Arcen Games

General Category => Starward Rogue => Starward Rogue Alpha Discussion => : Logorouge August 13, 2017, 11:34:29 AM

: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 13, 2017, 11:34:29 AM
I love the smell of burning mechs in the morning, so here's my first batch of feedback/suggestions:

Intro8 (tutorial): While learning about generators, a turret is shooting through obstacles and eventually, at you. It's the most important addition to the tutorial, I don't think the player should be pressured to hurry up for this part.
Tutorial: Add distance between "Luckily for both of us..." and "Unluckily for you..." messages.
Tutorial: Add distance between "To use a door..." and "You're on the topmost..." messages.
D18_TwoFactor room: Noticeable FPS hit

Rooms missing Travelporterâ„¢:
Boss_Circuit
XI_Craig_FountainRoom
XI_Craig_Medal
XI_Craig_Cross

Alien Eggs (explosive blocks): Don't disappear after room victory but when shot, the explosion doesn't happen.
END_Bombable2 room: Alien egg explosion doesn't reach healthshard blocks on new tile. -See "Eggs" image for reference.
ForeShields challenge room: Starts you on top of pipe (near upper door), you're stuck for a moment.
Keycard blocks: Looks exactly like bombable blocks. Learned it wasn't by wasting missiles (Warhog). Please give them some key/lock aspect to avoid confusion.
Warhog: Walk/run cycle seems like spinning on ice. To avoid issue, I recommend using default speed/sprintspeed with a "MovementSpeed" modifier of (Multiply) .7 instead.
Double missile module: Awkward. Recommend a missile lifetime greatly reduced or explosion on impact with walls. -See "Double Missiles" image for awkwardness.

New music: Energetic but not aggressively so. Love it.
Vulcan Sentry Cannon: Turret beeping. Make it stop please. I'll hear that sound in my nightmares.
Rocketeers: High pitched sfx a bit much?
Gravity Totem: Sfx too loud (same for other totems?)
Bombardier (drone): Bombs fuse too long. Sfx feel like I'm in a Jig-A-Loo commercial.
Paladin: Phantom Blade projectile sfx too loud.
Penumbra: Shuriken Shot, tone down sfx please (use gentle wind-like fx if available?)

Circuit Rondure (boss): I was expecting additional phases with more spheres chasing you, but then it just died. Is that intended?
Rive (boss): Phase 1-2, firerate too slow.
Meridian (boss): Phase 2 is the same as another boss (Rive I think)?
X1_MinibossLargeQueenWhite (room): Fire Queen miniboss used ice?

Alpha Mech + Alpha Slugger: Match made in heaven. Perfect.
Alpha Mech: Alpha Ray, So strange, can't tell if strong or weak.
Kaiser Komando (energy weapon): Grenade cancel bullets? Charge weapon system (tap or hold, warning light) is excellent. Slightly too cheap energy cost for the power?
All in the wrist: Can still destroy missile blocks?
Workhorse Sentry: Keep firing after Backfire boss was dead.

Just awesome:
Flamethrower turrets
Energy Drainer enemies
Tag Team challenge room
Enemy-themed challenge rooms
Incendiary Grenade: So cool
Zephyr Mech: Nailed it
Paladin Mech: The cool factor is too damn high.
Cataclysm Launcher: Instant good time
Etc...

And that's all of it.
To avoid making Mantis about as useful as Steam's frontstore page, I'll probably stick to my usual forum format for feedback.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 August 13, 2017, 01:51:25 PM
Wasn't the tutorial in there before? Or do they have changed the tutorial?

I have some questions before I want to add my own thoughts.
First, do elemental properties now finally influence the damage? To be more specific, if I have a flamethrower 8which naturally does fire damage), would it now inflict more damage to ice carriers for an example? And other ice themed enemies?
Are the last three mech sprites still paceholder for the final art? I would think so because they are just reskins of the white mech, which we had with the initial mechs before release as well.
Is the chakram just a reskin of the boomerang or does it have any significant differences?
Is the arrt for the golden floors final or do you want to add more "bling" to it?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 13, 2017, 02:13:37 PM
Wasn't the tutorial in there before? Or do they have changed the tutorial?
The tutorial received a massive expansion with many additional segments and even new voiced messages (previously unused files perhaps).

Is the chakram just a reskin of the boomerang or does it have any significant differences?
Very different behavior for the Chakram's attack. You can see it with the way it reacts to walls and the return of the shot.

The rest I don't know.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 August 13, 2017, 04:19:28 PM
Tested a little more about the chakram. The weapon is way too overpowered. It costs only 10 energy, has a fast attack animation (easy to hit faster enemies), pinpoint accuracy, deals huge damage (tested it on multiple enemies, most die in 1-2 hits) and can hit enemies twice. Also, bounces on walls. I think you should increase the energy cost to 25, so players have to put more thought into it, when to use. I could simply spam it in rooms and wipe them.

Gas pistol. Sounds nice, damages nice, accuracy nice, animation nice, after effect not so nice. The toxic cloud is way too big and covers way too much of the screen. It's hard to see any shots, both yours and the enemie's. Add more transparacy to the gas cloud.

New harrier bosses are really painful to battle in close range because the spread attack in the first phase is very hard to dodge. There is so little room between poison/ice/fire trails when they start to fire out at high speed. At longer range it is no problem but at close range it's a pain, so it depends on your style of weapon, how effective you are against them.

Double Bounce Laser is a really cool weapon. the sound is not. It get's annoying really fast because he plays it after every shot.

Penmumbras Shuriken can clip through walls if you stand directly in front of it, so you can effectivly shoot through walls. Don't know if this is intended since its a ninja themed mech. Haven't heard however of ninjas that can shoot through walls. When I mean walls, I mean the small block walls that should block your movement and shots normally.

Edit: I almost forgot the most important aspect. i walked into a health storage and it was filled with a double flame thrower turret. Whoever thought this up, screw you. when I use a keycard, I want a reward for it, not  a trap. You can put something liek this in Misery difficulty but not in normal.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 13, 2017, 08:15:28 PM
Intro8 (tutorial): While learning about generators, a turret is shooting through obstacles and eventually, at you. It's the most important addition to the tutorial, I don't think the player should be pressured to hurry up for this part.
Tutorial: Add distance between "Luckily for both of us..." and "Unluckily for you..." messages.
Tutorial: Add distance between "To use a door..." and "You're on the topmost..." messages.

Tweaked these, thanks. I just removed the turret from the last room.

D18_TwoFactor room: Noticeable FPS hit

That's the sludge turrets. I've tried to not tweak those too much because Cinth created them and I didn't want to mess with his design, but the performance hit is a bit too great, so I've tweaked the fire rate a bit and I think the same general design is still there. They should be about 40% better on performance now. If this isn't enough I'll have to look into other tweaks.

Rooms missing Travelporterâ„¢:
Boss_Circuit
XI_Craig_FountainRoom
XI_Craig_Medal
XI_Craig_Cross

Added some to those rooms, thanks.

Alien Eggs (explosive blocks): Don't disappear after room victory but when shot, the explosion doesn't happen.

That's weird, is that new behaviour? Those haven't been touched so I'm not sure what's going on there.

END_Bombable2 room: Alien egg explosion doesn't reach healthshard blocks on new tile. -See "Eggs" image for reference.

Good spot! This seems to be the result of adding more wall_collision_reduction to all shots. I've added a new shot for the eggs with the old reduction value.

ForeShields challenge room: Starts you on top of pipe (near upper door), you're stuck for a moment.

I'm going to hold off on this fix until I've asked Keith what controls where the player spawns in certain rooms. If it's possible to alter the spawning location, then there are a couple of rooms which I need to do that. The DeathWheel boss for one, and it's going to be way easier to move the spawn point on that rather than go through adjusting the patterns.

Keycard blocks: Looks exactly like bombable blocks. Learned it wasn't by wasting missiles (Warhog). Please give them some key/lock aspect to avoid confusion.

I'll add a super rough way to tell them apart, thanks. (does thing) Sorted, now.

Warhog: Walk/run cycle seems like spinning on ice. To avoid issue, I recommend using default speed/sprintspeed with a "MovementSpeed" modifier of (Multiply) .7 instead.

Done, thanks!

Double missile module: Awkward. Recommend a missile lifetime greatly reduced or explosion on impact with walls. -See "Double Missiles" image for awkwardness.

The missiles sticking in walls behaviour? I think this actually works ok, but I need to rebrand the module as sticky missiles module or something. This was after testing a while back, though. Keep me posted on if the module grows on you or not.

Vulcan Sentry Cannon: Turret beeping. Make it stop please. I'll hear that sound in my nightmares.

I suspect that this is due to the turrets not being removed when you leave a room, so the noise hangs around for ages. The sound itself should be useful in battles as it informs you when your turret is still up. I'll make it so that the turrets disappear when a room is left. If that's not enough I may need to tone the sound down. (I also made the totems disappear on room leave)

Rocketeers: High pitched sfx a bit much?

Not sure. It's meant to be a screamy thing as they're launching themselves at you. I'll leave it for the moment until we get more feedback or if you start feeling a bit stronger about it.

Gravity Totem: Sfx too loud (same for other totems?)

The totems will be getting a big overhaul, so they should change a fair bit at some point.

Bombardier (drone): Bombs fuse too long. Sfx feel like I'm in a Jig-A-Loo commercial.

I've toned the SFX down for the moment. It might get replaced or removed in the future, though. Goldenwolf created this familiar so I'll ask him about the fuse. I'm not how sure he even did that, heh.

Paladin: Phantom Blade projectile sfx too loud.

Reduced the volume of that a fair bit, thanks.

Penumbra: Shuriken Shot, tone down sfx please (use gentle wind-like fx if available?)

Swapped the SFX out for a much more toned down one. I maybe toned it down a little too much, though. I may revisit this one.

That'll have to do for the time being. I'll get to the other stuff tomorrow. I'll just answer Vampire's questions, first, though.

Wasn't the tutorial in there before? Or do they have changed the tutorial?

Yeah, the tutorial has been updated a bit.

First, do elemental properties now finally influence the damage? To be more specific, if I have a flamethrower 8which naturally does fire damage), would it now inflict more damage to ice carriers for an example? And other ice themed enemies?

Actually, no. I didn't want to complicate things too much when adding the elemental stuff, I wanted it pretty basic. However, ice versus fire are such strongly opposed properties it might be good to do that for those.

Are the last three mech sprites still paceholder for the final art? I would think so because they are just reskins of the white mech, which we had with the initial mechs before release as well.

Yeah, placeholder art for the moment.

Is the chakram just a reskin of the boomerang or does it have any significant differences?

Quite different as Logo says, yeah.

Is the arrt for the golden floors final or do you want to add more "bling" to it?

The only art that isn't final for the floors is the new tile art. The new tile art is going to be created at some point.

I'll respond to the more bug related stuff tomorrow.


Thanks guys!

: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 13, 2017, 08:46:39 PM
Alien Eggs (explosive blocks): Don't disappear after room victory but when shot, the explosion doesn't happen.

That's weird, is that new behaviour? Those haven't been touched so I'm not sure what's going on there.
Before, the eggs were removed on victory, leading to some in-the-way bombables blocks being left without on-site explosives. Now, they stay after victory but their explosions are negated I think.

Double missile module: Awkward. Recommend a missile lifetime greatly reduced or explosion on impact with walls. -See "Double Missiles" image for awkwardness.

The missiles sticking in walls behaviour? I think this actually works ok, but I need to rebrand the module as sticky missiles module or something. This was after testing a while back, though. Keep me posted on if the module grows on you or not.
The behavior itself is ok and fits quite well for sticky missiles, but the missiles just hang around for so long after the fact that it kinda feels weird.

Goldenwolf created this familiar so I'll ask him about the fuse. I'm not how sure he even did that, heh.
I don't know, but it made this "old" Bomberman player really happy. :)
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 14, 2017, 01:39:06 PM
X1_MinibossLargeQueenWhite (room): Fire Queen miniboss used ice?

Not sure on this. The display names were wrong so maybe that caused the confusion. Corrected now.

Alpha Mech: Alpha Ray, So strange, can't tell if strong or weak.

We wanted the weapon a bit weird because of the protoype angle. It's probably not weak, although it might seem like it. The weapon is piercing so I probably did set the raw damage a bit lower than other starting weps, though.  (checks) It actually has a solid DPS of 70 for a starting weapon. 60 is the base DPS usually. So 70 with piercing should be fairly strong for a starting weapon. Although for some starting weps like the flamer we just throw that baseline out the window, heh.

Kaiser Komando (energy weapon): Grenade cancel bullets? Charge weapon system (tap or hold, warning light) is excellent. Slightly too cheap energy cost for the power?

Good spot, I was almost tempted to leave the bullet canceling effect since it's not as bad as having it on a main weapon, but you could probably still stack a bunch of energy and become almost invincible, so I removed it. Also increased the energy cost of the Kaiser a bit.

All in the wrist: Can still destroy missile blocks?

I can barely remember, but I believe that I removed the Heavyweight perk and moved AITW to a later perk slot, but kept the missile block destruction, yeah.

Workhorse Sentry: Keep firing after Backfire boss was dead.

Fixed that now, just set it to OnlyInRange rather than AllTheTime firing timing.

Just awesome: ...

Nice to hear you like all that stuff! :)

To avoid making Mantis about as useful as Steam's frontstore page, I'll probably stick to my usual forum format for feedback.

Works for me!

Tested a little more about the chakram. The weapon is way too overpowered. It costs only 10 energy, has a fast attack animation (easy to hit faster enemies), pinpoint accuracy, deals huge damage (tested it on multiple enemies, most die in 1-2 hits) and can hit enemies twice. Also, bounces on walls. I think you should increase the energy cost to 25, so players have to put more thought into it, when to use. I could simply spam it in rooms and wipe them.

I'm going to take it a bit slow with some of the tweaks (energy weapons especially), so I've upped the cost to 15 energy for now. Still a pretty big nerf.

Gas pistol. Sounds nice, damages nice, accuracy nice, animation nice, after effect not so nice. The toxic cloud is way too big and covers way too much of the screen. It's hard to see any shots, both yours and the enemie's. Add more transparacy to the gas cloud.

For the next build the spread and duration of the gas has been reduced a bit. Thanks!

New harrier bosses are really painful to battle in close range because the spread attack in the first phase is very hard to dodge. There is so little room between poison/ice/fire trails when they start to fire out at high speed. At longer range it is no problem but at close range it's a pain, so it depends on your style of weapon, how effective you are against them.

The on transform attack you mean? If you're standing at close range you'll probably get caught, yeah. I think at mid range you have a fair chance to be able dodge it, though. I'll keep an eye on this one, and if necessary I can perhaps slow down the attack or create more space. I think I'll wait on a bit more feedback first, though.

Double Bounce Laser is a really cool weapon. the sound is not. It get's annoying really fast because he plays it after every shot.

I've reduced the volume a bit for now, plus a couple of tweaks to the sound. Additionally, the sound didn't have variants, so I've added a couple. If that doesn't do the trick I'll have to try and get a new SFX for that at some point maybe.

Penmumbras Shuriken can clip through walls if you stand directly in front of it, so you can effectivly shoot through walls. Don't know if this is intended since its a ninja themed mech. Haven't heard however of ninjas that can shoot through walls. When I mean walls, I mean the small block walls that should block your movement and shots normally.

Can you physically shoot through the walls? I tried to recreate it but I didn't seem to be able to shoot through walls. I'll keep an eye out for this, though. If the shots only clip into the walls a bit, that should be fine.

Edit: I almost forgot the most important aspect. i walked into a health storage and it was filled with a double flame thrower turret. Whoever thought this up, screw you. when I use a keycard, I want a reward for it, not  a trap. You can put something liek this in Misery difficulty but not in normal.

That's weird, I don't recall that room! (checks) Oops! That seems like one of my test rooms that was meant to be taken out, heh. Sorry about that! Hopefully that won't be in the next build, unless it manages to sneak its way in somehow....doh!

Oh, one more thing. I reduced the timer on the Bombardier bomb to 3 seconds (Goldenwolf showed me how the fuse works!).
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 August 14, 2017, 04:15:04 PM
Ion shot module is very strong with fast firing weapons. I tested it with the primary weapon of the Alpha mech and you caan almost immobilize enemies. I think this would be an issue with other fast weapons (flame tank mech) as well.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 14, 2017, 06:13:54 PM
That's weird, I don't recall that room! (checks) Oops! That seems like one of my test rooms that was meant to be taken out, heh. Sorry about that! Hopefully that won't be in the next build, unless it manages to sneak its way in somehow....doh!
That reminds me, I found another test room left in the normal room generation. Just a row of turrets and a wall of indestructible blocks. Luckily the boss was in a different path so I didn't have to restart. CNT_TurretTest (screenshot attached)
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 14, 2017, 07:54:15 PM
Ion shot module is very strong with fast firing weapons. I tested it with the primary weapon of the Alpha mech and you caan almost immobilize enemies. I think this would be an issue with other fast weapons (flame tank mech) as well.

Yeah, a bit tricky to balance time dilation stuff. Let's just keep progressively nerfing those type of things until they feel right. I've put a bit of a nerf in for the Ion Shot Module.

That reminds me, I found another test room left in the normal room generation. Just a row of turrets and a wall of indestructible blocks. Luckily the boss was in a different path so I didn't have to restart. CNT_TurretTest (screenshot attached)

Doh! I'll make sure to get rid of that for the next build. Cheers! (I moved the room to TestOnlySquare)
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 15, 2017, 06:03:02 PM
Circuit Rondure (boss): I was expecting additional phases with more spheres chasing you, but then it just died. Is that intended?
I'd like to come back to this. Turns out the problem with this boss is that the big sphere's attacks don't trigger on Normal difficulty or below, causing the encounter to be rather underwhelming. On Hard mode or above, everything worked as expected and it was loads of fun to fight.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 August 15, 2017, 06:08:50 PM
Side Step abmoogs are a pest, once they cling to you, they are really annoying. And deadly.

Also you missed the opportunity to name the clusters "comets" or "meteorites".

There was oen enemy, I don't remember his name, who seems a little useless to me. It was a really big sphere but the attack pattern is underwhelming and easy to dodge.

Also, Zephyr + Overcritical + Sniperprotocol + 10s speed bonus on each floor is awesome.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s August 15, 2017, 09:29:41 PM
There was oen enemy, I don't remember his name, who seems a little useless to me. It was a really big sphere but the attack pattern is underwhelming and easy to dodge.

I think you're thinking of Red Orb (or similar). It's "goal" is to aoe-lockdown a zone and prevent you from going there while dealing with other threats.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery August 16, 2017, 05:28:01 AM
Circuit Rondure (boss): I was expecting additional phases with more spheres chasing you, but then it just died. Is that intended?
I'd like to come back to this. Turns out the problem with this boss is that the big sphere's attacks don't trigger on Normal difficulty or below, causing the encounter to be rather underwhelming. On Hard mode or above, everything worked as expected and it was loads of fun to fight.


I knew there was going to be at least SOMETHING of mine pulling this kind of thing.  Ugh.

I cant fix it right now, I'm stuck with my laptop until after the weekend (game doesn't work right on that).  If anyone else wants to do a quick fix for that boss to set the pattern for normal, it should be a nice and easy fix.

I'll look into other enemy/boss related feedback when I actually get the chance to.

I seriously cant figure out why this game doesn't work on that blasted laptop though. 
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 16, 2017, 12:31:02 PM
Side Step abmoogs are a pest, once they cling to you, they are really annoying. And deadly.

Yeah, I might need to tone those down a little. Are these guys TOO much of a pest, though? There are some enemies in games which can be a pest, but in a respectable way. Red Arremer from Ghouls and Ghosts, for example. That enemy can be annoying, but it's kind of annoying in a charming way -- just about! That's why I'm a bit cautious about changing annoying enemies, because I want to figure out whether the enemy is annoying in the correct way or not. I believe that I did actually make a change to those after the build went out, though, which should make them a bit less aggressive. I'll keep a close eye on them.

Also you missed the opportunity to name the clusters "comets" or "meteorites".

The names are still quite working title-y, so we could go with comet or meteorites. Comet Cluster, for the alliteration, perhaps?

There was oen enemy, I don't remember his name, who seems a little useless to me. It was a really big sphere but the attack pattern is underwhelming and easy to dodge.

I'm not actually sure which enemy that is -- it sounds like the Eyelet, perhaps.

I think you're thinking of Red Orb (or similar). It's "goal" is to aoe-lockdown a zone and prevent you from going there while dealing with other threats.

That sounds a bit like the Red Dwarf enemy, but that has been taken out of the game since I couldn't find a way to stop it from getting stuck in walls. I might be thinking of a different one, though.

I cant fix it right now, I'm stuck with my laptop until after the weekend (game doesn't work right on that).  If anyone else wants to do a quick fix for that boss to set the pattern for normal, it should be a nice and easy fix.

I'll put a fix in for that then.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 August 16, 2017, 01:31:52 PM
Yeah, I might need to tone those down a little. Are these guys TOO much of a pest, though? There are some enemies in games which can be a pest, but in a respectable way. Red Arremer from Ghouls and Ghosts, for example. That enemy can be annoying, but it's kind of annoying in a charming way -- just about! That's why I'm a bit cautious about changing annoying enemies, because I want to figure out whether the enemy is annoying in the correct way or not. I believe that I did actually make a change to those after the build went out, though, which should make them a bit less aggressive. I'll keep a close eye on them.
Yeah, no, thsis is just a pest. For example, bullrushs. Once they hit you, you get knocked back hard and even get a movement speed debuff. But you can walk this off eventually and it's just the initial "WTF?!" moment, that comes across you. Side steps however cling to you nd deal damage all the time, because they are also so close to you, they are very easy to miss with your weapon. And they are small, that acts to that fact. They are just pushovers and I died because of them, either directly or because they brought me down enough for others enemies to finish the job. If they would be easier to hit, once they latch onto you, it wouldn't be much of a problem but that is exactly the problem.
It's worse, if you have a slow firing wepaon like the rail gun but easier with, let's say the flamethrower.

The names are still quite working title-y, so we could go with comet or meteorites. Comet Cluster, for the alliteration, perhaps?
Comet Cluster sounds perfect, rolls perfectly off the tongue.
I'm not actually sure which enemy that is -- it sounds like the Eyelet, perhaps.
Yes, I think that was the one. It definitely wasn't Red Dwarf. It was a big immobile sphere that shoots out slow traveling bullets in every direction from itself.


Additional observations so far. Warhog missile launcher. Sounds awesome on paper, you get huge damage if you have a huge missile storage (great for bosses) but besides that, you literally cannot farm health shards with it. At all. Once you fire a msisile, you fire them all, you deplet your missiles all the time and it gets hard to get new ones for health shards. Plus, you cannot fully utilize the true power of the launcher. I like the concept though, so I would miss it. Can we make it, that you can charge the launcher and th elonger you charge, the more missiles you fire at once?

While we're at missiles, the missile shot modules behave kind of weird. I get that they don't break obstacle blocks but why do they bounce of walls (any of them)? Shouldn't missiles explode on contact. This kind of behaviour leads to soem very irritating results, the missiles strike the wall and... slide kind of across it until they loose momentum and stay still until they explode (which takes a lot of time in itself). Really weird to look at, it's just a visual thing but still...

I'm still not sure, what the Alpha Mech exactly does. This "prototype" thing does not explain anything except he has unique weapons. Does he get more xp/levels up faster? Does he get special upgrades once he reaches a certain stage? Is his growth in power bigger than other mechs (gets better upgraes earlier)?

Paladin mechs description says you can use his potion multiple times but you can in fact use it once. Maybe an oversight int he text, which isn't final as you mentioned.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 16, 2017, 06:23:20 PM
I'm still not sure, what the Alpha Mech exactly does. This "prototype" thing does not explain anything except he has unique weapons. Does he get more xp/levels up faster? Does he get special upgrades once he reaches a certain stage? Is his growth in power bigger than other mechs (gets better upgrades earlier)?
Basically, the mech levels up quite faster than the others, but you never know what perks you'll get. It could be anything, with the exception of unique perks (like Time Master, etc). Although it starts out weaker than most, the rapid growth combined with the jumbled perks generally leads it to become very powerful later on. Just keep in mind that this one earned the nickname "roulette" for good reason. :P

Paladin mechs description says you can use his potion multiple times but you can in fact use it once. Maybe an oversight int he text, which isn't final as you mentioned.
I thought the same but strangely enough it reappeared later on in my consumable slot. I have no idea how it works though.
Edit: Couldn't replicate the item reappearance. I might have been more sleep-deprived than I thought and 2 runs kinda merged together in my mind. Sorry about that.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 16, 2017, 07:47:44 PM
Yeah, no, thsis is just a pest. For example, bullrushs. Once they hit you, you get knocked back hard and even get a movement speed debuff. But you can walk this off eventually and it's just the initial "WTF?!" moment, that comes across you. Side steps however cling to you nd deal damage all the time, because they are also so close to you, they are very easy to miss with your weapon. And they are small, that acts to that fact. They are just pushovers and I died because of them, either directly or because they brought me down enough for others enemies to finish the job. If they would be easier to hit, once they latch onto you, it wouldn't be much of a problem but that is exactly the problem.
It's worse, if you have a slow firing wepaon like the rail gun but easier with, let's say the flamethrower.

I believe that the versions of the SideSteps in my build are a bit different from the ones in the build you have, so I won't make any extra nerfs just yet. If the ones in the next build are still too annoying, then I can look into some tweaks, though. Probably making them a bit slower might help.

Comet Cluster sounds perfect, rolls perfectly off the tongue.

Sounds pretty good to me. I'll try and gets Ptarth's feedback on the name at some point, though, since he mostly designed the enemy.

Yes, I think that was the one. It definitely wasn't Red Dwarf. It was a big immobile sphere that shoots out slow traveling bullets in every direction from itself.

Yeah, that sounds like the Eyelet. It's not the most difficult enemy, but it might also depend on the positioning of the enemy in the room. It is more effective when it has a bit of space, I think.

Additional observations so far. Warhog missile launcher. Sounds awesome on paper, you get huge damage if you have a huge missile storage (great for bosses) but besides that, you literally cannot farm health shards with it. At all. Once you fire a msisile, you fire them all, you deplet your missiles all the time and it gets hard to get new ones for health shards. Plus, you cannot fully utilize the true power of the launcher. I like the concept though, so I would miss it. Can we make it, that you can charge the launcher and th elonger you charge, the more missiles you fire at once?

Charge weps have been a bit of a nightmare so far. The engine just doesn't have the functionality to make charge weapons other than simply having tap and hold style weapons like the Kaiser Commando. I actually like the restrictions on the Warhog, though, as it changes your playstyle a bit. The mech is just plain bad at resource gathering, but that can be balanced out by making the mech more powerful, which kind of suits the style of the mech, I think.

While we're at missiles, the missile shot modules behave kind of weird. I get that they don't break obstacle blocks but why do they bounce of walls (any of them)? Shouldn't missiles explode on contact. This kind of behaviour leads to soem very irritating results, the missiles strike the wall and... slide kind of across it until they loose momentum and stay still until they explode (which takes a lot of time in itself). Really weird to look at, it's just a visual thing but still...

I believe that the style was inspired by one of the variants of missiles from Gradius iirc. I think there are some sliding style missiles in that game -- however, there are also more traditional variants, too, so I think I might make the modules a bit more traditional, and then maybe add a new module with the sticky behaviour.

I'm still not sure, what the Alpha Mech exactly does. This "prototype" thing does not explain anything except he has unique weapons. Does he get more xp/levels up faster? Does he get special upgrades once he reaches a certain stage? Is his growth in power bigger than other mechs (gets better upgraes earlier)?

The main thing is that it jumbles up all the perks, as Logo says. So, you could get a 30% damage boost at level 1 for example, although perhaps I haven't added this to the description.

Paladin mechs description says you can use his potion multiple times but you can in fact use it once. Maybe an oversight int he text, which isn't final as you mentioned.

Yeah, I originally did want that as a multi-use item, but the engine functionality was not available, so I changed it to just a regular consumable, but must've forgotten to change the text. Oops!

I thought the same but strangely enough it reappeared later on in my consumable slot. I have no idea how it works though.

Hmmm, that might be a bug then, it is actually supposed to just be like a regular consumable since I couldn't get it to work as multi-use.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery August 17, 2017, 06:34:49 AM
I'm gonna agree with the bit about the Warhog mech.

I'd say it's a higher-skill mech, honestly.  Since it's bloody terrible at resource gathering, and knowing when to use the crazy missiles is difficult.  Not to mention that it actually makes max missile count important; on other mechs, this isn't really too important overall.  It's definitely meant to use missiles in combat situations rather than to get at stuff deposits.

As for charge weapons, yeah, as said above the game just doesn't do them well.  I'd prefer we avoid them altogether.... they just don't end well at all.  Frankly they're infuriating.  I'd love to see a fix for that, but that's a Chris/Keith sort of thing, and they're busy with other stuff, so that's not happening for now.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer August 18, 2017, 11:20:50 PM
Some stuff I've noticed so far.

The on use item that summons meteors seemed to be kinda ineffective when I used it in a boss fight.

The tank launcher seems to be pretty overpowered on non boss rooms. Maybe limit the number of shots the tanks can shoot.

The sound effect on the paladins main weapon is kinda annoying having both the sounds for the swing and the flying blade. Might just be me though.

Only new boss I've ran into so far was circuit rogue which was already mentioned that his attack pattern seemed somewhat simple.

The new visuals seem like a huge improvement so far.

: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s August 19, 2017, 11:12:29 AM
In trying to locate something else the other day, I did do a couple of runs.

Ran into some of the new weapons / modules that add weapony effects.

Nice stuff! Seriously. The grenade launcher that shoots over walls? Love it. Also probably OP as hell, but I love it. The animation effect on it is spot-on too.

The module that has secondary side lasers that bounce off walls: the SFX on that could probably be toned down a bit (slightly lower pitch, lower volume), not a lot, but it did irritate me after having to listen to it a lot.

Secondary homing missiles that shoot out backwards weren't as effective (I had to make a choice!) but I still liked it as an option.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 19, 2017, 12:33:23 PM
The on use item that summons meteors seemed to be kinda ineffective when I used it in a boss fight.

That might be ...ok, I think. As long as it's useful in regular rooms that should be fine. There are already quite a few items that are more effective on bosses versus regular rooms and vice versa. It kind of helps mix up whether you try to use those items up or whether you save them for bosses.

The tank launcher seems to be pretty overpowered on non boss rooms. Maybe limit the number of shots the tanks can shoot.

I experimented with this a bit, I think that just increasing the energy cost a bit seems to do the trick. You can probably put out too many tanks at the moment.

The sound effect on the paladins main weapon is kinda annoying having both the sounds for the swing and the flying blade. Might just be me though.

Yeah, I've toned that down a lot for the next build.

The new visuals seem like a huge improvement so far.

Yeah, the aesthetics are a lot better, mostly thanks to Goldenwolf who has a bit of knack for that type of thing.

Nice stuff! Seriously. The grenade launcher that shoots over walls? Love it. Also probably OP as hell, but I love it. The animation effect on it is spot-on too.

Cool! I'm glad you're liking the new stuff. Yeah, that launcher is Goldenwolf's work. It's kind of like the launcher in SMASH TV, I think.

The module that has secondary side lasers that bounce off walls: the SFX on that could probably be toned down a bit (slightly lower pitch, lower volume), not a lot, but it did irritate me after having to listen to it a lot.

Yeah, I've made a few tweaks to that sound. It should be a lot better in the next build.

Thanks for the feedback! :)
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 19, 2017, 06:20:58 PM
New weekend means new batch of feedback. Here goes:

Rusty Rocketshot (main): That thing is loud.
Shrinker (energy weapon): Energy cost is too high. 1.6sec max duration with default energy reserve (about 4 dodges if timed right) is too low.
Smoke Bombs (launcher): How do you destroy a generator with them?
Crimson Death Sniper: Miss penalty -2HP -> -1HP (too harsh to be worth the risk at the moment)
Double Missile Module + Crits + White Blocks (walkable bullet blockers) = FPS disaster
D18_WandererTrap is a good room to test it.

Cataclysm Launcher (Warhog) with RocketMan is hilarious.
Keyprentice perk (+5 keys version): Unused except for Roulette. Could be useful early game when Lady Luck doesn't want to give you any key.
Warhog sentries can die from friendly missiles explosion. Intended?
ChromaticArray (energy weapon): Shots sometimes stay around. -see "Chromatic Stay" image-
Bull Charge drone: Can break bombables blocks?
Zeph's Mech: Let's talk about the "Need for Speed" power. -See related video- (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yisjpA3sOps) I don't think the effect should stack or even increase with additional perks. The duration increase alone is already a major boon. In other news, it crushed Terminus in 8 seconds flat.

X1_Craig_MonoStreamGauntlet room: Adding some cover would be highly appreciated.
X1_Craig_SecretStash room: Missing travelporter
BGS_WatchYourStep room: On golden floors, enemies tend to autokill themselves.

Mirror V2: Last Phase moves forward until it hits the wall. Then what? Is it intended?
Circuit Rondure boss: Big sphere got stuck on center corner wall a few times.
Eyelet enemies: They don't do much. No movement and rare, easy to dodge attacks. I suggest making them inactive until they get a line of sight and are at a reasonable range, then start firing waves at rapid pace.
Repose enemies: Toned down Pearls? They need their own pattern or might as well be replaced by actual Pearls.

Melee weapons: Really fun. But does the lunge effect need to be so strong? It's problematic against bosses and most bullet-heavy situations.
Got UnlockAllItems achievement out of nowhere.

All intended top tier weapons?:
Poison Pistol (main)
Electro Blaster (main)
Armada (energy weapon)
Behemoth's Fist (energy weapon)
Firebug Flame Hose (energy weapon)
Chromatic Array (energy weapon)

Once you grab those, there's little reason to switch out apart for novelty and they often mark the beginning of steamrolling (maybe not so much for Poison Pistol). If they're supposed to be late floors rares that's fine, otherwise all of them will need a good nerf.

And done. Thanks for reading.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer August 20, 2017, 01:45:22 AM
I've won a couple normal runs with the new mechs. Won it with the zeph and paladin/ Getting the upgraded need for speed perk made it seem overpowered and forced me to rush a bit more which was nice to change my playstyle a bit. I didn't notice the effect of the melee master perk for the paladin. Maybe increase the range of the melee when you get that perk?

Rive boss on floor 1, his first phase pattern seems to be pretty tight on slipping through the first shot to avoid the second shot or I could just be missing something. His phase 2 seems okay though.

Forget the name but I got the module that generates energy as you walk. The energy generation rate seemed to be okay.
The phantom frame module says it allows you to sprint through walls but you can just walk through walls with it too.

Eyelets seem to be somewhat ineffective except when they are next to the entrance to a room.

I had a health upgrade room with just a enemy flamethrower turret in it and no health upgrade.

The twinshot revolver seemed to be a bit expensive on its energy cost for the low amount of damage it does even at close range.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s August 20, 2017, 02:41:48 AM
I had a health upgrade room with just a enemy flamethrower turret in it and no health upgrade.

That shouldn't even be possible. None of the health upgrade rooms (or the secret rooms or shops) have turrets in them except X1_Craig_FountainRoom (which has four sludge turrets in the corners).

Aside from that, it is potentially possible that the game "didn't have a health thingy" to seed for the room.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 August 20, 2017, 03:29:02 AM
    Edit: I almost forgot the most important aspect. i walked into a health storage and it was filled with a double flame thrower turret. Whoever thought this up, screw you. when I use a keycard, I want a reward for it, not  a trap. You can put something liek this in Misery difficulty but not in normal.

That's weird, I don't recall that room! (checks) Oops! That seems like one of my test rooms that was meant to be taken out, heh. Sorry about that! Hopefully that won't be in the next build, unless it manages to sneak its way in somehow....doh!
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 20, 2017, 08:29:15 PM
Rusty Rocketshot (main): That thing is loud.

Reduced the volume, thanks.

Shrinker (energy weapon): Energy cost is too high. 1.6sec max duration with default energy reserve (about 4 dodges if timed right) is too low.

Reduced the energy cost. Hopefully that does the trick.

Smoke Bombs (launcher): How do you destroy a generator with them?

It took a while, but I found a fix for this. Now you can destroy generators by standing close to the generator when you use the smoke bomb. It destroys the generator in one bomb. That's more of a convenience than a buff given that Penumbra already has immunity to traps, I think.

Crimson Death Sniper: Miss penalty -2HP -> -1HP (too harsh to be worth the risk at the moment)

There's a bit of a problem with this, since I can only set the percent_penalty to a percentage of 1 or more, so it makes it hard to balance. I'll have to put this on Keith's list, I think. Perhaps I can get something like miss_penalty_amount rather than a percentage. I can just set it to a straight 1, then.

Double Missile Module + Crits + White Blocks (walkable bullet blockers) = FPS disaster

So, I've put a quick fix in for that particular combination, but crits really need to be disabled for that particular block. I'll have to add that to Keith's list.

Keyprentice perk (+5 keys version): Unused except for Roulette. Could be useful early game when Lady Luck doesn't want to give you any key.

Might be worth putting in early. I've added it early, and moved Keymaster to a bit later on in the tree.

Warhog sentries can die from friendly missiles explosion. Intended?

Not intended. I've put a fix in for this which prevents the sentries from being damage by explosive damage. There aren't any enemies that use explosive damage yet, but if there are we can just use the LowExplosive damage type for those.

ChromaticArray (energy weapon): Shots sometimes stay around. -see "Chromatic Stay" image-

That's weird, I'll have to keep an eye on that one. Hopefully someone can find a way to reproduce it.

Bull Charge drone: Can break bombables blocks?

Yeah, I put that in as it seemed appropriate. It doesn't seem too abusable, if it is, though, I'll take it out.

Zeph's Mech: Let's talk about the "Need for Speed" power. -See related video- I don't think the effect should stack or even increase with additional perks. The duration increase alone is already a major boon. In other news, it crushed Terminus in 8 seconds flat.

Yeah. I'm not sure about having the refresh on level up, that seems to be a bit abusable. I think if I make it so that you only get the boost at the start of floors that should help a lot. I like the idea that if you're fast enough, you can get to the next floor and then stack that bonus, so we'll persevere with that for a bit. Having to change that would actually cause significant problems for the current implementation. Removing the refresh on perk level up should make a big difference, then we might have to start adjusting the boost numbers, if that isn't working. (does thing)

X1_Craig_MonoStreamGauntlet room: Adding some cover would be highly appreciated.

I think it's a bit tricky to add cover to this room. As I recall, it had very specific patterns that need to be recognized if you're going to be super comfortable in there. Temporary cover is not going to last long, and permanent cover is probably going to kind of break the original design a bit. I'll leave this for now to see how you get on after a bit more playtime. If it's still too tough, I'll have to make some changes.

X1_Craig_SecretStash room: Missing travelporter

Fixed!

BGS_WatchYourStep room: On golden floors, enemies tend to autokill themselves.

This won't be a problem in the launch release, since Gold floors are going to be made up of a completely new batch of rooms. The BGS rooms are all base game. Phew!

Melee weapons: Really fun. But does the lunge effect need to be so strong? It's problematic against bosses and most bullet-heavy situations.

Yeah, I think it was a bit strong. I've toned it down a bit.

Got UnlockAllItems achievement out of nowhere.

I believe that there is only 1 locked item in the game at the moment, did you grab that? The Hydra energy drink? SR is really bad for unlocks. You get the extra floors which is awesome, but there are hardly any other unlocks. The unlock visuals also...don't exist, heh. It's annoying, and hopefully something we can fix in the future.

All intended top tier weapons?:
Poison Pistol (main)
Electro Blaster (main)
Armada (energy weapon)
Behemoth's Fist (energy weapon)
Firebug Flame Hose (energy weapon)
Chromatic Array (energy weapon)

Those are all top tier weapons aside from the Plague Pistol and Behemoth's Fist. So, I decreased the power of those two a bit.

I didn't notice the effect of the melee master perk for the paladin. Maybe increase the range of the melee when you get that perk?

At the moment that actually gives a bonus to all weapons, I think. I need an engine tweak to set it up for melee weapons only. I don't think that a melee range increase is possible, unfortunately. At least I can't think of a way to do it at the moment. The damage boost is currently x2 so it should be pretty significant, but I guess it's hard to notice because there aren't any effects or anything.

The phantom frame module says it allows you to sprint through walls but you can just walk through walls with it too.

Ah, that's just a bad text description probably, you are meant to be able to walk through walls too. Fixed!

I had a health upgrade room with just a enemy flamethrower turret in it and no health upgrade.

Yeah, I accidentally left a test room in the build. Oops, sorry about that.

The twinshot revolver seemed to be a bit expensive on its energy cost for the low amount of damage it does even at close range.

Hmmm, I'm not 100% sure of the weapon you mean. If you see it again, if you can please get the name of the weapon that'd be great, cheers.

That shouldn't even be possible. None of the health upgrade rooms (or the secret rooms or shops) have turrets in them except X1_Craig_FountainRoom (which has four sludge turrets in the corners).

Aside from that, it is potentially possible that the game "didn't have a health thingy" to seed for the room.

Yeah, that was my fault oops! That test room isn't (or wasn't) even in the SVN build of game. It somehow just snuck into the alpha build that was sent out due to being present in my local build... or something! :)

Thanks for the feedback all! :)
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 20, 2017, 09:37:01 PM
I like the idea that if you're fast enough, you can get to the next floor and then stack that bonus, so we'll persevere with that for a bit.
Oh! That's what was happening? I thought entering a new floor reset the effect and that "need for speed", "need for super speed", etc, were stacking on top of each other, giving you 3 layers of bonuses every floor. But looking at the code now, I see there's a "remove system" in there. Ok, that's pretty neat actually. Once I play some more, I might have some duration suggestions for the super speed and super duper speed perks though. :) Thank you for clearing my confusion.

I think it's a bit tricky to add cover to this room. As I recall, it had very specific patterns that need to be recognized if you're going to be super comfortable in there. [...]
Tricky indeed. My issues with it are that the pattern doesn't seem to take into account that there's enemies trying to rip you apart while you navigate it and that there's no safe hub halfway through to take a break or retreat to when things go south. But like you said, I will give it more playtime and see how things goes.

I believe that there is only 1 locked item in the game at the moment, did you grab that? The Hydra energy drink?
Not sure. What's more strange is that I still have 1 item locked according to my save's stats.

The twinshot revolver seemed to be a bit expensive on its energy cost for the low amount of damage it does even at close range.
Hmmm, I'm not 100% sure of the weapon you mean. If you see it again, if you can please get the name of the weapon that'd be great, cheers.
That sounds like the Triggerking Revolver.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer August 21, 2017, 12:28:33 AM
Dumb question, does the undead revival perk from the sacrifice shop prevent you from picking  up any resources(credits,health,missiles),  does it grant you one health upon clearing a room, and the ability to walk through blocks that can be destroyed by missles and normal bullets? If so that makes it an interesting way to play with it. It could almost be an incredibility. If it doesn't then something was off since it gave me all of that.

Beat a run with Penumbra and Warthog now. Penumbra is rather intense until you get a health up of some sort. After that it becomes fairly easy with the primary and secondary weapons being so useful. The unique perk for it seemed rather amazing too. Penumbra is a good choice to pick with some of the incredibilities. Mind you I spent about 20 runs trying to get a run with a good heath up but eh.

Warthog seems so slow compared to the others but it does make sense. His turrets are kinda bland to me. Maybe have a random turret  spawn when used; bullet,missle,acid, ect. There seems to be a delay time between how often you can set a turret down.


That sounds like the Triggerking Revolver.

That sounds like the correct the name to me.

The Alpha Ray from the Alpha mech doesn't seem to fire if you are right against the wall of a room and
shooting at 20 degree angle or so. Even if you take one step away, it lets you fire from all angles.

I've gotten the room clear notice with an Evaporater Blue still alive in the room. Lets me exit and enter the room again. The enemy doesn't seem to be aggressive anymore either though and doesn't cause damage if I walk into it. Had it happen in a couple rooms.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s August 21, 2017, 12:48:31 AM
Quote from: Pepisolo on Yesterday at 08:29:15 PM
I think it's a bit tricky to add cover to this room. As I recall, it had very specific patterns that need to be recognized if you're going to be super comfortable in there. [...]
Tricky indeed. My issues with it are that the pattern doesn't seem to take into account that there's enemies trying to rip you apart while you navigate it and that there's no safe hub halfway through to take a break or retreat to when things go south. But like you said, I will give it more playtime and see how things goes.

Try using one or two Shot Blocker blocks. If shots are coming from both sides, the player has to embed themselves in them order to be safe. It also means they can't shoot back.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery August 21, 2017, 02:48:17 AM
Mirror V2: Last Phase moves forward until it hits the wall. Then what? Is it intended?

....Eh?

That shouldn't even be possible. That boss hasn't received any changes.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 21, 2017, 02:58:13 PM
Oh! That's what was happening? I thought entering a new floor reset the effect and that "need for speed", "need for super speed", etc, were stacking on top of each other, giving you 3 layers of bonuses every floor. But looking at the code now, I see there's a "remove system" in there. Ok, that's pretty neat actually. Once I play some more, I might have some duration suggestions for the super speed and super duper speed perks though. :) Thank you for clearing my confusion.

Yep, the previous perk systems should be getting removed. The durations are probably going to need fine tuning, yeah.

Tricky indeed. My issues with it are that the pattern doesn't seem to take into account that there's enemies trying to rip you apart while you navigate it and that there's no safe hub halfway through to take a break or retreat to when things go south. But like you said, I will give it more playtime and see how things goes.

Yeah, the safe zones are at either end of the room, so if you want to be super cautious you can try to draw out as many enemies as possible, and fight in those areas.

Not sure. What's more strange is that I still have 1 item locked according to my save's stats.

As far as achievements go, because that is proper engine stuff I don't really know what's going on there. The achievement bugs have been pretty frustrating to deal with for that reason.

Dumb question, does the undead revival perk from the sacrifice shop prevent you from picking  up any resources(credits,health,missiles),  does it grant you one health upon clearing a room, and the ability to walk through blocks that can be destroyed by missles and normal bullets? If so that makes it an interesting way to play with it. It could almost be an incredibility. If it doesn't then something was off since it gave me all of that.

Yep, that sounds about right. You become a kind of blood phantom, although it's not 1 health per room it's life leech when killing enemies.

Beat a run with Penumbra and Warthog now. Penumbra is rather intense until you get a health up of some sort. After that it becomes fairly easy with the primary and secondary weapons being so useful. The unique perk for it seemed rather amazing too. Penumbra is a good choice to pick with some of the incredibilities. Mind you I spent about 20 runs trying to get a run with a good heath up but eh.

Sounds like it's working out. You're going to have a lot of restarts with the Penumbra, but when everything works out those runs should be satisfying.

Warthog seems so slow compared to the others but it does make sense. His turrets are kinda bland to me. Maybe have a random turret  spawn when used; bullet,missle,acid, ect. There seems to be a delay time between how often you can set a turret down.

I think the turrets are meant to be solid and dependable, so you can reliably use them tactically, so I'm not a big fan of adding randomness to those. Hopefully just being able to deploy sentries, and the tactical gameplay that creates should make the weapon interesting enough. Yeah, there is a delay on how fast you can put the turrets down...I guess there doesn't need to be, though. It's probably more about how you position them. The fire rate doesn't really matter, I guess, so I'll reduce that delay a bit.

That sounds like the correct the name to me.

I'll reduce the energy cost on that a little then, thanks.

The Alpha Ray from the Alpha mech doesn't seem to fire if you are right against the wall of a room and
shooting at 20 degree angle or so. Even if you take one step away, it lets you fire from all angles.

I tested this a bit. Unfortunately, this seem more like a general problem. I've used as much wall_collision_reduction on shots as possible in order to reduce this effect, but sometimes if you are flush with the wall, the shots are stopped. For some weapons, the shots seem to be pushed to the side a bit...for some reason, which looks weird but gameplay-wise it's better. I'll have to investigate this a bit more and maybe ask Keith about it to see what's going on.

I've gotten the room clear notice with an Evaporater Blue still alive in the room. Lets me exit and enter the room again. The enemy doesn't seem to be aggressive anymore either though and doesn't cause damage if I walk into it. Had it happen in a couple rooms.

Yeah, the reason why I did this is so that if the Evaporater is hovering over an unreachable area, it's not halting your progress. It's a solution to that, but a janky one. I could just stick with the regular behavior on room clear, but then there would be some rooms where the Evaporater would hover in unreachable areas for a bit. You could just wait until the enemy moves, of course, but I was thinking that might prove frustrating for the player. I suppose I could just remove the ability to move through walls on this enemy, which isn't the original design, but it works, I guess.

Try using one or two Shot Blocker blocks. If shots are coming from both sides, the player has to embed themselves in them order to be safe. It also means they can't shoot back.

I might look into something like this, but I think that once the patterns click and it's realized that the end of the rooms are safe, the room should be good as is....I think! :)

: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 21, 2017, 07:53:47 PM
....Eh?

That shouldn't even be possible. That boss hasn't received any changes.
Darn. I should have recorded the fight. I thought it would be easy to reproduce in the test room, but it's not! Now all I have to offer is "It was going a bit forward everytime it went up or down", which is as unhelpful as can be. Now that's frustrating.

I suppose it's no big deal if it's that rare of an occurrence, especially on a rare boss (floor 6)...
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery August 22, 2017, 05:11:01 AM
Okay, I got some stuff here.

Firstly, I'm copy-pasting some feedback from someone that isn't on the forums here:

Feedback #1

- lack of item drops in general (health, creds, items, etc) because most new rooms don't have the white cubes

- a lot of the new melee enemies are BS (dunno their names sorry, alternate level enemies)

- rooms with "JumpScare_x1" couldn't spawn whatever that is.

- the alternate level seems a little too hard, not balanced based on what floor you're on

- you seem to not get as much XP as you used to get, so less health, damage, etc. could be associated with item drops being rare.

- could not find localade_3x3

- cound not find under catagory Defensive

- condemned room on alternate floor was empty except the spikes

- Firebug Flame Hose needs a nerf



Also, some complaints about the melee enemy.  Sidestep Abmoog, was it?  I'm pretty sure that was the one.   And a complaint about "too many bullets per enemy" which is going to feed in a bit to something else here.


: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery August 22, 2017, 05:36:20 AM
Okay first of all, I'd like to congratulate Windows on being the worst thing to ever happen to computers.  I have to type this up a second time because I maybe hit the windows key kinda almost sorta possibly.   WHoever came up with that has hopefully been A: fired and B: banished to another galaxy while covered in bees.


Anyway.  Biggest issue right now:  Visual confusion.  WAY too much of it.  I'll put it this way: in just going through a run on normal mode, I've had a few too many times where I cant even entirely tell what's going on.  Now, if *I* am having issues with this, it's definitely a problem.  I'm used to Mushihime and it's infinite fields of tangled purple doom, and it doesn't give me that much trouble.  The problem:  Too many "large" bullets and particle effects.  Way too many.   These larger shots should be used sparingly.  The problem isn't the hitbox size, it's simply the visual size of the sprite.  It sort of "bloats" everything.  But it also makes it nigh-impossible to tell what is going on when two patterns intersect, which is very frequent in this game.  I'll just put it this way:  There's a reason why the normal floors are using mostly bullets from the "simple" bullet art folder.  Same with most of the bosses.  There's already a lot that players need to process visually as it is.

I'd love to get some feedback from you testers on this one.  Let us know what you think of this.  I'm aware that it's a very subjective issue even just within individual games.

Let's see... other issue:  Entirely missing enemy category (jumpscares).  Facepalm.  This one is probably my fault.  I'll deal with that, and other related issues.  I'm going to put the Misery Mode stuff on hold and try to push out an update tomorrow or the next day containing some new baddies to fill some voids that are currently there and just add more in general to the golden floor enemy selection.  Also maybe new boss #8.   In particular we could use some more of the "simpler" foes.  Got lots of complicated ones in the golden floors, perhaps a bit too much.

Certain things also could probably do with a good whack from the nerf bat.  Carrion Engine in particular could use a nerf nuke, I went a tad overboard with that guy, so it's getting some changes.  A couple of the minibosses could maybe do with a mild nerf but I should test a bit more.

A couple of other things here....  elemental damage.  It's hard to even tell what this is.  It seems... out of place to me?  What do you guys think?  Also, most things capable of altering enemy firing timings (like the Narcotics Drone) could do with a toning-down.  They pretty much ALL turn bosses/fearsomes into sad, easy things regardless of difficulty.  There's a new module that was doing something like this, I forget the name.  I should have written this down.

Challenge rooms are doing well, too.  The one with the bazillion snipers might be a bit overboard though, I could see players getting a bit lost on that one perhaps.  But for the most part, these have been very good.  The more variety here the better!

Evaporator enemy:  room cleared, this guy was still hanging around.  No idea why.  Happened more than once.


Skeleton Key:  Not opening lock blocks.  Probably an oversight instead of a bug.

Lastly:  the biggest feedback I'd like to get right now, is what you guys think of the current difficulty, based on whatever mode you are playing on?




And yes I know I could have typed this up in an email, but I'd rather have all of it open for discussion among the testers as well.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 22, 2017, 10:24:32 AM
- lack of item drops in general (health, creds, items, etc) because most new rooms don't have the white cubes

That is actually a good spot, yeah. In my rooms, I've hardly used those glass containers. I'll add a bunch to mine where appropriate, cheers. I'll leave Draco take a look at his own rooms. Maybe it's just my rooms that are really lacking them.

- a lot of the new melee enemies are BS (dunno their names sorry, alternate level enemies)

These are probably the Sidestep Abmoogs. Those are actually slightly broken in the build that was sent out, so that they don't actually side-step (I think), which makes them a bit more terminator-esque. I've also slightly nerfed the movement speed for the next build. We'll take it easy with these guys, though. A couple of rounds of tweaks should get them into good shape.

- the alternate level seems a little too hard, not balanced based on what floor you're on

Not sure about this. Generally, there are later floor enemies that unlock, so there should be a clear difference between late and early game. I am trying something a bit different with the elemental enemies, though, in just having same floor variants, I might have to change that in the future, although it's a bit early to say. The enemy HP values could be looked at a bit more, perhaps.

you seem to not get as much XP as you used to get, so less health, damage, etc. could be associated with item drops being rare.

XP values should be similar, I think. Unless something weird is going on.

Firebug Flame Hose needs a nerf

I'm not at the correct computer just now, but I'll put a nerf in later, cheers.

The other errors with Challenge rooms and enemy seeding are all known, yeah. The empty challenge rooms won't be fixed for a long while.

Anyway.  Biggest issue right now:  Visual confusion.  WAY too much of it.  I'll put it this way: in just going through a run on normal mode, I've had a few too many times where I cant even entirely tell what's going on.  Now, if *I* am having issues with this, it's definitely a problem.  I'm used to Mushihime and it's infinite fields of tangled purple doom, and it doesn't give me that much trouble.  The problem:  Too many "large" bullets and particle effects.  Way too many.   These larger shots should be used sparingly.  The problem isn't the hitbox size, it's simply the visual size of the sprite.  It sort of "bloats" everything.  But it also makes it nigh-impossible to tell what is going on when two patterns intersect, which is very frequent in this game.  I'll just put it this way:  There's a reason why the normal floors are using mostly bullets from the "simple" bullet art folder.  Same with most of the bosses.  There's already a lot that players need to process visually as it is.

Yeah, I'm going to have to just be reactive about this. If anybody can point out any specific problem enemies, I'll take a look. For myself, though, I don't really struggle visually for some reason. It may just be that it doesn't really bother me that much, even when I can't see fully what's going on, heh. I like the chaos of the moment too much. The only thing I do find bothersome visually is at some points when there is visual glare from the backdrops behind. As for particles, the only enemies that are using particles, I think, are 3 attackers which give off an AOE -- the drainer, energy drainer, and the healer, I think. I'm going through the enemies in my mind, but those are the only ones I can think of, and those don't even shoot at you, so it's just an area around the enemy. Should be easy enough to see. It's a general rule to not use particles on enemy shots, only player shots. This then also helps you distinguish between enemy and player shots a bit. As for large bullets, those can be looked at, yeah. Someone is going to need to point out the problem enemies for me, though.

A couple of other things here....  elemental damage.  It's hard to even tell what this is.  It seems... out of place to me?  What do you guys think?  Also, most things capable of altering enemy firing timings (like the Narcotics Drone) could do with a toning-down.  They pretty much ALL turn bosses/fearsomes into sad, easy things regardless of difficulty.  There's a new module that was doing something like this, I forget the name.  I should have written this down.

I really didn't want to get too deep into the elemental damage stuff, so it's meant to be pretty simple. Mainly just some Dot and an associated effect. Ice just slows  a bit, Fire burns you a bit, Acid does Dot and increased weakness to further attacks, and Ion stuns a bit. I can remove it if necessary, though, but most of this stuff is already in the base game -- the effects like time dilation, I mean.

Evaporator enemy:  room cleared, this guy was still hanging around.  No idea why.  Happened more than once.

Yeah, I think I'm just going to have to lose the flies through walls attribute on this enemy. It's a shame, but I've tried various solutions so far.

Skeleton Key:  Not opening lock blocks.  Probably an oversight instead of a bug.

Yeah, just an oversight.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 August 22, 2017, 12:14:14 PM
No feedback currently, just a question. Do we get a new final boss with this expansion, when it gets released? Maybe somethign like "Hand of Midas" or soemthing along that line?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 22, 2017, 12:19:50 PM
No feedback currently, just a question. Do we get a new final boss with this expansion, when it gets released? Maybe somethign like "Hand of Midas" or soemthing along that line?

Yeah, I think so. Misery can confirm this, though.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s August 22, 2017, 01:27:44 PM
I'll run through my rooms and check on glass containers. I know that some of the simpler rooms I did recently didn't have any, but we're talking shops and secret stuff rooms, which probably don't need any.

Edit:
Found 3 rooms to add glass shottables to that didn't have them previously.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 22, 2017, 10:50:27 PM
Evaporator enemy:  room cleared, this guy was still hanging around.  No idea why.  Happened more than once.

Yeah, I think I'm just going to have to lose the flies through walls attribute on this enemy. It's a shame, but I've tried various solutions so far.
Aw, that's too bad. I really like those guys. One just gave me a good fright with Penumbra, passing over a wall to reach me. An intense and surprising moment that couldn't have happened without their current design. Can't you give them some special ability making them commit seppuku when the room is cleared?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery August 23, 2017, 12:26:45 AM
No feedback currently, just a question. Do we get a new final boss with this expansion, when it gets released? Maybe somethign like "Hand of Midas" or soemthing along that line?

I'm not sure what this Hand of Midas thing is. 

Normally I make an Isaac analogy when explaining how this works but you don't play that, so... uuhhh...

Okay, how about Enter the Gungeon?  I don't know if you've seen that but it's a decent analogy I guess.  The game's normal final boss is the Dragun, but if you've done enough things and completed a couple of special objectives, you have the option of going past that into another area (which in that game is literally named "Bullet Hell", someone was being very clever that day...).  In there you reach the game's "true" final boss, Lich, who is really dramatically harder than the Dragun, BUT, he's optional.  You don't HAVE to go to that area, you can simply end the game with a win right after the Dragun if you want.   But if you do go fight the Lich, you better know what you're doing because it's one of those fights where it seems like the game stops being balanced in difficulty and starts simply trying to actively kill you.    It's also a very long fight, as the boss has three separate forms.  Bosses like this are usually very long battles.

Isaac is where the concept is inspired by though, as it does this sort of thing in multiple places.  It's pretty common in the genre though.   Usually in these games the idea is, if you think your build is strong enough (and if you think you have enough skill) you can go after the big optional guy on that particular run.  But if it isn't, you don't have to.

I'm not sure what sort of conditions might be required here to get this boss to show itself.  Havent decided.

It's also somewhat inspired by lots of the bullet-hell games I play, where there's usually some sort of horrible "true" final boss that only appears if you beat the game almost perfectly. Cave's games do this a lot, they're the bosses that are so stupidly difficult that even most experts don't stand a chance.   I don't intend on going THAT far with it, but... I'll say that the misery mode version of this particular boss will be different than the rest.   If I can get it to do the stuff I want, that is. 

It's definitely not playable yet... right now it's a hideous jumbled mess.  It's pretty low on the priority list at the moment. 
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 August 23, 2017, 12:58:39 AM
I'm not sure what this Hand of Midas thing is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas#Golden_Touch
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 23, 2017, 10:47:22 AM
Evaporator enemy:  room cleared, this guy was still hanging around.  No idea why.  Happened more than once.

Yeah, I think I'm just going to have to lose the flies through walls attribute on this enemy. It's a shame, but I've tried various solutions so far.
Aw, that's too bad. I really like those guys. One just gave me a good fright with Penumbra, passing over a wall to reach me. An intense and surprising moment that couldn't have happened without their current design. Can't you give them some special ability making them commit seppuku when the room is cleared?

Actually...yes, yes, I believe I can! (checks). Yep, that works. Thanks! We'll try that for now then. The only problems are that if a room is filled with Evaporaters then you only have to kill the remaining enemies to clear the room. This is fine if there is only one or two Evaporaters, and a bunch of other enemies, but it does feel a bit weird if the room is mostly Evaporaters. You might potentially also get a room that rarely spawns only Evaporaters, so the room will auto-clear. Anyway, we'll try this for a while. If it doesn't work out I'll have to remove flies_through_obstacles.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer August 25, 2017, 11:37:18 PM
Mine layer abmog, vain, drove and trebuchet all do not give xp when I kill them. Not sure if it is intended since they are such easy kills.

I'm not sure what sort of conditions might be required here to get this boss to show itself.  Havent decided

Maybe pick up an item that could be a part of this boss. A weapon or a piece of armor or whatever. Then it checks if you have this part, if so then you can fight this boss. Make it available in the sacrifice shop to kinda guarantee it to show up.

The undead revival sacrifice perk doesn't seem to grant life on kill. It also prevents pickup of any weapon and resources too.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 26, 2017, 11:22:46 AM
Mine layer abmog, vain, drove and trebuchet all do not give xp when I kill them. Not sure if it is intended since they are such easy kills.

Well spotted on the Mine Layer and Vain. Mine Layer wasn't granting XP due to the enemy transforming into a mine on death. I've fixed that now using a different implementation. Vain is a super easy fix, but I'll leave Misery to deal with that. I don't like digging into his code when he's close to pushing an update, in case it causes conflicts. The others are popcorn enemies which are set to not give XP, I think...although maybe if they just gave a very small amount of XP that would be nice. Only really respawning enemies need to be set to 0, I think.

The undead revival sacrifice perk doesn't seem to grant life on kill. It also prevents pickup of any weapon and resources too.

Yeah, setting it to not allow you to pick up any items is kind of a thematic thing, plus it adds a slightly different gameplay element. I didn't want to do just another straight revive item. It does actually grant life on kill, but it's not a 1 health per enemy ratio. You have to kill 5 enemies for 1 health, I think. I tested it quick, and it does seem to be working correctly for me.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 26, 2017, 07:09:47 PM
Mirror V2: Last Phase moves forward until it hits the wall. Then what? Is it intended?

....Eh?

That shouldn't even be possible. That boss hasn't received any changes.
Coming back to this, because it did that thing again with Mirror mk1. But this time I recorded it! -Video here- (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7iSGv4ZUGA)
Brand new run with Roulette, where I picked up the Ice Shot Module and nothing else. Suspicious. Looking into it some more, the module includes a "SteeringDisabled" component, which must have messed up the boss movement pattern for that specific phase. Mystery solved.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer August 26, 2017, 09:13:34 PM
Yeah, setting it to not allow you to pick up any items is kind of a thematic thing, plus it adds a slightly different gameplay element. I didn't want to do just another straight revive item. It does actually grant life on kill, but it's not a 1 health per enemy ratio. You have to kill 5 enemies for 1 health, I think. I tested it quick, and it does seem to be working correctly for me.

Okay, that makes sense then. Just wanted to make sure it was meant to do that.

The others are popcorn enemies which are set to not give XP, I think...although maybe if they just gave a very small amount of XP that would be nice. Only really respawning enemies need to be set to 0, I think.

With how often you run into "zoo" rooms where you just have 20 of those enemies types, it does kinda make sense for them to not grant xp.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery August 27, 2017, 06:58:00 PM
Mirror V2: Last Phase moves forward until it hits the wall. Then what? Is it intended?

....Eh?

That shouldn't even be possible. That boss hasn't received any changes.
Coming back to this, because it did that thing again with Mirror mk1. But this time I recorded it! -Video here- (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7iSGv4ZUGA)
Brand new run with Roulette, where I picked up the Ice Shot Module and nothing else. Suspicious. Looking into it some more, the module includes a "SteeringDisabled" component, which must have messed up the boss movement pattern for that specific phase. Mystery solved.

Yeah, that's not one I can fix. 
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 28, 2017, 11:12:28 AM
Brand new run with Roulette, where I picked up the Ice Shot Module and nothing else. Suspicious. Looking into it some more, the module includes a "SteeringDisabled" component, which must have messed up the boss movement pattern for that specific phase. Mystery solved.

Yeah, makes sense. I'll probably remove the SteeringDisabled behaviour on those items. It was just a nicety to give the effect of an enemy sliding on ice a bit, but it's not absolutely necessary.

With how often you run into "zoo" rooms where you just have 20 of those enemies types, it does kinda make sense for them to not grant xp.

I would lean towards them giving you a small XP amount myself, maybe even as low as 2XP each. It seems a shame to kill a bunch of those enemies and get nothing out of it. Enemies that respawn shouldn't give any XP, of course, but as long there are finite amounts of the enemies, a small XP amount seems fine to me. Either way, I'm not too concerned about it, though.

Yeah, that's not one I can fix. 

Yeah, I'll remove the SteeringDisabled modifier on that item. That should fix things.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 28, 2017, 07:17:08 PM
Finally compiled my feedback/suggestions from the last weekend into a format that isn't complete nonsense. So there it is:


-X1_Craig_LockerRoom: Reduce the number of layers of keyblocks per corner. 12 keys to grab everything is a bit over the top.

-X1_MinibossLargeDeathWheel: You start the room on an enemy, taking a hit before you can even dodge.

-X1_MinibossLargeOpticon: Miniboss needs a lot more health. Didn't have time to get his name before it died.

-X1_MinibossLargeHarrier: Miniboss needs some extra health. Some regular projectiles are a bit too fast.

-PT_MinibossLargeHive: Miniboss needs more health.

-Overkill perk: Works on debris.

-No shopkeepers on golden floors?

-Golden floors significantly smaller than regular ones?

-Partial shops: Room design includes 3 items, but sometimes not all of them show up ingame. (See "HalfShop" images)

-IntermittentDamageTrap: Can damage Penumbra (immune to trap) and maybe Trapmaster?

-D18_TwoFactor room: Cannot go through with victory or golden button. Need to destroy generator. Intended?

-X1_Craig_LaserDisco room: Missing Travelporter.

-Acid Crystal Minion: Explosion projectiles too fast.


-Meteor Storm consumable: Allow to damage/destroy bombables.

-Laser Lance: Any way to lock the cockpit aim angle for a split second while the lance fires? So the two stay aligned when firing? It does add an aiming movement limitation to the weapon though.

-Armada (energy): Double energy cost. Even with that, it will still be a top tier weapon by a large margin.

-Shock Wave Missile Launcher: Reduce stun duration

-Leviathan Autocannon: The recoil was pushing me forward instead of back. Did that happen to anyone else?

-Elemental damage modules: Are some enemies weaker against specific elements? If not, might as well remove elemental mention to avoid confusion and simply describe effect (stun, DoT, etc).

-Phantom Frame module: Pass through all blocks and ignore one-way arrows AND immune to environmental hazards. Seems excessive. With only a portion of those effects, Jaywalker was made into an incredibility. My suggestion: Focus on the passing through blocks part, leaving the rest to other items/perks.

-Undead Revive (sac item): I like the concept of being reborn with a different set of rules, but the "no picking up items" part pretty much stops all progression for the mech (with the exception of levelup perks). No new weapon, module, powerups, consumable, or even credits/keycards/missiles. It's kinda of a big downer. Instead, I would recommend re-enabling item picking and using a Healthgains multiplier of 0 to negate healing pickups. That way you still have to rely on the lifeleech effect. To compensate this boost, the item could lose its damage multipliers and possibly its trap immunity. The specifics aren't that important, as long as triggering the power early doesn't mean the run is over, progression-wise.


And that's all I got for now.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 28, 2017, 09:52:01 PM
X1_Craig_LockerRoom: Reduce the number of layers of keyblocks per corner. 12 keys to grab everything is a bit over the top.

Yeah, it is a bit too much. I've replaced the inside keyblocks with rewards instead. It's a lot more rewarding now, hopefully not too much.

-X1_MinibossLargeDeathWheel: You start the room on an enemy, taking a hit before you can even dodge.

Yeah, I'm hoping to get the room starting position changed some time -- I need to ask Keith about that at some point. I'd really really really rather not have to tweak the positions of the enemies for this boss since even the slightest change is probably going to cause me to have to redo a lot of the work.

-X1_MinibossLargeOpticon: Miniboss needs a lot more health. Didn't have time to get his name before it died.

I've upped the health a fair bit. Thanks!

-PT_MinibossLargeHive: Miniboss needs more health.

Upped the health a bit. These minibosses might need one more round of buffs, we'll see.

-Overkill perk: Works on debris.

Drat. Sounds like a Keithy fix this. No solution comes to mind. I'll add this to the batch of fixes for Keith.

-No shopkeepers on golden floors?

Good spot. I better investigate that then. (investigates) Sorted, fixed that now. We should probably look into creating a new shopkeeper, too, perhaps. Or possibly just get a nice Gold Palette version.

-Golden floors significantly smaller than regular ones?

Not sure! (investigates). It does look like the floors are set up differently. This is where it'd be good to have Ptarth around so I could ask how he set these up and stuff, but unfortunately he's super busy and hard to contact at the moment. I don't really see why these should be smaller, so I'll just copy the values from the base floor setup, I think. Well spotted! I was completely blind to that, heh.

-Partial shops: Room design includes 3 items, but sometimes not all of them show up ingame. (See "HalfShop" images)

I have no clue on this one. I'll have to think on it...or something!

-IntermittentDamageTrap: Can damage Penumbra (immune to trap) and maybe Trapmaster?

I think I fixed these. I'll test them on one of my runs at some point.

-X1_Craig_LaserDisco room: Missing Travelporter.

Fixed!

-Acid Crystal Minion: Explosion projectiles too fast.

I'm not sure which enemy you mean here. Or which attack. Can you get the enemy name please?

-Meteor Storm consumable: Allow to damage/destroy bombables.

Sounds like that would be an interesting use of the item. Done!

-Laser Lance: Any way to lock the cockpit aim angle for a split second while the lance fires? So the two stay aligned when firing? It does add an aiming movement limitation to the weapon though.

So that you can't rotate the mech while firing? I don't actually think that's possible, but I'll think on it.

-Armada (energy): Double energy cost. Even with that, it will still be a top tier weapon by a large margin.

Okay. Hopefully we haven't gone overboard on the nerf.

-Shock Wave Missile Launcher: Reduce stun duration

Reduced the duration a bit.

-Leviathan Autocannon: The recoil was pushing me forward instead of back. Did that happen to anyone else?

I think I've seen that, yeah. (investigates) I think I've sorted this out. It was something to do with the recoil varying along with mech speed, so I set the mech speed when firing so that everything is consistent. Seems solid now.

Elemental damage modules: Are some enemies weaker against specific elements? If not, might as well remove elemental mention to avoid confusion and simply describe effect (stun, DoT, etc).

I haven't 100% decided yet, but currently no. I'll leave this for now to think on it a bit more and I'll get the descriptions fixed when I go through all the text.

-Phantom Frame module: Pass through all blocks and ignore one-way arrows AND immune to environmental hazards. Seems excessive. With only a portion of those effects, Jaywalker was made into an incredibility. My suggestion: Focus on the passing through blocks part, leaving the rest to other items/perks.

I'm not sure on this. It just seems so odd to me for your mech to be made into a phantom and yet still be harmed by caltrops. I know it's more a question of balance, but I'm not super convinced that the current setup is overpowered for a module, since you can only have one at a time. How no-brainer is it to pick up the Phantom Frame versus say the Homing Missiles? Not sure on this, but I'll think about it. It might be a little overpowered.

-Undead Revive (sac item): I like the concept of being reborn with a different set of rules, but the "no picking up items" part pretty much stops all progression for the mech (with the exception of levelup perks). No new weapon, module, powerups, consumable, or even credits/keycards/missiles. It's kinda of a big downer. Instead, I would recommend re-enabling item picking and using a Healthgains multiplier of 0 to negate healing pickups. That way you still have to rely on the lifeleech effect. To compensate this boost, the item could lose its damage multipliers and possibly its trap immunity. The specifics aren't that important, as long as triggering the power early doesn't mean the run is over, progression-wise.

I'm a bit undecided, but I think those changes sound good. I might make them tomorrow, I think.

Thanks for the feedback! :)
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 29, 2017, 11:45:35 AM
Couple of notes. The Laser Lance particle has been updated by Goldenwolf to look a little better.

On the Undead Revive. I tried the changes, and while they kind of worked it seemed a bit too much of a departure from the essence of the item. It is meant to be a pact with the devil that allows you to cheat death rather than be a simple extra life. So, when you die, your form is meant to be locked in place at the point you died. I actually did want to even remove the leveling, too, but you can't really do that in the engine, so that had to stay. I kind of prefer the current implementation because it's more original and more thematic, and still seems pretty useful to me. Yeah, if you die early then you've got a pretty hard road to victory...but at least you still have a chance, which is what the item is meant to offer. One last chance to win. I think any balancing tweaks should be based on the current implementation. Perhaps we could decrease the Sacrifice cost or up the damage bonus etc.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge August 29, 2017, 05:56:20 PM
-Acid Crystal Minion: Explosion projectiles too fast.

I'm not sure which enemy you mean here. Or which attack. Can you get the enemy name please?
From X1_Miniboss_KingGreen (Acid King), when his minions self-destruct they release some super fast projectiles. A bit too fast in my opinion. I think "Acid Crystal Minion" was the accurate name.

-Phantom Frame module [...]

I'm not sure on this. It just seems so odd to me for your mech to be made into a phantom and yet still be harmed by caltrops. I know it's more a question of balance, but I'm not super convinced that the current setup is overpowered for a module, since you can only have one at a time. How no-brainer is it to pick up the Phantom Frame versus say the Homing Missiles? Not sure on this, but I'll think about it. It might be a little overpowered.
In this case, homing missiles would provide some extra firepower (nice, but nothing crazy), but the Phantom Frame would allow you to ignore everything related to the rooms themselves (including traps), doesn't need missiles anymore to reach behind bombables and the mech itself can hide in blocks to avoid most enemy retaliations. He's in a different league entirely I think.

On the Undead Revive [...]
Yeah, my suggestion might have been closer to a zombie than a blood phantom. :P I'll try to think of something else while keeping the theme in mind. The main thing I wanna avoid, is that item single-handedly causing situations akin to facing MirrorV2 in the test room (it takes beyond forever), where you simply don't have the power to face the later opponents.

Or maybe it doesn't really matter and a firm warning in the item's description would be enough. If it's a choice, even a risky one, it would be up to the player to decide if it's worth taking and it makes things interesting. Hm, I guess I got some thinking to do.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo August 29, 2017, 07:20:33 PM
From X1_Miniboss_KingGreen (Acid King), when his minions self-destruct they release some super fast projectiles. A bit too fast in my opinion. I think "Acid Crystal Minion" was the accurate name.

Ah, right. I was trying to go through the regular enemies in my head, but didn't think of the Miniboss minions. Doh! Reduced the shot speed from 1000 to 900. Hopefully that does the trick. If not, we can go 800.

In this case, homing missiles would provide some extra firepower (nice, but nothing crazy), but the Phantom Frame would allow you to ignore everything related to the rooms themselves (including traps), doesn't need missiles anymore to reach behind bombables and the mech itself can hide in blocks to avoid most enemy retaliations. He's in a different league entirely I think.

Hmmm, ok. As much as it irks me to see a Phantom Mech get damaged by caltrops, I'll remove the trap immunity. I reserve the right to add it back if we get a bunch of feedback saying that the module is underpowered, though, heh. What if I were to make it so that it only gave immunity to caltrops? Would that still be too much?

Yeah, my suggestion might have been closer to a zombie than a blood phantom. :P I'll try to think of something else while keeping the theme in mind. The main thing I wanna avoid, is that item single-handedly causing situations akin to facing MirrorV2 in the test room (it takes beyond forever), where you simply don't have the power to face the later opponents.

One thing I'm considering adding is 1 missile regen on room change, so you can at least replenish missiles in some way. What do you think?

Or maybe it doesn't really matter and a firm warning in the item's description would be enough. If it's a choice, even a risky one, it would be up to the player to decide if it's worth taking and it makes things interesting. Hm, I guess I got some thinking to do.

Yeah,  a good description should help. Cheers!
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer August 29, 2017, 07:25:06 PM
One thing I'm considering adding is 1 missile regen on room change, so you can at least replenish missiles in some way. What do you think?

Missile regen would help out on it for sure. It would at least give you chance to push through the normal rooms. A good description could be all it needs too though.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer September 03, 2017, 12:48:45 AM
Having an odd bug that seems to be persistent in both the alpha and stable build on steam. The mech seems to just auto run to left. It continues to happen if I remove my keyboard and/or my mouse. It started happening this week. My cursor also disappears on the main menu requiring me to select game and mech choice by arrow keys. I'd assume these two bugs are related. 
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer September 03, 2017, 07:37:12 AM
Having an odd bug that seems to be persistent in both the alpha and stable build on steam. The mech seems to just auto run to left. It continues to happen if I remove my keyboard and/or my mouse. It started happening this week. My cursor also disappears on the main menu requiring me to select game and mech choice by arrow keys. I'd assume these two bugs are related. 

Seemed it was bug with unity and a program called vjoy which simulates a controller. I had to disable vjoy and now everything seems to be working. It was causing the same issue in other unity games too.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 03, 2017, 01:32:26 PM
Having an odd bug that seems to be persistent in both the alpha and stable build on steam. The mech seems to just auto run to left. It continues to happen if I remove my keyboard and/or my mouse. It started happening this week. My cursor also disappears on the main menu requiring me to select game and mech choice by arrow keys. I'd assume these two bugs are related. 

Seemed it was bug with unity and a program called vjoy which simulates a controller. I had to disable vjoy and now everything seems to be working. It was causing the same issue in other unity games too.

Glad you got that sorted, then.

Missile regen would help out on it for sure. It would at least give you chance to push through the normal rooms. A good description could be all it needs too though.

I'm still not sure on the regenerating missiles for the Undead Revive, or Necro Mech as it's now called. Hopefully we should get some more feedback on the item that will help me decide.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer September 04, 2017, 08:11:19 PM
The Wire enemies that shoot a wire across the room need some sort of sound cue when they shoot. You can get sniped by that shot if aren't aware that they are in a room. 

I ran into the Circuit Rodure boss on both floor 3 and floor 4. I didn't think it was possible for him to spawn on both floors.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery September 05, 2017, 11:14:08 AM
The Wire enemies that shoot a wire across the room need some sort of sound cue when they shoot. You can get sniped by that shot if aren't aware that they are in a room. 

I ran into the Circuit Rodure boss on both floor 3 and floor 4. I didn't think it was possible for him to spawn on both floors.

Wires are getting that changed.  In the testing I've been doing over the last few days, I'm finding that they dont work out as well as I'd originally hoped they would, so yeah, a change for them coming.

As for the boss, uhhh.... Not sure how that's happening?  I hope I didn't do something derpy like define the freaking thing twice.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 05, 2017, 12:56:00 PM
Wires are getting that changed.  In the testing I've been doing over the last few days, I'm finding that they dont work out as well as I'd originally hoped they would, so yeah, a change for them coming.

I added sound effects for the Wire. They seemed pretty good to me, but I didn't test them extensively.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer September 07, 2017, 08:20:33 PM
Found a combo that might be overpowered. I got the energy weapon, overwhelming power I think is its name. It takes all enemies health down by half whenever you use it. Well it synergizes with Penumbra's perk where it does double damage with the first hit you do to an enemy. Each room was an instant room clear using this combo. I wasn't sure if the perk was supposed work with that energy weapon.

 It became more risky on the bosses of course without the dodge but oh well.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 08, 2017, 07:33:02 PM
Found a combo that might be overpowered. I got the energy weapon, overwhelming power I think is its name. It takes all enemies health down by half whenever you use it. Well it synergizes with Penumbra's perk where it does double damage with the first hit you do to an enemy. Each room was an instant room clear using this combo. I wasn't sure if the perk was supposed work with that energy weapon.

 It became more risky on the bosses of course without the dodge but oh well.

Interesting combo...it's almost worth not nerfing that because it sounds fun, however it probably is a bit too much. I have a few solutions for that, I think. It would depend on how the First Blood perks are working out. Anybody got any thoughts on those? OP...or fine as is? The bonuses are currently double damage for each perk taken, which stack, so they may be a little OP. I'm not even sure if there should be two versions of that perk. One might be enough.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge September 08, 2017, 11:17:22 PM
It would depend on how the First Blood perks are working out. Anybody got any thoughts on those? OP...or fine as is? The bonuses are currently double damage for each perk taken, which stack, so they may be a little OP. I'm not even sure if there should be two versions of that perk. One might be enough.
Wow, those stack the damage? Ouch. I only ever got one at a time. Could getting both give a second boosted strike instead? Otherwise one might really be enough.

As for Decimating Power, I thought it was immune to damage modifications due to being a fixed %. Apparently not. Having it take 49% should prevent the room-wide instakill with one perk but I'm torn as to whether it's right or not to get rid of that specific combo. I don't think it works on bosses, so it's not a "I win" button per say. :-\


And here's a few things I noted lately:

-Penumbra & Roulette mechs: Missing their SprintWindSystem and initial missile refill. Refill doesn't affect Roulette with 5 missiles though.

-Healer enemy: Range too short to be effective. Also, suggestion: Remove huge wave visual effect, leaving only green/blue particles on allies getting healed to reduce visual clutter.

-MediWell consumable: Hurts the Warhog instead of healing. Warhog reduces damage by 1, with a minimum of 1 damage taken, including -1 attacks used for healing purposes. I'm guessing the Hardening Module will have the same problem.

-D18_HourGlass room: Lower door has 3 enemies in your face when you spawn.

-Alpha Ray weapon: Started leaving waves behind (like the Chromatic Array previously) after using range+ circuit. Same issue the Incineration Module used to have? -Bug report save included if needed.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer September 09, 2017, 03:07:08 AM
-MediWell consumable: Hurts the Warhog instead of healing. Warhog reduces damage by 1, with a minimum of 1 damage taken, including -1 attacks used for healing purposes. I'm guessing the Hardening Module will have the same problem.

I wondered why my warhog run died in a healing well when I used it. Just assumed I was getting hit by something I couldn't see.

It would depend on how the First Blood perks are working out. Anybody got any thoughts on those? OP...or fine as is? The bonuses are currently double damage for each perk taken, which stack, so they may be a little OP. I'm not even sure if there should be two versions of that perk. One might be enough.

I've never gotten the second version of first blood. Getting it once makes the mech feel really strong. I could see that if you got it again that it would just be an instant kill of most normal enemies if you have any damage boosts. It does fit the theme for the mech though. Maybe have the second one extend the window of double damage from one attack to 3 seconds so that it could a bit more useful on bosses.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 09, 2017, 04:45:47 PM
Wow, those stack the damage? Ouch. I only ever got one at a time. Could getting both give a second boosted strike instead? Otherwise one might really be enough.

They could but the one perk would have to replace the other, rather than stacking. I'm thinking of just removing the part 2, at the moment. (checks something) Oh, actually Part 2 isn't even on the perk list for the Penumbra at the moment, so I'll just leave it like that.

As for Decimating Power, I thought it was immune to damage modifications due to being a fixed %. Apparently not. Having it take 49% should prevent the room-wide instakill with one perk but I'm torn as to whether it's right or not to get rid of that specific combo. I don't think it works on bosses, so it's not a "I win" button per say. :-\

Not sure, either. Setting the power to 49% is the solution I would use, though, probably. I'll leave this one until we get more feedback perhaps.

-Penumbra & Roulette mechs: Missing their SprintWindSystem and initial missile refill. Refill doesn't affect Roulette with 5 missiles though.

Good spot, fixed!

-Healer enemy: Range too short to be effective. Also, suggestion: Remove huge wave visual effect, leaving only green/blue particles on allies getting healed to reduce visual clutter.

Hmm, I have actually buffed these slightly, but the buff is that the healing effect stays on the enemies for a bit longer rather than the range being boosted. Seems a shame to remove the particle, especially since it gives you a visual indicator of the range of the enemy. I'll probably leave this for the time being, since I've just introduced a new category for these type of buffer enemies. So, the rooms that you see them in now are going to be more tailored to the enemy, which might change how effective they are quite a bit. If there are still problems with them after the next build, then we can look into some more drastic changes.

-MediWell consumable: Hurts the Warhog instead of healing. Warhog reduces damage by 1, with a minimum of 1 damage taken, including -1 attacks used for healing purposes. I'm guessing the Hardening Module will have the same problem.

Good spot, I've redid how those wells work now. The energy well was also bugged actually, it was recharging energy no matter where you were standing.

-Alpha Ray weapon: Started leaving waves behind (like the Chromatic Array previously) after using range+ circuit. Same issue the Incineration Module used to have? -Bug report save included if needed.

Sort of fixed this. Boosting range in SR is a bit of a nightmare which causes screwy issues. It only really works on simple systems without bullet patterns, which is why I've tried to only allow the main weapons to get a range boost, but even then that makes things a bit restrictive on what main weapons you can create. We might just have to remove all the range boosters at some point, there's only 2 or 3 range boosting items in the game at the moment, and two of those are mysterious circuits, and that whole aspect needs a overhaul, anyway. In any case, the shots will just die on those weapons now without hanging around. You also can't boost them with range boosters, though.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge September 16, 2017, 12:35:54 PM
-Paladin mech: Lay on hands consumable, to make it reusable could you give one to the player when entering a new floor as a pickable on the ground?

-Out To Lunch perk: This one feels worth it now. Used it in quite a few runs lately for safety, even if it was at the price of XP/loot loss. It's nice to have an alternative to the on-hit perks of that level too.

-Phantom Blade & Ceremonial Blade: Problem with range+ circuit, same as Alpha Ray. (Starting to wonder if those range+ buffs are worth the trouble.)

-Eraser Blade: Can cancel bullets and destroy bombables? Seems unnecessarily OP. Bullet cancelling is already very powerful by itself.

-Blood Shard Refiner: Is it ever worth taking? 30 seconds seems so short, especially when permanent life leech upgrades are available (although at a lower magnitude).

-Effect floor panels: How are you supposed to know what they do before stepping on them (or even after in some cases)? Apart from using F3, I don't see how you could. I think there needs to be at least a way to tell which ones are good and which ones are bad just by looking at them. Icons on the panels themselves perhaps? A bit crude but effective.

-Getting gold floors but with regular enemies (and shopkeepers). Bug report save attached if needed.

-Since the expansion is getting close to its Beta, shouldn't there be an announcement on the Steam forums soon to keep players outside of the official forums in the loop? I wouldn't want the expansion to suffer a stealth release like the base game did.


That's all I got, unfortunately. I can't seem to do much in the way of gathering useful feedback on the current test version.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s September 16, 2017, 03:17:06 PM
-Effect floor panels: How are you supposed to know what they do before stepping on them (or even after in some cases)? Apart from using F3, I don't see how you could. I think there needs to be at least a way to tell which ones are good and which ones are bad just by looking at them. Icons on the panels themselves perhaps? A bit crude but effective.

There's supposed to be different art for all of them.
Problem is, I think we're missing at least two variants. And I don't think the animation/combinatorics are set up yet (custom code).
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 16, 2017, 08:39:16 PM
I can't fix anything at the moment, but I can respond to a few things.

-Paladin mech: Lay on hands consumable, to make it reusable could you give one to the player when entering a new floor as a pickable on the ground?

I had considered that, but I wasn't too happy with that solution. It seems a little on the janky side.

Out To Lunch perk: This one feels worth it now. Used it in quite a few runs lately for safety, even if it was at the price of XP/loot loss. It's nice to have an alternative to the on-hit perks of that level too.

Nice! Glad to hear that.

-Phantom Blade & Ceremonial Blade: Problem with range+ circuit, same as Alpha Ray. (Starting to wonder if those range+ buffs are worth the trouble.)

Yeah, they're probably not worth the trouble. I might just remove the few range boosting effects in the game. There are currently only 2 or 3-ish, I think.

-Eraser Blade: Can cancel bullets and destroy bombables? Seems unnecessarily OP. Bullet cancelling is already very powerful by itself.

I'll remove the destroying bombables effect, then. Sounds a bit too much, yeah.

Blood Shard Refiner: Is it ever worth taking? 30 seconds seems so short, especially when permanent life leech upgrades are available (although at a lower magnitude).

Yeah, I was going to have a bunch of effects like this, a set of different shards, but I can actually only do one replacement in the engine currently, so I've kind of gone off the idea for the most part.  I'll probably convert that to something that gives you +1 health with each shard collected (or something like that), which was an idea Misery had.

-Effect floor panels: How are you supposed to know what they do before stepping on them (or even after in some cases)? Apart from using F3, I don't see how you could. I think there needs to be at least a way to tell which ones are good and which ones are bad just by looking at them. Icons on the panels themselves perhaps? A bit crude but effective.

Yeah, these are completely borked at the moment. Sorry about that. I actually had to go into the engine code myself to start fixing those up -- desperate times call for desperate measures! -- and Goldenwolf is currently working on the aesthetics of those. So, they should be sorted soon...hopefully!

-Getting gold floors but with regular enemies (and shopkeepers). Bug report save attached if needed.

Unfortunately, I believe this is because you are using a save game. I probably forgot to mention this in the alpha notes, but if you save a game and reload, the enemy pool switches back to the base game enemies. A Keith style fix is necessary for this, so for the moment we'll just have to test without creating save games.

-Since the expansion is getting close to its Beta, shouldn't there be an announcement on the Steam forums soon to keep players outside of the official forums in the loop? I wouldn't want the expansion to suffer a stealth release like the base game did.

Probably, yeah. I can post something, but I don't think I can make an official announcement. I might just post something on there, or I'll write something up for Chris to turn into a proper announcement.

That's all I got, unfortunately. I can't seem to do much in the way of gathering useful feedback on the current test version.

Yeah, sorry about that. It was probably a bad call of mine to wait for Misery's update before pushing out a new build (I should have enquired with Misery on an updated time estimate or something), however, since a bunch of work is almost complete we might as well wait a little more before pushing the next one now...hopefully we won't have to wait too long. On my end, most of my work has been on SFX and those bug fixes, plus a few engine tweaks. There were a few things that weren't actually seeding too, I think. The Sentry and The Reanimator boss.  With a bit of luck we may even have the new tile aesthetics for the next build. Thanks for your patience.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 16, 2017, 08:47:28 PM
There's supposed to be different art for all of them.
Problem is, I think we're missing at least two variants. And I don't think the animation/combinatorics are set up yet (custom code).

We should be able to set up the aesthetics of those without needing any extra engine work from Keith or Chris, I did manage to tweak a few things myself, though...somehow! New art will be needed from Blue for a few of them, though, yeah. Speaking of which, one other task I've done is that I've written up the art request, for the most part, for Blue. So, progress is being made...we're slowly getting to the finish line. Phew!

Indeed, after Misery's next update, that's going to be the expansion pretty much complete aside from needing the new art and some engine work from Keith, plus a Beta period, of course. Oh, and a bunch more rooms, but that's it...I think!
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge September 16, 2017, 09:56:23 PM
Yeah, I was going to have a bunch of effects like this, a set of different shards, but I can actually only do one replacement in the engine currently, so I've kind of gone off the idea for the most part.  I'll probably convert that to something that gives you +1 health with each shard collected (or something like that), which was an idea Misery had.
Oh, like an alternative source of healing? That's pretty cool. I was gonna suggest that the shards could trigger a frenzy, but I think I like the healing option more. More of a game changer that way.

Unfortunately, I believe this is because you are using a save game. I probably forgot to mention this in the alpha notes, but if you save a game and reload, the enemy pool switches back to the base game enemies. A Keith style fix is necessary for this, so for the moment we'll just have to test without creating save games.
So that's what happened. Thanks for solving that mystery for me, I was really confused as to why it was doing that. :)

Indeed, after Misery's next update, that's going to be the expansion pretty much complete aside from needing the new art and some engine work from Keith, plus a Beta period, of course. Oh, and a bunch more rooms, but that's it...I think!
Talk about exciting! An entire expansion for SR. >D
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 17, 2017, 02:58:27 PM
Yeah, they're probably not worth the trouble. I might just remove the few range boosting effects in the game. There are currently only 2 or 3-ish, I think.

So, I removed the range boosting from the Railgun module and Destiny pickup -- and I think that's it unless I'm  missing something? (checks more) Of course, the mysterious circuits. I've just removed those two items. It's not a great loss, I don't think, given that the whole mysterious circuit stuff needs a big overhaul anyway. I think that's it now.

I'll remove the destroying bombables effect, then. Sounds a bit too much, yeah.

Sorted.

I'll probably convert that to something that gives you +1 health with each shard collected (or something like that), which was an idea Misery had.
I converted this item to a perk instead. It seemed more fitting there now that it wasn't a blood shard. I've added it to the Orbital perk tier. Extra Health Shard Refiner...I could do with a better name, though.

Talk about exciting! An entire expansion for SR. >D

Yep! Not too much more work to do now. Phew!
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge September 18, 2017, 06:38:54 PM
While experimenting with lower difficulties yesterday, I noticed a few things:

-Alpha mech: Using the wrong Keyprentice perk in its selection. (50% instead of +5 version)
Missing its healthgains multiplier for lower difficulties.
Starting HP at lower difficulties is weird. Instead of the standard double HP on easy and quadruple on very easy, it's double+1 and sextuple? Very weird.

-Paladin mech: Weird starting HP on lower difficulties for him too. Double+2 on easy and quadruple+6 on very easy.

-Penumbra mech: Multiplying max health (x3 on easy, x5 on very easy) on lower difficulties unlike all the other mechs. Changing it to adding max health instead would keep the mech more forgiving on lower difficulties without making the glass cannon aspect irrelevant after a single HP upgrade. I recommend keeping the same starting HP as now with +2 on easy and +4 on very easy.
Also missing its healthgains multiplier for lower difficulties.

-Trickshot (energy): Quite awesome when it works, but the shot tend to get cancelled too easily.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 18, 2017, 09:08:03 PM
-Alpha mech: Using the wrong Keyprentice perk in its selection. (50% instead of +5 version)

I've switched all the key perks to be of the + type rather than the % type for the latest build. The percentage ones weren't really working for me and I didn't want a mix of both, so all mechs should be using both versions now, so having the wrong one on there won't matter anymore...I think! Things should be good now, you can either get Keyprentice or Keymaster. +5 or +10 keys.

Missing its healthgains multiplier for lower difficulties.

Fixed, thanks.

Starting HP at lower difficulties is weird. Instead of the standard double HP on easy and quadruple on very easy, it's double+1 and sextuple? Very weird.

Yeah, I must've set those wrong...or something! Fixed. Oh, I've also removed any health decreases on Hard and Misery modes for mechs. I really don't think those are necessary. The extra difficulty is coming from a variety of other sources, the changes to HP don't really mean much, and they make things a bit inconsistent, like how many Sacrifice item rooms those mechs can grab. Seems like an overcomplication to me.

-Paladin mech: Weird starting HP on lower difficulties for him too. Double+2 on easy and quadruple+6 on very easy.

Also fixed! :)

Penumbra mech: Multiplying max health (x3 on easy, x5 on very easy) on lower difficulties unlike all the other mechs. Changing it to adding max health instead would keep the mech more forgiving on lower difficulties without making the glass cannon aspect irrelevant after a single HP upgrade. I recommend keeping the same starting HP as now with +2 on easy and +4 on very easy.
Also missing its healthgains multiplier for lower difficulties.

Switched to +2 and + 4 for the health. Fixed the HealthGain thing, too.

-Trickshot (energy): Quite awesome when it works, but the shot tend to get cancelled too easily.

Do you mean via other shots, or by walls? If walls, then the richochet code is inconsistent, which is unfortunately something we probably can't fix. I've tried tweaking the wall_collision_reduction and stuff to improve that as much as possible, but there's only so much that can be done.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge September 18, 2017, 10:01:55 PM
-Trickshot (energy): Quite awesome when it works, but the shot tend to get cancelled too easily.

Do you mean via other shots, or by walls? If walls, then the richochet code is inconsistent, which is unfortunately something we probably can't fix. I've tried tweaking the wall_collision_reduction and stuff to improve that as much as possible, but there's only so much that can be done.
I was afraid that might be the case. The shots tend to immediately go splat when thrown at certain angles against walls and it gets expensive really fast energy-wise. If only the shot could be made immune to cancelling until its time was up. But I don't think you can do that, right?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 19, 2017, 12:55:50 PM
-Trickshot (energy): Quite awesome when it works, but the shot tend to get cancelled too easily.

Do you mean via other shots, or by walls? If walls, then the richochet code is inconsistent, which is unfortunately something we probably can't fix. I've tried tweaking the wall_collision_reduction and stuff to improve that as much as possible, but there's only so much that can be done.
I was afraid that might be the case. The shots tend to immediately go splat when thrown at certain angles against walls and it gets expensive really fast energy-wise. If only the shot could be made immune to cancelling until its time was up. But I don't think you can do that, right?

Not that I can think of. Perhaps I can ask Keith about it, but I imagine that it's something that we're just not going to be able to fix. Would you still want the weapon in the game as it is, or should we perhaps think about removing the weapon?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: keith.lamothe September 19, 2017, 01:13:15 PM
If only the shot could be made immune to cancelling until its time was up. But I don't think you can do that, right?
Not that I can think of. Perhaps I can ask Keith about it, but I imagine that it's something that we're just not going to be able to fix.
The engine makes 100%-correct ricochet untenable. But are you asking that the "wall eats bullet" behavior be suppressed for those shots, or suppressed for them when they've been alive for less than X seconds, or something like that?

That would presumably be possible, though in those ricochet-fail cases it would probably just pass through the wall instead of being cancelled by it.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 19, 2017, 02:30:39 PM
If only the shot could be made immune to cancelling until its time was up. But I don't think you can do that, right?
Not that I can think of. Perhaps I can ask Keith about it, but I imagine that it's something that we're just not going to be able to fix.
The engine makes 100%-correct ricochet untenable. But are you asking that the "wall eats bullet" behavior be suppressed for those shots, or suppressed for them when they've been alive for less than X seconds, or something like that?

That would presumably be possible, though in those ricochet-fail cases it would probably just pass through the wall instead of being cancelled by it.

Yeah, I was thinking that perhaps the "wall eats bullet" behavior could perhaps be suppressed purely for that shot, but somehow retaining the collision detection logic so that ricochet would still work...somehow! It sounds like that's not really a possibility, though?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: keith.lamothe September 19, 2017, 02:48:15 PM
Yeah, I was thinking that perhaps the "wall eats bullet" behavior could perhaps be suppressed purely for that shot, but somehow retaining the collision detection logic so that ricochet would still work...somehow! It sounds like that's not really a possibility, though?
It's possible, but the consequence is that when the ricochet logic fails, the bullet goes through the wall or ricochets off at some strange angle.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 19, 2017, 02:53:08 PM
Yeah, I was thinking that perhaps the "wall eats bullet" behavior could perhaps be suppressed purely for that shot, but somehow retaining the collision detection logic so that ricochet would still work...somehow! It sounds like that's not really a possibility, though?
It's possible, but the consequence is that when the ricochet logic fails, the bullet goes through the wall or ricochets off at some strange angle.

Hmmm, that's probably not going to work then...drat! Hopefully the weapon is good enough as is, otherwise I'll probably just have to remove it.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge September 19, 2017, 04:48:56 PM
Hmmm, that's probably not going to work then...drat! Hopefully the weapon is good enough as is, otherwise I'll probably just have to remove it.
I'll do more testing to see just how failure-prone the ricochet really is. If it's not too bad, maybe changing the shots to be weaker lower cost attacks with a faster firerate could be enough, dividing the risk among more shots. Or including in the description that finding the right angle might be tricky, making it part of the concept to begin with (powerful but tricky). I have to say though, making a successful multi-bounce trickshot is super satisfying.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery September 20, 2017, 04:47:22 AM
Just a quick thing:  The update I was going to send out today will be tomorrow instead.  Everything is going along well enough, but I had a godawful allergy hell day yesterday.  Cant concentrate on much when that happens.  Anyone that's ever gone through that one probably knows exactly what I mean.  And heck if I even know what set it off.  All I ended up doing yesterday was making really awful attempts at Necrodancer over and over while trying not to go insane.

Anyway, the 8th boss is done finally. The one with the attack that was from another boss has had that changed (I really don't know how I managed to screw that one up and then not even notice it).  I have a couple of jumpscare enemies to finish here.  The misery mode stuff is separated and wont be in the update lest I break something since it's in an unfinished and jumbled state. 

And a couple of small tweaks here and there.  Plenty more tweaks will likely come later.  If any problems seem to exist with current enemies, by all means let us know. 

I'll likely add enemies at random intervals after that, and I need to make the alterations to create hard mode patterns for the new bosses (if anyone has any specific feedback on the difficulty of any of them in their current state, now's the time to point it out). Want to up the roster for the gold floors up a bit.  Things repeat a bit too much in there right now in my opinion.  Going to also start doing some rooms of my own, I never really got the chance to dive into that previously. 

On the note of rooms, if anyone wants to try their hand at making some and submitting them, by all means, go ahead.  We cant have too many rooms in a game like this.  Just be sure to test them fully before submitting.  As in, test them a whole bunch of times, not just once.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 26, 2017, 06:12:24 PM
Oh, if anybody has any good ideas, I have a half complete sacrifice item, Parasite Armour which leeches the player's health over time. What would make a good bonus for this item? Basic stuff like damage reduction and maybe damage boost? Or something more interesting? Just thought I'd see if anybody has any cool ideas.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge September 26, 2017, 06:20:22 PM
Oh, if anybody has any good ideas, I have a half complete sacrifice item, Parasite Armour which leeches the player's health over time. What would make a good bonus for this item? Basic stuff like damage reduction and maybe damage boost? Or something more interesting? Just thought I'd see if anybody has any cool ideas.
How about a powerful poison DoT effect? Mere damage boosts are pretty common, but DoT not so much. That'd give the hit & run tactic an interesting option I think.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery September 27, 2017, 07:18:20 AM
Oh, if anybody has any good ideas, I have a half complete sacrifice item, Parasite Armour which leeches the player's health over time. What would make a good bonus for this item? Basic stuff like damage reduction and maybe damage boost? Or something more interesting? Just thought I'd see if anybody has any cool ideas.

It'd have to be pretty strong if it's going to constantly drain the player's HP.

My first thought was "something to help speed up the run", because the speed would be warranted with this idea, but what would that be?  Just a damage boost is boring.  We've got enough of those.  An actual speedup is usually not a very good idea.

You could have it do something involving health draining of enemies, which'd make sense given the name.  You get a bit stronger somehow, and can heal by wrecking things, but you're constantly drained so you need to keep smashing to keep the health coming in.

I dunno, I'm not very good at item ideas.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 September 27, 2017, 01:32:59 PM
If it's called Parasite Armor then I guess it could reduce all incoming damage to 1?

You loose more than enough HP anyway with this item. Could also leech HP from kills like Misery suggested.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 28, 2017, 04:22:00 PM
For the Parasite Armor how about a combination everything, I'm thinking:

-1 health per 60 seconds
-1 to incoming damage (armor boost)
1 health restored per 5 kills
some poisonous DOT added to shots
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge September 28, 2017, 05:44:26 PM
-1 health per 60 seconds
Isn't that part basically a death sentence? With bosses and backtracking I think the player will be dead long before he reaches the end. It'll be game-changing for sure though, so it's definitely interesting, but I'm not sure the current numbers are survivable.

Regardless of the numbers, an important question is: Apart from the challenge aspect why would the player subject himself to the armor's effect and sacrifice max health for it too? The current bonuses don't look like enough of a reason to do it. If the draining effect is terrifying, I think the reward should be equally terrifying.

Offtopic, but that "-1HP every x seconds" effect would be a pretty good match for the Corrupting Power incredibility (crazy energy levels, but it's consuming you).
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 28, 2017, 06:33:01 PM
Isn't that part basically a death sentence? With bosses and backtracking I think the player will be dead long before he reaches the end. It'll be game-changing for sure though, so it's definitely interesting, but I'm not sure the current numbers are survivable.

I'm not actually able to test it for the moment, but you're not going to want to do much backtracking with this active, yeah. Bosses might be a problem, but we can probably balance that with the buffs you get. Bit of a tricksy item to get working correctly.

Regardless of the numbers, an important question is: Apart from the challenge aspect why would the player subject himself to the armor's effect and sacrifice max health for it too? The current bonuses don't look like enough of a reason to do it. If the draining effect is terrifying, I think the reward should be equally terrifying.

It'd pretty much be a speed runny style sacrifice item. A player like Windless Zephyr might grab something like this, but if you're more of safety first backtracker then you're not going to want to touch it. It seems like the reward needs to be even better then? Damage or fire rate boost is the most obvious boost, but also the most boring, I guess.

Offtopic, but that "-1HP every x seconds" effect would be a pretty good match for the Corrupting Power incredibility (crazy energy levels, but it's consuming you).

Yeah, sounds like a good match. What does Corrupting Power currently do? I can't recall. I never grab Incredibilities. An item that drains HP but regens energy would be perfect actually. It directly prevents the player from spending time hiding because if you waste time doing that you'll die. Maybe that should be the sacrifice item instead? Your health depletes but your energy regens, and forget the armor aspect of it.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge September 28, 2017, 08:10:48 PM
Yeah, sounds like a good match. What does Corrupting Power currently do? I can't recall. I never grab Incredibilities. An item that drains HP but regens energy would be perfect actually. It directly prevents the player from spending time hiding because if you waste time doing that you'll die. Maybe that should be the sacrifice item instead? Your health depletes but your energy regens, and forget the armor aspect of it.
Corrupting Power is very similar to Risky Assassin (with energy max/regen bonuses instead of attack power) and sets your max HP to 1 but I think you keep 1 shield. Kinda meh in my opinion. One thing to note: The energy regen of the incredibility is something like 50/sec and will probably need adjusting if the negative aspects are changed. It would be a shame to lose it as an incredibility as soon as it becomes more unique though.

I also think the Parasite Armor is worth having as a sac item. There's currently not enough defense-oriented sac items. Suggestion: Why not focus almost entirely on 1 bonus? The Armor part gives you a massive 50% damage reduction but the Parasite part is slowly consuming you. Simple and straightforward. Outside threats are significantly less dangerous, but your own pace becomes a threat. Also, life leech items/perks suddenly become very desirable. Having the armor already start with some life leech could be nice, but it would be like giving the problem and the solution to counter it at the same time. It might be more interesting if you have to seek out the solution. But depending on the intensity of the draining effect you're aiming for, the initial vampiric headstart might be necessary. As for my DoT, I don't think it fits anywhere in there and should just be ditched. How does that sound?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo September 29, 2017, 11:40:38 AM
I also think the Parasite Armor is worth having as a sac item. There's currently not enough defense-oriented sac items. Suggestion: Why not focus almost entirely on 1 bonus? The Armor part gives you a massive 50% damage reduction but the Parasite part is slowly consuming you. Simple and straightforward. Outside threats are significantly less dangerous, but your own pace becomes a threat. Also, life leech items/perks suddenly become very desirable. Having the armor already start with some life leech could be nice, but it would be like giving the problem and the solution to counter it at the same time. It might be more interesting if you have to seek out the solution. But depending on the intensity of the draining effect you're aiming for, the initial vampiric headstart might be necessary. As for my DoT, I don't think it fits anywhere in there and should just be ditched. How does that sound?

We could go pure defense, yeah, and see how that works out. Probably either a 50% reduction or have it reduce all damage you take to 1. We'll maybe try 50% first, then if it needs a further boost we can make it reduce damage to 1.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery September 30, 2017, 07:15:08 AM
OOOOOOOKAY so my update went in.

Ended up making more than intended.  Yay for random inspiration.   What originally was supposed to be a couple of Jumpscare enemies and a boss ended up being some Jumpscares, some Fearsomes, and 2 more bosses, Javelin and Pandemonium.    That last one is easily one of the stranger patterns I've done.  But I think Javelin is the harder of the two?  I'm not sure, Pandemonium's pattern is bizarre enough that it's hard to tell just how hard it is.  A hint for that one, don't try to be too aggressive.  Back off when the need arises, which it will.  You don't want to get caught up in the maelstrom.

Now I can finally go back to test runs of all the stuff.

Screw the stupid Javelin boss though, I must have gone through like 10000 revisions of it before it was ready to go. 
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 02, 2017, 03:50:00 PM
Now that the new testing build is out, can someone check out the DeathSentinel miniboss in the test rooms? I'm not sure whether that will make it as a miniboss. I think it's half complete, but I can't really contact Ptarth to check. If it plays pretty good as is, then I might add it as another miniboss.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 02, 2017, 05:10:05 PM
Now that the new testing build is out, can someone check out the DeathSentinel miniboss in the test rooms? I'm not sure whether that will make it as a miniboss. I think it's half complete, but I can't really contact Ptarth to check. If it plays pretty good as is, then I might add it as another miniboss.
"X1_Miniboss_DeathSphere_Sentinel" Is that the one?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 02, 2017, 05:16:51 PM
Now that the new testing build is out, can someone check out the DeathSentinel miniboss in the test rooms? I'm not sure whether that will make it as a miniboss. I think it's half complete, but I can't really contact Ptarth to check. If it plays pretty good as is, then I might add it as another miniboss.
"X1_Miniboss_DeathSphere_Sentinel" Is that the one?
Yeah, that should be it. The sphere boss without SFX.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 02, 2017, 05:33:37 PM
Yeah, that should be it. The sphere boss without SFX.
Alright then, opinion time:

After killing it a dozen times on two difficulties, I think the patterns are really cool and the whole thing should be converted into a boss. Current Normal version being one phase and the hard version being another phase. (Hard version isn't actually harder, just different) The patterns would need to be intensified for Hard and Misery difficulties, but otherwise I think it would make an awesome 3rd or maybe 4th floor boss once converted. I don't think a miniboss encounter would do it justice.

And I guess the amount of breakables in the room was a bit much, but that's neither here nor there.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 02, 2017, 08:40:52 PM
Yeah, that should be it. The sphere boss without SFX.
Alright then, opinion time:

After killing it a dozen times on two difficulties, I think the patterns are really cool and the whole thing should be converted into a boss. Current Normal version being one phase and the hard version being another phase. (Hard version isn't actually harder, just different) The patterns would need to be intensified for Hard and Misery difficulties, but otherwise I think it would make an awesome 3rd or maybe 4th floor boss once converted. I don't think a miniboss encounter would do it justice.

And I guess the amount of breakables in the room was a bit much, but that's neither here nor there.

Good feedback, thanks. If the Hard version is different enough it seems like it could work as a boss. I would have preferred it as a miniboss in terms of boosting that content, but if it seems to work better as a proper boss that's fine, too, although I was kind of seeing Sentinel and Sentry as miniboss brethren. I'll leave this for the time being while I finish up other stuff, and then take a look at a later date. Maybe in that time, Misery can check it out to see if it'd be suitable as a proper boss with the changes you recommend. Cheers!
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 03, 2017, 08:41:47 AM
Okay, I'm starting on test runs here.   Gonna type these out as I encounter them...

Firstly:  More new enemies soon.  STILL have missing categories here.  Ugh.  My own fault for not paying attention to how many enemies were already in ones I was adding to. 

The enemy Ryde causes a significant hit to performance.  Too many bullets in those lines it makes.


The Sentinel thing is absolutely overboard for a miniboss.  Finally someone other than me completely overdoes something to this degree :D    Indeed, make it into a floor 3-4 boss.   Also yes too many breakables in that room.  Perhaps also give the core more HP than it currently has.  Piercing attacks will just shred this thing in it's current state.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 05, 2017, 08:36:41 PM
Here's some feedback and suggestions before the weekend begins:

-Trickshot secondary: Tricky to use (pretty fitting considering the name), but worth having. Failure rate isn't too bad after all.

-Turrets: Sorry to insist on that one but a turret beeping when it's okay, is like a smoke detector beeping when there's nothing wrong. (3+ turrets at the same time gets very annoying) I would recommend making the turret's death sound more noticeable instead and getting rid of the beeping altogether and toning down the "taking damage" sounds so they don't cover the death sfx.

-2-Way Missile Module: I like the change of making them on-impact. They do destroy your scrap shields though. Is that intended?

-RPG secondary: Energy cost is a bit too cheap for such a badass weapon with bullet cancelling.

-Alpha Slugger (Shockgun?) secondary: Energy cost seems a bit low.

-Meteor Hammer Module: Awesome name. Magnetic Offense makes it a near-unlimited attack combo.


-Meteor Storm consumable: Instead of the usual chaotic storm, it only shoots a quick string of meteors in one direction and stops.

-Discount sac items: I willingly grabbed one in a Penumbra run, so definitely worth it now.

-Skeleton key: Can only use once on key blocks. After that the "1" key is spent and key blocks cannot be opened until another key is acquired. Other locks will still open normally though.


-Penumbra mech: With the cleaned up perk selection, this one feels great to play.

-Warhog mech: Is the starter shotgun a lot more sparkly and smokey than before?


-Eyelet Lair (challenge room): Center eyelet hard to hit with Roulette mech starting main weapon. I gave up after several minutes.

-Meridian & Rive bosses still share 2nd phase pattern.

-Pandemonium boss: If you ever wondered what Centrifuge would be like on a breezy day, now's your chance to find out! (Weird in a good way, fun to fight and not too tough on normal. Was a bit taken aback by the hitbox though)

-Burst guard enemy: The upgrade on those old enemies really surprised me, which is good.

-Charger enemy: Still think the tentacles length on those things and their turning speed especially is too much. The Charger challenge room reminded me how frustrating they are.


-SpecialFX panels: New appearances and sounds make it clear which is good or bad. Many thanks for that.

-Energy recharge panel visual/sound effect stayed forever on mech. -see attached bug report save-


-Missing health shards in rooms
CMP_regeneratingBlocks2x
CMP_Mines3x
X1_Craig_SecretStash
D18_Cake

-Missing travelporter in rooms
D18_WeaponsPipe
D18_Chalice

-X1_Craig_Treasury room: Could the cost and reward be toned down slightly to make it more accessible? (4 keys with less credits or 3 keys with less chests and credits?)

-D18_IsolatedWarp (Secret room): Cool concept, but requiring backtracking and only offering a single item choice is a bit harsh in my opinion. Would love to see the concept used in some regular rooms too, with hidden sections.

-MotherLode (Secret room): Didn't expect that. Really like it.

And done. I'm having even more fun than before with this build, so that's a good sign. :)
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 05, 2017, 08:53:52 PM
The enemy Ryde causes a significant hit to performance.  Too many bullets in those lines it makes.

I've made a couple of tweaks to that now. Should be a significant performance boost. Something like x4 ish.

The Sentinel thing is absolutely overboard for a miniboss.  Finally someone other than me completely overdoes something to this degree :D    Indeed, make it into a floor 3-4 boss.   Also yes too many breakables in that room.  Perhaps also give the core more HP than it currently has.  Piercing attacks will just shred this thing in it's current state.

Cool, I'll probably convert that to a boss then. Cheers!
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 05, 2017, 11:09:20 PM
-Charger enemy: Still think the tentacles length on those things and their turning speed especially is too much. The Charger challenge room reminded me how frustrating they are.

Would you believe that the key to dealing with them better is actually to get really close?  I suspect most wont actually try that, which is part of the point of their design, haha...

This though is why they're such an incredibly rare enemy.



Oh, and as for the bit about the Eyelet challenge room:  Yes, that one needs a change.  I went in there with that sniper weapon, and, well...... yeah it took quite some time.  I didn't exactly have much of an energy weapon to use instead.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 06, 2017, 09:43:33 AM
Would you believe that the key to dealing with them better is actually to get really close?  I suspect most wont actually try that, which is part of the point of their design, haha...

This though is why they're such an incredibly rare enemy.
Yeah, that's how I do the charger challenge. But even knowing that, here's how it went: I took one step toward it and bam, a tentacle appeared on me and insta-hit me, then I get very close and spinspinspin very fast until it dies. It works, but I'm thinking it doesn't have to be such a pain. And of course the insta-hit part always rubs me the wrong way.

While preserving the same concept, if the tentacles could appear in a fast gradual way when the charger awakens, I could dodge them. If the turning speed was less hectic, I could circle around the enemy at close range without having to spin-attack like I'm Sonic the hedgehog. :P
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s October 06, 2017, 03:17:05 PM
-Missing health shards in rooms
D18_Cake

-Missing travelporter in rooms
D18_WeaponsPipe
D18_Chalice

*Peek*
Cake is part of the "Secret Free Loot" rooms and the only room in that set that has health shards is IsolatedWarp (as a kind of immediate bonus where the free item  is more involved than usual), so I don see this as a problem.
Chalice - Fixed.
Bird - Also missing warp pad, fixed.
WeaponsPipe - Fixed.

-D18_IsolatedWarp (Secret room): Cool concept, but requiring backtracking and only offering a single item choice is a bit harsh in my opinion. Would love to see the concept used in some regular rooms too, with hidden sections.

It was an idea worth testing, glad you like it. Would you rather see two or three items instead?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 06, 2017, 05:02:14 PM
Cake is part of the "Secret Free Loot" rooms and the only room in that set that has health shards is IsolatedWarp (as a kind of immediate bonus where the free item  is more involved than usual), so I don see this as a problem.
My bad, I thought it was made standard to give each secret room a shard, so I just wrote down every one I saw without it.

It was an idea worth testing, glad you like it. Would you rather see two or three items instead?
As long as it's more than 1 item I think it's good. It's just more fun if you have to choose an item and sacrifice the other(s).
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s October 06, 2017, 08:36:59 PM
It was an idea worth testing, glad you like it. Would you rather see two or three items instead?
As long as it's more than 1 item I think it's good. It's just more fun if you have to choose an item and sacrifice the other(s).

Made it two, then.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Ventifer October 07, 2017, 11:31:28 PM
Did a couple of runs with the new build. Man I've gotten bad since I've started playing Gungeon again.

Love the new aesthetics of the floor panels. Had to a trial and error on what the panels do.

Circuit Rogue boss on third floor normal was a lot of fun.

I'll try to get some more runs in this week and get some more feedback.

Saw the steam notice for the expansion, awesome to see it out there.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 October 08, 2017, 01:01:46 AM
Okay, finally made my first run, sorry, didn't notice the personal message earlier.
I don't have much right now, I will go more into testing later.
Here are some notes I took.

Phantom frame is too good. Make it a Sacrifice item. Seriously, I got this on my first floor and the thing took me to all the sweet loot, that I would have to bomb my way through, for free. It makes a really good sacrifice item but add to the description that you can move through missile blocks too because that wasn't made clear.

RPG is way too overpowered, even with the delayed impact.

There was one enemy type who throws shurikens which also throw another bullets at you. The amount of ullets is in my opinion a little much.

There was a bug where I phased through the solid walls with the Phantom Frame. I moved through one of these giant blocks that split into multiple fragments, if you destroy them. When I walked through one of them, i suddenly phased through a solid wall. Happened only once and I couldn't reproduce it after that.

Boss "Circuit something" is just unfun. Not in a sense that he is too hard but simply because it is not fun to chase after a big ball that moves constantly through a labyrinth of traps and bullets and blockades. It's simply annyoing to chase him and then wlalk right into another dead end. The boss basically needs you to have a lot of missiles with you because you end too many times in a dead end made of bullets while chased by his invulnerable companion.
At least make the companion vulnerable. Also his body is WAY to big, if he comes right at you, there is no way to avoid contact, taking even more damage.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 08, 2017, 08:51:00 AM
Boss "Circuit something" is just unfun. Not in a sense that he is too hard but simply because it is not fun to chase after a big ball that moves constantly through a labyrinth of traps and bullets and blockades. It's simply annyoing to chase him and then wlalk right into another dead end. The boss basically needs you to have a lot of missiles with you because you end too many times in a dead end made of bullets while chased by his invulnerable companion.At least make the companion vulnerable. Also his body is WAY to big, if he comes right at you, there is no way to avoid contact, taking even more damage.


I'm not making any changes to this one for now.

The trick to him:  Don't chase him directly.  Not really meant to do that.  The fight isn't really about keeping up with the big guy (this is why he drops those big walls), it's about keeping a distance from the little guy.  Do what you can to stay far from that, and otherwise, let the big one come to you.  When you get an opportunity to strike, do so.  Dump all of your energy and such into it quickly.  And if you do move into the outer track for whatever reason, don't stay in it too long lest you get run over by the giant bowling ball of doom.

I find that the best way to deal big damage though is to get into his lane when he's starting to get near, and start running/sprinting away as he charges at you; stay near the inner walls so you can dive in before he gets you.  Of course, that's MY way of dealing damage.  The safe way is to strike from the inner section.

And don't waste missiles on what the big guy does (particularly the walls he drops, never use missiles on those, period).  Use those to escape the small one's beams if you screw up and get caught up in them.



What's this shuriken thing?  I'm not remembering that.

If you see it again, get a screenshot, if you can, and I'll have a look at it and see if it needs a change.  Do you recall what floor you encountered it on?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 08, 2017, 09:46:36 AM
What's this shuriken thing?  I'm not remembering that.

If you see it again, get a screenshot, if you can, and I'll have a look at it and see if it needs a change.  Do you recall what floor you encountered it on?
That's the Tide enemy. I think a big part of the problem is that the elite green version shows up very early (3rd floor maybe?) and is super tanky so you can't stop it fast enough to prevent its non-trivial waves of bullets.

Edit:
For Circuit Rondure, trying to chase him is like trying to stand your ground with the Labyrinth boss. Don't.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 October 08, 2017, 10:55:06 AM
Yeah, it was Tide. And yeah, he appeared early.

Circuit Rondure is still no fun in any way, even if you don't chase him. I try to grasp what could make him a fun boss but cannot see it.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 08, 2017, 01:32:40 PM
Yeah, it was Tide. And yeah, he appeared early.

Circuit Rondure is still no fun in any way, even if you don't chase him. I try to grasp what could make him a fun boss but cannot see it.

It's bloody impossible to make every single part of a given game fun for absolutely everyone.  Hell, just in this one page there's someone saying that the boss was fun, and another saying that it isn't.  No matter which game it is, everyone always has "that one boss" that will drive them up the wall, or that is just bloody irritating.  But others will often disagree and choose something else for that slot.  It's how it usually is. 

Now as for Tide, I had a look at which one it is.

Firstly:  This is a jumpscare enemy.  It wont go bonkers until you provoke it, so stay out of it's line of sight until you are ready.  This is also why it's so dangerous:  Jumpscares are specifically meant to be rather nasty foes, to encourage the player to be careful around them and only activate them when ready.

Now, that being said, there is a secret to dealing with this guy, and I know this will sound totally backwards, but... GET REALLY CLOSE TO IT.  No, seriously.  Do NOT keep a huge distance from it, get right up in it's face instead.  The shurikens are super easy to dodge by themselves.  But the real reason to get close to it is because it will mean that EVERY shuriken it fires will be at a high distance from it before it starts launching bullets at you.  With wave attacks (which those are), the further the wave travels, the more space there is between it's shots.  And these shurikens are very dangerous if you're too close to them when they're specifically firing.  So, the tactic is to not wake the thing until you're ready (if you can, that is), and when you are, charge straight at it before it can fully build up a set of flying shurikens.

And like with all Jumpscare enemies, saving your energy to use on it is recommended.  Don't be afraid to dump all of it into an enemy like this.


Now, all of THAT being said, I indeed might make a change so that it appears a floor or two later than it is.  I still have a lot of testing of my own to do here, so I'm reluctant to make any changes just yet, so don't expect something like that right away.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 08, 2017, 03:38:46 PM
Sorry about the delay.

-Trickshot secondary: Tricky to use (pretty fitting considering the name), but worth having. Failure rate isn't too bad after all.

Good to know, thanks.

-Turrets: Sorry to insist on that one but a turret beeping when it's okay, is like a smoke detector beeping when there's nothing wrong. (3+ turrets at the same time gets very annoying) I would recommend making the turret's death sound more noticeable instead and getting rid of the beeping altogether and toning down the "taking damage" sounds so they don't cover the death sfx.

Cool, no worries. If it's annoying, it's annoying and probably needs to be changed. Goldenwolf is going to be making some changes here. I think the main beeping will become barely audible, but the volume will increase when the sentry is on low HP.

-2-Way Missile Module: I like the change of making them on-impact. They do destroy your scrap shields though. Is that intended?

Not intended. Fixed!

-RPG secondary: Energy cost is a bit too cheap for such a badass weapon with bullet cancelling.

Upped the cost from 20 to 33.

-Alpha Slugger (Shockgun?) secondary: Energy cost seems a bit low.

Upped the cost from 7 to 10, we'll see how that works out.

-Meteor Hammer Module: Awesome name. Magnetic Offense makes it a near-unlimited attack combo.

Not sure what do to about that interaction, I'm kind of just hoping that it's one of those rare interactions that just clicks, and doesn't have to be nerfed. Or is it completely broken?

-Meteor Storm consumable: Instead of the usual chaotic storm, it only shoots a quick string of meteors in one direction and stops.

Oop, it seems that I broke that item. I've de-broken it now. :)

-Discount sac items: I willingly grabbed one in a Penumbra run, so definitely worth it now.

Good to know those are better now.

-Skeleton key: Can only use once on key blocks. After that the "1" key is spent and key blocks cannot be opened until another key is acquired. Other locks will still open normally though.

I had a quick look at the engine code for this, but seems more like a Keithy fix to me. I'll add it to the list.

-Penumbra mech: With the cleaned up perk selection, this one feels great to play.

-Warhog mech: Is the starter shotgun a lot more sparkly and smokey than before?

Good to know on the Penumbra. Most of the weapons have actually had extra particle work done by Goldenwolf, so a lot of them will look a little fancier.

-Eyelet Lair (challenge room): Center eyelet hard to hit with Roulette mech starting main weapon. I gave up after several minutes.

I've reduced the health of the center enemy to 10%, so you barely have to hit the enemy now to kill it. I'm presuming that you could actually hit the enemy. It's more a case now of just realizing how to target the enemy, and once you do that the enemy should be easy to defeat with only a few hits depending on the weapon you're using.

-Charger enemy: Still think the tentacles length on those things and their turning speed especially is too much. The Charger challenge room reminded me how frustrating they are.

For the record, I've pretty much gotten used to those enemies now myself. They fit into the "good" kind of annoying for me, although I'm also not too opposed to some slight tweaks, either.

-SpecialFX panels: New appearances and sounds make it clear which is good or bad. Many thanks for that.

Cool, another good to know thing.

-Energy recharge panel visual/sound effect stayed forever on mech. -see attached bug report save-

I think I have a fix in for this, but it's a bit tricky to test. In any case, I think this should be fixed. If not, it'll be back to the drawing board.

CMP_regeneratingBlocks2x
CMP_Mines3x
X1_Craig_SecretStash

Fixed, aside from Stash. I think the rewards in there are enough for that room.

-X1_Craig_Treasury room: Could the cost and reward be toned down slightly to make it more accessible? (4 keys with less credits or 3 keys with less chests and credits?)

I think this is probably alright as is, since it's a Treasury. We can do a similar room with less keys required and less reward as a variant, probably, though.

-MotherLode (Secret room): Didn't expect that. Really like it.

Cool, yeah, some secret rooms that offer something a bit different seems good to increase variety. If anybody has any other fresh ideas, that'd be cool.

And done. I'm having even more fun than before with this build, so that's a good sign. :)

That's definitely a good sign, yep. :)

Oh, and as for the bit about the Eyelet challenge room:  Yes, that one needs a change.  I went in there with that sniper weapon, and, well...... yeah it took quite some time.  I didn't exactly have much of an energy weapon to use instead.

Yeah, as mentioned above, I've now reduced the health of that enemy to 10%, so it's probably only going to take 1 or 2 shots to defeat it now. Should be a lot more manageable.

Love the new aesthetics of the floor panels. Had to a trial and error on what the panels do.

Cool, I'm glad that the feedback of those has been positive so far.

Saw the steam notice for the expansion, awesome to see it out there.

Yeah, we're trying to start getting some awareness of the expansion going now.

Phantom frame is too good. Make it a Sacrifice item. Seriously, I got this on my first floor and the thing took me to all the sweet loot, that I would have to bomb my way through, for free. It makes a really good sacrifice item but add to the description that you can move through missile blocks too because that wasn't made clear.

Not sure on this. Moving it to a sacrifice item seems like that would actually be buff. Modules are the kind of item that we can push pretty hard in terms of their power since you can only ever have one at a time, whereas with sacrifice items you can have as many as you want as long as you can afford the health cost. So, if you take Phantom Frame as a module, it's fun and cool, but you're probably trading a lot of DPS in order to bring it along. Phantom Frame as a sacrifice item seems even more of a no-brainer  than having it as a module to me.

RPG is way too overpowered, even with the delayed impact.
Yep, the energy cost on that has gone way up now.

There was a bug where I phased through the solid walls with the Phantom Frame. I moved through one of these giant blocks that split into multiple fragments, if you destroy them. When I walked through one of them, i suddenly phased through a solid wall. Happened only once and I couldn't reproduce it after that.

As long as you didn't get stuck as a result, this might be ok if it's super rare. The one bug I'm fearing is if someone gets stuck in a wall when using the Phantom Frame. If that happens I'll probably have to remove the item as I can't imagine being able to fix that.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. :)
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 October 08, 2017, 03:48:50 PM
Okay, good point on Phantom Frame, but at least make it a rarer item, let it seed on deeper floors. I got it on floor.
I woudl let it start at floor 3, that's not too late to profit from it but not too early to powerspike quickly.

Again, to Circuit Rondure, I made some somments how to improve him (like making the companion vulnerable since he blocks my shots all the time) or at least let my shot phase through him.
he simply blocks all my shots, I cannot even see how to defeat him that way unless I get lucky. The spread of the bullets is also very narrow, almost impossible to dodge unless you are very far away. Which is tricky in itself because you have almost no room to move around.

More room would be another good solution actually, everything is so narrow in this space because of the big boss himself, his just a little bit smaller companion and all the walls, blocked patchs and shooting patterns.
And not everyone has lightning quick reflexes to pass through these tiny gaps.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 08, 2017, 10:09:30 PM
Again, to Circuit Rondure, I made some somments how to improve him (like making the companion vulnerable since he blocks my shots all the time) or at least let my shot phase through him.
he simply blocks all my shots, I cannot even see how to defeat him that way unless I get lucky. The spread of the bullets is also very narrow, almost impossible to dodge unless you are very far away. Which is tricky in itself because you have almost no room to move around.

More room would be another good solution actually, everything is so narrow in this space because of the big boss himself, his just a little bit smaller companion and all the walls, blocked patchs and shooting patterns.
And not everyone has lightning quick reflexes to pass through these tiny gaps.
That's so strange. Narrow space, blocking companion and tiny gaps sounds like the exact opposite of Circuit Rondure. It might simply be a Wallmaster situation where different players get a vastly different experience from the same boss, but please take a look at this quick video (https://youtu.be/UnYqatqGFag) and let me know if the boss patterns are any different from what you faced or if my method is weird.

Edit:
Concerning the Phantom Frame: The discussion seems to be about making it a module or a sac item. Here's a thought: Why not both? The Dead Eye Module already does that so it wouldn't be a problem.

Also, thanks for the detailed reply Pepisolo. Always appreciated.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 08, 2017, 11:45:10 PM
It might simply be a Wallmaster situation where different players get a vastly different experience from the same boss

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.  This is why balancing these blasted things is such a massive pain.  One player will have no trouble and find it so easy and another will get totally shredded, yet they might be very close to each other in skill, so that just makes it more confusing.

The video there shows what I think is a good approach to it.   However there will always be an element of luck in a fight like this, in this case the way the boss moves.  If it's giving you lots of opportunities to safely back away from it while firing, the fight will be easier, but sometimes the RNG is going to be a snot and it'll constantly be forcing you to navigate through swarms/walls of bullets just for the chance at hitting the thing.  However, this approach doesn't stop being a good one in that case.  Still works, just means more danger, so it's good to keep at it even if the thing's movements are being frustrating.

But the important thing is that when you get a chance to get close and deal some damage, really throw everything you've got at it.  This boss doesn't have as much health as many of the others due to it's quirky nature, so it cant take a focused assault very well.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 October 09, 2017, 01:38:50 AM
For soem reason, the companion does not follow you very far in that video. it seems it got stuck on wall in an attempt to follow you. Because of that, it was way easier then my attempt. the thing was always right at my ass which turned the whole thing to a nightmare. if you are far away from the pattern, its easy to dodge, I noticed this as well, but from the front its a nightmare.
Also, I had a closecombat weapon, this might be also one of the issues. i don't know the name, it was the one whcih descriptions states "Brawlhalla".
Also, for some reason your mech can keep up with the boss. Did you turn on sprint? because on normal movement my mech was slower and I had Zephyr.

Edit: I just had the most weird bug encounter. This never happened before and I don't see what woudl have caused this.
I played Alpha Mech, I fiught the Reaper Miniboss, I got hit by the Scythe, suddenly the mech moves very sluggish and I couldn't spritn anymore. needless to say I died shortly afterwards. I would have shrugged this off if this wouldn't persist to the next run I played. Okay, maybe I use another mech insetad. Nope, same problem, suddenly the mech moves awefully slow. Only restarting the game entirely fixed it.
I don't know what exactly caused this but I had the Meteor Hammer Module and a perk that gives me more attack speed for fice seconds after killing an enemy. Also, Spread Shot as main weapon.

While we're at Spread Shot, I guess this is a tribute to the classic shmup weapon? But don't have these weapons normally 3 shots? I guess five in this case because balancing reasons.

Does the Improved Warheads perk also affect missile modules?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 09, 2017, 02:56:41 AM
For soem reason, the companion does not follow you very far in that video. it seems it got stuck on wall in an attempt to follow you. Because of that, it was way easier then my attempt. the thing was always right at my ass which turned the whole thing to a nightmare. if you are far away from the pattern, its easy to dodge, I noticed this as well, but from the front its a nightmare.
Also, I had a closecombat weapon, this might be also one of the issues. i don't know the name, it was the one whcih descriptions states "Brawlhalla".
Also, for some reason your mech can keep up with the boss. Did you turn on sprint? because on normal movement my mech was slower and I had Zephyr.

Edit: I just had the most weird bug encounter. This never happened before and I don't see what woudl have caused this.
I played Alpha Mech, I fiught the Reaper Miniboss, I got hit by the Scythe, suddenly the mech moves very sluggish and I couldn't spritn anymore. needless to say I died shortly afterwards. I would have shrugged this off if this wouldn't persist to the next run I played. Okay, maybe I use another mech insetad. Nope, same problem, suddenly the mech moves awefully slow. Only restarting the game entirely fixed it.
I don't know what exactly caused this but I had the Meteor Hammer Module and a perk that gives me more attack speed for fice seconds after killing an enemy. Also, Spread Shot as main weapon.

While we're at Spread Shot, I guess this is a tribute to the classic shmup weapon? But don't have these weapons normally 3 shots? I guess five in this case because balancing reasons.

Does the Improved Warheads perk also affect missile modules?

Enemies meant to chase you can get randomly caught on things, yeah.  There's never really been a way to not have that happen.  Well, unless I had the thing simply phase through the walls, but I decided against that.  But yeah, the game's pathfinding AI has issues at times. I strongly suspect that somehow the hitbox sizes matter when it comes to this.  I remember when I was adjusting it and testing, for some specific settings it would be mostly okay, but others it'd hit a wall and get utterly stuck every time.  The way it is currently is the best I can do... at it's core it's an engine issue, so not something I can fix.

And don't be afraid to sprint in a fight like that if you see the need.  But no he wasn't sprinting the majority of the time in that video.  The only way he would have been going too slow would have been to hold down the slow-movement button.  So I'm not too sure what's up with that.  But I might run a few tests on my end now that it's on my mind.


Now as for the spread shot, eh, it could be any number of bullets, but yeah that sort of thing is a classic shmup weapon indeed.  3, 5, or 7 shots seems to be the most common numbers at least among games that I'm familiar with. 
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 09, 2017, 09:35:56 AM
For soem reason, the companion does not follow you very far in that video. it seems it got stuck on wall in an attempt to follow you. Because of that, it was way easier then my attempt. the thing was always right at my ass which turned the whole thing to a nightmare. if you are far away from the pattern, its easy to dodge, I noticed this as well, but from the front its a nightmare.
Also, I had a closecombat weapon, this might be also one of the issues. i don't know the name, it was the one whcih descriptions states "Brawlhalla".
Also, for some reason your mech can keep up with the boss. Did you turn on sprint? because on normal movement my mech was slower and I had Zephyr.
The companion was chasing me relentlessly until it got stuck (right in front of my escape route) 10 seconds before the main boss died. The thing that made it easier for me was that the main boss didn't do as much back and forth movements, so I was able to quickly moonwalk my way to victory. But the method would have remained unchanged even if the length of the fight was extended. As for sprinting, I mainly used it when I was positioning myself to cut off the boss at the pass.

The Brawlhalla weapon must have been the Splattershot shotgun. To be honest, I would have preferred using that instead of the basic minigun. The fight would have been even quicker. But I would still recommend you try the boss in the test room with the White Gloss, without any possible speed debuff and see how that goes. At this point, I think it's just a difference in the approach though.

And I'm gonna go test Alpha against Reaper to see what's going on there.

Edit:
-Meteor Hammer Module: Awesome name. Magnetic Offense makes it a near-unlimited attack combo.

Not sure what do to about that interaction, I'm kind of just hoping that it's one of those rare interactions that just clicks, and doesn't have to be nerfed. Or is it completely broken?
Forgot to respond to this part. It is very broken. The thing clings to the enemy until it dies and then jump on a nearby target if available and cling to her until she dies, etc etc. Sometimes it will detach from the target early, but even a slow firerate will allow you to keep on shooting death constantly. It was so broken, I just abandoned my run as everything was now pointless.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 09, 2017, 01:26:01 PM
Concerning the Phantom Frame: The discussion seems to be about making it a module or a sac item. Here's a thought: Why not both? The Dead Eye Module already does that so it wouldn't be a problem.

Good point, I hadn't considered that for some reason....doh! That's certainly an option, but for the moment I'm not quite convinced enough that it's overpowered compared to some of the DPS boosting modules. Is it so much of a no-brainer to take Phantom Frame over the Homing Missile Module or Meteor Hammer, for example? Phantom Frame gives a really nice utility ability for sure, but the others give extra DPS, which is always going to be pretty big. There is one other slight problem in that the Sacrifice Room already has an item that kind of does what Phantom Frame does, in Necro Mech, so there is some overlap there. So, yeah, I'm not quite convinced enough to make it a sacrifice item...yet! :)

Also, thanks for the detailed reply Pepisolo. Always appreciated.

No worries, thanks for the feedback.

Edit: I just had the most weird bug encounter. This never happened before and I don't see what woudl have caused this.
I played Alpha Mech, I fiught the Reaper Miniboss, I got hit by the Scythe, suddenly the mech moves very sluggish and I couldn't spritn anymore. needless to say I died shortly afterwards. I would have shrugged this off if this wouldn't persist to the next run I played. Okay, maybe I use another mech insetad. Nope, same problem, suddenly the mech moves awefully slow. Only restarting the game entirely fixed it.
I don't know what exactly caused this but I had the Meteor Hammer Module and a perk that gives me more attack speed for fice seconds after killing an enemy. Also, Spread Shot as main weapon.

I've no idea about that one. That sounds pretty crazy! The Reaper Scythe doesn't affect mech movement so I can't imagine how that would have caused it. Yeah, I'm at a bit of a loss on that one. I guess we'll just have to keep an eye out for issues like that. Hopefully it was just some freak occurrence.

Does the Improved Warheads perk also affect missile modules?

It doesn't ...but it could, I suppose. I'm just not sure on whether that is a behaviour we want or not, though.

Enemies meant to chase you can get randomly caught on things, yeah.  There's never really been a way to not have that happen.  Well, unless I had the thing simply phase through the walls, but I decided against that.  But yeah, the game's pathfinding AI has issues at times. I strongly suspect that somehow the hitbox sizes matter when it comes to this.  I remember when I was adjusting it and testing, for some specific settings it would be mostly okay, but others it'd hit a wall and get utterly stuck every time.  The way it is currently is the best I can do... at it's core it's an engine issue, so not something I can fix.

Yep, that's pretty much just an engine thing that we can't really do much about. It's something to do with the engine not taking into account the size of an enemy's wall collision box when pathfinding. The hack I currently have is that I set a really high wall_collision_reduction. The problem with that is that it also affects the enemy's touching collision box, so I also have a fake touch collision system set up to cover that up. Which works somewhat, but enemies can still occasionally get stuck, unfortunately, so the whole thing is a bit ...bleh!

Forgot to respond to this part. It is very broken. The thing clings to the enemy until it dies and then jump on a nearby target if available and cling to her until she dies, etc etc. Sometimes it will detach from the target early, but even a slow firerate will allow you to keep on shooting death constantly. It was so broken, I just abandoned my run as everything was now pointless.

Hmmm, this is a bit of a problem. The root is kind of that magnetic offense just really does some quite screwy things -- I'm surprised that we haven't encountered more problems, actually. With hindsight the game would kind of be better off without that item, I think, but it's probably too late for that now. I have one solution to this problem, which will nerf and slightly break the Meteor Hammer Module, but I can't really think of another solution. (investigates for a bit) OK, so that's actually a pretty nice synergy, or it would be if it wasn't so OP. Fortunately, I managed to find an easy solution. I fixed it so that the Meteor Hammer beam can only latch onto an enemy for a couple of seconds rather than latch on for ages, so the shots can't stack together now. That was an easier and nicer fix than I thought. Yay!

Oh, one word on that Death Sentinel Miniboss/Boss. I looked at the Hard pattern and I'm not sure if will hold up as a second phase pattern without a bunch of work. It seems too similar as is to me. Given that some of the current minibosses are a bit crazy I think it could still work as a miniboss, too, but I'm not sure. I think we might have to put that to the bottom of the priority list, so it might not even make it into the expansion. I consider the expansion as kind of in content lockdown aside from rooms and maybe a few more enemies to round out certain categories, and I'm trying to be disciplined by focusing on the polish work now, rather than adding more content. That is, unless there's a bunch of feedback saying that the expansion is too light on content in certain areas, of course. Just a general question, how is the expansion looking in terms of content at the moment? Here is the current list as a reminder:

* A New Golden Floor (a new level design added for this expansion)
* 100+ New Rooms
* 3 New Mechs, The Zephyr, The Paladin, and the Warhog
* 80+ New Items
* 30+ New Unique Enemies
* 6 New Minibosses
* 8 New Bosses
* 10+ Challenge Rooms (a new style of room)
* 8 New Tile Types
* 4 New Tracks composed by Pablo Vega, and The Overthinkers

I know it depends on the price, but that has yet to be determined. Very roughly, it's probably going to be around half the cost of the game, or something like that. Maybe slightly more maybe slightly less, I'm really not sure. It should be in line with the cost of previous Arcen expansions, though.

: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: TheVampire100 October 09, 2017, 02:10:45 PM
Is it so much of a no-brainer to take Phantom Frame over the Homing Missile Module or Meteor Hammer, for example
For me it is. I would take Phantom Frame over anything, the ability to move through missile blocks and other stuff is way too good. Not for health shards but missile blockades will block also the entry point to loot like chests, key cards and credits. Never having to worry about this seems to be way too good, not even the Meteor Hammer, who can fire through solid walls, can compete against this. Maybe it's just my opinion though?

It doesn't ...but it could, I suppose. I'm just not sure on whether that is a behaviour we want or not, though.
I would like this because missile damage is so unappealing to me right now (like, I never use my missiles as damage source or let's say, rarely enough to benefit from this). Affecting missile modules too would maybe convince me to grab that perk. Maybe you can make it, that it affects missile modules less? So only 30% damage boost on them?

: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 09, 2017, 08:59:13 PM
For me it is. I would take Phantom Frame over anything, the ability to move through missile blocks and other stuff is way too good

I hadn't spoken up on this yet, but I'll put it this way:  something like this is the sort of thing that I have, in the past, locked up in the game's secret rooms.  Like that constant blade thing that made a win of any run it was in.

It reminds me of the Ring of Phasing from Crypt of the Necrodancer:  An item that was so absurdly overpowered, that even those devs realized it had no conceivable fix, and the game's expansion outright REMOVED it.  An item like this isn't just good at getting you more items.... it's good at EVERYTHING.  I guarantee you, players will also be using this one to cheese things to death in combat, too.  I can think of multiple ways to do that.

Honestly, this one is too much.  We already had an item that allowed the player to simply crash through shootable walls, but that one made more sense: Those were walls that your peashooter could pop anyway, and it destroyed them along the way.   Being able to go through anything else is so much harder to justify.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 09, 2017, 09:15:55 PM
I hadn't spoken up on this yet, but I'll put it this way:  something like this is the sort of thing that I have, in the past, locked up in the game's secret rooms.  Like that constant blade thing that made a win of any run it was in.
So the question is, would limiting Phantom Frame to secret rooms or only floor 4+ loot be enough? The secret rooms can always benefit from some extra loot variety.

Edit: But I have to admit I already started cheesing fights with it, so I think you have a point there.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s October 09, 2017, 09:35:18 PM
Would there be the ability to make it only function after a room clear?
Would that be a big enough nerf?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 09, 2017, 10:10:04 PM
I hadn't spoken up on this yet, but I'll put it this way:  something like this is the sort of thing that I have, in the past, locked up in the game's secret rooms.  Like that constant blade thing that made a win of any run it was in.

It reminds me of the Ring of Phasing from Crypt of the Necrodancer:  An item that was so absurdly overpowered, that even those devs realized it had no conceivable fix, and the game's expansion outright REMOVED it.  An item like this isn't just good at getting you more items.... it's good at EVERYTHING.  I guarantee you, players will also be using this one to cheese things to death in combat, too.  I can think of multiple ways to do that.

I don't think it's nearly as bad as the Blade Module, but it's likely you'd probably agree with me on that since the Blade Module is pretty ridiculous with its shot destruction.  The cheese factor is something I've taken into account, it's actually supposed to allow some situations of cheesiness like that. Some controlled cheese can be fun...that's a bit of a weird sentence, heh. Granted, it's a bit of a dangerous game allowing any form of cheesiness, though. The one major negative of the Phantom Frame is that it doesn't really directly give much of a boost on most bosses at all, since most boss rooms have very little cover. It is supposed to allow you to hide in shootables during regular rooms, and it is even supposed to allow you to hide behind bombables on occasion. On bosses, I believe that the only really cheesable one is Invader, for the rest you'd be pretty much better off with any other module.

Honestly, this one is too much.  We already had an item that allowed the player to simply crash through shootable walls, but that one made more sense: Those were walls that your peashooter could pop anyway, and it destroyed them along the way.   Being able to go through anything else is so much harder to justify.

I don't mind moving the item to a Sacrifice Room or even a Secret Room if that's necessary. I did test the item a lot a while back (I was actually thinking of making a Phantom Mech at one point) and the cheesiness seemed to be controlled enough to be allowable (and enjoyable to me) given that it's probably the worst module you can take for fighting bosses (except Invader). So, yeah. Not sure. Sounds like a move to either the Sacrifice Room or the Secret Room is probably likely, though.

Would there be the ability to make it only function after a room clear?
Would that be a big enough nerf?

Not sure, possibly, although the ability to move freely through certain obstacles and even allow certain amounts of cheesiness is part of the charm of the item for me. " Think you've got me cornered, Charger... think again...phases through some shootables...see ya!"
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 09, 2017, 11:29:27 PM
Just a general question, how is the expansion looking in terms of content at the moment? Here is the current list as a reminder:

* A New Golden Floor (a new level design added for this expansion)
* 100+ New Rooms
* 3 New Mechs, The Zephyr, The Paladin, and the Warhog
* 80+ New Items
* 30+ New Unique Enemies
* 6 New Minibosses
* 8 New Bosses
* 10+ Challenge Rooms (a new style of room)
* 8 New Tile Types
* 4 New Tracks composed by Pablo Vega, and The Overthinkers
From a player's perspective, the number of new rooms could really use a boost (I'll try to help with that) and if the number of new bosses was something like 10-12 it would be a major boon. (I know, easier said than done.) The 30+ new enemies sounds amazing but I think you're underselling the new golden floors. It's not a mere single floor you'll find at the end of a road, it's 7 new golden variants of the floors you can discover with their own enemies, bosses and treasures. It's awesome! Also, with the 8 new Tile types, the description make it sounds like they're just tileset additions, but they bring both beneficial and dangerous effects with them. I think it's important to mention it. And I just remembered you said no description feedback for now... Did that include the expansion store description? Oups. :P


Missile boosts affecting missile modules:
That's a slippery slope that brings many questions. If they do affect them, does the Explodifier sac item affect them too? Do the modules get the full bonus? Will missile-based secondaries (mostly Torpedo Cannon) be affected too? Etc.

Opinion time: It smells like a can of worm and I think you should limit the effect to weapons in the launcher slot to preserve your own sanity in the future. Grabbing a few missile-based perks in a run can quickly turn you into a boss killer that can blast through all patterns and shields, so I'm not sure they really need the buff even if specializing in them could be viewed as a bit of a niche.

And finally, I... forgot what I was gonna say. I should probably sleep, so good night everyone.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s October 09, 2017, 11:38:11 PM
s/Tile Types/Room hazards
s/Golden Floor/Golden floor theme with unique treasures
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 10, 2017, 04:09:13 AM

From a player's perspective, the number of new rooms could really use a boost (I'll try to help with that) and if the number of new bosses was something like 10-12 it would be a major boon. (I know, easier said than done.) The 30+ new enemies sounds amazing but I think you're underselling the new golden floors. It's not a mere single floor you'll find at the end of a road, it's 7 new golden variants of the floors you can discover with their own enemies, bosses and treasures. It's awesome! Also, with the 8 new Tile types, the description make it sounds like they're just tileset additions, but they bring both beneficial and dangerous effects with them. I think it's important to mention it. And I just remembered you said no description feedback for now... Did that include the expansion store description? Oups. :P


Missile boosts affecting missile modules:
That's a slippery slope that brings many questions. If they do affect them, does the Explodifier sac item affect them too? Do the modules get the full bonus? Will missile-based secondaries (mostly Torpedo Cannon) be affected too? Etc.

Opinion time: It smells like a can of worm and I think you should limit the effect to weapons in the launcher slot to preserve your own sanity in the future. Grabbing a few missile-based perks in a run can quickly turn you into a boss killer that can blast through all patterns and shields, so I'm not sure they really need the buff even if specializing in them could be viewed as a bit of a niche.

And finally, I... forgot what I was gonna say. I should probably sleep, so good night everyone.

I can add a few more bosses to it, why not.

I've had some random inspiration for some today anyway... may as well make something out of it.

Gonna finish adding a few more enemies to categories that didn't get any attention first though.

On a side note, anyone want to try their hand at making a sniper-type enemy?  Would like to get another one in there but I blanked out for ideas.  I've found it to be kinda a hard category to design for.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 10, 2017, 04:10:41 AM
I hadn't spoken up on this yet, but I'll put it this way:  something like this is the sort of thing that I have, in the past, locked up in the game's secret rooms.  Like that constant blade thing that made a win of any run it was in.

It reminds me of the Ring of Phasing from Crypt of the Necrodancer:  An item that was so absurdly overpowered, that even those devs realized it had no conceivable fix, and the game's expansion outright REMOVED it.  An item like this isn't just good at getting you more items.... it's good at EVERYTHING.  I guarantee you, players will also be using this one to cheese things to death in combat, too.  I can think of multiple ways to do that.

I don't think it's nearly as bad as the Blade Module, but it's likely you'd probably agree with me on that since the Blade Module is pretty ridiculous with its shot destruction.  The cheese factor is something I've taken into account, it's actually supposed to allow some situations of cheesiness like that. Some controlled cheese can be fun...that's a bit of a weird sentence, heh. Granted, it's a bit of a dangerous game allowing any form of cheesiness, though. The one major negative of the Phantom Frame is that it doesn't really directly give much of a boost on most bosses at all, since most boss rooms have very little cover. It is supposed to allow you to hide in shootables during regular rooms, and it is even supposed to allow you to hide behind bombables on occasion. On bosses, I believe that the only really cheesable one is Invader, for the rest you'd be pretty much better off with any other module.

Honestly, this one is too much.  We already had an item that allowed the player to simply crash through shootable walls, but that one made more sense: Those were walls that your peashooter could pop anyway, and it destroyed them along the way.   Being able to go through anything else is so much harder to justify.

I don't mind moving the item to a Sacrifice Room or even a Secret Room if that's necessary. I did test the item a lot a while back (I was actually thinking of making a Phantom Mech at one point) and the cheesiness seemed to be controlled enough to be allowable (and enjoyable to me) given that it's probably the worst module you can take for fighting bosses (except Invader). So, yeah. Not sure. Sounds like a move to either the Sacrifice Room or the Secret Room is probably likely, though.

Would there be the ability to make it only function after a room clear?
Would that be a big enough nerf?

Not sure, possibly, although the ability to move freely through certain obstacles and even allow certain amounts of cheesiness is part of the charm of the item for me. " Think you've got me cornered, Charger... think again...phases through some shootables...see ya!"

Yeah, I remember the blade module, that was one of the ones I complained about a lot and then stuck in the secret room.  I'd say moving this one into there as well is a good idea. 
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Misery October 10, 2017, 08:03:32 AM
Okay so I did a complete run just now, playing as White Gloss.

Firstly, I actually had Terminus bug out all over the place.  Something knocked it forward one phase while it's shield was fully up.   There were still two minions out.   I had these main items at the time:

Electro blaster

relentless crossbow

shockwave launcher

As well as some sort of funky bot that shoves things around.   I also need to make it's spawn bullets indestructible, I forget how to do that.  I could have sworn I already did it though. 

Basic enemies could honestly do with more HP in the late game (at least on the golden floors).  My base damage wasn't THAT bloody high.... Terminus took quite a bunch of hits to bring down, so I wasn't in rampage mode... but still, many things later on die pretty fast.  I have a few enemy tweaks to make

The crossbow might be a bit much.  The bolts stay out too long.  Otherwise it's a fun one.  Electro blaster is awesome, toxic gas gun is also awesome.  The enemy that slashes at you, that needs a change.  I honestly have no idea how to deal with it.  But not just that, I find it really hard to even see it.  I often don't realize it's there until I've been hit by it.

Anyone have any opinions on the game's overall difficulty as of the current build?  I'm not the best one to judge it here.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 10, 2017, 03:34:58 PM
From a player's perspective, the number of new rooms could really use a boost (I'll try to help with that) and if the number of new bosses was something like 10-12 it would be a major boon. (I know, easier said than done.) The 30+ new enemies sounds amazing but I think you're underselling the new golden floors. It's not a mere single floor you'll find at the end of a road, it's 7 new golden variants of the floors you can discover with their own enemies, bosses and treasures. It's awesome! Also, with the 8 new Tile types, the description make it sounds like they're just tileset additions, but they bring both beneficial and dangerous effects with them. I think it's important to mention it. And I just remembered you said no description feedback for now... Did that include the expansion store description? Oups. :P

Maybe we can push to 10 bosses, and by we I mainly just mean Misery, heh, but I'd rather keep that a low priority thing. If we get more bosses then great, if not, then there's still a good amount there. The main priorities for Misery currently should probably be room design, enemies, and continued polish work, of course. Thanks for offering to help out on the room front, much appreciated. Yeah, it kind of is 7 new floors, but also it's kind of not because of the overlap, so I'm not sure, but we could big that up a bit more. Yeah, we've definitely undersold the tiles there, though. We could add more information to that. It's just the item descriptions that need to be looked at. Any help we can get on store descriptions and stuff is great.

Missile boosts affecting missile modules:
That's a slippery slope that brings many questions. If they do affect them, does the Explodifier sac item affect them too? Do the modules get the full bonus? Will missile-based secondaries (mostly Torpedo Cannon) be affected too? Etc.

Opinion time: It smells like a can of worm and I think you should limit the effect to weapons in the launcher slot to preserve your own sanity in the future. Grabbing a few missile-based perks in a run can quickly turn you into a boss killer that can blast through all patterns and shields, so I'm not sure they really need the buff even if specializing in them could be viewed as a bit of a niche.

Yeah, that's probably a can of worms that it'd be unwise to open at this stage.

s/Tile Types/Room hazards
s/Golden Floor/Golden floor theme with unique treasures

Something like that, yeah.

Yeah, I remember the blade module, that was one of the ones I complained about a lot and then stuck in the secret room.  I'd say moving this one into there as well is a good idea. 

I'm not really seeing the level of OP-ness that the item needs to be locked away in the Secret Room myself. But if there is a consensus that that needs to be done, that's fine. I'll wait on a bit more feedback before making the changes at the moment, though. It might only go to the Sacrifice Room, I'm not sure.

I can add a few more bosses to it, why not.

The crossbow might be a bit much.  The bolts stay out too long.  Otherwise it's a fun one.  Electro blaster is awesome, toxic gas gun is also awesome.  The enemy that slashes at you, that needs a change.  I honestly have no idea how to deal with it.  But not just that, I find it really hard to even see it.  I often don't realize it's there until I've been hit by it.

The crossbow has recently had a nerf, I think, so I'm reluctant to make another nerf so soon, but reducing how long the bolts stay out is easy enough if necessary. Any more thoughts on the Shinobi enemy, everyone? That's another thing that has only recently just had some significant nerfs put in. It might just be the late game variants that are too much as the early game ones I haven't really been struggling with. Bear in mind that I like to try and preserve the good kind of annoying in enemies, which is why I'm cautious with nerfs.

I've had some random inspiration for some today anyway... may as well make something out of it.

Yeah, but don't push too hard on the boss front, we already have 9, if you want to do one more then great. Of course, if you want to do a bunch more I'm not going to stop you, of course, but I think your priorities should more be on room design, maybe one last small batch of enemies, and then polish work.

On a side note, anyone want to try their hand at making a sniper-type enemy?  Would like to get another one in there but I blanked out for ideas.  I've found it to be kinda a hard category to design for.

Goldenwolf might take a crack at that, if not I can probably think of one or two.

Firstly, I actually had Terminus bug out all over the place.  Something knocked it forward one phase while it's shield was fully up.   There were still two minions out.   I had these main items at the time:

Electro blaster

relentless crossbow

shockwave launcher

As well as some sort of funky bot that shoves things around.   I also need to make it's spawn bullets indestructible, I forget how to do that.  I could have sworn I already did it though. 

I'll probably try taking on Terminus with that setup to see if I can spot the bug. Sounds like a bit of a strange one, though.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 10, 2017, 05:43:06 PM
Any more thoughts on the Shinobi enemy, everyone?
Funnily enough, I had a note about them in my next feedback batch:
"Side-stepping Shinobi enemy: Now that they are less crazy, I love them. It's a fun enemy that I kinda want as a familiar now."
I'll keep an eye out for them in term of dodgeability (is that a real word?) and visibility. I only noticed they weren't death magnets anymore and their funny movement pattern.

Phantom Frame: I think it would be fine as a floor 4+ item. It's not as OP as the likes of the Blade Module or the Time Machine after all. But it's a bit too cheesy for the first few floors in my opinion.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Draco18s October 10, 2017, 07:48:56 PM
On a side note, anyone want to try their hand at making a sniper-type enemy?  Would like to get another one in there but I blanked out for ideas.  I've found it to be kinda a hard category to design for.

You know that over-the-wall grenade launcher we have?
Take that effect and merge it with the mortar turret we added to Last Federation.
If the grenade (gets bigger, then smaller again) bullet itself could be made to not hurt/connect with the player/shrubbery that'd be extra good.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 10, 2017, 08:03:29 PM
Funnily enough, I had a note about them in my next feedback batch:
"Side-stepping Shinobi enemy: Now that they are less crazy, I love them. It's a fun enemy that I kinda want as a familiar now."
I'll keep an eye out for them in term of dodgeability (is that a real word?) and visibility. I only noticed they weren't death magnets anymore and their funny movement pattern.

Cool, good to know that last nerf seemed to work.

You know that over-the-wall grenade launcher we have?
Take that effect and merge it with the mortar turret we added to Last Federation.
If the grenade (gets bigger, then smaller again) bullet itself could be made to not hurt/connect with the player/shrubbery that'd be extra good.

Could work, aye, although I'm not familiar with the mortar from TLF.

Oh, one more note on Bosses, we're running desperately low on new unique boss art. I think we have one more that is currently unused. All the rest are just hue changes of other bosses. So far, most of the bosses have unique boss art aside from perhaps a couple. I don't think we want to start making a habit of adding many more hue changed ones, especially for an expansion, as that looks a bit cheap. For future extra bosses maybe. I'd say 1 more extra boss for the expansion at the most.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 10, 2017, 08:43:23 PM
Funnily enough, I had a note about them in my next feedback batch:
"Side-stepping Shinobi enemy: Now that they are less crazy, I love them. It's a fun enemy that I kinda want as a familiar now."
I'll keep an eye out for them in term of dodgeability (is that a real word?) and visibility. I only noticed they weren't death magnets anymore and their funny movement pattern.

Cool, good to know that last nerf seemed to work.
Yeah, about that...
While testing my room of the day, I noticed the Black Shinobi's forward lunge sometimes goes hyper and makes him leap about 4-5 tiles (maybe more) in one go. It's a bit excessive and very hard to dodge, not to mention it got him stuck in a wall at one point.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 11, 2017, 06:13:25 PM
Yeah, about that...
While testing my room of the day, I noticed the Black Shinobi's forward lunge sometimes goes hyper and makes him leap about 4-5 tiles (maybe more) in one go. It's a bit excessive and very hard to dodge, not to mention it got him stuck in a wall at one point.

Cool, I thought the later variants might still be a little over the top. I've reduced the craziness of the lunge a bit now. Thanks!
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 14, 2017, 07:12:15 PM
Since I'll be mostly focusing on making rooms for a while, I thought I should post the expansion-specific lines I still had in my notes.

-Sentry Deathsphere Miniboss: Needs much more HP. Lasted mere seconds against a build that wasn't focused on damage. Too many glass breakables.

-Pinwheel enemy: Add visual cue before laser beam.

-Reanimator boss: Very unique boss, I like it a lot, but the few times when the boss goes transparent and rapidly flies around, I don't think it should do contact damage. And once the boss is dead, is it really necessary to make the player do the minions cleanup job?

Questions:
-If you use the time machine consumable, can you change a normal floor into a golden one and vice versa?

-Is it just me or does the sound overload where the game goes silent happens pretty often now?

-Is this the correct current boss distribution for the expansion? (Just making sure before I go into details)

Floor 1: Meridian, Rive
Floor 2: Circuit Rondure, Meridian, Rive
Floor 3: Circuit Rondure, Pandemonium
Floor 4: Circuit Rondure, Pandemonium, Reanimator*
Floor 5: Warden
Floor 6: Recast, Nova, Carrion Engine, Javelin*, Pandemonium, Reanimator*
Floor 7: Terminus

The rest of the feedback and suggestions were mostly about the base game, so I skipped those for now.

Edit:
-Proteus enemy: After being damaged, sometimes doesn't disappear (shrink?) and run around in a panic for a while. I don't think the panic part is supposed to be seen.

Edit2:
-Multitude enemy: Showed up on a non-golden floor 2. That was weird.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 15, 2017, 01:22:11 PM
-Sentry Deathsphere Miniboss: Needs much more HP. Lasted mere seconds against a build that wasn't focused on damage. Too many glass breakables.

I've more than doubled the HP on that, thanks. Hopefully that does the trick. I also reduced the amount of glass breakables in the room.

Pinwheel enemy: Add visual cue before laser beam.

I've added one using cue_non_sim_patterns, which I should probably use more. The one flaw is that rarely, if you are on the edge of the enemy's range, the visual cue will appear but if you quickly push out of the enemy range then that attack gets stored up as a kind of surprise attack. It's kind of half bug, half feature. I'm not quite sure on that behaviour. If I can find a solution I will probably use it, but then again, maybe having a rare almost surprise attack works.

-Reanimator boss: Very unique boss, I like it a lot, but the few times when the boss goes transparent and rapidly flies around, I don't think it should do contact damage. And once the boss is dead, is it really necessary to make the player do the minions cleanup job?

That's Ptarth work...hence the unique craziness, heh. For the contact damage, it's actually super tricky to have enemies with contact boxes that change size, or switch off and on since there's no Hitbox or Collision box modifier. I have set up things like this for the Proteus (Evaporater) enemy, but it involves creating fake contact damage systems and stuff and can get complicated. In this case, I'm not sure it's worth it to go that route. For the moment, I've reduced the size of the contact box on that phase significantly -- it was a bit big actually -- so that it is more comparable to the size of the trail that is being left behind. Given that the trail is there, having a bit of a contact box seems fine to me since you could just get damaged by the trail anyway. The other option is to remove the contact damage for that phase entirely, including when the enemy lands and stops doing its crazy flying behaviour.

As for the minion cleanup, there was a cleanup system in place, but it wasn't doing the job due to the multiple phases of the zombies. I had noticed this before, but I was thinking that if the Reanimator was the last floor boss it wouldn't matter since the game would end anyway; however, it is better to just address this so I've put in different cleanup system that seems to do the job. I'm not sure which floor the Reanimator is meant to spawn at.

-If you use the time machine consumable, can you change a normal floor into a golden one and vice versa?

I just tested this and yep, you can go from normal to gold and vice versa.

-Is it just me or does the sound overload where the game goes silent happens pretty often now?

That is mostly down to one specific enemy, the Wave Blaster, causing problems. I'm hoping for an engine tweak to help with this issue. Specifically, a version of min_ms_between_shot_fired_sounds for use with sounds_to_pick_from_when_action_starts. Additionally, the audio engine might also be getting an upgrade based on the new AI War sound system. Hopefully!

-Proteus enemy: After being damaged, sometimes doesn't disappear (shrink?) and run around in a panic for a while. I don't think the panic part is supposed to be seen.

Yeah, the amount of little problems I've had with this enemy has been crazy. I've fixed most of them, but there's always something else. I'm kind of hoping that this behaviour is so rare that it is acceptable, and it just seems like an enemy quirk. If not, I can try to fix it, but I may just have to remove the enemy if that's not possible.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 16, 2017, 09:20:31 PM
On a side note, anyone want to try their hand at making a sniper-type enemy?  Would like to get another one in there but I blanked out for ideas.  I've found it to be kinda a hard category to design for.

I've just done another sniper enemy, for the most part. Just needs a bit more testing and variants. If you blank out on any other enemy categories, just tell me and I'll see what I can do. Generally, I'm not looking at creating any more enemies, though. Oh, on that note, we'll forget about spawnee enemies. We need to half overhaul the whole spawner/spawnee gameplay at some stage, I think. We should just not be creating spawner rooms for the expansion, I think. We can take a look at the whole spawner situation at a later date.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 21, 2017, 01:14:50 PM
A few miscellaneous questions.

1) One thing I've noticed is that all the new mechs have exactly 100 energy which seems a bit boring. Any thoughts on tweaks for these numbers for each mech, to vary things up a bit.

2) Is it universally understood what a Gunge Gun is? Or is gunge more of a british term? Should that be renamed to Slime Pump?

3) This is for Logo and perhaps Keith if he's reading, but I've noticed that the Roulette has a problem. Due to the perks for that mech being completely randomized, each level the number of perks that the engine has to choose from is large which seems to be causing performance problems. For Keith, I wonder is there a way to improve the performance of that? For Logo, if not, then how are we going to fix that? The only non-engine solution I can see is perhaps removing all variant perks. So, by having only the medium health boost rather than small, medium, and large. This should reduce the amount of perks significantly, hopefully to a level which the engine doesn't struggle with. That's not ideal as I like the completely random approach with full perk lists, myself, though.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: keith.lamothe October 21, 2017, 01:37:15 PM
Due to the perks for that mech being completely randomized, each level the number of perks that the engine has to choose from is large which seems to be causing performance problems.
You mean it's slow right when the player gains enough xp for the level up? As in, in that moment? Or is it at the moment that the player opens the level-up screen? Or is ongoing from one point to another? Or what?
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 21, 2017, 01:46:09 PM
Due to the perks for that mech being completely randomized, each level the number of perks that the engine has to choose from is large which seems to be causing performance problems.
You mean it's slow right when the player gains enough xp for the level up? As in, in that moment? Or is it at the moment that the player opens the level-up screen? Or is ongoing from one point to another? Or what?

The moment when you open the level-up screen. As soon as you open it up, moving the cursor around becomes laggy and stuttery and stays that way as long as the level up screen is open. I'm assuming that has something to do with the quantity of perks that are being processed as the performance hit only occurs with the Roulette mech.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 21, 2017, 02:50:49 PM
The moment when you open the level-up screen. As soon as you open it up, moving the cursor around becomes laggy and stuttery and stays that way as long as the level up screen is open. I'm assuming that has something to do with the quantity of perks that are being processed as the performance hit only occurs with the Roulette mech.
I never noticed before, but there is definitely a significant fps hit while on the levelup screen for Roulette. For me it's about a 10fps loss, but it varies quite a bit. "Unstable prototype" was more fitting than I intended...

I took a little bit to think about it: Although I'm still pissed I never even noticed this problem all this time and it's certainly not ideal in principle, isn't it the most harmless performance problem possible? Considering it's limited to an out-of-combat only screen, while the game is reduced to clicking one of three big buttons, the gameplay impact of that issue is pretty close to non-existent. On the other hand, using your solution as an example (which is also the only one I could think of), diminishing the number of perks with variants would greatly reduce the probability of getting HP/Energy/Missiles at levelup and cause the increased probability of getting the other perks. I can guarantee the gameplay impact of that would be an overall more miserable experience for the player.

Of course, I'm looking at the problem from a strictly gameplay perspective while trying to protect the core of my mech, which might not be the proper way to do this. sigh
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 21, 2017, 03:28:25 PM
I never noticed before, but there is definitely a significant fps hit while on the levelup screen for Roulette. For me it's about a 10fps loss, but it varies quite a bit. "Unstable prototype" was more fitting than I intended...

Is mouse movement still smooth for you? For me things become super laggy, making perk selection a bit awkward.

I took a little bit to think about it: Although I'm still pissed I never even noticed this problem all this time and it's certainly not ideal in principle, isn't it the most harmless performance problem possible? Considering it's limited to an out-of-combat only screen, while the game is reduced to clicking one of three big buttons, the gameplay impact of that issue is pretty close to non-existent. On the other hand, using your solution as an example (which is also the only one I could think of), diminishing the number of perks with variants would greatly reduce the probability of getting HP/Energy/Missiles at levelup and cause the increased probability of getting the other perks. I can guarantee the gameplay impact of that would be an overall more miserable experience for the player.

It is quite harmless but also very noticeable for me.  However, maybe that's just a quirk of my pc setup. If so, then maybe we can get away with the performance hit. More feedback from more users on how noticeable the issue is would be useful.

Of course, I'm looking at the problem from a strictly gameplay perspective while trying to protect the core of my mech, which might not be the proper way to do this. sigh

Yeah, I'm thinking that reducing the amount of variants should be a last resort type solution.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 21, 2017, 03:43:25 PM
Is mouse movement still smooth for you? For me things become super laggy, making perk selection a bit awkward.
It's still smooth for me, not perfectly so, but if you haven't mentioned it I doubt I would have noticed. I ended up using Fraps to be sure.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 21, 2017, 04:02:43 PM
Is mouse movement still smooth for you? For me things become super laggy, making perk selection a bit awkward.
It's still smooth for me, not perfectly so, but if you haven't mentioned it I doubt I would have noticed. I ended up using Fraps to be sure.

Hmmm, interesting. Then maybe it's not quite as severe a problem as I thought. For me it's very very noticeable. Maybe it's something that we just need to keep an eye on then.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 21, 2017, 04:52:57 PM
1) One thing I've noticed is that all the new mechs have exactly 100 energy which seems a bit boring. Any thoughts on tweaks for these numbers for each mech, to vary things up a bit.
Here's my take on it:

In its current form, Roulette could start with less energy. Anything between 60 and 90 would be fine. Levelups are generous enough to compensate anyway.
Zephyr already has a strong start, so a slightly lower starting energy reserve shouldn't cause problem. 80 maybe?
For the Warhog, I think 50 and 100 would be the only values that wouldn't feel weird due to its secondary.
The Paladin's shield eats away energy so fast, I'm not sure it should have less than the standard value.
And finally, Penumbra kinda needs its full offensive potential to counter-balance the super harsh start (defense-wise).
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 22, 2017, 11:29:20 AM
1) One thing I've noticed is that all the new mechs have exactly 100 energy which seems a bit boring. Any thoughts on tweaks for these numbers for each mech, to vary things up a bit.
Here's my take on it:

In its current form, Roulette could start with less energy. Anything between 60 and 90 would be fine. Levelups are generous enough to compensate anyway.
Zephyr already has a strong start, so a slightly lower starting energy reserve shouldn't cause problem. 80 maybe?
For the Warhog, I think 50 and 100 would be the only values that wouldn't feel weird due to its secondary.
The Paladin's shield eats away energy so fast, I'm not sure it should have less than the standard value.
And finally, Penumbra kinda needs its full offensive potential to counter-balance the super harsh start (defense-wise).

Sounds good. Adjusted the Roulette to 60 and the Zephyr to 80. The others I've left at 100. We could boost the Penumbra to 120 or something, though, I guess. I'm also considering whether having the Zephyr's energy capacity also drain over time might work.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 22, 2017, 09:53:19 PM
Hmmm, interesting. Then maybe it's not quite as severe a problem as I thought. For me it's very very noticeable. Maybe it's something that we just need to keep an eye on then.
It just occurred to me that I could check back on Ethervil's LP with Roulette for that levelup issue. Luckily he records at 60fps and has the habit of circling the perks as he chooses. No visible lag or stutter for him. His game seems to be smoother than mine actually. It's a good sign, but I'll be more reassured once I hear about the performances of a few more players.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 24, 2017, 11:40:00 AM
Hmmm, interesting. Then maybe it's not quite as severe a problem as I thought. For me it's very very noticeable. Maybe it's something that we just need to keep an eye on then.
It just occurred to me that I could check back on Ethervil's LP with Roulette for that levelup issue. Luckily he records at 60fps and has the habit of circling the perks as he chooses. No visible lag or stutter for him. His game seems to be smoother than mine actually. It's a good sign, but I'll be more reassured once I hear about the performances of a few more players.

Yeah, we'll see if we get any reports back on this during the Beta. Hopefully not, and it's mostly just a problem with my current setup.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 25, 2017, 06:21:14 PM
2 quick things that stick out lately:

-Popcorn enemies giving no XP. That doesn't feel right. They're not infinitely spawning fodder, but you still have to kill a few dozen of them from time to time and now you get nothing for it. That's kinda frustrating. Maybe they should give less XP than other regular enemies, but I still think they're enough of a threat to be worth a reward.

-Spike Switch not working after victory. Is there a way that those could still be used after you won the room? It's a bit inconvenient to be stuck with lots of spikes because you were too efficient in your extermination.

And that's it.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Pepisolo October 29, 2017, 09:04:03 PM
Sorry for the delay. I have to edit the trailer so I haven't been looking at feedback much lately. It might take me a week or so before I properly get back to the bugfixing and stuff.

-Popcorn enemies giving no XP. That doesn't feel right. They're not infinitely spawning fodder, but you still have to kill a few dozen of them from time to time and now you get nothing for it. That's kinda frustrating. Maybe they should give less XP than other regular enemies, but I still think they're enough of a threat to be worth a reward.

Yeah, a small amount of XP seems better to me.

-Spike Switch not working after victory. Is there a way that those could still be used after you won the room? It's a bit inconvenient to be stuck with lots of spikes because you were too efficient in your extermination.

I think we might need a Keith fix for that. Something like is_not_disabled_on_room_clear for systems perhaps. I'll add it to the "small batch of engine tweaks for Keith" list.
: Re: Augmented Alpha feedback
: Logorouge October 29, 2017, 09:44:34 PM
Sorry for the delay. I have to edit the trailer so I haven't been looking at feedback much lately. It might take me a week or so before I properly get back to the bugfixing and stuff.
Thanks for the reply. Family matters kept me busy lately, but hopefully I'll have plenty more feedback (and rooms) for you once you get back.