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Sure let's make a thing over the next 3 weeks why not. I'm game to do a solo effort unless anyone's in desperate need of someone to do some C# in Unity or some artwork.
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Jul 7, 2017 01:24
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Harold Krell posted:
Thanks, I was feelin a bit rough after how badly it went down on stream. I've had some discussions with fellow jammers and some folk outside and I think I got a better idea of what went wrong. Ultimately some questionable design choices, some technical faults, lack of playtesting and the difficulty combined with a lack of check-pointing ended up with a very gong-unfriendly product I think (as well as real rough in general imo). I'm actually making the physics more megaman-like, because the physics used were an attempt at a Mariolike and after talking with people the general impression seems to be it just didn't work for a game like this! I shared a build in the discord with some adjustments and the feedback has been it's feels better. Between that and some other things mentioned I'm hopin over the next week I can have a version of it that's a lot better polished. Some hard lessons this time, but I think in the long run good lessons. The main thing to take away from the gong experience is have your games playtested more! Anyway I'm glad you got something out of it and thanks for the thoughts. But yeah some liked it, some didn't, hopefully takin the negative feedback on board will result in a thing more people like and some ideas of how to do better next time. Raujinn fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Aug 5, 2017 |
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Aug 5, 2017 21:40
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I mean that's kind of how I interpreted the reaction to mine after I'd gotten over the initial pain of it. I won't lie, it was pretty intense pain particularly as I had worked as hard I did. After that passed though, the question oriented to "but why did it go down the way it did" and I re-watched the footage, noting reactions to certain parts and what in particular seemed to cause the biggest problems. So I've decided to spend a week post-jam trying to address as many of the problems as I can just to see if I have a better product at the end or not. It won't fix the problem at the games core if it was particularly unappealing idea to someone (I do wonder if even the aesthetics were an issue..) but it might teach me a few things and if at the end I have a more solid base I could go on to use it for something else. Ultimately, it was a play-test session for free and I got about as honest a reaction as I could ask for, which is valuable. If it's OK, I would like to post a link to it in here for some additional feedback when I've made the changes I've noted so far.
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Aug 7, 2017 20:10
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Right, I don't know how long I'll keep this up for but I'm attempting to do feedback on a blog. I'll just copy+paste the feedback sections over here and see how that works out. I feel kinda dirty using this as an opportunity to promote a personal blog all the same, so I'll leave that out. First up: Soul Castle! Sprites The sprite-work, backgrounds and enemy design are all fitting and I like the animations on their movement. Like art-wise, I have no real suggestions to make as I feel like it delivers its message appropriately. Movement and Enemies Regarding player movement, I feel like the player moves just a tad too slowly and I don’t really like the delay on his attack. I understand it’s a heavy weapon, but I found it mildly frustrating as it’d feel like an enemy would telegraph then carry out an attack before my attack hitbox was activated. This might have been exacerbated by the fact the most common enemy; the hopping guy with a knife, was so much more nimble than the player was. Half the time I swing for him he’d hop way out of range. This would be neat enemy play if my character felt more responsive, but in his sluggish state it renders the enemy kind of annoying to me. If it helps, his movement speed in late game feels much better to me. The bone-throwing enemies I have no issue with. Every time I got hit by those guys it felt like it was totally my fault, so those guys are fine. I like their hopping animations. The rest of the enemies also felt alright. “Why Can’t Boneguy Turn?” I was a little bit weirded out that I couldn’t turn around in a game like this, but you clearly designed enemies with this in mind (they can’t turn around either!), so what initially felt weird ended up feeling completely fair to me so props for that. Another thing that weirded me out was his lack of jump, which was replaced by his dashing motion. It took a little getting used to but again it seems like the game was designed with it in mind so it sorta meshed well overall. I am a fan of how you let us walk up steps, as this would have been really annoying if we had to spend stamina on a dodge just to climb a small ledge! I do think the dashing motion needs some animations to go with it to help sell it. I also feel you should try adding i-frames to it if you haven’t already to see if it might help make combat feel better (if they’re there already I apologise, I guess I just suck at timing dodges!) Hitboxes I feel like hit-boxes need a minor rework. This might just be solidly opinion, but I hate it when enemy attack boxes persist after their attack. This is particularly noteworthy on the knifeguy; I don’t feel like his atack hitbox should persist beyond the initial stabbing motion. Again, this might just be opinion, but I reckon it’s worth experimenting with to see how it feels. The hitbox on the player’s melee attack seems about right on the horizontal but its vertical reach might be a little too generous! Overall It took me a little bit to get used to the controls and the movement of the game as I daftly wandered into knives, bones and sometimes both at once! After a few failed attempts I managed to crawl my way through the first two stages where what felt like the real game was ready to welcome me. While level 1 and 2 do get hit with the flaws of the game the hardest, 3 onward was a lot more fun. Maybe it's the goofiness of it or maybe it's just movement from then on feels so much better than in the early game. I'm not sure, either way it was more fun! The final boss was also really nicely done and the credits song was hilarious. All in all, it didn't take me too long to clear the game and there weren't really any major roadblocks. I'm glad I persisted to experience the 2nd half of this bizarre little adventure.
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Aug 8, 2017 12:18
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Don't think Bootquake got a public release did it? Thanks for the feedback, Giggs. I recognise all the issues you noted but its interesting you're the first to note issues with weapon EXP. I'll give it a tweak but I wonder if how it feels is gonna be pretty heavily tied to level and enemy design (as you say, its hard to level it off the Grand Dads where as its trivial to charge off a Sonic or a Lion in my experience). I'm curious how the game will feel after I've finished making my adjustments (and adding much needed checkpoints!). Thanks again!
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Aug 8, 2017 21:51
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