Thanks guys for the feedback. It's much appreciated!
Pteriforever wrote:Fun!
From the screenshots I thought it'd be a bit like Laserreimu or Librasphere, but it was actually pretty different. I like the variety of characters, and all the bullet patterns seem fairly well-designed ^.^The artstyle is really cute, too~ Only complaint is that the hitboxes are a little wonky and take some time to get used to.
I didn't know those two games. Laserreimu is graphically awesome and the other one is very good too.
Regarding the hitboxes I can relate, sometimes I get hit and I'm like "what?"
The hitboxes however are correct but maybe I need to make some a bit smaller. I'm currently tweaking them.
Lord Satori wrote:The girl with the chain on her neck reminds me of Bernkastel. I'm digging the characters.
Blackbird wrote:Yeah, the character designs are pretty cute! I'll give this a try later.
Glad you like the characters. I lost many months and HP drawing them all!
I didn't know that character, I have yet to play/watch umineko. Shame on me!
Kuroonehalf wrote:Hope you don't take the big list of remarks I made as a negative thing, as it's not intended to be.
Not at all. I appreciate your very long feedback and I agree on many points you raised!
Kuroonehalf wrote:
- I think assigning Esc to the button for skipping dialogue is not very intuitive at all. Assigning it to X and/or doing like the Touhou games do where ctrl fast-forwards the text would be appreciated. Related: being able to choose text speed also appreciated.
Yep, it's also not very comfortable. Added this today.
Kuroonehalf wrote:- Having all the bullets be light bullets (as in their inner color is white) looks good at first glance but is very tiring on the eye after a while, like you're looking at little shards of sunlight. There's a good reason why they're used so little. I'd highly recommend looking into diversifying those inner colors. I personally suggest looking into Hellsinker's bullets for inspiration (in addition to games you probably already take inspiration from), as I feel that game has the best bullets out there by a gigantic margin.
I see that hellsinker's bullets are more shaded and also come in many interesting shapes. I'll look into it!
Kuroonehalf wrote:
- Is this resolution the intended resolution for the final product? I ask because the bullets and entities look a bit pixelated and I wonder if this is intentional. Personally I'm not fond of pixelated bullets and would much rather play a lower resolution where the sprites are more crisp.
As a rule of thumb I'm making entities you can interact with pixelated while decorative elements are not.
I agree that crips bullets look way better however they would be odd along with pixelated characters, monsters and drops.
Kuroonehalf wrote:- Some sort of SFX indicator for when your bullets are hitting an enemy is severely lacking.
An impact sound is played when you hit bosses but it doesn't stand much. I'll have to tweak it, maybe making it more high-pitched.
Kuroonehalf wrote:- Ability to remember the last scoreboard name input and default to it whenever we get to that screen again, so that we don't have to write our name every time.
This could be a nice addition that I would have never thought of by myself.
Kuroonehalf wrote:- Is there no Boss health bar? I'm not sure if I'm blind or it's really not there. Related to this, it's always nice to be able to see this sort of information without having to look at the very top part of the screen. An indicator on the sides (vertically) or on the bottom, or even an SFX indicator where the sound gets slightly different depending on how much % of HP the boss has left (I believe ZUN uses this when bosses have like 10% HP left, but having it vary for more HP percentages would be cool too), would be great.
Oh yes, there is however it was getting rendered behind the boss' bullets making it not visible half of the time. Fixed.
Adding a % indicator of the boss' health on the lower part of the screen would be nice. I started working on it today.
Kuroonehalf wrote:- * A lot of these characters feel too simplistic and alike each other. Even characters with slight quirks like Fumin who is able to set her dragon on a fixed position on the screen as she moves, or Dev, feel like they're missing tools. I totally understand if that doesn't bother you, as I know plenty of folks are fine with simplistic controls as well, but personally it's something that bothers me a lot. I love complexity - having constant material to learn and skills to juggle makes a game feel a lot more fresh for longer - which is why I adore Hellsinker and have been playing it for over a year, and why I couldn't play games like Danmaku Unlimited 2 for more than 2 hours. I feel like at the very least every character here should have (significantly) different shots depending on whether they're focused or not.
Yeah, I can understand the need for complexity. Making a comparison to a genre I know better it's like Final Fantasy Tactics to Disgaea or Tactics Ogre. The latter are way more complex than the first one but they are also more rewarding for this very reason.
In this case I'm not confident in making a more complex game since I'm quite inexperienced with shmups, I'm trying to make an overall simple game that I would enjoy playing with.
(Why have I decided to make a shmup then? Because it seemed an easy and not too demanding genre to start programming games back then. Hahaha, how naive.
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
)
Thanks again for the feedback, I'll surely let you try another build in the future!