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[chrisjan]

Well, finally, after some weeks of hard work, I am able to present GunFu Deadlands V1.0!



First  of all, thank you everybody for the fantastic feedback I got from the game when I released the beta on september.  I have been finishing Version 1.0 of the game, and it is ready! As usual, I have uploaded it to SourceForge.
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/gunfudeadlands/

There are binaries for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Changes from V0.90:

 -  Turning:  The enemies don't turn instantaneously like they used to.  Now they need some milliseconds to turn around.  Which means you can shoot them from the back.  More strategic play.  In addition, a small 2-pixel-long pointer marks the direction in which they are looking.

 -  Dodging:  When the enemies shoot at you, they don't just stand there, they try to dodge your shots.  Still not very good at it, but they try.

 -  New buildings:  I tried to make the environment graphics simpler in order to fit the characters better... still looks kinda crappy, my artistic skills are quite limited.  There are some new buildings.

 -  Lower difficulty:  A lot of people pointed out that the game was extremely hard.  Although it is still quite hard, I made it a bit easier than before.

 -  New level design:  I modified the design of the levels a little bit, and thrown away the last two.  Surviving levels 9 and 10 depended too much on luck, due to the bad level design.  In this version they have been redesigned from scratch.

 -  Different levels for hard mode:  Still, if you die in hard mode you have to start from the beginning.  But now hard mode has its own levels, which are small variations of their equivalents in normal mode.  This means new content to discover if you make it far enough.  There is one level in normal mode that doesn't have a twin in hard mode.  It has been skipped to make room for the new level 10 in hard.  This new level is actually quite hard, and that is made on purpose.  If you finish it, you will have won the game.  This time I made sure that I myself am able to finish the whole game in hard mode before releasing it to the public, so you can too.  

 - Bullet time:  Charging is now faster, you don't have to wait as long as before.  The duration of the "jumps" is also a bit shorter, which means faster action!  The bar that displays bullet time and remaining bullets is now a small bar floating over the head of the hero, so you don't have to look at the corner of the screen and loose sight of the hero in the middle of the action.

 - Level editor:  You can create your own Gunfu Deadlands level with the built in level editor.  I have been wondering a lot if a user manual would be necessary, but I think you can find all the features by experimenting.  Help is always available in mode "help" (Accessible by pressing F1 at any time inside the level editor).  Features:
       - Quicksave / quickload, for testing that corner in midlevel again and again
       - Undo / Redo:  I actually never used those while designing the levels myself, but could be useful
       - Special options:  Some suggestions from the feedback that never made it into the main game are available through the special options.  For example, "one bullet per enemy" limits the amount of bullets you start with (the game becomes then extremely hard, you can't miss a single shot).  The old turning code can also be activated through these options.  There is an option "enemies with no bullets" that only works inside the level editor, it is meant for testing the level, not actually playing it.
       - Due to a limitation of Love, you can only store your level files in an specific directory.  The editor shows the path in the files menu.  If you send your levels to your friends, they will have to copy them into this directory.  Sorry about that.

- User level mode:  This is where you play the levels made in the level editor.

 I hope you like it.  Most of these improvements have actually been ideas from you, guys, the feedback was really helpful.  Thanks a lot!
 Christiaan

[ortoslon]

it's hard to see direction pointers of green shotgunners because their color makes them stand out less. you should make them darker

[chrisjan]

Hi,
I just updated the game a second ago.  The pointers are now black.  I kind of found them nicer when the color matched the bandit's one, but I agree that with that low contrast it was a bit difficult to see them, specially in the case of the green bandits.  Now they contrast highly to the orange background and can be easily seen.

Cheers,
Christiaan

[TheDustin]

Pretty cool stuff; I loved the .9 release and this makes everything a lot smoother. I'm trying to suppress a "yee-haw" right now.  I'll update my review and write a little blurb for the front page sometime soon.

[ortoslon]

me beat normal mode without dying

[TheDustin]

I've been trying to beat hard mode without initiating bullet time, do you think you'd be up to the challenge ortoslon? 

[ortoslon]

I've been trying to beat hard mode without initiating bullet time, do you think you'd be up to the challenge ortoslon? 

no, this may take much time and usually i try to record my playthroughs before i get bored with the game

[G.I.L.]

Fun game. Very hard tho...

[ortoslon]

hard mode playthrough

[Alec S.]

I liked this game quite a bit.  One issue, though, was that sometimes bullet time would go a bit longer than I expected, and it seemed like the game was just lagging (either that, or the game actually was lagging  ).  It would be nice to have some visible effect (other than a small bar) to tell me if I'm still in bullet time mode.  I think a bit more user feedback in general would be helpful in this game.  I'm all for minimizing user interface, but having everything really small by the character's head made information hard to get a hold of quickly.

Other than that, I liked the game quite a bit.

[TheDustin]

The .9 release actually had more of a HUD, it's the only thing I wouldn't have changed from that release.

[chrisjan]

I think a bit more user feedback in general would be helpful in this game.

You are totally right.  And that's the problem.  I already made public a version 0.9 of the game, and was tempted to make this version 0.99 instead of 1.0.  But then I asked myself how much could I stretch people's patience.  This is the first complete game I have ever made, which means I have no experience about playtesting, when to make it public, etc.  It seemed a good idea to post v0.9, when the game was almost finished, in the "feedback" forums so I could get some feedback.  And that is what happened, and I am very happy with it.  Thanks to everyone who took the time to play and comment it.  But, it turns out, the game spread from there.  Not only I got some feedback in the "feedback" forum (a place where you post your work in progress and hope that somebody will take the time and effort to look at it and tell you her oppinion), but the game was featured in indiegamer, jayisgames, playthisthing, etc.  And that was awesome, because it means that people liked it enough to feature it in their websites.  But...  The good side of it is that then I could get a lot of feedback through comments in those sites.  The bad side is that this put a lot of pressure on me, I couldn't keep making more and more versions with small improvements each and expect the players not to lose interest in the game.  I had the feeling that I had just one more shot, all changes had to go into it, and expect not to mess up too much.  There is a commenter in Playthisthing already complaining for the fact that there is a 0.9 and a 1.0, imagine if I had published 0.91, 0.92 and so on...

I would have prefered to get a small group of beta testers and be throwing versions of the game at them until it was really good, unfortunately I don't know how to do that.  This is where my lack of experience is hurting me.  Something I still have to learn. Posting in an internet forum which is publicly accessible has the risk that the game "leaks", it starts to spread "too soon", and then you can't just be publishing more and more betas, IMHO.  At least this is what happens to me as a player, I try the first beta, think "nice game", and then ignore all the others until the final release comes out.

But yes, you are completely right that the game would benefit from some more user feedback.  I just don't know how to do it without blowing up all the chances to still get some attention when an eventual definitive version comes out.

[/RANT]

The videos are awesome, I liked them a lot!  Clearly, I didn't make the game hard enough this time, hahahaha.  I'm kidding, I am glad that you liked it enough to take the time to record those videos.

The story about the "hard" mode is that initially, the game would only have a "normal" mode and then unlockable achievements on top of that.  One achievement would be finishing the game without a single use of bullet time, another would be killing the enemies always in the same color order, another would be using one single bullet per enemy, etc.  It was not clear how to implement them, and some would be really hard for the player to get, but there was one that made it, it was simple, and that was "finishing the game without dying".  And yet having one single unlockable achievement was kind of stupid, so I transformed it into the "hard" mode, because the game is harder if you are not allowed to die even once.  Then for version 1.0 I thought about making hard mode more interesting by actually changing the levels a little bit, but that was it. 

The bullet time progress bar floating over the character's head is just an idea that comes from some feedback I received for 0.90.  I think it's cool, you can keep your eye on the character the whole time now.  But yes, it is also kind of small.  I have to come up with some solution.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your support and feedback!
Christiaan

[Syrion]

I've played GunFu Deadlands just now and really like it. This kind of very simple, barebones gameplay is somewhat special in my opinion. When done right, and in this case it is, it can be a lot more fun and even motivate for a longer time than something much more bulky.

Concerning the gameplay, I mainly missed the ability to dodge without using the bullet-time. That's because I felt using the bullet-time is a tad too easy, since I could perfectly dodge all bullets (only shotguns were a a bit more difficult in that case) and would clearly survive, unless I didn't hit the enemy during dodging. On the other hand, not using bullet-time ment that I would certainly die, unless I could hit the enemy from behind. Thus, I think still being able to dodge a bullet, but without the benefit of bullet-time, could make the game more enjoyable. Especially maybe in some kind of extra mode, where the only restriction is that you can't use bullet-time.

Apart from that, while I think the randomness of enemies' movement is very good, it also takes away some suspense. Mostly, I would just have to wait until the enemy turns his back towards me so I could easily kill him, and that works nearly all the time. But, maybe this doesn't need to be changed, because it still gets more difficult when there are other enemies around (and I really liked that they react to gunfire, even if it wasn't directed at them).

The editor is very nice to have, but I think it would be a bit more comfortable to use if there was a menu with all the objects and you could just drag them onto the level. Having to scroll through all of them seemed a little bit tedious to me.

Lastly, I don't think the graphics are so bad. They are basic, but I find that they don't look too amateurish. Still, one thing I wondered about for a long time, was whether enemies have arms or if they are wearing hats. Especially when they fall over, the lines appear to be just long enough to be considered arms. But, I guess this could also be counted as the game having some more personality that way
Oh yeah, a proper mouse pointer would be nice, though.


By the way, especially with the level editor, this game would be a very nice fit for the Nintendo DS. I guess it's not a possibility, but I thought I should mention it

[Massena]

Excellent game: exciting, addictive and fun.

I have one major gripe with it, which is Bullet Time. I just feel it cheapens the whole experience. I found out I started having more fun without bullet time, when it was a speedy game of fast reflexes, not a game of picking out the other dudes 1 by 1, without them having a chance to fight back, so I switched it to hard mode and was disappointed to find out that there's bullet time in hard mode!

Great game!

[Sallen]

Excellent game, cool graphics and gameplay. I second the possibility of dodging without bullet-time and I repeat all the praise given thus far.

The only thing that I didn't like was when I tried to dodge-jump behind a church tower and I suddenly realized I collided with it! I understand it would be a problem to have pass-behind buildings, mainly because it would be difficult to tell whether an enemy sees you or not, but I think you could safely make obvious foreground elements (such as the church tower or the upper part of wells), foreground.

Are you planning on adding quick LAN coop and duels?

Very cool game. Keep it up!