played the new version
- the game installed flawlessly
- quality change was very much appreciated
- something weird on the options menu, i could drag the mouse and look around
- also on the options menu i couldnt trigger to get 3rd person view on the HUD
- its possible to change to 3rd person using the key "o"... and if I'm third person on the game and go to the menu, it continues to be third person
- when the game first started i had no idea what was going on, there was like some kind of video playing, but it wasnt full screen, and then i moved and the video stopped, is like the video is being played on a mesh face on a 3d world.. and also, the hud of the time was there, couting, which made everything more strange
- the animation is slippy on third person
- the movemente is not tight, and i don't think the "fire-like" ground, which I suspect slow you down (since there is no visual feedback gor that) is a good idea, at least not the way it is used now, filling the whole path, I would go for small avoidable spots
I'll address things point by point. First, thanks for playing and providing feedback! We really appreciate it.
1) Brilliant! We're going to improve the installer soon, so that it looks for and overwrites previous versions. Good to know this version worked well.
2) A vsync and resolution option set should be in the pipeline in the next few months. Definitely before full release.
3,4, & 5) The UMG/wrapper stuff in Unreal 4 has been giving us some issues, we've been troubleshooting those awhile. Bit by bit we fix things, but stuff like that is definitely on our radar. Part of the issue is a team-wide indecision on whether or not we wanted to force 3rd or 1st person.
6) The video you describe is an "idle state" that we put in to play when the game hadn't been touched for thirty seconds. Not sure why it started right when you began playing - sounds like a bug. Thanks for bringing it to our attention! We'll add it to our tracker and see what's up.
7) The animations have been undergoing some pretty extensive tweaking and improvement, so right now they feel a little weird. That should change as we continue to polish.
The slow tiles are something we're playing with, definitely. We want them to feel like an avoidable obstacle that still poses significant risk to the player, but we haven't found a good place for that yet. We'll keep trying.
Wow. I wasn't interested at all until I saw the new screenshots. I thought it was a side-view "runner" type game. It might be a good idea to put one of the new screenshots in the first post.
I'm not a fan of testing games that use installers. If I might be trying out a bunch of different versions, an installer is especially cumbersome. That said, I still wanted to check it out so I got it anyway.
-When I first started, I was falling endlessly in an area that looked nothing like the actual level once I hit Reset. The background was light grey. There was also a big red sphere in the distance and my character in third-person was transparent.
-When I tried running the game again later, the level started fine and I got to the second area (after the diving cutscene). Is there anywhere to go from there? I never reached the areas in your screenshots. Maybe the map didn't load properly? It just looked like empty rooms (one to the left and one to the right) and some cliffs. After wandering there for a while, I suddenly appeared in that area with the red sphere again, falling endlessly. I don't know why.
-At one point, I alt-tabbed to write here and when I returned to the game all I saw was a big wall with an image of a character running. Maybe I fell off the path while typing here? If so, I think it would be a good idea to stop accepting input when the game isn't in focus.
-The movement feels a bit stiff and the animations are really jerky, but the running and jumping was at least pretty easy to control. I only had one issue with the jumping, which was when I landed at the edge of a ledge and couldn't jump up onto it without forward momentum. A tiny bit of air-control might be a good idea, so that you don't need to already be running just to make small jumps forward like that.
-I didn't really understand the point of the foresight ability. It seemed like I just had to click constantly (since I couldn't just assume that a bounce pad would be at every ledge). It made me wonder what the point was for not having the ground types be visible by default. Clicking endlessly isn't that fun. I'd much rather just enjoy running through interesting and varied locations.
I played in first-person and didn't have any issues except that it seemed to take a lot of processing power to just stand at the start of the map while I typed in my browser. My keyboard inputs were really delayed while I had the game running. Actually playing, it didn't seem particularly fast (I expected a speedier character) but the movement through the level was smooth.
Hello! Thank you for the suggestion. I've posted the screenshots in the original post - which is definitely a great idea. I should have done that way sooner. Like mirrorlink's feedback, I'll go through yours point by point. Again, we really appreciate all the comments you took the time to give us. It makes us feel really good about what we're making!
1) We created an installer to streamline the process of getting the game on machines without fuss. Previously it involved digging through a bunch of folders and finding the exe and sometimes having to install some Visual Studio dl files, which was a barrier that we wanted to removed. We thought it would make things better to create an installer - it's interesting to hear that you're not a fan. Do you have any recommendations for alternatives?
2) The falling endlessly in the gray area is a bug that we are on the verge of fixing. If you encounter it again, hitting R will immediately reset the level for you and will hopefully prevent your needing to restart the whole game.
3) It sounds like you encountered a problem with our level loading system. The way we set it up was to ease the load on the computer and load each level piece in that room, but sometimes it doesn't work. We're trying to re-create it so we can fix the issue, but we are aware of it. If you continue to have trouble, sometimes it helps if players back up slowly and walk forward slowly, because sometimes that triggers the loading mechanism. I've petitioned the team to put a level selection menu back in the game just in case, though.
4) As mentioned previously, the movement and animations are in the middle of some adjusting, so we'll hopefully get it to a place where it feels better. Today we added a sort of "dash" movement that we're internally testing that may help smooth out the transition from jumping to running while giving the player a boost of speed. Air control is hotly debated among us, but for now there is only air control from side to side, but not forward or backwards. We will continue to experiment.
5) Ah, the ping ability. We keep coming back to it, but having it on automatically also hasn't worked in the past. The player had no control over what they're revealing or when. We've tried a reload mechanic (similar to Gears of War) that expanded the radius to encourage tactical pinging, but that just felt even more rhythmic and mechanical. We want the use of the ping ability to be the difference between good players and great players, but as novice designers we're wrestling with it. In the end, your suggestion may win out, but we're not done trying new iterations with it just yet. If you have any more ideas, we're honestly eager to hear them. Who knows what will spark the eventual solution?
6) Processor load is definitely a known issue. I'm curious - did you try to turn the visual quality down in the options menu? Many people have success with that in easing the lag. At any rate, it's a stop gap, and we're working to fix the strain the game causes. We have a few ideas to help with the feeling of speed, too, so expect some changes on that front in the future.
At any rate, once again, we very much appreciate your help! Please don't ever hesitate to contact us with any thoughts, feelings, or ideas. :D
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