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[xix]

I'll be in Madison, WI this weekend showing off the latest build at Geek Kon. If you're in the area, I'd love for you to come check out The Moon Fields.

Also interested in finding high-level beta testers - aka folks who are in the FGC, competitive Smash, or interested in competitive games in general. Cheers!

[xix]

A few of people had problems with the way jumps looked (The camera looks down at 60*), so I added a dust ring to the jump smoke effect. You're never going to know exactly how high you are, but all jumps are the same height so they all take the same amount of time to complete. I'm really just looking to find out how effective the new jump effect is at conveying that "yes you have jumped".

[xix]

Found out Imgur can do the same thing as GIPHY at a higher resolution for a longer time, so, check it ouut.

[xix]

8 Player video clip from Geek Kon up here in Madison, WI.

[xix]

I guess I should do some sort of analysis of the game at this point.

I have a pretty full character list of 16 different characters that can all be customized. They are equipped from a Llist of 11 normal melee weapons, 2 magic weapons, 4 projectiles, 10 shields, 3 magic trinkets, 8 consumeables, and 2 miscellanous items. This seems like a lot of items, but I actually think this is just enough to fully describe the systems I have in place/my interpretation of chaotic melee combat. By that I mean that each character and item feels unique and fills a space in my brainspace that imagines The Moon Fields while also not really overlapping other items.

There's light vs. heavy, quick vs. huge damage w/n the melee items. Some of them are straight forward, while others are tricky. The magic melee items give a slight edge to the more magically inclined fighters. The three magic books can only be used by characters with magic, and each has a different specialty (ranged offense, defense, and healing). The consumable items all do something different from permanently affecting the map (caltrops) to breaking through shield defenses (explosives, fire breathing heads), or altering speed/health/magic. The ten shields are kind of superfluous - I could probably get away with 4. But the slight differences seem like one last way to tweak your character, and the superfluousness is nice for what is essentially a nice aesthetic choice.

The one mechanical thing I haven't added to the game that I think I should is giving the shields an amount of HP before they get busted - that will be a nice way to make different shields distinct. For most kinds of combat this won't be a big deal - you really shouldn't be getting hit at all. But I think it'll let me differentiate shields better on the low end.

From here, I think the next moves are

1) Add sound FX

2) Add more stages

3) Add a more robust set of magic weapons and magic trinkets

4) Add a bunch more items

SFX are coming first, but while I'm doing the other steps I'll be putting together the single player parts of the game. I think it'll give me some time to tweak certain items (FireAxe, Telescope) for multiplayer. Once the sound FX are in and I have at least 3 stages I am pretty sure I'll be making a demo and limited key sales on itch.io.

I think the demo will limit the breadth that you can do while still hinting at the possible options. 3/16 characters and probably like half of the items will be available. I gotta make sure that the demo is robust enough that you can build your own builds, but limited enough that it looks like you're missing out. Aayyyee marketing  .

[Pixel Noise]

You've usually got a lot of great ideas in your posts, but I'll just highlight one from the last post -

I think you're right about the idea of offering more shield choices, even if they are just superfluous - if for nothing else than aesthetics. And I think you could potentially extrapolate that idea to overall character design. I think a large portion of the player base for a game like this will also be into aesthetically tweaking their character - think "fashion souls". Some will just jump in and play without a care - but I imagine the more dedicated audience will appreciate a few more color/customization options.

I also agree with the "shield hp" mechanic you mentioned.

Looking forward to hearing what the sfx will sound like! I really like the graphic style you've got going, and there are some nice visual fx, so I hope the sfx receive the same kind of careful treatment!

[xix]

"fashion souls"

!!! I have a shield named "Red And White". I should probably make it a blessed red and white shield and let it give you +1HP every 15 seconds.

[Pixel Noise]

\O/ praise the fashion. It's funny - I never cared about it, until I started caring. Now what my character looks like matters more to me than what gear I'm actually using

[xix]

\O/ praise the fashion. It's funny - I never cared about it, until I started caring. Now what my character looks like matters more to me than what gear I'm actually using

I think when you're dealing with numbers that are relatively huge to your HP you realize it's not a big deal to be plus or minus a small amount of "efficiency". It's when you're dealing with Diablo style minmaxing that edging out that 1%. Probably has to do with how boring it is to actually attack in that game

[xix]

I'm testing multiplayer banners. Here are three different banners. The first was my first pass, the second I shrunk it 1/2 height and made it recenter faster, and the third was a combination. I think I'm going with #3 with a little bit more dampening:


There can be up to eight players in The Moon Fields, so there are four different teams: Red Crown, Green Tree, Blue Double Cross, and Purple Swirl. There is a fifth flag that can be planted in the field when matches take too long. It's an orange flag embroidered with a sword.

In character select, you press one of the controller buttons to change your team. It will cycle through RGBP and not-teamed. Not-teamed can compete against teamed (e.g. 2v1 or 2v2v1v1). In these situations, each team will be treated as one unit and will spawn around a single spawning location. E.g. 2v2v2v2 will spawn pairs of players in each of the four corners.

As far as combat is concerned, team play won't change anything. I don't think I'm going to ever turn off friendly fire. It's too funny when accidents happen. I'm gonna do a quick analysis of team combat and then brainstorm some ideas:

Outside of threatening attacks over wide areas (e.g. Battle Axe, Heartdrain, Grandblade), the more team based actions are: caltrops/blackgoo/barrier magic for space control, neutral tossing bombs over teammates, and the healing circle (so good for team play).

I want more movement games. I think a ring attack might be a cool thing. It would be like a groundpound and shoot low projectiles that you'd have to jump over or get stunned a lot. I'd like to avoid making this a magic spell, but it might be inevitable? I was thinking something like the healing circle that would increase magic recovery would be really cool, too. The barrier magic is really good for manipulating the battlefield, and maybe a physical item that drops a wall could be a good thing, too? I worry about allowing the creation of a thing to let players get to places they shouldn't go to. Maybe I could put spikes on it? It could be a shield? Maybe the groundpoound could be a shield, too?

[xix]

Updated the flags. They're smaller and recenter faster. I hope this is more clear and less in the way.

[xix]

I don't know if you can tell, but the bottom of each flag has a different cut.

[Pixel Noise]

It is tough to see any difference in detail with the flags, but they don't really seem to be interfering with the action.

[xix]

I ended up making 8 flags. You can use one with a buddy to team up. You can use one solo if you want to just stand out. These are the flags pre-voxelization and flaggenication.


The differentiators I used were color (obviously), brightness, relative icon/border brightness, tassle/silhouette, icon shape, border, and texture. I noticed the tassles are most effective when the characters are rotating, and the specific icons are most effective when the characters are standing still at angles more perpendicular to the camera. The borders and general shape of the icons are pretty identifiable for both idle and in motion. The GIFs below are just for fun. I don't know if they help or don't help illuminate this thing. It's a good test for the darker of the two arenas, though.

[xix]

Just finished adding the Team Play code. You can divide your eight players in up to eight teams or seven players per team, but those are obviously nonsensical***. Teams are treated as one spawn, so they will all spawn together on one spawn point. The most common team numbers I'm expecting are going to be 2v2 and 3v3, though 2v2v2v2 and 4v4 will be amazing. It's just hard to get that many players around a single screen.

As I playtest, people are asking for drop in and drop out functionality. It usually happens when we have a few people playing and a few people want to join in OR we have a ton of people playing but a player wants to leave. I think it has to do with "match length" - 3 sets of first-to-3 rounds each, but tbh, I don't really concern myself with match length unless it's 1v1. I should probably consider optimal 2v2 and 3v3 settings, though I don't think that really solves the problem.

Being able to move from the main screen to the character select screen midmatch might be helpful? I want the game to be about picking your stuff and sticking to it, but that's me being more Final Destination than All Items if you know what I mean.

***I'd be interested to see 7v1, though.

[Ayramen_Studio]

Nice visuals! There is some good use of voxels and illumination! Gameplay looks like a lot of fun too 

[xix]

4 vs 4 confirmed to be tons of fun. Like, holy shit, lots of fun.

[xix]

Ok, so I'm trying to put together my thoughts. This might be stream of consciousness-y, but whatever. It was pretty crazy:

Team Play is super fun. That's... about all I was able to parse from it. I am worried it's highly unbalanced, but maybe that's because I just wasn't ready for it. I'm going to try to talk this through for now, so bear with me.

In general the balance goes like this: Melee > Shield > Range > Melee with Magic and Tools as wrenches to that already fragile balance. Shields can block Melee and Range/Melee can outmaneuver Shield/Range respectively. Magic is a repeatable set of things you can do to change up the balance while Tools are powerful but have limited uses.

In 1v1 situations or FFA situations this works because you are actively pushing/pulling players via threats of attack. Sometimes you come out of scrapes with no damage, sometimes you lose some HP, and sometimes you die. It's very fast.

In 2v1 situations this is hard because once you commit AND damage one player you are pretty wide open for the other player. Your best option in a 2v1 is to hope that you hit both OR you have a fast enough weapon that you can ping and run. This makes the heavier, more committed weapons HUGE liabilities. I don't know the equivalent IRL strategies or how similar games like Dark Souls does this... if you do Martial Arts or playing LOTS of Dark Souls... please get at me about this. Right now the best strategy is to bait and bomb because you're only committing distance and not time, so... yeah.

3+v1 situations are huge crapshoots. This is especially when something tricky is your ticket out of there. The only time I've seen this work is when the spacing was huge, the solo player was very aggro and quickly took out the weakest of the other three, and the other two kind of panicked. It was pretty great, but it's hard to reproduce.

[xix]

I've had some time to think about this, and I have a few solutions that I'm pretty happy with.

#1) Shields with bigger hitboxes help make your 2v1 enemies spend those extra frames looking for a better angle. Figuring out how to align that side or back shield is key.

#2) I've made it so that all shields have better angles vs. overhead attacks when they're active, so only really close up overheads can get the collision. This helps vs. the overhead/swipe mixups that 2v1s can get against you. Note: jumping usually beats horizontal swipes and shielding or maneuvering beats vertical slashes/strikes.

#3) Power Attacks or Armored Attacks don't take return stun, so big weapons with big pushback can help create space and rearrange the 2v1 in your favor.

#4) I'm tempted to make (some? all?) attacks cancellable. This is edging into hardcore button memorization territory, but it could help solve this 2v1 problem. The action would look like this:

Score a long spear hit > press a button to cancel out > attack/defend/manuever

What button would I use to cancel? Should it be the dash/jump button? Or can it be any button? Would it feel as good if any button canceled the attack? It would encourage mashing which would be kind of a funny. Being able to convert that into 2v1 skills would be difficult because you'd have to watch which button press activates the action, which cancels it, and which ones are empty presses before you score the hit. Once you do activate the cancel, you still have to press the correct button to jump/dodge over horizontal attacks, block vertical attacks, or start moving out of there.

[Pixel Noise]

To touch on a couple points from the previous posts:

1) I do both Martial Arts and play TONS of Dark Souls   The idea when you have a slow, heavy weapon, is to either only attack when you know you'll hit both, or to keep moving, and strike at one opponent when the other is positioned awkwardly (behind him, etc) and can't reach you.

A skilled player in Dark Souls shouldn't really balk at a 2v1. But then - you've got the dodge roll there; I don't think Moon Fields has that mechanic? I know it has the dash - but does that offer I-frames like the Souls dodge roll? So that could be a big difference.

2) I'd agree about letting heavy/long winded attacks be canceled. I'd suggest a dedicated button for this - probably the jump/dash button.

3) I think you touched on this in #3 of your previous post - when you say "Power attacks or Armored attacks don'tt ake return stun", I think you are basically describing what is called "hyper armor" in Souls games - when swinging large weapons, the character can not be stunned out of the animation - so even if you take a hit while swinging that massive sword, you're still going to land your hit on the opponent. This helps to balance the loss of speed and maneuverability you get with a heavy weapon