itch.io

Thanks for letting me know about the grenadiers. Short version - it's because some of them are running the wrong behavior tree that causes them to try and fire 'automatically' like another enemy does that doesn't appear in the demo. But they lack the animations for doing it properly so they just turn invisible instead.

The doors are a perennial problem child and will be fixed for sure in the next update - which will (finally) have the first episode's complete OST.

Interesting. It controls very intuitively (at least for movement and attacking/blocking) on a keyboard and mouse so that's good. The atmosphere is also nice - it kinda *feels* like it's going for 'what if Dark Souls but in 17th or 18th century' which I think is a worthy goal.

Parrying kinda confuses me, though. I only got it to work by holding down the button within a certain timeframe, which strikes me as kind of an odd way of implementing it.

Don't worry about the music - I got the guy who did the soundtrack for "The Case of the Golden Idol" working on music for the game, complete with a dynamic music system that changes based on whether or not you're in combat!Assuming all goes well, Episode 1's music should be complete by the end of the year.

The control rebinding is weird sometimes, yeah. I think that if you just hit 'reset controls' and go back into the menu it should be fine from thereon. Like it does that for every first time play of the game, so then every new version of this demo would have the same issue, but I'm not really sure.

I have tinkered with the gravity thing once or twice and haven't really found a setting that feels 'authentic'. I've never liked platforming in FPS's so I've been avoiding adding stuff like that. Kind of the same reason I don't want to get too schizo with the mazes. Filler is one thing but I want it to at least resemble something.

As for the texture filtering thing - it's because Unreal Engine handles texture filtering on a per-texture image basis. It's literally only just now that I learned that Unreal has a means of mass changing properties like that - so the next demo should have more consistent texture filtering.

And the spear - for what it's worth, is an AoE weapon that stuns enemies in an area and has a chance of instantly killing them once they come out of that stun.

I love shmups, and I think the inclusion of machine gun convergence as an actual mechanic kind of interesting, even if I find it doesn't really do much. The lack of firing and movement animations for the plane and enemies stuck out to me, as well as the way the clouds would get in front of the camera. Also the clouds that have random lines through them, looks unfinished.

Also, suggestion, rather than having the enemies just rain down willy-nilly, it'd be a lot cooler if there was like a pool of patterns that the enemies to come down in and the game randomly selected from those patterns.

I love the aesthetic. Very Dwarf Fortress. But there's just no conveyance of what's even available to me. I kept looking around for a weapon shop or something to get something other than a staff. The lack of XP/leveling also makes combat feel like a punishment rather than an opportunity for grinding.

Neat theming. Brings me back to my days in food service (so like two weeks ago) in the best and worst ways possible. 

That being said, I feel like some of the obstacles are kind superfluous. The corn guy in particular bugged me (after I changed pants) since I had no way beyond looking to see if he was there. Which would be fine if - like in a 'Papa's' game, the food actually took time to cook - but if everything is instant anyway there's not really much reason to turn around.

Firstly, thank you for playing!

About the shield guys - they actually can surround you - it's just currently random whether or not they *will*. IIRC it also has to do with whether or not they can actually path to a spot within 5 meters (or something like that) of you. This is partly a level design issue, I acknowledge.

and as for the shields themselves... ugh... this is one of those things I've been meaning to work on - and have gotten a lot of comments about. But I'm not really sure how to fix it. Right now the way it works is that all enemies just use one capsule collider for damage, and the shield guys just take less damage from the front, and more from the back. So the idea is that the ideal strategy is to keep tabs on where they are, keep yourself from getting surrounded, and hit them from the back (phrasing).

I guess I could add a flat box/plane collider to the front of them that does the same thing, but then it wouldn't necessarily be able to match up with the way the shield on the sprite moves. 

And there *is* a pain state animation where they sorta do what you're describing, it just appears that it doesn't show up enough/goes by too quickly for players to notice.

Right now the way the system is based on angles. So if you circle around the shield guys (or I think any enemy) then you'll do like twice as much damage compared to the front (which reduces it by I think 75%?). and thank you for complimenting the "plants". I wasn't sure how they'd look when I first commissioned them, but they really do spruce up the place.

Believe it or not - where you hit them *does* matter for damaging them. Evidently it's going to take more tweaking to make it feel less tedious.

Music isn't fully done/implemented. Or rather, the music that is done isn't for the set of levels currently available. 

The hit sound effects I kind of agree with, but I'm waiting until after music is done to do more with sound effects.

And the sprite appearing on screen when levels load in is because it's a placeholder for animated loading screens (gotta make sure the animation itself is working and all that). I keep forgetting to warn people about that... but yeah - thank you for playing and rest assure that's not a bug.

One of the stranger games I've ever played - but in a good way. The movement feels kinda weird - like, I know the turning rate is supposed to start out low and you upgrade it - but the way it starts it almost feels like the character is working wrong or the maps aren't designed right.

pro tip - the shielded enemies actually take less damage from the front - so strafe around them and shoot them in the back for best results. Though the amount of damage reduction might need to be adjusted.

Also, for what it's worth - difficulty levels only affect enemy damage and speed, not health.

Okay I figured out what happened. It's not exactly a bug but it's not intended either. At some point some weeks/months ago I was reworking the distance fog system and - as a means of testing it, set the Z key to set the fog to 500 units away from the player, and the X key to some ridiculous distance *away*. It seems I forgot that I had even put that in there.

Whoops. 

On the bright side, though, you can fix it by just pressing X - though it ruins the moody fog effect. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.

The energy balls that the Staff enemies throw at you don't actually chase you infinitely - IIRC the default lifetime is something like 20 seconds, but I can see how it feels functionally infinite.

The idea behind the pistol is that it's supposed to be powerful as fuck - but logistically inconvenient to use - making the rifle and shotgun more desirable relatively. Unfortunately it seems to be something of a recurring issue with the pistol. I'm thinking of dramatically increasing the amount of charge it takes to fire a shot to balance it out a bit.

It's cool, I did specifically put it up there so it wouldn't be distracting for the average player.

There is, in fact, a level selector in the debug/cheat menu in the top left corner of the pause screen.

I have been *dying* for a game about playing as a viking and raiding settlements and all that. Hopefully there'll be some good raiding party/army management in between raids.

Some criticisms:

- I really don't think the button to attack and the button to order your dudes around should be the same button, because around the loot/houses it's just a bit too easy to accidentally click on the house/loot.

- Even then, I don't really think I should have to order my minions to actually attack the enemies, at least not if the enemy is already aggro'd.

This is promising, and I hope to see it expanded upon in future.

Thanks for playing!

Music is kind of permanently on the 'to do' list until I can find a reliable musician to work with. Same thing with using the mouse wheel to switch weapons - I'm down for it I just haven't quite gotten it to work like I want because of mistakes made when the game was first being developed.

Using W and S to scroll through the terminal text is interesting, though - I hadn't thought to add something like that. I'll definitely look into it.

Definitely interesting. Very well done art in the main menu - and of the characters - but during actual gameplay I kind of felt there should've been a shader on things or some kind of post-processing to make the whole thing look more stylized - in line with the main menu.

Very cute - though I found the controls for Wizard Dance and the Shmup mini-games to be kind of imprecise. In Wizard Dance's case I guess it's actually *too* precise - and having to look on opposite sides of the screen for the track is... a lot.

In the shmup game I found my fairy kinda sliding around a little bit - and the projectiles were way too fast relative to that. Like I've played some (what I consider to be) fast shmups before but usually those kinds of games have much smaller (but clearly demarcated graphically) hitboxes on the player's sprite to compensate.

The dragon run minigame also seems to have odd enemy placement - like some enemies will be behind rocks - and I *think* I'm supposed to be able to shoot directly downwards/side to side relative to the direction of the dragon - but either I didn't read something or I couldn't get it to work consistently

The 'Make it Make Sense!" minigame is a REALLY fucking fun idea - but the letter is just sorta one big run-on sentence with big text that makes it hard to take in the paragraph. Though in fairness this might be entirely intentional and part of the challenge so...

I mean how much stealth do you plan on having in the finished game? Or rather, how viable of a playstyle is it meant to be? If it's not going to be something consistently useful then it seems odd to have it in at all.

The game overall reminds me a lot of Oni for some reason. Like Oni if it were made into an FPS. That's a *very* good feeling to be giving me.

I found the first enemy type to be kind of odd, though. I assume they're going to be changed, but the amount of time they spend in their 'huh?' phase seems too long to me.

Very neat, even if only for one level (that I could tell, at least)!

I found the brightness by default to be too low, though it could be something with my monitor. And the sensitivity option didn't seem to do anything for me.

Thanks for playing! Yeah the balance is in a weird place right now - since I don't have a huge number of testers I'm kinda winging it with regards to balancing the enemies. Be forewarned - the highest 2 difficulty levels make the enemies move and animate faster, on top of doing more damage.

Yeah the map system is proving to be a massive headache for me at the moment.  It's a plugin that doesn't appear to be working anywhere near as well as it should be. I'm considering removing it entirely. :\

Pretty sure the terminal text cropping thing is a result of some formatting I set up improperly. I'll look into it - thanks for bringing it to my attention.

As for the resolution thing - yeah I don't know why it did that.

Thanks for playing!

Yeah - the number to the right of the slash is the number of magazines available - so any ammo not used in your current mag is wasted. Which I acknowledge is weird since the shotgun counts it by individual shells but changing it to be otherwise isn't simple and could potentially lead to more confusion.

Thanks for playing! Funnily enough with the shield thing - there IS in fact a mechanic where the Sal Skirmishers (the shield enemies) DO in fact take more damage from the sides and rear (and less from the front) it's just that because of financial constraints the sprites that show this have yet to be made/finished so it doesn't really show very well. But yes - it is (sort of) present.

Your comments on the pistol have given me the idea of the pistol being a weapon that gets gradually upgraded over the course of the game. Could be an interesting mechanic.

I don't know if I'd say the rifle is *worse*. The idea is that the pistol is supposed to be powerful, but unreliable if you end up missing or there are more enemies. The rifle and shotgun would thus be more consistent overall.

The big doors DO sort of have a tell for if there's something behind them - whether or not they have any text. But yeah I get that's way too subtle. Will probably end up adding bits to them soon.

The switching weapons thing is actually intentional. There's a small delay before you're allowed to switch weapons to keep players from juggling guns - and thus make the choice more of a commitment.

The pistol disappearing during reload is a known thing, yeah - the animations aren't done yet unfortunately.

The guardrail pixel infuriates me as well but unfortunately I'm not sure how to get rid of it since I don't know what's actually causing it. 

I assume you're talking about the pistol. Basically - I got complaints from the first demo that the pistol felt far too convenient relative to the other weapons. As a result people didn't feel a need to use anything else since the pistol has unlimited ammo AND is reasonably powerful.

The idea behind the change is that the pistol can be powerful and have (functionally) unlimited ammo (since it's an energy weapon anyway) - but it has to have some kind of drawback that makes it untenable to use all the time. I figure its current configuration makes it just inconsistent enough that the other weapons will become safer bets - and thus used more. 

The level select thing is a good point though, actually.

Firstly, thank you for playing!

The health regen thing is just to make sure that people don't die - since I don't have a pickup graphic for it quite yet. The shotgun thing was my bad - I set up an object with the graphic for the shotgun pickup without telling it to point to the shotgun.

In the next demo (coming hopefully this May) there will be difficulty levels and a whole new level.

The particular build mentioned in this post has yet to be released publicly. When I do - it'll be labelled as 'Alpha Demo 2' for clarity.

Firstly, thank you for playing!

The stunlocking thing I think is actually just a weird stroke of luck (or unluck) since each enemy has a set chance to play their pain animation. The idea is that the fist would work as a means of stunning enemies that get too close - buying you time to use another weapon. But since everything does more damage while firing faster (except the Damocles) it ends up being kind of redundant once you get the rifle or shotgun. 

The decorations are sort of a work in progress. I definitely agree there are too many areas with too little going on.

The regenerating health thing was actually a last-minute decision to make sure that people would be able to finish the demo. I agree that the Sal Guardsmen (the staff/spear guys) aren't threatening enough - but I also had to assume that there were at least some people who aren't good at/familiar with shooters playing the demo. Basically, I had to choose between accidentally making it too easy or too hard. Once I have health pack/healing terminal sprites it'll be removed.

The difficulty thing was my bad - the UI elements for it were present in the demo without it being properly implemented. The latest non-public build of the game has it working now, and enemies hit MUCH harder. It's still an open question as to whether or not I want the difficulty to affect enemy movement speed, though.

Oh, and for the record - I was watching the stream while you were playing it and Project Nortubel. I don't think you were too mean. It's better that the criticisms come at a time when I'm still able to change/fix things. Even then, I moreso got the impression that you wanted to like the game but kept being pulled out of it because of gameplay that wasn't asking enough of you as the player.

I mean I won't say no to free labor. Also if you could please give access to [REDACTED] that'd be much appreciated.

Thank you for playing!

I guess I kinda see what you mean about the writing - at least in places.

I can't say much more - but the questions you're asking ARE intentional. Skimming through your video I don't think I saw you use the in-game map at all - so I should probably make it more clear that it exists.

Weird. I'll look into it. Thank you for letting me know.

Firstly, thank you for playing!

When you say that the settings menu didn't work - what do you mean, exactly? The way I have it set up you have to click 'apply changes' in order for the changes to take effect. Unless you mean to say that it didn't open at all. I don't know - Unreal is weird and I've had issues with that screen in particular.

Also, did you read any of the terminals? I've gotten into arguments with a friend over them over whether or not it's clear enough that they're interactable.