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This is Kick-in's fourth public alpha release for /agdg/ Demo Days! In this demo, there's a placeholder tutorial to teach you the basics of how to play, and one opponent named Paahul for you to fight against.

Changelog:

+Gamepad support added! You can now play through the entire game and navigate all of the menus with X-input compatible controllers, such as an PS4 or Xbox One controller. You can't rebind the controller bindings in this build, but that is a feature I have planned for the future.

+The game new runs in a widescreen resolution by default.

+Many changes to Paahul's AI. Enemy collision has also been completely rewritten from the ground up. Most hit registration bugs have been fixed as a result.

+Many small changes to make controlling the player character feel more responsive. 

+New title screen art! Because that's important enough to list in a changelog, I guess!

+Many bugs squashed!

Known quirks/issues in this build:

-There's *still* no audio, sorry. Audio is hard!

-While playing in the tutorial, the rapid jabs and rapid hooks super attacks don't loop correctly.

-Attempting to force the game into fullscreen on windows 10 can cause a hard crash. This is a Gamemaker 1.4 compiler issue I can't fix without porting the game to Gamemaker 2. I'm in the process of porting the game over to Gamemaker 2 for next demoday, but until then please don't try to force fullscreen the game on windows 10.

Thanks for taking the time to write up feedback!

I disagree with the notion that Paahul should not succumb to button mashing. As the very first opponent in the game, he definitely serves as an intro and I'm okay with people buttonmashing through him because when they make it further into the game they're going to get shut down hard by more technical opponents. If the player can buttonmash through the early game, that's fine because it's the early game. I already have plans for things like enemies that damage you immediately upon blocking your attacks, and enemies that cannot be hit at all without counterpunching them first. One of them should hopefully make it into the build for next demoday, but no promises. 

Paahul's dodging behavior is a work-in-progress and is probably the first thing on the chopping block in terms of behavior I'm likely to remove. Its old behavior (where he would counterattack immediately upon your punches whiffing) was confusing to new players as something as part of his kit. The dodging behavior is slightly better in that it's much less punishing to the player, but it has animation issues and I'm still not sure if it's appropriate for a first enemy.

I'm also okay with the player being able to mash and OHKO Paahul in the middle of his special attack to interrupt it. That's what it's for. If nothing else, Paahul's special attack exists as an early avenue to teach the player that some opponent special attacks can be interrupted for significant damage or a one-hit knockout. Paahul's special attack also not having a 'laggy' state at the end of it where he's vulnerable to being counterpunched is intended for the moment, but I'm more than willing to change it if doing so would be a positive change. One of the things I'm thinking of changing is so making it so that if you fail the OHKO counterattack Paahul's special the first time he uses it, he'll then use it again when he gets up the second time to give you another shot at it.

Being able to bind every action to a single button is something I've worked hard to try and prevent. The game does have some hard-wired menu controls to stop you from softlocking the game, but I don't do a good job of informing the player that's the case. F5 on the rebinding menu or title screen also resets all of the keybinds to default.

The opponent in this demo is the very first opponent you're intended to fight. It's intentional that he falls over easily, even to buttonmashing. Think of him as something like Glass Joe.

Dev notes for Kick-in's DD16 build:

-DEFAULT CONTROLS HAVE CHANGED. The default punch buttons are now J/K/L instead of Numpad 1/2/3.

-Many significant AI modifications to Paahul. He should be slightly easier than he was previously, I hope.

-Still no sound. Sorry it hasn't been implementd yet. Making sounds is hard.

-Also still no second enemy. I haven't gotten him to stop crashing the game when you punch him yet, so I've disabled him for now. 

Good eye! Between DD14 and now, player attacks were slowed by 2 frames and the damage modifiers were smoothed out across the board so that the majority of the player's damage dealt would no longer be from the first hit you deal that puts the enemy into stun. The enemy's actual hp values haven't changed, but the player's ability to deal large spikes of damage were modified. 

I've been leaning on the fence about lowering the enemy's maximum health but having him get back up with the same or ever-so-slightly-less hp on successive knockdowns. Right now he has 1000 hp for his first life, then when he gets up he gets either 800 or 400?, if memory serves. I've been thinking of reducing his first life to 800, and then making successive knockdowns 600 and 400 instead to make him feel less damage-spongey. As-is it's actually possible to take out his entire third hp bar in one go if you go into his second knockdown with full super and retain it over the duration of his rising attack, but a new player probably won't have a deep enough grasp of the game's underlying mechanics to do that on their first run through. 

Also, yeah, the art stuff remains a problem and something I'd like to fix, although it's something I'm not actually capable of fixing right now due to longstanding problems in getting art for the game. There's tons of big and small modifications to the existing sprites I'd like to make but can't, and it frustrates me to no end. You have no idea how much the fact that the player's waistband briefly changes colors when you block messes with my OCD... but I can't fix it because it's partially transparent and any attempts to alter the coloration makes it stand out and look weirder than it already does.

A couple of developer comments:
This build should be slightly easier than the build from DD14 was. If you run into any softlocks, press F2 to open up the debug menu and throw me a screenshot along with what you were trying to do when the game locked up to help me figure out what went wrong. 

Paahul's special attack lacking a sprite is unfortunately intentional due to a lack of art. It should be functionally complete, but it's stuck as a giant gray square for now.

If you accidentally rebind your controls in such a way that you can't navigate the menus anymore, pressing F5 in the rebind menu or title screen will reset you to the default controls. You can also just restart the game, because saving is disabled in this build anyway.

Uploaded third build:

-Fixed a crash related to opening the debug menus (F3 & F4) if the player had never dodged or attacked before attempting to open them.

Uploaded a new build in response to feedback!

-Added an indicator that pressing space defeats the title screen boss.

-Added a link to the devlog tumblr on the main menu.

-Increased text scroll speed for the enemy's bio

-Increased enemy attack speed

-Made many of the enemy guarding hitboxes increased hitstun for if you accidentally hit them.

-Hitting the enemy's guard or whiffing now detracts some of your super meter.

-Increased the speed of the player's super abilities slightly.

-Using one of your super punches now drains a small amount of the super meter. If you connect with it properly, the meter is refunded. If you miss or are counter, the meter will drain more and you'll have to work to build more meter if you want to use supers again.