I'm impressed by how many mechanics you've programmed into the game at this point! In the harder combat challenges (I got to the one with two polearms, two bear claws, and two mages) it feels hard to ever get a hit in. I guess I need to git gud at dodging?
Maybe! That combat challenge is pretty bullshit anyway. I don't think I'd put together a fight like that in the final game at all. Only advice I could give is to get close enough to the poison spitters so they lob a big glob into the air that splatters everywhere, then try to get the enemies to walk through it and get poisoned.
I know that your demo is in an early stage of development, and some of the problems could be just you didn't have enough time for this, I'll just list you problems I encountered, don't mind it as a hard criticism.
Controls for the menu and inventory are weird, I think, it is better to use just a mouse. It's cool that there is a focus on the enemy, although on the next battle already I forgot what this button was, lol. Any combat activity eats TONS of stamina, either try to make it cheaper or at least make some basic things free, like weapon swings, those are slow as a snail truck but eat so much that you can run out in like 4-5 swings, and you need stamina for everything besides sword swings. After an attack, if you hold down the right mouse button, then blocking with a shield will not work. It is cool that the run is a thing, but, strangely, you can't just run holding the shift. Oddly, the equipment can only be changed in chests. There is no pause on the Esc menu. Heals are spent, even if you have full health since nothing can be done when you hit, or when you are beaten, you have to quickly press heals and spend extra ones as a result, and attacks with a sword, on the contrary, are buffered too much and occur when you no longer expect them. Combat controls are uncomfortable and unresponsive in general. Monsters have interesting attacks and abilities, but the battle process itself makes you frustrated. Also, it seems that the health bar and other ones are displayed inaccurately, seemingly, part of it is hidden behind a huge panel on the left. When enemies killed me and it threw me back offscreen, I had about a half of my maximum health reduced, above which I can't heal, this is very punishing and limiting, I suppose you will have some ways to handle it later in development? The cool bleeding effect you have, when low on health.
Overall, it is a cute little demo, with a lot of harsh corners, but I see some good potential in it.
Also, I never played Dark Souls, so I could underestimate some of those combat elements which you could borrow from that game.
No criticism is too harsh. I'm happy for anything you gotta give me.
"Controls for the menu and inventory are weird, I think, it is better to use just a mouse." Yeah, I'll be implementing mouse controls for menus soon.
"It's cool that there is a focus on the enemy, although on the next battle already I forgot what this button was, lol." Haha can't help you there.
"Any combat activity eats TONS of stamina, either try to make it cheaper or at least make some basic things free, like weapon swings, those are slow as a snail truck but eat so much that you can run out in like 4-5 swings, and you need stamina for everything besides sword swings." Yeah, that's one of those things that's stolen whole hog from Dark Souls to ensure you can't just go in swinging constantly.
"After an attack, if you hold down the right mouse button, then blocking with a shield will not work." Yeah, that needs fixing.
"It is cool that the run is a thing, but, strangely, you can't just run holding the shift." Hmm, guess it wouldn't hurt to make it so KB+M controls have a bit more options for that. SHIFT is the default chord used for certain types of attacks with the mouse, so maybe ALT would be run and SPACE would be dodge. Never thought to do that.
"Oddly, the equipment can only be changed in chests." That's 100% intentional. The choice will make more sense when the full game design comes closer to fruition.
"There is no pause on the Esc menu." Yep, I need to implement that for single player.
"Heals are spent, even if you have full health since nothing can be done when you hit, or when you are beaten, you have to quickly press heals and spend extra ones as a result, and attacks with a sword, on the contrary, are buffered too much and occur when you no longer expect them." Yeah, I need to modify how potions work so they don't overheal so much. I also gotta fix attack buffering.
"Combat controls are uncomfortable and unresponsive in general." I'm guessing you mean having to hold SHIFT for certain attacks. That's one of those things that I haven't found a better way to deal with due to the game's design. But I do have full control remapping enabled.
"Monsters have interesting attacks and abilities, but the battle process itself makes you frustrated." Mind elaborating a bit on this one? What specifically made you frustrated?
"Also, it seems that the health bar and other ones are displayed inaccurately, seemingly, part of it is hidden behind a huge panel on the left." Oh, I just don't have death implemented for the player at all yet.
"When enemies killed me and it threw me back offscreen, I had about a half of my maximum health reduced, above which I can't heal, this is very punishing and limiting, I suppose you will have some ways to handle it later in development?" I don't actually know yet if I will. The basic plan for the game involves having a daily cycle where you go out, explore, and do something before heading back to camp to sleep and heal your permanent injuries. Hopefully that design choice will make sense in that context. I might create a super potion that heals injuries for demos though.
"The cool bleeding effect you have, when low on health." I think it's cool too! Funny enough, that's actually a status effect. I really need to rework status effects so it's more obvious that's what's happening though.
Anyhow, thanks for playing, and thanks for handing me the idea to have dodging and running be separate buttons on KB+M. I appreciate it.
I played the game on linux with default wine and I didn't have any issues, except that my screen automatically went dim every 5 minutes as if I was AFK even though I was playing the game.
Someone said already this but it was annoying for me as well that I couldn't use the joystick for the menus.
When fighting the "tough enemy" he fell into the water and he was having a really hard time getting out of it. I murdered him as he was slowly trying to swim back. I felt pretty bad afterwards.
As for the combat mechanics, I don't know how much of it is placeholder, but here's some feedback anyway:
- The input buffering for attacks seems way too high. I don't think that double-pressing attack should result in a 2 hit combo. Especially with such slow swings the second press should be only registered if it's reasonably close to the end of the first swing. Maybe I'm just too much of a casual to understand this though.
- I don't like the running, I don't think it should be so much faster than walking. The whole dash->run->drop system as it is feels a bit clunky and I don't think it's much of an improvement over just spamming dodgerolls.
- The poison wizard guy needs some clearer windups, otherwise it's hard to guess what he's doing and it's annoying to have him shoot at you point blank when you try walking in.
It's pretty promising all things considered. I can see the combat being very fun with some more polish.
"I played the game on linux with default wine and I didn't have any issues, except that my screen automatically went dim every 5 minutes as if I was AFK even though I was playing the game." That's certainly weird. I've never tested the game with wine, so I was unaware of any problems that may occur. Thanks for testing it on wine.
"Someone said already this but it was annoying for me as well that I couldn't use the joystick for the menus." Yup. I'l be doing my best to fix this by next demo day.
"When fighting the "tough enemy" he fell into the water and he was having a really hard time getting out of it. I murdered him as he was slowly trying to swim back. I felt pretty bad afterwards." Oh, yeah I definitely need to modify enemy AI to try to escape water, as well as not go into it by accident.
"- The input buffering for attacks seems way too high. I don't think that double-pressing attack should result in a 2 hit combo. Especially with such slow swings the second press should be only registered if it's reasonably close to the end of the first swing. Maybe I'm just too much of a casual to understand this though." Oh no, you're 100% correct about this. That along with shield raising issues is my top priority when I get back to work.
"- I don't like the running, I don't think it should be so much faster than walking. The whole dash->run->drop system as it is feels a bit clunky and I don't think it's much of an improvement over just spamming dodgerolls." For me at least, making running any slower felt bad, and the plan is to make it so leveling up certain stats improves both the dodge and the run speed. Part of the reason for the auto run after dodge right now is simply that dodging doesn't give i-frames, where as jumping on the ground does. It's one of those things I felt was necessary to better balance the use of a shield. Like most things though, this is of course open to change if it doesn't work for most people.
"- The poison wizard guy needs some clearer windups, otherwise it's hard to guess what he's doing and it's annoying to have him shoot at you point blank when you try walking in." Yup, I agree. For now he's just a testy enemy, so I don't know how long he's going to survive as a fightable enemy.
Anyhow, thanks for playing and giving such detailed feedback.
Didn't enjoy it at first until I turned on my gamepad; it was a MUCH better experience after that. Had a lot of fun bullying the enemies and getting my ass handed to me at certain points. I kept pressing L1 and expecting it to be a shield bash attack, lol.
I'm glad you had fun! I've done my best to make sure the game works well with KB+M as well, but it was definitely designed with gamepad in mind first. Thank you for giving it a try both ways.
Excellent base for a game right here. Good controls and mechanics, all fluid, functional and responsive.
Here are some points I made while playing:
It'd be good if you could have your shield up if you're holding the button after an attack ends. And also attack even if holding the button to block with a shield (maybe even with a unique attack).
I think this game would benefit from parries, stunning enemies when you block at the last second, and maybe some sort of action-cancelling action, like if you press the dodge button while not holding any direction you do a quick dodge that can be used by skilled players.
It's fine to have a permanent damage system to avoid potion-spam face-tanking, but please don't let players use their potions if their life is as high as it can go with them.
I don't want to make too many points on the art, as it's WIP, but I think the menus need some work as to not be as confusing, damage numbers should be colored to differentiate between your and the enemies' damage, and also consider zooming things in, as your animation system and gameplay would benefit a lot from larger character sprites. The controller on the side also seems unnecessary, unless it's only for testing purposes, you'd be better off with a handy button guide.
Also, game doesn't pause while on the menu. This is fine if intentional, but you have to show at least a bit of the screen if so.
Thanks for playing my game! I appreciate the feedback too.
"It'd be good if you could have your shield up if you're holding the button after an attack ends. And also attack even if holding the button to block with a shield (maybe even with a unique attack)." The shield holding up thing is top of my list of changes to make when I get to work again, so that should definitely be fixed by next demo day, as well as potentially attacks that can be done from behind the safety of a shield.
"I think this game would benefit from parries, stunning enemies when you block at the last second, and maybe some sort of action-cancelling action, like if you press the dodge button while not holding any direction you do a quick dodge that can be used by skilled players." Personally I'm not a big fan of parries, simply because it always seemed to me like an OP crutch in Souls games. BUT that doesn't necessarily mean I won't work it in somehow, like with block timing as you suggested, and something as simple as a weapon bounce animation. As for action cancelling, that's actually already a thing! You can dodge to cancel swing recoveries (for the sword at least, probably won't be for all weapons,) and tapping the dodge button makes you dodge backwards if you're not moving in any direction.
"It's fine to have a permanent damage system to avoid potion-spam face-tanking, but please don't let players use their potions if their life is as high as it can go with them." Not a bad idea. I was thinking of making it so each potion can be sipped for a specific amount of health, leaving the rest of the potion available. I might do that.
"I don't want to make too many points on the art, as it's WIP, but I think the menus need some work as to not be as confusing, damage numbers should be colored to differentiate between your and the enemies' damage, and also consider zooming things in, as your animation system and gameplay would benefit a lot from larger character sprites. The controller on the side also seems unnecessary, unless it's only for testing purposes, you'd be better off with a handy button guide." Yeah menus have been tricky to figure out. I'm not even 100% sure I'm going to have damage values flying off characters in the end. As for the character size, I'm not 100% sure. I was thinking of making them 32 by 32, but I like how much space they have to move around on screen right now. Things might change. And yeah, the controller is for testing purposes.
"Also, game doesn't pause while on the menu. This is fine if intentional, but you have to show at least a bit of the screen if so." Not at all a bad idea. I don't know yet if I'm going to implement pausing. Most likely, at least for single player.
"Delay between button press and sword swing feels bad. Even just a windup animation would help." Something more obvious than what I already have? Legitimate question. I've been told it feels slow as well, so I'm not sure. Maybe more wind up, quicker swing?
"Crossbow/poison kiting feels much easier and less risky than trying to melee" Absolutely right about that. I'm still thinking about how I might improve that. Maybe I could make the crossbow keep the player from running and dodging when it's being reloaded? To me, that would make it feel too sluggish I think. I may also implement an ammo counter.
"Shield doesn't raise after swinging if you press and hold the shield button during swing" Yup. That's actually top priority for me to fix once I'm back to devving.
"Auto sprint after dodging leads to accidentally running out of stamina during fights" It's sounding like people want more control over that. Right now I'm thinking about making it a hold rather than just something that happens after a dodge.
Thanks for playing, and thanks for sticking around so long through my stream!
I forgot about the windup animation, on review I think the windup animation is fine. Just popped into dark souls to compare and found a few ideas that could make it feel better:
Less delay between button press and damage dealt, more recovery time after. I'd rather land the hit and risk getting hit back than be unable to land a hit.
A small lunge forward during windup, to give the illusion of still being in control of your character (since you're probably running forwards when swinging anyway).
Starter enemies that are less likely to step back or move out of the way.
The improved shield control will also help the sword feel better.
I really, really like this so far. Killing the hard enemy felt great, and you've really nailed that feeling of soulsy combat in a way I don't think a 2d game really has before - I've played a shitload of soulslikes, and I honestly think this is the highest praise I can give.
The weapon trails really make it feel obvious when things are dangerous, which is fantastic. I kind of wish there'd been music/atmos but totally get that combat has been the priority so don't begrudge there being none yet.
I love the style of the little fella - I hope he looks like that right up to release.
The game has great conveyance - when I entered this room I immediately was like "what is the best way to deal with this threat", which I think means you've done a great job of conveying exactly what's required of the player and what the nature of the threat is as well as the toolset available.
I finished the demo and gotta say that I think all of my feedback at this point would be in the areas of presentation and inventory management. Once I got how it worked it was fine, but I was playing with kb+m and it felt a bit counterintuitive to figure out at first.
Presentation feels like it hasn't been a top priority - in terms of function over aesthetics it's instantly groccable and fulfils its function perfectly, so maybe giving feedback in that area is unwarranted right now.
Gonna be watching this project with EXTREME INTEREST. Keep it up, man. Stonking game!
Thanks for the praise, Knight Shift Dev. I can imagine a lot of the art will change over time, including the way the character looks, but I appreciate how you feel about how it looks. I'm sure it's really obvious souls games are an inspiration, so I'm happy it struck that chord with you.
Cute Sprites for the Player and the Enemies, I like the facial expressions on getting hit a lot!
Game immediately recognized my Controller which is nice, but Main menu didn't recognize Joysticks, only dirpad.
I like that the second dodge in row knocks you prone as a way to prevent dodge spamming.
The Controller picture in the bottom left doesn't necessarily match the picures in the tutorial signs.
Combat sounds like it has some nice depth, but I found myself just circlestrafing and shooting my Crossbow until each room was cleared without loosing health or getting punished in any other way appart from probably taking a bit longer.
At the Moment I can only equip/unequip Armor at the Chest, but it doesn't go into the Inventory, and I can't move it around or anything, only weapons and potions ( and I can't open the Inventory outside of Chests, probably because start opens up Steam instead)
Would like weapons to be equippable to the belt instead of cycling through all the ones in the Inventory, so I can choose which weapons to have quick access to.
In the Room with the 3 Fistguys, after a while all 3 of them just ran up to the upper left corner and stayed there.
When going prone the floorsprite doesn't wear Armor.
Whats with the 3 Guys walking on the Water that have Tons of Health?
"Game immediately recognized my Controller which is nice, but Main menu didn't recognize Joysticks, only dirpad." Yeah, I'll probably be making it so the sticks work in menus as well soon. It's pretty intuitive for me to immediately use d-pad, but I was unaware that was a personal bias.
"The Controller picture in the bottom left doesn't necessarily match the picures in the tutorial signs." I'll be removing this eventually since it's just for debug purposes.
"Combat sounds like it has some nice depth, but I found myself just circlestrafing and shooting my Crossbow until each room was cleared without loosing health or getting punished in any other way appart from probably taking a bit longer." I've thought of making it so the crossbow has limited ammo, but I'm still on the fence about it. Any suggestions on how you think I might mitigate that issue?
"At the Moment I can only equip/unequip Armor at the Chest, but it doesn't go into the Inventory, and I can't move it around or anything, only weapons and potions ( and I can't open the Inventory outside of Chests, probably because start opens up Steam instead)" Not being able to access the inventory menu from anywhere but the chest is intentional. It's one of those things that's implemented but won't really make sense in context until far later in development.
"Would like weapons to be equippable to the belt instead of cycling through all the ones in the Inventory, so I can choose which weapons to have quick access to." I'm a little lost on what you mean by this one, because it sounds like you just described it how I designed it. Of course, the confusion around the inventory is why I asked for feed back on it.
"In the Room with the 3 Fistguys, after a while all 3 of them just ran up to the upper left corner and stayed there." I'm assuming you mean the three guys with claws. Dunno why they did that! Sounds like a pathing bug.
"Whats with the 3 Guys walking on the Water that have Tons of Health?" Secret boss that I implemented in 5 seconds.
Thanks for playing it and giving feedback on the inventory. I appreciate it.
I think limited Ammo would be fine, also gives you another item to worry about Inventory management with.
As for the Weapons, I got the feeling at the moment when I cycle through weapons it cycles through everything I got in the Inventory, I'd like to be able to place like 3 of the weapons in my Inventory on the belt (kinda like in DS with equipping multiple weapons, instead of going through your whole Inventory of weapons) and then when cycling it only goes through those three. If thats not the case, then it just autoequipped the weapons I pulled from the chest to the belt and I haven't found a way to access the belt. But I guess this is not really an issue if you have the "main" inventory be the chest, so you only really take out the Items you're currently wanna work with/can fit in your grid, since then I could only take with me the weapons I wanna use, and have the extra ones just stay in the chest. Then it also makes more Sense that its a rather small grid to work with, I was a bit worried on how you planned to fit 10 or 20 weapons in there at some point.
The combat is shaping up to be really solid. Moving around, aiming and attacking felt very responsive with a gamepad. The pad image in the corner helps with identifying that your input is received, you could probably keep it in some form in the final game (have icons on the buttons for potions etc. as a reminder for what the button does). The inventory/chest screens can be confusing but it's clearly work in progress. The AI is fantastic.
Combat mechanics will need to be communicated clearly, such as how poison or bleeding affects your health. While the controls were quite snappy, it sometimes felt like my shield wasn't coming up when pressing the off hand attack button. There's definitely some instances of getting hit or accidentally doing the dodge jump where it feels like you have to wait for too long before being able to act again. The automatic running feels off, I had to constantly make sure to actually stop running so that I didn't drain my stamina.
How much of the graphics are placeholders? I'd recommend making the grass tiles less noisy. They currently look too distracting, and they are also very close to a hue that hurts my eyes (I have deuteranomaly).
"While the controls were quite snappy, it sometimes felt like my shield wasn't coming up when pressing the off hand attack button." You're absolutely right about that being a problem. The way it's currently coded is if you can raise the shield, the act of pressing the button down, (as in not holding it,) raises the shield, meaning if you pressed it while you couldn't raise your shield, the shield won't raise. Fixing that and some similar issues are top of my priority list when I get back to work.
"The automatic running feels off, I had to constantly make sure to actually stop running so that I didn't drain my stamina." Think it would feel better if running was a button you held, and then doing the dodge jump was if you tried to dodge right after releasing the dodge/run button?
"How much of the graphics are placeholders?" Most of them. I have a mostly consistent color pallet for a lot of the tiles right now, which I like, but I'm not an artist. I might make the tiles less noisy in general to better fit a gameboy aesthetic. I'll have to do some research on how to deal with deuteranomaly and other types of color blindness. Not sure how long that will take though. But thanks for letting me know.
Comments
I'm impressed by how many mechanics you've programmed into the game at this point! In the harder combat challenges (I got to the one with two polearms, two bear claws, and two mages) it feels hard to ever get a hit in. I guess I need to git gud at dodging?
Maybe! That combat challenge is pretty bullshit anyway. I don't think I'd put together a fight like that in the final game at all. Only advice I could give is to get close enough to the poison spitters so they lob a big glob into the air that splatters everywhere, then try to get the enemies to walk through it and get poisoned.
I know that your demo is in an early stage of development, and some of the problems could be just you didn't have enough time for this, I'll just list you problems I encountered, don't mind it as a hard criticism.
Overall, it is a cute little demo, with a lot of harsh corners, but I see some good potential in it.Controls for the menu and inventory are weird, I think, it is better to use just a mouse.
It's cool that there is a focus on the enemy, although on the next battle already I forgot what this button was, lol.
Any combat activity eats TONS of stamina, either try to make it cheaper or at least make some basic things free, like weapon swings, those are slow as a snail truck but eat so much that you can run out in like 4-5 swings, and you need stamina for everything besides sword swings.
After an attack, if you hold down the right mouse button, then blocking with a shield will not work.
It is cool that the run is a thing, but, strangely, you can't just run holding the shift.
Oddly, the equipment can only be changed in chests.
There is no pause on the Esc menu.
Heals are spent, even if you have full health since nothing can be done when you hit, or when you are beaten, you have to quickly press heals and spend extra ones as a result, and attacks with a sword, on the contrary, are buffered too much and occur when you no longer expect them.
Combat controls are uncomfortable and unresponsive in general.
Monsters have interesting attacks and abilities, but the battle process itself makes you frustrated.
Also, it seems that the health bar and other ones are displayed inaccurately, seemingly, part of it is hidden behind a huge panel on the left.
When enemies killed me and it threw me back offscreen, I had about a half of my maximum health reduced, above which I can't heal, this is very punishing and limiting, I suppose you will have some ways to handle it later in development?
The cool bleeding effect you have, when low on health.
Also, I never played Dark Souls, so I could underestimate some of those combat elements which you could borrow from that game.
No criticism is too harsh. I'm happy for anything you gotta give me.
"Controls for the menu and inventory are weird, I think, it is better to use just a mouse." Yeah, I'll be implementing mouse controls for menus soon.
"It's cool that there is a focus on the enemy, although on the next battle already I forgot what this button was, lol." Haha can't help you there.
"Any combat activity eats TONS of stamina, either try to make it cheaper or at least make some basic things free, like weapon swings, those are slow as a snail truck but eat so much that you can run out in like 4-5 swings, and you need stamina for everything besides sword swings." Yeah, that's one of those things that's stolen whole hog from Dark Souls to ensure you can't just go in swinging constantly.
"After an attack, if you hold down the right mouse button, then blocking with a shield will not work." Yeah, that needs fixing.
"It is cool that the run is a thing, but, strangely, you can't just run holding the shift." Hmm, guess it wouldn't hurt to make it so KB+M controls have a bit more options for that. SHIFT is the default chord used for certain types of attacks with the mouse, so maybe ALT would be run and SPACE would be dodge. Never thought to do that.
"Oddly, the equipment can only be changed in chests." That's 100% intentional. The choice will make more sense when the full game design comes closer to fruition.
"There is no pause on the Esc menu." Yep, I need to implement that for single player.
"Heals are spent, even if you have full health since nothing can be done when you hit, or when you are beaten, you have to quickly press heals and spend extra ones as a result, and attacks with a sword, on the contrary, are buffered too much and occur when you no longer expect them." Yeah, I need to modify how potions work so they don't overheal so much. I also gotta fix attack buffering.
"Combat controls are uncomfortable and unresponsive in general." I'm guessing you mean having to hold SHIFT for certain attacks. That's one of those things that I haven't found a better way to deal with due to the game's design. But I do have full control remapping enabled.
"Monsters have interesting attacks and abilities, but the battle process itself makes you frustrated." Mind elaborating a bit on this one? What specifically made you frustrated?
"Also, it seems that the health bar and other ones are displayed inaccurately, seemingly, part of it is hidden behind a huge panel on the left." Oh, I just don't have death implemented for the player at all yet.
"When enemies killed me and it threw me back offscreen, I had about a half of my maximum health reduced, above which I can't heal, this is very punishing and limiting, I suppose you will have some ways to handle it later in development?" I don't actually know yet if I will. The basic plan for the game involves having a daily cycle where you go out, explore, and do something before heading back to camp to sleep and heal your permanent injuries. Hopefully that design choice will make sense in that context. I might create a super potion that heals injuries for demos though.
"The cool bleeding effect you have, when low on health." I think it's cool too! Funny enough, that's actually a status effect. I really need to rework status effects so it's more obvious that's what's happening though.
Anyhow, thanks for playing, and thanks for handing me the idea to have dodging and running be separate buttons on KB+M. I appreciate it.
>What specifically made you frustrated?
Nevermind, it was just a conclusion of all problems I mentioned
Mom I want to buy dark souls. We have dark souls at home
Dark Souls at home:
You're not wrong...
But seriously I enjoyed the game and can't wait to see more weapons and enemies and levels/environments :)
I played the game on linux with default wine and I didn't have any issues, except that my screen automatically went dim every 5 minutes as if I was AFK even though I was playing the game.
Someone said already this but it was annoying for me as well that I couldn't use the joystick for the menus.
When fighting the "tough enemy" he fell into the water and he was having a really hard time getting out of it. I murdered him as he was slowly trying to swim back. I felt pretty bad afterwards.
As for the combat mechanics, I don't know how much of it is placeholder, but here's some feedback anyway:
- The input buffering for attacks seems way too high. I don't think that double-pressing attack should result in a 2 hit combo. Especially with such slow swings the second press should be only registered if it's reasonably close to the end of the first swing. Maybe I'm just too much of a casual to understand this though.
- I don't like the running, I don't think it should be so much faster than walking. The whole dash->run->drop system as it is feels a bit clunky and I don't think it's much of an improvement over just spamming dodgerolls.
- The poison wizard guy needs some clearer windups, otherwise it's hard to guess what he's doing and it's annoying to have him shoot at you point blank when you try walking in.
It's pretty promising all things considered. I can see the combat being very fun with some more polish.
"I played the game on linux with default wine and I didn't have any issues, except that my screen automatically went dim every 5 minutes as if I was AFK even though I was playing the game." That's certainly weird. I've never tested the game with wine, so I was unaware of any problems that may occur. Thanks for testing it on wine.
"Someone said already this but it was annoying for me as well that I couldn't use the joystick for the menus." Yup. I'l be doing my best to fix this by next demo day.
"When fighting the "tough enemy" he fell into the water and he was having a really hard time getting out of it. I murdered him as he was slowly trying to swim back. I felt pretty bad afterwards." Oh, yeah I definitely need to modify enemy AI to try to escape water, as well as not go into it by accident.
"- The input buffering for attacks seems way too high. I don't think that double-pressing attack should result in a 2 hit combo. Especially with such slow swings the second press should be only registered if it's reasonably close to the end of the first swing. Maybe I'm just too much of a casual to understand this though." Oh no, you're 100% correct about this. That along with shield raising issues is my top priority when I get back to work.
"- I don't like the running, I don't think it should be so much faster than walking. The whole dash->run->drop system as it is feels a bit clunky and I don't think it's much of an improvement over just spamming dodgerolls." For me at least, making running any slower felt bad, and the plan is to make it so leveling up certain stats improves both the dodge and the run speed. Part of the reason for the auto run after dodge right now is simply that dodging doesn't give i-frames, where as jumping on the ground does. It's one of those things I felt was necessary to better balance the use of a shield. Like most things though, this is of course open to change if it doesn't work for most people.
"- The poison wizard guy needs some clearer windups, otherwise it's hard to guess what he's doing and it's annoying to have him shoot at you point blank when you try walking in." Yup, I agree. For now he's just a testy enemy, so I don't know how long he's going to survive as a fightable enemy.
Anyhow, thanks for playing and giving such detailed feedback.
Didn't enjoy it at first until I turned on my gamepad; it was a MUCH better experience after that. Had a lot of fun bullying the enemies and getting my ass handed to me at certain points. I kept pressing L1 and expecting it to be a shield bash attack, lol.
I'm glad you had fun! I've done my best to make sure the game works well with KB+M as well, but it was definitely designed with gamepad in mind first. Thank you for giving it a try both ways.
Excellent base for a game right here. Good controls and mechanics, all fluid, functional and responsive.
Here are some points I made while playing:
Good luck and hope you make it into a full game!
Thanks for playing my game! I appreciate the feedback too.
"It'd be good if you could have your shield up if you're holding the button after an attack ends. And also attack even if holding the button to block with a shield (maybe even with a unique attack)." The shield holding up thing is top of my list of changes to make when I get to work again, so that should definitely be fixed by next demo day, as well as potentially attacks that can be done from behind the safety of a shield.
"I think this game would benefit from parries, stunning enemies when you block at the last second, and maybe some sort of action-cancelling action, like if you press the dodge button while not holding any direction you do a quick dodge that can be used by skilled players." Personally I'm not a big fan of parries, simply because it always seemed to me like an OP crutch in Souls games. BUT that doesn't necessarily mean I won't work it in somehow, like with block timing as you suggested, and something as simple as a weapon bounce animation. As for action cancelling, that's actually already a thing! You can dodge to cancel swing recoveries (for the sword at least, probably won't be for all weapons,) and tapping the dodge button makes you dodge backwards if you're not moving in any direction.
"It's fine to have a permanent damage system to avoid potion-spam face-tanking, but please don't let players use their potions if their life is as high as it can go with them." Not a bad idea. I was thinking of making it so each potion can be sipped for a specific amount of health, leaving the rest of the potion available. I might do that.
"I don't want to make too many points on the art, as it's WIP, but I think the menus need some work as to not be as confusing, damage numbers should be colored to differentiate between your and the enemies' damage, and also consider zooming things in, as your animation system and gameplay would benefit a lot from larger character sprites. The controller on the side also seems unnecessary, unless it's only for testing purposes, you'd be better off with a handy button guide." Yeah menus have been tricky to figure out. I'm not even 100% sure I'm going to have damage values flying off characters in the end. As for the character size, I'm not 100% sure. I was thinking of making them 32 by 32, but I like how much space they have to move around on screen right now. Things might change. And yeah, the controller is for testing purposes.
"Also, game doesn't pause while on the menu. This is fine if intentional, but you have to show at least a bit of the screen if so." Not at all a bad idea. I don't know yet if I'm going to implement pausing. Most likely, at least for single player.
Delay between button press and sword swing feels bad. Even just a windup animation would help.
Crossbow/poison kiting feels much easier and less risky than trying to melee
Shield doesn't raise after swinging if you press and hold the shield button during swing
Auto sprint after dodging leads to accidentally running out of stamina during fights
"Delay between button press and sword swing feels bad. Even just a windup animation would help." Something more obvious than what I already have? Legitimate question. I've been told it feels slow as well, so I'm not sure. Maybe more wind up, quicker swing?
"Crossbow/poison kiting feels much easier and less risky than trying to melee" Absolutely right about that. I'm still thinking about how I might improve that. Maybe I could make the crossbow keep the player from running and dodging when it's being reloaded? To me, that would make it feel too sluggish I think. I may also implement an ammo counter.
"Shield doesn't raise after swinging if you press and hold the shield button during swing" Yup. That's actually top priority for me to fix once I'm back to devving.
"Auto sprint after dodging leads to accidentally running out of stamina during fights" It's sounding like people want more control over that. Right now I'm thinking about making it a hold rather than just something that happens after a dodge.
Thanks for playing, and thanks for sticking around so long through my stream!
I forgot about the windup animation, on review I think the windup animation is fine. Just popped into dark souls to compare and found a few ideas that could make it feel better:
Less delay between button press and damage dealt, more recovery time after. I'd rather land the hit and risk getting hit back than be unable to land a hit.
A small lunge forward during windup, to give the illusion of still being in control of your character (since you're probably running forwards when swinging anyway).
Starter enemies that are less likely to step back or move out of the way.
The improved shield control will also help the sword feel better.
I really, really like this so far. Killing the hard enemy felt great, and you've really nailed that feeling of soulsy combat in a way I don't think a 2d game really has before - I've played a shitload of soulslikes, and I honestly think this is the highest praise I can give.
The weapon trails really make it feel obvious when things are dangerous, which is fantastic. I kind of wish there'd been music/atmos but totally get that combat has been the priority so don't begrudge there being none yet.
I love the style of the little fella - I hope he looks like that right up to release.
The game has great conveyance - when I entered this room I immediately was like "what is the best way to deal with this threat", which I think means you've done a great job of conveying exactly what's required of the player and what the nature of the threat is as well as the toolset available.
I finished the demo and gotta say that I think all of my feedback at this point would be in the areas of presentation and inventory management. Once I got how it worked it was fine, but I was playing with kb+m and it felt a bit counterintuitive to figure out at first.
Presentation feels like it hasn't been a top priority - in terms of function over aesthetics it's instantly groccable and fulfils its function perfectly, so maybe giving feedback in that area is unwarranted right now.
Gonna be watching this project with EXTREME INTEREST. Keep it up, man. Stonking game!
Thanks for the praise, Knight Shift Dev. I can imagine a lot of the art will change over time, including the way the character looks, but I appreciate how you feel about how it looks. I'm sure it's really obvious souls games are an inspiration, so I'm happy it struck that chord with you.
Cute Sprites for the Player and the Enemies, I like the facial expressions on getting hit a lot!
Game immediately recognized my Controller which is nice, but Main menu didn't recognize Joysticks, only dirpad.
I like that the second dodge in row knocks you prone as a way to prevent dodge spamming.
The Controller picture in the bottom left doesn't necessarily match the picures in the tutorial signs.
Combat sounds like it has some nice depth, but I found myself just circlestrafing and shooting my Crossbow until each room was cleared without loosing health or getting punished in any other way appart from probably taking a bit longer.
At the Moment I can only equip/unequip Armor at the Chest, but it doesn't go into the Inventory, and I can't move it around or anything, only weapons and potions ( and I can't open the Inventory outside of Chests, probably because start opens up Steam instead)
Would like weapons to be equippable to the belt instead of cycling through all the ones in the Inventory, so I can choose which weapons to have quick access to.
In the Room with the 3 Fistguys, after a while all 3 of them just ran up to the upper left corner and stayed there.
When going prone the floorsprite doesn't wear Armor.
Whats with the 3 Guys walking on the Water that have Tons of Health?
"Game immediately recognized my Controller which is nice, but Main menu didn't recognize Joysticks, only dirpad." Yeah, I'll probably be making it so the sticks work in menus as well soon. It's pretty intuitive for me to immediately use d-pad, but I was unaware that was a personal bias.
"The Controller picture in the bottom left doesn't necessarily match the picures in the tutorial signs." I'll be removing this eventually since it's just for debug purposes.
"Combat sounds like it has some nice depth, but I found myself just circlestrafing and shooting my Crossbow until each room was cleared without loosing health or getting punished in any other way appart from probably taking a bit longer." I've thought of making it so the crossbow has limited ammo, but I'm still on the fence about it. Any suggestions on how you think I might mitigate that issue?
"At the Moment I can only equip/unequip Armor at the Chest, but it doesn't go into the Inventory, and I can't move it around or anything, only weapons and potions ( and I can't open the Inventory outside of Chests, probably because start opens up Steam instead)" Not being able to access the inventory menu from anywhere but the chest is intentional. It's one of those things that's implemented but won't really make sense in context until far later in development.
"Would like weapons to be equippable to the belt instead of cycling through all the ones in the Inventory, so I can choose which weapons to have quick access to." I'm a little lost on what you mean by this one, because it sounds like you just described it how I designed it. Of course, the confusion around the inventory is why I asked for feed back on it.
"In the Room with the 3 Fistguys, after a while all 3 of them just ran up to the upper left corner and stayed there." I'm assuming you mean the three guys with claws. Dunno why they did that! Sounds like a pathing bug.
"Whats with the 3 Guys walking on the Water that have Tons of Health?" Secret boss that I implemented in 5 seconds.
Thanks for playing it and giving feedback on the inventory. I appreciate it.
I think limited Ammo would be fine, also gives you another item to worry about Inventory management with.
As for the Weapons, I got the feeling at the moment when I cycle through weapons it cycles through everything I got in the Inventory, I'd like to be able to place like 3 of the weapons in my Inventory on the belt (kinda like in DS with equipping multiple weapons, instead of going through your whole Inventory of weapons) and then when cycling it only goes through those three. If thats not the case, then it just autoequipped the weapons I pulled from the chest to the belt and I haven't found a way to access the belt. But I guess this is not really an issue if you have the "main" inventory be the chest, so you only really take out the Items you're currently wanna work with/can fit in your grid, since then I could only take with me the weapons I wanna use, and have the extra ones just stay in the chest. Then it also makes more Sense that its a rather small grid to work with, I was a bit worried on how you planned to fit 10 or 20 weapons in there at some point.
The combat is shaping up to be really solid. Moving around, aiming and attacking felt very responsive with a gamepad. The pad image in the corner helps with identifying that your input is received, you could probably keep it in some form in the final game (have icons on the buttons for potions etc. as a reminder for what the button does). The inventory/chest screens can be confusing but it's clearly work in progress. The AI is fantastic.
Combat mechanics will need to be communicated clearly, such as how poison or bleeding affects your health. While the controls were quite snappy, it sometimes felt like my shield wasn't coming up when pressing the off hand attack button. There's definitely some instances of getting hit or accidentally doing the dodge jump where it feels like you have to wait for too long before being able to act again. The automatic running feels off, I had to constantly make sure to actually stop running so that I didn't drain my stamina.
How much of the graphics are placeholders? I'd recommend making the grass tiles less noisy. They currently look too distracting, and they are also very close to a hue that hurts my eyes (I have deuteranomaly).
"While the controls were quite snappy, it sometimes felt like my shield wasn't coming up when pressing the off hand attack button." You're absolutely right about that being a problem. The way it's currently coded is if you can raise the shield, the act of pressing the button down, (as in not holding it,) raises the shield, meaning if you pressed it while you couldn't raise your shield, the shield won't raise. Fixing that and some similar issues are top of my priority list when I get back to work.
"The automatic running feels off, I had to constantly make sure to actually stop running so that I didn't drain my stamina." Think it would feel better if running was a button you held, and then doing the dodge jump was if you tried to dodge right after releasing the dodge/run button?
"How much of the graphics are placeholders?" Most of them. I have a mostly consistent color pallet for a lot of the tiles right now, which I like, but I'm not an artist. I might make the tiles less noisy in general to better fit a gameboy aesthetic. I'll have to do some research on how to deal with deuteranomaly and other types of color blindness. Not sure how long that will take though. But thanks for letting me know.