I really like the tweaks to the combat, I'm not sure but I think it feels harder than the previous version since the enemy is more varied and seems to have more health (or maybe my attacks are slower than before), it's certainly a big improvement.
It feels really nice to play but it's hard to tell if I'm actually hitting the enemy or being blocked due to the lack of clear feedback but that's just an art/audio problem. I also think the fight is a bit too long, maybe decrease the health a little bit.
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.
Nice demo! The tutorial was really helpful and the control rebinding really saved me because I was playing on a laptop with no keypad. Once I got the hang of the controls the game felt almost too easy, but it plays smooth and I'm looking forward for your next update! Good job!
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.
Comments
I really like the tweaks to the combat, I'm not sure but I think it feels harder than the previous version since the enemy is more varied and seems to have more health (or maybe my attacks are slower than before), it's certainly a big improvement.
It feels really nice to play but it's hard to tell if I'm actually hitting the enemy or being blocked due to the lack of clear feedback but that's just an art/audio problem. I also think the fight is a bit too long, maybe decrease the health a little bit.
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.
Nice demo! The tutorial was really helpful and the control rebinding really saved me because I was playing on a laptop with no keypad. Once I got the hang of the controls the game felt almost too easy, but it plays smooth and I'm looking forward for your next update! Good job!
Ah man, there's even a tutorial mode, that was a nice touch!
I don't think the game was too hard, at least I had no problem winning. Mr. Graybox was a bit of a problem but the WARNING mitigated that.
All in all, pretty fun demo, looking forward to where you'll go with it.
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.