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[nickd3000]

Hi, I'm Nick and I've been working on this action game called The Dungeoning for just under two years now. I'm coding it in Java, and I've made all the graphics and music myself (for better or worse).

The demo build is for Windows and Mac Os.

The game is an action platformer with a bit of RPG and thrown in there.  You level up by gaining experience from killed enemies, there are different weapon types, healing objects, magic, and a lot if rings you can wear to give boosts and special powers. Many of the items have descriptive text hinting at the back story to the castle you are exploring.

I'd like to get some feedback on a few areas of the game, and just feedback on the feel of the game too.

A few specific areas that would be really helpful to hear about:
General compatibility - Does it run on your Mac / PC config?
Performance - Does it run fast enough (should be 60fps)
Does sound FX, Music and fullscreen mode (Press F11) work ok?
How does combat feel (push down when attacking for heavy attack)?
Are the controls OK? Any suggestions for changes?
Does it work with your controller? (I've only tested it with an XBox pad on PC)
Difficulty - too hard? Too easy?
How does the auto targetting feel?
Are wall jumps obvious and easy to pull off?

These are just a few things to bear in mind, don't feel like you need to go through it all like a checklist or anything

This is the main webpage: http://thedungeoning.wordpress.com/

This is the page with the download link: http://thedungeoning.wordpress.com/demo/

Here is a recent youtube video of some gameplay:



Anyway, thanks for reading this far, and if you do decide to give the demo a try, I really hope you enjoy it, and if you decide to give some feedback, many thanks in advance!


All the best,

Nick

@nickd3000


Here are a couple of screenshots:




Q & A section: [I'll put any answers here if there are any questions]

DEFAULT CONTROLS: (can be remapped in the menu)
Arrow Keys to run left and right, up and down attaches and moves on ladders.
Z: Jump
X: Use Weapon
A: Target (useful when using a projectile weapon like a wand or bow)
LSHIFT:
1+2: cycle though equipped weapon.
ESC: Menu (for equipping weapon, using health items, wearing rings, leveling up etc)

Control Hints:
You can wall jump when near a wall.
Pushing down and attack when in mid air does a heavy attack.
You can quickly slide down a ladder that you are attached to by holding down and jump.
Upen chests and doors by pressing UP when in front of them.

[PeteHuf]

Taking some nodes as I play:

* I died after walking a few steps and getting triple-teamed by a spikey plant, a ghost, and a drippy ceiling-urchin. I loled. (Restarted.)
* I really like the music.
* I had an urge to hit the light fixtures with my sword.
* Drank a health potion from the menu (only realized I had these on the 4th play). Couldn't see how much health it gave me until exiting the menu.
* I don't really like it when you continue to jump while holding the jump button. I like it better when you have to re-press for each jump.
* I wish there were a menu button closer to z and x.
* Pressing F11 when in the menu does nothing. Pressing F11 when out of the menu exits (maybe silent crashes?) the game.
* The menu focus-changing animation looks awesome and makes the menus a lot of fun. Somehow when combined with the music it makes menu navigation feel kind of epic and important.


Looking at the questions you like to have answered:
Played on Windows
* It runs really well (I have a pretty beefy computer though)
* Graphics, sound work great, already mentioned my issues with F11.
* As far as combat, in general I wish things too less hits to kill. (Though I didn't realize there was a heavy attack until reading your post. I think it is a bit odd that down is used for heavy attack and looking down.)
* I think the controls were pretty good. Maybe the melee attack range seemed a bit short for as fast as the character moves. I was afraid of running into the enemy while trying to get in range.
* My 360 controller wasn't working with it.
* It seemed pretty hard. I don't know if there are other maps/floors you go to, but never got too far before dying.
* I didn't notice auto targeting.
* I didn't realize there was wall jumping until I read your post. Once I knew it was there it seemed pretty natural.

(Oops, I went through it like a checklist! :p)

I liked it! I'm not sure that I would get into it big time, I would probably opt for something more well-known like Spelunky (I know it's different in a lot of ways, but still.) This would need a bigger differentiator for me.

[nickd3000]

Hi Ubrasaur

Thanks a lot for trying the game out and posting your feedback!

I think a lot of people don't like that aspect of the jump mechanic so I'm probably going to change it.
You should be able to remap the key for menu in the key config screen, I'll double check though.

I'm a bit worried that F11 doesn't work... I know that some machines will crash if you go to full screen mode before you start the game and then start the game. Does it terminate anytime you press F11 while actually in the ?

Once you level up your strength a few times, it takes fewer hits to kill enemies, so I didn't want the initial stage ones to be tooooo easy, since you'll be killing them in one to two hits after getting some xp and levelling up.

I'll take a look at how many hits it takes to open a crate / destroy a plant though.

I'll also take a look at the melee attack range, it might be a bit short.

Auto targetting is only used if you select a projectile weapon like the bow or a wand etc, when it works you'll see a target drawn over the enemy, although this might not be very obvous looking at the moment.

There are 4 areas at the moment with distinct graphics and enemies, you probably got close to moving on to the next area after completing the 3 levels in the initial castle area...

I'm also a bit worried that a few people's xbox controllers arent working - I'm using a USB xbox controller though, is that what you are using? To activate it you need to press X or Y in the start menu...


cheers for posting your finding, let me know if you play more and have any more thoughts!

Nick

[st33d]

If you have to level up for the game to get easier then that's backwards. You expect windshield monsters to start with so that you have time to learn the mechanics instead of learning how often you see the title screen (which I saw a lot). Then as you explore you get nastier monsters.

Combat devolved into running towards and away from monsters constantly. The energy bar on the attack made opening crates tedious.

Wall jump I figured out because there was no way out of an area - so I assumed there must be one. I never discovered the menu... Had another go, discovered that the menu is Esc - which most games use to quit the game so I avoided pressing it till last. I couldn't remember which was jump or attack in the menu so I didn't know how to drink a potion.

I didn't see controls mentioned anywhere in this thread or elsewhere.

Everything else is quite nice, but yeah, at the moment the UI is giving me a lot of trouble.

[benedict]

Just tested this on my 13" mac air and it ran great. The fullscreen button worked as well.

I agree with what the others said about the automatic jumping when holding down the button – it feels weird. The game itself felt pretty good. I think the biggest problem I have right now is that it feels like the stamina meter isn't really doing anything for the game. The movement is so fast paced that a stamina meter feels out of place, and makes it feel like it's delaying everything rather than providing tension. Gameplay became wacking an enemy a couple times, running away, and then wacking them again, repeating the cycle until the enemy dies.

I think this is a great start though, especially on the visuals and lighting.

[PeteHuf]

I'm a bit worried that F11 doesn't work... I know that some machines will crash if you go to full screen mode before you start the game and then start the game. Does it terminate anytime you press F11 while actually in the ?

...

I'm also a bit worried that a few people's xbox controllers arent working - I'm using a USB xbox controller though, is that what you are using? To activate it you need to press X or Y in the start menu...

F11 for me caused the game to exit while it was doing its initial load and also while in the game itself.

I was using a wired 360 controller. I just tried pretty X or Y in the start menu but it seemed to have no effect.

[Raskous]

Hi,

Here is my feedback, I hope it will be helpful :

I could not launch the demo on a PC : windows 7 SP1. CPU intel i5 3.3 GHZ.
I get this message when I launch the .exe : "The registry refers to a non existent Java Runtime Environment installation or the runtime is corrupted."

I tried it on another (older) machine and it runs fine, the fullscreen worked I played with keyboard/mouse (but I find the defautl binding weird).

About the game, here are the things that bothered me :
-I find that the use of items like potion or food in the menu is not practical. There is no precise feedback of their effect(for example how many life I gain?).
-In my opinion the upgrading/leveling mechanics is unclear. I noticed that a "Stats" message appeared at some points during gameplay but there is no emphasis on the gain of a level. Also I put some points in strenght and did not really notice an effect.
-I tried (and died ) a few times and I did not find any weapons or pieces of equipments. I was a bit frustrated to unlock chest that give rocks or arrows.
-In my opinion the Menu is not easy to use and I don't like its look. For example I did not find right away that I had to press right to enter a sub-menu, that's confusing.

What I liked :
-Global look of the game.
-Generated architecture seems good, but I only managed to reach the level 2. I think I will try again to go further, maybe I will find powerful loot ?
-I like that I have to be really careful and to think twice before attempting a "bold" move.

I wish you luck to continue the development !

Pascal.

[nickd3000]

Thanks a lot folks for trying out the game and posting such detailed reponses, it's been very useful so far. I now realise that the game is a bit farther from completion than I earlier thought!

There's a lot of annoying things in the game that I don't notice anymore, so it's good to hear about them.  I'm going to take all this in to account, and figure out what I need to change without veering to far from my 'vision' of the game

Thanks again, and it's not too late to try it out and post your thoughts here!

cheers

Nick

[nickd3000]

Hi,

I have added some information about the default controls to the top post here (sorry, I really should have done that initially!)

I'm working on an update to the demo with some tutorial and tips build it and some changes made based on the feedback so far. I'll post again when it's ready.

Please post more feedback if you have any

Nick

[loggs2]

Some feedback for you:

*The game ran just fine on my PC, though I have a higher-end machine.
*The music and FX played just fine (though disabling them in the menu didn't work ).
*Fullscreen mode with F11 worked just fine.
*The controls are good. I think the movement and jumping is pretty tight, which is nice. It would be nice to have some kind of auto-potion key or a way to bind some -- I died a lot and opening up the menu everytime for a potion hurt the experience for me -- I would rather be exploring then fiddling with the menu.
*I found the difficulty too hard - the enemies do a lot of damage and I run out of stamina really fast. I often found myself getting wrecked once I was in a spot with low manueverability (against a wall or in a pit), especially against multiple enemies. Having so little stamina was really frustrating to me. I seemed to run away more than fight but I really wanted to fight.
*I didn't use auto targetting much. The few times I used it felt fine - I stuck with melee the most.
*Wall jumps were obvious to me. I needed to go higher and it seemed the only way so I tried it and it worked as expected.
*Opening chests wasn't obvious to me - I tried to sword them to open them - until I read your key-binding help for it.

Overall the game felt really good and the graphics were appealing to me. I would definitely play it some more if the combat was tweaked and I did not die so often so early.

On another note I hit a bug that occurred sometimes when landing after a wall-jump. The sword would swing the wrong way after landing if I did not move. In case this is news to you I threw an example on youtube for you to check out:



I look forward to another demo! Good work.

[nickd3000]

Some feedback for you:...

Hi, thanks a lot for the detailed feedback!
I'm planning to add a "quick health" button soon, I find it pretty annoying going to the menu all the time too!

Also thanks for posting the video of that bug, good find!

cheers,

Nick

[nickd3000]

I've uploaded a new build (0.57) of the demo:

http://thedungeoning.wordpress.com/demo/


Changelist (what I can remember)
Game tutorial (shown as hints on first level)
New sound effects and music functionality.
Plunging attack works better.
Destructable objects (bushes, crates) take less hits.
Improved physics and collision.
Fancy smoke on intro screen.
Improved health/stamina/magic bars.
Show health bar etc in menu.
Quick health key (defaults to 'S' on keyboard)
Gui sound effects.
Enemies can be hurt by falling blocks.


Please give it a try and let me know what you think!

[nickd3000]

New Alpha demo uploaded (v0.6) with a lot of tweaks and fixes, plus new enemies.

http://thedungeoning.wordpress.com/demo/