itch.io

If you're looking for story inspiration, I recommend the Ghost In The Shell manga. The characters are government spooks rather than mercenaries.

None of the GitS adaptations get this right. They're usually employed by the government but the adaptations never get that they're "glowies" in 4chan lingo and that they are basically authoritarian and not really moral.

It's still a unique take decades later.

I got it wrong every single time. Am I that bad or am I missing something?

The humans feel a lot livelier too, I think they have new animations?

New models actually! Just some crap from opengameart.org.

The mission trophies are ball-bustingly hard. Maybe that's intentional, but I thought I'd let you know because we tend to underestimate difficulty and all.

Not intentional, none of the difficulty in the game has ever been intentional it's just so hard to scale... Well the gold trophies are supposed to be quite hard. I only expect players who go all in to get gold. I was hoping bronze would be something anyone could get on a relatively mistake free run and silver would be someone who's pretty good.

Some flight rings will appear red even though they were not next on the queue. Going through them did not do anything.

Is there any condition you saw this bug happen in? Restarting maybe?

Echolocation cooldown is so quick it's like it's not even there...

If you get to later waves it will lengthen but that was something I did to try to reduce the difficulty.

A quick restart button would be nice.

For sure, it's necessary with the missions.

I like this mission structure, it's nice to see this going from prototype to a full structured game. Good job.

Thank you and thanks for playing! It's good to have someone play it at multiple stages of development.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lUtRU2FWu6-1LKK7aQbJ2rJ8T-cj6xOP/view?usp=shari...

I gave the updated version a try, much easier!

Oh man the memories. Can't believe it was 4 years ago now

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h5TinXFI4pCjIIKP5TRl-ciMcoAQNR2U/view?usp=shari...

Here's my playthrough, nice work! I just realized I played the version before you made the tree area easier... dammit...

>Decent prototype.
>more than two years into development

It's completely true though kek

The sound of the "urrrngg" gets annoying after bumping into the ground or a building after the 100th time.

huh second time I've gotten this feedback this DD but I've never gotten it before. Guess I'll have to look into voice acting..

Thanks for playing!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G26bwsUSkq34Y4tKSYrHjb-GwboK5Fgw/view?usp=shari...

Definitely the highlight of DD, nice work. Here's my playthrough. (Will delete after a week)

Thanks for playing!

High on my todo list is making her "Vamps" form playable.

you HAVE to let people select if they want inverted view or not. for many, a game becomes completely unplayable with the wrong

Press "i" to invert. I have it on the main menu screen and the help screen. Let me know if there's another place you were looking for that option. Someday I'll make a real UI for this game.

you can honestly get rid of the "follow the circles" mode. nobody wanted to play superman 64 back then and nobody wants to now, either.

:( I guess I'll turn it into a race mode.

Thanks for playing!

I gave it a try, looking good! (Will have to delete the video after a week to save space)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dl8DOT31ngDJObCRsrw4XPrZby9Zbmld/view?usp=shari...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19Z1sHBop8jETlDBrwCiUP6ewJIvJE1Bt/view?usp=shari...

Played for a bit, soulslikes aren't my cup of tea but looks promising! (I'll have to delete the video in a week because I'm low on google drive space)

Christmas and Demo Day are ruined.

Hotfix uploaded!

Can't play the download version

I forgot to package the json files, my shame is immeasurable. Fixed.

-Enemies have almost no sign of powering up a shot at the player. It feels like it comes out of nowhere. For example I got shot mere inches from eating the guy.

I give basically no indication of this which is my failing as a game designer but they hear and see Batty so they turn and attack when they hear your flapping. I'm planning on making this more clear to the player and a progressive thing where they hear first and then look to see Batty.

Also, it was slightly distracting how as my orientation changes, the clipping of distant building does too.

Raylib has a ridiculously small draw distance by default, I'll bump it up.

-There doesn't seem to be a way to quit the mode, which is especially annoying when you mess up in the race.

Fair, I'll add a restart or a pause or something.

Maybe I'm just bad, but it felt like I went though the hole but wasn't credited some times, primarily when going faster.

I expect the player to try to go through the circle rather than skim it, but you're the second person to give this feedback so I enlarged the hitbox.

Thanks for playing!

but the camera starts to feel quite disorienting after a while

Was there something about it that feels disorienting? Does it move too quick? FoV too big? Too close to Batty?

Hitboxes are also a bit too stingy, especially for the rings

I'll try to make them a touch bigger for the rings.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

I know batty targets only people but maybe if there was stuff in the air to target as well gameplay could feel more varied.

I definitely want aerial enemies so that the flying mechanics can be explored more. I may even add enemy bats or vampires, I'm open to seeing what's fun.

The hitbox / hurtbox feels a little wonky? Sometimes I would fly over the heads of enemies when I feel like I should've hit them. Almost as if batty's hitbox extends only above her model's body and not below it at all.

This is a common complaint. I think it's a perspective thing. I might help the player cheat and extend the hurt box lower, a coyote time hurt box I guess.

Also it's really hard to dodge the enemy that shoots orange balls at you.

I'll try slowing down the speed of the balls. Later I want to introduce a barrel roll dodge like in star fox which would make them much easier to manage.

A mechanic of the game that's not made clear to the player at all right now is that you can sneak up on humans. Once I explain that better and give the player better abilities to fly silently, the gameplay hopefully will shift more towards not alerting the aggressive humans in the first place.

My most recent devlog summarizes what's new: https://frenchfriesguy.itch.io/batty-vamps/devlog/892104/your-missions-should-yo...

Would love feedback on the trophy difficulty.

The next planned feature is a way to 'dive' at humans so you can silently and quickly attack them.

Edit: Hotfix: Fixed Windows build. Make ring hitboxes bigger. Made projectiles move slower.

Did you try holding down the rockets when firing them, or did they always only fire once if you clicked and held down?

I never held down the button, since I end up going through rockets so fast it would feel 'wasteful' to just hold down the button. But I guess that's too conservative.

best bet is not to use missiles or grenades and just your primary weapon.

This is surprising to me because I expected gernades and secondary weapons to do more damage than primary. If they don't, they're sort of outclassed by the utility of the primary weapon in all ways.

You're my virtual friend Marnix.

It seems like a lot of the clicks don't register for some reason.

Had to check out the new stuff!

Playthrough here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Eu-a1EEE2NSoV988uopGsesZo6vOtt7Q/view?usp=shari...

(I'll delete in 1 week to save space)

(ok posting to the correct dd now)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ppPdkbXyC8_nSTA_ddd5b1As76kxO_O4/view?usp=shari...

Here's my playthrough! I didn't get very far I guess. Somehow my research wasn't finishing? It feels like there's an interesting game here I just couldn't get to it.

(edit: I'll have to delete the video after a week to free up space)

wait lol my dumb ass posted this on the wrong dd

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ppPdkbXyC8_nSTA_ddd5b1As76kxO_O4/view?usp=shari...

Here's my playthrough! I didn't get very far I guess. Somehow my research wasn't finishing? It feels like there's an interesting game here I just couldn't get to it.

As for the "empty" Storage Crates. They are not empty. All storage from all sources is automatically combined into a single accessible inventory. You can only access this inventory from Chests. I admit is was painful to watch you check every chest in the camp not noticing they all contained the same items.

lol I feel kind of silly, but I was sort of overwhelmed by how many pawns I had and how much they were doing on their own. Also it 'felt' like the containers were different because they are accessed independently and I was instructed to build multiple ones in different places.

About audio adjusting in real time. The volume of an audio object in gamemaker is set at the time of play. So I reset all audio on menu close. I've been trying to find a good way around doing it this way for a while.

Hm, I'd think gamemaker would provide some way to make this work? I don't know anything about gamemaker but maybe you could hack it by waiting for the player to change the audio option, and then resuming play for the shortest amount of time possible and then stopping play. Then the change would take effect but it would be invisible to the user that they ever left a menu state.

That weird thing with the job switching. Huh, I've never see that happen before. After quite a bit of testing. I've determined that it is the newly implemented aspirations system. This was happening, because while pawns can choose a different job to perform on their own. They were not checking other professions aspirations, before setting a new one. Scrolling through the list of professions caused them to accept all jobs, and all of those jobs aspirations. Going on a job fair.

Ah don't you love bugs like this

Fun game! My feedback and playthrough are in this video:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FDIucBmsgZ33Q5aRCDyAYUREFi3amS-g/view?usp=drive...

I'll have to delete the video from my drive after a week because it takes up a lot of room.

Looking forward to more!

Very floaty! Felt less like a tank and more like a glider I could launch really high if I hit ramps or drove up walls. When the enemy respawns I can't target them again. Also I couldn't switch to the scout.

I have to tryhard whenever there's a movement-based game with a high score system so I sat down and cranked out a 2:47. I demand to know if this makes me the ultimate in peak penguin performance!

The ship is flying!

Cool to see your js framework in action.

Thanks!

Puzzles with different size holes where you need to be strategic about the size of your earth for each 'growth'.

lol you were one level shy of experiencing our implementation of this

F just toggles between looking at the player vs the world. But it's not quite there, sometimes it will toggle but just chill far away until you move. It was a conscious decision to not allow the player to move the camera manually, I liked having it be simpler.

The game really wasn't meant to be played with keyboard, so yeah it's not going to come across well.

Thanks for playing!

Dude this was super cool.

I really liked exploring the mechanics and the world.

Was there anything to do after I found the second generator? I couldn't find anything else because I kept running out of juice for the lights when I tried to go down long hallways and I exhausted all the resources I had.

flying is still a bit strange when diving

I'm definitely going to add a "divebomb" ability at some point.

the camera frustum depth is too small for no reason... maybe you plan on adding fog? if not just crank it up.

That's just out of the box raylib behavior. I'll investigate where that's set in the raylib code or add fog at some point.

wanted to mouse fly but didn`t know how to enable it... is it not available in the browser?

Yup only desktop version. I can't reset the mouse position in web.

maybe it would look more rad if they shot a stream of disperse elongated projectiles instead of a big ball

Hmmm like a shotgun blast? That would be cool visually.

Thanks for playing!

the velocimeter max out at 300 kmh

Ha that sounds about right, it does feel really fast. If you even go over a small bump at 300kph, you're still going to get serious hang time where you won't have control while airborne.

Cool glad the feedback was useful.

Really impressed to see you blaze through the whole demo in one sitting, some people had a lot of trouble previously finishing the second and third mission.

Oh that makes me feel good! Usually DD games make me feel like a scrub but I guess I can still keep up when it comes to mech/vehicle games. 2nd and 3rd missions were hard but I appreciated the challenge.

Good shit dude, recorded my playthrough (I'm still figuring out my new dd feedback video workflow, so my voice audio is too quiet for a lot of it):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JVJJ7JLNMXrjewiJzNn3J_MFRoNZVfSv/view?usp=shari...

Fun game! I recorded myself playing it. In the video I wished there was a first person view and now looking at the screenshots I realize there was and I forgot to try changing the camera...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Zy0NVcO7Ow69s_a92__Id-cpc111SosD/view?usp=shari..

I hope this game one day outgrows the simple wave based arcade formula.

I hope so too. I'm definitely thinking more seriously about what comes next, but there's still some core mechanics I want to add.

I think this could do well as a 'Simulator' like this : Pigeon Simulator on Steam .

I'm not interested in this 'meme simulator' format. But in the same vein, I'm thinking about a Grand Theft Auto style open world where you can interact with the city but also pick up missions to do from characters.

There seems to be a stealth mechanic? I might be imagining it but I felt like when I flapped my wings close by enemies would become alert. If that's the case I like that a lot, it should be more clear, I shouldn't be wondering if that's actually a mechanic or just in my imagination. 

The humans are alerted by the sight and sound of Batty! I was thinking I would copy Metal Gear Solid and have a state where they are alerted but haven't yet fully noticed the player (question mark over their head in MGS) and then fully alerted (Exclamation point over their head in MGS). Something like that might make it more clear.

I would like to feel more agile / in control of Batty

I've got plans to improve this for sure.

Voices are great.

Thanks! Recorded them myself this week.

Thanks for playing!

you can afford to make the camera much more weighted and dynamic

Interesting, I haven't gotten feedback on the camera for a while. I think I need to move the camera back a bit to allow for more room on the screen for dynamically tracking Batty. At a certain point I reduced how dynamic the camera was because it was too easy for her to end up half off the screen in a hard banking turn.

Work on the collision feedback, it feels to short, maybe a longer bounce with gradual control regaining?

I reduced the crash duration because earlier in the game's life there was a lot of 'ping ponging' between buildings when the crash duration was longer. You'd hit one building and then bounce into another one before you could get your bearings. Maybe if control could be gradually regained but then she'd need to recover from her spin early.

Once I fell through the ground and game crashed

Yeah it's been a tough bug to track down. I know the position variable goes to a Vector of { NaN, NaN, NaN } and I think it's because of an earlier magnitude being NaN. Well... I'm off to go crash into the ground over and over in a debug build...