Author Topic: Appreciation  (Read 6825 times)

Offline yuastnav

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Appreciation
« on: September 29, 2011, 07:52:24 am »
I just wanted to thank you for such a great game!
When I first heard of it I really got excited. People were putting it down for its graphics but I didn't care! I liked the style.
I must say I got a bit wary when you decided to change it from an isometric view to a side-scroller (although I love top-down and side-scroller shooters) and I still have those "what-if" moments concerning the isometric view. It's a bit irritating that you have to go through all the areas on the dungeon map to reach a specific spot. Wouldn't it be possible to be able to select from the region map to which area you want to go once you explored all of them and killed any potential bosses or don't you want to implement that because of a gameplay reason?
Well anyway, such a fantastic game! Really good work! It got even better when I discovered the strategic map yesterday!
I also love the fact that it lets you jump after you started falling. I honestly cannot remember the last game that let me do it (I'm pretty sure there was one but it was just so long ago...).

Another thing is: In the first build I played enemies weren't able to hurt me whenever I tried to get into a cave that had yet to be generated. It takes a few seconds to generate the cave and in that time enemies could attack you; with one of the newer updates they are actually able to hurt you. Was that intentional?

A weird bug also is that sometimes when I try to jump to the side the characters only makes a small jump. I cannot reproduce this because it doesn't always happen but if I'm standing still and press the jump button and either A or D to jump to the side WHILE holding the jump button to jump farther the character only makes a small jump.

[edit]
When I change the resolution my field of view is diminished. I like playing games in windowed mode but a smaller field of view is not something I'd trade it in for. Would it be possible to scale everything down instead of cutting off the borders of the window?
« Last Edit: September 29, 2011, 07:55:29 am by yuastnav »

Offline lifenoodles

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2011, 08:30:30 am »
If you've already explored an area you don't need to walk there in the 2d view again. Just press , or . (I forget which) to open the dungeon map in the bottom right and click on the area you want to go to. If it's been visited and you have a warp scroll in your inventory you'll teleport there. This also lets you go between dungeons and screens, everywhere in the 2d view for that map tile basically.

Offline yuastnav

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #2 on: September 29, 2011, 09:53:57 am »
Indeed but the problem with that is that it wastes warp scrolls and I don't have that many so far or rather the dust needed to make these is pretty rare (at least for me, I probably need to explore more).

Offline zebramatt

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #3 on: September 29, 2011, 10:17:40 am »
I'd quite like to get one or two more free warp scrolls from the Hearth. Two is the bare minimum for any endeavour, but a couple more help extend one's adventure into the field without having to go back home or backtrack through larger buildings and such.

Offline Nalgas

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #4 on: September 29, 2011, 01:06:49 pm »
A weird bug also is that sometimes when I try to jump to the side the characters only makes a small jump. I cannot reproduce this because it doesn't always happen but if I'm standing still and press the jump button and either A or D to jump to the side WHILE holding the jump button to jump farther the character only makes a small jump.

You can intentionally do short jumps by holding whatever key is bound to "down" while jumping (S by default), but I was also intermittently having it do that to me unintentionally without pushing S now and then even back early in the alpha.  I never did figure out a way to reliably reproduce it, so that's kind of annoying if it's still happening and no one else has been able to, either.

Offline rjblackwolf

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2011, 01:10:09 pm »
Just bought the game after a few days trying the demo / beta.
After all the boring same all games from the big game companies coming out, its good to see lots fresh idea`s from  Indie games coming out these days.  :)
I am happy there is even an easy setting in the game for hard working "noobs" like me, not having the time to spend to much time each day into the game.  ;)
(I only like harder settings in games like Elder Scrolls or Baldurs Gate)

 I hope for you the game gets as popular as minecraft is today.   :D

Offline x4000

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #6 on: September 29, 2011, 01:12:41 pm »
Cheers, and thanks for the kind words!

A few notes:

1. In the latest builds, there's no way enemies should be able to hit you while you're making transitions.  I'm not sure what the version you were seeing this on was, but if it's 0.507 then please let us know with a mantis report.

2. In terms of the resolution affecting the size of your viewport: yes, that's all the resolution affects, and there's not much we can do about that.  There's a mantis topic on it with more details if you like.

3. I think that perhaps having the guardians refresh you to 4 warp scrolls instead of 2 would be a nice convenience, I'll add that.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline tigersfan

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #7 on: September 29, 2011, 01:18:03 pm »
A weird bug also is that sometimes when I try to jump to the side the characters only makes a small jump. I cannot reproduce this because it doesn't always happen but if I'm standing still and press the jump button and either A or D to jump to the side WHILE holding the jump button to jump farther the character only makes a small jump.

You can intentionally do short jumps by holding whatever key is bound to "down" while jumping (S by default), but I was also intermittently having it do that to me unintentionally without pushing S now and then even back early in the alpha.  I never did figure out a way to reliably reproduce it, so that's kind of annoying if it's still happening and no one else has been able to, either.

The unintentional short jumps should be fixed now. If you guys are still seeing this on the latest version (.507 or later), please let us know.

Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #8 on: September 29, 2011, 01:40:21 pm »
3. I think that perhaps having the guardians refresh you to 4 warp scrolls instead of 2 would be a nice convenience, I'll add that.

At the risk of shooting myself in the foot, I wonder how good an idea this is. I'll start out by saying that I don't really like the current implementation. It basically leads to a binary choice. Either craft none, or craft all. Either you can have infinite warp scrolls with the limitation that you can only ever teleport in and out of a location exactly once on each trip, and rely on always going back to the guardian for your freebies, or you can craft your own scrolls and teleport around as you wish, but with the understanding that you'll never ever get any for free, and have to rely on dust to keep up your freewheeling, teleport happy lifestyle.

Changing it to 4 will probably give the end result of people never crafting any, since 4 is just about enough for most trips with some to spare for more convenient teleports, like getting out from the end of a long surface area, as opposed to 'necessary' teleports, like finding yourself 6 sub-levels down in a cavern network. So when you weigh the options, this puts the weight on the never-craft part of the binary choice.

I'm not entirely sure what the best solution is. Perhaps a return spell with a long (30 minutes or an hour) cooldown which takes you back to your 'home' guardian stone immediately. That would at least give more options for future tweaks. Right now the scrolls are filling the role of making it easy to get around while also filling the more crucial role of being the only way to realistically pull yourself out of a really deep exploration situation.

Any one else feeling this, or am I just inventing my own problems to complain about? (entirely possible)

Offline Nalgas

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #9 on: September 29, 2011, 01:49:20 pm »
I kind of have mixed feelings.  It does make crafting your own less appealing, I guess, but I sort of resent having to craft my own in the first place.  The only reason I would ever craft my own is because I can't use a single scroll to teleport in/out of a cave multiple levels deep, because it's separated into multiple levels for the sake of the dungeon map not being 150k pixels tall and so it has clear delineations for where the enemies become tougher.

That's great and everything, but it makes me cranky when I can't just click once and use a single scroll to warp right back to the lowest point I've been to before and pick up where I left off now that I'm a higher level, instead of having to use 85 of them and a bunch of fiddly manual transitions each time, or a bunch of walking.  Other than that, I don't usually have much motivation for using more than two warp scrolls in one trip, and I almost never have a good enough reason to use more than four and waste dust on making them if getting four at a time were the new "free".

Offline zebramatt

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #10 on: September 29, 2011, 01:50:25 pm »
What else can you use the dust for?

Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #11 on: September 29, 2011, 01:54:08 pm »
What else can you use the dust for?

I like to snort it before making bug reports.

Offline Nalgas

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #12 on: September 29, 2011, 01:55:21 pm »
What else can you use the dust for?

I'm sure it'll be good for something eventually, and then I'll regret wasting it on something free.  Or at least once it's good for something else, other people will be grateful that we sat around talking about how to make warp scrolls balanced so they don't regret it in the future.  Heh.

Offline zebramatt

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #13 on: September 29, 2011, 02:00:37 pm »
True enough, though I imagine I'll start a new world once we hit v1.0 - try the whole thing from the top.

Until then, the choice isn't actually binary at all. There's no point not using your dust to make warp scrolls and warp around all over the shop, because it's not useful for anything else. And there's no point not warping about willy-nilly because you'll always get a few more warp scrolls when you're done, even if you don't find any more dust. After a while of only having two (or a far more convenient three or four) then you'll begin to miss your warp-happy heyday. Until you find some more dust then it's warps away!

Fun times!

Offline Terraziel

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Re: Appreciation
« Reply #14 on: September 29, 2011, 02:03:34 pm »
3. I think that perhaps having the guardians refresh you to 4 warp scrolls instead of 2 would be a nice convenience, I'll add that.
.....
Any one else feeling this, or am I just inventing my own problems to complain about? (entirely possible)

Don't worry I was going to make post similar comments, it seems obvious to me as well that upping the number of free warp scrolls would make crafting them entirely pointless. two free warp scrolls is essentially a particularly overpowered town portal scroll (at least in my hands), which is entirely sensible and removes tedium, any extra is getting in to the realms of laziness, if you wish to warp around on a whim there has to be some effort involved (ie crafting)


I kind of have mixed feelings.  It does make crafting your own less appealing, I guess, but I sort of resent having to craft my own in the first place.  The only reason I would ever craft my own is because I can't use a single scroll to teleport in/out of a cave multiple levels deep, because it's separated into multiple levels for the sake of the dungeon map not being 150k pixels tall and so it has clear delineations for where the enemies become tougher.


Um, you can just press Period and select the lowest dungeon to warp to.