Just some ideas

[hasaosan]

I've bought AVWW awile ago... but i lost interest because of 2 main things

there needs to be melee combat ): me and my friends both agreed that there totally needs to be melee in this game it would make it so much more interesting.

there is also no real character progression.... i mean i understand the game is exposed to be about your town and all but its a little frustrating playing a character that has no meaning... i have a suggestion to fix this..... an inventory and stuff that you can equip that shows on your character ... I've always hated when u equip things in a game and it never showed <.<... even if the stuff is just cosmetics it would be better then nothin at all

just my thoughts overall still a good game tho

[tigersfan]

Hi, and welcome to the forums.

Unfortunately, neither of these is possible right now, and both for the same reason. Because of the way that the art is done, doing either of these in any way that was meaningful would take far too much time. We're only a 5 man shop, and we don't have the time for all of us to spend months doing nothing but art (which is what that would take). We're grateful you bought the game, and no one can predict the future, but right now, these things just aren't possible, sorry.

[hasaosan]

Hi, and welcome to the forums.

Unfortunately, neither of these is possible right now, and both for the same reason. Because of the way that the art is done, doing either of these in any way that was meaningful would take far too much time. We're only a 5 man shop, and we don't have the time for all of us to spend months doing nothing but art (which is what that would take). We're grateful you bought the game, and no one can predict the future, but right now, these things just aren't possible, sorry.

i understand hopefully when yall start rackin in the money yall can hire new peeps and work on this ..

i will also prob get back into it if there are steam achievements as i love getting them.

[tigersfan]

Hi, and welcome to the forums.

Unfortunately, neither of these is possible right now, and both for the same reason. Because of the way that the art is done, doing either of these in any way that was meaningful would take far too much time. We're only a 5 man shop, and we don't have the time for all of us to spend months doing nothing but art (which is what that would take). We're grateful you bought the game, and no one can predict the future, but right now, these things just aren't possible, sorry.

i understand hopefully when yall start rackin in the money yall can hire new peeps and work on this ..

i will also prob get back into it if there are steam achievements as i love getting them.

There are nearly 100 Steam Achievements in the game already.

[Jerebaldo1]

Don't lose heart thought! I'm thinking of adding some short range melee spells that look sort of like melee weapons to Mantis (if not already in there somewhere). 'Turns out that they can make a spell that feels and acts like a sword, mace, lance etc. using particle effects. I'm betting it'd look kind of like Zero's sword from the Megaman X series  .

[BenMiff]

...
10. Magic is at the center of pretty much everything in this game, and the technology that is present should account for that in thematically interesting ways. (Note: In later interpretations of this immutable design goal, since mid-alpha or so, we've extended this one to include "no traditional Earth-style vehicles" and "no traditional Earth-style physical weapons in the hands of players; guns and swords and such are out."  But obviously that wasn't the original design goal, so that interpretation isn't quite immutable though it's pretty darn set in stone at this stage).
...

(From the Immutable Design Goals thread in Brainstorming.)

The above isn't to say that melee spells are a no no (from what I can see), but weapons seem unlikely. (If there wasn't going to be melee, the short range spells like flamethrower and the whips wouldn't exist, after all.) Thinking laterally, it seems like having the spells emulate the weapon's style without necessarily being that weapon seems to be the way to go here; a lance spell would jet you forward a short distance, and give you immunity to collision damage during that move, for instance, while both swords / axes / maces would sweep through a 90 degree arc in front of you, with the differentiation coming in the speed the attack "sweeps" across the arc (and slower arcs dealing more damage, or possibly more knockback for the mace-a-like).

[Misery]

Hi, and welcome to the forums.

Unfortunately, neither of these is possible right now, and both for the same reason. Because of the way that the art is done, doing either of these in any way that was meaningful would take far too much time. We're only a 5 man shop, and we don't have the time for all of us to spend months doing nothing but art (which is what that would take). We're grateful you bought the game, and no one can predict the future, but right now, these things just aren't possible, sorry.

i understand hopefully when yall start rackin in the money yall can hire new peeps and work on this ..

i will also prob get back into it if there are steam achievements as i love getting them.

Generally, the idea of custom armor and such in a 2D game just doesnt happen, for most of them.   Usually due to the way it's rendered.  I've heard this complaint before regarding Dungeons of Dredmor, and the response was basically the same.... it'd take an insane amount of time (and money) to render even ONE piece of custom armor/whatever due to the way the art is and how it's drawn.  Let alone rendering LOTS of pieces of armor/weapons.

You usually see this in 3D games for the simple reason that they dont actually have to animate it;  they can create a couple of quick textures (as opposed to making 1000 sprite frames), and plop it on a 3D model (which usually doesnt need any changes to it's animation/movement to "wear" the armor).  The only game I can think of that does this is Terraria, and part of it is that the character animations/sprites in THAT game are EXTREMELY simple.  Even then, it still takes time and effort.  Updates in that game that contained alot of armor/clothing items generally took awhile and tended to be JUST armor/clothing add-ons.


As for the melee bit..... I dont see the point.  The game already has melee attacks (and a good number of them);  the fact that they arent shaped like a sword doesnt change what they do and how they work.  It'd be an unnecessary visual change only.  Not to mention.... about a kersquillion games already have swords and punching and stuff.  I prefer more creativeness than that, so this game doing things like Ice Burst, an explosion of sharp ice shards, as a melee attack just is cooler and more unique.

[keith.lamothe]

Like a year ago in very early alpha we actually had swords, spears, etc.  Swinging arcs, fairly precise collision detection, etc.  And a minigun that would increase in ROF as it spun up, etc.  But it was just a floating sword/spear/gun in front of your character (you didn't hold it or swing it or anything) and it didn't look at all good.  Doing proper animation to make it not look awful would have totally broken the bank (actually, I don't think we had enough money to even finish that, let alone a game in addition to it), so we scrapped actual weapons.

There's not really anything mechanically speaking that we could have done with those that we can't do with spells.