You fixed the stuttering! The game feels almost finished at this point to me, well done. Can always use more content and polish of course, like more levels/backgrounds and music. I like the enemy mouse pointer, much clearer to see what he's doing than when I played before. I'd like to see some things happen in the background occasionally, like I don't know a horse galloping getting chased by bandits or something etc - for some added soul.
I went on a little bug hunt for the elusive blue, but no luck. Tried to do pretty much the same things again. You'll have to contend with some whining instead.
About interacting with doors, even while standing in this position I can't enter the door:
What I meant about the locked door was if you enter the house from the outside this door will shut behind you.
You can start the climb down animation on this thing but nothing happens.
I realized why it feels so bad jumping from ledge to ledge is because you can't be close to the edge to jump from it, so from this position you can't jump for example. Also sometimes it looks like you made the jump but you phase through instead.
This is great, I love the idea of it all. The pixel art and humor is really good. It's pretty rough right now though so I won't bother you with tiny flaws I'm sure you're already aware of. But the game starts in the wrong resolution or something, stat screen is off to the upper left and the game looks like this:
Disabling then enabling full screen makes it look correct though.
Figuring out where you have to stand to interact with some things can be really finicky, I kind of wanted to just run around and mash Z the entire time. Can be hard to see what you can interact with.
Needs to say who's talking in the dialogue window.
After jumping out the window I immediately tried going inside again and the door locked behind me, shit...
Crashed once, unfortunately I wasn't really paying attention to what I was doing at the time so no idea when it happened.
Dirk is great, I want more.
I've played MMOs but never as a healer, this really feels just like it though but in singleplayer. Its fun and the concept is solid.
The elephant in the room though is that the game is ugly, and not in a charming way. It kills me because everything else about the game is good. The big problem is the models I think, the textures could probably be salvaged if just the models very nicer. I'll assume the environments are just placeholders, most of the UI too because of how much it clashes. I really wish the game could heavily lean into the old school pre-WoW MMORPG style. It would fit well with the gameplay. Say 3d like how Everquest originally looked like:
And the UI looking much more like Asheron's Call for example:
I hope you can figure something out because the game has potential, but the aesthetics do really drag it down.
Head down the mines for some ultraviolence against the goblin menace with your boys (and girls)? Sounds like a great time!
I don't think you've worked that long on this version if I remember correctly, you've gotten a lot in there already. You probably know about most of the things I'm about to say already. Windows Defender starts crying when launching the game, should at least zip the EXE file.
The dialogue options are numberer but you can't use the number keys to choose? ARGH
Walk animation speed needs to sync up better to movement speed, a bit slide-y.
I'd like to see a turning animation, it should still be really snappy though.
Movement feels pretty sluggish, I think you're pathfinding for every click? If you have no obstacles in the way the character should turn toward and move right away towards the point.
Stutters when you first encounter new things, shader compilations? Stopped for a solid 2 seconds one time.
Should clicking a companion in the companions window re-recruit it? Didn't realize I had to drag at first.
ALT-Tabing and then clicking back into the game sometimes makes the item highlighting stuck.
Everytime you go to a new area it zooms it, annoying.
My map stopped working suddenly, couldn't bring it up again.
Drinking a potion locks you into an animation? I love it.
Needs more feedback when your character gets hit.
This happened while picking up the bow, so it can happen without you manually trying to bug it out.
You can get stuck on NPCs: https://files.catbox.moe/43o6rf.webm
You can also get stuck on corners sometimes, companions too, looks like they try to turn corners too quickly.
Something to keep in mind going forward, might cause some issues; if you place an item it seems like its still selected and can be grabbed by pressing space/enter, tooltip also gets stuck doing it: https://files.catbox.moe/gfloux.webm
Is allocating stats for your companions necessary? I suppose it depends on where you plan to take the game, I could see you going for a more Dungeon Siege like thing with you controlling all characters fully or keeping more to the standard orblike thing with you controlling the main char but having some dudes run around slaying with you. At least the companions should have some simple modes you can set them to; passive, defensive, or aggressive are pretty standard for example.
Both approaches could work I think.
While I do miss the 2d graphics this seems much more sustainable and ultimately I think its the right choice, it looks really nice already. Excited to see what you'll bring to the game next.
I WANT MORE
Aesthetics are great, love unfiltered textures. My only gripe with it is that the contrast is too high or something, maybe too much ambient occlusion too. Some dark things will bleed into a black blob, played with the monitor on the highest brightness but it didn't help much. Some examples of what I mean:
Options menu of course, the default mouse sensitivity was really high on my computer.
The slow transitions between rooms can be a bit annoying, I can see what you're going for with having them though so maybe its necessary. I wish the doors would stay opened though so you can better tell where you can from when the corridors look similar. Designations above the doors would also help, eg. "DV-023" etc.
Key prompts while inspecting objects would be nice; <A | D>
The revolver is great, although aiming at a distance can be hard. But that might be the point. I couldn't see any point in spinning the cylinder though, I think I'd prefer if pressing R would load a bullet only into the top chamber and you had to spin it manually for each bullet. Also didn't see if you could unload just one bullet, pressing the unload button could unload just the top bullet and holding the button would empty the entire thing.
Loading a save doesn't say which slots are filled.
At first I thought I had to enter the temperature into the device with the key and tried to find a way to do it. Realized it had already been done, you could add a snippet about waiting for the red light to turn on so its obvious. I mean its the first puzzle right.
Should you be able to use the metal hook in melee too?
I think the sort of SCP/Half-Life/Resident Evil think you're going for is really working, excited to see more from you.
Ninja stealth roguelike? Cool!
Unfortunately I didn't play much because some things annoyed me a bit too much.
Options menu please, at the least sound options and if not rebindable controls I want to know what the controls are. I've played quite a few traditional roguelikes, ADOM being my favorite so I still have the muscle memory for playing that. Numpad moves - good, but 5 doesn't wait? How do you wait? Some items auto-pickup, makes sense, but I couldn't find the pickup button for those that don't. I keep trying to press W+direction to move in a direction until you hit something of interest like in many other RL games, could be something to add.
Other controls like the for inventory is fine as the keys are in the UI.
Lighting is nice. Same with the sounds. Some simple effects would do a lot I think, like a diagonal slash when attacking with a sword.
The game doesn't seem to be made for fullscreen at all, I played on a 27" 1440p monitor, loads of empty space. I'd like to be able to scale the UI, zoom in and out of the gameview with the mousewheel.
This is just a personal preference, but I think I'd like the log more on the bottom.
Enemies don't give any XP? I assume it's not implemented yet.
All in all the base seems good and I think a more stealth based RL can be really interesting, but I'd like to see a lot more QoL. As you can tell.
Good news, the door works! Bad news, both of these do not work.
Luckily I could jump inside just fine. I played it through on cultish, my impression of the game was a lot better now than the last time I played it. This level flows a lot better and has less cramped corridors. Relies a bit too much on ambushes I think though. Shotgunners aren't used very interestingly, their placements can be better. I think this is supposed to be an early level and should be shorter, fighting the same 3 enemies is fine; but it starts to drag on. Ending it by entering the Discount Suicides or so would be better. I only got half of the secrets, fuck.
The AI is dumber. And thats a good thing! They feel funner to fight than before, and very Doomlike. Good.
Blood splatter is great, the particles stop a bit abruptly from the exit wound (if that makes sense). A thinner strip coming from the body, joining up with the rest would be good I think. Put some bullet holes into the corpses. Bullets need impact effects when hitting walls.
Remove the use button! Having the kick also activate things would be funnier.
Fog is nice, but should probably be a bit weaker so you can see further.
Normalize that movement vector. Unless it's intentional.
If you'd like to differentiate yourself a bit from DOOM you could always make the end and start points of levels not so obvious (or completely continuous with some kind of level streaming), kind of like in Half-Life with checkpoints. Say you'd enter the Discount Suicides and turn a corner in a corridor and it would load up the next level quickly. It would further the deranged feeling of the game by having it feel like it just keeps on going.
Good work, its nice to see you improving. It sucks less!
