Hi! Thank you for playing the new build. Here are my responses:
Thank you!
Currently it's just a difficulty between making something realistic but also server gameplay. Other areas will have different purple objects (ex: crystals)
Thunder's randomization is a bit odd, I agree. I will look into this when I patch.
Pausing the game with ESC and making it go back to main menu will be added, thank you for pointing this out, I agree.
Control binding is extremely primitive at the moment. It will be polished.
Yeah, Options do not save at the moment. This will be added as well.
No can do on the duck and shoot, but maybe other projectiles added will?
Thank you! I enjoyed composing the music and making the sprites.
Altar is currently a teleport station in WIP. I focused on the save rooms first for this build.
Poltergeists should be hard and annoying, but I will play around with them more.
Glad you liked the Game Over screen. VampireDev did the endgame artwork give 'em a follow!
- Meele/ranged are swapped in the controls settings and do the opposite
- Easter room with the lever either bugged or has some mechanic that is not obvious to observe. When you flip the switch to the opposite of its default state the entry gate you opened before to get into this room is back on the next screen. After hitting in few times and re-entering I was able to leave the room with switch in new state. Bug?
- Some map issues - I'm in fact in the upper room but the position marker placed incorrectly: https://imgur.com/a/mZ3AmWZ
- I goofed around in the boss battle seeing if there is some way to skip it or do something differently and evidently got myself killed with her blood sucking attack. After I restarted from savepoint I've got this UI bug: https://imgur.com/a/YWMXzmm and there were some weird logic issues when enemies would deal insanely high damage to me while mine was normal but my damage to boss was like 20x or so and I've killed her during the intro phase where she was trying to bite me for the frist time.
- Same for the walljump - she dislodges (or rather the logic that detects it) from the wall the moment you press opposite direction which basically means there is no window for jump - you HAVE to jump first and then press direction. This is counter-intuitive as most games with WJ either use the opposite or liberal (with aleeway) in both ways. Suggestion - add a few frames window where it still would register jump after I press the opposite direction from the wall. Update: after going through places where it is mandatory I can officially say I hate it how WJ handles.
- Make attack instantly interrupt wall climb or give it priority over the wallclimb. It really sucks to check for secrets right now by attacking the walls since she sticks to them immediately.
- The relations between some movement techs and respective bars are confusing. Dash uses its own stamina bar but when you dash in air it is now MP? I get it you want it to be a separate move but that wasnt the best way to convey it and even after some time of playing I still find it hard to adjust nor do I even have any reason to since I still think it is inherently confusing.
-It probably makes sense to tone down skirt movement/animation when she isnt moving, it looks tad weird like she has a fan under it.
Hi! Thank you for your feedback and pointing out the bugs found.
BUGS
- I will swap this when I make my first patch run. Thank you for pointing this out!
- That lock is currently bugged, but it goes away after transitioning between rooms again. I will fix that so it doesn't just pop up again and confuse the player.
- Thank you for pointing out which room. Seems to be a room with an incorrect Y mapping, so that's an easy value adjustment.
- This happens because it doesn't delete the boss's UI after restarting, which messes stuff up. This will be easily fixed. I am surprised to hear about the insane damage values from enemies and whatnot so I will have to look into why that is happening.
FEEDBACK
- I will see if that can be added, but I need to check if that is a thing in the games that I take inspiration from (I'm pretty sure it is though).
- I can delay the wall jump detection so it will read your other side after a few frames as you stated. I will look into this.
- Didn't even realize attacks weren't coming out while in wall climb. This will be addressed.
- I will be combining the two bars together in a later build. This will put a decision on the player whether they want to use MP for movement or for safe projectiles.
- She's a light spirit, so she's not fully corporeal, but I will try to slow the animation down.
I hope you enjoyed playing the Halloween build! Again, many thanks for your feedback.
Also, one thing I forgot to add - for now, the moveset feels a bit messy and disjointed. There is alot of stuff but some of it seems too gimmicky and does not feel like it has a place and usage. For now mostly talking about the weird slide-down-the-stairs move when you press down. it is fun but I could not find any relevant usage to it and in fact, it became an annoyance because i often dive-kick or sometimes want to duck while on stairs and instead I get catapulted in whatever direction, which breaks my movement flow. This is just my personal approach to platformring design/philosophy but after a hour of gameplay player should be able to move in your gameworld with the same ease as he breathes, without putting actual hard thought (the latter should be occupied by the rest gameplay).
The slide isnt bad on its own but not the way it is currently implemented. You definitely should it keep for the case when you roll down the stairs but I think direct execution should be removed. Alternatively, you can add more abstractions - only let the character do it if he presses jump while crouching on the stairs.
Some other things also bug me. There is an interesting synergy with roll and jump - if timed correctly you can do longer jump but... you dont really need with with air dash. Is air dash something that is being (supposed to) acquired later in the game? It really makes some platforming challenges obsolete. If you want to keep it i suggest checking how Environment Station Alpha handed its booster pack progression.
A lot of the mechanics here aren't fully laid out progression wise. This build was to demonstrate metroidvania progression and map tracking as well as a few other things. I do need to think about how I want to have the player slide down and not get in the way, as you said. Currently it's just a Kirby implementation. Maybe I could do it with a double tap? Idk how players feel about that.
Rolling increasing your jump distance traveled is going to be a feature because that momentum is too much fun. I love how much it breaks things, so I am debating if I should tell players about it in game or not. Airdash is meant to navigate tight areas like that spiked room where the spikes are also on the walls. There will be more sensible progression with navigating rooms with which ability needed, promise.
You speak about how movement should be like breathing and I 100% agree. There's one bit for example where the wall jump halts momentum sometimes and this bug has been infuriating to figure out along with plenty of other bugs that have still been consistent (spamming projectile will lock the book for example. STILL IN THE DARN GAME AGH). It's currently just an issue with the way I have momentum interruption handled so it is something that will be addressed over time.
I'll be editing this post when I obtain the 'alternative costume' as a reward for a good time and as a reminder for myself, testing out the dodge attack jump bug again to make sure(it's real and works on jump dodge too, seems to be in the same manner as projectile stacking with X)
You epic memers really need to be run out, clearing this under 3 minutes was a huge mistake.
Please add configurable key bindings as the default ones are horrible for me. I don't get the inclusion of a stamina bar as it's specific to the dodge mechanic and it's nigh useless in this demo for actual use of dodging yet good as an option to run faster. The boss has various safe spots in his first second and third phase(you can keep him out of the screen in his third phase by shooting him out in a rhythm). So what really is the point of dodging then? You implemented a much better mechanic with a single button combination (jump + dodge - which strangely also has about the same amount of i-frames that your regular dodge has making me question more concerning your decision to include the regular, stamina-like version) that also uses the green resource bar. At least with that I can make informed decisions around my current situation - do I need damage or do I need to make a quick dash to evade this next move? - as an example. One could argue you can just move out of the way in place of using your regular dodge with how the boss is designed currently and honestly it just feels tacked on for the sake of it. If you're fast enough at pressing X, you can consistently glitch out (some of) the cube projectiles into a single stack and they'll most of the time dissipate out of thin air causing frustration and massive damage loss. Get lucky and you just earned double the damage of one projectile when you shot out at least 10.
I'm also not aware as to why you included some sort of turn delay in your demo, it's awkward and possibly screws with the player's movement. Being able to turn instantly should be a given in these kind of games. A better option to scale your screen that doesn't lock you out from alt-tabbing would be sweet. Using your default attack locks you in place for a very short amount of time, but thankfully you're able to cancel it into a jump and retain movement, meaning the correct usage of this attack is directly tied to how well the player's knowledge of the controls are and his own skill which I do very much enjoy so thanks for that. Overall player movement is very decent. Certain enemies seem to only pose a minor inconvenience which is rapidly resolved by a grounded dodge. I also think I ran into an issue where if I rapidly pressed shift twice, once to roll, twice for the kick attack, then jumped I managed be able to kill one of those full-black flying robotic enemies by simply touching them. Don't really understand why the player's sprite when not moving seems to have a wildly flailing about dress when everything else about the character is static(mainly hair).
Actually, I just found out you can crouch cancel attacks(just like jump canceling) for zero resource usage. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I like that you can cancel like this, but now it seems too strong although outright nerfing it or removing it seems wrong as it's a good interaction. Jump diving(single/double jump, down-forward C) seems too finicky, please alleviate the input leniency for that. Lastly, onion head spirit is cute. Best of luck on your continued improvement of the game, Oniondev.
Thank you for the thorough critique! Let me bullet point out a few responses:
I will add config keys next time. I'm new to this and I didn't have the time to set this up, but the next time I enter for demo day, they will be present.
The air dash actually doesn't have any I-Frames. Rolling allows quick movement without spending magic. If I didn't have a stamina bar though, it would be extremely OP. I still want to work out the kinks of it though with balancing, so I imagine it will be extremely different or possibly not even in the game at all once all the abilities and actions are in. I could always just remove the I-frames though. Not sure.
Some haven't found those safe spots, but I agree, the player shouldn't be able to stand there indefinitely for the entire fight.
There's an issue with the projectiles firing. I have no idea how people are pressing X so fast to glitch them out, as I haven't been able to recreate the scenario myself. This will be the third time I reworked them from scratch, as it was one of the first things I made in the game.
Turn delay a byproduct of the way movement is being handled. It should be instant like the turning in Castlevania, so that will be fixed. Thank you for pointing it out.
Alt Tabbing should work still even with screen being resized. What version of Windows are you using? I'm worried about version differences affecting the game.
You might of caused the hitbox to stay active after the kick. That's an easy fix. Will do so.
So many opinions about the dress, lol. The idea was to make it move actively because of her inner energy as a light spirit. I didn't want to have her just standing there blinking, but if it's getting a lot of negative feedback, I'll just have to change it.
Downward Kick might be changed where it will be inputted after a third jump and angled whichever direction the player is holding (so even completely down). Tackling to the attack button does seem strange, I agree. Will change.
Onion head is a good insult for her. I might use that for dialogue. :^)
Thank you for the feedback! Can't wait to hear more when you get the costume!
Just so I get this out of the way while I'm currently re-running the demo for the costume since edited posts don't notify anyone. I'm running Windows 10 and I finally figured out the cause, it being a combination of the maximize button, alt+enter and resizing the screen. I must have done it instinctively after all these demos for full screen. You can ignore it if you prefer your current resizable button for the game's window or you can include true fullscreen. Quite literally mashing X will alone net you a glitch after a bit, debug it with unlimited magic. It's not exactly negative feedback more so to it being weird as there's(here's the part you need to touch up instead of possibly removing a characteristic affecting your character) no aura or any effects to display so. It doesn't have to be constant either, just bind it to the same frame as the dress moves(every 30 frames as an example) and you're golden. This can also apply when she's in a crouch-state, animate the back part of her dress to flow slightly restricted.
>I'm new to this and I didn't have the time to set this up, but the next time I enter for demo day, they will be present.
If this is the game you will be focused only on you can simply update it on this page as you go. It being in a demo-day doesn't restrict you to only updating it between demo day event cycles but alas. That's just the kind of example I see certain developers on here do, some don't but please choose whatever seems best in your situation.
>Onion head is a good insult for her. I might use that for dialogue
That was in no way an insult nor a bullying attempt but no worries, I'll be satisfied if you create one good demo for every 150 mentions of onion head in your game.
That was great. Fantastic movement and controls, it felt like I was flying with how many options I had. Felt the difficulty spike with the boss was too stiff though. Keep up the good work, this game has a lot of potential. I'd recommend changing the music.
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I remembered this game randomly and I'm wondering if this game is still being developed. Would love some clarification!
Love the game btw!
gotta harass this boy to get back to work BOY I know you're readin gthis
I'm unsure if this was intended.
I now have a kickass whip, I think I did something wrong.
Edit: there's now castlevania music, nice touch!
Congrats on being the first one to find the whip easter egg in this build! Be sure not to pick up the other weapon if you want to keep it.
When character leaves the first map,the game stop working.
Keep trying. That's the super bugged enemy that's crashing the game. It needs to be completely reworked. It will be fixed.
EDIT: This has now been fixed.
I like seeing old games that keep getting updated. Nice job! Remarks as I played your demo:
Hi! Thank you for playing the new build. Here are my responses:
Will update as I go.
SOME ISSUES:
- Meele/ranged are swapped in the controls settings and do the opposite
- Easter room with the lever either bugged or has some mechanic that is not obvious to observe. When you flip the switch to the opposite of its default state the entry gate you opened before to get into this room is back on the next screen. After hitting in few times and re-entering I was able to leave the room with switch in new state. Bug?
- Some map issues - I'm in fact in the upper room but the position marker placed incorrectly: https://imgur.com/a/mZ3AmWZ
- I goofed around in the boss battle seeing if there is some way to skip it or do something differently and evidently got myself killed with her blood sucking attack. After I restarted from savepoint I've got this UI bug: https://imgur.com/a/YWMXzmm and there were some weird logic issues when enemies would deal insanely high damage to me while mine was normal but my damage to boss was like 20x or so and I've killed her during the intro phase where she was trying to bite me for the frist time.
FEEDBACK:
- Add this: http://kpulv.com/123/Platforming_Ledge_Forgiveness/
- Same for the walljump - she dislodges (or rather the logic that detects it) from the wall the moment you press opposite direction which basically means there is no window for jump - you HAVE to jump first and then press direction. This is counter-intuitive as most games with WJ either use the opposite or liberal (with aleeway) in both ways. Suggestion - add a few frames window where it still would register jump after I press the opposite direction from the wall. Update: after going through places where it is mandatory I can officially say I hate it how WJ handles.
- Make attack instantly interrupt wall climb or give it priority over the wallclimb. It really sucks to check for secrets right now by attacking the walls since she sticks to them immediately.
- The relations between some movement techs and respective bars are confusing. Dash uses its own stamina bar but when you dash in air it is now MP? I get it you want it to be a separate move but that wasnt the best way to convey it and even after some time of playing I still find it hard to adjust nor do I even have any reason to since I still think it is inherently confusing.
-It probably makes sense to tone down skirt movement/animation when she isnt moving, it looks tad weird like she has a fan under it.
Hi! Thank you for your feedback and pointing out the bugs found.
BUGS
- I will swap this when I make my first patch run. Thank you for pointing this out!
- That lock is currently bugged, but it goes away after transitioning between rooms again. I will fix that so it doesn't just pop up again and confuse the player.
- Thank you for pointing out which room. Seems to be a room with an incorrect Y mapping, so that's an easy value adjustment.
- This happens because it doesn't delete the boss's UI after restarting, which messes stuff up. This will be easily fixed. I am surprised to hear about the insane damage values from enemies and whatnot so I will have to look into why that is happening.
FEEDBACK
- I will see if that can be added, but I need to check if that is a thing in the games that I take inspiration from (I'm pretty sure it is though).
- I can delay the wall jump detection so it will read your other side after a few frames as you stated. I will look into this.
- Didn't even realize attacks weren't coming out while in wall climb. This will be addressed.
- I will be combining the two bars together in a later build. This will put a decision on the player whether they want to use MP for movement or for safe projectiles.
- She's a light spirit, so she's not fully corporeal, but I will try to slow the animation down.
I hope you enjoyed playing the Halloween build! Again, many thanks for your feedback.
Also, one thing I forgot to add - for now, the moveset feels a bit messy and disjointed. There is alot of stuff but some of it seems too gimmicky and does not feel like it has a place and usage. For now mostly talking about the weird slide-down-the-stairs move when you press down. it is fun but I could not find any relevant usage to it and in fact, it became an annoyance because i often dive-kick or sometimes want to duck while on stairs and instead I get catapulted in whatever direction, which breaks my movement flow. This is just my personal approach to platformring design/philosophy but after a hour of gameplay player should be able to move in your gameworld with the same ease as he breathes, without putting actual hard thought (the latter should be occupied by the rest gameplay).
The slide isnt bad on its own but not the way it is currently implemented. You definitely should it keep for the case when you roll down the stairs but I think direct execution should be removed. Alternatively, you can add more abstractions - only let the character do it if he presses jump while crouching on the stairs.
Some other things also bug me. There is an interesting synergy with roll and jump - if timed correctly you can do longer jump but... you dont really need with with air dash. Is air dash something that is being (supposed to) acquired later in the game? It really makes some platforming challenges obsolete. If you want to keep it i suggest checking how Environment Station Alpha handed its booster pack progression.
A lot of the mechanics here aren't fully laid out progression wise. This build was to demonstrate metroidvania progression and map tracking as well as a few other things. I do need to think about how I want to have the player slide down and not get in the way, as you said. Currently it's just a Kirby implementation. Maybe I could do it with a double tap? Idk how players feel about that.
Rolling increasing your jump distance traveled is going to be a feature because that momentum is too much fun. I love how much it breaks things, so I am debating if I should tell players about it in game or not. Airdash is meant to navigate tight areas like that spiked room where the spikes are also on the walls. There will be more sensible progression with navigating rooms with which ability needed, promise.
You speak about how movement should be like breathing and I 100% agree. There's one bit for example where the wall jump halts momentum sometimes and this bug has been infuriating to figure out along with plenty of other bugs that have still been consistent (spamming projectile will lock the book for example. STILL IN THE DARN GAME AGH). It's currently just an issue with the way I have momentum interruption handled so it is something that will be addressed over time.
thanks for your work! i hope you have a good day
I'll be editing this post when I obtain the 'alternative costume' as a reward for a good time and as a reminder for myself, testing out the dodge attack jump bug again to make sure(it's real and works on jump dodge too, seems to be in the same manner as projectile stacking with X)
You epic memers really need to be run out, clearing this under 3 minutes was a huge mistake.
Please add configurable key bindings as the default ones are horrible for me. I don't get the inclusion of a stamina bar as it's specific to the dodge mechanic and it's nigh useless in this demo for actual use of dodging yet good as an option to run faster. The boss has various safe spots in his first second and third phase(you can keep him out of the screen in his third phase by shooting him out in a rhythm). So what really is the point of dodging then? You implemented a much better mechanic with a single button combination (jump + dodge - which strangely also has about the same amount of i-frames that your regular dodge has making me question more concerning your decision to include the regular, stamina-like version) that also uses the green resource bar. At least with that I can make informed decisions around my current situation - do I need damage or do I need to make a quick dash to evade this next move? - as an example. One could argue you can just move out of the way in place of using your regular dodge with how the boss is designed currently and honestly it just feels tacked on for the sake of it. If you're fast enough at pressing X, you can consistently glitch out (some of) the cube projectiles into a single stack and they'll most of the time dissipate out of thin air causing frustration and massive damage loss. Get lucky and you just earned double the damage of one projectile when you shot out at least 10.
I'm also not aware as to why you included some sort of turn delay in your demo, it's awkward and possibly screws with the player's movement. Being able to turn instantly should be a given in these kind of games. A better option to scale your screen that doesn't lock you out from alt-tabbing would be sweet. Using your default attack locks you in place for a very short amount of time, but thankfully you're able to cancel it into a jump and retain movement, meaning the correct usage of this attack is directly tied to how well the player's knowledge of the controls are and his own skill which I do very much enjoy so thanks for that. Overall player movement is very decent. Certain enemies seem to only pose a minor inconvenience which is rapidly resolved by a grounded dodge. I also think I ran into an issue where if I rapidly pressed shift twice, once to roll, twice for the kick attack, then jumped I managed be able to kill one of those full-black flying robotic enemies by simply touching them. Don't really understand why the player's sprite when not moving seems to have a wildly flailing about dress when everything else about the character is static(mainly hair).
Actually, I just found out you can crouch cancel attacks(just like jump canceling) for zero resource usage. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I like that you can cancel like this, but now it seems too strong although outright nerfing it or removing it seems wrong as it's a good interaction. Jump diving(single/double jump, down-forward C) seems too finicky, please alleviate the input leniency for that. Lastly, onion head spirit is cute. Best of luck on your continued improvement of the game, Oniondev.
Thank you for the thorough critique! Let me bullet point out a few responses:
Thank you for the feedback! Can't wait to hear more when you get the costume!
Just so I get this out of the way while I'm currently re-running the demo for the costume since edited posts don't notify anyone. I'm running Windows 10 and I finally figured out the cause, it being a combination of the maximize button, alt+enter and resizing the screen. I must have done it instinctively after all these demos for full screen. You can ignore it if you prefer your current resizable button for the game's window or you can include true fullscreen. Quite literally mashing X will alone net you a glitch after a bit, debug it with unlimited magic. It's not exactly negative feedback more so to it being weird as there's(here's the part you need to touch up instead of possibly removing a characteristic affecting your character) no aura or any effects to display so. It doesn't have to be constant either, just bind it to the same frame as the dress moves(every 30 frames as an example) and you're golden. This can also apply when she's in a crouch-state, animate the back part of her dress to flow slightly restricted.
>I'm new to this and I didn't have the time to set this up, but the next time I enter for demo day, they will be present.
If this is the game you will be focused only on you can simply update it on this page as you go. It being in a demo-day doesn't restrict you to only updating it between demo day event cycles but alas. That's just the kind of example I see certain developers on here do, some don't but please choose whatever seems best in your situation.
>Onion head is a good insult for her. I might use that for dialogue
That was in no way an insult nor a bullying attempt but no worries, I'll be satisfied if you create one good demo for every 150 mentions of onion head in your game.
lol no worries about the onion head. I think it's a cute comparison!
I definitely plan to update this specific build the further I go along. Once it's finished, it's a new submission to keep it fresh.
Sorry for memes. :v
I like it but sword is OP as fuuuu
It's the endgame sword so that's why lol
That was great. Fantastic movement and controls, it felt like I was flying with how many options I had. Felt the difficulty spike with the boss was too stiff though. Keep up the good work, this game has a lot of potential. I'd recommend changing the music.
The music is definitely placeholder music until I compose something actually worthwhile. Thanks for playing!