Look, the art style is gorgeous and SOVLful and the destruction effects are gorgeous but it's getting in the way of the gameplay. It's hard to tell what's going on once things start happening and it's frustrating dying in a giant cloud of smoke and I don't know where enemies are. The radar seems like a potential solution to this, but at the same time the scale it's using seems off- at one point there was a red dot near me according to the radar but that enemy was not on-screen yet, so it's hard to gauge how accurate it is. As much as I'm complaining, I do want to reiterate that the artstyle and effects are all 200% great, but it feels like the cart was put before the horse.
I've since added some indicators to the enemy mechs and also turned down their aggression. I realize as the programmer I'm too familiar with how they behave, so I know what to anticipate for their attack patterns but to normal players it's almost relentlessly hard. I agree that the radar could be more accurate with the distance, and I'll also try adding some arrow indicators around the player to point out enemies coming from behind the camera position/mouse.
Thank you greatly for playing and the feedback, will use this information to refine it!
Yeah, it feels like just a few tweaks are needed to have a solid game. Going to throw a suggestion out- would it be possible to have like an outline on the mechs when there's heavy smoke? Like how L4D or other games do for low visibility areas?
It's going to be a bit tricky with how GM's draw_sprite function works and how I'm handling depth sorting of the smoke particles, but it should be possible with a shader. Will look into it, thanks for the suggestion!
This is really cool, great effects and destruction, reminds me of desert strike somewhat
I did have some trouble reading what was going on since the colours all blend in. It would really benefit from some icon overlays for enemies and yourself, or just different colours for the mechs even if its just army green
I like the idea of icon overlays, maybe they'd pop up Far Cry style when you mouse over them and they get marked. Will definitely work on the readability, thanks for the feedback!
What the hell I didn’t know Game Maker could be made to do things like this.
Doesn’t go past 44 FPS for me though, I’ll blame that for me not beating level 1 (edit, I beat it, was focusing too much on keeping the city a city). Wait, I fiddled with the .ini and uncapped it. Game speed is tied to framerate, no bueno. I’d try my hardest to fix that while it’s early.
Sounds are fantastic, wonder if a bit of directionality would make it better.
The rotary cannon sounds cool but it seems to have a white noise element that’s too harsh to my ears.
Also have trouble with visibility and it doesn’t feel right to be overly reliant on the radar. If it gets to that might as well have some kind of onscreen target identifiers.
Think it needs better feedback for when you take damage. I get through a fight thinking I did well then I peep the HP and half is gone. Also, some form of healing for the casuals?
Single (fire) clicks don’t register sometimes.
Add some screenshots on the jam page because not everyone checks the main game page.
Thanks for playing. Can I ask what your system specs/OS is? I made this game on a Toshiba Satellite C855 laptop from 2013 that has no GPU, 4 GBs of RAM, and an Intel Pentium 2020 processor. Despite that, the game plays at a stable 60 FPS on level 1 and 2.
I'll see if I can have a setting to turn off the FPS capping, but I think that's just how Game Maker handles all games made in it.
I realize how much the visibility is a problem now, I'm going to fix that ASAP along with a patch to fix the resolution. Healing would definitely be nice, I'll have repair kits available along with the ammo drops. Not sure why the single clicks don't register, are you using the minigun weapon?
Will add some screenshots too. Thank you very much for this feedback, it's extremely valuable.
Setting AlternateSyncMethod=1 moves the cap to 144 but also speeds everything up to the point it’s unplayable. Lowest dip I saw is ~75 when getting really hectic.
It matches the refresh rate, so switching to 60Hz caps to 60. So my workaround is keeping 144Hz and using RTSS to cap to 60.
Clicks seem to register fine at 144 FPS but capped at 60 with RTSS I can pretty consistently make it fail. Try tapping single shots yourself, maybe my mouse is failing or RTSS cap is not ideal still. Oh, I see the cursor changing when clicking but the shot isn’t fired. Autocannon not rotary.
With AlternateSyncMethod=0, tried single monitor, 50-60-72-120-144Hz, all cap at 45. Maybe a Game Maker quirk, I don’t use it or I’d have run into it.
Right, I've just added under the options menu the ability to turn on v-sync and the alt sync method, thanks for letting me know! Still need to figure out what's causing the mouse button issue, haven't seen anyone else have it but still want to make sure its patched.
Sorry to see that the shader is causing a problem on Linux. It's a GSLS ES shader which is the most compatible, but it seems l still need an actual Linux computer to compile a dedicated build. Thanks for playing nonetheless and the fanart!
Very cool game, the destruction is superb. Nice juice already. UI looks really good too, except the font scaling is off, some words I can't even make out. No borderless/fullscreen mode. Some utility and counterplay things to use would be nice, like smoke and flares against missiles.
The problem is that its way too hard to make things out, hard to see yourself, enemies, even bullets. I'd suggest to slather some color on the mechs and aliens, make the ground a lot darker generally.
Man, I didn't think anyone was actually going to take the time to ace both levels, that's awesome!
Thank you for the feedback. I'm working hard on getting a patch out to change resolutions right now; it's really stupid that I didn't code it earlier. As for the enemies, I'm going to make sure they're way more visible too, thanks!
I definitely am going to improve the enemy visibility, I'll give them highlights and an indicator arrow so they won't blend in.
That cursor issue is really odd as the menus have the least amount of stuff going on haha, glad to hear it didn't occur when the actual gameplay was happening. Might be some compatibility issue, I'll look into it.
I'm working really hard on getting a patch out to change the resolution right now. I'm ashamed to say it, but I work with a 1366x768 display and it just didn't occur to me to add that option, oops. Thanks again!
This was the game I was most looking forward to playing, and it didn't disappoint. Looks amazing, and feels great! Can't wait to see what you add next.
My only problems were that the enemy mechs were a little hard to see and blended into the background, the same for the player mech, although that matters less. Maybe make them a brighter colour or add black and yellow caution stripes to them or something. The other thing was the end screen. It's cool that it counts up kills, damage etc, but having a button to just show the results would be a nice feature.
Thank you for playing and your kind words! I'll definitely have it so you can just push the button and it'll display everything at once, I wanted to add that but there just wasn't enough time to do that between menus. Enemy mechs are also going to be revamped, sorry they're so hard to see (guess it sorta makes sense since they're camouflage in olive drab though haha)
Comments
Look, the art style is gorgeous and SOVLful and the destruction effects are gorgeous but it's getting in the way of the gameplay. It's hard to tell what's going on once things start happening and it's frustrating dying in a giant cloud of smoke and I don't know where enemies are. The radar seems like a potential solution to this, but at the same time the scale it's using seems off- at one point there was a red dot near me according to the radar but that enemy was not on-screen yet, so it's hard to gauge how accurate it is.
As much as I'm complaining, I do want to reiterate that the artstyle and effects are all 200% great, but it feels like the cart was put before the horse.
I've since added some indicators to the enemy mechs and also turned down their aggression. I realize as the programmer I'm too familiar with how they behave, so I know what to anticipate for their attack patterns but to normal players it's almost relentlessly hard. I agree that the radar could be more accurate with the distance, and I'll also try adding some arrow indicators around the player to point out enemies coming from behind the camera position/mouse.
Thank you greatly for playing and the feedback, will use this information to refine it!
Yeah, it feels like just a few tweaks are needed to have a solid game. Going to throw a suggestion out- would it be possible to have like an outline on the mechs when there's heavy smoke? Like how L4D or other games do for low visibility areas?
It's going to be a bit tricky with how GM's draw_sprite function works and how I'm handling depth sorting of the smoke particles, but it should be possible with a shader. Will look into it, thanks for the suggestion!
This is really cool, great effects and destruction, reminds me of desert strike somewhat
I did have some trouble reading what was going on since the colours all blend in. It would really benefit from some icon overlays for enemies and yourself, or just different colours for the mechs even if its just army green
I like the idea of icon overlays, maybe they'd pop up Far Cry style when you mouse over them and they get marked. Will definitely work on the readability, thanks for the feedback!
What the hell I didn’t know Game Maker could be made to do things like this. Doesn’t go past 44 FPS for me though, I’ll blame that for me not beating level 1 (edit, I beat it, was focusing too much on keeping the city a city). Wait, I fiddled with the .ini and uncapped it. Game speed is tied to framerate, no bueno. I’d try my hardest to fix that while it’s early.
Sounds are fantastic, wonder if a bit of directionality would make it better. The rotary cannon sounds cool but it seems to have a white noise element that’s too harsh to my ears.
Also have trouble with visibility and it doesn’t feel right to be overly reliant on the radar. If it gets to that might as well have some kind of onscreen target identifiers.
Think it needs better feedback for when you take damage. I get through a fight thinking I did well then I peep the HP and half is gone. Also, some form of healing for the casuals?
Single (fire) clicks don’t register sometimes.
Add some screenshots on the jam page because not everyone checks the main game page.
Thanks for playing. Can I ask what your system specs/OS is? I made this game on a Toshiba Satellite C855 laptop from 2013 that has no GPU, 4 GBs of RAM, and an Intel Pentium 2020 processor. Despite that, the game plays at a stable 60 FPS on level 1 and 2.
I'll see if I can have a setting to turn off the FPS capping, but I think that's just how Game Maker handles all games made in it.
I realize how much the visibility is a problem now, I'm going to fix that ASAP along with a patch to fix the resolution. Healing would definitely be nice, I'll have repair kits available along with the ammo drops. Not sure why the single clicks don't register, are you using the minigun weapon?
Will add some screenshots too. Thank you very much for this feedback, it's extremely valuable.
Setting AlternateSyncMethod=1 moves the cap to 144 but also speeds everything up to the point it’s unplayable. Lowest dip I saw is ~75 when getting really hectic. It matches the refresh rate, so switching to 60Hz caps to 60. So my workaround is keeping 144Hz and using RTSS to cap to 60.
Clicks seem to register fine at 144 FPS but capped at 60 with RTSS I can pretty consistently make it fail. Try tapping single shots yourself, maybe my mouse is failing or RTSS cap is not ideal still. Oh, I see the cursor changing when clicking but the shot isn’t fired. Autocannon not rotary.
With AlternateSyncMethod=0, tried single monitor, 50-60-72-120-144Hz, all cap at 45. Maybe a Game Maker quirk, I don’t use it or I’d have run into it.
Right, I've just added under the options menu the ability to turn on v-sync and the alt sync method, thanks for letting me know! Still need to figure out what's causing the mouse button issue, haven't seen anyone else have it but still want to make sure its patched.
But I like destroying everything on my path until I crash.
Sorry to see that the shader is causing a problem on Linux. It's a GSLS ES shader which is the most compatible, but it seems l still need an actual Linux computer to compile a dedicated build. Thanks for playing nonetheless and the fanart!
Very cool game, the destruction is superb. Nice juice already. UI looks really good too, except the font scaling is off, some words I can't even make out. No borderless/fullscreen mode. Some utility and counterplay things to use would be nice, like smoke and flares against missiles.
The problem is that its way too hard to make things out, hard to see yourself, enemies, even bullets. I'd suggest to slather some color on the mechs and aliens, make the ground a lot darker generally.
I had fun, completed both levels. Keep it up.
Man, I didn't think anyone was actually going to take the time to ace both levels, that's awesome!
Thank you for the feedback. I'm working hard on getting a patch out to change resolutions right now; it's really stupid that I didn't code it earlier. As for the enemies, I'm going to make sure they're way more visible too, thanks!
I loved the aesthethics and polish of the game. Rotary gun is very fun to shoot.
The only problem I had was with with enemy visibility. Especially in first level since they have similar colors to the background.
There are alot of little details like kicking the cars which was pretty cool. Overall I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to where you go with this.
To small technical details:
- mouse cursor in the main menu is pretty choppy when it moves, not sure why, the gameplay is smooth
- you could add the 2x scaling option, window can be resized but it's hard to nail exact ratio and without it the window is tiny on 1440p monitor
Thank you for playing!
I definitely am going to improve the enemy visibility, I'll give them highlights and an indicator arrow so they won't blend in.
That cursor issue is really odd as the menus have the least amount of stuff going on haha, glad to hear it didn't occur when the actual gameplay was happening. Might be some compatibility issue, I'll look into it.
I'm working really hard on getting a patch out to change the resolution right now. I'm ashamed to say it, but I work with a 1366x768 display and it just didn't occur to me to add that option, oops. Thanks again!
This was the game I was most looking forward to playing, and it didn't disappoint. Looks amazing, and feels great! Can't wait to see what you add next.
My only problems were that the enemy mechs were a little hard to see and blended into the background, the same for the player mech, although that matters less. Maybe make them a brighter colour or add black and yellow caution stripes to them or something. The other thing was the end screen. It's cool that it counts up kills, damage etc, but having a button to just show the results would be a nice feature.
Thank you for playing and your kind words! I'll definitely have it so you can just push the button and it'll display everything at once, I wanted to add that but there just wasn't enough time to do that between menus. Enemy mechs are also going to be revamped, sorry they're so hard to see (guess it sorta makes sense since they're camouflage in olive drab though haha)