Hey thanks everyone for the feedback.
You can edit the controls in the Asunder/GameData/Save/Controls.ini file. I know most people prefer WASD but for this demo I thought I'd keep it at ctrl/shift/enter mostly because big floaty letters in the sky are a lot more vague to explain the controls than full words and buttons. Easier for my betatesters which mostly involved non-gamers, too.
Watched the video, it looks cool! and disorienting....
Reminds me of braid with space distortion abilities.
Thanks! Sadly I started this engine before Braid and its only now starting to fruit, so the comparisons are inevitable- but I don't think anyone will mind! Braid was a great game, and I feel it didn't even scratch the surface of what is possible with time manipulation mechanics, which brings me to:
there's a lot of awesome things here, and to tell the truth i was worried with the graphical style (don't know why), but i think something fantastic has and will come from this. i don't really know how to point out the things i liked about this in an easy way, so here's a list:
awesome stuff
-I enjoy the fact that you managed to keep a sense of direction in the game while still making the game as disorienting as you could.
-The rewinding was used as well as in braid i think, it's never used as a game mechanic from what i've seen so far, but i liked using it for last minute adjustments.
bad stuff
-You had a lot of good effects in this, but you definitely need the artist you were talking about, mainly because the graphics don't stand out much in places, leading to confusion (not the good kind).
-I believe you should try to communicate that the player has health, because up until one of those hand thingies got me, i took being invincible for granted, and thought being stunned was all that would ever happen to me.
-Combat didn't seem to work well, not sure i can say much more about that.
Aye aye, thanks! Very useful stuff.
Indeed this doesn't even start to show off what the engine is capable of in terms of time, it just showed some global speed up/down effects. In the engine any object could be moving at an independent rate through time, even backwards. Objects could easily be displaced and not subject to rewinding, like they did in braid, or move along prerecorded paths as time works according to an external factor like player position (ok these braid comparisons kill me). Enemies that when frozen in time can be used as platforms, or enemies who move only when time is reversed, or enemies who attack you by sending you backwards in time or eating up your remaining time (those darn hands).
Really we're only limited by our imaginations here since the engine is already in place. This demo was just a really proof of concept deal, and its way way way too short that it really just explains the controls and tosses you headlong, it doesn't even being to explore the concepts like I hope the finished product will. I've got a single line of code that can make a dungeon that is rotating around its center, or a setting for one that flips upside down, or an area where time slows down as you try to go off an edge, sending you into an inescapable event horizon.
My goal with the final game is to have a castlevania that fully exploits time and space mechanics. Not just using the rewinding to escape, but tying it fundamentally into how enemies attack you, how you get past obstactles and puzzles- while at the same time throwing you into topsyturvy gravity situations that need you to think upside down and backwards.
Its true the graphics right now make it very difficult to tell whats going on- I'm sure we'll address that. Something as simple as a black or white outline makes enemies 10x easier to recognize. Something as simple as flashing when they are hit
I know that its not clear how the combat or rewinding time limit work- there just wasn't time to explain that in the demo. In the real game I imagine I'll slowly phase the player into each element so he doesn't get so overloaded. Right now its set up so that you can rewind up to 10 seconds into the past (well when it was 50 FPS, now its 60 FPS so 8.33 seconds). Even after you're dead, you can rewind up to those 10 seconds to undo it. You can only really *die* when you run out of time to rewind- when you've gone so far past your own death that the time left in the past you could rewind is not possible. Complicated eh? Enemies can attack you by eating away this time- those creepy hands drag you backwards in time until all your rewind is used up, leaving you very vulnerable- but its impossible for them to kill you alone.
Its all so complicated I feel the best way is just to not tell this to the player and let him slowly figure it out as he gets guided through the experience- a 3 level demo was way too short for that.
Just played the demo
I think my brain asploded
naw but srsly, this is cool stuff.
It took me quite a while to figure out the combat, and at times collision seemed a bit finnicky - like, I hit a dude and he starts going back in time or whatever, but it still hits me as well, so I do a kind of rewind dance as I go back and forth in a short span trying to get it so I hit the bastard right.
Many times I only made it through due to button mashing and arbitrary time-remixing as opposed to any skillful maneuvering on my behalf. I think this is also due partly to the afforementioned finnicky collisions.
And even so I'm still not sure I understand how the combat works...I hit them until when I hit them they go back in time, and then I can use my charged move to erase them from existence? Or for certain enemies my normal attack will erase them from existence anyway? And sometimes I can jump on enemies to harm them? So many questions. These things should be clear - I mean even if you want to let players 'discover' how the things work, these things should be clear eventually, and not kind of perpetual questions as to what I'm doing that's working even after I find something that works, dig? This is the other part of why I mostly button mashed and mostly stumbled to the finish in a cloud of question-marks rather than knowing what was going on and making it there battered and bruised, but confident.
Also I think there was a graphical bug with the water, but I wasn't sure since the whole game had a strange aesthetic anyway. I thought I took a screenshot but apparently I didn't, but it looked something like a larger version of the character and his surroundings overlaid transparently above the play area - including that which wasn't water - and offset quite a bit. It was weird.
I don't really know what boxedlunch means by being stunned - I thought it was pretty apparent that once you died you only had so much time to rewind yourself back to life? That is what happens, more or less, right?
Anyway, groovy game, look forward to seeing where more it goes.
:3 danke
My insurance doesn't cover brain asplosion so I wear a bike helmet while I code
Aye the combat is finnicky, I've been messing with collision detection a ton. And theres that silly depreciated feature where stomping on a red hopper deals it damage, I forgot to remove that. But the basic way it works goes like this: When you attack an enemy, it deals it damage. A hopper has 20 HP, a lizard-man has 60 HP. A normal attack does 10 HP, a charged attack does 20 HP. When you 'kill' a monster with a normal attack, he is sent rewinding in time up to 5 seconds in the past (over 5 seconds, so 10 total). He reappears in the normal space time continuum when this is finished, with full HP restored. But if you kill a monster with a charged up attack, it sends that monster hurtling infinitely backwards in time, wiping them out completely. But for example the purple goo monster has very high HP (100) but you can reflect his own missiles back at him by reversing them in time. A normal goo ball does 50 damage to him, and a charged up one sent flying back in time blasts him for 100. If hes killed by his own reflected shots he explodes and dies. Now the big red suicide blobs take this a step even further. They jump and explode showering you with bits that kill you if they hit you, and send you uncontrollable backwards in time if they explode on you. But if you try to send the bits flying backwards in time, they will connect with each other and reform the blob again, which comes back to life and attacks you again! IE the monster killed itself, so if you rewound its remnants in time, they come back to life again. Making your own attack both a shield and a liability.
Now, theres a very good reason I just dumped people into the game instead of explaining all that, eh? Its much easier to figure out the nuances of "your attack reverses time" than have someone try to explain to you such mind bending concepts. I think if a player had a nice slow introduction they wouldn't be so overwhelmed with the combat. But I do need to tighten up the
graphics on level three hit detection and charge speed to give it the right *feel*.
Yeah I definitely need to rewrite the HLSL effect for the water then. It doesn't use anything but if statements and division so I wonder why its malfunctioning on some computers. In the correct version, it makes a bit of a reflection of the area above the water onto the water. In the bad version, it creates a ghostly blown up mirror of the action which makes absolutely no sense to me because thats simply not in the code. :S
But yeah also need to make it explicitly obvious what the bar over the players head does- when its blue its charging up how much time you have left to rewind, when its white while you rewind thats how much time you have left until you're "out".
Anyway thanks all, loads of people to respond to for the applications
Developer
