Nice, I think the core of your game is shaping up well. The movement mechanics are fun. "Dropping" and whipping around to kill the guys chasing you feels really good. I like to charge into them while blasting. Few things I noticed that might improve it
I think the camera movement could be improved. In my experience, a lerping camera feels best. Make the camera move towards its target at a rate of X% of the distance each frame (adjusted by the framerate of course). You can tweak the % to suit the speed and all that, but it keeps things moving in a smooth way.
The acceleration feels a bit too high, making the movement slightly too exact. If the acceleration was a bit weaker, I think it would help sell the fact that this is a giant heavy jet flying around, and the engines firing take a moment to give you forward movement. This would add a lot of play to the movement I think.
Anyway I think you're on track. Keep going, this is a solid start. Also, don't underestimate how much getting a consistent look among things helps with a games feel. The look of the plane is great, might want to get some sort of vector drawing program and turn all the sprites into similar looking "vector art".
-Movement isn't nearly precise enough and the camera is too close to avoid the kinds of things the game throws at you. Additionally to this, I wonder if having back boosters could help add some complexity and allow the player some more freedom of movement
-the character floatings upwards on a balloon forever after you die forcing you to quit to the menu Yeah, this was pretty annoying. You should be able to get right back into the main game loop with even just a single keyboard button so your hands don't have to leave the keyboard. A few seconds delay would keep people from accidentally starting a new session on accident as well.
Overall, pretty fun, though it was frustrating to keep on restarts have I had gotten so far since the difficulty didn't seem to reset
> Movement isn't nearly precise Technically not my words as I was quoting someone else. The movement was fluid, but it was hard to dodge things for me. Could be a skill issue, or my other suggestion with the dodge boosters could help me. >difficulty didn't seem to reset I don't know 100%, but I survived a LOT long the first time I played that the subsequent ones. I could've gotten lucky the first time, but honestly I thought I was running into the enemies without damage the first time too so I don't know exactly why it was harder the 2nd+ play-throughs. Sorry if that is more frustrating than helpful. Non-concrete answers suck
Nah, it's more clear now. Your answers are concrete. Also I don't expect people to just give me solutions, it's my job really to figure out the meaning behind feedback. This reminds me of this clip about interpreting feedback: https://streamable.com/rxqlyi
My confusion was with word "precise", because I myself have problem with precision of the beam weapon. So I wanted to make sure if this is the same thing or something else.
This exchange is really good lesson that it really is on the gamedev to figure out meaning behind feedback.
I just checked and I did fix the bug with difficulty.
But you say you feel like the bug is still there.
I know you played the fixed version (from download analytics).
So the question for me to figure out is: why does it feel like the bug is still there? what's the REAL problem with difficulty?
OKAY, I get it now. I actually didn't fix the difficulty bug, not fully. The difficulty level consists of 2 things.
list of possible enemies that can spawn
and simple spawn multiplier
I fixed 1. the resetting of the list (so the shooter enemies don't appear for example at 0:00 second), but 2. the multiplier still persisted between runs which resulted in there being too many enemies.
Comments
Nice, I think the core of your game is shaping up well. The movement mechanics are fun. "Dropping" and whipping around to kill the guys chasing you feels really good. I like to charge into them while blasting. Few things I noticed that might improve it
Anyway I think you're on track. Keep going, this is a solid start. Also, don't underestimate how much getting a consistent look among things helps with a games feel. The look of the plane is great, might want to get some sort of vector drawing program and turn all the sprites into similar looking "vector art".
Thanks for feedback.
Vector art look idea sounds interesting. I'll see how it looks.
I'll reflect what Qwott said mostly:
-Movement isn't nearly precise enough and the camera is too close to avoid the kinds of things the game throws at you.
Additionally to this, I wonder if having back boosters could help add some complexity and allow the player some more freedom of movement
-the character floatings upwards on a balloon forever after you die forcing you to quit to the menu
Yeah, this was pretty annoying. You should be able to get right back into the main game loop with even just a single keyboard button so your hands don't have to leave the keyboard. A few seconds delay would keep people from accidentally starting a new session on accident as well.
Overall, pretty fun, though it was frustrating to keep on restarts have I had gotten so far since the difficulty didn't seem to reset
Thanks for the feedback.
By that you mean aiming and rotation?
Did this happen in v02? I thought I fixed it.
> Movement isn't nearly precise
Technically not my words as I was quoting someone else. The movement was fluid, but it was hard to dodge things for me. Could be a skill issue, or my other suggestion with the dodge boosters could help me.
>difficulty didn't seem to reset
I don't know 100%, but I survived a LOT long the first time I played that the subsequent ones. I could've gotten lucky the first time, but honestly I thought I was running into the enemies without damage the first time too so I don't know exactly why it was harder the 2nd+ play-throughs. Sorry if that is more frustrating than helpful. Non-concrete answers suck
Nah, it's more clear now. Your answers are concrete.
Also I don't expect people to just give me solutions, it's my job really to figure out the meaning behind feedback.
This reminds me of this clip about interpreting feedback: https://streamable.com/rxqlyi
My confusion was with word "precise", because I myself have problem with precision of the beam weapon. So I wanted to make sure if this is the same thing or something else.
This exchange is really good lesson that it really is on the gamedev to figure out meaning behind feedback.
So the question for me to figure out is: why does it feel like the bug is still there? what's the REAL problem with difficulty?
Thanks for clarifying.
OKAY, I get it now. I actually didn't fix the difficulty bug, not fully.
The difficulty level consists of 2 things.
I fixed 1. the resetting of the list (so the shooter enemies don't appear for example at 0:00 second), but 2. the multiplier still persisted between runs which resulted in there being too many enemies.
This seems like a pretty solid start to what could be a fun Luftrausers clone.
Thanks for playing it on stream.
-Needs an options menu.
-Menu needs keyboard support.
-Background is too plain; you need some parallax so you actually have some indication that you're moving (apart from just a vertical gradient).
-Movement isn't nearly precise enough and the camera is too close to avoid the kinds of things the game throws at you.
-What the hell is with the character floating upwards on a balloon forever after you die and forcing you to quit to the menu?
-Restarting doesn't reset the difficulty.
Thanks for the feedback.
Especially this one would be hard for me to notice on my own.