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[Lavesson]

I and a few others have been working on a NES-styled adventure game name Cathedral since early 2015. The devlog can be found at http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=46481.msg1113691#msg1113691

If you want to see a gameplay video before downloading, one is available at



NOTE: We're still in VERY early development and I decided to mark this as prealpha since we're still fleshing out the game mechanics. Level design is far from completed. There's less than 5 minutes of gameplay. A lot of features are still missing.

A few screenshots can be found at the bottom of this post.

Download link, instructions and info

• The build is available as a zip here: http://goo.gl/fc298m. Download and unzip anywhere - no install necessary.
• The game is written in a mix of C and C++, and uses OpenGL 3.2.
• You might get an msvcp120.dll is missing error. In that case, download the x86 version of the MS Redist for VS2013, available here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40784

So what kind of feedback ARE we looking for?

Right now, the most important feedback would be how the game handles. Does the controls feel clunky/weird etc. Is hit/miss detection a bit off? Simply put: How does the game mechanics in place feel to people playing the game? Do we need to change anything before going further?

EDIT: I should probably clarify that while this *mainly* the feedback we're looking for, but of course general feedback on things such as art style, music etc. is welcome too.

Controls

• The game can be controlled with either the keyboard, or with an Xbox 360 controller (might work with other controllers - haven't tried yet)
• Keyboard mappings are hardcoded right now, but: ASWD to move, J to fight and K to jump
• Xbox controls: DPad for movement, X to fight and A to jump

Known bugs, TODOs etc

• The most obvious bug right now is that input state does not carry over well from one area to another - you might encounter a bug where, if you for instance were moving right when leaving an area, and let go of the dpad during load time, your character will keep moving right when the next area is loaded. Just press the dpad in the same direction and release. This bug is in our issue tracker, and I'm working on a nicer solution
• The checkpoints does nothing: When you die, you just die and then the game exits. We're currently working on a profile and checkpoint system, but it's not part of this build.

I might have missed something. Feel free to ask questions and post feedback.
Thank you!

Screenshots

[Quicksand-S]

Ok. I gave it a try, but I should mention that I mostly grew up with DOS games so I don't have much NES nostalgia to affect my impression of the game.

-It's a bit weird that the small blobs don't turn around when they hit a wall. I'm just letting you know in case you're too good at killing enemies and don't ever see that behavior.

-The initial slime seems a bit cruel. Someone who's just figuring out the game has a good chance of being hit by the slime after attacking it once and expecting it to die. Also kinda cheap is the small slime hiding in the grass later on.

-The ducking animation gives the appearance of readying the shield, but it doesn't do anything to protect me.

-The sword swings are much too slow for me. I imagine it's something that I could potentially get used to, but once the reapers came into play, I found fighting them like that really annoying. Pretty much every NES game I can think of had near-instant attacks. I guess Zelda II doesn't, but the shield was useful in that and made combat very different from this.

-What made it worse, and caused me to stop playing after I died once, was the incredibly short range of the sword. Even just taking out the first slime in the game, I found that I really over-estimated my range and had to move a bit closer to kill it. It doesn't feel natural for his sword to be that short. I think most older games get around this by either making an oversized sword or adding an extended "flash" with each swing. Some even made the hit range slightly longer than the sword's sprite, without additional visuals.

-A downward attack while in the air would be helpful and maybe make combat more varied.

-Why do the reapers take off so much health? Losing more than a full heart to a single hit seems a bit extreme.

-Why does the game close when I die? That's an easy way to make players/testers less interested in trying again.

-A way to quit the game without using Alt-F4 (or dying in this case) seems pretty important.

-I hated the controls. It's been a long, long time since I last played an indie game that used J and K as the primary action buttons, but I guess there's a precedent for it. Personally, I would really like to play this with Arrows + Z and X (or X and C in case of AZERTY users).

-Gamepad controls, which I realized later that I should try out, feel much better.

-I never did figure out what the purple orbs on my HUD were. I thought they'd be magic, but all I could do was jump and attack.

-I like most of the art (apart from the blocky background trees), and the animation. The main character's leg movements look a bit off, though. It feels like his back leg takes less time to extend forward than the other one does, but I could be wrong. The little touches like the crows are really nice.

-The music is pretty good, although maybe the track is a little shorter than I'd like. I didn't mind the sound effects.


I went back and decided to try killing the reapers again, only to realize that they can be stun-locked incredibly easily and never even touch me. That made them kind of pointless. I went down the waterfall, fought a bunch of guys and then died instantly upon mis-timing a jump and falling into lava that I thought I had enough health to get through. I didn't feel like making my way back there again.

I did mostly get used to the range and speed of the attacks, which was nice, but the whole thing does feel like it's lacking in excitement. Enemies don't do anything interesting, and all that combat does is slow down progress. There's no benefit to it and it's just not fun to fight these enemies. That said, I don't think it would be that difficult to tweak the combat if you feel inclined to listen to me. I'm curious kinda what other people think of it.

[Lavesson]

Thanks for giving it a try. You're confirming some of my suspicions around how things work right now - I REALLY needed someone elses perspective though. Hard to stay objective after playing through the thing for the 1000:th time

-It's a bit weird that the small blobs don't turn around when they hit a wall. I'm just letting you know in case you're too good at killing enemies and don't ever see that behavior.

-Yep. That's my bad. The AI really shouldn't be that simple. We went from a system where you didn't really have different hitboxes depending on whether you were standing or crouching, so I threw together a smaller enemy to test it out. But yes. It shouldn't just walk into a wall

-The initial slime seems a bit cruel. Someone who's just figuring out the game has a good chance of being hit by the slime after attacking it once and expecting it to die. Also kinda cheap is the small slime hiding in the grass later on.

Agree with the small slime hiding in the grass. Will remove that one. Regarding the initial slime (I'm guessing the one in the very first room), I'll probably just remove that one altogether, and let the green one encountered outside the first room be the first enemy.

-The ducking animation gives the appearance of readying the shield, but it doesn't do anything to protect me.

It's supposed to. It's just not implemented yet. But we were thinking of having it protect you against projectiles rather than enemy attacks later on. Maybe that's under-utilizing the shield though...

-The sword swings are much too slow for me. I imagine it's something that I could potentially get used to, but once the reapers came into play, I found fighting them like that really annoying. Pretty much every NES game I can think of had near-instant attacks. I guess Zelda II doesn't, but the shield was useful in that and made combat very different from this.

This is something we've been changing and tweaking and trying various things with. I had a feeling that this might come up. The way things are currently working, it IS actually a bit modelled after Zelda II. The shield will be used, but no, not in the way that it's used in Zelda II.

The thing is, we started out with an initial sprite looking like this (Kind of. It was a bit more polished later on, and the in-game attack was faster than the actual gif shown here). It also had instant attack:


This didn't work too well. The expected hitbox were big to the point where missing an enemy was virtually impossible if you didn't *really* screw up. We also added a small, small delay pretty early (it looked kind of weird that an enemy in front of you got hurt when the sword was in its top position). Still, it was more "near-instant" than the current way.

Yesterday, in order to fix the whole issue of basically being impossible to lose, we switched to the current way things are working. In order to also avoid the stun-lock problem you're mentioning, we added the slightly larger Zelda II-esque delay. We've also been experimenting with different kinds of enemy knockback etc to avoid this.

One option might be to scrap the delay and give a much more instant attack, combined with removing the stun on the enemies altogether. I would love to hear some more ideas on this.

-A downward attack while in the air would be helpful and maybe make combat more varied.

For some dumb reason, I've found myself trying to perform downward attacks. I wrote the code - I know they're not there
Might be time to add something like that, yes.

-Why do the reapers take off so much health? Losing more than a full heart to a single hit seems a bit extreme.

Definitely something that could be tweaked. Maybe it's kind of evil right now.

-Why does the game close when I die? That's an easy way to make players/testers less interested in trying again.

Of course, the plan isn't to do that later on. You're supposed to be respawned at the last checkpoint, but that part isn't completely in place yet. I could have just made the game start over of course. I'll do that in the next build if I'm not done with the checkpoint system. Thanks.

-A way to quit the game without using Alt-F4 (or dying in this case) seems pretty important.

I haven't implemented the menu system yet, so I didn't want to spend too long time building a throwaway menu when Alt-F4 sufficed for testing purposes. If it's just the matter of closing the game easily, then I could just bind it to escape for now.

-I hated the controls. It's been a long, long time since I last played an indie game that used J and K as the primary action buttons, but I guess there's a precedent for it. Personally, I would really like to play this with Arrows + Z and X (or X and C in case of AZERTY users).

Yeah, they're going to be configurable. To be honest though, I didn't quite know what people preferred as a default. I almost never play this kind of game with the keyboard.

-I never did figure out what the purple orbs on my HUD were. I thought they'd be magic, but all I could do was jump and attack.

There is a magic system, but it's a currently disabled WIP. I'll disable them from future builds to avoid confusion if I haven't finished that system by the next version.

I did mostly get used to the range and speed of the attacks, which was nice, but the whole thing does feel like it's lacking in excitement. Enemies don't do anything interesting, and all that combat does is slow down progress. There's no benefit to it and it's just not fun to fight these enemies. That said, I don't think it would be that difficult to tweak the combat if you feel inclined to listen to me. I'm curious kinda what other people think of it.

This is, without a doubt, my *greatest* worry to be honest. We've tried so many various ways of "making combat more engaging" that I'm afraid we're losing track of what has been working and what hasn't. This is exactly the reason why I needed to get a build up here for people to play and comment on. Thank you so much for leaving such detailed feedback.

If you, or anyone else, would have more suggestions on *what* would make the enemies more interesting to fight, I would LOVE that kind of feedback. I too am a bit curious of what other people think of it. If it turns out that the general concensus is "this is a boring way to do things", then I really need to change things. I'll give it some more time to gather some more feedback, but this was worth a lot.

[Quicksand-S]

One option might be to scrap the delay and give a much more instant attack, combined with removing the stun on the enemies altogether. I would love to hear some more ideas on this.

Have you considered taking a different approach? Rather than changing the player's abilities in order to make enemies harder to hit, how about changing the enemies? Look at something like Castlevania. The enemies aren't hard to hit because the player character is slow or has a short attack range. The games' difficulty is largely the result of how the enemies move. You've got so many options, even in 2D. Enemies don't just have to move in straight lines or focus entirely on attacking.

On the subject of the stun, maybe consider knocking enemies back slightly when they're hit. That way, there's less chance of stun-locking but the player still gets feedback that their attacks have made contact.



In my mind, there are two good ways to do melee combat:

1) Fast-paced, where you run and jump and slash while jumping and are just always moving. I'm thinking of something along the lines of the 2D Ninja Gaiden games.

2) Slow-paced, focusing on timing like Dark Souls or some of the combat in Zelda II.

Either method can be engaging in its own way. What you have here seems to be a mix of the two. You require the player to slow down for some enemies like style #2, but the player's combat options are very limited like style #1. In order to make it work better, I feel like you'd need to give players more options and slightly adjust some enemy placements/movements. That way, #1 could still be viable if players are good, but #2 is the method the game is designed around.

I tend to think that if you have really easy-to-defeat enemies, then they should be avoidable or the attacks should let you continue to move forward while attacking. Easy/weak enemies shouldn't be slowing down the player.

I feel I should clarify one thing. When I talk about adjusting enemy placement/movement, I'm talking about two main things. There's at least one spot where you've got three slimes in a row, so they take up too much space for the player to jump over them. That means I have to stop and fight, throwing off the forward momentum. Of course, if you do add the downward attack, then there might be no need to spread out those slimes.

The second thing is the reaper movement. I found it a little strange that I couldn't jump over them. Maybe I was just playing badly, but it seemed like they didn't dash toward me fast enough for me to make the jump. If I'm not meant to dodge them, then maybe they shouldn't move down low like that and should instead have some other sort of attack that makes it clear I have to defeat them (maybe some sort of hit-and-retreat tactic, so they stay ahead of me until I kill them).

[Lavesson]

Have you considered taking a different approach? Rather than changing the player's abilities in order to make enemies harder to hit, how about changing the enemies?

This is a good point. Because to be honest, I hadn't really considered a different approach.

Of the two ways of doing melee combat that you're mentioning, we've definitely been aiming for #2. But yeah, I get your point. The enemies aren't really designed for it.

Ok, so after giving it some thought, here's what I'll do for a start:
- The downward attack has been on my mind too for a while. It's going in.
- I'll extend the overall attack range. I like the idea of adding a flash. It would probably help the attack look a bit more interesting as well. Right now, it looks a bit too much like he's just poking someone with the sword.
- I'll go back to the drawing board and try to come up with some more interesting enemy behaviour. This is probably the more critical point
- I'll probably play Castlevania again

Other than that, we've been toying with the idea of a secondary weapon system consisting of ranged attacks. I just need to make sure they actually help the game's design, but if I *could* incorporate that, I think some enemies could be designed around that too.

I've already added the enemy knockback, and yes - it did help a bit. Still some tweaks to do though. I'll post new builds when I've polished things a bit more.


Really though, thanks. I really needed an outside perspective

[Quicksand-S]

- I'll go back to the drawing board and try to come up with some more interesting enemy behaviour. This is probably the more critical point

Yeah. It's a pretty important part of combat gameplay. I've been working on a game for months now, and even though I think it's pretty decent, the combat just isn't as interesting as I want it to be. I've decided to take a break from my actual game and prototype a bunch of potential enemy movement styles. It's kinda fun thinking up ways for enemies to act. A side benefit is that by doing things separately, I can more easily streamline the code a bit before I integrate it into the game.

Really though, thanks. I really needed an outside perspective

Happy to help.

[Lavesson]

New sword animations, extended weapon range and a downward attack alone made quite a big difference.
Still not enough, but designing enemies around this should hopefully yield something a bit more interesting:

[Quicksand-S]

That was fast. Looks a lot more enjoyable already. Nice work.

[thefoolishbrave]

I'm going to wait for you to come along with this a bit more but it looks like something i'd enjoy playing!

[Lavesson]

I'm going to wait for you to come along with this a bit more but it looks like something i'd enjoy playing!

Thanks! I'll keep this thread updated with new builds when I've gotten some of the bigger changes into the game. It'll probably take at least a few weeks (I want the next build to be a bit more mature and not just minor adjustments), but it'll get here

Trying to play it in WinXP SP2.. "....\cathedral.exe is not a valid Win32 application." is what I see on when launching the executable after unzipping with directories preserved

But I checked out the screens and gameplay video- Looks like it is reaching far beyond what the NES can do in just about every area, save for the bgm and sfx which may run with expansion hardware. So it feels generally retroesque to me than NES. Lots of great documentation here on specs and the numerous rules for the NES if you're committed to that particular image

I've seen that before - can't really remember why. Did you install the vc redist? My first guess *was* actually that VC2013 Redist wouldn't work on XP SP2. Can't actually find anything to back that up though. I'll have to investigate this. Honestly though, for me, supporting WinXP at all is really a "nice to have" more than a "must work", but hopefully it's an easy fix. Thanks for pointing it out.

No, the NES definitely wouldn't be able to handle it. The background music and sound effects, yes probably (they're made in Famitracker). The sound effects so far are made without any extra channels, so those probably would work. For soundtracks, we're using extra pulse/sawtooth channels (VRC6), so as you pointed out, they would work with expansion hardware. At least technically since we have the NSF-files. In reality though, we're still post-processing and mastering the music.

We're not really aiming to reproduce the limitations of the NES. When I say NES-styled, I'm thinking more about things such as the music, the color palette and the game feel in general. There's all kinds of things we're doing that wouldn't work on the NES, but still adds a nice depth to things (for instance, 3-4 parallax layers would most assuredly be impossible - I think *one* was hard enough on the NES). I don't mind that overly much though

[Quicksand-S]

In response to the "not a valid Win32 application" error. Is it possible you compiled it as a 64-bit application by accident?

[Lavesson]

In response to the "not a valid Win32 application" error. Is it possible you compiled it as a 64-bit application by accident?

Hm. No, it's compiling as 32 bit, but I might have an idea. I'm using the /SUBSYSTEM option in VC++ which, IIRC, sets a default min windows version of 6.0. XP would probably need 5.x something. I'll give it a try and see what happens.

[jb]

A couple of quick thoughts:
-The red slime shouldn't be able to change it's facing direction mid air. Would be more fun if it was committed to the jump it makes.

-The the slime art work is at odds with the rest of the game. The alert and sleeping icons seem arbitrary (unless they are planned to make an appearance in other situations also).  Your character, Death and the flying skulls have dark, pixelated aesthetics while all of the slime monsters look like they are out of Commander Keen. Maybe remove the eyes and add some hard shading? Something like this could be good inspiration: http://forum-files2.fobby.net/0012/5771/EB_Slime.png

-The contrast between foreground and background is rather jarring. I don't really like that the towers in the distance are identical to those that you traverse at your player's level.

Overall it is fun to play, though more contented is needed to really make a decision about that since interesting level designs are what is required to set this kind of game apart from other Castlevania and Wonder Boy off shoots.

[Lavesson]

Thanks for the feedback!

Your character, Death and the flying skulls have dark, pixelated aesthetics while all of the slime monsters look like they are out of Commander Keen. Maybe remove the eyes and add some hard shading?

Yeah, the slimes are a bit off. They were around one of the first enemies I made, and were never really supposed to stick around in exactly that form. But then they kind of did... Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give it a try.

The contrast between foreground and background is rather jarring. I don't really like that the towers in the distance are identical to those that you traverse at your player's level.

I know what you mean. I'll probably try and do something closer to the way the waterfalls on the lower level look (basically, just recolor the same sprite in darker shades).

Overall it is fun to play, though more contented is needed to really make a decision about that since interesting level designs are what is required to set this kind of game apart from other Castlevania and Wonder Boy off shoots.

Glad to hear that it's fun. I'll add a new build in a few weeks with some new content