If you want to make this platforming focused, you really going to need to improve player handling and animations, especially when moving about as a human character.
Performance is very erratic, there's a lot of stuttering.
Never played Messiah, so the idea is very new to me. I dig it a lot, but... It's very jank. It almost hanged up on me until I changed resolution from 4k to something smaller. It was still janky, but playable (up until the platforming part)
I saw a lot of neat features, like the actual cameras on the doors, weapon switching. The AI kinda bugged out on me - it kept shooting at the place where I was when I posessed a new character (they ignored the new character). Shooting wasn't good, maybe it's due to the game running poorly - but it took ages for me to kill someone.
It's a very rough prototype, needs a lot of polish. Platforming messes you up if the game runs poorly.
I'm only familiar with the Ross Game Dungeon video on Messiah but I definitely want to see more games like this. I think with this kind of game the level design is make or break for whether its fun or not. I really like the little sandbox and I thought the door opening with the camera was really impressive. The shooting completely broke for me and every character ended up invincible and T-posing but the guns felt nice. Platforming on the pistons kind of sucked since the player bounces constantly while it moves down, it reminded me of the teeth platforming puzzle in System Shock 2. If you can set up a few fun shootouts that'll be an improvement on Messiah.
I noticed that the game stutters when you fire any type of gun for the first time, which I'm pretty sure happens because Godot is compiling the particle effects / shaders when they are first called. You can preload and instantiate them while the game is first loading to prevent this but it does make your initial load a bit longer.
Nice concept, reminded me of Messiah as well. I saw that softlock-issue is something you already considered, that's probably the biggest pitfalls for this kind of game.
Jumping felt a little finnicky at times, for example I consistently missed the jump from the ramp to the room with the multiple pistons. The character also doesn't follow the moving platforms correctly, when they're going down you "bounce" with gravity instead of staying on the surface, and occasionally the sideways-moving platforms tried to throw me off as well.
There are a few places where the camera clipped through the geometry, like at the roof of the room past the first locked door, or the vent section.
I assume you can only posess enemies that are unaware, but I haven't seen any indication of whether possession is possible or not, as the circle indicator still shows up when soldiers are shooting at you.
Combat feels fine, I imagine that's not the main focus of the game, though if you want to add dedicated shooting sections it could probably use some polish, as right everyone is rather spongy and there is not much feedback for getting hit. If you hold RMB a bit too long for picking up guns also makes the character drop them immediately afterwards as well. Currently reloading makes everyone T-pose with only their wrists moving.
I don't think the tutorial explains what's the top left bar is - I assume it's some sort of visibility meter for stealth?
Some better feedback for the puzzles would be nice as well. Some doors are only opened by some enemies, but since I didn't try opening the first locked door with the soldier it was not confirmed with me that the portrait shown after unsuccessful attempt is the character I need until I found the officer dude that you use to unlock the second door. I also didn't check the fans before getting to the console, so I only realized that was what turned them on after I went back to the game the second time.
Apart from the initial stutters at the beginning (which is likely shader compilation), the game froze for me once and crashed to desktop another time out of the blue.
Having sections where you're forced to stay in alien form due to size was interesting, perhaps giving the aliens some other basic abilities to mix things up could work well.
Played on Linux, seemed to work no worse than Windows, from Ryan’s post.
Thought it was fun, obviously early prototype, but with plenty good approaches, like it can turn into a good proper game. Besides all the issues you can see in the video, I found that jumping on the platforms that go up-and-down was kinda doing nothing.
Took about 20 seconds to show the Godot logo, and that logo stayed for about 10 seconds, Windows thought the program was crashing.
All I saw was a grey screen and the Windows taskbar after that, almost crashed and then the game snapped in.
When landing a jump as the ground slug it snaps to the ground rather than landing naturally, jerks the camera.
Firing the first two bullets stuttered the game for 5 seconds each. The first ragdoll also stuttered the game for 5 seconds.
The unique control scheme is neat with the shooting, I like it. Didn't notice a time I would ever drop a weapon.
I'd like to know how to unpossess a character earlier.
If I press LMB and RMB at the same time while possessing someone they get stuck in an aim pose but drop their gun, fixes itself when I pick up a gun again.
Game stuttered for 10 seconds when leaving the first area and going through the hall with the boxes.
The room with the boxes has a dead drop that just looks like a shadow on the floor, add some sort of border maybe.
Almost zero air control makes the jumps off the pistons annoying.
It seems that velocity isn't retained when jumping off one of the white moving platforms, I could never make it to the piston in the corner and gave up.
Nice little Messiah-like I guess, use a more serious engine in the future.
The stuttering was unbearable and never let up. You should try prototyping some smaller rooms to test and experiment with different possession mechanics and puzzles you can do, right now it's pretty bare-bones, it feels like I'm playing a third-person shooter where the designer didn't put much effort into polishing the third-person controls because that's not the point of the game, but 99% of the time you are possessing someone, and the slug is very very boring to play when they should potentially have more navigation options than the humans.
Comments
Never played Messiah, so the idea is very new to me. I dig it a lot, but... It's very jank. It almost hanged up on me until I changed resolution from 4k to something smaller. It was still janky, but playable (up until the platforming part)
I saw a lot of neat features, like the actual cameras on the doors, weapon switching. The AI kinda bugged out on me - it kept shooting at the place where I was when I posessed a new character (they ignored the new character). Shooting wasn't good, maybe it's due to the game running poorly - but it took ages for me to kill someone.
It's a very rough prototype, needs a lot of polish. Platforming messes you up if the game runs poorly.
I'm only familiar with the Ross Game Dungeon video on Messiah but I definitely want to see more games like this. I think with this kind of game the level design is make or break for whether its fun or not. I really like the little sandbox and I thought the door opening with the camera was really impressive. The shooting completely broke for me and every character ended up invincible and T-posing but the guns felt nice. Platforming on the pistons kind of sucked since the player bounces constantly while it moves down, it reminded me of the teeth platforming puzzle in System Shock 2. If you can set up a few fun shootouts that'll be an improvement on Messiah.
I noticed that the game stutters when you fire any type of gun for the first time, which I'm pretty sure happens because Godot is compiling the particle effects / shaders when they are first called. You can preload and instantiate them while the game is first loading to prevent this but it does make your initial load a bit longer.
Nice concept, reminded me of Messiah as well. I saw that softlock-issue is something you already considered, that's probably the biggest pitfalls for this kind of game.
Jumping felt a little finnicky at times, for example I consistently missed the jump from the ramp to the room with the multiple pistons. The character also doesn't follow the moving platforms correctly, when they're going down you "bounce" with gravity instead of staying on the surface, and occasionally the sideways-moving platforms tried to throw me off as well.
There are a few places where the camera clipped through the geometry, like at the roof of the room past the first locked door, or the vent section.
I assume you can only posess enemies that are unaware, but I haven't seen any indication of whether possession is possible or not, as the circle indicator still shows up when soldiers are shooting at you.
Combat feels fine, I imagine that's not the main focus of the game, though if you want to add dedicated shooting sections it could probably use some polish, as right everyone is rather spongy and there is not much feedback for getting hit. If you hold RMB a bit too long for picking up guns also makes the character drop them immediately afterwards as well. Currently reloading makes everyone T-pose with only their wrists moving.
I don't think the tutorial explains what's the top left bar is - I assume it's some sort of visibility meter for stealth?
Some better feedback for the puzzles would be nice as well. Some doors are only opened by some enemies, but since I didn't try opening the first locked door with the soldier it was not confirmed with me that the portrait shown after unsuccessful attempt is the character I need until I found the officer dude that you use to unlock the second door. I also didn't check the fans before getting to the console, so I only realized that was what turned them on after I went back to the game the second time.
Apart from the initial stutters at the beginning (which is likely shader compilation), the game froze for me once and crashed to desktop another time out of the blue.
Having sections where you're forced to stay in alien form due to size was interesting, perhaps giving the aliens some other basic abilities to mix things up could work well.
Best of luck for futher development!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2243980487
Played on Linux, seemed to work no worse than Windows, from Ryan’s post.
Thought it was fun, obviously early prototype, but with plenty good approaches, like it can turn into a good proper game. Besides all the issues you can see in the video, I found that jumping on the platforms that go up-and-down was kinda doing nothing.
Keep it up!
Took about 20 seconds to show the Godot logo, and that logo stayed for about 10 seconds, Windows thought the program was crashing.
All I saw was a grey screen and the Windows taskbar after that, almost crashed and then the game snapped in.
When landing a jump as the ground slug it snaps to the ground rather than landing naturally, jerks the camera.
Firing the first two bullets stuttered the game for 5 seconds each. The first ragdoll also stuttered the game for 5 seconds.
The unique control scheme is neat with the shooting, I like it. Didn't notice a time I would ever drop a weapon.
I'd like to know how to unpossess a character earlier.
If I press LMB and RMB at the same time while possessing someone they get stuck in an aim pose but drop their gun, fixes itself when I pick up a gun again.
Game stuttered for 10 seconds when leaving the first area and going through the hall with the boxes.
The room with the boxes has a dead drop that just looks like a shadow on the floor, add some sort of border maybe.
Almost zero air control makes the jumps off the pistons annoying.
It seems that velocity isn't retained when jumping off one of the white moving platforms, I could never make it to the piston in the corner and gave up.
Nice little Messiah-like I guess, use a more serious engine in the future.
The stuttering was unbearable and never let up. You should try prototyping some smaller rooms to test and experiment with different possession mechanics and puzzles you can do, right now it's pretty bare-bones, it feels like I'm playing a third-person shooter where the designer didn't put much effort into polishing the third-person controls because that's not the point of the game, but 99% of the time you are possessing someone, and the slug is very very boring to play when they should potentially have more navigation options than the humans.
Linux build is untested, curious if it even works.