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[Zaphos]

Hooray, looking forward to igf trailer & such

Is the wobbly sound effect in the video meant to indicate that the shots are being blocked?  If so it seems to come a bit out of sync with the shots ... I worry a bit that their weakness / when they are vulnerable or not isn't communicated that clearly by the visual&audio cues, though it's hard to say for sure.

Also not sure it's a good thing you can shoot yourself accidentally during battles ...

[PsySal]

Hooray, looking forward to igf trailer & such

Is the wobbly sound effect in the video meant to indicate that the shots are being blocked?  If so it seems to come a bit out of sync with the shots ... I worry a bit that their weakness / when they are vulnerable or not isn't communicated that clearly by the visual&audio cues, though it's hard to say for sure.

Also not sure it's a good thing you can shoot yourself accidentally during battles ...

This might be true, re: whether the "tells" are enough. I am worried that these guys are going to be just too hard in general, but only user testing will show these kind of things.

The later you go in the game the less polished things are. Right now I'm filling in some major-ish holes in the very late game and trying to punch a hole through to where the game is winnable (albeit still pretty incomplete towards the end.) Being able to shoot yourself in battle is actually important and fun, there are enemies which tend to cluster around you making it hard to shoot them without shooting yourself as well.

Battles tend to be on a pretty steep "control curve" which is something less common in my limited game-playing experience. Like, if you make a major mistake it can be really hard to recover. However it's also incredibly exciting when you do, much more than a typical health metered game because it tends to be more stateful. I.e. as a player you are either in some form of your attack mode (move, shoot, run, position, etc.) or you are in panic-escape-at-all-costs mode, which in practice is really exciting. The game does not punish very much for death (much closer to VVVVVV than to LTTP, for example) so the trick is just tuning it for that balance. Across such a big game that is especially challenging...

Thanks!

[Zaphos]

The thing about having a mechanic where the player can shoot themselves -- I can see it being fun mechanically in the abstract, but I think when you connect it back to its meaning in the world, that my character just randomly shot himself during a battle, it's potentially just going to come off as stupid and obnoxious?  I mean it sounds like the sort of frustrating thing where people will tend to blame the game for it happening, because it will risk feeling more like a bug than a feature.  It might work a bit better if you could find a funny way to acknowledge the weirdness of the mechanic, in the dialog perhaps ...
(of course, maybe I'm just wrong and it's fine!  feel free to ignore me, I am just musing)

[PsySal]

The thing about having a mechanic where the player can shoot themselves -- I can see it being fun mechanically in the abstract, but I think when you connect it back to its meaning in the world, that my character just randomly shot himself during a battle, it's potentially just going to come off as stupid and obnoxious?  I mean it sounds like the sort of frustrating thing where people will tend to blame the game for it happening, because it will risk feeling more like a bug than a feature.  It might work a bit better if you could find a funny way to acknowledge the weirdness of the mechanic, in the dialog perhaps ...
(of course, maybe I'm just wrong and it's fine!  feel free to ignore me, I am just musing)

Mm.. It definitely runs that risk. It is definitely not a random thing per se, e.g., it has it's own (slightly muffled) sound effect and is also something you can only do with the handgun. However I do think letting the player know that they shot themselves via some text is not a bad idea. In testing, players didn't have a hard time understanding what had happened, however early cuts had it that if you clicked your gun you would shoot yourself; now, it doesn't count if you shoot your gun. For various reasons (basically, that your guns sticks out and tracks the mouse as you spin around) it was obnoxiously easy to shoot your gun. Now it's fairly hard, but some enemies does latch onto you and it can be really satisfying to carefully pick them off without shooting yourself!

Anyhow =) We shall see! I try to make things as clear/balanced/interesting as I can and see how they shake out in user testing...

EDIT: I should add that I'm very much not averse to throwing things out when they aren't working, so if it really is an issue I will ditch it!

[Igor Hardy]

Overall looks really neat and stylish.

The main character seems a bit awkward with using the gun, but I guess that's just the animation.

[PsySal]

@Hardy hey nice to meet you! Your blog is really brilliant and I've read it for a long time...

There is one problem with the main character not turning around properly when he's shooting, so sometimes he's angled the wrong way. Other than that in action I think it looks reasonably convincing when he shoots, but we'll see!

Today I have my rally outfit on, which is basically a shirt that says TEXAS and a pair of camo pants. So we'll see what I get accomplished!

[Igor Hardy]

@Hardy hey nice to meet you! Your blog is really brilliant and I've read it for a long time...

Thanks I appreciate that you like it a lot. And I remembered you from the comments you left under our articles.

There is one problem with the main character not turning around properly when he's shooting, so sometimes he's angled the wrong way.

Yes, mostly that was the problem I was referring to.

[ithamore]

I really like the new changes and additions to the 200 alpha. I like how the creatures remind me of Cubivore.

I've already found a couple of bugs, so I'll PM them to you.

[PsySal]

Hey thanks! I've fixed the issue with the barrier, it had to do with how objects were being initialized (actually it was a rather major fix, but made other things better, too.)

Your saves are in Something/Local Settings/The Real Texas/(Version #) ... I think! I don't have my windows machine on, but basically if you go to the folder with all your local settings, it's usually C:\Users\Your Username or C:\Documents and Settings\Your Username you should be able to find it. This is the place that Windows recommends explicitly that games put their savegames.

The other really gross issue with saves was getting stuck, because it autosaves when you enter a new area. That has hopefully also been nuked by now but in 200 there were a number of ways to get stuck!

Thanks for playing and for the encouragement!