itch.io

Thanks! Just after the prototype build, the right stick is now used to control yaw and controls vertical velocity since that's how it works in space. I've also hooked in the strafe thrusters to apply when you roll in hover mode to give you more responsive lateral control when hovering. Yaw and roll are also separated when in hover mode, though I keep going back and forth on that. I might make that a ship-specitic thing. 

The yaw being on the right stick is the one that makes a big difference IMO and I'm sad that prototype build was just before I added that, because I use it constantly.

I'm also curious to know what led you to try that in the first place . . . But practically speaking, it doesn't seem like something that arose out of necessity, or maybe I'm just not seeing it. 

The short answer is that a fully manual flight mode won't give me the results I'm looking for without a flight model that is both less forgiving, and requires much more complex and precise input devices such as a full on HOTAS. Even in Tiny Combat, which does have a fully manual control setup, you can't get the level of precision, smoothness, and the "cinematic look" I'm after without fancy hardware. There's a reason I call out Star Citizen in the the game's page, and it's because that kind of flight model and control setup just doesn't lend itself to good landings.

This goes back to the helicopter stuff I was talking about. Helicopters fly like both helicopters and planes in a realistic sim (i.e. DCS) and it's all controllable because you aren't flying this on a gamepad, and you are doing things at a much slower, more controlled pace. You can't whip these things around like a video game sci-fi spaceship, the way I'd like to be able to, because the physics just doesn't work that way. So to give that faster pace, and more responsive handling, you need to up the power on everything, exaggerate the physics, and so on. However in doing that, it also becomes even harder to control. With a mode switch, you can adapt the controls, filter them, tune them, to specific regimes of flight and make it very controllable. It's similar to how aim down sights completely changed how FPS games were made on console. When a player uses ADS, they are expressing their intent to precisely aim, and you can lower the sensitivity, snap the crosshair, and change how recoil is handled.

Without some kind of mode switch, the only other option to make these kinds of physics controllable (and good looking enough, which is the whole point here, this is a very aesthetics driven project) is for the ship to massively change in behavior on its own. The way that the throttle blends from lift to main engine in the "manual" mode is actually vestigial from experiments on that, though I liked it enough to keep it. Not all ships behave this way either, e.g. the aerodyne that's not in the prototype doesn't use the lift engines at all in the manual mode. So there will variety in how things fly and control. It's also an avenue for me to experiment in different control methods and physics. However the problem with some kind of magic blending that somehow deduces what the player is trying to do, is that inevitably you're going to guess incorrectly about what the user wants to do and that feels really bad!

The modes communicate the player's intent, and from there you can optimize the two modes for their own special purposes. If you want to hover in a precise and tight controlled area: hover mode. If you want to land vertically: hover mode. If you want to fly somewhere far away: normal mode. If the player doesn't understand this, and is trying to use the modes for things they aren't designed for, that is as I've been going on about, a training issue. A good tutorial should cover this, but at the same time I don't think it's a problem that the player might have to learn and practice a skill. That's kind of the whole point here.

That's working as intended, since you're not really meant to move forwards at speed in hover mode, and not really meant to hover up/down in the manual mode. However I am interested in what you were trying to do that you felt you needed to do either of those things in those modes.

There is a lot of feedback missing, both in HUD stuff and especially in audio. Thank you for giving it a shot!

This is great stuff, thanks. I do think a lot of the problems here are framing problems and that a good tutorial to set expectations would go a long way on addressing your feedback, but also it's kind of supposed to be a little weird. Some other random points:

• "Because I have to contend with the rules of how it wants to work rather than how I want it to work."
  • Considering all the different ships will have slightly different controls and handling quirks, it sort of is the intent that you learn how to work around the given control set and flying style. You might not like how one ship flies, but maybe you like another more, etc.
• "The thing I had the hardest time with in general was slowing down. There are no brakes, and while I didn't specifically expect there to be brakes while playing, it does beg the question: how does a craft that flies like an airplane and lands like a helicopter transition between the two without brakes?"
  • This is a really good question, that has two answers. The first is that in the final version you have direct access to the reverse thrusters when in normal flight. This makes slowing down to hovering speed very easy. The throttle actually works a bit differently in the final version than it does here to make this a lot easier and make a lot more sense.
  • The second answer is that it kind of is complicated because ironically what you're describing as a problem is actually a real problem and skill with landing helicopters in real life. When helicopters are flying at speed, they actually fly like planes, and pitching up causes them to gain altitude and fly up. This will happen in the game too if you're also flying at speed, so slowing down to an appropriate speed before going into hover mode is actually important. Knowing when and how you can start easing the nose up for "reverse thrust" is also part of the skill. This is extremely helicopter-like and I thought it was really cool, THAT SAID it is weird and inconvenient that you can't reverse thrust in normal flight, especially because this is critical for space-flight. Hence the point above.
• "I wanted to do something like fly in and bank sharply left or right and then use vertical thrust to counteract my forward inertia, but switching to hover mode cancels out my ability to roll."
  • There isn't a direct way to do this, but in the full version since drag depends on the ship's velocity flying belly down will slow you down dramatically and you can do handbrake turn landings. Ship turn rates are unaffected by airspeed, so they can turn fast enough that at low speeds you will basically stop in midair from the drag. 
  • This isn't the most elegant handbrake landing (it was my first try) but you get the idea. 

• "When I was in the tunnel I was trying to switch to manual mode"
  • The tunnel is actually exactly what the training missions are going to frame as something specifically for the hover mode, since it's about very precise maneuvering in a very tight space. It doesn't make sense to use the manual mode for this. In the full game, one of the types of hangars the player needs to be able to fly and land in are very tight vertical spaces and manual mode is just not meant for that kind of maneuvering. Honestly I think "manual mode" is a bad name for it, because it implies that it's meant to be a "full control" superset of what the hover mode does and that's just not the case. The "Hover Mode" itself has changed names like 5 times so far, because I'm not exactly happy about that either. I almost wish I could call it GERWALK but nobody would get that.
• "I'm not so confident that it makes sense to have aerodynamic lift"
  • The aerodynamics is exactly where all the interesting difficulties come from in the flight model, so it's non-negotiable. Mastering the transition between forward flight and hovering flight is one of the most important and difficult aspects of flying a helicopter, and that's the kind of feeling I wanted to get across. Also even a brick will be affected by aerodynamic forces, and depending on the ship, some ships will be more "bricklike" than others. The prototype transport is the generic everything ship, so it has enough aero to be interesting, but is mainly focused mainly on the hover mode stuff.

I know it might sound like I'm arguing with these points, but this is actually really encouraging because most of the parts of the game you're describing as being difficult are supposed to be difficult and take some practice to really get right. The game is about nailing sick landings, and if it was super trivial to do, what's even the point of the game?

As I said before, I think a lot of the problems are coming from incorrect framing and expectations, and I think with a decently designed tutorial (and tutorial level) a lot of that could be ironed out. That said there are some control oddities that I'm not exactly sure how to handle. Space raises some very annoying questions and is essentially two more control modes even if it wasn't intended to be. That will require more testing. 

It's also important to note that in some cases the omissions of certain features is very deliberate because it would go against the very thing I'm aiming for. E.g. I actually did try having direct control of forward/reverse thrusters while in hover mode (there's video of it too) and it looks and feels atrocious, nullifying everything I thought was interesting about the control and flight model.

Thanks again for trying this and noting it all down! You always come at my games from a very different place, and always give very detailed and insightful feedback on how a normal person might (or might not) survive contact with them.

You need a gamepad. If you don't have a gamepad a bunch of stuff isn't going to work. This is all written out on the game's page. This was very hastily put together and as a proof of concept for a hyper-specific purpose. It's not meant to be a real game.

No.

It doesn't have keyboard controls at all.

I did not plan to play this for an hour but oh boy did that hour just completely disappear. I always figured I would get sucked into one of these if I ever actually played them and this proved me right. I actually really enjoyed it. Some comments:

• Please fix the default ugly Unity environment map. Mess with the materials and add a couple environment reflection probes to get rid of that really unnatural indoor rim lighting.
• After a messy first day (where I realized how little I know about coffee) I figured everything out pretty quickly as the days went by.
• It happened a few times that the customers asked for things I didn't have the equipment for. Most of the time I was able to franticly buy what I needed on the spot, but the ice machine I had to let a customer go because I wasn't able to get the money for it midday next day. Should customers be allowed to make orders for things you don't have?
• Love the moe moe kyun blessing, and the little heart popping abstracted minigame is good for the purposes of the game.
• That said, the maid theming is pretty thin. I don't know how seriously to take this, as in if this is a shitposty friendslop asset flip whatever game, or something with more meat to it, but there's so much more that could be done here. Decorations, more themed snacks and foods, omurice with messages, more types of minigames to service the customers, returning customers, customers having their own oshi, shows if you really want to go that far, etc. There's so many places this could be expanded on.
• I only played SP, so I can't say anything about the MP aspect, but it's pretty obvious how the game would be easier with even just one other person splitting the workload.
• Interaction with most things was simple, satisfying, and self-explanatory.
• Only thing I tripped up a lot on, was not knowing what state the coffee grinder was in. I.e. if it was ground up or not, and if I was allowed to put more stuff in it or not.
• Conceptually I like the auto-grid sorting in the fridge, but the way things were placed would often obscure things since the how they were placed felt somewhat random. I think at the very least letting you pick which shelf the things go on would help.
• For moving things around, the trays were nice and convenient to use, but if you bless a customer's food while holding a tray it blocks the QTE directions.
• I never had multiple customers at a single table, so I can't comment on how that works.
• Simple soundtrack tied the whole thing together. The game wouldn't be half as good without that song.
• The way the day ending is handled feels a bit weird how people just get up and leave immediately. It creates a situation where it's better to ignore a customer if they come in too late and just let them leave when the cafe closes so you don't waste resources on them. Feels bad.

If you decide to try this, please read (or at least skim) the itch.io page, as there is a lot of context to what and why this is! I'm building a small game out of this, but I didn't have enough time to get it in a good enough state before Demo Day, so I've submitted the prototype instead.

Here's the notes I took down while playing. I had some frustrating moments with the fox lady boss but I still had fun. The run where I finally beat her was really satisfying and felt like I knew what I was doing. I relied a lot on the kick, since it mixes into your attacks so well and does so much posture damage.

- In the tutorial pop ups, pressing A on the gamepad doesn't close it
- Oh, it was a delay, the difference between an inactive button and pressable button wasn't very clear
- It's hard to tell if you took damage when blocking because it sounds the same as a hit?
- The constant rumble when holding down block is kind of annoying
- I don't remember seeing the arts/skills last time I did the tutorial, but this time it makes sense
- Control popups on the left showing what the "combos" are for the techniques is good
- Glomp attack
- Not sure how I triggered, but some combination of kick and block I think got the controller stuck in a rumbling state, fixed it by pressing block
- Kick is really strong
- Doing the thing where it switches prompts based on gamepad or keyboard is very good
- Still extremely unclear on how recovering posture works, does guard speed it up? Does sprint slow it down? When does it start recovering?
- Not sure at all what the deflect windows are for the fox lady fan attacks, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and I'm not sure what I'm doing differently
- After doing the first execution attack on the fox lady I fell below the level somehow
- If I get the first deflect in, I can deflect the rest, but if I don't, it seems like none of the deflects can happen after? It's basically all or nothing.
- Gamepad rumble got stuck again after beating the fox lady
- Ometedou
- Have you ever tried some kind of unshaded or cel shaded shading style for the characters? The lighting, and especially shadows, can sometimes look a bit awkward on them, and I wonder if maybe a different shading style could help. Maybe not receiving shadows? Hard to explain.

Thanks, but I have no interest in making DCS. I still wouldn't, but something more in line with VTOL VR is the most realistic I would ever care to make myself. I would only work on something DCS-like if I was paid lots of money to be on a big team with the resources to make it happen.

Thank you!

Starshatter is one of the tiny handful of games that lets you fly fighters and capital ships. The capitals have a totally different HUD And control scheme. Space Reign also lets you fly both fighters and bigger ships.

If I'm understanding you right, that's something that's just on you to correct as you come down. 

No I couldn't figure out what to do to make it into a game. I learned a lot though.

This is the whole thing.

What?

It's not flyable. It's just scenery.

I did not know the enemies respawned.

Insanely good art, style, and polish. I was blown away when the I used a gamepad and all the glyphs changed and also the gamepad controls actually worked. Seamlessly switches between gamepad and mouse and keyboard. All the UI has sounds and animates. Real game shit. When I got on the scooter I said "oh hell yeah", but it's weird that the scooter stops turning the instant you stop giving it gas. Character controller has just a hair more inertia than I'd personally like when walking. Scooter sometimes get stuck on bumps. Character animations for the most part are really good, though the run animation feels a bit stiff.

I played through the first 3 levels plus the training mission. These are my thoughts as I was playing the game. Overall I had a lot of fun! The UI is very unpolished, and I think it needs beefier VFX (juice), but this game has also gotten me thinking about how "GoldSrc" graphics if done well can be just fine.

• I've had this in other Godot games, but the game failed to launch the first try, but then worked the second time. Not sure if that's just my computer not liking Godot.
• The mission select and loadout UI is very vertical. Feels like a lot of wasted space.
• UI is very rough in general.
• The levels feel like GoldSrc levels.
• The physics feel like func_vehicle physics.
• Surprised at how easy it was to blow up tanks in the training mission.
• I liked the training mission a lot, was simple and to the point and gives you room to play around.
• Bad Company 2 ass buildings.
• I raised the main SFX volume because the engine was very quiet and then blew up my ears when I fired the first shot.
• The tank is REALLY fast, way faster than I was expecting.
• When I played the first mission I didn't read the briefing and was looking for a way to see it ingame.
• The way reversing works is a bit unintuitive, not sure if that's normal or not.
• On mission 1 I fell into a hole and got stuck on the western side of the map.
• Holy crap the chaingun shoots a lot of bullets.
• Infantry are really fun to mow down.
• As somebody who really liked light tanks (even though they were kinda useless) in World of Tanks, I am really loving rolling around at the speed of sound with a fast firing weapon.
• I was not expecting a replay function, that's really cool. I couldn't figure out how to move hte amera or change views in the replay though, I was just watching icons.
• Not sure I like the slower firing guns.
• Holy crap the 90mm looks ridiculous and the recoi blows you away I love this.
• Okay it's really useless against the tank swarms but it was really funny blowing up the buildings.
• The granularity of the armor and component system feels mismatched for how fast paced and arcadey the actual gameplay is. Maybe it makes more sense later on, but both player and AI movement is so fast that I wasn't thinking about armor beyond generalities like sides and perpendicular.

I tried Macroquad a while ago a simple excuse to use a bit of Rust for something. It's somewhat similar to raylib, which is a very good thing because I love raylib, though it's been a while since I last used it. Having easy web exports is one of the most notable things about it to me.

Excellent patch! The force trim and rudder trim are greatly appreciated. If there could be an option for force trim to also trigger the rudder trim, it'd be perfect! The rudder trim right now is its own separate system, which is good for people with pedals, but it's very comfortable to have it tied into force trim since you can trim your cyclic/pedals for a specific flight, press a button, and now everything is set up.

So far all I've done is fly around a bit and after getting my controls configured this is really fun to fly around in! I love the VTOL VR simplified cockpit systems and startup, and the physics feel like a fantastic "just realistic enough to be interesting and require skill, but not so realistic that it's unflyable without a ton of practice."

It took me a couple flights to realize how easy it is to overload the helicopter. Flying with much less than full fuel made a huge difference. Maybe the default fuel could be lower, or maybe a warning to let players using the "default" flight model know they're going to have a hard time could be nice.

I haven't done any combat, just flown around a bit, but the only thing I think it needs with regards to the flight model is more trim options. Some way to apply rudder trim, since I don't have pedals, would be fantastic. I think my ideal trim setup mirrors DCS' with the push button force trim (that also applies to pedals) and then a return to center before you get authority again.

The foundation here for the flight model is rock solid though, and just throwing the little helicopter around is a blast.

The FPS counter logic was completely wrong, so I honestly am not even sure what an indicated low FPS actually means. There's no frustum culling or anything like that either. I don't know if you've tried it since the patch but there really was a massive performance problem from a really really terrible loop I wrote while half-asleep at 5AM, and I wonder if it's the cause of the FPS problems some people were having.

This seems super early so there's not much to say aside from talking about the basics. My notes while playing:

• Love the sort of Crimson Skies-ish setting and designs. This kind of setting is sorely under-done.
• Target indicators didn't seem to line up with the targets when they were off-center
• Exposure is weird and sometimes snaps between values?
• I set up a plane in the hangar with cannons and bombs. It's neat to see it react and that this stuff matters.
• The physics feel really stiff. There's such a sharp transition between the yawing for small movements and then a sharp 90 degree bank when you go just tiny bit past that.
• The guns are really loud.
• Takeoff was easy but I found landing really difficult because of the stiff controls.

Good stuff, thanks! I'm curious what you mean about the framerate though. I don't understand what you mean.

Hell yeah enginedev planedeving! For reference, I played with a gamepad.

Some notes:

• Physics are a lot more sluggish than I would expect, especially in roll. The real jet would actually be way more responsive in a roll, especially at speed.
• The SARH style missiles are a pretty cool idea and make it feel kinda like using guns but with missiles.
• Speaking of guns, sometimes it felt like I would sweep a target with bullets but to no effect.
• I love love love the way planes are visible in the distance.
• The demo starts with cure girls in a hangar between missions. This is a good idea.
• I like that the blackout mechanic is there, but also not overbearing and kinda just for flavor.
• There's a bunch of issues with the UI with where buttons gets placed when changing resolutions and sometimes disappearing buttons.
• I'm not sure if the gamepad controls can be rebound, but it was hell on me having the triggers be throttle, and the bumpers be yaw. 
• Runs perfectly smooth!

Lots of cute art, but the UI's art style is all over the place, and it's what's grabbing my attention the most.

• Escape menu has a very smooth sci-fi look (looks great, just doesn't look like anything else)
• Loading screen + all the character art is another style
• Main menu has a "modern indie game" look for its buttons
• Detention has clean pixel art for the rooms and characters
• Sortie screen has a kinda "Unity game" look to it.
• The mission complete screen uses a pixel font that I don't think is used anywhere else?

While having multiple styles in the same game isn't necessarily bad (and to be honest, there are very pragmatic reasons to do so), it really should be kept to 2, maybe 3, and they should all be internally consistent with each other. While I'm not a huge fan of what to me feels like clashing styles, the Celeste artist wrote a good article on the subject that I think is worth considering.

Other notes

• I love the main menu scrolling around the base.
• Ability to rebind controls would be nice, though I assume is planned since there's a space for it in the escape menu. I prefer to play a shmup with arrow keys and Z/X/C.
• The actual in-stage gameplay/graphics is pretty good!
• The (starter?) character is faster and twitchier than I was expecting. She feels like the speedier version of the main character.
• In the cutscene with the big wooden platform, they started shooting and I got hurt before the camera scrolled back. Might have had something to do with my having paused in the middle of it?
• If there are multiple weapons, having a faster way to get to them versus cycling between them might be useful.
• The hitbox was kinda confusing when your "stand" is out. My brain knows it didn't change, but when I have to make intuitive split second dodges, it confused me.
• I liked purple green boss a lot.
• I never got any points to unlock stuff on the database (maybe I missed something) but I think that's a fun idea and love "codexes" like that. Making it unlockable also gives a fun meta-progression to the game.

It's Marmo. It's Real.

Thanks! I'm starting to think the FPS counter is broken because on the occasional frame drops the FPS actually goes up!

Weird 🤷‍♀️

That's pretty amazing. What are your system specs? There's definitely something going wrong somewhere. It's a custom engine so who knows what I missed up, especially when I can only test on my machine.

This shouldn't be the case if aspect ratio doesn't change. I've tested with changing resolution (e.g. 1366x768 vs 2560x1440) and the view is the same. If you made the aspect ratio narrow/wider though, you will see less/more, and that's just inevitable unless I force an aspect ratio on the game.

Windows Defender might complain about this being a trojan virus. I've contacted Microsoft about this, but there's not much I can do about it on my end until they do something.

Edit: This might be fixed now?

Honestly I've thought about it, but I'd have to strip a lot of stuff out because of assets and plugins. It wouldn't be something that just builds and runs right away. Work would need to be done on it.

There is no further development planned.

This is really good! I love the style, the cannon mechanic and the way you can't shoot behind you add just enough depth to keep it interesting. And on top of all that, the fact that it's actually built on a 90s engine is 😙👌 You can't rate 90s any more than that.

This is really good! I love the style, the cannon mechanic and the way you can't shoot behind you add just enough depth to keep it interesting. And on top of all that, the fact that it's actually built on a 90s engine is 😙👌