Sup. Game is shaping up very well, glad you decided to keep the owl. I think you've underestimated how much playtime the game has for someone playing it the first time.
A few notes I wrote down while playing:
picking up aggy's dagger removes journal entry - cant say anything about it to daggy
no reward for damas' supply quest?
no "journal updated" text for lico's quest
finished quests could be marked, greyed out in the journal or with a note
cant use esc to get out of menu after saving - have use the UI buttons
cant give wolgi pomao doll, even after getting the one in the ravine
Various screenshots and videos of issues, see filenames for short comments:
I'll look into Aggy/Daggy quest having issues, but I might've fixed that just now when fixing the Traders. If not, I'll be sure to adress that obviously. Same with Wolgis Doll, and other quests being unfinishable, I had a small issue with some choices not displaying in general.
In general Quests only give you XPRewards, are you sure you completed Damas' Quest? The Supplies in the cave aren't the final ones he's looking for, you'll have to find out who did it. Might not be clear enough from the Text itself.
I also look into a journal updated text. It might be fixed already, but probably not. Did that happen when picking up the Head, or during some other time?
Using ESC in the save menu should be fixed now, I forgot to hook it up. If it still doesn't work in the new version, I forgot to hook it up again, and just thought I did.
By the finished Quest thing I'm assuming you'd like them to not just disappear from the Journal, but have a finished Quest section or something in there? I'll see if I can add that in without too much hassle.
Thank you very very much for playing again, I'll be sure to look through the screenshots etc. aswell.
Ah right, no I did not finish Damas' quest. I didn't realize there was more to it after that.
For Lico's quest it was when first talking to him.
About the quest journal, yeah either a section with completed quests or a last entry that says you've completed it or just greying out the quest title and sorting them at the bottom of the list. Any of those would be a nice QoL thing I believe.
HUGE improvements from last time, really awesome stuff. Atmosphere, graphics and world reminds me of breath of the wild. Level design is well done, not too punishing. Gameplay is intuitive, this is really shaping into an awesome game. Its a really ambitious scope so you should be proud of all you have done!!
Wow this demo has really shaped up into an awesome game. I escaped the cave then died to the skeleton at the pyramid, did the tutorial again because I didn't save and went along killing things, gaining levels, talking to pirates then I died to a giant monster next to some raptors. The fx and music are great and give the game some nice flow since it changes when you change areas. I thought the doors moved too fast, and would expect old iron doors to not open like some scifi space doors but it is magic so I guess. I took the pomaos and other stuff inside the hut and when I tried to take one next to the dude he got pissed, so I think I was stealing but it's not clear that I was in the first place. I loved that there were items everywhere to pick up, it made exploring the areas fun and exciting, and as a bonus I could sell them if I so wished. The only other thing to note is I got a quest to find trawiz but no inkling of a hint of where he might be, The map is small enough to probably figure it out eventually but then I was aimlessly wandering around so maybe a vague location could go a long way without making it too easy i.e. the castle or the port etc. What was the most difficult part of making this game thusfar? Are you gonna put it on steam? Great work as always :)
Most difficult would probably be to get the lighting in Unreal to not produce dumb artifacts on those low poly models, or maybe fixing the Bugs that constantly reappear every DD.
Its not going on Steam, I'll fix the remaining Bugs that popped up this DD (hopefully), and finish up the few missing Things/adjust some minor stuff that got requested this DD. Then I'll rework the Itch side with some more reasonable description and newer screenshots and keep it on here for free.
Definitely feels similar to Gothic or Morrowind and genuinely surprised how big the world is. It seems pretty detailed. Not too sure if the river is moving too fast cause it feels like rapids. I like how points of interest can be seen about to go to. That feels like something mentioned in a Gothic post-mortem I guess you saw that too? If not check it out, it had great info on world layout decisions.
Also like how you are given directions. That is classic old CRPG stuff. So long as the directions are good it isn't an issue. Otherwise you will end up like in old WoW. I think it was a barrens quest where the instructions were just terrible and people needed to lookup what to do.
Somebody already mentioned the dialogue on top and options on bottom is a bit off putting.
Killed the beast in the forest, got into camp and walked around for a bit before I stopped. Was fun! Really like the atmosphere, feels very nostalgic. The characters and the environment are all very charming. Sound effects and music were solid, nothing sounded too out of place. Footstep sound effects would be nice.
I'll say the dialogue being at the top of the screen with the characters being below it felt a bit off to me. I felt like I couldn't really see what was actually going on while I was reading. It's entirely possible that I'm just retarded though. Also, the opening scene in particular, it wasn't very clear to me during the dialogue that Adol was above me somewhere. I didn't think to look for him after gaining control of the character, but I just assumed he was stuck in the temple with me, so I was confused when I made it out and he was just chillin.
It didn't seem like there was much to the combat. I only really used the dagger but I didn't notice any options to avoid enemy attacks. Right click might have been some sort of parry? But I couldn't tell when enemies were winding up for an attack, so I'm not sure. I mostly just spam clicked.
At some point it got very dark in the overworld and I couldn't see pretty much anything without a torch. Not sure if that's intended or not, but I didn't notice any brightness options.
Didn't encounter a ton of bugs. There were a few points where the music seemed to stop abruptly before starting a different track. When I first walked into the camp there was a guy kind of spazzing out and stuck on a wall, but he fixed himself after I talked to him. I also accidentally stole something and a guard fucked me up, and then I started talking to him while I was down on the ground.
I've played for about 2 hours, mostly jumping around and looking for places to go where I shouldn't. It was a pretty fun experience and you should have a bit more confidence in your own skills.
Combat is basic but functional. Spamming attack seems to work best for me. Some more variety in attack types and dodging would help a lot.
Jumping felt nice. Having platforming challenges as an extra could be fun.
Starting dungeon is nicely designed. Enemies where easy to deal with but still felt dangerous with their amount of damage. I feel like level/environment design is where your talent shines.
Sound design and music are nice. Though sometimes footsteps sound starts playing before the previous one ended
It's really difficult to tell what monsters are powerful and which are not. You also seem to be having trouble with scaling enemy difficulty. In the forest there is a cave with a few maggots in front and inside it, so I thought it was an easy dungeon but when I went further inside a scorpion or something removed 90% of my hp in one hit.
Some pirates didn't have any dialog
The saw weapon didn't have a description
Talking to the pirate captain let's you say that you and Trawiz found a way of the Island before having ever met Trawiz. Afterwards you can also say that the ship is repaired even though I didn't do anything with the ship.
There are no consequences for stealing. Only the guy you stole from comes after you and as soon as you lose aggro everything goes back to normal.
When asking the camp guards where the farm is, he is the one saying thanks instead of the main character.
I was able to enter the camp by going through the farm before finishing the quest shift gave me. After entering once the guards don't seem to stop you anymore.
When joining the mercernaries you get the quest of helping Shift out. I am not sure if that is the same quest as you got to be able to enter the camp or a different one.
The torch fire seems to be bugged. Sometimes the flame is visible other times it isn't. It would also be nice to be able to douse the flame and put the torch back into your backpack.
When going to bed you keep the lit torch in your hand which looks weird.
Tooltips on the stats would be nice to be able to tell what they do.
That's everything that I have for now. Like I said in the thread I will do a full playthrough later just to make you feel bad.
Thank you very much for playing. I know I don't have a lot of self confidence, sorry.
I'll look into footsteps playing too soon, missing pirate dialogue, saw description, pirate captain breaking progression, and all the torch parts, those are definetly bugs. Campguard saying thanks also is a bug, thank you for catching.
I didn't want to have too major consequences for stealing, in case somebody accidentally stole from trawiz or something, so it'll probably stay the way it is right now. I'll keep it in mind for future Games tho, if I ever add stealing again. (without it being a game about stealing ofcourse)
Entering the camp through the farms is a possible way, theres extra triggers there to let the guards assume you belong to the camp. I'm surprised noone else seemed to have found that way before, but if its that unintuitive and feels like a bug, I'll think about blocking that path of by a dialogue trigger from Shift or something. (You could then still technically just kill shift to get in, same way its with the guards right now)
The quest to help shift out is the same as the one to enter the city through him. People in general seem to be confused about that one, should I maybe just remove that option from entry, and only have it as a quest later on? Your only options would then be moving through the farms, bribing the guards, killing the guards at the front or back, or climbing the robot.
Stats just get added to the weapons damage in a 1:1 ratio if its one of the kind. So big chunky ones and crossbows add your strength, daggers and bows your focus, and all magic + staffs your mysticism. I should maybe put a small line in the weapons info box what type of weapon it is tho.
The Hive is one of the 3 Endgame dungeons, I'll see if I can make it a bit more clear from the outside that its dangerous. Maybe put some of the warriors out there aswell, instead of only maggots.
I've gotten to the end in just over 2 hours. Mostly by rushing through it. The only thing I think that I didn't complete were the forest temple and the owl demon. I skipped the owl demon because I had a pure strength build without any ranged attacks and waiting for it to swoop down was too taxing on my patience. I've also found some more bugs.
When climbing the robot to bypass the gate guards (a great use of that platforming I mentioned previously btw), a guard called Denzel calls out to come to him. When you reach him there is only test dialogue for a quest that you can immediatly finish. Went from level 2 to 5 and gained some good armor from this.
I was able to just walk to Trawiz without being stopped. When I got there I could tell him about the key an unlimited amount of times gaining 1000 exp each time. Furthermore there is the same bug as with the pirate captain. I can tell him that I had gotten into the tower and that the pirates are willing to let us go with them. I also got the second key from this allowing me to finish the game.
In the farm there is a wine giving quest. The villagers have a missing string table entry error.
There doesn't appear to be a way to tell which quests are completed and which not. Also the status of the quests is difficult to tell.
After climbing the robot I think I got the quest to talk to shift from the mercenary leader but it doesn't appear in my log and Shift just tells me to go away. After finding the missing guy, Shift does say something about telling the guards to let me pass.
The summon fairy is nice, but having it in the middle of the screen is annoying.
It's possible to sell quest items like the proof of ownership and the special orders because their price is set to 5.
I can't seem to give the special orders to the mercenary leader.
Sometimes enemy weapons don't show up, but they still perform the animations and drop their weapons upon death. So far I have seen the kobolds and skeletons with two-handers do this.
There is also a good point to praise you with. The light in caves only lights up the ground, so I almost walked off of a cliff in the hive. More games should do that because it forces me to be more careful which is good for the immersion.
The owl being annoying without ranged weapons is alright, you can technically use magic scrolls without requirements, but I understand thats not really a solution with them being so limited. Crossbows have a rather high strength low dex requirement, I think about removing their dex requirement to have a ranged option for full strength builds.
All the Dialogue issues will be adressed ofcourse, those shouldn't be happening. Were the Wine quest farmers the only ones with a missing string table entry?
Technically you have a journal with queststates in it, but its a really crude implementation and doesn't describe very well what your current state is either. Sorry for that.
I'll see about having the fairy follow your right/left side instead of dead center, thank you for the suggestion.
I'll also up the price of the proof of ownership and special orders a bit, but its intended to be sellable, since its basically just pieces of paper, unlike the rare hive/owl hearts.
Did you encounter missing enemy weapons only on enemies, or also on NPCs sometimes, maybe after loading a game?
Would've played more, but I'm kinda burnt out after playing so many games today + it's getting late, though I will return to it eventually(can't tomorrow). Was able to fight some of the woodland creatures and explore the town and become a guard.
I've never played Gothic before, but I could tell it's inspired by it in some ways, such as the deadly enemies just around the corner, and the danger of crossing the NPCs.
The visuals are great, and the character and enemy designs are appealing. Level design was well done I'd say, communicating where to and where not to go. The story seems standard fare, but I like it and think it compliments the general fantasy island vibe. While I didn't test it, I appreciate the (I assume) ability to tackle a problem from multiple avenues, such as sneaking into the town vs going around into the forest to get to the other side.
Item pickup animation was nice, as well as the torch falling to the ground to keep lighting up the area. I will say the combat left something to be desired, felt kind of weird to strafe and then bonk and repeat to avoid damage. Otherwise, they feel more like DPS/HP checks than fights. Though to be fair I didn't use the parry at all, I tend to avoid them is Souls games + most of the enemies were animals.
Overall, I had a fun time for what little I did. Think I'll enjoy it even more when I get more time to check it out.
Random Idea: It may already be in, but a reason to use the jump in combat would be fun, like a leg or tail sweep you can jump over.
Bug: The Goblin with a stick on the main path to the town. I killed him and picked up his loot + club. I then died to a skele and loaded my save that was in sight of, but not aggroing the goblin. Upon load, his club was gone and he was hitting me with nothing(it did do damage I believe). After defeating, he had the same loot, but no club. Wish I recorded that, would have saved me a few words.
Thank you for playing. The combat is pretty bad, I agree, but its too late to rework that now. I'll definetely keep the Jumping in combat in mind for the next one tho, I wanted to make sure that has a more interesting combat anyway.
You can parry the enemies, even if they're wild animals, makes combat possible without loosing hp/too much hp, but its still basically just a simple damage check.
Thanks for catching the goblin not having his weapon equipped after loading. I was sure that bug was gone, but it seems I was once again wrong.
What cave section? The Hive with the insect things in them?
If the music changes you should have switched Areas or entered combat, but that seems to be bugged sometimes, had another person comment on that before, I'll look into it. I'll also see about maybe reducing enemy movementspeed a bit. No filters tho, sorry.
Environments are fun to explore. Controls feel good once you learn them. Torch flame seems to be a big bugged, and there's no feedback when you get hit.
Can't pick up the mushroom that looks like diggers meat. 0/10.
In all seriousness though, I'm a huge gothic fan (Like the first game more than the second one) and I really liked your game a lot. Didn't finish the entire thing yet. Got into the camp, talked to what I presume was a leader and got all the armor through placeholder dialogue, but I explored quite a bit before getting there.
First the bugs. I was fighting the kobolds near the trash heap below the farms and the combat music started playing all the time. Combat tracks switched, but it was like I never left combat.
I don't use english keyboard layout so the 1 key for pulling out weapon doesn't work. Works fine if I switch to english keyboard, but it would be nice thing to sort this out. Not a big deal.
Torch flame effect seems to disapear and reapear every few seconds.
Save name gets erased / replaced by SaveGame_0 if you click save button right after saving with custom save file name. Game saves and loads normaly, just the name gets replaced.
There seems to be a problem with visible character names. Only Eplons name is visible if you look at him, every one else has no name above their model. Including monsters.
There were some mistakes with dialogue. Mainly the camera not changing to correct character in some conversations and some missing strings. Mainly in the quest where you give wine to farmers. They only say <missing string table entry>.
That's about all I found. Everything else works wonderfuly. Never got stuck, never crashed, performance was alright, except the part where you get out of the ruins for the first time, but the dip was only minor.
Graphics are alright, but inconsistent in some places. Mainly the terrain and character textures don't look like they fit completely, but that's a minor thing since the difference in quality is not that big.
Combat is pretty much like gothic without the horrible lock on. Makes fighting multiple enemies easier. I also hope you decide to add multiple attack animations depending on characters weapon skill.
The island it self is nice. A bit too small perhaps, but fully packed with items and enemies around every rock, stump or corner. Personaly, I would try to limit the field of view by separating individual areas by tall mountains or trees in so the player can't see from one end of the island to another, or experiment with radial fog. Could give a nice illusion of the island being bigger that it really is without having to enlarge it. Forest looks great. It still amazes me how small developers can make better looking forests than big studios.
Now for the suggestions. Deffinitely add quick save / load function. Saving manualy all the time gets tiring. Or just make us able to navigate the menu with movement keys and rearange the buttons so that save button is at the top. Saving would be a matter of pressing esc and enter twice.
Adding a "loot all" key would be nice. There is no weight limit so there is no point in not taking everything.
Other than that, I would like to see the game expanded in general. Larger island, more enemies, more dungeons, more magic items, more more more.
And here are some "wild" suggestions / ideas. Being able to customise our character visualy in some way would be nice. Barber NPC selling different hairstyles or hair dyes or ability to dye our clothes / armor. Adding some utility skills from gothic would also be nice, like pickpocketing, butchering animals or acrobatics for better jumping and lower fall damage. Also some endgame spells for traversing the land, like limited levitation, speed potions or jump potion. Some kind of crafting / cooking system might also work.
Overall, I'm really impressed. I will deffinitely be following this project and I hope you continue working on it.
Placeholder Dialogue should not exist, it should be fully working, same with the missing string table entries. I'll look into that, must've accidentally messed something up there.
Torch flame, Save name and dialogue cameras sound like Bugs, I'll fix those. The combat music playing constantly during kobol fight probably means you were in combat for the whole time, with some kobold somewhere being stuck or something maybe. I'll see if I can reproduce that.
You can rebind the keys how you see fit, can you tell me which keyboard layout you're using, and what key specifically isn't working? It should work with all standard letter keyboards for all I know.
I see about radial fog and quicksaves, but there won't be any more content then what is there, or any extra skills etc, the Game is basically complete how it is ( apart from the obvious bugs like the ones you found) and some missing soundeffects/intro/outro, I submitted this Time to catch and fix the last remaining Bugs before release.
Thank you very much for playing and finding all these Bugs!
That's a shame, but I understand. What you have there is already great. Hope you decide to make a sequel one day.
The kobold battle music lasted through out the rest of the game. Finished some quests in the camp, fought some more enemies, but the music never ended. There was probably some enemy stuck somewhere.
I use czech keyboard layout:
Rebinding works fine and switching to eng keyboard layout does the trick too. Anyway, this is not just a problem with your game. I have the same problem with some bigger games too. Most of them seem to be in the U4 engine.
I played a little more and found another possible bug. Dryads in the swamp get stuck after the first parry and I can just hit them over and over without them retaliating. Also, "test" starts appearing in the left corner when that happens.
Tried talking to mercenary leader and he works alright. It's the guard leader who just lets me join instantly and gives me all armor pieces for free.
Anyway, I really like your game. Will wait for you to patch those bugs and I will try to finish the whole thing.
If the battle music lasted, it might also be a bug with the music player. I'll look that up, thank you.
If the keybind issues persist through other UE4 Games, I don't think I can easily do much about that, sorry.
Dryads shouldn't be permastunned, you are right on that. Also thank you for specifying the guard leader, I'll be sure to adress that and the other dialogue options and whatever else comes up thats basically gamebreaking as soon as possible.
Thank you again for playing and finding those Bugs!
Comments
Sup. Game is shaping up very well, glad you decided to keep the owl. I think you've underestimated how much playtime the game has for someone playing it the first time.
A few notes I wrote down while playing:
picking up aggy's dagger removes journal entry - cant say anything about it to daggy
no reward for damas' supply quest?
no "journal updated" text for lico's quest
finished quests could be marked, greyed out in the journal or with a note
cant use esc to get out of menu after saving - have use the UI buttons
cant give wolgi pomao doll, even after getting the one in the ravine
Various screenshots and videos of issues, see filenames for short comments:
https://files.catbox.moe/lw728g.7z
I'll look into Aggy/Daggy quest having issues, but I might've fixed that just now when fixing the Traders. If not, I'll be sure to adress that obviously. Same with Wolgis Doll, and other quests being unfinishable, I had a small issue with some choices not displaying in general.
In general Quests only give you XPRewards, are you sure you completed Damas' Quest? The Supplies in the cave aren't the final ones he's looking for, you'll have to find out who did it. Might not be clear enough from the Text itself.
I also look into a journal updated text. It might be fixed already, but probably not. Did that happen when picking up the Head, or during some other time?
Using ESC in the save menu should be fixed now, I forgot to hook it up. If it still doesn't work in the new version, I forgot to hook it up again, and just thought I did.
By the finished Quest thing I'm assuming you'd like them to not just disappear from the Journal, but have a finished Quest section or something in there? I'll see if I can add that in without too much hassle.
Thank you very very much for playing again, I'll be sure to look through the screenshots etc. aswell.
Ah right, no I did not finish Damas' quest. I didn't realize there was more to it after that.
For Lico's quest it was when first talking to him.
About the quest journal, yeah either a section with completed quests or a last entry that says you've completed it or just greying out the quest title and sorting them at the bottom of the list. Any of those would be a nice QoL thing I believe.
HUGE improvements from last time, really awesome stuff. Atmosphere, graphics and world reminds me of breath of the wild. Level design is well done, not too punishing. Gameplay is intuitive, this is really shaping into an awesome game. Its a really ambitious scope so you should be proud of all you have done!!
Thank you very very much for playing!
Wow this demo has really shaped up into an awesome game. I escaped the cave then died to the skeleton at the pyramid, did the tutorial again because I didn't save and went along killing things, gaining levels, talking to pirates then I died to a giant monster next to some raptors. The fx and music are great and give the game some nice flow since it changes when you change areas. I thought the doors moved too fast, and would expect old iron doors to not open like some scifi space doors but it is magic so I guess. I took the pomaos and other stuff inside the hut and when I tried to take one next to the dude he got pissed, so I think I was stealing but it's not clear that I was in the first place. I loved that there were items everywhere to pick up, it made exploring the areas fun and exciting, and as a bonus I could sell them if I so wished. The only other thing to note is I got a quest to find trawiz but no inkling of a hint of where he might be, The map is small enough to probably figure it out eventually but then I was aimlessly wandering around so maybe a vague location could go a long way without making it too easy i.e. the castle or the port etc. What was the most difficult part of making this game thusfar? Are you gonna put it on steam? Great work as always :)
Thank you very much for playing.
Most difficult would probably be to get the lighting in Unreal to not produce dumb artifacts on those low poly models, or maybe fixing the Bugs that constantly reappear every DD.
Its not going on Steam, I'll fix the remaining Bugs that popped up this DD (hopefully), and finish up the few missing Things/adjust some minor stuff that got requested this DD. Then I'll rework the Itch side with some more reasonable description and newer screenshots and keep it on here for free.
Awesome, great to hear this come to a good close
Definitely feels similar to Gothic or Morrowind and genuinely surprised how big the world is. It seems pretty detailed. Not too sure if the river is moving too fast cause it feels like rapids. I like how points of interest can be seen about to go to. That feels like something mentioned in a Gothic post-mortem I guess you saw that too? If not check it out, it had great info on world layout decisions.
Also like how you are given directions. That is classic old CRPG stuff. So long as the directions are good it isn't an issue. Otherwise you will end up like in old WoW. I think it was a barrens quest where the instructions were just terrible and people needed to lookup what to do.
Somebody already mentioned the dialogue on top and options on bottom is a bit off putting.
Nice job. Keep at it.
Killed the beast in the forest, got into camp and walked around for a bit before I stopped. Was fun! Really like the atmosphere, feels very nostalgic. The characters and the environment are all very charming. Sound effects and music were solid, nothing sounded too out of place. Footstep sound effects would be nice.
I'll say the dialogue being at the top of the screen with the characters being below it felt a bit off to me. I felt like I couldn't really see what was actually going on while I was reading. It's entirely possible that I'm just retarded though. Also, the opening scene in particular, it wasn't very clear to me during the dialogue that Adol was above me somewhere. I didn't think to look for him after gaining control of the character, but I just assumed he was stuck in the temple with me, so I was confused when I made it out and he was just chillin.
It didn't seem like there was much to the combat. I only really used the dagger but I didn't notice any options to avoid enemy attacks. Right click might have been some sort of parry? But I couldn't tell when enemies were winding up for an attack, so I'm not sure. I mostly just spam clicked.
At some point it got very dark in the overworld and I couldn't see pretty much anything without a torch. Not sure if that's intended or not, but I didn't notice any brightness options.
Didn't encounter a ton of bugs. There were a few points where the music seemed to stop abruptly before starting a different track. When I first walked into the camp there was a guy kind of spazzing out and stuck on a wall, but he fixed himself after I talked to him. I also accidentally stole something and a guard fucked me up, and then I started talking to him while I was down on the ground.
Overall really cool!
games real cool, my only issue with it its that it gets real dark and hard to see, cant imagine being able to play this on a sunny day
I've played for about 2 hours, mostly jumping around and looking for places to go where I shouldn't. It was a pretty fun experience and you should have a bit more confidence in your own skills.
That's everything that I have for now. Like I said in the thread I will do a full playthrough later just to make you feel bad.
Thank you very much for playing. I know I don't have a lot of self confidence, sorry.
I'll look into footsteps playing too soon, missing pirate dialogue, saw description, pirate captain breaking progression, and all the torch parts, those are definetly bugs. Campguard saying thanks also is a bug, thank you for catching.
I didn't want to have too major consequences for stealing, in case somebody accidentally stole from trawiz or something, so it'll probably stay the way it is right now. I'll keep it in mind for future Games tho, if I ever add stealing again. (without it being a game about stealing ofcourse)
Entering the camp through the farms is a possible way, theres extra triggers there to let the guards assume you belong to the camp. I'm surprised noone else seemed to have found that way before, but if its that unintuitive and feels like a bug, I'll think about blocking that path of by a dialogue trigger from Shift or something. (You could then still technically just kill shift to get in, same way its with the guards right now)
The quest to help shift out is the same as the one to enter the city through him. People in general seem to be confused about that one, should I maybe just remove that option from entry, and only have it as a quest later on? Your only options would then be moving through the farms, bribing the guards, killing the guards at the front or back, or climbing the robot.
Stats just get added to the weapons damage in a 1:1 ratio if its one of the kind. So big chunky ones and crossbows add your strength, daggers and bows your focus, and all magic + staffs your mysticism. I should maybe put a small line in the weapons info box what type of weapon it is tho.
The Hive is one of the 3 Endgame dungeons, I'll see if I can make it a bit more clear from the outside that its dangerous. Maybe put some of the warriors out there aswell, instead of only maggots.
Thank you very much for playing!
I've gotten to the end in just over 2 hours. Mostly by rushing through it. The only thing I think that I didn't complete were the forest temple and the owl demon. I skipped the owl demon because I had a pure strength build without any ranged attacks and waiting for it to swoop down was too taxing on my patience. I've also found some more bugs.
There is also a good point to praise you with. The light in caves only lights up the ground, so I almost walked off of a cliff in the hive. More games should do that because it forces me to be more careful which is good for the immersion.
Thank you very very much for playing for so long!
The owl being annoying without ranged weapons is alright, you can technically use magic scrolls without requirements, but I understand thats not really a solution with them being so limited. Crossbows have a rather high strength low dex requirement, I think about removing their dex requirement to have a ranged option for full strength builds.
All the Dialogue issues will be adressed ofcourse, those shouldn't be happening. Were the Wine quest farmers the only ones with a missing string table entry?
Technically you have a journal with queststates in it, but its a really crude implementation and doesn't describe very well what your current state is either. Sorry for that.
I'll see about having the fairy follow your right/left side instead of dead center, thank you for the suggestion.
I'll also up the price of the proof of ownership and special orders a bit, but its intended to be sellable, since its basically just pieces of paper, unlike the rare hive/owl hearts.
Did you encounter missing enemy weapons only on enemies, or also on NPCs sometimes, maybe after loading a game?
Again, thank you very much for playing.
Would've played more, but I'm kinda burnt out after playing so many games today + it's getting late, though I will return to it eventually(can't tomorrow). Was able to fight some of the woodland creatures and explore the town and become a guard.
I've never played Gothic before, but I could tell it's inspired by it in some ways, such as the deadly enemies just around the corner, and the danger of crossing the NPCs.
The visuals are great, and the character and enemy designs are appealing. Level design was well done I'd say, communicating where to and where not to go. The story seems standard fare, but I like it and think it compliments the general fantasy island vibe. While I didn't test it, I appreciate the (I assume) ability to tackle a problem from multiple avenues, such as sneaking into the town vs going around into the forest to get to the other side.
Item pickup animation was nice, as well as the torch falling to the ground to keep lighting up the area. I will say the combat left something to be desired, felt kind of weird to strafe and then bonk and repeat to avoid damage. Otherwise, they feel more like DPS/HP checks than fights. Though to be fair I didn't use the parry at all, I tend to avoid them is Souls games + most of the enemies were animals.
Overall, I had a fun time for what little I did. Think I'll enjoy it even more when I get more time to check it out.
Random Idea: It may already be in, but a reason to use the jump in combat would be fun, like a leg or tail sweep you can jump over.
Bug: The Goblin with a stick on the main path to the town. I killed him and picked up his loot + club. I then died to a skele and loaded my save that was in sight of, but not aggroing the goblin. Upon load, his club was gone and he was hitting me with nothing(it did do damage I believe). After defeating, he had the same loot, but no club. Wish I recorded that, would have saved me a few words.
Thank you for playing. The combat is pretty bad, I agree, but its too late to rework that now. I'll definetely keep the Jumping in combat in mind for the next one tho, I wanted to make sure that has a more interesting combat anyway.
You can parry the enemies, even if they're wild animals, makes combat possible without loosing hp/too much hp, but its still basically just a simple damage check.
Thanks for catching the goblin not having his weapon equipped after loading. I was sure that bug was gone, but it seems I was once again wrong.
What cave section? The Hive with the insect things in them?
If the music changes you should have switched Areas or entered combat, but that seems to be bugged sometimes, had another person comment on that before, I'll look into it. I'll also see about maybe reducing enemy movementspeed a bit. No filters tho, sorry.
I'll look into it, but its probably just an issue with the particle system. It has no collision and pretty big sheets for the Fog.
Environments are fun to explore. Controls feel good once you learn them. Torch flame seems to be a big bugged, and there's no feedback when you get hit.
There should be blood and soundeffects on getting hit. Do they not appear at all, or only appear sometimes?
I'm away for the weekend but I'm looking forward to trying it out! Looks like a lot of good work has been put in to it.
Can't pick up the mushroom that looks like diggers meat. 0/10.
In all seriousness though, I'm a huge gothic fan (Like the first game more than the second one) and I really liked your game a lot. Didn't finish the entire thing yet. Got into the camp, talked to what I presume was a leader and got all the armor through placeholder dialogue, but I explored quite a bit before getting there.
First the bugs. I was fighting the kobolds near the trash heap below the farms and the combat music started playing all the time. Combat tracks switched, but it was like I never left combat.
I don't use english keyboard layout so the 1 key for pulling out weapon doesn't work. Works fine if I switch to english keyboard, but it would be nice thing to sort this out. Not a big deal.
Torch flame effect seems to disapear and reapear every few seconds.
Save name gets erased / replaced by SaveGame_0 if you click save button right after saving with custom save file name. Game saves and loads normaly, just the name gets replaced.
There seems to be a problem with visible character names. Only Eplons name is visible if you look at him, every one else has no name above their model. Including monsters.
There were some mistakes with dialogue. Mainly the camera not changing to correct character in some conversations and some missing strings. Mainly in the quest where you give wine to farmers. They only say <missing string table entry>.
That's about all I found. Everything else works wonderfuly. Never got stuck, never crashed, performance was alright, except the part where you get out of the ruins for the first time, but the dip was only minor.
Graphics are alright, but inconsistent in some places. Mainly the terrain and character textures don't look like they fit completely, but that's a minor thing since the difference in quality is not that big.
Combat is pretty much like gothic without the horrible lock on. Makes fighting multiple enemies easier. I also hope you decide to add multiple attack animations depending on characters weapon skill.
The island it self is nice. A bit too small perhaps, but fully packed with items and enemies around every rock, stump or corner. Personaly, I would try to limit the field of view by separating individual areas by tall mountains or trees in so the player can't see from one end of the island to another, or experiment with radial fog. Could give a nice illusion of the island being bigger that it really is without having to enlarge it. Forest looks great. It still amazes me how small developers can make better looking forests than big studios.
Now for the suggestions. Deffinitely add quick save / load function. Saving manualy all the time gets tiring. Or just make us able to navigate the menu with movement keys and rearange the buttons so that save button is at the top. Saving would be a matter of pressing esc and enter twice.
Adding a "loot all" key would be nice. There is no weight limit so there is no point in not taking everything.
Other than that, I would like to see the game expanded in general. Larger island, more enemies, more dungeons, more magic items, more more more.
And here are some "wild" suggestions / ideas. Being able to customise our character visualy in some way would be nice. Barber NPC selling different hairstyles or hair dyes or ability to dye our clothes / armor. Adding some utility skills from gothic would also be nice, like pickpocketing, butchering animals or acrobatics for better jumping and lower fall damage. Also some endgame spells for traversing the land, like limited levitation, speed potions or jump potion. Some kind of crafting / cooking system might also work.
Overall, I'm really impressed. I will deffinitely be following this project and I hope you continue working on it.
Thank you very much for playing.
Placeholder Dialogue should not exist, it should be fully working, same with the missing string table entries. I'll look into that, must've accidentally messed something up there.
Torch flame, Save name and dialogue cameras sound like Bugs, I'll fix those. The combat music playing constantly during kobol fight probably means you were in combat for the whole time, with some kobold somewhere being stuck or something maybe. I'll see if I can reproduce that.
You can rebind the keys how you see fit, can you tell me which keyboard layout you're using, and what key specifically isn't working? It should work with all standard letter keyboards for all I know.
I see about radial fog and quicksaves, but there won't be any more content then what is there, or any extra skills etc, the Game is basically complete how it is ( apart from the obvious bugs like the ones you found) and some missing soundeffects/intro/outro, I submitted this Time to catch and fix the last remaining Bugs before release.
Thank you very much for playing and finding all these Bugs!
That's a shame, but I understand. What you have there is already great. Hope you decide to make a sequel one day.
The kobold battle music lasted through out the rest of the game. Finished some quests in the camp, fought some more enemies, but the music never ended. There was probably some enemy stuck somewhere.
I use czech keyboard layout:
Rebinding works fine and switching to eng keyboard layout does the trick too. Anyway, this is not just a problem with your game. I have the same problem with some bigger games too. Most of them seem to be in the U4 engine.
I played a little more and found another possible bug. Dryads in the swamp get stuck after the first parry and I can just hit them over and over without them retaliating. Also, "test" starts appearing in the left corner when that happens.
Tried talking to mercenary leader and he works alright. It's the guard leader who just lets me join instantly and gives me all armor pieces for free.
Anyway, I really like your game. Will wait for you to patch those bugs and I will try to finish the whole thing.
If the battle music lasted, it might also be a bug with the music player. I'll look that up, thank you.
If the keybind issues persist through other UE4 Games, I don't think I can easily do much about that, sorry.
Dryads shouldn't be permastunned, you are right on that. Also thank you for specifying the guard leader, I'll be sure to adress that and the other dialogue options and whatever else comes up thats basically gamebreaking as soon as possible.
Thank you again for playing and finding those Bugs!