Game-play Suggestions & Tweaks
feel free to make threads about anything 馃憤
I cannot guarantee I can take all suggestions on board though 馃
So i mentioned this in my play test video, but i thought id stick it over here in suggestions for a more visual explanation
i think it would be best for the player, to use the right most vent coverings only, it keeps things universal visually as a game play mechanic.
my first thought when playing was that the left vent style required something different to open, vs the teachings from the normal vents,
i think its perfectly fine to use the left vent styles coverings on objects that size wont fit a vent size scale, like the end of E1M3 for example. But for ones that are the same size as the right vent style coverings, i think should be used as that universally, to help keep visual game play lessons synchronized throughout.
(and if you wanted to have the right most vent be some what transparent to see what is on the other side, removing a few bars from the 3d model and making two separate model styles might do the trick)
Zortch Brain Need Structure!
I think I will go through the maps to see if I hidden any things important for progress behind the first kind of grating 馃
but for the secrets I think I should keep them as is - after all secrets should be hard to find
i agree for sure, secrets should be hard, but the grating feels like it is something that is not destroy able, as it has a different visual, maybe just a different visual that looks a tiny bit close to the normal ones, as it looks more like a indestructible grating, but ofc, no pressure, i just think it would help player comprehension.
hmm well if you encounter any that is actually indestructible let me know that is certain to be a bug 馃
thing is apart from doing the many objectives I don't mind confusing players: it's fine if people get lost after the first episode
I just want to make sure they understand the basics by then
also I seem to figured what could be causing the slowdown for the question mark pickup: the scripts for them are loaded from the data file when you pick them up - so much for modern HDDs 馃様
in terms of understanding basics, i feel like a lot of the game play basics are taught to the player in a satisfying and cohesive way, like the wrench throw/force field power box being a grate one, that is honestly perfect, same with slide kick teaching, but with the vents there was never a moment in the first map that really taught the player that was a game play feature, for me in my mind i knew it as one due to half life, but for a new player i think it would be grate to just have a moment in the first map were the player must break and crawl through a vent to progress, that way its in there minds that this is something i can do, much like how you taught the players with the wrench throw and force field fuse box shut downs.
and same with the med kits and jump, the medkit is hidden away in a vent as a secret that can be missed by the player, when that is a important game play aspect for the whole game, so in my mind you could kill two birds with one stone, by having a part in E1M1 that forces you to break a vent and crawl through it to collect and use a medkit after being hurt, then the vent leads in to the room with the shotgun, and you can sneak up behind the enemy looking at the vending machine to dispatch him with ether the new gun or your wrench, this both allows the player to be introduced to the first real enemy of the game in a safe way, as well as know how to heal and how to attack with the wrench.
again this is purely my own lvl design brain, but hopefully its some food for thought.
I think you are onto something here - the first medikit on e1m1 definetly needs some rethinking
and right now it's not mandatory to learn to crouch .. I'll see if i can make this room better 馃
of course on the other hand it's impossible to leave enough clues - so many people missed that you need to blast the big generator
and I thought that the fact it has a similar design to the wall generators would be enough 馃様
at first I thought of course not blasting a nuclear generator would be something a sensible person would do and I was a fool ..
but then also nearly everyone tried to unleash the raptor on themselves so now I don't know what to think 馃槙
human thinking is mysterious 馃
3 birds with one mandatory stone would be grate for all 3 of those.
It would work extremely cohesively as well in such a simple and effective way.
Break vent = this is something i can and now know how to do going forward
Crouch in to vent = this is something i can and know how to do going forward now
Med kit in vent = i want to explore vents in the future
You could also throw in the flash light teachings and make the vent dark as well and none of it would be to much as they all sync up to useful actions simultaneously, and even on repeat play, there is no real stopping, you could easy just break the vent rush through in seconds on a second run. but that small little trio set piece would go along way to seal some of the more basic actions you want the player to know in the later levels and episodes.
ok so far I got this area at the start:
(rest of the video is not relevant - but might contain 馃悇 )
but I just realised this will not help people with motion sickness 馃
I wish there was a less brutal way to demonstrate that fall damage is minimal 馃様
tbh if someone cannot figure out how to break regular vents I don't know what can I do..
I mean there just needs to be a point where the hand holding stops .. I just don't know ..
this was supposed to be an easy game .. how it came to this? 馃様
That looks honestly so much better! i cant stress enough how much that is a improvement already.
Ah man its so cool seeing my old space cow in game :D thank you so much dude, it fits almost to well... considering the burger place is the next map xD poor space cow... captured for tasty treats... lets hope it does not get the bloop treatment and become not so harmless hehe (:
honestly i quite like how barbaric it is xD, but if you wanted a less brutal way to show fall dmg is minimal, it would be to just not make it such a big fall, that seems like the logical conclusion to me, and instead of a red X just some blood or bones or something instead. everything else you have done is fantastic there. the crouching is much better and the med kits teaching, my only real issue lays with what you say, vent coverings teaching, so maybe you could use both types of coverings at some point, its more so that there are two types of breakable vents that is confusing, so if you can nail that they both do the same thing even though they are visually different that would be grate, but you are defo on the right path here for sure. even the first 40 seconds is such a massive improvement, just need to nail that both vent covers = breakable, which honestly you have really nailed id say with the first breaking the one on the pit down, i fully understand what you mean about hand holding, but with basic loop mechanics, i think its not really hand holding per say, its more so just initial teaching then the training wheels come off, if it was hand holding, then it would be a permanent indication 24/7 by your side, which i defo agree on not wanting, but initial teaching of basic game play patterns that plan to stick around through the whole game, should defo have a mandatory initial spotlight, and you are doing just that now with these changes, and it really helps a bunch.
but fantastic work man, please dont burn your self out though! and take breaks to chill, think of it as cooking a nice meal with the right ingredients, cus you sure as hell are cooking some good stuff here chef mutant leg, your just putting the final seasoning on 馃榿
Thought this might be a little inspiration for you :D (from the unreal 1 lvl designer)
one small idea if you did not want fall dmg as a gameplay mechanic, you could with the fall down to the medkit, maybe just have one of those fire emitters that was on E2M3 in that fall down, so that way the hurt is from something that is not the fall its self, so a short fall passing through the flame = get hit, then heal with the med kit, maybe that way would be better, if you did not want to implement fall dmg as a gameplay mechanic.
it would encourage a risk = reward that you are going for, plus you could have some fun with the idea that it is a incinerator/cremator for the hallow's disposal or something of the sort and land on a ash pile.
"but fantastic work man, please dont burn your self out though"
Too late 馃様
young cliffy seem to had the right idea 馃 (what a fall from grace huh)
but there is a next step to this problem: just don't ever instakill the player and you can get away with putting anything anywhere
(of course this brings the problem that you always need to add an escape route from pits and whatnot which is a lot of extra work)
honestly, people love experimenting with the game play, like you said about the raptor's, anything you say, Dont do, they are going to do it for sure, cus curiosity and wanting to see what everything does is just part of the charm of older games, think back to DUKE 3D, if there was a big Red sign that said, dont blow this up, you know for sure if you got a pipe bomb in your hand, your guna wana do it to see xD
so in my opinion, use that to your advantage, play in to that silliness, as a way to get players to do things you want them to do.
treat everyone like they are DD out of Dexter's laboratory xD (if you have seen that)
Got a few suggestions id like to stick here, some are hopefully simple, and or food for thought.
1: iv noticed maybe 1 area 2 at most were some of the key cards don't have there color coded base they hover on under. most if not all have some color indication under them, minus a select few.
2: this one is a potentially crazy suggestion, you know in unreal how the dispersion pistol can be upgraded over time, or how each mission in unreal 2 you would get a upgrade of some sorts from Issac, i was thinking that what if each guns secondary fire is something you acquire after killing a boss, that way you can deliver every gun to the player, but then they still have a secondary fire to unlock some how, maybe after each episode ends? or boss kill, as there is only 6 guns in the game with alt fires, 5 if you don't count the shotgun, and you could have that as is with its secondary fire to teach the player there will be one. and there are 5 bosses = 5 attachments after each kill, you wouldn't have to change the models or anything. maybe each boss drops the attachment and that is how the mission ends vs on kill, collect it with little top left green text then mission ends. again this is just a wild suggestion. not something that has to be done. just spit balling :3
1) the only important part here is to have something below them - its really just there to make the key more visible
2) for this to work I really should have planned for it before making the guns and bosses 馃
I sort of had something like this planned: originally you would get the bloop gun from the big bloops corpse - but even this brought the problem of: where would you get the gun if you start with a level select? like would you start the levels afterward the boss with this gun ?
(I guess Prey pulled it off greatly - but I just don't have that kind of bravado)
overall I feel this idea of combining guns from bosses would make more sense in an open world game or rpg where you can go anytime anywhere - or at least some megamanish ordeal where you can choose which boss to tackle first 馃
(I also remember SiN did something like this but that was also a linear game and you had to find the parts in secrets and it was really easy to miss one)
1) Absolutely, and that was exactly the importance i was conveying in the image comparison, maybe i should of put it in bugs 馃槄, but yeah, the left screen shot is E2M1 were the Green key is located, and it has no green pad under it, iv checked to see if every other card has one, (in EP1-2 only) and they do, i should of put 1) it in the bugs section my bad 馃樀 (il make sure to keep a eye out in the further EP's today.
2) with the lvl start, i am not sure if you have played the recent game cultic, but most of the time each lvl select spawns you with the what type of load out you might have at that point in time (with a optional melee only load out start button), in terms of progression, but considering alot of the guns are pretty much all given to the player so quickly, i can see what you mean at how difficult it is to gauge, which is why on my first EP1 play, i felt like a lot of the guns were given to the player way to soon, you pretty much get everything almost in E1M1, which is totally fine if that is how you want it, i just feel like the main take away for me is not really about segregating the attachments to bosses per say, but more so a sense of lacking progression with your arsenal. With the bloop gun for example, that was presented to the player in such a cathartic and meaningful way, as well as it being unmissable, then ofc any map after can have that gun as a secret to be found or just around in the lvl anyway, half life 1 has plenty of guns that you did not really have to pick up so to speak, so that them being non mandatory is not a issue. Its mainly just the When you get most of your load-out, and How quickly you acquire everything that feels distributed prematurely.
Also for the record, you have tons of bravado, you are kicking ass dude! don't sell your self short!
1) well if you encounter a section where you have a hard time finding the key that is definitely something I need to look into 馃
2) I guess it was a bit of a mistake of thinking of them as tools - when you don't have one the game is a lot harder
so I have no choice but introduce them early on
maybe I should have made it in a way that you lose all of them in an episode .. but that felt like a bullshit move 馃
(it's difficult to balance guns - like there shouldn't be useless guns but on the other hand you can never have enough of them .. so I understand how such a small set is kind of disappointing 馃様
.. but at least you can carry more than two at a time 馃檪
this was suggested by FreeHawk too
but I'm afraid it's one of my (bad) game design decisions (that I insist on) to have it work this way 馃様
(this way it's very hard to miss that you can zoom in - also you would be surprised how easy it is to fall in a hole while walking zoomed in)
anyway I will think about this.. but this is one of those have-our-cake-and-eat-it-too problems 馃
ok make it some expansion pack I would take that but a sequel!? Cmon I won't wait all the time for a sequel lol especially knowing at some point that it might be cancelled an expansion pack would be better good luck making it a reality :)
ok dude good luck with it if you manage to code it into the game then I will be a pro at playing zortch especially those bosses with DAT EPIK MUSIK
in the end I took a gordian knot or egg of columbus ish approach to it:
I can no longer make sense of the function that is responsible for firing
so I hacked in another one that is only called when you are sliding 馃挕
still some guns like the flamethrower doesn't work well in this way so I outright disabled them 馃様
(so you cannot slide and shoot with the multitool primary, tripmine and the flamethrower primary fire)
the tnt also seemed useless during sliding .. but was amusing enough so it was left in 馃
I added it as a new patch (just replace the exe as usual): ZortchBuild_1795.zip
please check if this is good enough and this is what you meant
it's probably not a good idea to add new features before release - but so far it seems to have not introduced any new bugs 馃
when you notice a bug on accident but thought that the new feature didn't have that yet bruuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh
I dont know if its a bug or if i am suggesting something maybe make 2 separate buttons for dynamite one to detonate the dynamite one by one cuz if you throw 2 far away from each other you cant detonate the other one unless if you pick it up I know it's kinda there you can throw more than one dynamite but make 2 separate buttons fire could be throw dynamite and alt could be detonate dynamite if that makes sense and no I want to instantly throw dynamite instead of having to press the button twice i hope that helps and make sure that the detonate button works for every single individual dynamite first press detonate the last dynamite thrown second press then the before last dynamite and etc SCREENSHOT PROVIDED I hope it helps in getting you to understand what I mean
I know I can pick them up it's just that it's a bit annoying? just make the detonate button detonate all the dynamite that has been thrown cuz it kind of ruins the purpose of having dynamite in some places when you are planning to use it in a good way
what if you are low on dynamite and wanted to not waste more than what you want to use take GTA SA for example you know the satchel charges? Yeah they work like how you expect them to they stick and they all detonate on one button press
still on e2m1 (I have exams and I am busy with doing other stuff I have beaten all the bosses tho)
I'll look into it
btw what value you are using for it? (also could you post a screenshot?)
Here you go! I'm using FOV 100 in this image. I had to use a lower resolution than i use during game play to get it under 3 MBs. Hope this helps!
So, i just realized that there's no view increase when i go from FOV 90 to FOV 100. I just entered FOV 100 and assumed it was all the way to 100. Either way it works better for me than the default FOV
yes the old one had it maxed at 85 deg
I'm still testing it but if you want to try it out early I added Build1801 in Patches.zip
(just replace the exe in your folder - the slider is under Misc in Options)
I like this a lot!! The only very minor gripe i might have is the shotgun and grenade launcher perhaps look a bit too low with the higher vertical FOV's distortion.
However, when I enabled the letter-boxing, and it negated the distortion and also added visual charm In my opinion.
many of them are out of my scope as a developer indeed 馃様
but the dynamites should be kickable and it doesn't seem to work - this one is definetly a bug 馃
I updated Patches.zip:
Build 1806 has the dynamite kicking fixed and some fov adjustment for the shotgun and grenade launcher
(still under testing of course)
Also forgot to mention, i am in fact enjoying kicking dynamite around QUITE a lot. What a great update!
Thanks for Build 1820! Now I know why I struggled so hard at the final boss. Lightning gun has no effect (as well as the flamethrower). Is this 矛ntentional?
Lightning gun (9) has still no effect on the end boss in 1821. Is it the build or my old savegame which includes the old boss armor?
No, thanks, I can beat him without the lightning gun 馃槇 Why should generations of players have a piece of code in the game that fixes a savegame from build 1820 to 1821?
I can only thank all the testers for that 馃憤
(my other secret is to develop on the worst gaming laptop ever made 馃様 )
1. protip - you can cheat and shoot through right from below
2. this is music to my ears - what I was worried about that it won't block explo or won't let your bullets pass 馃憤
if anything I wanted it to make more powerful by giving it more uses .. 馃
I use old notebooks for nostalgia reasons 馃槈 I have to try one with Windows XP. You see it everyday what happens, whens developers only test with their best hardware and those are AAA with a budget of millions.... Cyberpunk, Jedi: Survivor, Hogwarts Legacy, The Last of Us all with big performance issues when released.
1. you should fix this 馃槣 (two areas must be passed in correct sequence like checkpoints or the direction must not point against gravity direction)
2. Yes, it's always hard to give up power, but it would help balance. Another way to make it weaker would be to only make it work with weapon "2".
I'm actually with pixelpeas on this one. The laser pistol shield would be better if it didn't stay forever. I always imagine it getting hit by enough projectiles for it to disappear.
because it's just too OP you can just stand there and the enemies will keep firing at you but you won't get hurt most of the time and you could camp at the same spot easily
it's not as easy to add one (tbh doom source ports kind of became bloatware lately 馃 but I digress)
but I guess the patches and features are not about to end anyway (so it's a strong maybe)
I added a few new mini-features you can check (still under testing: you can find them in the Patches.zip)
also somes questions (related to doom and might have some lab2 relevance): have you ever made any doom levels? and have you tried out the zortch editor yet? is any of them feel easier? (I was toying with the idea of making lab2 with zortches engine instead but it feels like 'cheating': originally it was going to be a straight doom clone but i'm not so sure about that anymore - as you are one of the biggest fans of the original I would like your feedback on this)
I made some test levels using SLADE which is a doom map editor I have experience with some doom modding in the past when I was 13 lol using the zortch editor is a little complex I couldn't make any levels using it also how do source ports become bloatware all of a sudden? I don't get it lol at least zandronum is fine along with gzdoom (why are the updates so silent? or is it just me?)
hmm I guess I better go with the original idea then 馃 (using a doomish map format)
maybe it's just me - it feels that there are so many useless features tacked on (well at least I'm not the only one who has a problem saying no to suggestions 馃)
I don't announce them until I update the large zip packages (so the idea is that patches only has the fixes still under testing and it's a smaller download for convenience)
I started with 3) because I thought it would be problematic but works surprisingly well
you can already find it in Patches.zip (Build 1834) (just copy over the exe)
anyway these all seem sensible and not hard to implement so expect them in the next official patch 馃憤
1) press F6 (F9 to load)
2) this seems to be requested quite a lot - I tried to get around it by giving you equivalent or better weapons early on
but I guess it's more fun to take them 馃
4) once I figure out how to generate geometry for an automap it will be probably included to that (but no idea when that will be 馃様)
5) hear hear (so far it's only planned for the expansion)
3) 6) time manipulation means having rewriting most of the engine - unlikely to be added anytime soon
thank you for your suggestions! 馃憤
Thanks for answering. F6, ok, but you can't rebind the key nor does it appear in the menu.
not only it's overpowered: you can actually attach tripmines to it and use it as an improvised cannon 馃槈
Talking about the overpowered shield? Not only that not a single shot hits me, the boss kills himself when he comes to close. https://vimeo.com/835370915?share=copy
It be over passed by enemies who do physical attacks by coming closer to the player through the shield (the hands, sawblade bots, blobls).
for 10.000 signatures I'll change the color
100.000 I make it non invincible
1.000.000 and I remove the shield altogether 馃槈
IMO a good rework for the shield would be to set it for difficulty. Let's say that if you play at the early difficulties (Visitor and Pushover) the shield is infinite and indestructible, from Warrior to Subjugator your shield has a limited time span finite HP before breaking down but is still strong enough to take multiple hits/explosions/rockets before breaking down, and in the Maxed difficulty the shield is back to being indestructible but keeps a limited timespan.
As for the timespan itself, for the normal difficulties a good balance would be something that last a minute and a half ( maybe something like 1m20s ) , while in Maxed is reduced to just 40 seconds.
