First off, thank you! Seeing new projects is fun, I wan't yall to have a good time while making this (Or at least, as much as you can get from indiedev lol).
Aah I see. Yeah, a lot of people have that first impression from mentioning quake. Perhaps boomer-shooter-like movement would be more accurate? I agree it should be thought over so to not cause wrong ideas.
Rainworld and SBTF move wildly different from what I saw on youtube videos, and I'd say Rainworld is the most interesting. The character is almost completely simulated with physics and its like they're made out of jiggle bones... flopping all over the place, letting velocity, acceleration, weight... do all the work. I'd say it's achievable as long as the foundation of your movement is quite unique as this. it's gonna need plenty of work for it to look appealing though (unless you want the main character to also look like a cluster of simulated pixels)
Fully agree, I've heard so much about Rainworld and how much pressure it puts under your shoulders. Thankfully their movement techs are still kind of slow paced and dont require much of your brain process moreso than usual reflexes/intuition... it won't need to you pay attention to everything as dashing through an entire map
Great to hear! Yeah some kind of early warning will do, just seeing the door shake with the doorsteps for example would be enough
FrozenTrovador
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Glad to hear the majority has been solved! And yeah, I tend to overexplain myself since im passionate with gamedev too haha!
I can imagine you can patch the jump so you get vertical velocity by holding down until a set deltatime. That should allow you to not redo all the code, but itll need some value tweaking so the player doesnt shoot upwards like a rocket.... no idea if something like that would be possible, my only code knowledge is with Unity, there should be some Godot sidescroller guide with such info for sure.
Cool! That sounds about right for the antialiasing. Personally glad you will be taking a more lighthearted approach lmao, so fair enough!
I did see there was an invincibility state, is just that it felt like it was from [EnemyInstance] to [Player]. So, if theres a second enemy nearby, it would not be stunned. I'd have to check for myself again though, cannot say for sure. Nice it's there!
Using plants as platforming sounds really cool! Excited to see how that will affect the level design. I'd recommend tweaking the camera so it doesn't zoom in right after getting grabbed then, so we dont have it zoom in and out constantly, could be disorienting.
Yeah I saw your concerns with struggle systems and pacing, which I do agree that it can be incredibly annoying to deal with whenever you are not getting grabbed on purpose... is just, as you said, some enemies with ranged attacks might need it more so they don't become insufferable. Echidna Wars DX took that kind of approach, very similar to what you have for now, only very specific enemies have a struggle mechanic and instead uses a magic/stamina bar (you use it to either do powerful attacks or avoid damage from the first 1-3 grabs).
If the camera showing too much of the scene becomes troublesome, I'd suggest creating some camera boundaries, just so you don't have to deal with the camera showing potentially out of bounds. You know, stopping the camera from moving to the right when you reach said side of the room. Though if you wan't to create secret rooms for the player to find, it might cause more problems than the intended... something to mess around with I guess!
Yeah modding can be a bitch and a half, and most of it comes from having very grounded devtools to ease the process. Don't blame you at all if you prefer to not deal with all that garbage, I wasn't even able to find a straightforward enough answer when I looked at it myself lol.
I like the concept/Idea that you describe in the game page, but it's definitely in too much of an early stage for someone to leave feedback for now
Really like the whole idea of trying to do a quake-like movement system. Although, I dont really see QUAKE for the time being, only being able to gain a lot of momentum from a ramp and maintaining it while jumping.
I can imagine that you can stack a LOT of speed if you are careful enough, and thats gonna mess up your reaction times... it'd be pretty nice to have the camera move ahead of you slightly while moving and to not zoom in too much... think of games like "Pizza Tower" or even "Speedrunners". That means not having the camera be adjusted by your mouse though, which should allow you to let people freely use their mouse for other things like a weapon, stungun, hook, flashlight...
Since its a 2D game you can't really do strafing, which is a shame since that means not being able to keep some momentum while turning around... this is pretty much solvable with how Speedrunners deals with this.
Enemies grab you instantly when you touch them. This is probably going to become an issue as the movement mechanics start being more grounded and people dart through the map. It means getting caught by something the moment they pop out of a door, and probably will feel unfair, specially since creatures stay locked on you until you reach a safe area. I imagine that making you grab immune when you reach a certain velocity would be enough, or allow you to floor slide to "dodge" a grab.
If you wanna push for more detailed and elaborate gore scenes, or about more niche kinks, I recommend having a way to disable those animations. The current one is brief and not really an issue at all, but still food for thought.
Biggest flaw I see at the moment is the dissonance between the fast paced movement and survival horror, in my opinion. It feels like putting cookie clicker or farm sim mechanics to a Doom game. I'm not saying you can't make a grime and dark looking bhop game, but players are either A) Be too scared to play with the movement, they want to be careful (like in any survival horror) B) Become the literal manifestation of a quake 3 comp player.
Nice work and good luck with this project! (Also, what does the character say when you press the taunt/talk button? Lol)
Hello! First of all, given it's the first time I see your game and is in its early stages, you got a very solid work already done! Congrats!
Very excited of how it's looking and to know the future of this game, it called my attention a bit when I read it was going to be inspired by Packetrat's game.
Upon reading just how much I typed on this.... sorry for typing the entire Bible, lol.
____Feedback
The general movement and animations of the character feels nice, nothing to really say there. Jumping currently has a fixed height, I'd say it feels better when it scales up depending on how long you hold 'Space'. The character struggles to jump down from platforms when moving, stopping you in place as if the game tries to move and stop you at the same time, and holding 'Down' doesn't let you jump off of all platforms you stand on (As in, if theres two platforms ontop of eachother, you cant just hold the button to pass through both).
Very nice aesthetic/visual style. Specially for a solo dev project, this looks pretty neat and should not cause you much trouble compared to other games, you could even make slight variations on the tileables and some objects for depth, subtle guides for the player (we are yellow tape HATERS here) or to identify different areas. I've read about your level roadmap from another post, and I'd be careful to see how each area links together. No idea on what the lore or script is for the game, but never hurts to point that out.
Basic attacks seem to not do much damage, sticks you in place for a long bit and are spammable, enemies are flung off from the attacks, its sound effect isn't very pleasant to listen to after a while (sounds like shattering glass), and I find no reason to hold my attacks. Making combat a bit faster and "free" could benefit you in the long run, specially if you are planning on adding new mechanics afterwards. It can grow a very toxic/unsatisfying behavior of just standing around smashing your attack button, which will be an issue in boss fights. I recommend checking other metroidvanias and side scrollers, if you are scared of the controls getting too difficult for keyboard users... using the mouse buttons for combat doesn't feel bad at all in games.
Very nice menus, there's already a lot of accesibility (If we can call vore fetish tags as such lol) and is completely functional. Given how -Sharp- all the graphics in the game are, seeing the font be slightly blurry feels off, like I suddenly changed my screen resolution. I would recommend having one/few tags for certain sounds like screaming, bone crunching, crying, etc. (if you ever plan to add those in the first place)
The game feedback when interacting with enemies is a bit too little in my opinion. Perhaps this is probably because of this being an early demo, but it's still nice to mention. A hurt/stunned stance for enemies would be great, specially whenever you jump/struggle away from a grab (Currently, enemies either switch between walk/idle animations, or just stand still). The player could have more sounds, like landing on the floor, jump, footsteps...
I'd be careful with the "Metroidvania" side of the game, the backtracking. The area with the elevators/sliding platforms forces you to wait for them to come down every time you wanna go up, which is slightly annoying with how slow it is compared to going down, which is simply jumping off the platforms. Either make the platforms appear already at the bottom when you activate them, or make it so you can easily toggle the elevator position while laying the map out... basically make it feel nice to go back and forth. Speaking of maps, one would be nice but I've seen you have one in the elevators area, so making sure there's a few around as quality of life would be great!
____Bugs (Or seemingly so)
Player is capable of landing hits on enemies behind doors, and I imagine walls too (though this is impossible with the current level design).
Boss fight music won't stop after beating them (very minor since you can simply leave the area or reload save, but still).
After escaping from struggling, you have invincibility for a few moments against that enemy. That doesn't happen when you are close to another. You can easily end up locked between two of them.
The plant enemy can be escaped from without receiving damage. Might not be a bug, but careful in case you want to make a platforming area with a bunch of plants below, players could potentially just jump from plant to plant without loosing hp at all.
____Suggestions
Given how big areas are, I assume there would be upgrades like double jumps and other possible movement mechanics. Perhaps enemies that could attempt to vore you from a distance could be cool in these cases: A frog sticking its tongue on you and having a struggle mechanic to pull away while it drags you, a spider lasoing you in the air, a suspicious jackalope doing voodoo doll vore on you if you stay in their line of sight for too long... I've read you dont want a struggle system, but the current one is a bit too forgiving, perhaps you can make something more similar to the game Echidna Wars DX, or just quicken the struggle system (Eg. Movement button appears on screen, press the right one quickly enough or you are getting caught)
Speaking of enemies, you could even make certain ones that can appear in any area just to mess around with people. Slime mimics that hide as objects from the map, additional ghost enemies appear in areas you die a lot... (though these kind of enemies can do for a whole area/level of their own).
Zoom out the camera a little bit, or make it adjustable by the player. Not only this means some can zoom in to see all the d e t a i l but so it doesn't feel too claustrophobic. Specially helps if you are planning on adding ranged enemies, can mess with the level design though, up to you if to adjust it at all or make it a slider for the player to mess with.
If you need more ideas, I honestly think you can take inspiration from SCP and the game Prey. Its gimmicky type of creatures make for great inspiration for enemy concepts, and you can see it in multiple games already (Enemy that approaches only when you dont see them, slow but unstoppable enemy , sound based hound, hacker placing traps around...)
Dont forget to give some love and care to the sound design, it can really give the punch to a lot of things, and be the reason why some elements might fall flat or not feel as impactful... for example, ambience music.
I am a huge fan of modding tools, but I haven't seen a single project try make mod tools for Godot games, so this isn't much of a suggestion but rather a thought. If you are able to find anything about it, or even create it, that'd be sick as f**k.
Repeating myself a bit here since I do talk about this in the feedback section, but using the mouse for stuff like attacks feels way better than having everything on the keyboard. You might not use it to move a cursor around, but it's more comfortable in my opinion.