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SPECXHT1 year ago

Interesting game. Played with moving orb and enemies attacking player. Eyes can be really hard to see, especially when they're on the ground so you can't tell if they're dead or not. I know you can turn on the halos in the options but it seems to be intended to play without it. The enemies didn't really pose any threat at all after figuring out how the combat system works. Blocking feels really awkward with the free movement and how you can block 360 deg, maybe a lock on would work good for the game or having you face the closest enemy when blocking or something. Light attack felt pretty useless, I only used heavy. If you hold right mouse button and then shift you can slide around (no animations) while holding a heavy attack. I like how the camera pans around when paused.

You can bug out the animations by mashing some combination of space, shift, and right mouse button:

https://files.catbox.moe/tjlyu9.webm

Only goes back to normal after restarting the game.

Enemies can jump on top of you and stand there, they seem to stop moving then. You can also get on top of them and their AI bugs out:

https://files.catbox.moe/64f8zx.webm

There is something wrong with the shadows, some Z fighting in places, and the player and enemies look like they hover a bit most of the time. The IK on stairs work pretty well!

https://files.catbox.moe/bkumoi.webm

I really hate the camera... Sorry.

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SuperUltraMuffin1 year ago

Hey, thanks for playing! 

The eyes are a work in progress - they've got a glow to make them visible even from behind, but I added it before I gave them hair, so now it's a little hard to see. Probably oughta make it bigger but the current hair is itself a placeholder. The game's supposed to have moments where you wonder whether an enemy is actually dead or whether you should try to finish it off, but right now it's a little too common.

Individual enemies aren't particularly dangerous, yeah - these are the lowest-level mooks and they're still not quite playing with a full toolbox. Though if you still felt that way past wave 5 or so then wow, I'm impressed.

Blocking, yeah, it's gonna need some fine tuning.

Sprinting speed bonus still applying while holding heavy is a silly oversight on my part, will fix right up. I thought I'd found all the situations where you could get stuck in animations, but I guess not.

Dealing with entities getting on top of each other is still something I'm not entirely sure how I wanna handle. Stunning the lower entity and shoving it sideways is probably the simplest solution.

I think some/most of the appearance of floating is due to the shadows messing up. But yeah, lots to do there, too.

Could you quantify what you don't like about the camera? And please don't apologize.

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SPECXHT1 year ago
Though if you still felt that way past wave 5 or so then wow, I'm impressed.

Well as far as I can tell all you need to do is roundhouse kick them as they run up to you and run away if you miss. Even if you get hit you can just run away and you won't die. The hardest part was probably fighting the camera to get good angles. Here's a vid of what I mean:

https://files.catbox.moe/1cgzga.webm

I guess it would be more difficult if I had set them to attack the orb too though.

Could you quantify what you don't like about the camera? And please don't apologize.

Basically its hard to get it too look where you want it to and it feel inconsistent and changes pitch sometimes by itself for example when you wouldn't expect it to. Like running in a straight line. Your character is most often not in the center and when turning it it just feels awful when it turns around some random pivot point. It lazily pans to the sides while you can barely see whats in front of your character.  It all makes it hard to gauge distances with so weird control of the camera, which isn't really a good thing in a fighting game.

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SuperUltraMuffin1 year ago

...I never once thought to try just sprinting away when you get hit. Oh man.

Yeah no that definitely makes it a lot easier to get out of a bad situation than I'd intended. Thanks a lot for pointing it out.


That's all very fair criticism of the camera. I've got a lot of ambitious ideas for how it's supposed to work, but they're not working out quite like I'd hoped. I'll add an option that takes it down to something Dark Souls-style simple and predictable.

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SPECXHT1 year ago
...I never once thought to try just sprinting away when you get hit. Oh man.

Hahaha yeah that's why its so good to have play testers.  It'll be a problem if you're always faster than enemies and there not being any ranged. But having something you need to protect like the orb would make the strategy more difficult. From what I've gathered you're not sure where you're going with the game.  I think it should be one of your top priorities to figure out now because of to balance and design the game will depend on it going forward. So have a singular vision for it and remove all the sandboxy options like what the enemies attack etc.

One idea would be to make it level based, have the enemies attack both you and the orb, and the orb going on a set path through levels. So the goal would be to protect the orb until it reaches the end of every level. Could have you unlock different moves and stuff if you want to go that route, secrets and stuff to find out in the dark if you dare run from the orb about, etc.

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SuperUltraMuffin1 year ago

Well, the main thing is that you probably shouldn't get your sprint bonus when you're recovering from a hit; that's a simple oversight on my part that makes the intended ways of surviving a mistake long enough to recover (namely dodging and blocking) completely superfluous. The other thing is AI improvements, which is a little more complicated, but nothing impossible.

I do have a pretty decent idea of the final overall game flow; with the orb leading you through ~5 procedurally generated levels/areas of ~5 waves, with a boss fight/wave at the end of each.

I know I'm gonna want both sections where you have to split your attention to defend the orb and sections where you only have to defend yourself, which is why there's the mode select in the current prototype. The finished game won't let you pick in regular gameplay.

The things I'm still not sure of is stuff like "how smart should the orb be" and "how do I wanna implement a damage system for the orb".

I think I probably won't have any use for the orb-attack-only mode in the finished game, but it's there for testing purposes for now.

I do have ideas for unlockables, but it'll probably be lore/backstory and costumes/cosmetics, rather than character progression.
But all that's way in the future right now. I got basic mechanics to implement, like y'know, walking animations.

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