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Deathland Drifters Prototype's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Aesthetic (Art & Audio) | #9 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Interesting Gameplay / Fun | #18 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Likely to Release | #18 | 3.200 | 3.200 |
| Overall | #18 | 3.150 | 3.150 |
| Bug Free | #27 | 2.800 | 2.800 |
Ranked from 5 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
>What was the most frustrating moment or aspect?
This game needs a lock on the mouse. I tried the web and downloadable windows version, and I think my experience would've changed alot if the mouse couldn't leave the game window. As is, it's frustrating.
>What was your favorite moment or aspect?
Splitting an enemy ship in half with my railgun made me laugh.
>Was there anything you wanted to do, but couldn't?
I wanted to be able to snipe or hit enemies before they notice me, and have the hit be the first time they notice me.
>If you could change, add, or remove any 1 thing, what would it be?
The camera move whenever you take control of the 2 front guns was so slow that I struggled to use the guns against the smaller ships. This probably relates to the general mouse control difficulty I was having. I'd basically line up a shot on the small ships, move to target them with my faster firing guns, and by the time I was able to actually use the guns the target ship would be at an angle I couldn't easily turn to and I'd have to back out and line up again.Thanks for the feedback. We plan to implement the mouse lock in the polish phase, so it's good to hear that many people are asking for it and that it would help out their experience. My main concern was not being able to unlock the mouse, so until we get the pause functionality working again (which would unlock the mouse), we decided against locking the mouse (since then the only way to regain control would be an alt tab or hard closing the program - considering you may be playing in the browser, the alt tab may not be very intuitive). It's the top priority on our list for sure since we want it to be very easy to control and aim.
I will adjust the timings on the camera transitions - I agree that some are very slow and could be sped up or turned into hard cuts instead. Regarding the turret and railgun timings, at present you cannot fire the turrets while the railgun is on cooldown - this was a deliberate design change but is unintuitive to users, and with no audiovisual feedback letting you know that you cannot fire due to being on cooldown, it can lead to frustrations. I plan to separate them so that they can be fired independently and not be reliant on the other being off cooldown, and possibly implementing some kind of feedback if the user tries to fire while on cooldown (ie some kind of error sound and a red glow around the cooldown indicator).
There will be UI control for the aim mode to let you know that you can use the mouse to turn the ship in aim mode as well, not to mention strafe in any direction (which is currently bugged and not strafing based on current direction). The mouse aiming will also work better once the mouse is locked to the screen.
The railgun has infinite range - so if you can line up a shot against an enemy, you should be able to hit them (they'll be aggroed to you too if they didn't die).
Glad you liked splitting ships with the railgun - I laughed myself the first time we had it working. It's also fun to finish them with the turrets because the ship parts and projectiles have physics, so you can shoot around their pieces before they disappear!
Amazing graphics and music, I think it must be hard to see the whole game when not multiplaying, but driving is enjoyable, although I had the most fun firing from the turrets. Great entry, kudos
Very good progress! I really liked the music shift when you get into combat, as well as the sound effect when your railgun is ready. The ship was easy to control and I could feel its weight going around turns vs. drifting (I think, see below). Unfortunately I played alone so I feel like I (as of yet) have missed out on using the turret.
Some feedback:
- I'm still not super sure how the railgun works, I never saw any actual projectiles or hit the enemy. I also hit right mouse button at some point which brought up an aiming reticle but didn't seem to do much else?
- I feel like holding down space to make turns while going at speed made you turn faster, but a sand kick-up or some other feedback would be super helpful and satisfying.
- The art style is super clean and stylish, but the reflection on the shady side of the dunes was a bit much.
I wish I could play this game with a group to give it an actual fair judgement, making a multiplayer game is super ambitious. Unfortunately it's pretty hard to organize anything like that with my schedule, but maybe when the polish version comes out we can get a group together and try it!
Thanks for trying it out again! Unfortunately, the visual effects graphs we used in Unity are unsupported by WebGL and won't be feasible at all until WebGPU is developed (something like years away), so you miss out on exactly the feedback you mentioned (railgun firing visual, sand kickup, boost smoke, explosion when killing an enemy) when playing it in the browser. They do work in the .exe though!
Not sure we will do anything to address it in the polish phase, we would need to make hard modeled visuals instead and use some other system to get them to display, and the HTML5 version is mostly an easy way to get exposed to the game rather than the intended way (it has other limitations too).
You're correct about the drift (spacebar) making you turn faster! It halves your max velocity, doubles your max angular velocity, and decreases angular drag so you can get a sharper turn. The sand kick up happens all the time but you can really see it when doing a drift. I might do something like add a couple extra dust emitters that activate only when you drift so it really kicks up some dirt.
We'll try to look into the sand shader again to address the reflection on the dark side, thanks for the feedback.
Multiplayer unfortunately is still not really where we would want it to be and we plan to focus on that mostly this week. You can join a lobby together but non-hosts (it seems) are really wobbly unless they mount a turret and there isn't much that is synced between players besides the ships (you can't see other players for some reason, you can't see them shooting sometimes, enemy health and position is not the same). But you can get in a lobby together and ride around in the ship while someone else drives!
Oh, I didn't realize there's an .exe. I'll be sure to play that one when the polish version comes out, I've never liked playing in WebGL anyway. :D