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[Quarry]

Werks nice for me at (980x540)x2 in fullscreen.
Needs cross-hair!

Cross-hair was something I tried but wasn't too pleased with. I might add it anyways though

[DustyDrake]

Well...
I was excited for this, but it kinda disappoints.

The level design felt really poor. I was often cursing to myself saying "God damn it Quarry" because of either the fact that I cannot dodge anything, so it turns into either me sitting still and taking the shots that the bots shoot, or me backpedaling any time a bot so much as appears (Neither is fun) or because the breakable crates were place on top of tables we can't get onto!

Because of the fact that it feels nearly impossible to dodge any shots, when I got to the point with the modular walls, at 50ish health and like two armor points with a Cobra and an Eviscerator, I knew I was going to die, and I did. And there was nothing I could've done about it except run back to the shop and buy health kits oh wait it closed.

[Greg Game Man]

Good job for programming this yourself, and getting it done so fast - you've got a great work ethic, i like the color scheme and consistency of the art too.

things i didn't like:
- repetitive maze levels
- boring combat
- only holding 3 guns
- no plot/generic setting
- cant jump, crouch, swim, climb - just running

I think you dug yourself into a hole being inspired by Wolfenstein instead of Doom or Unreal.

[Quarry]

The aim of this demo which is more like a tech demo considering the lack of balance changes. All these feedback you are giving will be taken into consideration. I'd also be really glad if you could send feedback to [email protected] rather than this thread.

@Greg Sergeant
1) We just released 3 testing levels and we are working on more interesting levels (especially for the demo)
2) Could you elaborate further?
3) How much guns can you hold?
4) It's just 3 levels, we have 27 other levels left to release with a lot more background information and story elements
5) As you said it's more Wolf/Doom-1 than later Dooms or Unreals. The fact that it's 2D makes it not require swimming or jumping

@DustyDrake
Inability to dodge shots is something we are trying to resolve as it's been requested quite a few times

Which one of these options sound better?

-adding different reaction times and first shot times (first shot starts on cooldown) so the enemy comes after you, but doesnt immediately start shooting
-slowing down ALL enemy projectiles significantly
-increasing the damage a single enemy shot does to counter above
-increasing time between enemy attacks
-slowing down enemy movement speed

[Interrupt]

There's a great base here, but I'll parrot what's been said about the levels being too small for the gun combat that's in there. Even in Wolfenstein most hallways were at least three tiles wide to allow the player to move around some.

Maybe it's the level size that's too constrained - try doubling one of your levels from 20x20 to 40x40 and see how the combat feels when the rooms are turned into more open arenas.

[Quarry]

@Interrupt
I'm really concerned about this at the moment because we have around 20 levels with us. The only options I have are the ones I stated above. I could even scale the levels to allow more movement but that's something that'll break the whole scale of things

Also;

[kurtkz]

Would it be possible to scale just the tiles themselves and not the level size? So, don't go from a 20x20 level to a 40x40, just increase the size of the rendered tiles?

[Quarry]

I could do that but that'd cause you to be way too small or have stretched textures

Also PCGamer article!

On PCGamer

On Twitter

[s0]

congrats on the article! 

gonna second the level size criticism though. i also feel the enemies take too many hits and (and/or?) there's not enough ammo.

[Quarry]

It depends a lot on the type of gun you use at the moment as for example shotguns use like 5 ammo per shot while pistols use single ones and you need more shots with shotgun to get kills. It ends up as weapon balance again

Also uploaded to Mediafire due to troubles people are having

[DustyDrake]

None of those options sound like they'd work with the current level size.
You didn't spend too long working on the levels considering you announced that you had made the level editor not too long ago, so please just bite the bullet and make larger levels please. Having fun levels to play in is more important than having a lot of levels to play in.

[Quarry]

So, it's been only 2 days since the release of the demo and we've reached 700 downloads in both IndieDB and Mediafire for the demo!

@DustyDrake

The announcement of the level editor isn't really the time I made it and I don't think that you can really determine the amount of time we spent on these levels. Me and Stefan are listening to all of your concerns and we are trying to resolve all of them. Addressing the issues we've received from the feedback are the top priority things now. On top of that, making sure that the levels are fun, exciting and memorable are equally important to us. We are sorry if we reduced the hype you had for the game but getting these kinds of feedback was one of the main goals of the demo. After working on the game for this long we can't really decide what's right or what's wrong. All the mails, comments and threads are read by us to ensure that the former isn't an issue and we will make the game "right"

As you and other have said the levels are small but that's something we can't really change after this moment because as I mentioned before we have around 20 levels and I am running out of time here. I'd love to increase the level size and such but the big issue is that I have school to attend and the quicker this is released at the most complete, playable and most importantly enjoyable state it'll be better for me, Stefan and everyone else expecting the game. We will put all of our forces to fix everything you didn't like and make this happen, but I can't guarantee a perfect outcome

[vittorioromeo]

Any way to change mouse sensitivity?

[Quarry]

I'll be adding mouse sensitivity and invert mouse options in a release after this, both are requested features

Also @DustyDrake again;
Do you think that having ranged enemies stop at a distance help? That way you'll have more time to avoid projectiles and change your positioning

[deathtotheweird]

I really liked it. though I do agree with others on some key things:

shotgun definitely needs a much larger damage increase. it uses up more ammo, but for little reason since the damage increase is minimal. it should be super lethal at close range, makes little sense that it isn't.

I don't mind the cramped level design, but ~30 levels or whatever of that would get real old real fast. it definitely needs some kind of variety. I think you dug yourself in a corner by making the levels so small.

ranged enemies are kinda frustrating to fight against. I think if you slowed down the speed of their projectiles it would make them easier to dodge and the lack of mobility from narrow corridors would be less frustrating.

definitely needs crosshair. just a simple one should do, doesn't need to be fancy and animated.

sometimes the mouse seemed to 'hitch', as if the game skipped a few frames and missed all mouse events in that frame. it felt really weird, and it would jerk the mouse around.

more sounds (those are coming right?)

I really liked it though. the art style and the setting is something I really enjoy. feels like a solid mash up of old school fps gameplay with the cool setting and atmosphere and story bits of system shock. nothing too special, but a decent experience.

the quicker this is released at the most complete, playable and most importantly enjoyable state it'll be better for me

I don't like this attitude, remember that you're expecting people to pay for this game. that seems like a weird and lazy attitude to take. if it's freeware, then yeah sure whatever. you're making it in your free time and don't expect anything in return, that's fine. but since you expect people to pay for it you should put a lot more effort into making it better.

[DustyDrake]

the quicker this is released at the most complete, playable and most importantly enjoyable state it'll be better for me

I don't like this attitude, remember that you're expecting people to pay for this game. that seems like a weird and lazy attitude to take. if it's freeware, then yeah sure whatever. you're making it in your free time and don't expect anything in return, that's fine. but since you expect people to pay for it you should put a lot more effort into making it better.

Ditto here.
Look, Quarry, this is the first game I'd see you finish here, and I've been wanting to see a game from you ever since I saw that 2-bit-ish mockup that I altered a while ago, I want to see this succeed as well.
This is why it's so frustrating when it's not.

Honestly, school is no reason why development on this should stop, nor should it dictate that you compromise on the quality of the game.
Do what my father told me when working on a project, work on it when you can, don't rush it unless it's absolutely necessary. Even if you can only work on the game for about an hour a day, or less, or hell only on the weekends even, get what you can done, and work on making that fun. This game will be better for it, and I'm sure we can all wait for it to come out, s'not like it'll be the end of the world if it takes a while.

A few other nitpicks I had about the game, but didn't mention before:

-I'd like to know exactly how much ammo I have, so that way I actually know if there's a cap to it, because it feels like there is but because I can keep picking up ammo, it's hard to tell
-Armor feels awkward. Seems like sometimes it blocks damage and goes down a point, other times nothing happens at all. Just a straight "this type/amount of damage is blocked X% by 1 point of armor and anything else gets through" would make it a lot more sane.
-Bullets from the player are blocked by the computers, but enemy bullets are not.
-Bullets from the player can hit multiple targets, it's easiest to see in that slalom of computers on the tables in level 2.
-The fact that you put those computers on the table makes it so that you cannot pick up the items that they drop. Please do not do this, it means I see credits, armor, and ammo on the ground where I cannot get to it, and made it frustrating when I needed it.

As for how to fix the enemies, I don't think you can really fix it by tweaking any values.
But perhaps if you added an "alert" time to the robots, where they are 'surprised' by your presence (perhaps less so if you had been shooting around them recently, but with the small levels, "around them" is kinda half to a quarter of the map).
Also perhaps make the tankbots fire a three shot volley, made of slower, but more damaging projectiles.
And those explosive hoverbots should probably be knocked back by melee damage. If I were hitting one of those things, I'd be shoving it the hell away from me.

[pluckyporcupine]

As for how to fix the enemies, I don't think you can really fix it by tweaking any values.
But perhaps if you added an "alert" time to the robots, where they are 'surprised' by your presence (perhaps less so if you had been shooting around them recently, but with the small levels, "around them" is kinda half to a quarter of the map).
Also perhaps make the tankbots fire a three shot volley, made of slower, but more damaging projectiles.
And those explosive hoverbots should probably be knocked back by melee damage. If I were hitting one of those things, I'd be shoving it the hell away from me.

My biggest problem with the AI, and it's a predictable one given the development time, is that they're so simple. It drives me insane. All they do is charge at you, guns-blazing. Due to the exceptionally high amount of small rooms and tight corridors, the only way I see to make it even slightly possible to not get hit all of the time is to make it so that the AI are careful and hide behind walls and doors, attempting not to get shot, giving you a chance to time when to hide and when to peek out, etc.

What's worse is that it becomes insulting in the current levels, capitalizing on the AI's shortcomings, creating cheaply designed "challenges" like on the first level with the hallway where the bots are in alternating cutaways in the wall, unable to charge you because of lower blocks in front of them. That is insanely cheap. The AI shoot fast and there's no way to dodge their shots. If you step in front of them, their internal shot timer is probably at 0, meaning you get shot the moment you're in their firing arc.

Combine that with the fact that the game is meant to have a survivalist nature and it gives you very few health/armor pickups and all it ends up being is frustrating.

[DustyDrake]

Well I was hoping that maybe I could try out larger levels by editing the files, but it appears that 20x20 level format is hardcoded.
Tried using this level file

Which rotates the level 180 degrees, adds a second shop in the lower right corner (player also spawns here) and extends the height of the level file to 21.
I turned around when I spawn and I see a void.

The fact that the 20x20 level format is hardcoded would explain why when I doubled the map image (Even accounting to edit out the excess players) the game would crash because it was trying to spawn entities in the void.

[Quarry]

I just want all of you guys to trust me on this, I've been noting every single issue you've had with the game and I'll resolve all the ones I can. As all of you were so keen on having bigger levels I'm making them 40x40

@DustyDrake
You have no idea how the game works, so try not to force things to happen. I've already explained that the game only accepts 20x20 levels

Another thing I'll be very glad about is actually sending all of these to the e-mail addressed in the readme rather than here

[Quarry]

We decided on re-making the former levels into bigger ones with more content, places and secrets to explore through. Also to people not liking mazes, too bad but this game or any space station might not be your thing