Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length

 
Advanced search

1411276 Posts in 69323 Topics- by 58380 Members - Latest Member: bob1029

March 28, 2024, 11:25:00 AM

Need hosting? Check out Digital Ocean
(more details in this thread)
TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsLonely Star - action / corn / RPG
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5
Print
Author Topic: Lonely Star - action / corn / RPG  (Read 12523 times)
Gorgondantess
Level 0
*


View Profile
« Reply #40 on: June 29, 2016, 09:17:55 PM »

Also, I streamed today for a while, among friends. About six people were there, they seemed pretty interested, and we had a good time. Even though half of it was me trying to get out of Snake Town, because I'm bad.

I'd imagine everyone has trouble getting out of Snake Town. imho it's one of the most confusingly and punishingly designed areas in the game.
Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #41 on: June 30, 2016, 11:52:02 AM »

I'll be interested to hear what you think about that. It's pretty hard for me to gauge the difficulty of anything at this point. The idea was that it'd be hard to navigate in the dark with enemies chasing you so it would pay off to look around and plan your escape route before you grab the altar stone.
Logged
HollowHollowHollow
Level 0
**


View Profile
« Reply #42 on: July 01, 2016, 10:46:35 AM »

I'll be interested to hear what you think about that. It's pretty hard for me to gauge the difficulty of anything at this point. The idea was that it'd be hard to navigate in the dark with enemies chasing you so it would pay off to look around and plan your escape route before you grab the altar stone.

I think maybe a little less archer-ghost type enemies, maybe? Because I eventually figured out where to go after scouting out before picking up the stone, but the arches kept DEMOLISHING me, making it kinda frustrating. Also, as was mentioned before, where to go from there is pretty confusing. I had to come back and read your instructions on how to leave.
Logged
Io
Level 0
**



View Profile
« Reply #43 on: July 01, 2016, 05:01:25 PM »

the arches kept DEMOLISHING me, making it kinda frustrating.
Were you using the corn powder?
Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #44 on: July 01, 2016, 05:13:35 PM »

OK. I think what i'll do is add a little crack in the wall with sunlight / moonlight highlighting the escape route from the 2nd floor. As for the ghosts, what I was going for was to have so many that you'd think "OK this is obviously too many people to fight at once, better lose them and sneak out." Did you try to fight them all, or were you sneaking and they were catching you anyway?
Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #45 on: July 01, 2016, 05:14:35 PM »

the arches kept DEMOLISHING me, making it kinda frustrating.
Were you using the corn powder?

Oh yeah that's a good point. The fire and cloud magics are both real good for losing them
Logged
HollowHollowHollow
Level 0
**


View Profile
« Reply #46 on: July 01, 2016, 05:58:53 PM »

OK. I think what i'll do is add a little crack in the wall with sunlight / moonlight highlighting the escape route from the 2nd floor. As for the ghosts, what I was going for was to have so many that you'd think "OK this is obviously too many people to fight at once, better lose them and sneak out." Did you try to fight them all, or were you sneaking and they were catching you anyway?

Oh, right! Nah I never tried to attack any, and I tried using fire magic, but that didn't stop the archers from sniping me. I didn't, however, use the cloud magic. Probably would've made that part easier, yes. Just a case of me being bad again lol.  Tongue

the highlighting of the route sounds good, though, would clear up some confusion, I bet  Hand Thumbs Up Right
Logged
HollowHollowHollow
Level 0
**


View Profile
« Reply #47 on: July 01, 2016, 05:59:46 PM »

the arches kept DEMOLISHING me, making it kinda frustrating.
Were you using the corn powder?

for some reason I forgot it even existed.
Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #48 on: July 02, 2016, 02:14:12 PM »

Oh and I just remembered that electric light (like the headlamp) paralyzes them. There's a headlamp in the Time Tube Antechamber and another one in the cave that connects Snake Town to Universal Mine. If you've already got one picking up the other will refill your batteries.
Logged
nathy after dark
Level 8
***


Open Sourceress


View Profile WWW
« Reply #49 on: July 03, 2016, 02:13:17 PM »

Checking this out because of our conversation over here. Looks weird and totally awesome. Hopefully I can find time to play the demo when I get back to my Windows PC.  Coffee
Logged

Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #50 on: July 05, 2016, 11:44:12 AM »

Checking this out because of our conversation over here. Looks weird and totally awesome. Hopefully I can find time to play the demo when I get back to my Windows PC.  Coffee

Great, thanks for giving it a try!

Testing a new update right now. It'll fix the cannibal scorpion bug, a crash when the torch burns out under certain circumstances, projectiles missing the player when they hit a wall on the same frame, some weird inconsistencies in how the player moves (like when pressing against walls), and a bunch of minor animation glitches.
Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #51 on: July 06, 2016, 01:19:01 PM »

Latest update has all known bugs fixed: http://www.indiedb.com/downloads/lonely-star-demo-108 This includes crashes and animation glitches, and also how certain collisions are handled. No more accidentally falling off stairs!

Also, youtuber Cereal00Killer is LPing the demo here:



One thing that's not a bug exactly, but that I've been meaning to get feedback on, is the way targeting for melee weapons works. Right now, melee weapons choose which direction to attack in a descending order of priority like this:

1) enemy within range in the direction that the cursor is pointed
2) any other enemy within range
3) direction of player movement
4) direction of cursor relative to player

Is this working for you? I'm used to it by now, of course, but I'm wondering if other people are sometimes not attacking in the direction that they intend to.
Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #52 on: July 11, 2016, 07:33:28 AM »

Turns out the last update introduced a whole new category of animation glitch, so I've been ironing that out


Not pictured: lil guy jiving and shuddering as the sprite base and cursor battle for control of his facing direction and arm placement


Looking the correct direction while attacking in place, attacking while moving, attacking while dashing

Those thunderbolt arrows have also been badly in need of attention; they still look weak and unfinished in the 1.08 version. Not so much anymore
Logged
gimymblert
Level 10
*****


The archivest master, leader of all documents


View Profile
« Reply #53 on: July 12, 2016, 11:48:09 AM »

subs
Logged

HollowHollowHollow
Level 0
**


View Profile
« Reply #54 on: July 17, 2016, 04:35:04 AM »

One thing that's not a bug exactly, but that I've been meaning to get feedback on, is the way targeting for melee weapons works. Right now, melee weapons choose which direction to attack in a descending order of priority like this:

1) enemy within range in the direction that the cursor is pointed
2) any other enemy within range
3) direction of player movement
4) direction of cursor relative to player

Is this working for you? I'm used to it by now, of course, but I'm wondering if other people are sometimes not attacking in the direction that they intend to.

Yeeeaah, that's a thing I kept doing often, it feels almost natural to think that the direction you're going to attack follows the cursor. Mainly because the sling, bow, and torch follow the cursor.
Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #55 on: July 17, 2016, 01:38:15 PM »

OK cool I will take another look at that system. I built it because of feedback from people who were used to console games and aiming by moving, so now I'm thinking about a toggle switch between cursor-based aiming and movement-based aiming for melee weapons?

Also big news:

The LONELY STAR Kickstarter begins next week! Aiming for the 25th but it depends somewhat on the KS approval process. I'll let yall know at least a day in advance when the exact date & time is nailed down.
Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #56 on: July 23, 2016, 11:46:35 AM »

ENCOUNTER DESIGN

Over the past couple months I've mostly been debugging and promoting the game, in anticipation of a Kickstarter, so there hasn't been a lot of news on the development front. Now that I'm getting back into development, I'll have more to talk about here.

There aren't a lot of one-on-one encounters in Lonely Star, and that's by design. Individual enemies are largely pretty easy to push around.


Continually body-checking this guy every time he tries to do something makes it impossible for him to respond.



Add even one more enemy, though, and now failing to take him into account puts you in danger. By the way, check out how, when the player repositions so the conquistador is between them and the archer, the archer moves to outflank and ends up close enough that he switches to a melee weapon. That's an important thing for the player to exploit, when they're fighting multiple enemies-- maneuvering so they get in each other's way.



Similar deal here. Every time the enemy starts to attack, the player dodges and strikes his unarmored legs. For a one-on-one encounter, like a boss, I could give the enemy leg armor, or a limited ability to do dodge attacks of his own, to complicate this approach.



But just by having multiple enemies, with different attacks of different speeds and ranges, with slightly randomized elements to their level of aggression, things get a lot more interesting. The player can't dodge-attack back and forth unharmed forever; eventually, one of the four attackers they're exposed to will get a good shot at them. This boss, the Witchfinder, is probably the hardest in the demo, even though he has low health, no armor, and the slowest ranged attack in the game. His entourage and his attack range organically combine into a complex, reactive challenge.


This is what a better attempt at swordfighting him looks like, by the way. The player uses their speed advantage and the terrain to break through the enemy line and get a clear shot at the boss. Still, you can see that going in with just a melee weapon requires good timing and footwork.



Or, by spending some corn to make magic, you can fight in a more strategic, less twitch-reflex-based way. It's a tricky balance to strike, but my goal here is to incentivize stealth and tactics, not with special rewards or ranks, but by making them legitimately less dangerous than facing everything head-on.
Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #57 on: July 25, 2016, 08:12:46 AM »

Lonely Star is live on Kickstarter! Now!!

Thanks so much for your support!

Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #58 on: July 30, 2016, 04:24:39 PM »

During the Kickstarter I think i am gonna switch the devlog to backers-only updates. If we get funded though I'll make em available for general consumption, and I'll still post previews here.

Here's me talking about level design and the illusion of 3d space: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/51725075/lonely-star/posts/1641092

Back Lonely Star now and learn about the context for these cool gifs:



Logged
Peace Soft
Level 0
***


All magic is made from corn


View Profile WWW
« Reply #59 on: August 04, 2016, 03:56:14 PM »

Nothing huge to report, but there's a new build of the demo which removes a glitch where the player can sort of wiggle through certain walls that meet at a 90 degree angle.



This isn't a new thing and I made this gif for different purposes but btw did you know that the ogre enemies can be distracted with food?



Should have brought enough for the whole class, but anyway
Logged
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4 5
Print
Jump to:  

Theme orange-lt created by panic