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or232i5 years ago (1 edit)

Stats were 2 hours 30 minutes, 1 death to flower, 25 to Sarcoph, 50 to Orobas. I played on Intended without the august attire and without using the hourglass. 

I liked the patterns and around where the challenge was at, but I think either the player's hurtbox or the projectile hitboxes are too large. I may be spoiled by most shmups having the hitboxes for bullets be much smaller than their sprites, but it doesn't feel right to me to get hit like this (closest frame I could grab from test recording):



Other small stuff: Sometimes difficult to tell exactly how tall something is. I don't think that the game tells you that the hourglass boosts attack outside of Orobas' quiz (maybe this is apparent with use, maybe it's not significant to be anything more than trivia, I wouldn't be a good judge). Last phase of flower causes frame drops. It would be nice to be able to refight bosses.

Humor and dialogue were good, movement and interacting with everything is very smooth without any jank. It's fun and I liked it.
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shru5 years ago

Hey, thanks for playing!

It sounds like you might be the player who is the most experienced with danmaku games so far, based on the success of your challenge run. So, I'll trust your judgement that the hitboxes might be a little too large and I'll have a look at things. At some point I did do some testing to make sure that the hitboxes lined up with the sprites exactly, but it's possible that some newer bullets or some changes may have thrown that off the mark. And even so, it still might feel better if I shave some pixels off of some hitboxes here and there. 

Besides the screencap you posted, were there any bullets types in particular you where felt the hitboxes were especially off? Just asking so that I can give those some extra scrutiny.

Yeah, the perspective sometimes making the height of things hard to perceive is something I'm aware of, and there are a few areas I've been meaning to tweak to make a bit more intuitive to understand. Do you recall any spots in particular which confused you?

Noted on the hourglass damage boost. I used to have it during the sort of freeze-frame moment in the Mandrake fight, but cut it because that whole sequence is already verbose and the that information seemed non-essential. I suppose throwing it in the item description would help, but I think not every player will read that. I'll think more about the right place to put that information.

Noted on the frame drops too, I still need to do a big optimization pass.

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or232i5 years ago

The large circular bullets Orobas shoots out directed at the player during phases 1&3 were the only time I felt like the hitbox was actually a bit larger than the sprite. Everything else was more or less me feeling that it was odd that everything was as it looked. While on bullets I just remembered that the start of Sarcoph's final phase is awkward. It's probably just a matter of transition though because even though the saws spawn in instantly and start orbiting around I think at least their hitboxes don't come in for a while (until they start spinning?).

The only instance of being confused at the height of things I think was the area with the 3 stalls and the treasure chest, and it was when trying to jump to the outer walls. This was only because the path from the treasure chest felt like it was leading somewhere so I tried for a while. Everywhere else it was fine, just think it could read a little better.

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shru5 years ago

Thanks, these details will be helpful. And yeah, the saws could probably really use some spawn-in animation. You're right that they're not deadly until they start spinning, though.

Ah yeah, I guess the walls around the treasure chest probably do read a lot like a secret, don't they. I put that in there because I thought it was a little bit fun to run on top of them. So I'll either make sure that they're far enough from the outer walls that nobody will make that same mistake, or I'll actually put something something up there to get...

One thing I forgot to comment on, refighting bosses. I do have some fairly novel ideas for a boss rush mode that I'd like to do eventually. I think that'll *probably* have to wait for the full game, though.

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