

  • The animation before the main menu appears should be skippable.

I don't understand what you mean by that? Do you mean the walking and looking at the moon animation?

  • Just let me pause the goddamn game. Not pausing while the menu is open adds nothing to game.

I'll think about it but I don't think pause adds all that much, especially when a lot of rooms are just safe spaces where you can walk and wait.

  • The pose the character does when picking up an item lasts for slightly too long.

I can tone that down

I somehow managed to miss the path to the snow area entirely.

  • Wouldn't let me give the pearl to the guy in the cave.

I didn't add the pearl items yet, I understand the confusion since he mentions it.

  • You should be able to switch spells while moving. For example, if I'm moving left, I should be able to press Space and up to switch to the star spell while still holding the left arrow key, and then continue moving left.
  • The page flipping animation should only play once instead of repeatedly flipping to the same page.

I kinda have some idea how to implement that but I'm going to try to redo bits of how you change your spell anyways, instead of using spacebar you'll use x or k +direction keys and when you release it after a bit you'll cast the spell like the charged attack, so I can maybe change it while doing that. Same with page flipping animation so possibly next dd or so there's going to be some changes with those.

  • The frost giant's contact damage hitbox is too big.

I know didn't test it enough, that whole dungeon is 2 rooms so they're basically boss sketches atm and wanted to show it since demoday to get some feedback instead of keeping it hidden. I'm going to rework bits of those bosses at some point.

  • Some areas are too dark. The woods where the cat is are pitch black when playing in daylight.

I do like the contrast between dark and light areas but I've gotten similar comments before so maybe I can tone it down a bit, but I personally don't mind how they are atm.

  • Sacrificing the fairies to the alter didn't seem to do anything.

Someone else said the same thing, I thought it was working ok but there's some sort of issue with it, I'll try to fix it.

  • You should be able to attack at the end of a dash.

I don't understand exactly, like a fast attack right after a dash? because I thought you can attack after a dash, also dashing does a little damage as well.

  • Don't make it seem like the turtle miniboss is taking damage from attacks if he's not actually taking damage.

It is taking damage but it'd take a bit until it's dead, maybe I can just make it block everything except the bomb, but I like you can defeat some enemies with just hitting them as well.

  • It's not that obvious when the octopus boss is vulnerable and when he isn't.

When he's being shadowy you can't hit him, I guess it could look bit vague so I'll check it out.


Again thanks for playing, I hope you saved the cat and gotten the candle after you got the jar. One of the reasons I didn't want to make charge attack a long range thing because you can hit the candle flame for ranged attack, although it collides with walls unlike lightning orb. Thanks for your feedback, it's very valuable!

Reply
Qwott1 year ago(+1)

>I don't understand what you mean by that? Do you mean the walking and looking at the moon animation?

Yes.

>I don't understand exactly, like a fast attack right after a dash? because I thought you can attack after a dash, also dashing does a little damage as well.

I mean pressing Z during a dash to attack while keeping some momentum from the dash. It's just something you'd expect would happen and would make the game feel more responsive. I never would have assumed the dash did damage since the character doesn't hold his weapon out during  it.

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