Post by Malkavian Grin in Zordak comments

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Hmmm where to start...

I can see how this could be enjoyable. Its got that Super Metroid feel, but its missing many things. For one, there's a severe lack of music which is absolutely key to this genre. Secondly, the game font is terrible. I can barely read it. Third, the controls are seriously bugged; I use JoyToKey to turn my keyboard into my SNES controller. However, Zordak likes to randomly swap the control scheme into things I never programmed/wanted. For instance, I can't seem to aim diagonally up while standing still. Can you have an option to turn off auto-detection? Also, those predefined controls are just madness (Down arrow to confirm? How am I supposed to scroll through a menu!?)

Those things aside it seems like you have a nifty game on your hands. Were I to have a more powerful computer (I.E. not a potato) I can see how some of the graphical options would be fun (water/foilage movement).

A simple pet peeve is how it takes the character a moment to get up to full speed every time she starts moving. Minor, I know, but its something I notice every single time I turn around or enter a new room. Got real old, real fast. Again though, that's my personal annoyance and not a mechanical bug. The way to scroll through menu options after going into your map seems less than efficient. I'd rather there be a way to skip the map and just go straight to options (there's plenty of buttons you could use).

As is, the annoyances are outweighing the fun for me. Maybe I'll come back to this one later.

Apapappa5 years ago

Hey, thanks for trying the demo.

So let's see here..

Music will be updated at some point, not sure when but likely closer to when the game is finished.

I can see how some letters could be hard to read with the game font, but not really how it would be completely unreadable. That being said however, I have plans for adding an option to use a standard font like Arial or the like in the future.

As for the control issues, never heard of or seen any of these. The control scheme you're talking about (down arrow to confirm etc) doesn't exist so something else is wrong here and I'd like to clarify that I'm not saying I don't believe you, this control scheme should not exist though (unless it's custom made). But this did make me realize one thing though: I should add restrictions for certain buttons so that you can't bind for example - "down arrow" to "confirm.

I haven't tested the game with JoyToKey so I will add that to the list in case JoyToKey does something weird to the game. I do not have a SNES controller either so this one I can't really test.

You should be able to aim diagonally up when standing still but as something seems wrong I understand it could be broken.

The game should also not swap controls around unless you bind them or change control scheme so no clue what could be going on here.

And finally, not sure what you mean about auto detection? If you mean controller detection there is an option for that called "Controller Enabled". (should probably rename this to controller detection)

Unless your computer can't compile or handle shaders for whatever reason then you might be able to play with those graphical things enabled. Using the "Frame Skip" option in the "Display" menu should help a lot with framerate issues, this does render the game in 30fps instead of 60fps however if this is something you do not desire. I have tried to optimize it to run it on weaker machines, still lots to do of course, but I can run it pretty decently on my very low end laptop using said frame skip option and low/medium graphics. This is where the minimum requirements listed on the game page comes from. This is on Windows however so if you're talking about Linux then I can't do as thorough testing since I only have a virtual machine available for that at this moment.

The character speed up thing is probably not going to change, I want the character to feel slower and honestly, a little bit clunky, not too much though of course.

The reason for having to go to the map and then pressing a button for the options menu is exactly that, buttons, there's not enough of them, I'm speaking in terms of using a controller since of course there are enough buttons on a keyboard, but if you're only using a controller then this seemed like the best way to do it ie: using less buttons. But if you have another idea, please let me know. Also, not sure what to do different about the efficiency part as this is just the same menu as the title screen menu, again, speaking in terms of using a controller so there's no mouse or such available here.

Sorry that there were too many issues for you to enjoy the game, I try to make it as enjoyable as possible for everyone but sometimes it just does not work.

Anyway, I tried to answer all the issues, if you have any suggestions and such please feel free to tell me.

(also, sorry for the giant reply) ;)

Malkavian Grin5 years ago

Thanks for the quick reply!

Firstly, its got lots of potential, I can see that, but I think a lot of my technical issues were getting in the way of it. Great job on the demo so far! Didn't want to seem like I was just trolling you or making it seem like you didn't know what you were doing.

Music: Not a problem. I understand its a demo and that music probably isn't a priority at this point. Tweaking mechanics and smoothing out bugs is, and that's probably a good thing. Just saying that a Metroidvania style game has to have great music. :)

Font: No, its not totally unreadable, but my eyes aren't what they used to be. A more standard font / just making the font take up more physical spacing per letter would be a great addition for some of us older gamers.

Controls: When I first booted the game up, it was in "custom" control scheme. I used those keys to map to JoyToKey initially. However, in mapping these keys I encountered some strange things. For clarification the game auto-recognized my SNES controller as "SNES controller" though I have no idea what this ended up doing to the control scheme.

So #1 this auto-detection would happen every single time I swapped windows (I.E. to go back and forth to see what button I needed to map next). This may have been messing with my controls every time it happened?

#2 I then swapped from Custom to Predefined 4. Then I started to experience the next issue, where it kept switching back to Custom.

#3 After I finally got all the keys mapped to Predefined 4, I started actually playing through the game. This was where I noticed that only one of my directional aiming buttons worked (one of the shoulder buttons). The other would simply point straight up. SUGGESTION: perhaps make it so there's instead a button that stops you from moving so that you can use the d-pad/arrow keys to aim?

#4 I'll give the "controller enabled" option a go and see if it fixes some issues.

Graphics: Yeah, my potato of a laptop seemed to not like shaders and I had to turn them off. Any graphical things are my issue for playing on this old hunk of junk LOL. I am playing on Windows 7 BTW.

Apapappa5 years ago

Okay, this helped me better understand the control config issue.

So what I think is happening is:

You are pressing buttons on the controller, which in turn activates the input in game, but then JoyToKey converts that input to a keyboard input, which in turn also activates in game causing a sort of loop and therefore switching control scheme between controller and keyboard since they are separate.

That's the only explanation I have for it switching control schemes by itself without your input.

So the solution(s) would be:

1. Since the game detects the controller then just use the controller without JoyToKey and bind everything in game, this is of course if the game actually understands the SNES controller, I have no idea about that.

2. Disable controller detection completely with the mentioned "controller enabled" option, this should make it so the controller does nothing to the game and all inputs should be keyboard only, which in turn *SHOULD* make JoyToKey work.

I think I will add a message in the controls menu recommending people to disable controller detection if they are planning to use JoyToKey.

About the suggestion, if I'm not misunderstanding then that option basically already exists, but without the "stop moving" part, since there are dedicated buttons for aiming and not just using the directional keys.

Sure, music is pretty important but exactly as you said, it's not really a priority right now, the priority is actually finishing the game and fixing the most glaring bugs.

Yeah, that's what I thought, the font couldn't be THAT bad. ;) but as mentioned before, hopefully I will fix this issue when I add support for using a more standard font, not sure when this is coming though.

As for the graphics, my suggestion would be:

If the shaders are not auto disabled eg: shows a message that they are "not compiled" and the button does not accept input, then:

Try using the "Low" or "Medium" graphics preset with the "Frame Skip" option turned on in the "Display" options.

This might allow you to play the game with some graphical things turned on.

Also, to be honest here, I haven't really tested the game on Windows 7, but it should work the same as on Windows 10, all I know is there are definitely issues running it on Windows XP that's why I put Win 7 as Minimum Requirements. :)

Anyway, thanks for the extensive reply since it (hopefully) helped me find the cause of the control issues.

Also, it did not really seem like you were trolling me or whatever, you said what was wrong and that is what I expect from feedback. :)

(sorry again for the "wall of text" reply)

itch.io

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