i think it's kind of a bad thing as it stands right now. i feel like the game would flow better if you just died more easily (so the stress of it being difficult feels reasonable since the punishment for failure would be high) ooor keep the current health but actually reward the player for not getting hit...
basically either punish mistakes more or reward perfect play more, or both
i was just kinda memeing because at this stage you could turn this into anything. but an extraction shooter would usually have you set up a loadout to go into a map and then playing there and needing to extract through some risky means. and if you die you lose your inventory but if you extract then you keep that stuff in your vault to risk again later.
but yeah probably bigger maps with more to do and more competent enemies would be like the first thing you'd wanna work on idk
i reaaalllyyyyyyy enjoyed it. looks and sounds and feels great to play.
- moving slower on the ground is kinda annoying ngl
- game is hard as hell to not get hit in but the health feels too forgiving... so it's really difficult but too easy at the same time.
- this really needs a little glossary of what every sub-weapon is and stuff like that
oh, yeah, it's a very conscious design choice to only allow cardinal directions and directly up and down. i'll add analogue stick support soon but it will still be axis locked so it'll still be the same lol. And although it's not frequent, there's been many games with controls like this and i never found them awkward idk, i think it's something you get used to in like 3 minutes
I suck at it (i think i have to beat every enemy in a level to get to the next?) but man it is satisfying as hell to grapple around and shoot at the floating dudes and the worms.
I actually kinda prefer not being able to pick guns, rotating through them feels really nice.
I kinda wish you could just grapple with left click and shoot with right click, instead of swapping between them.
definitely scratches the devil daggers itch
i found my first treasure naturally but the second literally was not physically there. i knew i was in the right spot, i dug a massive crater around it, and even used the debug beams that tell you were it is. but it wasn't there.
i assume that's a bug or something unfinished, idk.
anyway i like the idea and it's very pleasant to play right now already
played it with controller, feels great to play that way actually aside from janky menuing.
grenade feels like it should just be its own input rather than a weapon you switch to tbh
controller aiming also feels like it should have a little dot or something in the direction you're pointing like hotline miami or something.
i missed the disc gun from the previous demo but other than that nice proggy!
kino.
golem too strong
it's not too clear what the yellow and green squares are for in the dungeons. also ideally replace them with something that doesnt rely on color to be communicated.
white damage numbers are hard to make out during attacks sometimes, maybe theyd benefit from a thicker outline or something
finished it, became the ultimate digger, extremely fun!
some pain points:
- this should not have frame drops when i look in certain directions bro idk what is up with that
- losing a bunch of health instantly because some tiny debris rolled off a rock i just cracked and they briefly touched me shouldn't be a thing
- game lets you stand back up in places you need to crouch through and it gets you stuck or slides you around buggily until you crouch back down
- inventory/controls/holding stuff on your hand feels like it should get a new pass for how to handle it and how to handle the related inputs, it feels awkward right now
The game has free diagonal movement, you don't move in a grid, the only limit is 8 directions. I'll add the analog stick as an option later but it will still work like the d-pad.
and yes, the game absolutely needs the odd attacking control scheme, having to press a direction first and only then shoot that way would get people killed a lot later on and it would be very frustrating for them.
I'd rather ask my players to learn a weird control scheme at the start rather than give them a poor control scheme for the entire game lol.
Thanks for playing!
- when you jump, during the the upward part of the trajectory, you usually cant change direction (left or right), and that is suddenly allowed once you are on the downward part of the jump arc, the shift feels sudden but not bad. It's inconsistent though because when jumping off a wall you are allowed to change direction all you want instantly, which always happens if you're holding the direction towards the wall.
- the knockback when you hit an enemy is so big that you can almost never hit them more than once which defeats the purpose of being able to attack continuously
- i seriously think you should do an art pass over your environments to make the foreground and background more contrasting and distinct. right now the levels are all too gray, not enough black or white
- lightly pushing the analog stick can remove in a very goofy slow-mo walk cycle and extreme foot-sliding. nothing major but funny
- testing out those slopes, you might want to have a dedicated "sliding off" (or just the falling state) for when the slope is too extreme
- saving and loading is great, good job. but enemies doing their death animation again is obviously funny. my guess is you can avoid that by just despawning already-dead enemies. or spawning them into a state where they're already on their fully dead keyframe, instead of doing their death anim again.
- i think enemies should have a clear tell when they die. Either a distinct (universal) sound effect or an animation. i always find myself shooting enemies once or twice after they already died because i wasnt sure yet
- do headshots matter?
- game seems mostly designed for controllers. I believe the current aiming speed curve is linear? it feels that way. Anyway it's uncomfortable, because the minimum speed is too fast and the maximum speed (pushing the stick against the edge) is not fast enough. should be more like an exponential curve or something
- i LOVE the little particle effects that only show up with your flashlight
- crouching seems to mostly make robots miss their shots, probably unintended
- you might want to have some kind of damace fall-off range for the gun, to make cheesing enemies from far away less reliable
- great vibe as always. you should add reverb zones in big interiors. would give your laser shots even more intensity
- once i stepped into the garden i didnt hear grass footsteps, is this a feature you're missing entirely? add it ASAP it's super important (different footsteps per surface material)
- i really like the introductory enemy and using a candelabra as a makeshift weapon
- i feel like the level design is still weak. every single room looks amazing individually, but they're 100% just random rooms and hallways and it's impossible to build a proper sense of direction or priorities. no door feels more important than the others, no rooms feel more important than others. nothing. I think you should "zoom out" metaphorically and focus on the bigger picture of your environments. because as i said by themselves and looked at up close they're magnificent. but they don't feel like they're contributing to a bigger theme or picture
uhh
- the map screen is clear enough except for how moving your mario works, i'm confused about that, probably more clear if i played DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS first.
- game would generally benefit from a lot of little things that DARKEST DUNGEON does during battles for clarity, such as being able to hover the mouse over an enemy at any point to see their status.
- also at some point in the future a little dictionary with what the status and elements are would be great.
- everything else is peam
impressive proggy.
- the flamethrower broke on me near the end, it was draining ammo if i held click but there was no fire coming out, no sound, no damage, nothing.
- i love the shopkeeper and her different poses
- a lot of the props in the level didnt have collision kek i noticed that
- the shotgun seems too strong even at a distance, you may wanna reign it in a bit
after beating the race i was softlocked cuz the ghost congratulated me but aggy chan was in full control mode so i could move around and not finish his dialogue. pressing restart let me bypass the problem.
i think the animals that are dangerous should either be bigger or more visually distinct, otherwise they can kinda pass for other animals like the birds which are harmless.
absolutely stellar presentation and feel as usual.
couldn't find where to unlock costumes and the backflip seems pretty useless.
good proggy tbh!
Yeah i've heard the UI buttons bug is still there which is a pain on my back tbh.
You are indeed a woman in the demo, though that armor set in particular changes very little between genders.
I noticed a bug in your stream where not locking onto enemies made their healthbars go away and never come back after a while, i'll fix that.
I also noticed a small bug where the attack hitbox remained enabled on your weapon when you got hit by the miniboss as you killed him, noted.
It was unfortunate that you wanted to practice parrying on the enemy with the PARRYGOD personality lmao.
Stealth is not supposed to give you instakills, you hit that enemy from behind and it did a crit just like hitting them after a parry would, you can charge the attack to get the most out of it. But yeah a backstab instakill is not the idea for the game at all.
Sad to hear it didn't feel much different for you than the last demo but trust me the behind the scenes stuff is so much less spaghetti it's unreal.
Anyway, thanks for the stream and the feedback man!
glad you found the combat intuitive!
noted on the lack of feedback, i already added a lot of extra audiovisual stuff since last demo day but i will add even more (like screenshake).
i agree enemies are feeling too passive right now and will probably adjust all their behaviour settings to make them more agressive.
I'm probably going to overhaul how blocking works both for the player and enemies.
Heh the B button will probably still not be functional in the next demo sadly. but the gun might!
- i'm malding that the UI buttons bug showed up again.
- I'm aware enemies pathfinding can die under certain situations.
- This occlusion culling thing is something i haven't heard or seen myself before, i'll try to recreate it later.
- Sry the water is in the new level that didn't make it to this DD
thanks for leaving feedback!!!
god fucking dammit that button prompt bug showing up again i'll fix it next DD i swear.
Oh man yeah i'll add a little tiny range around them in all direction in which they just see you even if you're not making noise, you shouldn't be able to slam against their ass like that.
Thanks for playing and leaving feedback!!!
Hiii!
- thanks for using controller, i hope the controls themselves were agreeable, and if not in the future there will be full rebinding.
- yeah sorry about the order of the menu options it's just thrown there semirandomly for the demo. I will implement a memory feature for that one though, so it opens up in the last one you selected, thanks for the idea.
- I've given it some thought and i'm going to yet again expand how attacking works, you will be able to hold attack from any position but doing so after your first swing (so when your sword is to your left) will lead into a unique double swing animation rather than a single big strike. Doing either of the charged attacks will end your combo though and reset you back to idle. I think it'll feel much better.
- Yeah dodging unsheathing your weapon is by design like that, it's like a tiny trick that i put in to skip the unsheathing if you're in a hurry.
- Yes, stairs steps have been fixed on my modular assets for a long time but this demo level is built out of outdated parts and has shitty step colliders instead of a smooth ramp, sorry.
- Yeah you and the enemy hitting each other is not something i'm gonna prevent, most games let it happen and it's fine.
- It's fine if you figure out how to aggro a single enemy at a time, i will have a few instances of group aggro triggers in the final game but i mostly prefer not resorting to that.
- That fake godray window was for testing and it was going to be much more prevalent in the level that i didnt finish in time lol.
- Most doors in fromsoft games can be closed again, at least the normal sized ones, but yeah a lot of them will be like that in my game too.
- glad you used stealth succesfully.
- yeah again z fighting and jank stuff is because it's an old test environment
- the enemy may have been dodging through your attacks if your sword was skipping through his body between frames, it's a classic collision problem and i'll fix it soon.
thanks for playing and leaving feedback!
Hey! thanks for playing.
- Yeah the game controls much better, the characters have an almost entirely new custom state machine with input buffers and stuff like that, it's quite good now. glad you noticed.
- This isn't really communicated but almost every enemy has custom combat behaviour parameters, some of them never block, some of them block but never parry, the one that probably gave you trouble is internally labeled parryGod lol. You can just shove him, he can't parry those.
- Interesting you mention the greatsword being too fast, i'll consider making it slower, or maybe making the regular sword faster.
- Yeah no the problem currently with hitboxes is not that they're too small but rather that, with the speed of the swing, and the range of the greatsword, the hitbox is passing through enemies sometimes BETWEEN frames so the game doesn't register a collision. I will build a custom solution for it soon but it'll probably be a lot of work hence it not being in this demo already.
- Sorry the spirals are staying lol
Hi kemo!
- interesting point on circling the stick when locked on, i'll test that out. As for stairs, all steps in my modular assets have included a ramp for collision for months now but since i rushed this demo out and couldn't complete the new level we're stuck with the shitty janky stairs that torture the camera.
- I will be playing around with how tracking works and when it's disabled during animations. I'll point out that as it is currently wheneve an enemy does the charged attack you just strafe to any side and they never hit you lol, I don't want the game to be fully strafeable though. And while you're dodging you don't get tracked by enemies, my plan is to fiddle with that until it feels good basically.
- I'll have that rock papers scissors arrangement you described in mind. I don't want the game to work exactly like that, but it's a useful way to think about things, thanks.
Hi! thanks for the feedback.
- Dodging will remain on X rather than O as default but when i add settings the first will be rebinding so people can do whatever they want.
- I might speed up the sheathing/unsheathing animations in the future
- I don't know what you mean by swinging carrying momentum, it's the standard in almost every single action game ever to stop you when you attack
Hi!
- Yeah i'm working mostly on the combat itself for now to get it into a nice place before building the rest of the game. The infinite healing is mostly there for testing purposes.
- Absorb does nothing at the moment and thanks for the ideas you threw at me about it on discord
- The dodge button will remain as it is as default because i really like it but once i get around to adding settings rebinding controls will be the first thing.
- Sheathing makes you move much faster, like a lot, but the current run animation looks almost the same lol. No there won't be an actual functional civilization.
- No need to hold dodge to run since sheathing is a perma-sprint that doesn't deplete stamina (you take more damage sheathed however).
- Gun soonish i promise
quake 4 stroggification cutscene my beloved.
moving the mouse straight up and straight down does weird things that shouldnt happen
also reminds me of the ghost in the shell game for ps1 in a good way
i keep getting some kind of wind accumulation out of nowhere that sends me flying into the void???
ok i stopped playing because i just get stuck in the environment literally every 3 seconds or so.
i love what the game is going for but the basics are super hyper rough right now.
forge on
latching onto red ropes while grounded seems glitchy (visually)
i latched onto a red rope grounded and when i cancelled it my model became offset, after moving for a bit the position fixed itself, it seemed to be a visual problem and not a collision one
good progress since last demoday btw. game is still very very enjoyable
