Hey! Thanks for the extensive feedback, made me rethink some things, so I've adjusted and fixed some of the things and re-uploaded the demo : )
M.Knight wrote:I played the demo and cleared its two stages. Here are my comments :
-There are "initial movement delay" options in the settings menu, which I immediatly disabled as they are switched on by default. Is that inertia? If yes, then it is good that we can play without it but there is no point in keeping that inertia at all in the game, so you might as well ditch it completely.
If it is for analog movement, then maybe the naming should reflect that more accurately?
I think it's good to leave some choice, I normally play with starting inertia (initial movement is slower, then it speeds up, but it always stops right away so there's no left-over inertia).
M.Knight wrote:
-Is there any input rebinding? WASD controls for player 2 don't play nicely with AZERTY keyboard for example, and if you play in Co-op mode, it seems a plyer has to use the arrow buttons and the numpad keys at the same time, which is very unusual and not convenient.
I think that's a fair comment and I've added it to my to-do list: not sure if I'll be able to make it in time for the release, but I want to support accessibility
M.Knight wrote:
-The diagonals in your game are not normalized. If you move your ship in a diagonal direction, it is a lot faster which feels a bit odd.
Good catch, thanks for letting me know! Fixed it, now they are normalized.
M.Knight wrote:
-The dialogue boxes in the tutorial hide the text prompts that tell you what keys to use to perform the currently discussed action. While the dialogue box disappears after a while, it looks unpolished, so you should move the text elsewhere.
Good point, remade it : )
M.Knight wrote:
-Is the lower left bar what determines when you can use your special ability? I thought at first it was the top left one, but that was a multiplier bar. In any case, you should have some visual indication on the ship itself to tell you whenever you can use the ability again, with a sound effect if possible.
Great suggestion, implemented it. There's a sound / UI animation / ship animation that indicates that now.
M.Knight wrote:
-Having to press a dedicated button to pick up items and allies can feel weird, but at the same time I can't deny that it can prevent picking something you don't want, so I am mixed. Still, if there is no reason not to rescue an ally, there shouldn't be a reason you have to press a button to do it, unlike the end-of-stage weapon bonuses where you want to choose wisely and not get something on accident.
My idea behind it is that it should be a conscious decision so that player understands what he did
M.Knight wrote:
-Is there any pause button?
Right now the only way to pause the game is by pressing Escape key: It shows the pause menu
M.Knight wrote:
-The dialogue boxes should not appear while playing. They hide way too much stuff. The warning is obviously okay.
Made it toggle-able + now they will mostly appear when there are no enemies on the screen (unless it's a ally death dialog)
M.Knight wrote:
-Your fire should not be sent in a slightly random direction, that makes it feel unreliable. Maybe it works in those Vlambeer games with random shit but in a good shmup, you always want your main weapons to behave in predictable and reliable ways. There's nothing wrong with a straight shot that fires a stream of bullets in a single direction. It guarantees that you will hit an enemy if you are aligned with it, which is important in such a demanding genre.
I don't think that the current angle matters that much, but I like the game feel with _seemingly_ randomized bullets much more.
M.Knight wrote:
-I think the small enemies should actually have 1HP. They stagger and are pushed back when hit once and don't die depsite how small they are, which feels very weird.
Good suggestion, reduced the overall enemy hp, thank you!
M.Knight wrote:
-The first boss's first phase should be vulnerable on its entire body and not just the two super tiny turrets on it. Your shot is already rather small to begin with, so hitting such a supposedly big enemy shouldn't be such an issue.
-The guard shîps in the boss's second phase take way too many hits to kill. They are very small yet take more than a minute to defeat and are not super easy to hit either. Having the boss be invincible during that portion also feels wrong. Not only it will absorb shots that should have hit the guards, thus prolonging th fight even firther, but that sort of boss invincibility doesn't work too well for a simple stage 1 boss. If you take games such as Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun or Touhou PCB, there is a phase where the final boss is invincible and you have to survive attacks for a set amount of time before it explodes. It works beautifully well because it is extremely climatic and serves as the very final battle in the game. A final test of the player's patience and endurance, with grandiose, ominous or intense music playing in the background and demanding patterns to dodge. Here it is just a simple stage 1 boss with very basic attacks. Why not have him temporarily leave the battle and let the guardsmen attack you, and then have him come back right after the guards are killed?
I don't want it to be overly-basic, it's easy to beat, but I still want him to be _somewhat_ unique
M.Knight wrote:
-Speaking of the bosses, they are both wayyyy too long. They last like, 5 minutes? With patterns that start repeating themselves after 20 seconds or so. Even the music has to stop and loop given how long the bosses are. It's absolutely fine to have short bosses, especially at the beginning of the game. A long boss at the beginning means you'll have to fight them every single time and the mere idea of playing the game and having to face them quickly becomes a turn-off for the entire game. If you look at some good fast-paced arcade shmups, you'll see that the first bosses don't last very long. DoDonPachi's first boss can be killed in 30 seconds for example.
Good argument, reduced the boss health (+ I might make a few more alternatives for the first bosses for them not to be boring).
M.Knight wrote:
-Post-boss upgrades should display the text all the time instead of only when the player gets near them.
Good suggestion, implemented it.
-I noticed that the ally system was not used at all in the entire first stage : you save a guy and he says he'll be there later. Why is that? This ally system with lots of potentially different shot types is one of the major selling points of your game and you shouldn't hinder that mechanic in your level-design. Have the rescued guy be available earlier in the level and have him directly join you when you resuce him.
-The guitar-based music is rather good. Reminds me a bit of Aka to Blue. That said, I feel it does not really match the relatively low intensity of the stage and is a bit at odds with the space background.
M.Knight wrote:
-When (inadventently) playing co-op mode, I had a glitch : if a player dies but the other one still clears the stage, it can pick up an upgrade but the game does not proceed to the next stage and none of the other upgrades can be picked up. My theory is that each player is supposed to pick one upgrade but the game does not check whether both are alive or not so it still expects the other player to show up and get an item.
Thanks, fixed it!
M.Knight wrote:
-I once had the same upgrade apepar twice in the set of 6, but that was in co-op, so I guess it's intentionnal. In any case, there shouldn't be any repeats in solo play.
Yup, that's the co-op thing and there are definitely no repeat in solo play.
M.Knight wrote:
-The purple hexagon things look like collectibles rather than enemies. Theu shinyness does not help.
Thanks for letting me know, I've removed the shine from the mines.
M.Knight wrote:
-The 2nd ship's firing speed is wayyyy too low. It doesn't matter how powerful it is if it fires a shot every two seconds. The triple shot also has a noticeable delay after firing three salvos, which feels a bit unsettling.
Increased the ship firing speed, thank you!
M.Knight wrote:
-The turret enemy with spikes around it still looks active and alive during its dying animation. You can make it darker or something like that.
It's not really dying when you destroy the cannon (he's still flying to block your bullets)
M.Knight wrote:
-I had a bug where upon restarting a run after a game over, I had the main menu's music playing in the background.
I _think_ I've fixed it (hopefully)
M.Knight wrote:
-You should replace the player HP by actual lives. Instead of having %, you can have a set amount of lives and each time you get hit by a bullet you lose one of them. The allies can still keep the HP IMO, since they are not the main player ship, but you can also give them lives as well. G-Darius has allies that can take a lot more hits than the player and it works well.
I think it's going to stay for now, but I'll be closely monitoring the feedback
M.Knight wrote:
-The stage 2 missile-firing enemies are a bit puzzling : they are very tiny but can send lots of missiles and are very resilient for their size.
Reduced the health, thanks!
M.Knight wrote:
-The boss 2 attack where it spins around the screen is rather original and interesting in theory, but you can still stay on the left side and fire at the boss instead of staying in the middle as the pattern seems to have been programmed for.
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I'm ok with that: those are somewhat random and you can't always hide on the left.
Thanks a lot for leaving so many details! I've also updated the release trailer today. Doing some last-moment adjustments / fixes right now before releasing it in two weeks.