I was a little surprised at how cool this game turned out to be. I could tell from the screenshots it would look nice though. My only complaint is the character portraits in the top corners of the screen look a little bad compared to the rest of the visuals. This was very fun to play. I might pick it up again in the future.
I'm a Doom WAD freak so this was right up my alley. The vehicular gameplay takes some getting used to so but I like it. The only thing I'm a little disappointed by is that the water itself doesn't bob up and down, and I'm not sure if GZDoom has a simple way of letting you do that without extending the engine.
I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, this looks like it would benefit a lot from a simple story to string a bunch of the levels together. The artstyle is also solid, I don't have any complaints about that it already looks great. Thanks for uploading the IWAD as well, works great on Manjaro.
Oh, there will definitely be a story, the original version had text cutscenes that I removed for this version as I need to rework it and add some new characters.
Only played a few levels, not my cup of tea so the difficulty made me bored. Needs a basic text tutorial at least. I got overwhelmed for awhile, didn't realize there was a dash for a long time, still don't know what on earth the red canister does beside create a bar in the bottom left. Sabotage bots with the green sappers felt weird, was hard to notice when they were on me sometimes. Also maybe add a way to tell if a torpedo came from you vs the enemy? At least I don't think there was a difference between them. I enjoy the aesthetics, music and SFX was fine. I like having two character portraits, one for captain and one for weapons specialist. Portrait art is decent, though not as high quality compared to the rest of the textures. May want the UI to be bigger on default(I have 1080p display), I found it hard to tell at a glance what I had selected on the hotbar.
Stopped playing on third level since it got too difficult too fast, and I think the enemies kept spawning at a constant rate, which makes it harder for someone who struggles than one who is good and kills at a faster rate.
>Needs a basic text tutorial at least F1 brings up a help screen, although I haven't added info on items yet.
>Also maybe add a way to tell if a torpedo came from you vs the enemy? Enemy torpedoes have different color from yours, but it can be hard to see, I'll try to add some indicator over the homing projectiles to make them stand out, maybe a sound effect as well.
>Stopped playing on third level since it got too difficult too fast There are only two real levels so far, the third one is just a stopgap that spawns infinite waves of enemies.
It wasn't obvious at first what the purple robots were doing. The jamming needs some kind of effect like making the laser flicker and putting a big, red "JAMMED" on the charge bar.
It's nearly impossible to get the purple robots off you even with the boost.
What are the two triangles after the pickup text supposed to be? They just look like a misplaced colon.
The box with the secondary weapon/battery/repair icons feels a bit cramped.
The secondary weapons still aren't really worth using. Maybe you should make the ammo more rare and make them a lot stronger to compensate. The mortar could have a large blast radius for killing groups of weaker enemies, while the torpedoes are for killing strong enemies at long range. I also don't like how the homing on the torpedoes work. I think they should require a manual lock-on isntead of just going for the closest enemy.
The batteries should be blue to differentiate them from the repair kits better.
Enemies should require line of sight to shoot, especially when they lead their shots.
Either the player's hitbox or the hitboxes of enemy projectiles are too big. This should not be a hit:
>purple robots Honestly the more I look at them, the less I like them. The whole idea of an enemy that makes you helpless in a single-player game seems flawed. I need to think up a new attack for them, or at least make it so that they can't prevent you from shooting altogether, just limit your RoF and prevent you from using high-speed and charged shots. That being said, you can shake them off with a mortar.
>What are the two triangles after the pickup text supposed to be? Forgot to fix them.
>The box with the secondary weapon/battery/repair icons feels a bit cramped. I have an alternative HUD for smaller resolutions, maybe I should make it the default one.
>The secondary weapons still aren't really worth using. Before I get to balance them, I will need to make some proper non-placeholder levels first and see how they perform. For one I am going to make levels more cramped and prevent the long-range shootouts for the most part. I will try experimenting with manual lock-on for torpedoes, but the problem with mortar being AoE weapon right now is that the enemies are usually low in numbers and spread apart, so it's hard to get them to bunch up. There is an AoE on mortars already, by the way, but it is pretty small.
>The batteries should be blue to differentiate them from the repair kits better. I am trying to avoid using color blue for the objects because, you know, the ocean, but yeah, I just noticed that it is way too red. I'll play around with the colors, maybe make it more purple or do bluish-gray gradient.
>Enemies should require line of sight to shoot, especially when they lead their shots. I keep forgetting to add LoS checks for attacks.
>Either the player's hitbox or the hitboxes of enemy projectiles are too big. Well, as I said multiple times already, hitboxes are an engine limitation - despite all the bloat, it's still a Doom source port deep underneath, and so not only hitboxes are strictly square (not even rectangular), but you can't even rotate them. I don't think I can do anything about it short of writing my own collision system from scratch somehow.
Comments
I was a little surprised at how cool this game turned out to be. I could tell from the screenshots it would look nice though. My only complaint is the character portraits in the top corners of the screen look a little bad compared to the rest of the visuals. This was very fun to play. I might pick it up again in the future.
I'm a Doom WAD freak so this was right up my alley. The vehicular gameplay takes some getting used to so but I like it. The only thing I'm a little disappointed by is that the water itself doesn't bob up and down, and I'm not sure if GZDoom has a simple way of letting you do that without extending the engine.
I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes, this looks like it would benefit a lot from a simple story to string a bunch of the levels together. The artstyle is also solid, I don't have any complaints about that it already looks great. Thanks for uploading the IWAD as well, works great on Manjaro.
Oh, there will definitely be a story, the original version had text cutscenes that I removed for this version as I need to rework it and add some new characters.
Only played a few levels, not my cup of tea so the difficulty made me bored. Needs a basic text tutorial at least. I got overwhelmed for awhile, didn't realize there was a dash for a long time, still don't know what on earth the red canister does beside create a bar in the bottom left. Sabotage bots with the green sappers felt weird, was hard to notice when they were on me sometimes. Also maybe add a way to tell if a torpedo came from you vs the enemy? At least I don't think there was a difference between them. I enjoy the aesthetics, music and SFX was fine. I like having two character portraits, one for captain and one for weapons specialist. Portrait art is decent, though not as high quality compared to the rest of the textures. May want the UI to be bigger on default(I have 1080p display), I found it hard to tell at a glance what I had selected on the hotbar.
Stopped playing on third level since it got too difficult too fast, and I think the enemies kept spawning at a constant rate, which makes it harder for someone who struggles than one who is good and kills at a faster rate.
>Needs a basic text tutorial at least
F1 brings up a help screen, although I haven't added info on items yet.
>Also maybe add a way to tell if a torpedo came from you vs the enemy?
Enemy torpedoes have different color from yours, but it can be hard to see, I'll try to add some indicator over the homing projectiles to make them stand out, maybe a sound effect as well.
>Stopped playing on third level since it got too difficult too fast
There are only two real levels so far, the third one is just a stopgap that spawns infinite waves of enemies.
>purple robots
Honestly the more I look at them, the less I like them. The whole idea of an enemy that makes you helpless in a single-player game seems flawed. I need to think up a new attack for them, or at least make it so that they can't prevent you from shooting altogether, just limit your RoF and prevent you from using high-speed and charged shots. That being said, you can shake them off with a mortar.
>What are the two triangles after the pickup text supposed to be?
Forgot to fix them.
>The box with the secondary weapon/battery/repair icons feels a bit cramped.
I have an alternative HUD for smaller resolutions, maybe I should make it the default one.
>The secondary weapons still aren't really worth using.
Before I get to balance them, I will need to make some proper non-placeholder levels first and see how they perform. For one I am going to make levels more cramped and prevent the long-range shootouts for the most part. I will try experimenting with manual lock-on for torpedoes, but the problem with mortar being AoE weapon right now is that the enemies are usually low in numbers and spread apart, so it's hard to get them to bunch up. There is an AoE on mortars already, by the way, but it is pretty small.
>The batteries should be blue to differentiate them from the repair kits better.
I am trying to avoid using color blue for the objects because, you know, the ocean, but yeah, I just noticed that it is way too red. I'll play around with the colors, maybe make it more purple or do bluish-gray gradient.
>Enemies should require line of sight to shoot, especially when they lead their shots.
I keep forgetting to add LoS checks for attacks.
>Either the player's hitbox or the hitboxes of enemy projectiles are too big.
Well, as I said multiple times already, hitboxes are an engine limitation - despite all the bloat, it's still a Doom source port deep underneath, and so not only hitboxes are strictly square (not even rectangular), but you can't even rotate them. I don't think I can do anything about it short of writing my own collision system from scratch somehow.