That's a shame, my Linux experience is very limited and I haven't set up a testing environment yet. I know it's worked on other Linux setups at least. From looking at the dump my guess its something to do with Vulkan, unfortunately I know it won't run on Linux at all without using Vulkan. Searching around a bit it would seem its not a very uncommon thing with Unity games, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
Yeah, I've had issues with my vulkan drivers in the past, I might play around with them see if I can maybe get the game to run. At least it didn't freeze my whole PC like some other vulkan apps do. So sounds like a good app to test things out with.
I'll let you know what I did if I manage to run the game.
- I agree on adding a little camshake at least when you are hit (aka you need a major feedback for keyboard users for when they get hit, pad can vibrate and sidestep that). More about on hit feedback, I know it's a horde shooter and the deal is to be good or be swarmed, but maybe even a 0.1s of invulnerability could be good.
-For me is a problem to have life on the top right side of the screen, my eyes are really not adjusted to that. left top is a classic, but for sure you had your reasons. I suggest to add an option to put the lifebar (also) under player's feet.
- Burning laser has a problem on how the ray exit from the gun, but I'm sure you know that.
- Is a problem (visually) to have runes and ammo have both square sprites, I know they are different in many reasons, but while playing ammo and runes get blended. Ihmo you need to add clarity to distinguish an ammo crate in a sea of runes in a blink of an eye.
- More on ammo, I know a rogue don't explain itself, but try to tell me in some manner what kind of ammo is what color type. It's a compound problem because you deviate a little too much from nuclear throne and its ammo clarity. Light ammo has both machinegun and granade launcher, but shotgun is heavy? Special I can understand, but light/heavy difference in blurry right now
I've been thinking about some minor invul. too actually, will try it out and see how it plays.
The UI isn't final in anyway at all, a lot of people have had similar feedback as you about so I'll look into it. I'm a bit hesitant to add a lot of UI elements that can get in the way of gameplay, but again I might change my mind if I actually try implementing it.
There are a lot of small problems like with the laser that I just haven't gotten around to fix yet, but I will sometime!
About the ammo and runes looking similar, good point I'll look into it.
Yeah I'll improve on distinguishing the ammo types, probably change their names too...
Yeah I agree about the feedback, its an area I haven't focused much on yet. The boxes are ammo for 3 different types of ammo, you start with a, pretty crappy though, short range weapon that has recharging ammo. And the level up screen will definitely be changed.
The gun is better than the last time, I like the new varieties of weapons, such as fraggo and little friend as well as new punchy sounds. Also, it looks like there are now weapon rarities, I'd suggest drawing an outline around the weapon to show how rare it is, cause you can only tell it by standing on it and looking a the stats(stats display is a nice addition, too).
I never had a reason to buy any weapons at the store, cause they were pretty similar to those that get dropped during the levels, so I only bought ammo.
The game feels like it became a lot more difficult, and I usually die in one of the cave levels when the enemies box me into a corner, I haven't even made it to the boss yet.
The upgrades still feel as incremental as the last time, their effect is barely noticeable.
Dropped guns will have different colored particles for their rarities, but adding an outline too is a good idea. I've already heard that they can be hard to see in some cases.
Yeah the store can be improved, I think it mostly works well if you're looking for a specific gun right now.
I think I've unintentionally made it harder because I'm always testing it so much myself. Just about everyone has said its too hard and I don't think anyone has seen the last level, whoops.
The skills have barely been touched since last time so its not strange that you think so, I've mostly added a few. Hopefully with some more interesting effects like being able to dash through enemies and attacks without taking damage. But they will absolutely be changed, I'm thinking about if it would be good to take away most of their different tiers so you'd get the full effect at level 1 of a skill. And more changes.
Played 5 runs, mostly died on the middle point of them.
This is very fun! The guns are powerful, but the scenarios where they must be used are on the overwhelming side so they don't feel overpowered. Altough I died a lot, I'm pretty sure it was because I was playing badly more than the game was being too hard. The game has a very solid base to grow from.
I didn't realize there was ammo until I run out of it while using the super machine gun. The ammo system itself feels a bit odd, specially since there is no control over which kind of weapon or ammo you are going to get. The shield gun is kind of unique that it works as a knife, but I ended up replacing it for better guns most of the time. It would be nice if its secondary, the shield, was something that could be adapted into the character in some way rather than being tied to something as precious as inventory space.
I found it very hard to parse the stats of each weapon. There is a lot of text in there. I don't mean that you should simplify things diablo 3 style, but in some way reducing and condensing the weapons stats would be welcome.
Why do pistols drop when you can get a machine gun? Why does the granade launcher use blue ammo when all explosives use green ammo?
I think I remember reading seen posts of yours in the thread explaning the game runs on ECS. It is impressive how smoothly everything runs in my laptop.
I believe I barely scrapped the surface of the game by playing badly and getting killed so early, but this game really looks promising. I hope you will be able to polish and improve this game further, good luck!
That its too hard has pretty much been a universal comment so I'm sure its tuned a bit too punishing at least. Its kind of hard to tell when you've been testing it yourself so damn much so DDs are invaluable for that type of feedback.
I'd like the emphasis being on the guns for the game. But at the same time have you get stronger from getting skills. For example I had planned to put in a skill to make the shield gun better before DD but it didn't make it. I've considered adding an item slot too though, so you'd start with the shield gun there and have the option of finding other items that do other things to exchange it for. But I will have to decide how it should all be handled.
The way the ammo system works right now is pretty much how I'd like it to work. It can be improved of course, but I want you to have to adapt a bit to what you're given and also balance the use between the different types. There are some ways to control it; you can always buy every type in a shop and there are skills to increase the max capacity. I'd like to add more though. Getting skills is way too random now I think for example, so it'll be changed a bit at least so you can have some control over your build and so.
I'll try to explain how I see the different types of ammo. Basically its based on how exotic (not rare) the guns are, with blue (light) being the least and green (special) the most. But at the same time its balanced around ammo costs, for example special is a bit more rare but most guns in that type don't have a really high ammo cost or really high rate of fire unless they're really "doomsday-y". As you can't go below 1 ammo cost and the max capacity is lower, each time you fire a special gun its a bit more... special. Than compared to the other types. For example the grenade launcher, name might change, you'll spam fire without much worry but a quadzooka you'd think a bit more before pulling the trigger. Also all types of guns with exploding projectiles, the starting gun is light for example hehe. If any of that makes sense.
Lower quality guns, like a pistol, have the capacity to drop with more and better mods on them compared to rarer ones. Its an attempt to make guns that are worse in their basic forms still be viable in later levels because they'd be able to have a lot of "stuff" on them that would make them good anyway. The ordinary pistol in particular though also has a lot of armor piercing so it could prove useful to take in the beginning.
I agree that the gun stats screen is pretty bad. I want to change pretty much all the text into icons and probably remove a lot of unnecessary info to condense it. Might add a way to inspect them closer and see absolutely every stat if you really want to.
Yeah I'm using ECS for pretty much everything except most of the UI. I wanted a lot of enemies so the whole collision detection and physics are custom and multithreaded. Pathfinding always runs on a separate thread. Which are pretty much the only taxing things. So I think it'll run pretty good as long as you have a few cores, luckily most computers do now. So hopefully all that effort was for something.
It's a fun game, I like the procedural levels and the progression on upgrades is pretty nice.
Small improvements I'd make:
UI could be more readable, the font is weird and you're thrown into the game without much time to look at things or figure out what's what.
Some screenshake would go a long way, though I understand if you're going more for Vampire Survivors-like with minimal juice to distract from the progression.
The directional audio feels very weird, it always sounded off so as not to be useful. I think the power of the guns would feel better if it was removed altogether.
Perhaps a pause screen when you walk over a gun so you can decide what to swap it with. You could even compare stats, fire rate, ammo type, etc. I suggest this because the only two times I died was when I tried to pick up a gun but couldn't determine when to press F and also was trying to switch to a gun I didn't want.
Reloading takes way too long. I think you're trying to encourage the player to switch weapons, but the arenas are so big and it's so easy to strafe around enemies that I'd rather wait on the reload than change my concentration to which weapon would be better.
Yeah the UI will be changed, I'd want to remove most of the text and have icons for most of it instead. Might overhaul it entirely too.
I'm not a big fan of screenshake, in most game where you can set it I usually turn it way down. However I do intend to add some, when getting hit for example. I'm afraid it might be really annoying when there's so much going on on the screen and it gets hard to see incoming things. I'll have to experiment with it.
I'll look into the directional audio stuff, I haven't really spent that much time on tweaking it yet actually
I'm hesitant to pause the game for things like that. Well I say that but right now you can already press Esc and inspect your equipped guns by hover over them. It seems most people didn't realize you can see your guns' stats by hovering over them with the mouse so I'll have to do better there. You can hold down F while running and you'll pick up whatever you run over. And if you stand over a gun at the same time you can compare it with one in your inventory. Ex. in pic. But I'd say its encouraged to keep the guns you have on you right now and picking up a new one in the middle of battle is more of a desperation move; for example if you run out of ammo or you just really need a better one. You always have the opportunity to take your time after the portal spawns and decide exactly what you want to take with you. But if it turns out that this isn't enjoyable I'll change it.
Yeah reloading and switching weapons is something I'm trying to balance well, last DD I'd say it was much worse. I'd say in the later levels you often won't have time to keep using only one weapon at all like in the earlier ones. Its all something that will need constant tweaking I think.
I am going to give you a proper feedback after I play more, and hopefully get to the end, but so far I really like all your additions, ad I appreciate linux builds.
I played more, but didn't record my embarrassing attempts, which is embarrassing on its own.
I like the game, but it's either way too hard, or I am just bad. The farthest I got was 4th room.
Shop additions are nice, but I could never afford anything.
After dying for the first time, score would always shop up as 0. Quitting and restarting fixes it only for one run.
Spawners for the little guys are very tanky, and it's hard to get to them. I was able to record one spawner spawning enemies, which protect another spawner. I am not sure if that;s intentional
Thanks a lot for playing and the feedback! The vid is great to have too, for one thing it made it apparent that I need to add a clicking sound when you try to fire an empty gun right away.
Yeah its not meant to be easy, but its clear to me that I made it way too hard for now.
Score is bugged - will fix.
I'll paste a previous response here regarding the spawners, and yeah I think I'll change how it works when they're close to each other.
Also enemies have armor and that one in particular has a high amount, all guns and effects have different amounts of armor piercing so if you used the SMG vs them it'll take a lot of bullets but others can kill them really quick. I know its not obvious at all right now so you might have missed it, but if you hover the cursor over the guns in the UI to the left you can see their stats (AP for armor piercing). And if you stand on top of a dropped gun you'll see its stats after a moment, can also compare stats if you hover at the same time.
That radar bug is weird! For now I will assume its a Linux specific problem, I will probably set up a testing environment for it. Its running on a compute shader and I have changed it since last time, I don't think you had that problem before? What GFX card do you have?
I'm a bit hesitant to add things like auto-pickup for guns, especially right now when a lot of people don't pay much attention to the UI (which is a design issue). But it might not hurt, I'll think about it.
At least 1 gun per level, agreed.
Not knowing what the ammo types are called I haven't really thought about, so good suggestion. Will probably put an icon for it in there as well.
I don't think I'll be changing the dash, at least for now. But I am open to it.
The way I see it about the map icons is that you're not supposed to know what they are til you go to them. Its a bit of rogue* design thinking where you'll find out about how the game works by making mistakes and retrying, in my opinion at least. Granted you have to make the process actually fun so its something that needs to be balanced. At the same time having tooltips for different modifiers the levels will be able to have "is on the list", so I'll have to see what I decide to do.
I don't think you had that problem before? What GFX card do you have?
No, I don't recall experiencing it before. I got GeForce RTX 2080
About the armour piercing, I get it is cool to have different weapons for different situations, but the amount of weapons you got on you is small, and limited by not just ammo types, but random drops. That might become a balancing problem.
I do think its a balancing problem, but one to be solved. I originally added armor piercing to try to fix another issue actually; shotgun like guns with a lot of projectiles would be way too good vs larger enemies and most could be killed instantly just by so many projectiles hitting them and just by making them weaker would then require you to shoot weaker enemies several times instead, which feels awful. Generally large enemies will have more armor and guns with a lot of projectiles less piercing. I think you can still kill a spawner for example in one shot with a basic super shotgun if you get right next to it though.
Anyway I've planned to add more different resistances and such, right now all enemies take the same amount of damage from explosives, ice, and fire. Guess I'll have to find out if it becomes a complete balancing nightmare, but I believe its manageable.
An alternative way to fix that could be to cap how much damage one unit can take per one shot, so getting close with a shotgun could deal more damage, but you could still design it so they wouldn't die in a single weapon use.
I've planned to add more different resistances and such
Maybe you could have some other equipment which would modify weapons, adding perks and additional damage types to them (maybe some amulets, or something). It would give players more customization options instead of limiting use cases of every gun.
I am sure with enough time, and playtesting you are going to be able to balance things out.
An alternative way to fix that could be to cap how much damage one unit can take per one shot, so getting close with a shotgun could deal more damage, but you could still design it so they wouldn't die in a single weapon use.
Yeah there are definitely other, maybe better, ways of handling it. I think mostly the problem is not having adequate options/tools in the beginning for all situations.
I've planned to add some light crafting for guns so you'd be able to for example find a crafter and you could buy a mod for a gun. Also thinking about having a slot for a usable item that could do a lot of different things, but I'm not sure about that one yet. And improve how skills work a bit so they're more impactful.
I can really see why a lot of these types of games go the early access route because balancing can really make or break how fun the experience is. DDs have proven to really useful.
The game is good. Other devs should take notes on how to make a roguelite. The super shotgun is insane, weapons being pulled near you on exit is a great touch, and I love how enemies protect the ranged attackers. I'm not good at it though, the difficulty curve is merciless.
Thanks a lot for playing! Yeah its supposed to be quite hard but its obvious to me that its too brutal at the moment, will definitely be tweaked in the future.
I got 97,157 for my best score. I really like the weapons and it's mostly an ammo management game. There is a bug where there is no music or sound at all until opening the menu to change things and then it works. Maybe make enemies drop more ammo. Pretty fun.
A lot of nice weapon variety. super shotgun and fraggo were satisfying to use and I liked how the colored ammo mechanic incentivized me to use experiment with different options
I really wish there was some option to rebind hotkeys
I felt like the boulders on the dark map blended in a little with the background. I also mistook the small spawned placeholder art enemies as pickups initially
I saw that there was an upgrade that made runes despawn slower, but it felt like their lifespan and pickup radius were already generous enough that this didn't seem too relevant. I think they should also flash a bit before despawning.
It would be cool if there was a ui indicator for things things like the portal, weapon pickups and maybe even straggling enemies when there are few of them left.
I can't think of any reason for weapons to not automatically reload at the start of levels
I'm sure the shield gun is great for better players, but it always felt really weak to me
Large placeholder spawner enemies felt really bullet-spongey. I noticed that some weapons could kill them really easily, but when they appear on the 2nd encounter, there is a good chance the player hasn't gotten one yet. In general, a lot of large enemies felt really tanky yet not that threatening.
imo the enemy movement should have a little noise/randomness to it. Watching large crowds move uniformly feels a bit weird to me.
There is a system for changing keybinds already actually I just need to code the UI for it, so definitely for the next version.
Flashing runes is a great suggestion.
There's a minimap in the bottom right that should show you enemies in red, and the portal in blue. I'd like to keep ammo and guns away from it if I can, but I'll think about it. When finishing a level and the portal spawns all the ammo and guns are dragged towards it, so you don't need to run around the map when everything's dead.
Weapons reloading after a level, I'll fix that. Actually the shield gun recharges already.
Did you notice you can use right mouse button with the shield gun to use its shield? I haven't really heard anyone use it so I probably need to make it a lot clearer.
I'll paste an earlier response I had regarding the spawners:
Also enemies have armor and that one in particular has a high amount, all guns and effects have different amounts of armor piercing so if you used the SMG vs them it'll take a lot of bullets but others can kill them really quick. I know its not obvious at all right now so you might have missed it, but if you hover the cursor over the guns in the UI to the left you can see their stats (AP for armor piercing). And if you stand on top of a dropped gun you'll see its stats after a moment, can also compare stats if you hover at the same time. For now I think I'll upload a new version with the spawners starting at later levels.
Having them move a bit more erratic is a good suggestion, specifically the green ones I think I'll keep it as is. They're coded to stick together, mostly because I hated how it played when they came at you individually.
15.30 with comments on the side. Gave up on 16 .45 without having reached the final Boss.
Your Resolution options are blurry. All of them, even up pto 2560x1440 Only Text and UI tho, the Gameview is crips. And minimap is still pretty useless. Overall I think the UI takes up too much for what it displays. And it might be on non-intuitive locations, but maybe thats just me. But I never really looked at health/dash since its so far out, Gun/Ammo counters could be smaller and maybe even merged into something, demons counter is kind of useless with them all swarming you anyway, and theres a lot of wasted black space. I'd rather have more screenview.
The Level Screen is a nice addition, its a bit thin for the Screensize I think, but its nicely filled over with background Art.
Level up should also be before next level selection I think.
Apparently the big Bosslike Symbol on the Level ment a free Level, was kind of disappointed on that.
Having the option to replace my backup weapon so I can completely run out of Ammo seems a bit dumb to me.
Took active trying to figure out the Blue Crystals explode for Damage, I thought they'd just act like the normal rocks. Maybe some Incentive or something on the Level design to showcase that might be better.
Your Spawners also seem way too tanky, I easily empty half of my ammunition into one.
And your Red levels are so much more enjoyable then your Blue ones. The wide open Spaces are really better suited for this I think, as opposed to the small Corridors on the blue Ones. Unless they are the same and I just get bad generation on blue Levels.
Shop Font is basically impossible to read. You can figure it out by what makes Sense, but thats about it.
Theres no Feedback on getting hit, and in the later parts you just loose massive Chunks of health when anything touches you. Also I keep running terribly low on Ammo, even when only picking ammo reduction/ammo max increases.
Any Plan to have a borderlands-like weapon generation? Or just the static ones as is now?
Its still pretty addicting, I kept starting run after run, thinking I could get further if I'd just do it better. Which I couldn't.
I'm a bit surprised about the blurriness at higher resolutions, you're the only one that's mentioned it. I know it happens at lower res. for the sidepanels right now because I haven't set it up properly, but it definitely should not be on 1440p (I use it on my main monitor too). If you could give me a screenshot as an example, preferably in a shop, I would really appreciate it. Although if you mean what the shopkeeper says you're not meant to understand him. Out of curiosity, what size is your monitor?
About the UI, the reason for it taking up so much space is to make the viewport more square and normalize threat assessment. In widescreen you'll overestimate danger from the the horizontal axis because you can see more enemies - even though it might be inaccurate because there are just as many in the same radius to north and south for example. A lot of this is inspired by Nuclear Throne, although there are things I really disagree with that they did like running the game at an awful 30 FPS for no real reason, thank you mods. The actual locations of the different elements I'll be honest and say its not been given nearly as much thought, but I do like keeping them separate from the game view. Maybe people really dislike having so much of it in the periphery though. I'd say out of everything the UI is the least set in stone though so might change it all entirely. I will have to do some tinkering to what feels best. The demon counter is really just there because I think its fun hehe. I think I've said it before but I really don't want people to be staring at the minimap all the time so it won't be filled with useful information. In the earlier levels its probably mostly used for finding lone enemies, and finding your way back to the portal if you run off for some reason. Its a blue dot on it now. On later levels its good for quickly finding a good angle of attack for a level. For example after playing a lot you'll start to recognize some minimap signatures for specific spawn formations such as the scepter ones, stationary shooters, which you'd probably want to take out first. Or find an area where the density is lower and start from there. Also special objectives will show up on it, on the boss for example where you really need to find your way to them. But maybe I could come up with a better solution for all that.
I'm glad you like the map, will probably make it larger. The intent is to have you travel to, at least, a new map after finishing this one.
Not exactly sure how I want to handle leveling up actually, at least before a level is probably better - I've considered it too. Or having the option to do so whenever you like. Or only once per level, we'll see!
Being allowed to screw yourself by thinking you know better than the game, like selling all your weapons, is in my opinion a really fun thing about rogue* games.
Regarding the spawners, I'll paste a response I gave earlier about them:
Also enemies have armor and that one in particular has a high amount, all guns and effects have different amounts of armor piercing so if you used the SMG vs them it'll take a lot of bullets but others can kill them really quick. I know its not obvious at all right now so you might have missed it, but if you hover the cursor over the guns in the UI to the left you can see their stats (AP for armor piercing). And if you stand on top of a dropped gun you'll see its stats after a moment, can also compare stats if you hover at the same time. For now I think I'll upload a new version with the spawners starting at later levels.
Blue and red levels are indeed generated differently, I see what I can come up with for the crystals (I guess exploding crystals isn't the most intuitive thing to begin with haha). Tweaking level generation and balance will be a constant thing so its always good to hear what people think about it.
Right now the UI sidebars flash red when you get hit, but I will give it more feedback - sounds, obviously. Enemies deal the same amount of damage at all levels at the moment. Comments about ammo is good, and you're not the first to say so, I've been testing so much that I'm never close to running out. I actually increased the drops slightly just before DD. I might lower the importance of ammo management, its something I obsess about pretty much subconsciously in all games I play.
In this version there are 18 different gun templates that can have 28 different modifications on them, number and quality of them depending on the rarity of the gun dropped. I don't think it will change much more than that system, except some very minor crafting. And a lot more of both of course. I'm curious if you noticed that guns can have different mods on them at all though? Because I know I haven't made it clear at all here...
Its very reassuring to hear that you seemed to enjoy it though and played it for some time!
Heres a Screencapture of the main Title. at native Resolution. That Screen is I don't know how big, but big.
I think I recall about not wanting People to look at the Minimap, but as it is now, I think its more or less useless. You might aswell just remove it, to get more Screenspace, and add some red indicators onto the actual Play Area as to where Demons are.
For example after playing a lot you'll start to recognize some minimap signatures for specific spawn formations such as the scepter ones, stationary shooters, which you'd probably want to take out first.
I agree on that, thats definetly noticeable on there. But I don't think it warrants a full minimap. I don't know tho, I don't usually make minimaps.
To clarify, the exploding Crystals are definetly nice, it just wasn't clear to me thats what they do, until I decided to blow one up in an empty level before continuing to check it out.
And no, I didn't notice anything about Armorpiercing, different modificators or anything. I literally only looked at the Weapon name to decide what kind it was. So if it said Ultra Machine gun or whatever, I knew it was a super heavy spray thing, so I took it and promptly ran out of Ammo. I'm not really good at any kind of shooting.
That's really odd, like the resolution isn't being set properly. If you press alt+enter does the window cover the screen? Does it looks the exact same no matter what resolution? I'll have to think about this. For comparison here's how it looks on my end.
Also I forgot the say: the "big bosslike symbol" is a rest stop - currently the only way to heal. Maybe it should look less intimidating then...
Cool promo image! It caught my eye and made me want to replay the game immediately.
I played two runs until my untimely death. There were a couple of bugs, but nothing terrible. I'll try to review things as they were presented.
I started off and got an SMG early on. The purple cave map feels a lot more constricted than before, but it wasn't too bad. I just held a corner and pressed left click until there weren't any more demons coming at me. Some got stuck between a rock object and the cave wall, so I needed to hunt them down. I saw a weapon that was almost entirely covered up by the cave walls, only a tiny bit was sticking out . Might need a bigger effect to show players that a gun is on the ground and nearby. If I wasn't attentive, I'da missed it. It was a nice shotgun, but the SMG felt better.
Before I finished the level, I felt as if the music wasn't matching the game at all. It was a very suspenseful track that played while I was singlehandedly depopulating hordes of baddies. I just ended up playing some of my own music. Playing high bpm rave music actually fit the game better and made it more fun to mow stuff down. While that seems to be the fad as of late (reminds me I guess of Ultrakill and other fast paced shooters with music that has very high BPM), it works well for this game. Perhaps that's something to look into? I'm sure there's some royalty free stuff out there.
Anyway, I leveled up. Clicked the level up button, chose my upgrade, then it brought me back to the same screen giving me the option (greyed out, though) to level up or proceed. I feel as if this is redundant - I leveled up already! After leveling up, I should be immediately sent to the next level instead of confirming whether or not I want to proceed.
The map screen is fun as well, but the symbols aren't obvious or explained. I just picked a triangle and kept going.
Onto level 2, a red level. The layout feels harder since I can't funnel all the enemies, but it wasn't too bad. At some point I just stopped moving and held down left click without any problems, then the level ended. Some purple enemies seen to have pathfinding issues if I'm behind a wall? They just sortof stand there, and will mimic my movements a bit if I'm moving around behind the wall. Shot them anyway, no issue there. I also picked up two different grenade launchers. A normal grenade launcher, works as intended, and a Little Friend (or something like that) gun. Big grenade, short range. I liked that one, felt more unique. Blew my own health away quickly, though.
Next up, a purple cave level. I was very quickly surrounded, since it felt like there were a lot more enemies than the level was intended for. Didn't have a lot of movement options, since all the tunnels around me were basically filled up from the start. Died there.
The 'Sh' enemies were fun, spawning some small boys. Felt a bit too bullet spongy though. It might be a good opportunity to introduce a high proiority target, since otherwise I just shoot mindlessly. Perhaps reduce their HP by a lot, and have them spawn enemies MUCH faster (when in range of the player?). Makes the player want to target them first, and gives some tactical incentives instead of Hold LMB to win.
All in all, a few minor bugs, no major issues, had fun shooting. Could use with some minor QoL fixes, mainly having to do with outside the shooting part (level up screen polish, more explanations or incentives on the map screen, etc).
The Score screen showed my score properly on my first playthrough, but was 0 on the 2nd despite making it just as far.
Perhaps some smarter enemy types (or maybe I just died before reaching them)? Some map improvements too, maybe? Although I wouldn't know what to suggest for that one.
Yeah I'm entirely sure about what kind of music I want, but higher tempo would probably be better at least.
Concerning enemy AI, I have been experimenting a bit with smarter AI and with some local collision avoidance but I haven't seen that much benefit to it in the long run. The reason for that is the amount of enemies rise massively the further you get but so does the power of your guns; the enemies will be packed so tightly and die quickly that the behavior of an individual is barely apparent. Giving them more different behaviors though, absolutely. And the reason why you thought some of the purple ones path-finding seems to break is because units can get into different formations that changes how they act. In that instance they're protecting the "scepter" enemies, stands still and shoots, so you have to get through them to kill the shooters. I realize though that it might seem jarring if the same enemies suddenly act different, so maybe it'd be better to have them always act the same and make new ones instead?
The reason for returning after leveling up is that if you have enough runes to afford it you can level up multiple times. Might be changed in the future though. And I know its ugly as sin.
Map symbols not being obvious is a bit by design, although I made the sprites really quickly so I'll change most of them, so you'll have to go to them first to discover what they do. Right now there are 5 different ones: blue cave, red desert, rest point, shop, and boss. A lot more stuff is planned though.
About the spawner enemies; good suggestions, I'm not entirely sure how I want to handle them but I'll probably try yours. But I think they get more interesting in the later levels when there's a lot more enemies, might just remove them from the first levels actually. Also enemies have armor and that one in particular has a high amount, all guns and effects have different amounts of armor piercing so if you used the SMG vs them it'll take a lot of bullets but others can kill them really quick. I know its not obvious at all right now so you might have missed it, but if you hover the cursor over the guns in the UI to the left you can see their stats (AP for armor piercing). And if you stand on top of a dropped gun you'll see its stats after a moment, can also compare stats if you hover at the same time.
I threw in the score at the last minute so I can't say I'm too surprised its bugged somehow, thanks! Tweaking maps and enemies is something I'm expecting do to constantly so I'll look into it all. Hearing thoughts about enemy density and such is good because I think I've been playing so damn much I can't really tell myself - it all feels so easy to me.
But one tip is to use the shield gun when you feel overwhelmed sometimes, it can have a lot of utility. Its short range attack is pretty crappy except for pushing people away, but it can pretty easily destroy walls so you can make new passages if you need to. It also has a secondary fire mode, RMB, that protects you from incoming shots.
Lots of changes since last time. Most notably a new map screen, a different level type and two special levels, new guns, enemies, skills, gunmods, sounds, a win state, and many, many changes under the hood. But there's still a lot of placeholders, gray boxes everywhere...
Might be a bit hard but its definitely possible to complete as I've done it.
Comments
Crashes on startup. I'm on arch linux.
here's the Core Dump: https://pastebin.com/b5mPiGin
That's a shame, my Linux experience is very limited and I haven't set up a testing environment yet. I know it's worked on other Linux setups at least. From looking at the dump my guess its something to do with Vulkan, unfortunately I know it won't run on Linux at all without using Vulkan. Searching around a bit it would seem its not a very uncommon thing with Unity games, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
Yeah, I've had issues with my vulkan drivers in the past, I might play around with them see if I can maybe get the game to run. At least it didn't freeze my whole PC like some other vulkan apps do. So sounds like a good app to test things out with.
I'll let you know what I did if I manage to run the game.
Played a bit for the time I had free, it was fun and I want to play more.
No real complaints except that the font is pretty hard to read.
Thanks for playing!
Great shooter.
- I agree on adding a little camshake at least when you are hit (aka you need a major feedback for keyboard users for when they get hit, pad can vibrate and sidestep that). More about on hit feedback, I know it's a horde shooter and the deal is to be good or be swarmed, but maybe even a 0.1s of invulnerability could be good.
-For me is a problem to have life on the top right side of the screen, my eyes are really not adjusted to that. left top is a classic, but for sure you had your reasons. I suggest to add an option to put the lifebar (also) under player's feet.
- Burning laser has a problem on how the ray exit from the gun, but I'm sure you know that.
- Is a problem (visually) to have runes and ammo have both square sprites, I know they are different in many reasons, but while playing ammo and runes get blended. Ihmo you need to add clarity to distinguish an ammo crate in a sea of runes in a blink of an eye.
- More on ammo, I know a rogue don't explain itself, but try to tell me in some manner what kind of ammo is what color type. It's a compound problem because you deviate a little too much from nuclear throne and its ammo clarity. Light ammo has both machinegun and granade launcher, but shotgun is heavy? Special I can understand, but light/heavy difference in blurry right now
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
I've been thinking about some minor invul. too actually, will try it out and see how it plays.
The UI isn't final in anyway at all, a lot of people have had similar feedback as you about so I'll look into it. I'm a bit hesitant to add a lot of UI elements that can get in the way of gameplay, but again I might change my mind if I actually try implementing it.
There are a lot of small problems like with the laser that I just haven't gotten around to fix yet, but I will sometime!
About the ammo and runes looking similar, good point I'll look into it.
Yeah I'll improve on distinguishing the ammo types, probably change their names too...
Thank you for playing!
Yeah I agree about the feedback, its an area I haven't focused much on yet. The boxes are ammo for 3 different types of ammo, you start with a, pretty crappy though, short range weapon that has recharging ammo. And the level up screen will definitely be changed.
The gun is better than the last time, I like the new varieties of weapons, such as fraggo and little friend as well as new punchy sounds. Also, it looks like there are now weapon rarities, I'd suggest drawing an outline around the weapon to show how rare it is, cause you can only tell it by standing on it and looking a the stats(stats display is a nice addition, too).
I never had a reason to buy any weapons at the store, cause they were pretty similar to those that get dropped during the levels, so I only bought ammo.
The game feels like it became a lot more difficult, and I usually die in one of the cave levels when the enemies box me into a corner, I haven't even made it to the boss yet.
The upgrades still feel as incremental as the last time, their effect is barely noticeable.
Thank you for playing again!
Dropped guns will have different colored particles for their rarities, but adding an outline too is a good idea. I've already heard that they can be hard to see in some cases.
Yeah the store can be improved, I think it mostly works well if you're looking for a specific gun right now.
I think I've unintentionally made it harder because I'm always testing it so much myself. Just about everyone has said its too hard and I don't think anyone has seen the last level, whoops.
The skills have barely been touched since last time so its not strange that you think so, I've mostly added a few. Hopefully with some more interesting effects like being able to dash through enemies and attacks without taking damage. But they will absolutely be changed, I'm thinking about if it would be good to take away most of their different tiers so you'd get the full effect at level 1 of a skill. And more changes.
Played 5 runs, mostly died on the middle point of them.
This is very fun! The guns are powerful, but the scenarios where they must be used are on the overwhelming side so they don't feel overpowered. Altough I died a lot, I'm pretty sure it was because I was playing badly more than the game was being too hard. The game has a very solid base to grow from.
I didn't realize there was ammo until I run out of it while using the super machine gun. The ammo system itself feels a bit odd, specially since there is no control over which kind of weapon or ammo you are going to get. The shield gun is kind of unique that it works as a knife, but I ended up replacing it for better guns most of the time. It would be nice if its secondary, the shield, was something that could be adapted into the character in some way rather than being tied to something as precious as inventory space.
I found it very hard to parse the stats of each weapon. There is a lot of text in there. I don't mean that you should simplify things diablo 3 style, but in some way reducing and condensing the weapons stats would be welcome.
Why do pistols drop when you can get a machine gun? Why does the granade launcher use blue ammo when all explosives use green ammo?
I think I remember reading seen posts of yours in the thread explaning the game runs on ECS. It is impressive how smoothly everything runs in my laptop.
I believe I barely scrapped the surface of the game by playing badly and getting killed so early, but this game really looks promising. I hope you will be able to polish and improve this game further, good luck!
Thank you for playing and all the feedback!
That its too hard has pretty much been a universal comment so I'm sure its tuned a bit too punishing at least. Its kind of hard to tell when you've been testing it yourself so damn much so DDs are invaluable for that type of feedback.
I'd like the emphasis being on the guns for the game. But at the same time have you get stronger from getting skills. For example I had planned to put in a skill to make the shield gun better before DD but it didn't make it. I've considered adding an item slot too though, so you'd start with the shield gun there and have the option of finding other items that do other things to exchange it for. But I will have to decide how it should all be handled.
The way the ammo system works right now is pretty much how I'd like it to work. It can be improved of course, but I want you to have to adapt a bit to what you're given and also balance the use between the different types. There are some ways to control it; you can always buy every type in a shop and there are skills to increase the max capacity. I'd like to add more though. Getting skills is way too random now I think for example, so it'll be changed a bit at least so you can have some control over your build and so.
I'll try to explain how I see the different types of ammo. Basically its based on how exotic (not rare) the guns are, with blue (light) being the least and green (special) the most. But at the same time its balanced around ammo costs, for example special is a bit more rare but most guns in that type don't have a really high ammo cost or really high rate of fire unless they're really "doomsday-y". As you can't go below 1 ammo cost and the max capacity is lower, each time you fire a special gun its a bit more... special. Than compared to the other types. For example the grenade launcher, name might change, you'll spam fire without much worry but a quadzooka you'd think a bit more before pulling the trigger. Also all types of guns with exploding projectiles, the starting gun is light for example hehe. If any of that makes sense.
Lower quality guns, like a pistol, have the capacity to drop with more and better mods on them compared to rarer ones. Its an attempt to make guns that are worse in their basic forms still be viable in later levels because they'd be able to have a lot of "stuff" on them that would make them good anyway. The ordinary pistol in particular though also has a lot of armor piercing so it could prove useful to take in the beginning.
I agree that the gun stats screen is pretty bad. I want to change pretty much all the text into icons and probably remove a lot of unnecessary info to condense it. Might add a way to inspect them closer and see absolutely every stat if you really want to.
Yeah I'm using ECS for pretty much everything except most of the UI. I wanted a lot of enemies so the whole collision detection and physics are custom and multithreaded. Pathfinding always runs on a separate thread. Which are pretty much the only taxing things. So I think it'll run pretty good as long as you have a few cores, luckily most computers do now. So hopefully all that effort was for something.
It's a fun game, I like the procedural levels and the progression on upgrades is pretty nice.
Small improvements I'd make:
You got a good base here though, keep it going.
Thank you for playing and the feedback!
Yeah the UI will be changed, I'd want to remove most of the text and have icons for most of it instead. Might overhaul it entirely too.
I'm not a big fan of screenshake, in most game where you can set it I usually turn it way down. However I do intend to add some, when getting hit for example. I'm afraid it might be really annoying when there's so much going on on the screen and it gets hard to see incoming things. I'll have to experiment with it.
I'll look into the directional audio stuff, I haven't really spent that much time on tweaking it yet actually
I'm hesitant to pause the game for things like that. Well I say that but right now you can already press Esc and inspect your equipped guns by hover over them. It seems most people didn't realize you can see your guns' stats by hovering over them with the mouse so I'll have to do better there. You can hold down F while running and you'll pick up whatever you run over. And if you stand over a gun at the same time you can compare it with one in your inventory. Ex. in pic.
But I'd say its encouraged to keep the guns you have on you right now and picking up a new one in the middle of battle is more of a desperation move; for example if you run out of ammo or you just really need a better one. You always have the opportunity to take your time after the portal spawns and decide exactly what you want to take with you. But if it turns out that this isn't enjoyable I'll change it.
Yeah reloading and switching weapons is something I'm trying to balance well, last DD I'd say it was much worse. I'd say in the later levels you often won't have time to keep using only one weapon at all like in the earlier ones. Its all something that will need constant tweaking I think.
I only had time to play one run, which did not go too well, but I recorded it (no commentary, just gameplay)
https://litter.catbox.moe/034se4.mp4
(link expires in 3 days)
I am going to give you a proper feedback after I play more, and hopefully get to the end, but so far I really like all your additions, ad I appreciate linux builds.
I played more, but didn't record my embarrassing attempts, which is embarrassing on its own.
I like the game, but it's either way too hard, or I am just bad. The farthest I got was 4th room.
Shop additions are nice, but I could never afford anything.
After dying for the first time, score would always shop up as 0. Quitting and restarting fixes it only for one run.
Spawners for the little guys are very tanky, and it's hard to get to them. I was able to record one spawner spawning enemies, which protect another spawner. I am not sure if that;s intentional
https://files.catbox.moe/qgkysi.mp4
Minimap is more like a radar, because it only shows enemy dots with no environment. Mine also had weird gray dots, which seemed like a glitch.
It would be nice to have weapons be auto picked up if you have a free slot, but not switching to them right away.
I would like to have at least one weapon dropped in every room.
I did not know which ammo names are for what colours until I got to a shop. You could maybe colour ammo names in level up perk descriptions.
I think dashing should allow you to phase through enemies from the start of the game.
icon descriptions for those symbols on the map? Runes fit your theme, but I don't know what they mean. Small tooltip would fix that.
I like how much content you added since the last DD. I am sure you're going to be able to expand upon the game, and balance things later.
Thanks a lot for playing and the feedback! The vid is great to have too, for one thing it made it apparent that I need to add a clicking sound when you try to fire an empty gun right away.
Yeah its not meant to be easy, but its clear to me that I made it way too hard for now.
Score is bugged - will fix.
I'll paste a previous response here regarding the spawners, and yeah I think I'll change how it works when they're close to each other.
Also enemies have armor and that one in particular has a high amount, all guns and effects have different amounts of armor piercing so if you used the SMG vs them it'll take a lot of bullets but others can kill them really quick. I know its not obvious at all right now so you might have missed it, but if you hover the cursor over the guns in the UI to the left you can see their stats (AP for armor piercing). And if you stand on top of a dropped gun you'll see its stats after a moment, can also compare stats if you hover at the same time.
That radar bug is weird! For now I will assume its a Linux specific problem, I will probably set up a testing environment for it. Its running on a compute shader and I have changed it since last time, I don't think you had that problem before? What GFX card do you have?I'm a bit hesitant to add things like auto-pickup for guns, especially right now when a lot of people don't pay much attention to the UI (which is a design issue). But it might not hurt, I'll think about it.
At least 1 gun per level, agreed.
Not knowing what the ammo types are called I haven't really thought about, so good suggestion. Will probably put an icon for it in there as well.
I don't think I'll be changing the dash, at least for now. But I am open to it.
The way I see it about the map icons is that you're not supposed to know what they are til you go to them. Its a bit of rogue* design thinking where you'll find out about how the game works by making mistakes and retrying, in my opinion at least. Granted you have to make the process actually fun so its something that needs to be balanced. At the same time having tooltips for different modifiers the levels will be able to have "is on the list", so I'll have to see what I decide to do.
No, I don't recall experiencing it before. I got GeForce RTX 2080
About the armour piercing, I get it is cool to have different weapons for different situations, but the amount of weapons you got on you is small, and limited by not just ammo types, but random drops. That might become a balancing problem.
I do think its a balancing problem, but one to be solved. I originally added armor piercing to try to fix another issue actually; shotgun like guns with a lot of projectiles would be way too good vs larger enemies and most could be killed instantly just by so many projectiles hitting them and just by making them weaker would then require you to shoot weaker enemies several times instead, which feels awful. Generally large enemies will have more armor and guns with a lot of projectiles less piercing. I think you can still kill a spawner for example in one shot with a basic super shotgun if you get right next to it though.
Anyway I've planned to add more different resistances and such, right now all enemies take the same amount of damage from explosives, ice, and fire. Guess I'll have to find out if it becomes a complete balancing nightmare, but I believe its manageable.
An alternative way to fix that could be to cap how much damage one unit can take per one shot, so getting close with a shotgun could deal more damage, but you could still design it so they wouldn't die in a single weapon use.
Maybe you could have some other equipment which would modify weapons, adding perks and additional damage types to them (maybe some amulets, or something). It would give players more customization options instead of limiting use cases of every gun.
I am sure with enough time, and playtesting you are going to be able to balance things out.
Yeah there are definitely other, maybe better, ways of handling it. I think mostly the problem is not having adequate options/tools in the beginning for all situations.
I've planned to add some light crafting for guns so you'd be able to for example find a crafter and you could buy a mod for a gun. Also thinking about having a slot for a usable item that could do a lot of different things, but I'm not sure about that one yet. And improve how skills work a bit so they're more impactful.
I can really see why a lot of these types of games go the early access route because balancing can really make or break how fun the experience is. DDs have proven to really useful.
Yeah DDs are great, and those are all good ideas
I don't have anything new to add besides me getting new high score:
which means I got better.
I can see your game as something I can get back to for short periods of time when I take breaks.
Well I really liked hearing that at least!
The game is good. Other devs should take notes on how to make a roguelite. The super shotgun is insane, weapons being pulled near you on exit is a great touch, and I love how enemies protect the ranged attackers. I'm not good at it though, the difficulty curve is merciless.
Thanks a lot for playing! Yeah its supposed to be quite hard but its obvious to me that its too brutal at the moment, will definitely be tweaked in the future.
I got 97,157 for my best score. I really like the weapons and it's mostly an ammo management game. There is a bug where there is no music or sound at all until opening the menu to change things and then it works. Maybe make enemies drop more ammo. Pretty fun.
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
The music volume slider was a last minute addition, of course I fucked something up... Thank you for finding it! And I hear you about the ammo.
Fun game
Thanks for playing and the feedback!
There is a system for changing keybinds already actually I just need to code the UI for it, so definitely for the next version.
Flashing runes is a great suggestion.
There's a minimap in the bottom right that should show you enemies in red, and the portal in blue. I'd like to keep ammo and guns away from it if I can, but I'll think about it. When finishing a level and the portal spawns all the ammo and guns are dragged towards it, so you don't need to run around the map when everything's dead.
Weapons reloading after a level, I'll fix that. Actually the shield gun recharges already.
Did you notice you can use right mouse button with the shield gun to use its shield? I haven't really heard anyone use it so I probably need to make it a lot clearer.
I'll paste an earlier response I had regarding the spawners:
Also enemies have armor and that one in particular has a high amount, all guns and effects have different amounts of armor piercing so if you used the SMG vs them it'll take a lot of bullets but others can kill them really quick. I know its not obvious at all right now so you might have missed it, but if you hover the cursor over the guns in the UI to the left you can see their stats (AP for armor piercing). And if you stand on top of a dropped gun you'll see its stats after a moment, can also compare stats if you hover at the same time. For now I think I'll upload a new version with the spawners starting at later levels.
Having them move a bit more erratic is a good suggestion, specifically the green ones I think I'll keep it as is. They're coded to stick together, mostly because I hated how it played when they came at you individually.15.30 with comments on the side. Gave up on 16 .45 without having reached the final Boss.
Your Resolution options are blurry. All of them, even up pto 2560x1440 Only Text and UI tho, the Gameview is crips. And minimap is still pretty useless. Overall I think the UI takes up too much for what it displays. And it might be on non-intuitive locations, but maybe thats just me. But I never really looked at health/dash since its so far out, Gun/Ammo counters could be smaller and maybe even merged into something, demons counter is kind of useless with them all swarming you anyway, and theres a lot of wasted black space. I'd rather have more screenview.
The Level Screen is a nice addition, its a bit thin for the Screensize I think, but its nicely filled over with background Art.
Level up should also be before next level selection I think.
Apparently the big Bosslike Symbol on the Level ment a free Level, was kind of disappointed on that.
Having the option to replace my backup weapon so I can completely run out of Ammo seems a bit dumb to me.
Took active trying to figure out the Blue Crystals explode for Damage, I thought they'd just act like the normal rocks. Maybe some Incentive or something on the Level design to showcase that might be better.
Your Spawners also seem way too tanky, I easily empty half of my ammunition into one.
And your Red levels are so much more enjoyable then your Blue ones. The wide open Spaces are really better suited for this I think, as opposed to the small Corridors on the blue Ones. Unless they are the same and I just get bad generation on blue Levels.
Shop Font is basically impossible to read. You can figure it out by what makes Sense, but thats about it.
Theres no Feedback on getting hit, and in the later parts you just loose massive Chunks of health when anything touches you. Also I keep running terribly low on Ammo, even when only picking ammo reduction/ammo max increases.
Any Plan to have a borderlands-like weapon generation? Or just the static ones as is now?
Its still pretty addicting, I kept starting run after run, thinking I could get further if I'd just do it better. Which I couldn't.
Thanks a lot for playing and all the feedback!
I'm a bit surprised about the blurriness at higher resolutions, you're the only one that's mentioned it. I know it happens at lower res. for the sidepanels right now because I haven't set it up properly, but it definitely should not be on 1440p (I use it on my main monitor too). If you could give me a screenshot as an example, preferably in a shop, I would really appreciate it. Although if you mean what the shopkeeper says you're not meant to understand him. Out of curiosity, what size is your monitor?
About the UI, the reason for it taking up so much space is to make the viewport more square and normalize threat assessment. In widescreen you'll overestimate danger from the the horizontal axis because you can see more enemies - even though it might be inaccurate because there are just as many in the same radius to north and south for example. A lot of this is inspired by Nuclear Throne, although there are things I really disagree with that they did like running the game at an awful 30 FPS for no real reason, thank you mods.
The actual locations of the different elements I'll be honest and say its not been given nearly as much thought, but I do like keeping them separate from the game view. Maybe people really dislike having so much of it in the periphery though. I'd say out of everything the UI is the least set in stone though so might change it all entirely. I will have to do some tinkering to what feels best.
The demon counter is really just there because I think its fun hehe. I think I've said it before but I really don't want people to be staring at the minimap all the time so it won't be filled with useful information. In the earlier levels its probably mostly used for finding lone enemies, and finding your way back to the portal if you run off for some reason. Its a blue dot on it now. On later levels its good for quickly finding a good angle of attack for a level. For example after playing a lot you'll start to recognize some minimap signatures for specific spawn formations such as the scepter ones, stationary shooters, which you'd probably want to take out first. Or find an area where the density is lower and start from there. Also special objectives will show up on it, on the boss for example where you really need to find your way to them.
But maybe I could come up with a better solution for all that.
I'm glad you like the map, will probably make it larger. The intent is to have you travel to, at least, a new map after finishing this one.
Not exactly sure how I want to handle leveling up actually, at least before a level is probably better - I've considered it too. Or having the option to do so whenever you like. Or only once per level, we'll see!
Being allowed to screw yourself by thinking you know better than the game, like selling all your weapons, is in my opinion a really fun thing about rogue* games.
Regarding the spawners, I'll paste a response I gave earlier about them:
Also enemies have armor and that one in particular has a high amount, all guns and effects have different amounts of armor piercing so if you used the SMG vs them it'll take a lot of bullets but others can kill them really quick. I know its not obvious at all right now so you might have missed it, but if you hover the cursor over the guns in the UI to the left you can see their stats (AP for armor piercing). And if you stand on top of a dropped gun you'll see its stats after a moment, can also compare stats if you hover at the same time. For now I think I'll upload a new version with the spawners starting at later levels.
Blue and red levels are indeed generated differently, I see what I can come up with for the crystals (I guess exploding crystals isn't the most intuitive thing to begin with haha). Tweaking level generation and balance will be a constant thing so its always good to hear what people think about it.
Right now the UI sidebars flash red when you get hit, but I will give it more feedback - sounds, obviously. Enemies deal the same amount of damage at all levels at the moment. Comments about ammo is good, and you're not the first to say so, I've been testing so much that I'm never close to running out. I actually increased the drops slightly just before DD. I might lower the importance of ammo management, its something I obsess about pretty much subconsciously in all games I play.
In this version there are 18 different gun templates that can have 28 different modifications on them, number and quality of them depending on the rarity of the gun dropped. I don't think it will change much more than that system, except some very minor crafting. And a lot more of both of course. I'm curious if you noticed that guns can have different mods on them at all though? Because I know I haven't made it clear at all here...
Its very reassuring to hear that you seemed to enjoy it though and played it for some time!
Heres a Screencapture of the main Title. at native Resolution. That Screen is I don't know how big, but big.
I think I recall about not wanting People to look at the Minimap, but as it is now, I think its more or less useless. You might aswell just remove it, to get more Screenspace, and add some red indicators onto the actual Play Area as to where Demons are.
For example after playing a lot you'll start to recognize some minimap signatures for specific spawn formations such as the scepter ones, stationary shooters, which you'd probably want to take out first.
I agree on that, thats definetly noticeable on there. But I don't think it warrants a full minimap. I don't know tho, I don't usually make minimaps.
To clarify, the exploding Crystals are definetly nice, it just wasn't clear to me thats what they do, until I decided to blow one up in an empty level before continuing to check it out.
And no, I didn't notice anything about Armorpiercing, different modificators or anything. I literally only looked at the Weapon name to decide what kind it was. So if it said Ultra Machine gun or whatever, I knew it was a super heavy spray thing, so I took it and promptly ran out of Ammo. I'm not really good at any kind of shooting.
That's really odd, like the resolution isn't being set properly. If you press alt+enter does the window cover the screen? Does it looks the exact same no matter what resolution? I'll have to think about this. For comparison here's how it looks on my end.
Also I forgot the say: the "big bosslike symbol" is a rest stop - currently the only way to heal. Maybe it should look less intimidating then...
Alt+Enter just exits out of fullscreen. Doesn't do much to the Font, stays blurry.
Cool promo image! It caught my eye and made me want to replay the game immediately.
I played two runs until my untimely death. There were a couple of bugs, but nothing terrible. I'll try to review things as they were presented.
I started off and got an SMG early on. The purple cave map feels a lot more constricted than before, but it wasn't too bad. I just held a corner and pressed left click until there weren't any more demons coming at me. Some got stuck between a rock object and the cave wall, so I needed to hunt them down. I saw a weapon that was almost entirely covered up by the cave walls, only a tiny bit was sticking out . Might need a bigger effect to show players that a gun is on the ground and nearby. If I wasn't attentive, I'da missed it. It was a nice shotgun, but the SMG felt better.
Before I finished the level, I felt as if the music wasn't matching the game at all. It was a very suspenseful track that played while I was singlehandedly depopulating hordes of baddies. I just ended up playing some of my own music. Playing high bpm rave music actually fit the game better and made it more fun to mow stuff down. While that seems to be the fad as of late (reminds me I guess of Ultrakill and other fast paced shooters with music that has very high BPM), it works well for this game. Perhaps that's something to look into? I'm sure there's some royalty free stuff out there.
Anyway, I leveled up. Clicked the level up button, chose my upgrade, then it brought me back to the same screen giving me the option (greyed out, though) to level up or proceed. I feel as if this is redundant - I leveled up already! After leveling up, I should be immediately sent to the next level instead of confirming whether or not I want to proceed.
The map screen is fun as well, but the symbols aren't obvious or explained. I just picked a triangle and kept going.
Onto level 2, a red level. The layout feels harder since I can't funnel all the enemies, but it wasn't too bad. At some point I just stopped moving and held down left click without any problems, then the level ended. Some purple enemies seen to have pathfinding issues if I'm behind a wall? They just sortof stand there, and will mimic my movements a bit if I'm moving around behind the wall. Shot them anyway, no issue there. I also picked up two different grenade launchers. A normal grenade launcher, works as intended, and a Little Friend (or something like that) gun. Big grenade, short range. I liked that one, felt more unique. Blew my own health away quickly, though.
Next up, a purple cave level. I was very quickly surrounded, since it felt like there were a lot more enemies than the level was intended for. Didn't have a lot of movement options, since all the tunnels around me were basically filled up from the start. Died there.
The 'Sh' enemies were fun, spawning some small boys. Felt a bit too bullet spongy though. It might be a good opportunity to introduce a high proiority target, since otherwise I just shoot mindlessly. Perhaps reduce their HP by a lot, and have them spawn enemies MUCH faster (when in range of the player?). Makes the player want to target them first, and gives some tactical incentives instead of Hold LMB to win.
All in all, a few minor bugs, no major issues, had fun shooting. Could use with some minor QoL fixes, mainly having to do with outside the shooting part (level up screen polish, more explanations or incentives on the map screen, etc).
The Score screen showed my score properly on my first playthrough, but was 0 on the 2nd despite making it just as far.
Perhaps some smarter enemy types (or maybe I just died before reaching them)? Some map improvements too, maybe? Although I wouldn't know what to suggest for that one.
Keep it up!
Thanks for playing all the feedback!
Yeah I'm entirely sure about what kind of music I want, but higher tempo would probably be better at least.
Concerning enemy AI, I have been experimenting a bit with smarter AI and with some local collision avoidance but I haven't seen that much benefit to it in the long run. The reason for that is the amount of enemies rise massively the further you get but so does the power of your guns; the enemies will be packed so tightly and die quickly that the behavior of an individual is barely apparent. Giving them more different behaviors though, absolutely. And the reason why you thought some of the purple ones path-finding seems to break is because units can get into different formations that changes how they act. In that instance they're protecting the "scepter" enemies, stands still and shoots, so you have to get through them to kill the shooters. I realize though that it might seem jarring if the same enemies suddenly act different, so maybe it'd be better to have them always act the same and make new ones instead?
The reason for returning after leveling up is that if you have enough runes to afford it you can level up multiple times. Might be changed in the future though. And I know its ugly as sin.
Map symbols not being obvious is a bit by design, although I made the sprites really quickly so I'll change most of them, so you'll have to go to them first to discover what they do. Right now there are 5 different ones: blue cave, red desert, rest point, shop, and boss. A lot more stuff is planned though.
About the spawner enemies; good suggestions, I'm not entirely sure how I want to handle them but I'll probably try yours. But I think they get more interesting in the later levels when there's a lot more enemies, might just remove them from the first levels actually. Also enemies have armor and that one in particular has a high amount, all guns and effects have different amounts of armor piercing so if you used the SMG vs them it'll take a lot of bullets but others can kill them really quick. I know its not obvious at all right now so you might have missed it, but if you hover the cursor over the guns in the UI to the left you can see their stats (AP for armor piercing). And if you stand on top of a dropped gun you'll see its stats after a moment, can also compare stats if you hover at the same time.
I threw in the score at the last minute so I can't say I'm too surprised its bugged somehow, thanks! Tweaking maps and enemies is something I'm expecting do to constantly so I'll look into it all. Hearing thoughts about enemy density and such is good because I think I've been playing so damn much I can't really tell myself - it all feels so easy to me.
But one tip is to use the shield gun when you feel overwhelmed sometimes, it can have a lot of utility. Its short range attack is pretty crappy except for pushing people away, but it can pretty easily destroy walls so you can make new passages if you need to. It also has a secondary fire mode, RMB, that protects you from incoming shots.
Lots of changes since last time. Most notably a new map screen, a different level type and two special levels, new guns, enemies, skills, gunmods, sounds, a win state, and many, many changes under the hood. But there's still a lot of placeholders, gray boxes everywhere...
Might be a bit hard but its definitely possible to complete as I've done it.