Post by WildObsidian in Vinculike (18+) - Prototype comments

Viewing post in Vinculike (18+) - Prototype comments

This game is ridiculously addictive and I like it a lot.

I wanted to comment earlier, but had account issues. Well, what I would have written then would embarrass me now.

Now for actual feedback...

Maybe there should be a limit to the number of guards that can be on one floor. On my first save file, I got 6 girls stuck on floor 7, which meant that I had to face 6 guards before I could rescue them. Now that I properly understand the enemies and concepts like numinescence, it's not so scary anymore, but back then I felt like it was close to impossible. Especially since guards are noisy and tend to attract each other, forcing you to face multiple at once.

This game could also be called "The quest for good shoes". Do shoes really have to be obliterated when worn off? They can be manually fixed and they will drop in a broken state when broken due to an attack, so why not when worn off?

The controls are very rough, stealth attacks are extremely unreliable due to sometimes just not triggering and the character often rolling into the completely wrong direction or getting stuck on nothing, but I guess it's an early state of the game.

When I first played, I thought stealth was everything, any more than 3 noise being unplayable. You take damage for being exposed and/or not wearing shoes, but that amount wasn't too bad. I would still recommend new players to play like this, but once you get into the late tens, the damage from being exposed piles up and there are better options for stealth than being exposed(plus many enemies have numinescence vision). Now I think noise as high as 12 can be tolerable. Stealth is good and saves weapon durability, but if you know the enemies well enough, you can use some careful maneuvering or stamina for dodge rolls to take them out head-on.

That being said, if your noise is 1 or 0 and you can just rush through a corridor, instantly killing all enemies on the way, it's extremely satisfying.

Resting is currently very annoying, but a good way to level up, I guess. Also there seems to be a bug where sometimes all enemies will just stand in front of you and wait while you are resting. Kind of creepy, but beneficial.

EugeneLoza1 year ago(+1)

Huge thank you! :) I’m very busy right now, I’ll try to reply in detail a bit later. In short: indeed, you’ve mentioned most of the issues that I really want to fix, I’ll try to be more specific in a few hours.

EugeneLoza1 year ago(+1)

Horribly sorry for the delay. I’ll try to catch up now :)

On my first save file, I got 6 girls stuck on floor 7, which meant that I had to face 6 guards before I could rescue them

Yes, this is not how it’s supposed to work. Currently a lot of systems are in “temporary” state, and several characters captured per level is one of those. My overall idea is that when a character is captured at a level where there is another prisoner - the heroine will be moved up a level, maybe more. This way “more than one prisoner per level” will be rather a fallback than a regular situation.

Actually, I guess it’s already time to implement this feature. That shouldn’t be hard.

Do shoes really have to be obliterated when worn off?

Overall I wanted to be a “small but important micromanagement”. But eventually I absolutely agree - this feature is instead just annoying. I’ll change it asap.

often rolling into the completely wrong direction or getting stuck on nothing

Indeed, this is a very very annoying bug, or rather a set of bugs. I hope I’ve finally found the reason for “stuck on nothing” bug - it’s not too quick to fix it, but the fix itself hopefully will be relatively trivial. The map also should be much “smoother”, this will leave less places for the character to get stuck on - but this requires a bit different generation algorithm (I’ve got it planned, but first I want to make the basic gameplay systems right).

Resting is currently very annoying

Yes, I’m aware of that. And not yet sure what to do with this issue. First the resting should be dangerous and “fully rested” next to impossible, and it works. Second, resting should be next to impossible on some levels, and it also works. But in the end on average instead of being fun - it’s rather annoying (because requires wasting a lot of time, instead of exploring a new map - fighting on an already explored one). I’m not yet sure how to fix this issue. Ideas are welcome :D

a bug where sometimes all enemies will just stand in front of you and wait while you are resting

Yes, I know about this bug, but I couldn’t figure out how to fix it so far :)

Thanks again for your feedback!

(Now for your more recent posts…)

WildObsidian1 year ago

Now what's the best way to keep the feedback organized without an ever growing tree of threads? There's always a bit more to say~

My idea with the guards problem would be to have a maximum number per floor, maybe scaling based on floor size and just skip extra girls if too many, but dropping them a little deeper in also works.

Resting is not as annoying anymore since the addition of sleeping bags, I can reliably fully restore my stats on any level that has one, though it made me overconfident.

As for stuff related to the Wrapper update:

I do in fact roll up to the exit to camp when I have a sleeping bag. It consumes dozens of max stamina, but that doesn't matter since I can regain like 200 between reinforcements.

I found the debug menu by accident before, but I kinda don't wanna use it since my Vinculopedia is like 98% complete now and everything had been done organically so far.

In my experience I get like 1 catsuit, normal or loose for every 5 of every other item, so I guess I must be unlucky. But I don't see a reason to wear a loose catsuit, the stats are terrible... I would only wear it to test Living Suits. I guess it has higher def than the normal catsuit, but if the normal catsuit had 0% Def, that would be a buff anyway imo.

Unrelated feedback:

I would like my camp to be a bit more lively, but I don't wanna summon more girls and sacrifice them to the abyss just to get new camp music, plus it gets harder and harder to get them back out, since there's no way to rescue a girl without getting another stuck at least as deep... Is that an integral design decision? That one girl must always be stuck as deep as possible?

Are features like "Way to move girls back a few floors/flee from the dungeon(Like in The Enchanted Cave)" likely to be added?

Or a way to get a nice camp that acts as a display of the player's skill, rather than a monument of their repeated failure?

More reliable ways to execute sneak attacks? Like lock-on or lurking behind corners when an approaching enemy is known(Would probably makes Will-o-wisps a lot less scary)?

EugeneLoza1 year ago (1 edit) (+1)

Now what’s the best way to keep the feedback organized without an ever growing tree of threads?

Personally for me the best way is through GitLab issues: https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues - you’ll need an account there, but you can then easily comment on issues, start new ones and track their progress. E.g. you can see the two issues at the top I’ve added yesterday according to your feedback :) Note that some of your feedback hits already existing issues.

I can reliably fully restore my stats on any level that has one

Oh, I don’t think that’ll work :D So far in “real game” I’ve managed to encounter only one sleeping bag, and while indeed they give a great “risk/reward” ratio, but still the risk is way too high (primarily because one has to put off a weapon, which will most likely be picked up by a Vacuum Cleaner in a few seconds of resting).

everything had been done organically so far.

Indeed, but as I’ve mentioned, not all of the game systems are in-place yet. First of all now we’re lacking crafting and lift, which while more or less ok for “short game” but can become boring for longer sessions. That’s why I highly recommend starting from deeper levels :) Arghhh… I just need to add at least one boss monster and ability to unlock elevator endpoints. It’s not trivial but shouldn’t be too hard and it’s hurting at the moment :)

That one girl must always be stuck as deep as possible?

Yes, overall there will be one point where the girl can return from without getting captured. But it’s the very end-game, before the final boss. Also “missions” will also have “success” condition when all participants will return to the settlement on success. I really hope I’ll start making missions this year.

“Way to move girls back a few floors/flee from the dungeon(Like in The Enchanted Cave)”

Ah, the Enchanted Cave was one of the core inspirations for this game :D No, my primary idea is that (almost) every run ends in capture (with a few exceptions I’ve mentioned above). However, I wanted ability to add “items storage between runs” and ability to send excess good items to the settlement. But that’s for later.

Or a way to get a nice camp that acts as a display of the player’s skill, rather than a monument of their repeated failure?

Yes, overall the whole game will be organized a bit differently. There will (hopefully) be a way to build the settlement - housing, crafting stations, training grounds. Also there will be originally girls to rescue in the dungeon, around 10, I guess. Also each heroine will have a different set of skills (now we just have XP - level), I want a more Skyrim-like skills system including crafting, cooking, etc. More experienced characters will be able to train less experienced ones. And eventually even fall in love with each other :)

Like lock-on or lurking behind corners when an approaching enemy is known?

I’m honestly not yet sure how to deal with stealth attack problems. I’ve mentioned fixing two bugs - and that should dramatically improve both rolls and stealth attacks. But will not fully remove their drawbacks. I guess let me fix those (hopefully I’ll fix “invisible wall” bug very soon, remaking the map generator will take more time unfortunately) and then we’ll see how to improve it.

Would probably makes Will-o-wisps a lot less scary

Note that currently I indeed want to nerf this one https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues/1320 — it is literally a boss level monster now, it should be just a regular one. It doesn’t need that much health or see the player almost at the end of the vision range.

WildObsidian1 year ago (2 edits) (+1)

Gitlab? Very well, I will use that in the future!

But I have to disagree about sleeping. Originally I assumed the best way to sleep was to find some secluded corner, take off most clothes and hope that nothing would find me for like a minute, but this was extremely unreliable, especially in later levels and then required me to make my way through the hordes of reinforcements to hunt down the vacuum to get my stuff back and then leave without losing all the stats I just regained, but this is just the wrong way.

If you sleep near the exit, you can take power naps between reinforcement waves, wake up, destroy the new wave, then go back to sleep. This would work in any room with excess weapons and shoes(you would lose the regained HP again if you can't put on shoes while destroying the reinforcement wave. Without weapons is doable, especially with wild amulet/sharp glasses, but can go terribly wrong) This would allow regeneration of 2-3 HP per nap, which sounds tedious, but it helped me get deeper than I would have otherwise.

But now the addition of sleeping bags has buffed this strategy tenfold, now due to the potency of the regeneration, shoes and weapons aren't necessary anymore, because the HP loss due to...gymnastics is negligible compared to the HP gain from sleeping.

PS: Is there a lore explanation for enemies that have improved vision for clothed targets? I get numinescence, but this is weird.

EugeneLoza1 year ago(+1)

Hmmm, interesting! I’ll need to test this kind of resting - because patrols are exactly meant to discourage player from resting near the exit. And indeed finding a secluded corner should be the way to go. I’ll see how to fix that, at least one idea I wanted to experiment for quite some time - some patrols will “enter and leave”, so that the map will not get overran by monsters, and some organized monsters group can be avoided altogether.

Is there a lore explanation for enemies that have improved vision for clothed targets?

Yes, it’s in the same numiniscence article (last two paragraphs), however, indeed the explanation is not good enough. I’ll need to work on it more (I have a lot of notes, now I need to sit down and put them all together into a human readable text :)). Plus right now both nude/dressed vision are not working exactly as they were supposed to - I want eventually to implement “proper sensory organs” both for player characters and monsters, but didn’t get to rework this feature yet.

WildObsidian1 year ago(+1)

I have tried using GitLab just now. Can't find my own issue. It's probably hidden for some verification process, but just in case the system just eats it: I suggested improving the interaction hitboxes so trying to disarm the bottom one of two vertically stacked traps won't make the character try to disable the top one instead and set off the bottom one.

EugeneLoza1 year ago(+1)

Weird, I can see it. Let me check the settings, but it should be visible to all by default. No, it’s perfectly visible for me - even as an unregistered user. Let’s make sure: https://gitlab.com/EugeneLoza/vinculike/-/issues/1324 this is the one, right? I’ll have a look into that, looks like a bug to me.

WildObsidian1 year ago(+1)

Yes, I can see it now, too.

I assumed it was just temporarily hidden for some reason, but since I couldn't find any way to tell what was going on I decided to make sure and mention it here, too. Good to know I won't have to worry about this in the future.

itch.io

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