(This is the point at which I'd love the forum to have dynamic quoting, rather than a single "quote everything" button that then calls for manual editing. >_<)
As always, this is like 50% being bad at the game, 50% being a grumpy old coder and 10% truth. :D
Not at all, this is useful feedback, I feel--thank you for all of it! ^_^
Are you talking about the loose floor tiles? I have opened them from below in the end with an unexpected item (the other super thin metal rod). I'd rather have used a hammer or one of the many tools that are laying around (a hook, a silver knife) that I can NOT pick up.
That's fair! (And indeed, the loose tiles were what I meant.)
I would suggest that maybe silver isn't a great metal for such a job, however--something more robust, like iron, might be called for.
As to a hook... Looking around the level quickly, the only one that I see is a tiny one in the embalming room. That looks too small to me for lifting great big floor tiles! (Was there another one that I've forgotten?)
My problem with the combat isn't the difficulty unless I am super dumb. ...
Ah, I see. Hum, that's disconcerting!
For dodging, I'm not sure of what to suggest other than that it's a matter of timing: when the attack starts, hit the "dodge" button!
(This presuming that you're not seeing some sort of speed-bug that I'm not seeing on my machine, of course...)
The mummy was doing a quick left/right/left thing, but even though I knew it, I wasn't able to block it. I was holding down D, but she never raised the sword to block. I don't know if you also need stamina for this.
You should see a flash of white light when hit by that attack. This indicates a brief stun, which is the reason that you can't block. Perhaps I should make it a longer stun so that it's more visible!
Scrollbars in the menu are used for vertical scrolling and for setting values (e.g. mouse speed). So, when you are scrolling down and the mouse pointer happens to land on a horizontal bar for a setting, you are suddenly changing that instead.
I seem to recall that I was worried about this!
Hum... Perhaps I should prevent scrollbar-activation when scrolling something else, then. That should allow mouse-scrolling of both the overall menu and any scrollbars within it, if implemented well, I think...
4k: The texts in the cutscenes are super small and the text bubble pointers are weird.
Yeah, at the moment I don't have official support for 4K resolutions. I don't have a device that can display anything like that, and so can't test it. It's a known issue, I'm afraid! :/
That said, if I may ask, do you have any sort of OS-level UI-scaling active? I'm surprised that the text is so small--it should be normalised for the resolution, I think! However, I gather that some systems have some sort of UI-scaling, which might perhaps be causing problems...
Lockpicking: works fine, I guess. took 7 seconds to understand what I was supposed to do, but was easy afterwards. Although... it says "find the smallest gap" and I think I have found a very small one, but that didn't work. Instead a larger one was the correct one.
That's odd! Are you sure that it was a gap--i.e. with a rise on either side--and not just a step?
There is a shelf that is glowing in a blue light. This was confusing me as I was expecting it to be important somehow and returned a few times to it. ^^
Do you mean the pale corner-shelf, near the location of the lockpicks? If so, then there might be something to be found on it...
Why are the curtains closing again? Performance? I would prefer them to stay open, so I know what I've examined already.
Interesting! I'll confess that I have them close, I think, because that's what makes sense to me: you step back, let go of the curtains, and they fall back into place. There are no ties or hooks or anything holding them open--just the player-character.
I can see that you might want to leave them open for the purposes of knowing where you've been, however.
To be honest, I didn't really get why some combinations were considered correct in the word puzzle, for example this one (and I have successfully solved number puzzles in "The Ripper" ^^):
Hmm... Could you elaborate on what's confusing you there, precisely? Why does it seem like that solution isn't fitting?
The light in the dark: It looks more like a background image than a light with a real 3d position ...
Hmm... I'll want to look at that! It is artificially made--an actual object that far off would be hidden, as I have things--so it's very possible that I messed up some part of the calculation.
I wouldn't think so, however, since I think that it corresponds to the location of the origin of a ray fired between the player's location and the actual light.
Traversal: In the tomb I had problems to get where I wanted to in the caverns below. The jumping or climbing didn't react as expected and I glitched into death. ^^
Ah, that's saddening!
Could you elaborate on how you expected the jumping and climbing to react, please?
Graphics: The caverns below the tomb and the "light in the dark" chapter are so dark that it was difficult to navigate.
Hmm... I'll have to think on this, I fear.
And the floor just a few meters away is black while the wall in 20 or so meters distance is bright like the sun. This is probably uncommon for sandstone like materials.
I'm not sure that this is all that uncommon for a point-light source. (At least without somehow modelling scattering.) After all, the angle between the light-vector and the surface-normal quickly becomes rather close to ninety-degrees on the floor, but remains close to zero on the wall directly ahead.
The small box and the silver knife are kinda merging with the shelf. They have the same color and brightness
That is very fair. I might have to play with things a bit to make objects like that--with similar colours and high "shininess"--stand out against each other...
Interactions: "That doesn't work" feels a bit annoying when it appears every time that I left click on something just to find out whether I can left click it. ^^
If there is only a valid action when there is an icon below it (open/close, take), why say anything at all?
Hmm... On the other hand, if I had no response at all then the game would feel unresponsive, surely?
My feeling is that it's generally wise to have the game at least acknowledge that the player attempted an action.
When using an inventory item and the combination does not work, you might consider not ending the mode. In some occasions like using a key on all four doors, this would be nice.
That's an interesting thought, and noted, thank you. ^_^
Symbol puzzle: This one is kinda nice.
That's good to read! ^_^
In your case, I thought it might be cool to display a "A/D - rotate" when you grab a puzzle piece.
Hmm... I'm generally going to resist putting instructions up on the screen--I rather dislike it when games do that, I think, as it undermines immersion.
There are three doors that you are never able to open (at least I think so).
Hmm... That's tricky. My instinct is to acknowledge that they're there, but I don't want to make the character psychic and have her proclaim that she'll never find a way to open them.
One of them I can easily make non-interactive (the door in the "outside" section of the "light in the dark" level). The stone door in the upper tomb, however, is a red herring for a puzzle. The jammed door in the lower tomb at least proclaims that it's jammed--and having it be non-examinable would feel off to me, I think.
Chests: I really like the freedom here and the lack of handholding to solve the puzzle to get up to the second floor.
Excellent, and thank you! ^_^
(BTW: You can climb onto those stone blocks and end up with your head like 30cm above them, because there is not enough room to stand above them ^^)
Yup! That's intentional--indeed, I even recall testing the system with them. It comes in handy when doing things like climbing into windows--or jumping to upper-storey windows and climbing into them--for example.
But I didn't really get the meaning of the placement icon. ...
Hmmm... Perhaps I should tutorialise this? Or possibly rework the icons? What do you think?
And yeah, I really don't want to use the "ghost" implementation unless the lack of it becomes a serious problem...
Clueless: I've wasted a LOT of time with just walking around and not knowing what I was supposed to do, caused by thinking that I am not able to solve the word puzzle because of missing pieces or looking for a hidden thing. I think I have played 2 hours or so, while I could have done that in 20 minutes. Xd
I would argue that this is consonant with adventure-style gameplay. (In the "point-and-click" sense of "adventure", not the "Zelda" sense.)
But I do see what you mean about it being a "trap". On the other hand, signposting is difficult, I'll confess! You should see how much trouble I had getting people to spot that hole in the ceiling of the lower tomb...
Ok, that's all for now. I've sent you a video of some scenes, too.
Thank you for that! I've watched the footage that you sent, and found it useful. ^_^
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