Okay, first off, thanks for the feedback all ^_^
Little busy, so takes a while to respond.
I've responded to some of M.Knight's post on the discord, but I wanted to respond to a few things here too:
M.Knight wrote:
-What is "define music pack" ? I activated the option but it asked me to choose a .ini file in my file system, so I cancelled the whole thing.
It's a relic! Ignore!
M.Knight wrote:
-I still have the "__A" glitch when inputting a hiscore. Am I the only one who has it or did other players mention a similar error? On a side note, the glitch didn't occur on the run where I killed the boss.
Hmmm, could you describe the glitch a little more? Is it defaulting to an abnormal letter, or is it actually entering your initials wrong?
M.Knight wrote:On the other hand, I feel that the stage background and visual atmosphere may not be up to par with the track's intensity.
It'll be improved! Still acquiring more sprite assets. I'd also like some sort of take off sequence or intro, etc.
Amusingly, I think this fucking space castle is gonna end up being this games equivalent of the cho ren sha ring for a good long time, given how long it takes to get stages concepted and tiled out lol.
M.Knight wrote:
-I had a tough time setting up my controls. I initially set Shot to W, Bomb to X, Focus to Shift and Pause to Space with the "Define Keyboard" option. The result was : Shot is properly set, X did nothing, Shift is Bomb and Pause is bound to A. After fiddling a bit with the option, I managed to properly set up most of my key bindings, save for Pause which stays on A no matter what. For the record, I have an AZERTY keyboard and also have the previous version of the demo if for some reason, there are some shared metafiles.
Will look into this when I have time. On that note, did you have any such issues on the previous demo?
M.Knight wrote:
-Before I learned how to properly use all the weapons, the mid-boss felt like it was never gonna end. Actually, it feels too long for a stage 1 midboss even when using the slash + homing attack.
Yeah the DPS is poorly balanced due to me making some necessary changes on the last few days and then rushing to rebalance it again. Even just using shot like a coward, it shouldn't take that long to kill bosses.
M.Knight wrote:
-It is kinda weird that the same enemy (here, the animated insect-winged ghost) appears several times with completely different HPs and attacks, one acting as a pseudo-mid-boss while the others are more like popcorn enemies. I don't mind having one be much tougher, but in that case, give it a color change or something to indicate its superior strength, like the Judgement Silversword boss where one of the popcorn enemies turns metallic gray.
Yeah, I actually have an alternate pallete for the wraith. Didn't have time to impliment it though. We've also talked about having a few minor interchangeable parts in the long run: different head / wing designs, etc.
M.Knight wrote:
-Don't forget to implement time outs! I managed to keep the pseudo-mid boss alive long enough to have the BGM loop twice and reach the judgement mode activation threshold 4 times with the enemy never changing its attack patterns nor leaving the screen. I suspect the mid-boss and boss are similar.
Yeah, there's deliberately no time outs. Bosses don't give any score except by killing them and by Judgement, and the latter only gives score once per boss. So milking isn't or shouldn't be a thing.
M.Knight wrote:
-The mine trap attack looks very stylish, however there is no indication when it is ready, so it can be frustrating to stop shooting and hoping to have the mine trap tready when you resume firing, only to realize it isn't.
Lack of telegraphing on the charge was another conscious sacrifice due to time constraint, yeah. Expect one next time.
M.Knight wrote:
-The boss's rotating razor phase has much better telegraphing than its Demo 1 equivalent. I have no complaints about this phase aside from the fact that triggering Judgement mode during it forces you to either get hit by the blades while trying to hit the markers or let the judgement mode pass.
Hitting the markers is supposed to freeze him and temporarily disable the blades. Hope I didn't accidentally remove that...
M.Knight wrote:
-If I game over or clear the level, enter my initials, and then immediatly go back to the Hiscore table after the game brings me to the main menu, I am asked for my initials again, which will then register a new entry with the same score as the one I just had. It looks like you forgot to delete a temporary object that contained the newest highscore and is checked whenever you enter the Hiscore menu. Or something like that.
Thanks, never seen that. Will look into that!
M.Knight wrote:
-Is it normal if successful Judgement attacks only last a second or two? There's a bunch of spinning flames around me that destroy everything and then it's quickly over.
Depends on how many enemies are around to be marked. Basically, when you activate, it spends the next 2 seconds marking all the enemies that are on screen or about to spawn. Once you kill all of them, you unlock the final attack and bonus. If the enemy desnity isn't high, then yeah you can activate it quickly.
M.Knight wrote:
-There are four buttons, aren't they? Shot + Homing + Bomb/Judgement + Focus. That's quite a lot, especially for a game that can be directly played with a keyboard. (even though I never use Focus) Not saying that you should go full Yagawa-style and have weird two button combinations for everything to make the game playable on arcade sticks straight out of the 80s, but that means the best way to play the game would be an arcade stick. (Controllers wouldn't be too great due to the tapping on the main shot)
I use a SNES controller ^_^
Technically, the focus is optional and more there for testing purposes and "just in case it proves handy 1 in a million" since I try to design patterns so that slowing your movement is more likely to get you killed than anything else.
M.Knight wrote:
-Due to the rapid switching between the sword and the homing buttons, I sometimes trigger the flamethrower instead. Bit of an annoyance, but oh well.
-Speaking of which, what little did I do with the flamethrower didn't convince me much, but I despise the very unreliable and finicky Eschatos shield so I doubt I would like this defensive weapon anyway.
Yeah, mulling over ways to change it, possibility of removal, and a control shift.
I want to make it a bit more offense oriented when used right, with a unique purpose / ability, but we'll see.
M.Knight wrote:
-The homing attack mechanic is fucking elegant! It gives such an intense dynamic and rhythm to the boss fights. I am kinda worried about the shot power balance though. Because the homing mechanic is not necessarily mastered right from the get-go, a new player might stick to the main shot for a a while, and if the boss fights last forever because the main shot alone is too weak, it can be annoying.
Glad you felt that way about the homing! Very encouraging! Will definitely be fixing dps as well for the main shot.
M.Knight wrote:
-In terms of pacing, I think it is better than the previous demo. However, mid-bosses and the boss still take up a lot of time and have too many phases for a first level, whereas the portions where you kill regular enemies waves do not seem long enough to really make a difference between a run where you speedkill them efficiently and those where you don't. It is possible that there are still a lot of waves that I haven't reached because I still have lots of speedkill potential, but at least that's how I feel with a few runs under my belt.
Noted!
The stage isn't *quite* as high on speedkill potential as it could be, because I over/under estimated a few variables. That being said, if you play really fast you can get 6 wraiths to spawn before the miniboss, as opposed to the 4-5 if you just do well. There are also "extra" enemies that appear in some ways when you kill things fast enough. IE the first wave of 3 enemies can actually spawn 5 if you kill certain key members fast enough.
I think I can improve the depth on the first stage, though I think things aren't going to get really deep until there's more bullets littering the screen on later stages. That's really what drives the speedkill depth in Dangun and Gundemonium too.
Also considering shortening the miniboss a lot. Boss is...probably where I want him in length. Keep in mind you can speedkill him in 50 seconds (most people I've seen take 70+) if you know all his weaknesses, which will net you a bonus.
M.Knight wrote:
-Oh, by the way, I managed to get a game-ending error! =D
It happened as I activated the judgement mode while the mid-boss was leaving. I had one of the 4 cores with a marker on it and focused my fire on it, which prompted the following beautiful Error Log. For the info', I had to manually kill the process in the Task manager even after clicking on "Abort".
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object obj_bossRingTracker:
Unable to find any instance for object index '621338' name '<undefined>'
at gml_Object_obj_bossRingTracker_Draw_0
############################################################################################
Yikes! Will fix!
M.Knight wrote:Oh, there's another thing I forgot to add about the Judgement timer!
The thing is, the circular bar appears when the judgement jauge reaches a certain threshold and the circle's progression matches the actual judgement jauge's progression.
What does that mean? Well, if you don't kill a lot of enemies, the bar will increase slowly but if you are on a killing spree, it fills much faster. Thus, the timing on the judgement mode activation is inconsistent. It is like a rhythm game that randomly speeds up or down its notechart.
From what I recall, it can even instantly jump from no circle to a filled circle sometimes when I kill a major enemy or get a bonus item.
Why not have a fixed circle animation with the same timing every single time it occurs, and this circle animation plays when your judgement reaches a specific threshold. Moreover, during the circle animation, the actual judgement bar value stays the same as it is not directly bound to the circle's animation progress and is only used as a trigger to start the circle animation. Depending on the player's actions during the circle animation (dying, letting the judgement mode go, or triggering it), you can then decide to resume the judgement bar progress or reset it accordingly.
Basically the circle is just a representation of the meter in the top left corner of the screen, so you don't have to glance at it to see when it's ready.
Judgement is filled both overtime and by killing enemies and grabbing certain medals, so that's why the ring fills differently.
I'd say more but tired of typing right now, ha ha. Thanks for ALL the feedback! <3