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[Echelon5]

I'm not entirely sure how the new leveling system works. I got a full bar with the rogue but couldn't get a new skill. I'm assuming it's something really simple and I'm kind of dumb and missing it.

[sakuyo]

I'm not entirely sure how the new leveling system works. I got a full bar with the rogue but couldn't get a new skill. I'm assuming it's something really simple and I'm kind of dumb and missing it.

spoiler

finish the level (go out the end door). you get your upgrade point in the in-between level screen

@keo, dunno how spoiler free you want this devlog to be, lemme know if you want me to delete that. i've seen a few other things in line w/ this so it seemed okay?

[kruxus]

The rogue doesn't need the starting ability more than the knight IMO. With the bow + jump attacks with the dagger she's much more flexible. I do hope the starting ability is added back though.

I second ChosenCharacter though that there are a lot of annoying deaths from falling, failing to grab a ladder or a ledge.

There are also some rooms with spikes on the floor where the ceiling is so low that you have to time your jump perfectly, or you bump your head in the ceiling and won't make the jump. This is probably the most annoying thing in the game for me right now. Sure, with timing you can make it, but it feels like a pretty cheap death.

In general I think you should avoid low ceilings when there's jumping involved. Some level chucks seems to be built to have challenging jumps, which in my opinion doesn't do any good for the game. The platforming is tricky enough when there's enemies involved.

Approximately 80% of my deaths are related to falling.

EDIT: Some more bugs / suggestions.
- In one session (or maybe in just one map) no traps worked. At least pressure-plates and those flesh-eating plants. Or could it be a status effect of some equipment I got? Anyway the level required a block from a trap to be able to reach the exit so I had to give that session up.
- I'm pretty sure that the merchant got angry at me because the giant worm spawned right in the shop and attacked him.
- Are you supposed to be able to hit yourself with wands? Seems to happen every time if you swing it and there's no other target.
- One very annoying bug that killed me twice: When trying to jump over a floor trap with very little space between the pressure-plate and the block, I'm pretty sure I was killed by touching the block, or more likely, touching the block triggers it to fall, which killed me. Sometimes it feels like it's triggered just by jumping over it though.
- Please make ladders easier to grab (bigger "hitbox"). I don't know how many times I've died because of this.
- When an enemy starts their attacks, and plays the anticipation-animation (wonderfully done), they should not be able to change direction. This already applies to the player so it would be fair.

[kruxus]

Please make something about the spikes. Vagante is probably my favourite game at the moment, but even Spelunky don't make me rage-quit nearly as much, and I'm pretty terrible at Spleunky.

Seems like you get impaled by spikes even when you have nearly no speed at all. The rule that lets you walk past spikes could be a bit more forgiving too. Right now I was impaled by walking down from a tile, entering a spike-tile from the side (but still in the air), which killed me right away. Also maybe dropping down on spikes from just one tiles height could just hurt you a bit? Climbing down from ledges would be nice too, then spikes wouldn't hit you at all.

More forgiving spikes and bigger hitboxes on ladders (for easier grabbing) are probably my main wishes for this game right now.

Ratio of deaths caused by falling is probably at 90% right now.

[Rat Casket]

Or! Don't fall onto spikes!?

Seems like a smart plan to me. However I do agree with you about not getting killed if you are in the air, but not above the spikes. The way it sounds now you could stand in the spikes, jump, and die when you leave the ground?

But I don't know how it all works.

[kruxus]

Or! Don't fall onto spikes!?

Seems like a smart plan to me. However I do agree with you about not getting killed if you are in the air, but not above the spikes. The way it sounds now you could stand in the spikes, jump, and die when you leave the ground?

But I don't know how it all works.

Well, no, it's not as bad as that. I'm not sure if I can explain it better, but if you are in the air, it seems like just a tiny downward velocity will get you killed. When you move horizontally through the air, with just a tiny bit of falling speed, and the player sprite moves in over a spike tile, it seems it's enough to get impaled, which I found a bit unfair.

I think the spikes should be able to insta-kill you, it adds tension to the game, but in combination with the tricky jumps some level parts require, the spikes becomes more of an annoyance than they would have to be. if the game was just a bit more forgiving when it came to the jumping I would enjoy it more.

[clockwrk_routine]

yea some of those spike jump rooms are my bad : P
I think there are a lot of solutions to this
lesser more common attributes that deal with spike damage
spells that break things, spells that alter movement,
i'd like to add crawling over the ledge and hanging (spelunky), because I like the tactileness of that, and experience of peering below.
Also we'll probably bring back torches in the next build, so that should help players a lot deal with the darkness, and impaling themselves

A part of me also feels, that we could just not have them insta-kill?  Maybe 1/2 - 1/3 max health?  The games not like super meat boy and other platformers where it's about precise and skilled platforming per se.  After playing just these 3 levels, a playthrough I estimate is probably gonna be quite long, so dying much later due to spikes is a bigger reason to rage quit.  Although they will be more equipped to deal with them I guess. so 

also cieling spikes and the wall spikes and retractable spike traps : P I'm kind of kidding. ..

[kruxus]

All of those ideas sounds good. As I said before I also fail to grab ladders quite often, seems like their "hitboxes" could be bigger, that is allow you to grab them from a slightly further distance.

The games not like super meat boy and other platformers where it's about precise and skilled platforming per se.

This was my main point with my rant above, Vagante feels like it's more about progression and combat than pure platforming. The spikes bring some tension to the game which is good, maybe the damage could be scaled in a way so that falling down one or two tiles is survivable.

[Sam English]

also cieling spikes and the wall spikes and retractable spike traps : P I'm kind of kidding. ..

 

[DarkWanderer]

Once the player has progressed to later parts of the game can they unlock access to those Spelunky style so they can quick hop into that area or do they have to start from scratch every single time?

[jmcmorris]

also cieling spikes and the wall spikes and retractable spike traps : P I'm kind of kidding. ..

Don't forget backwall spikes!

When I played through a bunch I died many times from the spikes but eventually I got to the point were I would never die from them. Like spelunky, you learn to watch for them and how best to avoid them. I'm not sure how badly you need to nuke them if at all.

[Squidly]

also cieling spikes and the wall spikes and retractable spike traps : P I'm kind of kidding. ..

Don't forget backwall spikes!

When I played through a bunch I died many times from the spikes but eventually I got to the point were I would never die from them. Like spelunky, you learn to watch for them and how best to avoid them. I'm not sure how badly you need to nuke them if at all.

How I think about it is like this:

This is not Spelunky.

This game is an RPG, more attune to roguelikes of old. When you died in one of those roguelikes, it was barely ever a reflex test insta kill, because, well, it was turn based. So when you DID lose everything, you could tell why you lost everything, shooting a magic missile at a mirror, staring a gorgon in the face, etc.

[aberrantmike]

This game is friggin great man. Will definitely purchase when ready.

[Christian]

Man, went to try this since I've heard so many good things about it and the game crashes whenever I enter the cave right at the start

[clockwrk_routine]

@christian could you send us the contents of your logs folder to [email protected].  also what are you playing this on?  is it alpha 5?

@darkwanderer, haven't really gotten to the point where we have to consider it.  makes sense, for players to practice in new areas, but we'll see how well it works with the design.  might not be needed, might be needed

@aberrantmike ty

@spikes I think for now we could just tone down the amount the spikes, and tough platforming rooms, at least in the first area.

works coming along in the new area : )

[clockwrk_routine]

post

thx for those logs christian, not sure if they point out the problem : /
how old is your machine?  what's your gfx card?  intel cards seem to cause graphical problems, maybe even crashes (if that is possible <iwouldn'tknow>).

[James Edward Smith]

This game has some wonderful variety if you play it long enough though I almost didn't witness it due to bad rolls on my early plays making the game seem kinda boring. Then I loaded it up one more time and was finding weapons and a bandana that gave me a little familiar friend. It was amazing, but in my first bunch of plays I never found anything like that.

I don't like how you need to level up to get what seem like basic abilities like ATTACKING UP or JUMP WHILE SHOOTING. The fact that these are not default moves makes the game feel very frustrating to new players and I fear that you are losing a lot of potential fans of the game by making it seem so frustrating like this. When you make a game where enemies frequently come from above or below you, and then give the player no up or downward facing attack by default, it's not challenging, it's frustrating. It seems like a very bad design choice to me to make the feeblest of enemy encounters require draging the enemy along to a horizontal area so that you can have any chance of fighting them without taking damage. It's compounded by the fact that you can just randomly find a weapon SOMETIMES, that attacks up early on. It makes all other play throughs where that doesn't happen very annoying.

If you want to make early enemies tricky to kill, make them do something trickly like dodge attacks they sense coming, making them hard to hit with anything but fast attacks, ranged attacks, or by backing them into a corner, don't hamstring the player. The slimes and the jump out of the ground guys work well.

Megaman could only shoot side ways, but had an immediate attack that he could fire at anytime by default. Having a game where you can't attack upwards OR easily attack and have it land at the apex of your jump feels very unnatural to me. Spelunky has a slow whip attack that won't hit at your jump apex if you jump and then attack BUT, it allows you to start your whip attack before you jump, thus allowing for a proper jumping attack if you just time things right. Vagante gives you no such recourse as you are not allowed to jump or even move once you begin an attack unless you have points in certain abilities.

Save the level ups for actually powerful and not essential platform abilites, please. Being able to shoot a laser from my sword at level 5 is cool. Not being able to fight the simplest of enemies because I don't have an attack that moves the right way is retarded. It's like making a Street Fighter game where low level players can only attack to the left or something.

I honestly think this is a sour point in an otherwise really deep and atmospheric game. I fear a ton of people will play this game for a few lives, go "Why does my character control like a retard, I can't fight anything properly." and then give up on it and that would be a real shame.

[kruxus]

While I do agree in a way, I find that this restriction is kind of fun too. I can see that a lot of new players might be annoyed. While you can jump and attack, it's pretty hard with the slow speed of the knight.

The rogue skill that lets you aim your bow for example makes the game a lot more fun. Same with the pogo-sword of the knight. In general in games it feels a bit cheap to me when abilities that anyone would be able to do (swing your sword upwards etc) are locked away, but then again, it's an arcade game and doesn't have to make sense in that way.

The problem though is that if all basic moves were unlocked from the start, there would have to be a total enemy overhaul to make the game challenging.

Looking forward to the next release!

[clockwrk_routine]

Thanks for checking out the demo and giving us feedback James.  It's really early days still for the combat, it'll be interesting to compare what's it's gonna be in 6 months, but for now as kruxus says the enemy behaviour would have to change along with the player.  Part of the idea is that while it might handicap players at the start, they also get a sense of what's to come, and how to proceed with the game it's not just "hack before the enemy does leave them no openings."  Over consecutive playthroughs they'll learn the quarks of each weapon type and class and little strategies like backing up through a corner, or timing their jump attacks better, or head bopping to lower the bats, I think it's really neat if players can pick up on that through trial and error.  But that's what we've been going with since the start of the project, several players have also suggested changing it but it seems to kind of be an outlying issue.  Something needs to probably change.  Don't know if this would be a valid solution, I'd like to individualize each weapon animation down the line, and give them their own attacks sets - attack 1 leads to attack 2 leads to attack 3 sort of thing.  Maybe in there the hitboxes change.  More crunch, reasons to switch between weapons, and one more thing to learn.

Affinities will get reworked, but we don't really have the intent to give the player quantifiable power through them, just more mechanics they can try to exploit.  We're trying lots of things, and finding some things work and others don't.  With how combat plays out, these basic moves, give the player a lot of power in themselves.

everything said, we'll go back to the drawing table with combat when we have more time to look at it, right now it's all been about implementing the underlying mechanics and putting in content and figuring out what works and what doesn't.

@kruxus the next release is worth the wait : )  a lot of cool things added, modified - but not going to spoil it.  Shouldn't be much longer though.

[James Edward Smith]

By the way, I really like how the player's sight radius affects play and how certain items and such increase it, that's really neat.