Big fan! Love the aesthetic. Love the China. Love the DOOM.
It's extremely, extremely similar to DOOM, actually. Strafing and holding LMB was all I needed to succeed. I would say my biggest critique is the same problem I have with DOOM; I get lost really easy. I saw you use coloured lighting to guide me to where to use keys in the ship level, which is smart! I am notoriously bad at looking for things, but I really couldn't find the green door in the streets level.
The core loop of running around and gunning dudes down is great. Your level design is solid, and I love set pieces like the cars driving in or the dumbwaiter. To my personal tastes? I think it could use a few more enemy types. Games like this live and die on enemy variety for me.
The twin dragons at the end of the ship level seems very placeholder, but the idea excites me. If you can execute on that concept in a way that's mechanically engaging and fun, I think it would be super hype. Even something simple like giving their segments separate health, and having them change colour when depleted as the dragon flies around the room. I just really love the boomer shooter in China concept, and I wanna see the idea taken to the height it deserves. "These mafia guys are transporting fucking dragons" is too good.
Minor bugs, I was able to jump out of bounds off this balcony right here, see below. Also you can still see the prompt to open doors from the wrong side after you've already opened them up on the right side. I also experienced the performance issues when shooting at walls close to the camera, I was experiencing some performance hiccups and hitching in the tutorial level as well? I think I got a hitch every time it loaded something new, since it had the "hitch when I fire my gun for the first time" issue.
I really liked how the gun felt but the game had some performance issues on my end, especially when shooting a wall with the shotgun, my entire game would drop to 2fps
Good stuff, playing through it was still fun, even with playing the two levels in previous DD. I have to admit, the mix of classic sprite graphics and the high-quality effects felt odd at first, but it grew on me eventually. What stood out with this style is that the environments were rather sparse and the level gemoetry a bit simplistic compared to the presentation. The difficulty for me was rather easy, the only time I got under 50 HP is on the hsip level when I didn't realize at first that enemies can shoot through the doors that can open one-way only. For the weapons, they're overall nice - the two outliers are the shotgun, which feels really good to use: the sound, the screen shake, the rhyhtm of the animation is perfect - the only thing is that personally I wish the spread was tighter. On the opposite end for the other, I didn't care much for the flamethrower - it doesn't really have much feedback to it, and it doesn't even have specific death animations like Blood. Speaking of though, I love the new powerup, especially that it's triggered manually after being picked up instead of on-pickup. Below are some bugs, issues and findings I've written down as I played through the demo:
- The tutorial is nice, though a bit handholdy for this genre, so perhaps keep it optional. I'm also not sure it needs the jumping part with the three columns, as the game is not really a platformer and precision jumping didn't came up that much during gameplay. - The nightclub started after the tutorial level, but after completing it my only option was to go back to the main menu instead of continuing with the next level. - Was generally missing a text somewhere on the screen that tells you what you picked up - Would be nice if weapons and ammo carried over between levels. - On the streets, you can jump out of bounds from the balcony of the building where you pick up the shotgun (jump from the railing to the top of the wall) - There's a z-fighting at one of the buildings where you jump on the roof: - The ladder movement doesn't follow the camera: looking down and pressing forward you still climb up. - The vase in the dragon room in the sewers doesn't follow the camera, you can look behind it. - The way the lighting disappears when you pick up the keys and you're left in darkness can be jarring when the area doesn't have other lights. - The tram really needs sound! Also feels like not having an enemy specifically put at the start so it can be ran over is a missed opportunity. - The lever that overlooks and operates the railway turntable is a bit too high up and doesn't have a good overlook over it - the main reason I know what it did and what to do was because I played the game before. - The dogs keep barking when they die mid-playing the sound - probably should cut off or have a specific sound when they die. - In the ship level engine room (with the big horizontal cylinders), if you fal between two cylinders the game makes you juggle like a pingpong ball: probably can be fixed by a small invisible horizontal platform.
Thanks for playing, and thanks for all the feedback. Those are on the todo list now. High quality 3d models should hopefully get destructed into lower poly ones in time, as the game gets more polished, to try and make the visuals more cohesive. More decoration will be added as well. Streets currently has areas which are way too big and need to be scaled better. I'm planning to keep the concept of weapons not carrying over between levels. I like the sandbox of needing to find weapons and ammo before being completely ready to fight anything. Shotgun needs to be a bit more reliable. Flamethrower is still rubbish. I changed ladder movement from looking up goes up, looking down goes down to minecraft ladder movement, where pressing forward goes up and back goes down. Still not perfect, but I think ladders just don't fit that well in first person video games. Will try to avoid using them for needing to go down.
I played all the playable levels and was very impressed. I like the art style and the mix of 2D and 3D is great, the guns look amazing! Amazing art aside, I like how the guns feel, especially the shotgun and it was fun to kill all the enemies. The key puzzles felt good and the levels felt fun to explore and walk around in. The only thing I think needs real change is the bullet icon on the bottom right, it should change based on your equipped weapon. Overall great theme and feel! Look forward to more!
Thanks for playing. Really happy to hear you like the art style. For quite a while, it was by far the weakest part of the game and I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull of anything decent. It's finally beginning to start to look how I imagined it. The changing ammo icon is a great idea.
I like the tutorial, it does its job without being too intrusive and it's good to get a little bit of lore.
While you're reworking levels, maybe you could also fix the perspective on some of the giant-sized rooms
The akimbo powerup is fun, firing the akimbo tommy guns lagged my game and picking up the shotgun while the akimbo was active lagged by brain, it's so unexpected to see 4 mirrored hands picking up two shotguns at once, it got a laugh out of me.
I didn't replay the other two levels since I think they're still the same.
Thanks for playing. Will get that bathroom scaled properly. The entire streets map is also awfully scaled and needs a complete overhaul. Fixing the particle lag from weapons is on the todo list. Glad you like the tutorial and akimbo.
Cars need a complete proper implementation. They don't even have working doors lol. Thanks for the drawing, I like seeing them. And thanks for playing again.
Not sure why, and it’s only your game that does this, but it defaults to the wrong sound device on launch on Linux. Almost like it’s picking the first device in the list instead of detecting the default.
Could really use an FOV setting, climbing that first ladder in the tutorial is a little disorienting.
In the boiler room on the ship you can run right up the hull of the ship despite the steep slope. If you don’t want to modify the character controller to disallow this then ought to cover it with some vertical invisible walls
I like the new UI, I think this minimal look is very effective. Would be good to work in the old wood paneling somehow though. Would be cool to multiple levels of UI like in modern Doom and Quake ports, or how Hedon has extra UI layers enabled in the DLC.
Aaaargh! I can get using E for interact instead of F, but I can’t abide scrolling “up” to get to the “next” weapon. Why the hell did everybody universally decide to do it this way after Crysis did it!?
Upon ascending the dumwaiter (fun idea btw, very Duke 3D of you) the enemies in the room all immediately unload on you which seems a bit cheap. It didn’t seem like there was a way to avoid being hit at least once.
I like the new ship level overall, there’s some fun ideas in there like the new enemies at the end. Polish it up with a bunch of art like the other levels and I think this one will be pretty good.
-New pixel text on main menu doesn't fit the style of the surrounding art at all. Or if it isn't new, then I still feel that way. In game is fine I guess since it's more pixely.
-Opening menu in game, then clicking outside of window/alt tabbing, then clicking back in causes the mouse to disappear and the only way to close the menu is to press ESC again.
-3D Car behind player at tutorial start doesn't have pixely textures, sticks out like a sore thumb. Maybe it's just the texel density.
-I get what I assume are shader compilation stutters when picking up, and then again when shooting the pistol. and yet again when shooting the red targets in tutorial. Please try to precompile at launch or something, especially if your game is already a public demo on steam(idk).
-Beat tutorial, only other thing to say is that it runs terribly, way worse than the last time I played. I tested level 1 and it's silky smooth, so idk why that is, I mean it's the first thing a player may experience.
-Skipped to Ship since I haven't played it. Enemy shot me through the blue door, which felts kind of unintended, but maybe it is.
-Dragon snake things are neat, but their body broke apart and partly seemed stuck to the ground until they moved a little in the air in which the body parts caught back up.
-Ship level design seems fine enough. Of the three though, it didn't have the same fun level design feel. Only part that was interesting was the dumbwaiter. Also, it has forced motion blur for some reason, unlike the other levels. Maybe that's why the tutorial ran so bad, default post fx.
Thanks for the feedback. All of those are now on the to do list. Ship is basically fucked, since I put in new doors and didn't add shooting or enemy visibility collision on them, so it ruins the whole map flow. Proper optimization is still in progress, with nightclub being the testing ground.
The game was unplayable for me for some reason. I kept trying to use wasd but it felt like 99% of my inputs were lost. Not sure if it's just me or if you have uploaded a broken build.
Damn, that's not good to see. Would you be able to send me your specs and peripherals to see if it can be narrowed down? Have you played the game previously? Haven't massively changed the input in a way I would expect to cause this.
Comments
Big fan! Love the aesthetic. Love the China. Love the DOOM.
It's extremely, extremely similar to DOOM, actually. Strafing and holding LMB was all I needed to succeed. I would say my biggest critique is the same problem I have with DOOM; I get lost really easy. I saw you use coloured lighting to guide me to where to use keys in the ship level, which is smart! I am notoriously bad at looking for things, but I really couldn't find the green door in the streets level.
The core loop of running around and gunning dudes down is great. Your level design is solid, and I love set pieces like the cars driving in or the dumbwaiter. To my personal tastes? I think it could use a few more enemy types. Games like this live and die on enemy variety for me.
The twin dragons at the end of the ship level seems very placeholder, but the idea excites me. If you can execute on that concept in a way that's mechanically engaging and fun, I think it would be super hype. Even something simple like giving their segments separate health, and having them change colour when depleted as the dragon flies around the room. I just really love the boomer shooter in China concept, and I wanna see the idea taken to the height it deserves. "These mafia guys are transporting fucking dragons" is too good.
Minor bugs, I was able to jump out of bounds off this balcony right here, see below. Also you can still see the prompt to open doors from the wrong side after you've already opened them up on the right side. I also experienced the performance issues when shooting at walls close to the camera, I was experiencing some performance hiccups and hitching in the tutorial level as well? I think I got a hitch every time it loaded something new, since it had the "hitch when I fire my gun for the first time" issue.
I really liked how the gun felt but the game had some performance issues on my end, especially when shooting a wall with the shotgun, my entire game would drop to 2fps
also would be cool if it had an fov option
Good stuff, playing through it was still fun, even with playing the two levels in previous DD. I have to admit, the mix of classic sprite graphics and the high-quality effects felt odd at first, but it grew on me eventually. What stood out with this style is that the environments were rather sparse and the level gemoetry a bit simplistic compared to the presentation. The difficulty for me was rather easy, the only time I got under 50 HP is on the hsip level when I didn't realize at first that enemies can shoot through the doors that can open one-way only.
For the weapons, they're overall nice - the two outliers are the shotgun, which feels really good to use: the sound, the screen shake, the rhyhtm of the animation is perfect - the only thing is that personally I wish the spread was tighter. On the opposite end for the other, I didn't care much for the flamethrower - it doesn't really have much feedback to it, and it doesn't even have specific death animations like Blood. Speaking of though, I love the new powerup, especially that it's triggered manually after being picked up instead of on-pickup.
Below are some bugs, issues and findings I've written down as I played through the demo:
- The tutorial is nice, though a bit handholdy for this genre, so perhaps keep it optional. I'm also not sure it needs the jumping part with the three columns, as the game is not really a platformer and precision jumping didn't came up that much during gameplay.
- The nightclub started after the tutorial level, but after completing it my only option was to go back to the main menu instead of continuing with the next level.
- Was generally missing a text somewhere on the screen that tells you what you picked up
- Would be nice if weapons and ammo carried over between levels.
- On the streets, you can jump out of bounds from the balcony of the building where you pick up the shotgun (jump from the railing to the top of the wall)
- There's a z-fighting at one of the buildings where you jump on the roof:
- The ladder movement doesn't follow the camera: looking down and pressing forward you still climb up.
- The vase in the dragon room in the sewers doesn't follow the camera, you can look behind it.
- The way the lighting disappears when you pick up the keys and you're left in darkness can be jarring when the area doesn't have other lights.
- The tram really needs sound! Also feels like not having an enemy specifically put at the start so it can be ran over is a missed opportunity.
- The lever that overlooks and operates the railway turntable is a bit too high up and doesn't have a good overlook over it - the main reason I know what it did and what to do was because I played the game before.
- The dogs keep barking when they die mid-playing the sound - probably should cut off or have a specific sound when they die.
- In the ship level engine room (with the big horizontal cylinders), if you fal between two cylinders the game makes you juggle like a pingpong ball: probably can be fixed by a small invisible horizontal platform.
Thanks for playing, and thanks for all the feedback. Those are on the todo list now. High quality 3d models should hopefully get destructed into lower poly ones in time, as the game gets more polished, to try and make the visuals more cohesive. More decoration will be added as well. Streets currently has areas which are way too big and need to be scaled better. I'm planning to keep the concept of weapons not carrying over between levels. I like the sandbox of needing to find weapons and ammo before being completely ready to fight anything. Shotgun needs to be a bit more reliable. Flamethrower is still rubbish. I changed ladder movement from looking up goes up, looking down goes down to minecraft ladder movement, where pressing forward goes up and back goes down. Still not perfect, but I think ladders just don't fit that well in first person video games. Will try to avoid using them for needing to go down.
I played all the playable levels and was very impressed. I like the art style and the mix of 2D and 3D is great, the guns look amazing! Amazing art aside, I like how the guns feel, especially the shotgun and it was fun to kill all the enemies. The key puzzles felt good and the levels felt fun to explore and walk around in. The only thing I think needs real change is the bullet icon on the bottom right, it should change based on your equipped weapon. Overall great theme and feel! Look forward to more!
Thanks for playing. Really happy to hear you like the art style. For quite a while, it was by far the weakest part of the game and I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull of anything decent. It's finally beginning to start to look how I imagined it. The changing ammo icon is a great idea.
nice to see good progress.
i like how you can sneak up on the AI
health kits feel pretty abundant in the streets level
dogs kind of keep barking even a second or two after dying
there's a bug with the collision shape of flamethrower guys not disappearing after killing them
it would be nice to have a more fitting item pickup sfx
Thanks for playing. All those are on the todo list. Streets will be getting an overhaul next as its got some problems.
I like the tutorial, it does its job without being too intrusive and it's good to get a little bit of lore.
While you're reworking levels, maybe you could also fix the perspective on some of the giant-sized rooms
The akimbo powerup is fun, firing the akimbo tommy guns lagged my game and picking up the shotgun while the akimbo was active lagged by brain, it's so unexpected to see 4 mirrored hands picking up two shotguns at once, it got a laugh out of me.
I didn't replay the other two levels since I think they're still the same.
Thanks for playing. Will get that bathroom scaled properly. The entire streets map is also awfully scaled and needs a complete overhaul. Fixing the particle lag from weapons is on the todo list. Glad you like the tutorial and akimbo.
My favorite puppy murder simulator is back
>Car need better sound
>I like it
>It need a better ost
Cars need a complete proper implementation. They don't even have working doors lol. Thanks for the drawing, I like seeing them. And thanks for playing again.
Nice to see this again! Keep it up!
Not sure why, and it’s only your game that does this, but it defaults to the wrong sound device on launch on Linux. Almost like it’s picking the first device in the list instead of detecting the default.
Could really use an FOV setting, climbing that first ladder in the tutorial is a little disorienting.
In the boiler room on the ship you can run right up the hull of the ship despite the steep slope. If you don’t want to modify the character controller to disallow this then ought to cover it with some vertical invisible walls
I like the new UI, I think this minimal look is very effective. Would be good to work in the old wood paneling somehow though. Would be cool to multiple levels of UI like in modern Doom and Quake ports, or how Hedon has extra UI layers enabled in the DLC.
Aaaargh! I can get using E for interact instead of F, but I can’t abide scrolling “up” to get to the “next” weapon. Why the hell did everybody universally decide to do it this way after Crysis did it!?
Upon ascending the dumwaiter (fun idea btw, very Duke 3D of you) the enemies in the room all immediately unload on you which seems a bit cheap. It didn’t seem like there was a way to avoid being hit at least once.
I like the new ship level overall, there’s some fun ideas in there like the new enemies at the end. Polish it up with a bunch of art like the other levels and I think this one will be pretty good.
-New pixel text on main menu doesn't fit the style of the surrounding art at all. Or if it isn't new, then I still feel that way. In game is fine I guess since it's more pixely.
-Opening menu in game, then clicking outside of window/alt tabbing, then clicking back in causes the mouse to disappear and the only way to close the menu is to press ESC again.
-3D Car behind player at tutorial start doesn't have pixely textures, sticks out like a sore thumb. Maybe it's just the texel density.
-I get what I assume are shader compilation stutters when picking up, and then again when shooting the pistol. and yet again when shooting the red targets in tutorial. Please try to precompile at launch or something, especially if your game is already a public demo on steam(idk).
-Beat tutorial, only other thing to say is that it runs terribly, way worse than the last time I played. I tested level 1 and it's silky smooth, so idk why that is, I mean it's the first thing a player may experience.
-Skipped to Ship since I haven't played it. Enemy shot me through the blue door, which felts kind of unintended, but maybe it is.
-Dragon snake things are neat, but their body broke apart and partly seemed stuck to the ground until they moved a little in the air in which the body parts caught back up.
-Ship level design seems fine enough. Of the three though, it didn't have the same fun level design feel. Only part that was interesting was the dumbwaiter. Also, it has forced motion blur for some reason, unlike the other levels. Maybe that's why the tutorial ran so bad, default post fx.
Guess that's it, keep up the work.
Thanks for the feedback. All of those are now on the to do list. Ship is basically fucked, since I put in new doors and didn't add shooting or enemy visibility collision on them, so it ruins the whole map flow. Proper optimization is still in progress, with nightclub being the testing ground.
Video Feedback:
The game was unplayable for me for some reason. I kept trying to use wasd but it felt like 99% of my inputs were lost. Not sure if it's just me or if you have uploaded a broken build.Damn, that's not good to see. Would you be able to send me your specs and peripherals to see if it can be narrowed down? Have you played the game previously? Haven't massively changed the input in a way I would expect to cause this.
Windows 10 Pro
GTX 1660 Super
AMD Ryzen 6 2600
First time playing the game