very impressed with your speed of progress, this is so far beyond the first version i played before (DD54 maybe), which didn't even have sounds or projectiles... this has come so far in such a short amount of time, great job. echoing a lot of what others have said here, but for me i think the most helpful thing to add would be indicators.
indicators for offscreen missiles
clearer indicators for which weapon is armed, and the cooldown remaining
improvements to the health/damage indicators, so for example a limb on the monitor blinks yellow or red when it's hit
the mech weight feels nice while also not too slow. some nice clunky mech footstep sound effects would go a long way in helping with that classic mechwarrior feel.
also i died alot. enemy onslaught is pretty unforgiving
anyways good job, has the bones of a great mech game, and look forward to seeing this progress!
Controller support isn't great, had some issues where R1 would both jump and change weapons while the D-pad didn't actually change weapons, just the UI. After I restarted the game once, I couldn't change weapons or shoot with the controller. But the keyboard controls work more than fine, so I just played with them. The minigun is fun, always good to have a fun minigun.
Taking damage feels a little weird, sometimes I felt like I could strafe and tank bullets all day and sometimes I would die without even realizing I was getting shot. But it's nice to have this much enemy variety in an early demo.
Default alternate weapon that shoots the rocket vertically up and then it comes down. It's pretty fun to use though I didn't understand it at first and whas taking damage by shooting it under the bridge.
Truck on top.
Drawn portraits, propably wouldn't like them in a AAA game but they have soul. The designs are nice, would still be good if you decided to go digital instead of hand drawn.
Things I liked less:
The default left click weapon. It doesn't do that much damage but takes forever to reload. I kept finding myself trying to repeak after shot thinking it must be reloaded now but no, could not shoot yet. Minigun was just so much better and more fun to use.
The laser enemy - laser is too thin and in the beginning I didn't know what was damaging me.
Randomly game has stutters, a stutter takes like half a second stuck on a single frame but then continues on. Couldn't figure out if some specific action causes it but otherwise my FPS was good.
Overall I think it it has potential. I was getting strong Shogo vibes. Not sure if it was some kind of inspiration but if not you should look it up.
Felt a bit lost while playing because I didn't know what the health is and how the damage impacts gameplay. Also I couldn't tell a difference between the three available options through the mouse wheel. Also projectiles fired by enemies disappear mid-air when you kill the enemy. Movement felt very good though, very mech-like and heavy. Sound was also decent but damage to yourself could use a bit more impact I feel like or some more indicators.
The Grey Screen after loading is weird. I'm assuming all Menues are Placeholders. The Character in the Corner makes no Sense, if you want a representation of the Playerface there, consider a Console or something, but even that wouldn't make a lot of Sense. If you just want the Image, how about your Commander phoning in for Mission Objectives, or a Picture of a Friend or something?
When you die the Weapon Sounds from the Machine Gun don't stop. Theres a missing Feeling of Weight to your Mecha. Needs more shaking Consoles, stompy Feet, Crushing Cars when walking over them, or firing at them with Hitscan Weaponry, All that Stuff. Also an Overhaul of the UI Screens, they seem to work but are very Barebones. You also jump between Worldspace UI on the Bottom, but then put the Compas, Minimap, Picture etc. just on Screen, which clashes. Either stick to one or the other, preferable the former.
No Ammocount, no Overheating or Stuff like that?
The Mecha bobbing when moving but the Camera standing Still doesn't work. It makes you feel disconnected from the Mecha.
The Truck driving on Top is really Cute. Also apparently the only Car my Gatling could damage.
When you fly on top of a Building, the Enemy Mechs fail to find a Way to fire at you, making it trivial. Also personally I think flying Mechas are stupid. Those are huge and heavy Machinery, it'd take immense Power and Fuel to lift them, much less at that Speed and Acceleration.
Your Camera not beinding down on Position makes Sense I guess, but it feels odd. I also don't know how your Mecha is designed, or if it would even be able to look straight up/down like that.
Probably the biggest game I've had to download for one of these. Haven't really gotten that deep into it yet but I'm having fun so far, brings back memories of those mech pod games they used to have in arcades. And the portrait art is really nice, did I hear correctly that your mom did them?
Shooting feels pretty decent, level design is quite tight and a bit claustrophobic at points, but I assume that's the intention. I like the pilot portraits in the corner, it's reminiscent of mecha games like Bulk Smash on the Sega Saturn, just need some animation and voice lines. A few of the UI stuff such as the compass could be scaled down I think, it takes up a bit too much of the screen along with the displays and the mech's cockpit frame. All in all a really solid foundation you have so far though, I'll be watching this with great interest!
Oh, and the DOOM inspired loading screen is also great, love that touch.
I had a pretty good time blowing up bad guys. The gatling gun ball launcher is prolly my fav combo.
I'm not really sure if the turret did anything, and I have no idea what the yellow triangle ability does. I think I found where the enemies spawned and just shot at that area with explosives kind of cheesing the game.
The mouse buttons for the weapons seem kind of odd L/R being swapped made me fire the wrong gun multiple times, and it was a bit difficult telling what or where I was taking damage from aside from the missiles.
Midway through my playthrough I froze up crashed, and I'd also experience major FPS drops later in the round when tons of robots were showing up.
Enjoyed the shooting, tried looking for some sort of reload meter but couldn't find one, something around the crosshair maybe? Seems like the frame dips are related to switching weapons, dm me if you need video. Can't wait to play the campaign (if it ever gets one)
As others have mentioned the game stutters when loading in new enemies though the problem disappeared after a while so I'm assuming this has to do with loading in a new enemy type for the first time or something similar?
Left weapon on right click and right weapon on left click feels unintuitive, I get that it's like that because left click = main weapon makes sense and main weapon in right hand makes sense but for me it was crossing some wires in my brain but this one might just be a me problem
Gatling gun fire sound drowns out most other sounds
The character portrait looks great but I'm not sure why it's constantly on screen, I could get behind it if the portrait reacted to damage à la doomguy but as is it seems like a random way to use screen space
needs more feedback when hit
I love mecha stuff so I'm looking forward to seeing how this game evolves, what you have here seems like a pretty good foundation.
Performance was fine on my end, I had maybe a frame dip or two but nothing substantial.
I really liked the feel and the controls of the mech. The UI could maybe use some more juice, like flashing lights when you get hit, and maybe some screen shake, it's easy to take damage and not realize it.
The SFX were good, you could probably add some random pitch variation to make them a little less repetitive.
I agree with others that I wanted a faster firing weapon. I was expecting the machine gun to fire faster, and was disappointed it was about the same fire rate as the rail gun. Love the rocket launcher, was meh on the grenade launcher. Didn't get what the "targeting now" weapon did, maybe an air strike?
I'd love a score counter, or something to track my improvement each time in arena mode.
That's all the feedback I can think of right now, I had a lot of fun blowing up the robots and figuring out strategies that worked (rocket launcher all the way)
Even though it's super janky, the game is FUN in its current state, which I think is a very good sign.
The controls screen just lets you rebind up left down and right, I assume for the menu controls. I know it's WIP, but it's still confusing since there is another control screen in the tutorial.
What's the DEAL with the picture that is there for a second when you start the game, a placeholder I assume?
I don't really like the weapons you start off with in arcade mode, if you started with a gatling gun and some kind of weak blaster that would be a far smoother start, because I kept wondering whether I was running out of ammo or doing something wrong, but the weapons (afaik) just had really slow firing rate. Imagine if you started off in Halo with a sniper rifle and rocket launcher, you know?
The fuel bar is confusing, maybe add an E and F and little notches as a quick fix, because right now it looks more like a health bar than the health bar. Also the fortress mode text just makes things even more confusing, pushing the overall UI into "fingerless glove meter" territory.
My condolences for the stutters, hopefully you find a way to counteract that devil Juan's handiwork. I know how frustrating it is for that to be the first thing everyone complains about when it's something hard to fix.
I assume the woman in the bottom right is the pilot, and she will be animated / react to events?
At the beginning there's lots of stuttering when shooting, but it seems to settle quickly. I wonder if it is because you're not preloading the sounds or something. I feel like I should be able to shoot faster though both guns feel so slow. And maybe the enemies need some better pathfinding because once you have the highground you can artillery strick everything with basically no risk.
Compared to last DD things really take shape, lots of new things you put in the game. Very nice!
First thing to encounter is the stutter that others already pointed out. I had the same issues (which im hoping i've fixed by now, but lets wait for the DD verdict on my game) and the thing im doing currently to avoid it is to use the ResourceLoader.load_threaded_request(<instance>, "", true) for all kinds of instances i will soon need. In your case thats mostly the enemies and various projectiles i guess. A proper loading screen might do that as well and has the bonus of not showing that grey background when starting a game.
Secondly, i died pretty quickly on the first arcade run, somehow instinctively pressed escape while already having the little death menu. So the death menu was covered with the other menu and neither worked at that point. Pressing escape again made the top level menu disappear, but still nothing worked and i had to quit the game the hard way.
Speaking of menus, the fullscreen option doesnt seem to do anything for me. Also is it set to exclusive fullscreen? Because that might have weird interactions with some peoples setups. I used that myself for my first demo and had some negative feedback about it. Normal fullscreen seems to work better.
Lastly a small gameplay nitpick: switching weapons gets me confused, since pressing 1 switches the weapon on the right, while pressing 2 does it on the left.
This is really starting to come together. Really digging the new map and all the easter eggs. Bad Apple is a few steps down from RickRoll though, tsk, tsk, tsk.
I couldn’t really tell what the new secondary weapon does, is it like an artillery markerlight or something? I though it was a lockon swarm missile rack or something from the look of it.
The HUD is quite misleading, the blue bar is your health but because that’s where the Fortress Mode indicator comes up it makes me think that’s a Fortress Gauge or something. The actual mech portrait on the right side is what I immediately associate with the health display.
Gameplay is fun. And I really like dig the sound of the gatling gun. It takes some getting used to and it’s easy to mess up if you aren’t careful but I like how you’ve combined the different functions on the Shift key. Would be good to disable some though because I think the backward one is an instant 180° turn which I don’t find very useful when you can just whip the camera around.
Menu design is awful, both in music and UX. Floor glitches out, game stutters out the ass. Arcade mode has you get killed by enemies coming out of nowhere. I guess it's fine as a personal/recreational practice project, as it has no commercial viability.
Comments
very impressed with your speed of progress, this is so far beyond the first version i played before (DD54 maybe), which didn't even have sounds or projectiles... this has come so far in such a short amount of time, great job.
echoing a lot of what others have said here, but for me i think the most helpful thing to add would be indicators.
the mech weight feels nice while also not too slow. some nice clunky mech footstep sound effects would go a long way in helping with that classic mechwarrior feel.
also i died alot. enemy onslaught is pretty unforgiving
anyways good job, has the bones of a great mech game, and look forward to seeing this progress!
Very good.
Controller support isn't great, had some issues where R1 would both jump and change weapons while the D-pad didn't actually change weapons, just the UI. After I restarted the game once, I couldn't change weapons or shoot with the controller. But the keyboard controls work more than fine, so I just played with them. The minigun is fun, always good to have a fun minigun.
Taking damage feels a little weird, sometimes I felt like I could strafe and tank bullets all day and sometimes I would die without even realizing I was getting shot. But it's nice to have this much enemy variety in an early demo.
Things I liked:
Things I liked less:
Overall I think it it has potential. I was getting strong Shogo vibes. Not sure if it was some kind of inspiration but if not you should look it up.
the default left weapon is a shotgun, it does more damage at point blank.
Felt a bit lost while playing because I didn't know what the health is and how the damage impacts gameplay. Also I couldn't tell a difference between the three available options through the mouse wheel. Also projectiles fired by enemies disappear mid-air when you kill the enemy. Movement felt very good though, very mech-like and heavy. Sound was also decent but damage to yourself could use a bit more impact I feel like or some more indicators.
Played for roughly 15 Minutes.
The Grey Screen after loading is weird. I'm assuming all Menues are Placeholders. The Character in the Corner makes no Sense, if you want a representation of the Playerface there, consider a Console or something, but even that wouldn't make a lot of Sense. If you just want the Image, how about your Commander phoning in for Mission Objectives, or a Picture of a Friend or something?
When you die the Weapon Sounds from the Machine Gun don't stop. Theres a missing Feeling of Weight to your Mecha. Needs more shaking Consoles, stompy Feet, Crushing Cars when walking over them, or firing at them with Hitscan Weaponry, All that Stuff. Also an Overhaul of the UI Screens, they seem to work but are very Barebones. You also jump between Worldspace UI on the Bottom, but then put the Compas, Minimap, Picture etc. just on Screen, which clashes. Either stick to one or the other, preferable the former.
No Ammocount, no Overheating or Stuff like that?
The Mecha bobbing when moving but the Camera standing Still doesn't work. It makes you feel disconnected from the Mecha.
The Truck driving on Top is really Cute. Also apparently the only Car my Gatling could damage.
When you fly on top of a Building, the Enemy Mechs fail to find a Way to fire at you, making it trivial. Also personally I think flying Mechas are stupid. Those are huge and heavy Machinery, it'd take immense Power and Fuel to lift them, much less at that Speed and Acceleration.
Your Camera not beinding down on Position makes Sense I guess, but it feels odd. I also don't know how your Mecha is designed, or if it would even be able to look straight up/down like that.
all legitimate points, but i won't negotiate on the flying mech. the hover mechanic is a big part of what makes hawken enjoyable
Sure, after all this is just my Opinion. If you want flying Mechas, go for it.
Probably the biggest game I've had to download for one of these. Haven't really gotten that deep into it yet but I'm having fun so far, brings back memories of those mech pod games they used to have in arcades. And the portrait art is really nice, did I hear correctly that your mom did them?
correctly did you hear.
Shooting feels pretty decent, level design is quite tight and a bit claustrophobic at points, but I assume that's the intention. I like the pilot portraits in the corner, it's reminiscent of mecha games like Bulk Smash on the Sega Saturn, just need some animation and voice lines. A few of the UI stuff such as the compass could be scaled down I think, it takes up a bit too much of the screen along with the displays and the mech's cockpit frame. All in all a really solid foundation you have so far though, I'll be watching this with great interest!
Oh, and the DOOM inspired loading screen is also great, love that touch.
I had a pretty good time blowing up bad guys. The gatling gun ball launcher is prolly my fav combo.
I'm not really sure if the turret did anything, and I have no idea what the yellow triangle ability does. I think I found where the enemies spawned and just shot at that area with explosives kind of cheesing the game.
The mouse buttons for the weapons seem kind of odd L/R being swapped made me fire the wrong gun multiple times, and it was a bit difficult telling what or where I was taking damage from aside from the missiles.
Midway through my playthrough I froze up crashed, and I'd also experience major FPS drops later in the round when tons of robots were showing up.
Enjoyed the shooting, tried looking for some sort of reload meter but couldn't find one, something around the crosshair maybe? Seems like the frame dips are related to switching weapons, dm me if you need video. Can't wait to play the campaign (if it ever gets one)
Fun game so far! Some notes:
I love mecha stuff so I'm looking forward to seeing how this game evolves, what you have here seems like a pretty good foundation.
I'm happy you've made a linux build
-Walk sound effect need to be more bombastic, I'm piloting a massive engine of death, not some small children sized toy
-So do the canon
-I have a hard time understanding when i'm hit
I wish to see more. Here a fanart to motive you
t-thanks, you too
Performance was fine on my end, I had maybe a frame dip or two but nothing substantial.
I really liked the feel and the controls of the mech. The UI could maybe use some more juice, like flashing lights when you get hit, and maybe some screen shake, it's easy to take damage and not realize it.
The SFX were good, you could probably add some random pitch variation to make them a little less repetitive.
I agree with others that I wanted a faster firing weapon. I was expecting the machine gun to fire faster, and was disappointed it was about the same fire rate as the rail gun. Love the rocket launcher, was meh on the grenade launcher. Didn't get what the "targeting now" weapon did, maybe an air strike?
I'd love a score counter, or something to track my improvement each time in arena mode.
That's all the feedback I can think of right now, I had a lot of fun blowing up the robots and figuring out strategies that worked (rocket launcher all the way)
you assumed correctly on all your points.
have you tried touching the teleport on top of one of the buildings? there might be a surprise in store....
Heh, I'm honored! Name a more iconic duo.
You need to do something with constant stuttering
Nice progress anyway game is much better than before
it runs well on my machine... but i guess that's because those shaders are already compiled on my pc or whatever the fuck
it runs better the more you play it, but i REALLY have to solve this thing
At the beginning there's lots of stuttering when shooting, but it seems to settle quickly. I wonder if it is because you're not preloading the sounds or something. I feel like I should be able to shoot faster though both guns feel so slow. And maybe the enemies need some better pathfinding because once you have the highground you can artillery strick everything with basically no risk.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2136023590?t=1h11m33s
Impressive progress again. I like the atmosphere of this city and how tiny the cars are. Amazed to even find driving ones.
Ran into a very fun bug, you’ll see it in the vod.
Cheers!
what the fuck i have never seen that happen lol
the jump speed and maximum jump height are supposed to go back to normal after you exit the area3d of the jump pad
also, the enemies stopped spawning? it has never happened to me.
will have to look them up
Fellow Godot enjoyer is progressing fast!
Compared to last DD things really take shape, lots of new things you put in the game. Very nice!
First thing to encounter is the stutter that others already pointed out. I had the same issues (which im hoping i've fixed by now, but lets wait for the DD verdict on my game) and the thing im doing currently to avoid it is to use the ResourceLoader.load_threaded_request(<instance>, "", true) for all kinds of instances i will soon need. In your case thats mostly the enemies and various projectiles i guess. A proper loading screen might do that as well and has the bonus of not showing that grey background when starting a game.
Secondly, i died pretty quickly on the first arcade run, somehow instinctively pressed escape while already having the little death menu. So the death menu was covered with the other menu and neither worked at that point. Pressing escape again made the top level menu disappear, but still nothing worked and i had to quit the game the hard way.
Speaking of menus, the fullscreen option doesnt seem to do anything for me. Also is it set to exclusive fullscreen? Because that might have weird interactions with some peoples setups. I used that myself for my first demo and had some negative feedback about it. Normal fullscreen seems to work better.
Lastly a small gameplay nitpick: switching weapons gets me confused, since pressing 1 switches the weapon on the right, while pressing 2 does it on the left.
Keep going, you are doing well!
This is really starting to come together. Really digging the new map and all the easter eggs. Bad Apple is a few steps down from RickRoll though, tsk, tsk, tsk.
I couldn’t really tell what the new secondary weapon does, is it like an artillery markerlight or something? I though it was a lockon swarm missile rack or something from the look of it.
The HUD is quite misleading, the blue bar is your health but because that’s where the Fortress Mode indicator comes up it makes me think that’s a Fortress Gauge or something. The actual mech portrait on the right side is what I immediately associate with the health display.
Gameplay is fun. And I really like dig the sound of the gatling gun. It takes some getting used to and it’s easy to mess up if you aren’t careful but I like how you’ve combined the different functions on the Shift key. Would be good to disable some though because I think the backward one is an instant 180° turn which I don’t find very useful when you can just whip the camera around.
I assume this is Godot right? Getting rid of the stuttering is going to be a pain in the ass as I’m pretty sure that’s shader loading: https://youtu.be/oG-H-IfXUqI?si=KAfVFl-bBcWRLqRK&t=438
Still needs a lot of polish but fuck that Max Stern guy, it’s not about being commercial success. I definitely think this game has potential.
Also, it works great but 1G for the Linux download? What the fuck? Is that just from the music video?
thanks for the optimization tutorial, i will definitely check that out.
the shift key is an approximation of how hawken handles things, i don't really want to change it TOO much...
yeah i haven't really optimized for size yet. i'm using blend files instead of glbs, and some of my textures weigh way more than they should.
I almost forgot, is the jump-pad supposed to take you this high?
welp, looks like you are not the only one with this bug.
thanks for letting me know
Menu design is awful, both in music and UX. Floor glitches out, game stutters out the ass. Arcade mode has you get killed by enemies coming out of nowhere. I guess it's fine as a personal/recreational practice project, as it has no commercial viability.
I-I'll do my best....
Great up date to the game and good progress. I like the new map and the indicators.
You should focus on trying to figure out what is causing all the frame stutters as its really distracting and detracts from the game.