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Good to know, thanks for telling me! I don’t test it much on toasters and haven’t done a whole lot of genuine optimization, but I do try to not to implement features in obviously wasteful ways. I do have a frame counter but it’s disabled in the release builds, I might as well turn it on because it’s useful for anyone to know. Yes of course, resolution settings will be a must, for now it just matches the window.

Ooh! Oh yeah that’s a challenge, I’m sure it can be done but it’s a bit like trying to melee a Baron of Hell to death without Berserk. I did have an idea for a melee powerup before that I might add back in. I was going to have expendable pickups like in Duke or Shadow Warrior but it would be less work to do this one the way Doom did.

There’s definitely enough ammo on the jungle/highway level, and at the moment they’re very weak to the shotgun. In the waterfront/downtown level there’s even more options but it’s much tougher if go straight there with level select.

You know… I have difficulty options now, he’s not there on the Easy difficulty… just sayin’

Not sure if it is intentional, but could only play the tutorial.

That’s definitely not intentional. Did you push the big red button and see all the confetti? It’s advancing normally on my end. There’s supposed to be four levels and you can access them all with the level select in the main menu.

This is not a huge update, if you don’t want to try and break the save system then there isn’t much else new besides some difficulty options which mostly affect spawns on the first two levels. The second level has also undergone a big visual makeover to fill it out with trees.

I don’t think it will look as good but yeah, I will.

Yeah there we go, you should be good in the next demo. Thanks for posting the video! I wouldn’t have found the problem so easily without it.

Wow, no kidding it genuinely doesn’t connect! It’s definitely the framerate, I just tried it out with a limit of 20 FPS and had exactly the same bug.

What’s happening is that the melee attack only detects collisions for a single animation frame, and if the framerate is lower than 30 FPS you’ll completely pass through that window and it never detects anything. I’ll have this fixed for the next demo in two weeks, I can redo the logic so it will do the detection for at least one render frame.

That sounds pretty strange, I’d sooner expect the game to not run at all than for that specifically to not work, could you show me a recording? You do have to be really close, if they spot you first and start running away you usually have to give chase until they stop to shoot before you can easily hit them.

Thanks! Some of it is image reference, like bark, wood, and dirt; but the concrete, metal, and foliage are all hand-drawn in Krita. The grass is a photo I took myself and then color graded.

Glad you liked it, and I love the video! “I got bullets for everyone and I’m dead generous today” - you had me in stitches 🤣

I’m aiming to release sometime near the end of the year with a few more levels and some story elements. Just have to grind it out!

I can do a lot and I intend to but it takes a lot of time. This game has already taken years and is going to still take months to finish, Turbostellar is much more ambitious still.

I’m not going to go immediately offering a partnership, but with a little editorializing I can easily put this in as a lore book. The Sol system is pretty far from Turbostellar’s focus so an ancient story about Luna obtaining independence through a diplomatic technicality doesn’t contradict anything.

Thank you for the kind words! MGS is a very unconscious influence on me, I rarely intentionally try to emulate it but I listen to the soundtracks and ideas from there just sneak in, lol.

If you ever need a writer for a game, i am open to help!

I’m intending to release this game this year and need to do a little writing for it, I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible but when I get to it in a few months I can bounce some ideas off you if you like.

A RPG inspired by fallout or deus ex with you would be amazing.

My big space game is taking a lot from Deus Ex and Morrowind, it’s those kinds of games that seem to be what I’m most naturally suited to. It’s just a shame they’re so much work to get together!

Glad you liked it! There won’t be too many more levels as they take a while to make and I want to move on to other projects, so at launch the game will probably only have 7 full levels plus a boss fight at the end. I’m currently on track to release around Q3 next year.

I noticed the cosmic call ad and wanted to ask if you are actually selling those ads? How much if so?

No charge, just send me something in the right dimensions, you can even just reply to this with it. Keep in mind I will add a 1px border to counteract mipmapping artifacts. I intend for most of the ads to be in-universe goods and services but I’ve still got plenty of room for more AGDG references.

Ah that will mean gibberish to you then. Odd, Windows only has one sound API so I wouldn’t think it should have problems. Do you have Git Bash installed? (Not that that would cause it, this is just the easiest way to get terminal/command-line output) If not you could try launching the game using cmd and see if it prints anything out. I believe most of the output should still be enabled on Windows it just doesn’t go anywhere by default.

Might not be a bad idea for me to set up some logging to files.

D: That’s not very good. Are you running on Linux? Can you give me a terminal printout? I probably can’t guess that much but there’s probably an assumption I’ve made that doesn’t hold properly.

Thanks for trying it again, glad you’re enjoying it.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2291816761?t=1h14m49s

Dammit, there’s an offset applied for ultrawide monitors that I wasn’t properly defaulting to zero. That must be why your hud wasn’t showing fully. I just noticed it wasn’t being applied to the keycards which are supposed to be anchored to the same point as the health display. I’ll upload a hotfix as this could affect Windows as well.

The enemy behaviour in this game is really nice, not too simple, but not too clever either.

I made a point of modelling Doom and Quake behaviors without really going too much further

Wow, glad that you enjoyed yourself! I’ve spent years on and off working on this game and oft-times it does feel like polishing a turd with all the really good boomer shooters coming out these days. If I can find a couple thousand more people like you to give it a shot I’d probably be more confident in it!

I think games like these weren’t even called “boomer shooters” back then.

The first prototype of this game was made way back then and yeah I don’t remember “boomer shooter” until a few years later.

As a finished product, though? Count me in.

I do hope to see you play it again for money! Apart from polishing up the existing four levels I’m only planning a handful more as I’m kind of sick of this project and want to move on to something else, but I can’t bear to just abandon it so I’m aiming to release around Q3 next year.

Thanks again for giving it a shot!

although the hotkey for it didn’t work and I could only select it with the scroll wheel.

If you’ve played the demo previously then you need to reset the keybindings for it to work. I’ve got an idea to make that less necessary in the future though.

I wish the spike has a bigger hitbox, it says it does more damage while moving but it’s not easy to land reliably unless you’re running straight at the enemy.

That is actually the intention, it doesn’t check which direction you’re moving in, just your speed. I may as well rephrase that point actually.

Hoping for more levels soon, I want more chances to mow people down with the autoshotty

Next demo day I’ll have a level finally pushing forward again instead of adding to the start, and the later levels will prioritize more enemies and larger (or at least more difficult) encounters. I’m getting quite sick of working on this game though so unless it randomly blows up (unlikely) I’m going to only have seven levels.

Also loved how running into cacti can hurt you.

It hurts the enemies too, but I haven’t found a good way to actually make use of that.

i think i found an… unintended route to the yellow key in the tutorial? lol

Dammit, I made a point of removing things you could jump on near that beachhouse but the bridge is a very recent addition and I’ll have to redesign it. I’ll probably just move the cliff further up or something.

railgun ammo seems pretty scarce, i was barely able to test it out

I’m adding the difficulty options soon so I’ll go around and rethink where all of the weapon and ammo pickups are, for now I just wanted the railgun thrown in anywhere. There is actually another one in secret on level one as well.

in general, starting out on level 4 makes it so you are EXTREMELY low on ammo with all weapons. i even died because of it

It really hasn’t been designed around the level select. All levels can be finished from an empty start as I regularly try them out like that when I’m iterating on them, but isn’t always particularly easy. That said, there’s also another semi-hidden shotgun right near the beginning that you didn’t see.

Thanks for trying it again and uploading the gameplay, always useful to see what people are doing.

Nice to see this again! Keep it up!

Not sure why, and it’s only your game that does this, but it defaults to the wrong sound device on launch on Linux. Almost like it’s picking the first device in the list instead of detecting the default.

Could really use an FOV setting, climbing that first ladder in the tutorial is a little disorienting.

In the boiler room on the ship you can run right up the hull of the ship despite the steep slope. If you don’t want to modify the character controller to disallow this then ought to cover it with some vertical invisible walls

I like the new UI, I think this minimal look is very effective. Would be good to work in the old wood paneling somehow though. Would be cool to multiple levels of UI like in modern Doom and Quake ports, or how Hedon has extra UI layers enabled in the DLC.

Aaaargh! I can get using E for interact instead of F, but I can’t abide scrolling “up” to get to the “next” weapon. Why the hell did everybody universally decide to do it this way after Crysis did it!?

Upon ascending the dumwaiter (fun idea btw, very Duke 3D of you) the enemies in the room all immediately unload on you which seems a bit cheap. It didn’t seem like there was a way to avoid being hit at least once.

I like the new ship level overall, there’s some fun ideas in there like the new enemies at the end. Polish it up with a bunch of art like the other levels and I think this one will be pretty good.

Actually some substantial updates this time. There’s a bunch of graphical improvements regarding lighting (geometry now obscures lighting on entities). There’s a new weapon in the railgun, a new enemy in the form of a flying drone that shoots bouncy grenades, a new starting level that will actually function as an intended tutorial.

There’s a key you need to get to access the control tower, but I’ve had another playtester point out the keycard is in a spot where it really blends in with its environment. I’ve been trying to keep the pickups consistent as simple objects on the ground, but I may need to start making some of them glow or float or something.

If you stay in their line of sight you won’t see many differences, it was more about improving performance and handling edge cases so they don’t blindly dive off cliffs or run into walls trying to chase you.

Thanks for trying it, I still need to come up with more reasons to go underwater.

Standing partially behind an obstacle, mechs will stand still and shoot but not hit you while you can shoot back

I don’t have an easy way to deal with this, a lone AI is never going to outsmart an experienced player.

There’s a crack between two rocks near the end of the first level where I got stuck jumping between them, not sure if you can tell where it is from this pic

Thanks for pointing it out, I can’t find all of these myself.

Oh good catch. I think I’ll just start surrounding these with clip brushes eventually, it’s the only way to be sure.

Thanks for trying it again, not much new to see.

the kill counter sfx at the end of the level is very loud

It’s based on just the regular menu volume level but all the menu sounds files are quite a bit quieter. I’ll change it to the lower of either SFX or Menu sounds.

i always struggle to find the blue key card in the final level, even though i already know where it is. it just doesn’t pop up enough, it almost looks like a normal armor pad or health kit from afar

I can see this being a problem, I don’t really know what to do other than maybe just try to move it elsewhere in the room like maybe on one of the couches. I could put it next to the two dudes in there but you can sometimes alert them from outside and it won’t be much more visible all the way at the far end.

the mech AI seemed smarter at aiming? it actually hit me a few times while i was strading circles around it.

I don’t remember intentionally doing this, but I tweaked the tracking speed and the projectile spread a bit when I was adding the torso twist which definitely would’ve had an effect.

I don’t get how you can stand turning off music, head bob, AND weapon bob. Whatever, the options are there for a reason.

The menus aren’t intended to work with less than 720p, but the HUD shouldn’t be so messed up. I added an extra offset to restrict the corners to 16:9 in ultrawide but forgot to put an fmin in the equation to stop it applying to other aspect ratios. Easy fix.

Spooky game. It took me a bit to work out how the map worked. I also didn’t look at the screenshots until I was done so I didn’t end up building any furniture, is that what the scrap metal is for?

Really not a fan of the CRT filter, it works for the hud but not as much for the game. Maybe I just don’t like this particular one but I’d rather just not have it at all.

Would be good to have a gauge to fill up when you’re resting or repairing so it’s more obvious how much time it’s going to take.

I thought the yellow dots were enemies on the radar so I avoided them, didn’t realize until later that the histogram around the radar is what gives away enemies.

It’s cool that you can really spread out the map with the procgen, though it does stutter sometimes when moving around. Having it actually match up with the map is also useful, though it doesn’t always help much with those overpasses as I had a couple that were pretty useless.

It’s neat, you kept me driving around for half an hour or so while I listened to some music.

EDIT: Worked fine on Linux over wine.

I definitely don’t play a lot of shmups but I can confidently say my failure to last longer than a minute is purely a skill issue. The incoming bullets are all nice and distinct, the art style looks neat and the game runs fine over wine. I’m a little iffy on the glow used to show selection in the menus, it stands out a lot as non-pixelated compared to the rest of the game. It also took me a sec to realize I had to use ZXC controls, but that’s probably normal in this genre.

A solid and pretty game for only a couple weeks’ work, good job.

I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to submit for this one, there’s isn’t much new to see. I did however finish the AI overhaul and redesigned the HUD to make it easier to add new stuff. Railgun/Sniper is currently being textured so that will definitely be in the next demo day.

I don’t have anything in mind for the spike, the rocket launcher already alt-fires the rockets as grenades which do extra damage but bounce around unpredictably

Darkness has been the most consistent complaint I’ve gotten, the lighting changes a lot on different monitors. In the current demo I did add a flashlight, though it can give your position away to enemies who otherwise haven’t seen you yet.

Thanks for trying it! It’s been a long time but it’s coming together.

I’m in the middle of an optimization pass on the AI to allow for a significant increase in the enemy count which should make the encounters in later levels ramp up. I will be adding some difficulty options later that can limit ammo and health pickups as well.

I can justify it on two counts: 1 - I’m looking for any possible excuse to cut things out of scope, and I wouldn’t want to do quick melee without proper animations. 2 - Even integrated into her arm, she still has to pull it back to throw a punch. Changing weapons represents having to commit to that. There’d be this annoying delay every time you hit the quick melee button, whereas in the melee stance it’s near instant.

My only gripe is that the scope on the SMG feels a little pointless with that recoil.

It’s really intended to give you an option before you get the railgun which will be the dedicated sniper weapon.

It’s effective, but feels a little cheesy.

There’s only a couple right now, but I intend to have some enemies that hold their ground and wait for you, especially on unreachable ledges.

Also, I feel strangely compelled to play Cosmic Call.

…no comment

Initially I didn’t plan on having any, but in my own playtesting I always catch myself sneaking up to do melee kills and I’ve had other agdgers say they do the same. It is intended to be viable, but there will be ambushes and encounters where the enemies spot you immediately, particularly at close range. Which does mean it will be situational rather than consistently useful. You’ve raised a good point, I’ll have to ruminate on this for a while.

One issue I found was that if I went up the stairs at certain angles (diagonal? against the wall?) my movement would go jagged where it was seemingly getting caught on the steps?

One of a never ending list of corner cases. Never ever use Bullet!

Are you getting this high? Less?

Nowhere near that high, about as much as just jumping normally off of the lip