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[Thaumaturge]

As to the grappling hook, it looks fine to me, as far as I'm managing to follow the movement in that GIF. What do you feel is missing?

As to a test-build, I'm interested--albeit with the caveat that I don't always get around to trying games, and when I do, it's not always promptly.

That said, perhaps the latter might help with the former: trying out the hook for ourselves might help us in providing suggestions for improving it.

As to the first level, have you considered a hybrid approach? Have it be randomly-generated, but give it a level-generation algorithm of its own that makes a point of adding in all of the intended story elements, if not always in the same places?

[Mixer]

Wooooo third page.

Thamaturge, the grappling hook works as expected, but it doesn't feel 'fun' or 'fluid' because it's not very agile only moving in one direction. It's very hard to explain though, and you're right in that letting people try it is a good course of action.

In terms of the hybrid approach, it's a great idea that has been pretty difficult to actually implement. I did some experiments the other day with placing hand made -rooms- in levels, and while it 'worked', the difficult part is in things like managing the doors to connecting rooms, choosing the right hand made room to pick, etc etc.

Some other games (like the super inspiring moonman) have handmade structures and constraint solvers, so that basically some sort of storyline can be built with certain assumptions. Eg - the generator knows to place a room with a key before the room with a door. I think that's pretty incredible, and I'd love to have something like that, but at this stage I think it would take too much time. It's more likely at the moment at the moment that I'll end up saying 'on the third room out from the spawn of a level, place this story room'. If you want to read about eigenbom's system, he goes into detail here: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=21997.3640.

I've just added locked doors and keys. They're hand placed in the intro level, so you have to run past enemies and traps to get to unlock the door. I've had lots of ideas about this seemingly simple system! Bosses could drop a key, letting you move on from their room to the exit room. Gold, which is currently unused, could be used to buy general keys that, if you wish, you can skip challenges like bosses and fly forwards!

Getting the lock that unlocks the door. I really should have showed that I can't open the door without it, but just take my word for it lol.


Til next time

[Thaumaturge]

Thamaturge, the grappling hook works as expected, but it doesn't feel 'fun' or 'fluid' because it's not very agile only moving in one direction. It's very hard to explain though, and you're right in that letting people try it is a good course of action.

Ahh, I see--fair enough!

We'll see what feedback your testers give. ^_^

In terms of the hybrid approach, ...

Ah, fair enough again. I daresay that a full hybrid system would indeed be quite difficult (and perhaps superfluous for a single, introductory level). That said, your simplified version, in which the generator simply places story-rooms in given places, may well be sufficient for that: it provides some randomness (thus--hopefully--making the first level less tedious to repeat with each run), while still keeping the intended story elements. As long as the level isn't too long, that seems likely to me to be enough.

Gold, which is currently unused, could be used to buy general keys that, if you wish, you can skip challenges like bosses and fly forwards!

Building on this, perhaps have the store-bought keys open both doors that allow the player to skip sections, as well as doors that provide additional loot. Thus the player has a choice: skip ahead, but miss out on loot, or take the potentially-advantageous loot, but miss out on bypassing potentially-dangerous encounters.

[Mixer]

First Public Demo!
https://5mixer.itch.io/exilium-demo

play play play
feedback feedback feedback
 

[Thaumaturge]

Ah, that's good to see! I don't know when (or indeed, whether) I'll get around to playing, but hopefully sometime soon. ^_^

[Pixel Noise]

Nice!!! 

[Thaumaturge]

All right, I've finally gotten around to playing the demo, and have feedback!

First of all, it seems like a decent start, and reasonably fun to play. ^_^

Movement feels very fast, although that wasn't too bad once the game was running smoothly as a result of my switching from Firefox to Chromium. (Which may not reflect a difference between browsers in this case, the note on the game's page notwithstanding--I had quite a few tabs open in Firefox, and only the game's tab open in Chromium.)

As to items, when collecting them there's little indication of what was picked up--perhaps it might help to have popups appear over the character's head for this?

Speaking of items, why are gold and keys selectable inventory items? Keys at the least seem to be used automatically, after all.

I don't like that the item-selection is reset between levels--to my mind, it would be more intuitive for the selection to carry over from one level to the next.

As to the grappling gun, I'm honestly not seeing the purpose to it right now. This might, however, reflect my play-style more than the item's utility.

I do think that the utility of both the grappling gun and the shield are a little undermined by the fact that they're primary weapons, and that using them thus calls for switching away from the current primary weapon. As a result, I seldom attempted to use either in serious combat.

As to the weapons, I liked the overall "feel" of them, including the slight recoil of each--with the exception of the laser gun, with which it felt a little off to me to have perceptible recoil.

Is there some effect to collecting more than one instance of a weapon? If not, why the number beside them?

As to the combat, the enemies didn't feel like much of a threat; even the boss died fairly quickly to the laser gun.

Right now, it seems that one can shoot well beyond the borders of the window, and thus hit and destroy things that one didn't know were there. I'm not sure that this is all that much fun--perhaps it might be preferable to destroy weapons-fire once it passes the window-border (or just beyond)?

There seem to be a few technical issues: Under Chromium, I had occasional momentary "freezes", while under Firefox I found that I could grapple myself through and push the boss past walls. The latter two issues may be the result of a lower frame-rate in that browser, however.

[Mixer]

More feedback wooo  Thanks for playing.

Feedback on item pick up does need improvement, we're already working on sounds/particles that might be able to help. The item reset between levels that I think I just got used to, but the amount of feedback mentioning it really reminds me to fix it. I agree with the nature of the shield/hook, and you've worded it well. There's just no real need to use them... you're much better trying to kill them than run off right. The weapons do need some refining so thanks for the feedback there. I was thinking the number beside the weapon could be it's level or something, but at the moment it's silly.
Thanks for playing!

Recently I've been planning a localised slow-mo mechanic, I'll hopefully post gifs soon!

[Thaumaturge]

My pleasure. ^_^

The item reset between levels that I think I just got used to ...

This, I think, is one of the pitfalls of game development: becoming used to an issue in one's game, and thus not realising how it feels to encounter it for the first time, with no reason to expect it.

Weapon levels might be interesting, especially if they modify the behaviour of the weapons (see Cave Story, for example). (As long as the weapons are made rather less powerful at their base-level than they currently are, I think.)

[Mixer]

Since the demo
The game is not dead yay.  exams, lack of motivation, other game jams, projects etc, meant I haven't posted.

Since last time, I've started working on a sound system for Gas
https://twitter.com/5Mixer/status/872723276241358848 (mp4, can't go here.)

Added bats (they're static here, but ingame they are animated awesomely by Patch and have basic follow ai)


A couple of minor bug fixes and backend systems from the demo have improved gameplay
 - Now, inventory select index carries between levels, meaning that unexpected weapon changes don't happen
 - Some weird collisions were fixed (bullets shouldn't stop infront of chests now, just disappear)
 - More backend stuff, but I transitioned from frame based intervals to second (delta) based, meaning I can now do slowmo super easily.
 - Collisions were sped up, and the improved performance gives me time to add lights to every bullet

slowmo (you can see in this gif a bullet getting stuck on a chest, that's been fixed.)

lights on every bullet (they're not strong lights, so it's subtle)


Exilium Alpha 2.
So, moving forwards I've defined what I want for the next update.
 - A shop system
 - Some handmade puzzles/levels

The shop system
I'm thinking that there will be three different types of shops, each with a unique npc.
 - Potion npc. Sells you potions - healing, strength, poisoning, dazing
 - Wizard npc. Sells you abilities/spells - dash, teleport, stealth, timewarp
 - Weapons npc. Sells you ammo/guns - Basic pistol, machine gun, grenade launcher, ammo, etc. Sells widest array of items.

Handmade puzzles
The current demo's only direction is to survive and kill. That seemed a little surface level, so here's my thoughts on puzzles/levels.
 - Loaded from a tiled level.
 - Not just bosses, enemies etc. Also level systems, pushing blocks around, top down parkour, stealth timing.
 - Mixed with proc gen stuff.

I'm not sure about procedural generation in exilium. The current system makes levels that all feel the same and don't really have a sense of progression. I don't want to throw away the proc gen though, but I'm thinking that maybe it could be used in side quests, and really vary up what get's generated. For example, the current system could be used for having to find an item before an enemy catches you. A proc gen system that places floating blocks above a void that you have to parkour across, automatically placing springs, traps etc in suitable places.

Current proc gen, where every level is a random maze arrangement of rooms will still be usable in parts. I'm going to make it generate smaller, denser levels though.

Thanks for reading the update!

[Thaumaturge]

It occurs to me that there's little wrong with a static, hand-made set of levels; for one thing, they can more easily than procedural generation provide an intelligently-crafted setting, whether in terms of story, sense of place, or gameplay, I think.

Some added variety to the gameplay seems as though it could make for a richer experience, done well. Beware of shoe-horning in elements that the mechanics aren't suited to, or that clash with the experience of the rest of the game, however!

I like the lights on the weapons-fire. ^_^