Even with now knowing that there IS a way to get through the door in level 1, I could not find it. I found a bunch of bugs, though, so I’m not sure if maybe it’s all broken now. E.g. in one attempt there was no wine left after adjusting the clock, so I could not prompt the Admiral to drink.
I increasingly tried to really stick to the (presumed) ideal path of play, not triggering or taking anything before it’s intended, but still got stuck. The Admiral’s dialogue option at that point is just: END. In case I did not trigger a softlock, and there is actually a way forward, the Admiral should probably have at least some dialogue option left that hints at what to do. The Bard had an option left that hinted I should go find out the Admiral’s taste, but I already found the book of Shanties, so idk what more is needed, especially if I can’t even talk to the Admiral. I suspect the final solution is to have the Bird sing instead of the Bard, but I can’t figure out how to set that up.
I found the Grains the first time only by running around mashing Z frantically. It may be worth adding the yellow "interactible!" symbol also for pickups.
Thank you for trying to make keys rebindable, looking forward to that functionality.
Eventually I also tried the new level, not much to say yet, it’s obviously quite WIP. I noticed, in terms of gameplay, that jumps get *too* high to reach certain spots, if one has a lot of Agility. This is funny, but probably can get you stuck easily.
Overall I quite enjoy the Monkey Island style narrative and interaction, feel the game can go a long way with that. Just the systems need way more polish.
Finally got around to trying it again after last DD.
Briefly glanced over the other comments, most things were already mentioned like the default control scheme being a hassle for different keyboard layouts, flickering exclamation mark for interactions and such.
Speaking of the interact indicator: sometimes it acts weird, like it shows up when standing to the right of the bard, but not to his left. In both cases you can interact with him.
Some events need indicators for needed player input or be automated. For instance when asking the admiral about the southern shores, he says he has to go, but nothing happens. I waited for around 10 sec until i hit a key and suddenly he moved.
Starting the game i was in the room with the guy at his desk (narrator?), but was quickly ported to the first level. Not sure if i hit a button that did it or if its normal this way. After beating the game once, i ended up there again but i could take my time and interact with stuff.
I saw that others got stuck in the oustide level. This happened for me as well but at the ladder way off to the right.
Went down the ladder, tried to push the rock and decided to jump up to the top. From there i couldnt move away I had 2 or 3 agility, not sure anymore.
Tried a lot more with items and using/combining them, but i think i missed how i can deselect the current item instead of closing and opening up the inventory again. If theres such a function, its not intuitive enough for people like me.
Another minor thing: did you increase the charm requirements to talk with the woman? I think last DD i took charm as the initial stat and she told me about her missing bird. Now she told me to go away even with 2 charm. When increasing to 3 she would properly talk to me.
Anyway, thats about it for the issues i encountered. The charm of that game is off the charts nevertheless and i want to see more interactions and events. The escape ending was pretty good and i wonder what the over arching story will be. I hope its not gonna be a collection of seemingly unrelated stories that just happen to contain Dirk. Keep it up and show us more cool stuff (or just more polish) next DD, Chad Plunders demands it!
Demos are focusing on self-contained story bits I have in mind, or so I keep telling myself that. With each demo I want to expand the possibilities of our hero and I have to say this one is almost half-assed. Combo system is meh, still only one melee weapon, ranged needs to be adjusted, not all NPCs got to the cut, level was rushed etc. hence the possibility to be stuck. Still, new level is more of a treasure hunt now, picking up items and equipment, using them to get better stats so I have this thing going. My main goal is to have something like act I, when all of demos can be conjoined together and locked/unlocked based on your actions and stats. We'll see how much of a pain is that gonna be.
Flickering exclamation mark is a feature. It reminds me of old monitors I used to play on. It'll take more of you to change my heart! Also exclamation next to the bard is about his cell. I don't think anyone bothered to find that out, but you can actually steal keys from the admiral to open his cell.
That one event with opening doors, yeah, I should probably make it automatic.
I did something with the charm system, I expanded it to other statchecks. Turns out I broke something along the way.
You can deselect items with 'x'. It's my cancel button, also used for attacking.
Also I was playing your demo too! The comment about gold centipede showing up and kicking the big guy was mine, I was playing on version 0.16-2. I'll write something more after I'm done with the current build! And I found Dirk! Clueless and in obvious situation!
Thanks for stopping by, more stuff to come, hopefully we'll see each other in next DD!
Demos are focusing on self-contained story bits I have in mind
Thats pretty cool, like little appetizers really. Actually i didnt figure out the fighting at all today, but then again im limiting myself a bit because i dont want so see everything from Dirk at once. Want that exploration feel next DD again too and it is easy to max out all stats once you figure out one way to get out.
Seems like you have a rough plan, thats good. Stay assured i will keep an eye on Dirk's adventures, in both worlds that is!
Don't bind to y/z if you don't adjust to logical Keyboard Layouts automatically, thank you.
Textbox goes off the Bottom of the Screen.
Choice Options go off the Bottom of the Textbox.
Why is Gold saying a Coin? Exclamation Mark flickers instead of staying visible. Charming Graphics otherwise.
Don't precisely know why Keyboard Controsl tho, it feels more like a Point and Click to me.
You need in between Frames for the Cape from Jump to Fall.
I wish I could hold up/down to go through Dialogue Options faster. Writing is nice tho, sad that all I've read so far is Demo specific Instructions.
Why can I stand and walk to the Sides on the various Steps of a Ladder?
Why do I have 2 Hello options with Sophie?
Beat it once, on the second Run, when feeding the Bird, leaving the Room, reentering and moving to the right I got a main.lua:786 attempt to index a nil value.
Traceback: [love "callbacks.lua"]:228 in function 'handler'
main.lua:786: in function 'update'
main.lua:258: in function 'update:
[love "callbacks.lua"]:162: in function <[love "callbacks.lua"]:144>
[C]:in function 'xpcall'
I might play Part 2 Later. I don't think I did any actual Puzzling on my first Run, I picked up all Items, gave the Lord some Wine, combined the rest with the grain, then jumped up the Goblins and ran through them to escape.
I like the Concpet, the Animations are missing some Frames, there's basically no Sound, and the small Part 1 Demo isn't offering a lot to do. I dislike the Idea of multiple Runs to improve Stats and clear the same Game again just for a different Ending.
I wasn't as impressed by part 2 as much as I was with part 1. Taking into account it's a work in progress but I'm gonna go over my impressions.
GAMEPLAY
Part 2 has a much bigger focus on platforming, combat, and action, something which wasn't that big of a focus in the last version. This is good, since the parts of the game which were easily overlooked last time were put front and center this time which helps get a better sense of them. Helps you to get feedback on those things but it has its own problems which I'll explain later.
Not a fan of how the combat works. Goblins are extremely aggressive which means that there is very little actual player skill or stat-dependency involved. The only way to fight is to spam the attack, which works even if you only have 1 in strength. Doing anything else allows the goblins to strike back, costing you precious health points.
I'm assuming strength makes your hits deal more damage while agility makes you swing faster, but I don't think the basic enemy should be that annoying to deal with. The easiest, most common enemy type should really be less dangerous otherwise the game turns into kiting and looking for exploits. Having the goblins be that mobile and fast teaches you to avoid combat more than anything.
Having an enemy that behaves in this way would still be a good encounter for the game, just not for the "easiest" most common enemy type which is also the only enemy type which you can use to teach yourself how combat works. It's an unnecessary difficulty spike, and a very frustrating progress block when every single goblin you meet somehow manages to hit you at least once before you can stunlock him.
Would have liked if there was some way to restore health instead of having to die and restart to restore it every time. You don't have to make it common or even a consumable. Just some sort of "fountain of life" that you can find every few screens would be nice so you can restore yourself there after you've progressed through a bunch of enemies.
There wasn't all that much dialogue compared to last time, which is a shame since the dialogue has a lot of personality and is fun to go through.
Content density on this one was pretty sparse. Much bigger levels with much less to do in them, and more walking between points of interest. Very few interactions.
The stat boost items were a nice addition, but when combined with the skill point consumables they become extremely OP. Either the consumables' effects should run out after a while or there should be some other way to prevent the player from becoming a maxed out God.
ROLEPLAYING
I don't think the game should require the player to max out all his skills to beat a specific part of it. It takes away from the most interesting quality the game has. The game plays more like a metroidvania than it does an RPG and if that's your intention then you can ignore this.
Since the second adventure has such a strong focus on platforming and combat it feels like a completely different game which neglects everything that makes Dirk special. There were no item puzzles, no dialogue puzzles, and barely any use for intelligence, charm, or stealth. This version felt like it either required you to already have gained extra skill points from the first adventure or to use the free potions, which I assumed were supposed to have been a sort of easy mode cheat, but so far I have not found a way to beat it without using the potions. The end of part 2 is locked behind a requirement to have at least 4 or 5 in agility, and as far as I could tell there is no way to finish it with any other skill.
The one single use for intelligence that I came across (the cook book) was probably my favourite part of the whole demo since it was the one thing that had an element of RPG gameplay in it. I think it would be interesting if going forward intelligence was used multiple times to discover new recipes and get specific items that way.
I don't think there is any way to beat the second adventure with 0 skills. I really liked that part about the previous version. I don't think it needs to be done again but it would still show good RPG design if it was still possible to beat the whole thing with just 1 skill point in a single skill (it would just be harder - like an extra challenge for players who want that).
The game needs more stat-locked interactions, items, areas, and etc (and not just locked behind agility). That's the best thing it's got going about it in my opinion. It's a good hook for RPG enjoyers if it's implemented right.
BUGS AND ISSUES
Everything worked fine on the first try when trying the second passage on the updated version. Didn't even need to use the new setting.
After using the attack a few times the character controller occasionally freezes. Can't jump and can't move. Hitting attack again usually breaks out of this lock.
Fighting goblins pushes them out of bounds all the time. Also that specific area with the three crates requires you to have both 2 in agility and in strength to get out of, which is baffling.
Getting into dialogue or opening the inventory while blinking after respawning freezes the transparency animation until you close the UI.
After getting Agility 4 it's ridiculous easy and even unavoidable to jump through the level geometry.
Got the blue screen twice -- once when going into windowed and trying to shrink the screen size when it was already at the minimum size, and once while spamming the attack button really hard when the stamina was at its lowest. First one was easy to replicate. Not sure about the second.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The game is amazing and I hope you have some good ideas on where you're taking it.
Fighting is pretty much in prototyping stage, gotta find a correct flow. Goblins are more aggressive due to last DDs comments of them being too easy to kill. I guess we can't have it both ways. Current level is WIP and you guessed it, extra potions were added as a last minute help to avoid being stuck before reaching other upgrades. Still, I managed to make you all stuck here and there. Item hunting is just a little extra, went all in with new system for increasing stats, but those items will be rare.
Missing NPCs and one singular way to beat it was a compromise with a lack of time and levels not being that easy to plan. That being said this particular route is designed for players roleplaying as a fighting adventurer. I envision that parts with enemies shouldn't be accessed at all by players avoiding strength and agility stat, but - once again - I want to have a special item that can scare goblins away. It's just further down the line of crossing a map and sticking to main road that can have occasional enemy, and not entering a cave that's infested with goblins. This is clearly a Fighter's Guild member that has to swing a sword here and there. Proper ending for goblin hunting quest without actually fighting them demands a city with a Fighter's Guild building. I sure hope I'll be able to pull that one soon.
Sorry, I started rambling. Your insight is invaluable and I think we both think alike. Now I have a canvas and I should have plenty of time to implement missing parts for combat trip. Bugs will be ironed out, new paths will be unlocked, new NPCs gonna show up and I hope I won't have to rush next one, but to be honest, preDD time is the most motivating time for me.
Love the art, some areas are obvious WIP, but it looks great none the less. I read all text, but still, some placeholder music/ambient would work wonders.
If you spam down button on stairs, you can push the camera a little bit down, but not move at stairs, so you can throw the camera as down as you want (it only works down, going up the steps doesn't work, camera resets when you finally start moving on the stairs).
I could fall over the map here, if you walk he will go over and fall over the map, you need to jump over to get to the next screen.
looking at some items in the inventory break the game randomly. (looking at the flower with 3's in sneak and agility): player.lua:486: attempt to get length of global 'equipList' (a nil value) Traceback player.lua:486: in function 'update' main.lua:244: in function 'update' [C]: in function 'xpcall'
For second version: You can get "stuck" in some geometry (got here by jumping, you can jump out but still):
Jumping as the whole is kinda broken, oh, you have problem with refresh rate of the monitor, with higher rate you jump much higher (every animation becomes faster too?) - https://files.catbox.moe/mhjlbo.webm
Only in the second version, sometimes game takes your movement away, you could still jump and use inventory/menu, but not move.
Overall, combat feels wonky, you can easily launch enemies on ladders or other platforms and it becomes weird fight if they are not gonna go down themselves.
Game is great! I do love the different paths that you could make either with your stats or your items. Sounds crazy to scope, but you done great for this slices. It has a lot of content already, I enjoyed the dialogues and puzzles, some objects have quite a big/small interaction box (like cell door in the first demo could be open with the key from far away or bird nest could be interacted only from the right)
Man, that refresh rate. I wanna say it's an engine limitation and I tried to fix it but I just have a standard 60Hz monitor so I can't test it reliably. The thing is I still use delta time for calculating height of the jumps and I don't know why I can have a higher refresh rate, so more calculations, but delta time stays the same...
Other bugs are accounted for and I'll be taking care of them one at a time. You have a good eye for them!
Well, I do not know Love engine, but maybe you could check how high you are from starting position and stop immediately after getting over normal jump high? If second demo wouldn't block me as much, I could bug-hunt it more :)
Forgot to mention this typo(?), when you give bird back and ask about "admiral's quirks". (masself - myself)
It sounds like you are trying to use natural time to pace game logic, at basically infinite resolution. What's usually done in games is you have a logical tick rate -- this can be quite low, for example 30 per second, or one logical tick every 40 ms, something in that ballpark. All your real game logic is doing updates discretely, per tick. E.g. if you have "upwards velocity 50," you move the character up by 50 units whenever a logical tick passes, and at no other time. Your game state is only touched by the regular logical updates.
You tie this in with monitor refresh rate by interpolating the logical state based on how far along is the next tick. So if you are at a point where 60% of the time until next tick has passed (e.g. 24ms have passed and your tickrate is 40ms), and your character has upwards velocity 50, you apply 60% of 50 = 30 units upward change of position for drawing the character. But only for drawing the character!! You do not change the logic state at all here. You calculate an ephemeral state, for means of drawing to the screen, that is an interpolation between two logical states.
This approach is kind of overkill for a point and click adventure, but it's needed as soon as you have any sort of action gameplay going on.
Here is another short post of mine where I describe one way to weave logical ticks and drawing frames: https://itch.io/post/9490552 But there's gotta be plenty tutorials on the internet, too.
ps. As for user inputs, it's cleanest and easiest to apply them only at logical ticks. If this is too laggy for you, you can just work with a higher tickrate (no issue in a simple game like yours).
pps. You can test any FPS on a 60 Hz screen, you just have to turn VSync off.
I'm here because someone just mentioned the control scheme and shift to jump, so I'm gonna give feedback on that.
SPACE - SET STATS : is setting stats something you do frequently, that it needs to be on the biggest bar on the keyboard? If you press space by accident then press it again, the menu doesn't go away. You have to navigate until you find the other control that closes it again. Whack. It's true that I do need to bring it up to see the controls so there is a reason I'd want to bring it up for the first few times. Oh, ESC works as well so that's nice. Seriously though SPACE to bring up the menu SPACE to hide the menu. ARROW KEYS : this is fine. Z/X : Japanese games seem to love this scheme. Guess it's fine. TAB - INVENTORY: Every time I have to try and close the SET STATS screen I try to use this to get out, but it's actually Z to get out. huh. There could probably be a better button for this if you're using a Z/X scheme, somewhere around QWEASD. Maybe even C. LEFT SHIFT - JUMP: It works but I'm not really feeling it, ZXC-SPACE feels more comfortable for a jump. Also, the fact that you can't jump unless you take the 1/5 chance of selecting the right stat is a dangerous choice because most people will think the game is broken, you don't even acknowledge that the player is pressing the jump button. You need the jump button to do something, even if it's useless. I'd say something about how STR should affect jump height and AGI should affect something else like how much you can move while jumping but that's a slippery slope into a D&D rant. The most important take from this is, in game design, you should always react to the player's inputs and actions even if it's to show that the input is currently useless, so the player knows it isn't broken / it may be possible in the future.
Also, have an exclamation mark when an interactible object is present so you know you can press Z.
I've seen you posting progress for quite a while so good job of making it into demoday (again)! It's always nice to see the games in action.
Everybody chasing me with pitchforks, well ok then, shift is gone. Now default for jumping is 'C'.
I changed that stats menu, now we can check them and make them go away with space.
I alsoadded exclamation mark. Pretty good call as plenty of streamers wasn't even aware that some objects can be investigated. Items aren't marked though, I want to leave a little bit of pixel hunting in there.
With the jump, I intend to make a path where jumping is not needed at all, and to make it play like old point n click game. Jumping and fighting is an option for players that look for action so they should invest in these stats. That being said I should give more visual hints that low agility won't let you jump and write it in the text description for skills.
You can back out from inventory with 'X' as well.
Overall plenty of good suggestions for me to chew on. Thanks for checking out the game!
I believe people will be filtered by inability to jump if they don't put points in, even with potions. Order of interaction is a bit counterintuitive, lets take the doors for example. Even if you have the key, basic interaction gives you basic line about the door, in order to unlock it, you have to open inventory and use it in proximity of the door, once you learn that order you can work with it, but imo there should be a check for default interaction.
I could use some sort of a clue on what's usable and what isn't. As the things are it's down to spamming Z button, I'm not saying you should slap yellow paint all over every usable object but there should be some way to tell.
I've managed to spot weird bug in the interaction with Admiral - uncle look at the time -> Sends you into a loop of equip<=>talk. You can end it by ending convo and talking again. All in all I believe the strongest point of the game is your writing, hope you keep up with the updates
Agreed, new parts aren't polished as it's pretty much incomplete. Half of the map wasn't ready and couple of NPCs are still missing to make it for a compelling level and my art sucks. It's too repetitive.
Key example is actually crucial. You're locked in a small room and you have no other way to progress other than finding a key and using it. I'd say it's a good design choice to have your player experiment with smaller, obvious puzzle as that prepares him to understand how to solve other interactions in similiar way. Having a quick use option for an item would just increase the 'z' spamming.
About these clues... please don't force me to make a Witcher sense... but! Looking back at Oblivion your crosshair was changing shape when in close proximity to usable item. I think it would be a good idea to have a little 'inspect', 'search', 'open' tooltips when next to interactible item. I'll look into it.
Strongest point of the game is my writing? Oh... oh no...
Witcher sense would be an overkill, same with annoying blinking from RE. There are two approaches I'd favor, one is some UI indicator that you can in fact use the object just as you described. The other is consistently making every object interactible (if it makes sense obviously) even if output is just a toast message with 'There's nothing inside'.
And writing is indeed great, people do have a soft spot for something written by a human rather than a room of writers, keep up the good work lad
i'm afraid to say that your latest build does not seem to be as polished as your previous one.
it's way too easy to clip and end up on the platform above you while trying to clear a smaller jump
the music eventually stops and doesn't loop
why is shift the default for jump?? i understand that by leaving the option of changing the keybinds you are allowed more "creativity" in your control scheme, but this choice is going to be absolutely baffling to 100% of your players.
at least i found the little guy undeground. fit snugly in my pocket.
Previous demo had similiar problems with clipping so intelligently I made all floors flat and thin, and enemies can't get stuck in weirdly shaped level. I hae to add collisions on top of the Dirk's head.
Music shouldn't loop. I mean, it's a pretty slow and uncanny track, listening it more than a handful of times would be grating. I was fighting with myself if I even should add it. One track without a loop seemed like a sensible compromise to me.
And what's wrong with shift? I'm more of a jump on 'z' kinda guy myself, but having all three buttons pretty important I didn't think that either 'zxc' or 'azx' would be comfortable. Shift is pretty long! It fits perfectly for a ring finger! Would it be better to have it used for interactions or attacks? I don't think so.
Did you bring the guy to the mother? You should, you know...
Unfortunately, a bug blocked me from trying the new content. Trying to enter the second adventure just turns the screen black and the music loops while nothing happens. None of the controls do anything while in this state. It just stays stuck on the black screen until you close the game. Restarting the game and trying again gives the same result.
Only thing I can report is that in the dialogue with Sophie both of the options are unlocked at the same time. This is with no points put into charisma. It allows you to play both the regular dialogue and the "get away from me" dialogue.
Also the coloured speech text to differentiate speakers is a nice addition. Really helps.
Damn, these passageways were working in my editor and stopped when I had .exe nice and ready. I think that changing the .exe name or name of the game folder could help but I need more feedback. Downloading build from the site and running it fresh works on my machine. Also it didn't crash? Was Dirk visible? Could you still walk around?
Also I've made some changes in the dialogue system, did a quick test and it was working fine. Do you remember what was the charm stat?
I really appreciate your feedback and I'd like to see what you have to say about the second challenge.
Passage bug: Downloaded the game, ran the game, put no points into anything just ran straight for the second passage - still happening, Transition animation runs and then the screen just stays black. Can't see anything except black screen. Music is still running. Tried all keys; nothing works except for the 1 and 2 keys which resize the game window.
Dialogue bug: When my charm is at 1 and strength is at 2 I get both dialogue options. When my charm is at 2 I only get the "get away from me beggar" version of the option. Doesn't seem right.
Comments
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2140327780 (sorry, first attempt somehow did not get captured correctly)
Dirk’s Adventures in Softlock Land...
Even with now knowing that there IS a way to get through the door in level 1, I could not find it. I found a bunch of bugs, though, so I’m not sure if maybe it’s all broken now. E.g. in one attempt there was no wine left after adjusting the clock, so I could not prompt the Admiral to drink.
I increasingly tried to really stick to the (presumed) ideal path of play, not triggering or taking anything before it’s intended, but still got stuck. The Admiral’s dialogue option at that point is just: END. In case I did not trigger a softlock, and there is actually a way forward, the Admiral should probably have at least some dialogue option left that hints at what to do. The Bard had an option left that hinted I should go find out the Admiral’s taste, but I already found the book of Shanties, so idk what more is needed, especially if I can’t even talk to the Admiral. I suspect the final solution is to have the Bird sing instead of the Bard, but I can’t figure out how to set that up.
I found the Grains the first time only by running around mashing Z frantically. It may be worth adding the yellow "interactible!" symbol also for pickups.
Thank you for trying to make keys rebindable, looking forward to that functionality.
Eventually I also tried the new level, not much to say yet, it’s obviously quite WIP. I noticed, in terms of gameplay, that jumps get *too* high to reach certain spots, if one has a lot of Agility. This is funny, but probably can get you stuck easily.
Overall I quite enjoy the Monkey Island style narrative and interaction, feel the game can go a long way with that. Just the systems need way more polish.
Finally got around to trying it again after last DD.
Briefly glanced over the other comments, most things were already mentioned like the default control scheme being a hassle for different keyboard layouts, flickering exclamation mark for interactions and such.
Speaking of the interact indicator: sometimes it acts weird, like it shows up when standing to the right of the bard, but not to his left. In both cases you can interact with him.
Some events need indicators for needed player input or be automated. For instance when asking the admiral about the southern shores, he says he has to go, but nothing happens. I waited for around 10 sec until i hit a key and suddenly he moved.
Starting the game i was in the room with the guy at his desk (narrator?), but was quickly ported to the first level. Not sure if i hit a button that did it or if its normal this way. After beating the game once, i ended up there again but i could take my time and interact with stuff.
I saw that others got stuck in the oustide level. This happened for me as well but at the ladder way off to the right.
Went down the ladder, tried to push the rock and decided to jump up to the top. From there i couldnt move away I had 2 or 3 agility, not sure anymore.
Tried a lot more with items and using/combining them, but i think i missed how i can deselect the current item instead of closing and opening up the inventory again. If theres such a function, its not intuitive enough for people like me.
Another minor thing: did you increase the charm requirements to talk with the woman? I think last DD i took charm as the initial stat and she told me about her missing bird. Now she told me to go away even with 2 charm. When increasing to 3 she would properly talk to me.
Anyway, thats about it for the issues i encountered. The charm of that game is off the charts nevertheless and i want to see more interactions and events. The escape ending was pretty good and i wonder what the over arching story will be. I hope its not gonna be a collection of seemingly unrelated stories that just happen to contain Dirk. Keep it up and show us more cool stuff (or just more polish) next DD, Chad Plunders demands it!
Demos are focusing on self-contained story bits I have in mind, or so I keep telling myself that. With each demo I want to expand the possibilities of our hero and I have to say this one is almost half-assed. Combo system is meh, still only one melee weapon, ranged needs to be adjusted, not all NPCs got to the cut, level was rushed etc. hence the possibility to be stuck. Still, new level is more of a treasure hunt now, picking up items and equipment, using them to get better stats so I have this thing going. My main goal is to have something like act I, when all of demos can be conjoined together and locked/unlocked based on your actions and stats. We'll see how much of a pain is that gonna be.
Flickering exclamation mark is a feature. It reminds me of old monitors I used to play on. It'll take more of you to change my heart! Also exclamation next to the bard is about his cell. I don't think anyone bothered to find that out, but you can actually steal keys from the admiral to open his cell.
That one event with opening doors, yeah, I should probably make it automatic.
I did something with the charm system, I expanded it to other statchecks. Turns out I broke something along the way.
You can deselect items with 'x'. It's my cancel button, also used for attacking.
Also I was playing your demo too! The comment about gold centipede showing up and kicking the big guy was mine, I was playing on version 0.16-2. I'll write something more after I'm done with the current build! And I found Dirk! Clueless and in obvious situation!
Thanks for stopping by, more stuff to come, hopefully we'll see each other in next DD!
Thats pretty cool, like little appetizers really. Actually i didnt figure out the fighting at all today, but then again im limiting myself a bit because i dont want so see everything from Dirk at once. Want that exploration feel next DD again too and it is easy to max out all stats once you figure out one way to get out.
Seems like you have a rough plan, thats good. Stay assured i will keep an eye on Dirk's adventures, in both worlds that is!
Played for roughly 25m.
Don't bind to y/z if you don't adjust to logical Keyboard Layouts automatically, thank you.
Textbox goes off the Bottom of the Screen.
Choice Options go off the Bottom of the Textbox.
Why is Gold saying a Coin? Exclamation Mark flickers instead of staying visible. Charming Graphics otherwise.
Don't precisely know why Keyboard Controsl tho, it feels more like a Point and Click to me.
You need in between Frames for the Cape from Jump to Fall.
I wish I could hold up/down to go through Dialogue Options faster. Writing is nice tho, sad that all I've read so far is Demo specific Instructions.
Why can I stand and walk to the Sides on the various Steps of a Ladder?
Why do I have 2 Hello options with Sophie?
Beat it once, on the second Run, when feeding the Bird, leaving the Room, reentering and moving to the right I got a main.lua:786 attempt to index a nil value.
Traceback: [love "callbacks.lua"]:228 in function 'handler'
main.lua:786: in function 'update'
main.lua:258: in function 'update:
[love "callbacks.lua"]:162: in function <[love "callbacks.lua"]:144>
[C]:in function 'xpcall'
I might play Part 2 Later. I don't think I did any actual Puzzling on my first Run, I picked up all Items, gave the Lord some Wine, combined the rest with the grain, then jumped up the Goblins and ran through them to escape.
I like the Concpet, the Animations are missing some Frames, there's basically no Sound, and the small Part 1 Demo isn't offering a lot to do. I dislike the Idea of multiple Runs to improve Stats and clear the same Game again just for a different Ending.
Another day, another Dirk...
I wasn't as impressed by part 2 as much as I was with part 1. Taking into account it's a work in progress but I'm gonna go over my impressions.
GAMEPLAY
Part 2 has a much bigger focus on platforming, combat, and action, something which wasn't that big of a focus in the last version. This is good, since the parts of the game which were easily overlooked last time were put front and center this time which helps get a better sense of them. Helps you to get feedback on those things but it has its own problems which I'll explain later.
Not a fan of how the combat works. Goblins are extremely aggressive which means that there is very little actual player skill or stat-dependency involved. The only way to fight is to spam the attack, which works even if you only have 1 in strength. Doing anything else allows the goblins to strike back, costing you precious health points.
I'm assuming strength makes your hits deal more damage while agility makes you swing faster, but I don't think the basic enemy should be that annoying to deal with. The easiest, most common enemy type should really be less dangerous otherwise the game turns into kiting and looking for exploits. Having the goblins be that mobile and fast teaches you to avoid combat more than anything.
Having an enemy that behaves in this way would still be a good encounter for the game, just not for the "easiest" most common enemy type which is also the only enemy type which you can use to teach yourself how combat works. It's an unnecessary difficulty spike, and a very frustrating progress block when every single goblin you meet somehow manages to hit you at least once before you can stunlock him.
Would have liked if there was some way to restore health instead of having to die and restart to restore it every time. You don't have to make it common or even a consumable. Just some sort of "fountain of life" that you can find every few screens would be nice so you can restore yourself there after you've progressed through a bunch of enemies.
There wasn't all that much dialogue compared to last time, which is a shame since the dialogue has a lot of personality and is fun to go through.
Content density on this one was pretty sparse. Much bigger levels with much less to do in them, and more walking between points of interest. Very few interactions.
The stat boost items were a nice addition, but when combined with the skill point consumables they become extremely OP. Either the consumables' effects should run out after a while or there should be some other way to prevent the player from becoming a maxed out God.
ROLEPLAYING
I don't think the game should require the player to max out all his skills to beat a specific part of it. It takes away from the most interesting quality the game has. The game plays more like a metroidvania than it does an RPG and if that's your intention then you can ignore this.
Since the second adventure has such a strong focus on platforming and combat it feels like a completely different game which neglects everything that makes Dirk special. There were no item puzzles, no dialogue puzzles, and barely any use for intelligence, charm, or stealth. This version felt like it either required you to already have gained extra skill points from the first adventure or to use the free potions, which I assumed were supposed to have been a sort of easy mode cheat, but so far I have not found a way to beat it without using the potions. The end of part 2 is locked behind a requirement to have at least 4 or 5 in agility, and as far as I could tell there is no way to finish it with any other skill.
The one single use for intelligence that I came across (the cook book) was probably my favourite part of the whole demo since it was the one thing that had an element of RPG gameplay in it. I think it would be interesting if going forward intelligence was used multiple times to discover new recipes and get specific items that way.
I don't think there is any way to beat the second adventure with 0 skills. I really liked that part about the previous version. I don't think it needs to be done again but it would still show good RPG design if it was still possible to beat the whole thing with just 1 skill point in a single skill (it would just be harder - like an extra challenge for players who want that).
The game needs more stat-locked interactions, items, areas, and etc (and not just locked behind agility). That's the best thing it's got going about it in my opinion. It's a good hook for RPG enjoyers if it's implemented right.
BUGS AND ISSUES
Everything worked fine on the first try when trying the second passage on the updated version. Didn't even need to use the new setting.
After using the attack a few times the character controller occasionally freezes. Can't jump and can't move. Hitting attack again usually breaks out of this lock.
Fighting goblins pushes them out of bounds all the time. Also that specific area with the three crates requires you to have both 2 in agility and in strength to get out of, which is baffling.
Getting into dialogue or opening the inventory while blinking after respawning freezes the transparency animation until you close the UI.
After getting Agility 4 it's ridiculous easy and even unavoidable to jump through the level geometry.
Got the blue screen twice -- once when going into windowed and trying to shrink the screen size when it was already at the minimum size, and once while spamming the attack button really hard when the stamina was at its lowest. First one was easy to replicate. Not sure about the second.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The game is amazing and I hope you have some good ideas on where you're taking it.
You read my mind and know exactly how I feel.
Fighting is pretty much in prototyping stage, gotta find a correct flow. Goblins are more aggressive due to last DDs comments of them being too easy to kill. I guess we can't have it both ways. Current level is WIP and you guessed it, extra potions were added as a last minute help to avoid being stuck before reaching other upgrades. Still, I managed to make you all stuck here and there. Item hunting is just a little extra, went all in with new system for increasing stats, but those items will be rare.
Missing NPCs and one singular way to beat it was a compromise with a lack of time and levels not being that easy to plan. That being said this particular route is designed for players roleplaying as a fighting adventurer. I envision that parts with enemies shouldn't be accessed at all by players avoiding strength and agility stat, but - once again - I want to have a special item that can scare goblins away. It's just further down the line of crossing a map and sticking to main road that can have occasional enemy, and not entering a cave that's infested with goblins. This is clearly a Fighter's Guild member that has to swing a sword here and there. Proper ending for goblin hunting quest without actually fighting them demands a city with a Fighter's Guild building. I sure hope I'll be able to pull that one soon.
Sorry, I started rambling. Your insight is invaluable and I think we both think alike. Now I have a canvas and I should have plenty of time to implement missing parts for combat trip. Bugs will be ironed out, new paths will be unlocked, new NPCs gonna show up and I hope I won't have to rush next one, but to be honest, preDD time is the most motivating time for me.
Cheers!
That's a really good quest/adventure game!
Love the art, some areas are obvious WIP, but it looks great none the less.
I read all text, but still, some placeholder music/ambient would work wonders.
If you spam down button on stairs, you can push the camera a little bit down, but not move at stairs, so you can throw the camera as down as you want (it only works down, going up the steps doesn't work, camera resets when you finally start moving on the stairs).
I could fall over the map here, if you walk he will go over and fall over the map, you need to jump over to get to the next screen.
looking at some items in the inventory break the game randomly. (looking at the flower with 3's in sneak and agility):
player.lua:486: attempt to get length of global 'equipList' (a nil value)
Traceback
player.lua:486: in function 'update'
main.lua:244: in function 'update'
[C]: in function 'xpcall'
For second version:
You can get "stuck" in some geometry (got here by jumping, you can jump out but still):
Jumping as the whole is kinda broken, oh, you have problem with refresh rate of the monitor, with higher rate you jump much higher (every animation becomes faster too?) - https://files.catbox.moe/mhjlbo.webm
Only in the second version, sometimes game takes your movement away, you could still jump and use inventory/menu, but not move.
Overall, combat feels wonky, you can easily launch enemies on ladders or other platforms and it becomes weird fight if they are not gonna go down themselves.
Game is great! I do love the different paths that you could make either with your stats or your items.
Sounds crazy to scope, but you done great for this slices.
It has a lot of content already, I enjoyed the dialogues and puzzles, some objects have quite a big/small interaction box (like cell door in the first demo could be open with the key from far away or bird nest could be interacted only from the right)
Good luck Dirking around with your game!
Man, that refresh rate. I wanna say it's an engine limitation and I tried to fix it but I just have a standard 60Hz monitor so I can't test it reliably. The thing is I still use delta time for calculating height of the jumps and I don't know why I can have a higher refresh rate, so more calculations, but delta time stays the same...
Other bugs are accounted for and I'll be taking care of them one at a time. You have a good eye for them!
Well, I do not know Love engine, but maybe you could check how high you are from starting position and stop immediately after getting over normal jump high?
If second demo wouldn't block me as much, I could bug-hunt it more :)
Forgot to mention this typo(?), when you give bird back and ask about "admiral's quirks". (masself - myself)
It sounds like you are trying to use natural time to pace game logic, at basically infinite resolution. What's usually done in games is you have a logical tick rate -- this can be quite low, for example 30 per second, or one logical tick every 40 ms, something in that ballpark. All your real game logic is doing updates discretely, per tick. E.g. if you have "upwards velocity 50," you move the character up by 50 units whenever a logical tick passes, and at no other time. Your game state is only touched by the regular logical updates.
You tie this in with monitor refresh rate by interpolating the logical state based on how far along is the next tick. So if you are at a point where 60% of the time until next tick has passed (e.g. 24ms have passed and your tickrate is 40ms), and your character has upwards velocity 50, you apply 60% of 50 = 30 units upward change of position for drawing the character. But only for drawing the character!! You do not change the logic state at all here. You calculate an ephemeral state, for means of drawing to the screen, that is an interpolation between two logical states.
This approach is kind of overkill for a point and click adventure, but it's needed as soon as you have any sort of action gameplay going on.
Here is another short post of mine where I describe one way to weave logical ticks and drawing frames: https://itch.io/post/9490552
But there's gotta be plenty tutorials on the internet, too.
ps. As for user inputs, it's cleanest and easiest to apply them only at logical ticks. If this is too laggy for you, you can just work with a higher tickrate (no issue in a simple game like yours).
pps. You can test any FPS on a 60 Hz screen, you just have to turn VSync off.
Got around controls and video settings, so in the left passage I had some fun.
Reminds me of old computer games and I managed to finish that.
The second path, however, I got stuck after picking the blue book.
But overall, this project has charm and I like the sitting mechanic.
But you can go right...? You can climb these stepping stones.
And yea, I'm really happy with sitting :D
I'm here because someone just mentioned the control scheme and shift to jump, so I'm gonna give feedback on that.
SPACE - SET STATS : is setting stats something you do frequently, that it needs to be on the biggest bar on the keyboard? If you press space by accident then press it again, the menu doesn't go away. You have to navigate until you find the other control that closes it again. Whack. It's true that I do need to bring it up to see the controls so there is a reason I'd want to bring it up for the first few times. Oh, ESC works as well so that's nice. Seriously though SPACE to bring up the menu SPACE to hide the menu.
ARROW KEYS : this is fine.
Z/X : Japanese games seem to love this scheme. Guess it's fine.
TAB - INVENTORY: Every time I have to try and close the SET STATS screen I try to use this to get out, but it's actually Z to get out. huh. There could probably be a better button for this if you're using a Z/X scheme, somewhere around QWEASD. Maybe even C.
LEFT SHIFT - JUMP: It works but I'm not really feeling it, ZXC-SPACE feels more comfortable for a jump. Also, the fact that you can't jump unless you take the 1/5 chance of selecting the right stat is a dangerous choice because most people will think the game is broken, you don't even acknowledge that the player is pressing the jump button. You need the jump button to do something, even if it's useless. I'd say something about how STR should affect jump height and AGI should affect something else like how much you can move while jumping but that's a slippery slope into a D&D rant. The most important take from this is, in game design, you should always react to the player's inputs and actions even if it's to show that the input is currently useless, so the player knows it isn't broken / it may be possible in the future.
Also, have an exclamation mark when an interactible object is present so you know you can press Z.
I've seen you posting progress for quite a while so good job of making it into demoday (again)! It's always nice to see the games in action.
Everybody chasing me with pitchforks, well ok then, shift is gone. Now default for jumping is 'C'.
I changed that stats menu, now we can check them and make them go away with space.
I alsoadded exclamation mark. Pretty good call as plenty of streamers wasn't even aware that some objects can be investigated. Items aren't marked though, I want to leave a little bit of pixel hunting in there.
With the jump, I intend to make a path where jumping is not needed at all, and to make it play like old point n click game. Jumping and fighting is an option for players that look for action so they should invest in these stats. That being said I should give more visual hints that low agility won't let you jump and write it in the text description for skills.
You can back out from inventory with 'X' as well.
Overall plenty of good suggestions for me to chew on. Thanks for checking out the game!
Good work!
Yeah, if the level 1 of agility said "can't jump" it would be a bit clearer too.
Style is solid, shanties made me laugh.
I believe people will be filtered by inability to jump if they don't put points in, even with potions. Order of interaction is a bit counterintuitive, lets take the doors for example. Even if you have the key, basic interaction gives you basic line about the door, in order to unlock it, you have to open inventory and use it in proximity of the door, once you learn that order you can work with it, but imo there should be a check for default interaction.
I could use some sort of a clue on what's usable and what isn't. As the things are it's down to spamming Z button, I'm not saying you should slap yellow paint all over every usable object but there should be some way to tell.
I've managed to spot weird bug in the interaction with Admiral - uncle look at the time -> Sends you into a loop of equip<=>talk. You can end it by ending convo and talking again.
All in all I believe the strongest point of the game is your writing, hope you keep up with the updates
It's not a platformer if you can't jump
Agreed, new parts aren't polished as it's pretty much incomplete. Half of the map wasn't ready and couple of NPCs are still missing to make it for a compelling level and my art sucks. It's too repetitive.
Key example is actually crucial. You're locked in a small room and you have no other way to progress other than finding a key and using it. I'd say it's a good design choice to have your player experiment with smaller, obvious puzzle as that prepares him to understand how to solve other interactions in similiar way. Having a quick use option for an item would just increase the 'z' spamming.
About these clues... please don't force me to make a Witcher sense... but! Looking back at Oblivion your crosshair was changing shape when in close proximity to usable item. I think it would be a good idea to have a little 'inspect', 'search', 'open' tooltips when next to interactible item. I'll look into it.
Strongest point of the game is my writing? Oh... oh no...
Witcher sense would be an overkill, same with annoying blinking from RE. There are two approaches I'd favor, one is some UI indicator that you can in fact use the object just as you described. The other is consistently making every object interactible (if it makes sense obviously) even if output is just a toast message with 'There's nothing inside'.
And writing is indeed great, people do have a soft spot for something written by a human rather than a room of writers, keep up the good work lad
i'm afraid to say that your latest build does not seem to be as polished as your previous one.
it's way too easy to clip and end up on the platform above you while trying to clear a smaller jump
the music eventually stops and doesn't loop
why is shift the default for jump?? i understand that by leaving the option of changing the keybinds you are allowed more "creativity" in your control scheme, but this choice is going to be absolutely baffling to 100% of your players.
at least i found the little guy undeground. fit snugly in my pocket.
Previous demo had similiar problems with clipping so intelligently I made all floors flat and thin, and enemies can't get stuck in weirdly shaped level. I hae to add collisions on top of the Dirk's head.
Music shouldn't loop. I mean, it's a pretty slow and uncanny track, listening it more than a handful of times would be grating. I was fighting with myself if I even should add it. One track without a loop seemed like a sensible compromise to me.
And what's wrong with shift? I'm more of a jump on 'z' kinda guy myself, but having all three buttons pretty important I didn't think that either 'zxc' or 'azx' would be comfortable. Shift is pretty long! It fits perfectly for a ring finger! Would it be better to have it used for interactions or attacks? I don't think so.
Did you bring the guy to the mother? You should, you know...
Video Feedback: I found things a bit confusing
Happy to see Dirk back.
Unfortunately, a bug blocked me from trying the new content. Trying to enter the second adventure just turns the screen black and the music loops while nothing happens. None of the controls do anything while in this state. It just stays stuck on the black screen until you close the game. Restarting the game and trying again gives the same result.
Only thing I can report is that in the dialogue with Sophie both of the options are unlocked at the same time. This is with no points put into charisma. It allows you to play both the regular dialogue and the "get away from me" dialogue.
Also the coloured speech text to differentiate speakers is a nice addition. Really helps.
Damn, these passageways were working in my editor and stopped when I had .exe nice and ready. I think that changing the .exe name or name of the game folder could help but I need more feedback. Downloading build from the site and running it fresh works on my machine. Also it didn't crash? Was Dirk visible? Could you still walk around?
Also I've made some changes in the dialogue system, did a quick test and it was working fine. Do you remember what was the charm stat?
I really appreciate your feedback and I'd like to see what you have to say about the second challenge.
Passage bug: Downloaded the game, ran the game, put no points into anything just ran straight for the second passage - still happening, Transition animation runs and then the screen just stays black. Can't see anything except black screen. Music is still running. Tried all keys; nothing works except for the 1 and 2 keys which resize the game window.
Dialogue bug: When my charm is at 1 and strength is at 2 I get both dialogue options. When my charm is at 2 I only get the "get away from me beggar" version of the option. Doesn't seem right.