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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsHeart&Slash - [RELEASED ON XBOXONE AND PS4]
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Juan Raigada
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« Reply #380 on: June 07, 2016, 08:00:12 AM »

Hi there!

Just an update, because...

WE HAVE A RELEASE DATE FOR PS4 AND XBOXONE

Isn't it amazing??? And what's even greater is that there will be physical copies for PS4. The idea of the game being on a store somewhere is weird, tbh, but it's really exciting.

Oh yeah, the date... It's:

JUNE 24TH 2016

We are going to wait a little for the PC release, partly because it's not a great time to release on Steam, but also because we want some distance between the two launches.

As for us, we are starting to prototype the next projects while we wrap the launch and prepare to support the game for the coming months.

Cheers!

Juan
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Elideb
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« Reply #381 on: June 20, 2016, 02:13:34 AM »

Hello.

This is a quick recap on what's been going on lately. As Juan said, we're close to launching the game. That means that the last few weeks have been taken over by all kinds of not-game-related-stuff. Which is important, of course, but not that interesting to discuss in here.

We've been busy adding new languages to the game (Japanese, Traditional Chinese and Korean), fixing old bugs, improving some parts of the interface, etc. But mostly, it's been builds, testing, pricing and date back and forth...

Probably the most important change we've implemented has been a considerable revision of how the second level (City & Sewers) is generated.
As we explained in the Steam update, the second level used to be generated as a big group of rooms, relying a little too much on probabilities for it to have a certain sense of progression. That meant that the level lacked structure and included too many rooms in the surface, which made it a little of a chore to complete.
The other important side effect was that the probability to spawn each boss was not symmetric. Copgore's room had some special requirements regarding its connections, which made it very hard to even have a chance to spawn. And then the random throw could say no, anyway.

The reason why we made it like that was that it was too complex a level for the state the game was when we created it. Changing it to make use of the new sections1 system we used in the Factory could cause many things to break, so we delayed, delayed and then delayed a bit more the decission.

But recently we had a little more time to work on this stuff, and we wanted to get it right before the release. So now, the city spawns less rooms on the overworld, both bosses spawn pretty much every run, etc. Also, the transitions from sewers to surface are much more controlled. After lots of testing, I must say I'm quite happy with the configurations I've found. There's a lot of variation, and the player is more likely to notice, because changing between surface and sewers is now required to end the level quite often.

I've also used this opportunity to remove most of the health, strength and defence power ups. They were part of an old test and weren't propagated to the other levels. So, gone they are. I've also reduced the overall number of crates in the City & Sewers, too. Otherwise, you could get something like 25% of the equipment in each run.


1 Sections are groups of rooms which can spawn together. Our code considers that a section is comprised of all rooms which can use the same set of connections (doors/corridors). If a room uses two sets of connections, it is considered to be a Transition. After a section is complete, the next section to build is selected from the available transtion rooms (grouping transitions by the connections they allow, so one section can start from several transitions at once).

This approach lets us control which rooms are available at each section of a level, and which sections can follow each. In the end, that's how you want things to work. Otherwise, there's no easy way to guarantee things happen in a particular order.
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Heart&Slash is on PS4, Xbox One and Steam Early Access!
Saeryf
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« Reply #382 on: June 24, 2016, 01:41:56 AM »

Not sure if this gets checked or not, but wasn't sure where to post about a bug. I've made it to the City and Sewers once each (On XB1) and both times my character has bugged out and gets stuck stuttering forever. Nothing I do will fix it, and I've lost a run because of it both times. First time was in the sewers and I was being attacked by some underground worm thing. Second time, in the City, I was fighting some bi-pedal robot soldier guys.

Both times I had the Thunder Hammer, I haven't made it far enough with any other weapon to find out if it's just tied to that, but that was the only thing that was similar between the two runs.
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Elideb
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« Reply #383 on: June 26, 2016, 12:52:10 AM »

Not sure if this gets checked or not, but wasn't sure where to post about a bug. I've made it to the City and Sewers once each (On XB1) and both times my character has bugged out and gets stuck stuttering forever. Nothing I do will fix it, and I've lost a run because of it both times. First time was in the sewers and I was being attacked by some underground worm thing. Second time, in the City, I was fighting some bi-pedal robot soldier guys.

Both times I had the Thunder Hammer, I haven't made it far enough with any other weapon to find out if it's just tied to that, but that was the only thing that was similar between the two runs.

Hi. Bugs are usually managed through mail (support[at]aheartfulofgames[dot]com).

We haven't been able to reproduce issues like this yet. However, we're aware that it can happen some times. In patch 1.0.0.4, which should already be live on Xbox One, the framerate should be slightly better, which helps preventing problems of this nature. We've also modified some of the most notable sources of these kind of problems.

We'll keep looking into it, and we'll specifically check the thunder hammer.

We're really sorry you lost progress because of this.


Edit: correct rocket hammer to thunder hammer.
« Last Edit: June 26, 2016, 07:57:09 AM by Elideb » Logged

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Heart&Slash is on PS4, Xbox One and Steam Early Access!
Juan Raigada
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« Reply #384 on: June 28, 2016, 03:16:15 AM »

And this is fixed. We are submitting the patch today (along with some other fixes and improvements) but we are not sure when it will be approved.

Cheers!
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Elideb
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« Reply #385 on: June 28, 2016, 07:31:03 AM »

CONSOLES VS PC RELEASE

So, as Saeryf said, Heart&Slash has already been released on PS4 (the USA version will be activated in a few hours!) and Xbox One.  Tears of Joy

We're collecting feedback, planning patches, checking reviewes (some amazingly good, a few heartbrekingly bad), refreshing metacritic  Hand Any Key and preparing for whatever comes out of it.

In the meantime, some people have asked us why is the game still in Early Access. We have just posted an announcement in Steam, but since TIGSource is a community where we have quite some followers, we'll re-post it here.

Quote
Is the console version more polished than the Steam Early Access?
The version released on consoles is pretty much the same as the one in Early Access. There are some platform specific changes, but the overall game remains the same.
We are releasing a patch on consoles which fixes some bugs discovered by our new players, and these changes shall be part of our next PC update.

When will the PC version of the game be released?
We are aiming for a late August/early September release date. There are still details to decide and, as always, things might not work as expected. We'll try to meet that date as best as we can.

Why was the game not released on PC at the same time as consoles?
There are several reasons. The main one is that the Steam Summer Sale was planned to start one day before our release date. We didn't think it would be a good idea to release the game in the middle of the sale, so we looked into delaying that date.

There are also some secondary reasons. Although we consider the game to be completed, it is still missing some of the content we announced on our Kickstarer, including the infinite dungeon mode. We'd rather have that as part of our PC release, along with the custom tailored version of the game for $100+ backers.

Will that content be PC exclusive?
Once we finally take the game out of Early Access, we'll release a patch for the console versions. It shall contain all the improvements done to the game and the new game mode. However, things like custom tailored builds will not be available on consoles, simply because backers get access to the PC version, not the consoles.

Will Heart&Slash be released in Steam only?
Currently, Heart&Slash can be bought from other stores, but only to get Steam keys. We're trying to get the game into GOG, with full support for achievements and the like. However, this is not 100% under our control. At the very least, a GOG, Humble Bundle, etc. version will come for sure. I'm too much of a DRM-Free defender to settle for anything less.

If anyone has any question we have not answered here, please ask! We'll happily answer.

tl;dr The game will be released on Steam, GOG and others once the extra content from the Kickstarter is available. The estimated date is late August/early September. PS4 and Xbox One versions will be updated to match this extra content.
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Elideb
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« Reply #386 on: June 29, 2016, 12:06:57 PM »

So, the game has been out for a few days on PS4 and Xbox One now (except for USA PS4, where it was available yesterday). Time for a mini-post-mortem!

Early Access
Even if the game has been on Early Access for quite some time already, as soon as the game was available we got reports of several problems and easi to reproduce bugs.

EA has been a great way to detect and solve issues before releasing the game. Without it, things would have been much worse. However, given the amount of players we had and their profile (most certainly in the hardcore side of gaming), things got through.

Some bugs, like the Thunder Hammer issue that is affecting a lot of players, should have been easily detected, but they were never reported. It's possible people thought it was a collision detection problem (it's a common mistake), and we didn't get new reports because of that. It's also possible that people simply didn't go keep the Thunder Hammer for long. I know I usually keep it around, but I use it on specific situations.

Other things, like the difficulty curve and some quests which might be a little harder to figure out than expected, were things our Early Access players had accepted long ago. Most of them have played a lot, so the difficulty (or the camera) might already be a part of the experience for them.

Sales reports
We have a very rough idea of how the game is selling. One of the platforms only releases reports every other week, so we're mostly extrapolating from likes/votes we have compared to those of games with known (to us) figures.

One thing we've noticed is that our game has some very odd statistics. From the sales we know, we have a lot more votes than the comparisons indicate. Because we don't know the vote distribution, we can only ellaborate on the causes. But it seems to indicate that we have a very vocal playerbase, at least.

It could be that:

  • Those who play, love the game enough to vote.
  • Those who play, find one of the game breaking bugs and votes negatively.
  • Those who play hate the camera and vote negatively.
  • The volume of sales is not high enough for these statistics to be of any relevance.
  • Anything else we have not noticed yet. Or will ever.
  • All of the above.

What now?
Well. We're taking the feedback from players and reviewers, to remove as many potential complaint points as possible.

We've already made the beginning of the game slightly easier. Fewer enemies, the most punishing enemy weapons are not present, slower sneak attacks, COPS have weaknesses... The patches with these changes should be approved next week, if everything goes alright.

We're analyzing the problems with the camera and will include some solutions down the line. Reduce camera speed (and add a slider), add options to disable screen shaking, smooth camera transitions and FOV changes... Some of these things are easier than others, but we've already got at least a plan to tackle most of them.

I'm also working on making the last level slightly more interesting (not really a complaint, but I'm pretty sure it would be if the other issues weren't around). We cannot make huge changes there, but we've been trying some alternatives.

One of the things I'm experimenting with is enemies with random weaknesses, so the player has a reason to keep weapons of different elements for the late-game. Right now, pretty much all enemies in the [redacted] are Elite Bots, which are weak to physical attacks. What I'm doing is give them a random weakness (physical, electric or plasma) and an equivalent resistance to the other two elements. That part is easy. The hard part is explaining what is weak to what to the player.

I considered changing the textures, adding some kind of particle around the enemy, placing icons... The first falls in line with our current approach; the second feels a serviceable last resource; and the third is a no-no.

So I went with the first: creating a special texture for these variations. And this is my first attempt:


Top right is the original Elite Big Grunt. It shall be replaced by the others.

And I liked the result so much that I think I'll stick to it. As a matter of fact, I've already applied the same treatment to all other Elite versions of our enemies. I'll compose a bigger image and post it when I have the time.

The solution is a bit messy, because I'm no artist. I've basically duplicated the elite textures and materials and done some color swapping in Gimp. Because we use cel-shading in-game, thin limbs can be a problem. The black lines obscure their surroundings considerably, so I had to use brighter colours (greys and greens) for the Smallbots or Flybots, for example. Otherwise, it was very hard to tell them apart from a distance.

I hope people (and Juan) like the result. Mostly because I don't want to go with any of the other options...
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Juan Raigada
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« Reply #387 on: July 01, 2016, 10:53:46 PM »

Not sure if this gets checked or not, but wasn't sure where to post about a bug. I've made it to the City and Sewers once each (On XB1) and both times my character has bugged out and gets stuck stuttering forever. Nothing I do will fix it, and I've lost a run because of it both times. First time was in the sewers and I was being attacked by some underground worm thing. Second time, in the City, I was fighting some bi-pedal robot soldier guys.

Both times I had the Thunder Hammer, I haven't made it far enough with any other weapon to find out if it's just tied to that, but that was the only thing that was similar between the two runs.

The PS4 patch for this (and other tweaks) is now live. The XB1 patch is still awaiting approval, thought...
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joemusashi
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« Reply #388 on: July 12, 2016, 06:00:18 AM »

Good luck with the release Smiley When I can, I will play the console version Smiley

Cheers!
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« Reply #389 on: August 03, 2016, 10:35:24 PM »

Hi Juan! I found you through your old comment on Hitbox Team's post, and wow, it looks like your critical insight does translate into making great games. Thanks for making Heart & Slash! I just posted a link to /r/gaming, will try to think of more places to show off your game.
« Last Edit: August 04, 2016, 10:03:58 AM by cousin_it » Logged

Elideb
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« Reply #390 on: August 05, 2016, 09:09:28 AM »

Hey there, all.

In case the message didn't filter in here (it didn't, because we didn't tell), we have an official launch date for Heart&Slash on PC:

8 Aug 2016

Yuhuuu!
That's like, next Tuesday!
Once the game launches, the price will be set to $15 (and the equivalent for each region) and there will be a 10% discount for a week. For the time being it will be available in Steam, but we plan to release it on GOG, Humble Store and some other places, too.

In this last week we're testing a new version of the third level, because the original version was not very appreciated. It is currently in Early Access, and we're waiting for people's verdict to decide if it stays as it is, or if it gets some other changes.

Right now, I'm working on fixing other long standing enhancement we never had time to work on, apart from some libraries and not 100% Heart&Slash related stuff.

Regarding Heart&slash, today I've been homogenizing all the heads. People always asked for lock-on functionality in the game. The problem is that the game is quite fast, and lock-on does not make things a lot better. So we agreed (mostly I did and Juan did not oppose) on a compromise solution: we would have all the heads include the option to lock on targets, plus whatever other power they granted. We would also need to twek our camera tracking system to reduce the turn rate a bit, because otherwise this feature would be completely unusable.

But we never had the time to get that done. Since heads was implemented at very different moments during development, they are a mix of old and improved and re-improved systems and states. And because I didn't have much experience tweaking equipment (Juan did most of that work), everytime I looked at it I froze in panic. But lately, we have made a couple of changes which have made things slightly easier. Plus, I've tweaked other equipment lately, so I'm a lot more familiar with the systems now.


All the special heads. Minus Heart's. And Slash's. And...

So, with just a couple of tweaks and adjusments pending, all heads now feature the desired lock on. And, as a bonus, some of them work a little better.

The head I've done the most changes to was the Rocket Head. I always wanted to have the ability to fire several missiles to a single target. The upgrade to enable lock-on was going out, so it needed something to replace it, and it got greenlit.


We've called it Macro Missile Massacre. Nothing to do with a certain Japanese show.

Most shields also have the ability to aim at specific targets, so there are enough options for the players who want to play like that.
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Elideb
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« Reply #391 on: August 06, 2016, 08:16:34 AM »

As I said in the Steam update, because I've spent so much time playing with missiles (Rocket Head + Mecha Head), I noticed some stuff I didn't like too much about how missiles moved or behaved. Mostly when they had no target. So I jumped in on their code and implemented some random deviation, plus proper deflecting. When you hit missiles and there's no enemy close enough, they will spread away from you with a little bit of randomization.

I think the new effect looks cool. It is one of those things that will happen very few times. But it's important that those moments feel special, too, because that's what the experience is about.

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Daniel Pellicer
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« Reply #392 on: August 08, 2016, 01:47:23 AM »

Hey! Are you releasing actually today or tomorrow?
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Elideb
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« Reply #393 on: August 09, 2016, 08:52:06 AM »

Hey! Are you releasing actually today or tomorrow?

In 90 minutes! Depending on where you are, that might be either today or tomorrow  Roll Eyes
(Edit: More like 70, because I spent some time writing this post)

Version 1.0.0 of the game is already uploaded, as is the Steam announcement.

Once the game is released I'll post again to let you know, because there will be a discount from that moment on.

It's been quite the journey, but at last we reached the end. Now it's only a matter of how we cross the goal line.

In the last weeks the game has seen some big changes: a new version of the third level, including enemies with weakness/resistance variations, a heads refactor, lots of tweakes to damages, speeds, distances...

And yesterday I implemented another important modification:

Instead of spawning equipment using an uniform distribution of probability, it is now less probable to get equipment you've seen a lot before.

In particular, the calculation for a part's weight is

value = 15 - Min(14, times picked up)
weight = value * value

This gives an inverse quadratic probability, with the lowest possible value of 1. Never picked equipment has a weight of 225, and 1 if it was picked 14 or more times. Because there are a lot of possible weapons, these values should balance themselves. 225 would be around 2-5% of the total pool weight, which gives higher changes, but not absolute certainty.

And as more and more equipment gets picked up, the distribution tends to revert to the original uniform distribution. But only after we've made sure you've played with every piece of equipment, potentially seing lots of combinations.

Extreme cases:
All equipment has been picked up more than 13 times, and a new piece of equipment is added to the pool. If 100 parts are available, that's 99 vs 225. The next time, it will be 99 vs 196. 169. 144. 121. 100. 81... You'll find this particular piece of equipment in several runs, but it will slowly fade from the first spawn points into further ones, until it might not appear at all.

The effect, at least as I picture it and the tests I made backed, is that you'll get some part quite often, but after 4-5 runs playing with it, you will return to the normal set-up.


In reality, that case won't happen, and many parts will share the same chances. Thus, things won't be so bland as getting the same starting equipment 3 times in a row.

And if the numbers prove to favour new equipment too aggressively, we can tweak that 15 down to 10 or lower.

I'd love to have some nice graphs for this post, but I've just improvised it Shrug

See you in an hour or so!
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Elideb
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« Reply #394 on: August 09, 2016, 10:41:15 AM »

Heart&Slash is officially out of Early Access!


Buy it before Steam runs out of units to sell!!! What? There is no limit? Well... get it while the 10% discount lasts!

Thanks for following us! Thanks for the support! Thanks for the community!
We'll try to post some (ahem) post-mortems and follow up with changes to the game.

Tears of Joy
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« Reply #395 on: August 09, 2016, 01:02:58 PM »

Looking forward to those Humble/GOG releases.
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Juan Raigada
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« Reply #396 on: May 23, 2017, 09:33:48 AM »

Ok, so two pretty big pieces of news:

first, the endless Level is getting close to being ready and we will start beta testing really soon.


Which puts us very close to the final fulfillment of Kickstarter stretch goals (a couple morte to go, but those are also pretty advanced).

And, on a related note, Dynasty Feud, a game we collaborated on, has launched on Steam today. The main devs (Kaia studios) are a pretty amazing bunch and I honestly think the game plays really, really fun. You should check it out!!!  Toast Left Toast Left Toast Left
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