itch.io

I can't find any definitive answer. Anything I can find only talks about selling the keys: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

I was under the impression that the Steam price parity rule only applies to Steam keys (can't sell the Steam version of the game cheaper elsewhere).  I mean if it applies to other versions too, how far would it reach? Non-steam PC versions from other stores? Console or mobile versions?

I will try verify this somehow..

I found some old threads about this but no real solution.

My game will eventually release on Steam for a certain price. I want to keep the game as "$0 or donate" type here on Itch.io and only give external Steam keys to people who pay above a certain limit (the price on Steam). How can I do this?

Thanks for testing!

The "free" mouse aiming mode (aim cursor can move freely around screen, not limited to fixed distance from player) should have been the default setting since 0.0.9.  Is this what you mean by "fixed distance cross-hair"?

There is a laser sight weapon modifier that can be installed into any weapon but obviously you would need to get it first. Perhaps I should remove the modifier it and make the laser sight constantly available in all weapons and toggelable in settings.

Did you have the PS5 controller plugged in while playing with keyboard? There is known bug in Godot that makes keyboard movement work very badly with PS controller connected. I should make some sort of workaround to this because I don't think it's going to get fixed in the 3.x any more.

Yes, this has very likely something to do with Intel GPU or driver. Probably some edge case that Intel handles differently.

Now that I continued playing the game, the slowdowns are gone, so it must have been something weird going on at my end.

I forgot to mention that this is what it looks like underwater to me:

I'm guessing this is not intentional.

Really nice. I'm getting a lot of quake 1 vibes.

The game runs mostly well but there is some stutter at start of every level and drastic fps drop when multiple four-legged enemies get close to player.

The initial stutter could be caused by shader compiling (are you doing something to hide this?) but I have no idea what could cause the slowdown with the enemies. Profiler might reveal something. Unless of course this happens only on my machine..

Edit: I played on a laptop running Xubuntu 24.04 with Intel Arc GPU.

This is really good! I like the quirky art style, the controls feel good.

I had some trouble with the mouse cursor getting lost in the action but I don't know how it could be made more visible. I often have this same problem with other similar games too.

I played the Linux version on a laptop with Intel UHD620 and it ran mostly well. Some minor slowdowns when the screen was full of enemies.

I really like the art style and the atmosphere! This clearly has a lot of potential.

Mouse/keyboard controls are a bit weird. I can only move with WASD and the mouse cursor is irrelevant?

Alt-tabbing out froze the game (I played with wine on Linux).

For now, it's mostly for script encryption. I'm also planning to do some project specific optimizations later on.

If I end up doing something that is useful for others too, I will make pull requests to Godot.

Is there any data available on the amount of users installing games through the app vs direct downloads in general?

Gave it a really quick try. The initial scene (with the cabin) ran well but I get like 5 fps in the next level, even after lowering the resolution. Admittedly, I only have an integrated Intel HD 620 but still. It has potential, I would have played more if I had a proper gaming PC..

Thanks for giving it a go!

I will consider making the mouse aiming crosshair behavior an option later on. There is room for improvement in the vertical auto-aiming but it will never be perfect. Luckily missing some shots is not that bad when the ammunition is infinite.

The control guide text at the beginning is just something I slapped in at the last moment when I realized there were no in-game instructions at all. It will be improved.

This is a very early version with a lot of things missing. Music is one of them. I intend to add music at least in the menu. I'm not sure about background music during gameplay. I generally prefer using a lot of ambient sounds instead..

Thanks! Nice to know someone's still playing this :)

I'm not seeing any license information.. Any restrictions on using these?

This is a great idea! Though the bundle should be managed by Itch.io. I would definitely participate if my pay-what.you-want games are allowed.

I grew to like the red crosses too but they were confusing to many and a lot of new players mistook them for health pickups (that you couldn't pick up).  This was a hard decision.

I tried to come up with an alternative less confusing indicator that would still be visible in the dark and fit the art style.. but none of them fulfilled all three requirements.

Do you think something like this would help with sunlight visibility? If I make the walls brighter entirely, it would make seeing the enemies and items harder.

I have to admit that this is a problem I haven't even thought about. I assumed adjusting phone's screen brightness would be enough. I'm not sure how much simply increasing game's brightness would help as that would effectively lower contrast. But a sunlight mode with somehow adjusted textures is definitely worth exploring.

I will see what I can do.

Holy ****, this is nice! The game looks good and the art style is clear and consistent. With perfectly fitting  music, the atmosphere is just right. Most importantly, the gameplay _feels_ good.

The order of the control keys felt a bit weird to me (I don't play platforms that often). I forgot the see if they can be reconfigured..

Edit: I played the game on Linux using Wine. Worked flawlessly.

By twin-stick controls I meant gamepad controls where left stick moves the player and right stick aims. Usually on PC these games use WASD keys to move the player so that A always moves left and D always moves right.

Here A and D keys _turn_ the tank. I have to look at the tank to see which direction pressing W will move it. Not really a problem at all, just took some time getting used to.

It's fun to play and I like the consistent look. Feels very polished for such a simple game.

I would have liked some sort of knock-back animation on enemies to make hits "feel" better. Then again, it's not that important in an RTS game where this is coming from.

I'm so accustomed to twin-stick-style controls (player moves to WASD directions) that using driving controls with my left hand was surprisingly hard :)

I played it on Linux using Wine. Worked flawlessly!

Glad to hear you like it!

The rail gun is my favorite weapon too. Luckily it's a relatively common power-up. Its sound and visual effects could still use some minor tweaking. I don't think it _feels_ powerful enough..

Congratulations on the #1 high score! I don't think I can reach those numbers myself :D

This is amazing! So much detail in so few pixels. Now somebody just needs to remake Warcraft 1 with this.

The visual style and the atmosphere is just awesome.

Now that I took a closer look at my code, I noticed that using multiple joysticks  should already work! You can bind inputs from multiple joysticks in settings. The UI just doesn't show which device each button belongs to but it still works.

Please try this in alpha 0.0.9 and report back if there's something (other than the UI) that needs fixing.

The end of the level would be a good place to reward player but I'm not too keen on using time as the condition. I have so far intentionally avoided all time limits and time rewards. Also, determining the actual time limit for the reward would be tricky because the levels are procedurally generated and unique.

Someone suggested simply restoring the health to some minimum value on level completion/start, so that the a level would never start with near-zero health. I kind of like this idea but perhaps I should limit the total number of times the health would be restored.

My excuse for not doing the same is that it would make balancing the difficulty more complicated. I will have to do some more testing on this.

It might be a good idea to add a possibility to regain some amount of  health along the way, I would just have to adjust the difficulty to compensate for this. Randomly appearing rare health power-ups are not an option because that would introduce too much randomness to player's success and final score. Perhaps the enemies could drop  items that would give a minimal amount of health to player. But this should only happen in certain conditions..

Thank you for playing and for the feedback!

1. I might adjust this when/if I add more enemy types. Currently new enemies are introduced on levels 4, 8 and 12. If I introduce them much earlier, the later levels would get boring as there would be nothing new to expect.

2. If you mean the round "mines", you're absolutely right. They have already been redesigned for the next version. They now trigger when they see the player for long enough time and explode sending fragments towards the player. They are still stationary but now they actually pose a threat.

3. There is a shield power-up that lowers the damage taken on hit but there is no way to recover your health. This is a design choice. The game is designed to be an endless high score shooter where the player eventually dies and avoiding damage is the most important thing.

4. That's a good point. I could make the enemies aim a little smarter at higher levels. Currently they only get tougher and shoot more/faster. 

5. They are drones in zero gravity, guarding their designated positions. I don't see why floating makes any less sense :)

The reason why most enemies don't move and none of them actively follows the player is that I want the player to always be able to retreat to safety and relax for a while. I also wanted to enable more careful play style where you can sneak behind corners and trust that enemies don't sneak behind your back. This is also why there are no time limits or time score bonuses.

I have though about secondary weapon power-ups. The laser beam was supposed to be the first one but I added it as a primary weapon replacement so that I didn't have to add another touchscreen button in the mobile version. The logical secondary fire button (L1) on gamepad is also used already,

I would like to add some missile weapons but it would need changes in the controls. It might happen, but I'm not making any promises  :)

I will see if I can add support for multiple joysticks. I've never tried a  HOTAS setup myself but I imagine it would be a great way to play this game.

I had anti-aliasing disabled. It's good to hear a native Linux version is coming, I will wait for that!

This looks very promising!

I tried playing on Linux with Wine but got black screen with UI on top (stats, cross-hair) although the intro worked just fine. Not blaming anyone, just tested my luck :)

Nice. Great atmosphere.

About this post: https://fractilegames.itch.io/polychoron/devlog/218525/polychoron-009-alpha-upda...

It's type is "major update" and it shows as such in unfiltered devlog listing. If I set the filter to only show "major updates" (and sort by most recent first) it does not show at all. In fact, the first devlog it shows is from 15 days ago.

Is this a bug or just something I'm doing wrong?

I will have to think about that. I see your point and I kind of agree but I'm worried how that would effect gameplay. This might lead to game runs lasting a lot longer for the best players because a single mistake per level could no longer lead to death.

Perhaps it could regenerate health slightly at beginning of levels but only if it's below some (low) limit. And maybe this could only happen once per game or require some rare power-up.

Thanks for the feedback again!

Hmm.. what do you mean?

I haven't tested this with Xbox controlled but based on your description I assume the triggers show as both buttons and axes.

For each movement you can bind one digital and one analog input, so now that you have mapped the LB/RB as digital roll inputs, you should remove the RT/LT analog bindinds. But having said that, I realized there is no way to remove a binding, other that binding that input somewhere else.

While trying this myself I found another issue: When reassigning one analog axis direction it removes previous bindings to both directions :|

I'm happy to hear you liked some of the changes :D  I will address these binding issues in a maintenance update sometime soon..

BTW, that start-up sound IS the sound of an old hard drive starting with a bit of other stuff mixed into it.

Thanks! 

Butler is great, makes things so much easier. I should have start using it earlier :)

I'll put that issue on hold then and get back to it if I can later reproduce it myself.

The mouse wheel control problems have been "fixed" by removing it completely. I didn't know it can warp through walls but the huge acceleration spikes from it caused all sorts of other problems.

Thanks for the help again! By the way, I have a big update almost ready with some of your suggestions implemented :)