EddieBytes
Level 1
I have ideas, and I'm not afraid to use them
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« Reply #4 on: February 25, 2015, 08:02:26 AM » |
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Hey Quicksand, thank you very much for your detailed feedback. You make some very good points that are very helpful to us.
Regarding the installer, the main reason I made one is because it is able to install the Visual C++ runtime automatically, instead of bothering the user to install it manually.
Indeed there are audio DLLs, but there isn't any sound implemented in the game yet. Since the game is a very early work in progress I considered it low prio for now. Thank you for paying attention to that though. It could have been a bug.
You are definitely right about starting in mid air. I am thinking starting the level with the ship "paused" until the player presses anything, then the ship starts being affected by gravity. What do you think?
The losing health while on the landing pad bit is a bug I knew about, but since it didn't affect player progression I focused on getting features in first. It is possible to die there I think, but the game progresses to the next level anyway. I'll try to fix it as soon as possible.
Regarding the shakiness of the ship, I still want to give it that "made out of scraps" feel. Perhaps making the moving parts bigger and fewer will help. I'll give it a try.
The ship flickering between two positions at high speed is known to me. I was hoping it wasn't noticeable so I postponed fixing it, but I was wrong, obviously xD
"-I didn't feel like there was any impact to the...impacts."
Particles! Particles! Particles! My engine doesn't have them yet, but they're on the list. I'll try using an impact sprite sheet instead until then. Regarding collision, I tried making the ship's collision as small and forgiving as possible. Seems there's still more work to be done there. Many thanks for pointing this out, Sir!
"The controls really threw me off. Even though I don't like landers, I've played a bunch and I'm pretty sure every single one had the left-side button control the left thruster and the right-side one control the right thruster."
I'm getting 50-50 feedback about this. Some people, including me, find it more intuitive to press right to go right. I've had other people see the pressing right as using the right thruster and thus going left. I find it a bit backwards, but the customer/player is always right! so I'll add an option to change the control scheme in the future.
"The actual feel of the ship's movement was pretty decent. I found the acceleration and gravity pretty easy to get used to."
Why thank you, kind sir!
"I stopped playing in level 2 because when I reached the bottom right of the first long string of tornado things, the game became really choppy and then my ship was suddenly destroyed. I didn't enjoy fighting against those things anyway."
Choppy? I know my engine is quite poorly optimized. I was hoping it would be ok on current machines though. Could you tell me your PC configuration please?
"Level 1 didn't seem very hard once I got used to the controls being the opposite of what I expected. I didn't have any trouble at all with it after a couple of quick tries. Maybe people just think the first level should be a tutorial level with no obstacles so they can get used to how the ship controls? In any case, I thought it was pretty decent and liked it a lot more than what I saw of level 2. It's nice to feel like you have control any crashes can be avoided. Those long sections of "tornadoes" just feel like they rip control away from the player (even if they don't do that completely, it feels like it) and a death from that is just irritating. At least, it is to me...but like I said, I'm not a big fan of these games to begin with."
Indeed I made level one as sort of a tutorial, for the player to get accustomed to the controls. Even so, I had people tell me level 1 is too hard, so I'm strongly considering making an even easier intro, and make the current level 1 become something like level 3, with the previous two being even easier.
I designed the tornado areas as more of a puzzle challenge with you having to figure out how to go through them without having your control ripped away from you. There is definitely a 90-100% success rate way to go through it without dying, you just need to discover it. There are three such areas in the entire game, each requiring a completely different approach.
There is an area (the curved tornado area) in level too that doesn't add much gameplay value so I'll remove it when I get back home. But the other two tornado corridors in the level are actually puzzles. Maybe I should think of a way to transmit this to the player better...
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