Author Topic: Impressions after a couple games.  (Read 2357 times)

Offline Ashnal

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Impressions after a couple games.
« on: February 09, 2013, 09:40:03 pm »
I've played two games of Valley 2 so far, one on .728 that I failed miserably, and now one on .800-.802 that I've almost beaten (only the final fight left). Both games were on the default difficulties of Rook and Adept.

The first game I had failed miserably due to only having 3 turns to prepare and losing a couple rebels to Daemonaica. In that game I was unable to access key areas on the world map due to lacking water dash with ocean shallows and swamp tiles nearby the keep. This also prevented me from stocking up food since I couldn't build any farms early on.

The second game on the newer beta version was a whole different ball park though. The map for this had many many more recruitable survivors, no early water dash blocking tiles, and many more turns to prepare before Daemonaica emerged. This essentially turned the strategic part into a cakewalk compared to the earlier version since I had so much man power and building space due to two nearby amplifier towers. I managed to split my development into three different areas and Daemonaica had only managed to flatten two areas before I had destroyed the citadels. I finished with over 25,000 food, and had up to 30,000 food and 40 rebels before I had to expend a few to destroy the second citadel.

So now, a few bugs I noticed.
-Daemonaica and friends don't destroy warehouses when they walk over them. Are these tiles even functioning? I never noticed their effect.
-When you have many rebels, the turn ending summary will run off the bottom of the screen. Perhaps make that window scrollable?
-There was a feather based mage class with an ammo attack  that shot out feathers in a fan pattern for only 2 ammo cost. These feathers could not hurt a variety of enemies such as the ice bats and other flying nuisances.
-Debris field ammo attacks never worked for me. They would spawn their projectiles on top of the player character and harm it, usually resulting in suicide.
-The swamp belltower tile seemed to not work at all. I left a scout there for a number of turns and Daemonaica never seemed to notice.

Now for a few suggestions.
-I played the majority of the second game with no perks at all, since the research facilities were so far from the starting zone. I would like to see at least water dash and miniaturize available earlier in the game, unless it was just bad luck on my map.
-Seeing as how the game is inspired by retro games like Actraiser and Metroidvania games, I was slightly disappointed to see that all "melee" range spells were projectile attacks with very short ranges. I'd love to see some melee spells that mimic the swing of a sword in an arc in front of the character.
-There are some pieces of equipment in the game with -% projectile lifetime and +secondary attack damage. Many mage classes have a melee spell with very short projectile lifetime as their secondary attack, and this combination of equipment stats becomes worthless since the projectile lifetime reduction prevents most melee spells from reaching outside of the players hitbox.
-Is the "On Fire" equipment supposed to reduce it's own durability? I think that equipment type would be a lot more fun if it didn't subtract from it's durability and didn't trigger ivincibility. It would promote killing enemies as fast as you can to keep your health up.
-Why do merc coin drops from bosses behave like they have no friction? They slide along the floor indefinitely until they meet a wall. Chasing them down can be an annoyance.
-Currently when using a homing type spell with an extra projectiles equipment piece all of the projectiles stack right on top of each other and will all hit the same enemy at the same time. In many cases the extra projectiles just do overkill. I would like to see homing spells fan out a bit before seeking targets when combined with multiple projectiles equipment.
-The smashed robot towers sidescrolling areas seeom to drag on a bit too long. For one tile, I had to go through no less than four towers to get to the end. Each tower has two rooms of climbing, and one room of slow falling. I would suggest cutting it down to one upwards room, and one slow fall room.
-The bosses on Adept felt like a pushover once I attained a couple damage boosts. I could take a couple special attack boost perks and one or two shot a boss with a rocket attack. There was also one ammo spell that fired a straight shot large piercing green projectile that could easily one shot anything with the +100% ammo attack boosts.
-Animation. I know this takes lots of time and money, but I'd like to see some more sprites for smoother character animations, as well as maybe different sprites for casting in the air, casting different spell types. More than one sprite for a character in the air, say a couple for jumping, a couple for the peak of the arc, and then the one for falling.
-Maybe add + projectiles as a possible higher level perk? It's a fun mechanic with some spells and I think it would be fun as a playstyle choice in addition to an equipment piece. Stackable with equipment for crazy fun results.
-A new piece of equipment (and/or perks? ) that increases spell damage but also increases the cooldown period between shots. It would allow for a more carefully placed one shot style of play as opposed to many spells' spam all the time style. Should slightly decrease overall spell dps to make up for front loading damage.

Overall, I enjoyed the game a lot. I like how the level progression works with random perks and mage classes. It allows you to tailor your character for a specific mage class. The strategic part is interesting, I feel like I could easily handle queen or even king difficulty after the playthrough on rook though. I'd like to see more interesting tiles that offer strategic decisions in the future. I look forward to seeing where this game goes with further development.

Offline x4000

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #1 on: February 10, 2013, 12:50:27 pm »
Cheers!  Just a note to say that this has been read, by several of us, and a number of your suggestions have already made it into the next release.  Others are being considered for future releases, or are otherwise on the list.
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Offline Ashnal

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #2 on: February 10, 2013, 05:23:49 pm »
Ah good. The change to Reckless spells affecting concentration was one issue I had forgot to mention. Glad someone else caught that.
With the new scrap and food caps it seems the power of the resistance will be limited at the top end by how much of your stores you're willing to burn through when Demonaica destroys some farms. I hope the cap is applied after income and usage are calculated, else you'd never be able to have more food in your store than the cap - consumption.

One more suggestion in light of the new caps. How about allowing purified warehouses to increase your caps by 200 each or so? That's almost an extra new building worth of scrap, and a turn or two worth of food for a decent sized rebellion. I believe you might be able to remove the food consumption bonus, since decreasing usage and increasing stores both have the same end effect of increasing the amount of turns the resistance can hold out for without food production.

I'll give the new beta a go in Queen/Skilled in a bit and see how it plays with the changes.

Offline x4000

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2013, 07:56:47 pm »
Nice!  Coming up:

* Fixed an issue where the new food and scrap caps were being applied too early in the turn and thus making it so that you could never have more than (cap - consumption) food stored.  Now you can actually store up to the cap.

* Updated the turn events display to show how much food and scrap could not be kept due to lack of storage.

* The effect on food reduction of the warehouses is now able to stack, but cannot take the survivor consumption below 1 food per turn.

* While you control warehouses -- usually a temporary thing -- your food and scrap caps are increased by 200 per warehouse.
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Offline Ashnal

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #4 on: February 12, 2013, 01:21:57 am »
And this is why I love you guys :D

Offline Ashnal

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2013, 03:54:06 pm »
I finally got my PS3 controller working over bluetooth, with much rejoicing. I decided Valley 2 could use a go with it. Now on v8.09, will start a new game on queen/skilled and see how it goes.

Okay I HAVE to post this because tit's bugging the crap out of me. The health display in the top left just isn't working for me. I Like the new graphical display, it's just in a bad spot. The specific reason is that it is too far from the typical character and enemy positions on screen, which means I have to take my eyes off my character to glance at my health, which i way up in the corner. With the old display, I could easily check my health at any time from the edge of my focus, since it was close to my character.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2013, 04:41:30 pm by Ashnal »

Offline x4000

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2013, 04:35:32 pm »
Sweet!
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Offline Ashnal

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #7 on: February 15, 2013, 04:40:03 pm »
Did you get the edit I just wrote? I try not to double post if I can help it on any forum. Also some feedback in the default 360 controls thread :)

Offline x4000

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #8 on: February 15, 2013, 04:45:09 pm »
Ah, I didn't see that, no.

In terms of the health being up there, there's not really an option -- with the health being able to go to 21 hearts, there's noplace else with room on every monitor.  This is also pretty much the standard location for Metroid and Zelda games, and it's nice and uncluttered away from the attack-oriented stuff that you need to check less often down at the bottom.  I'm not sure that there's much I can do about that...
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Offline Ashnal

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #9 on: February 15, 2013, 05:31:57 pm »
True, it is kind of standard. Speaking of Zelda games, they managed to fit a lot of hearts by stacking two rows. Perhaps you could use the lower right half of the screen starting at the edge of the equipment bonus and stack the hearts in two rows. At their current size, or maybe a few pixels smaller, two rows would match height with the other interface elements at the bottom.

Something like this? All 21 hearts fit fine on my 1680x1050 screen, and the display is condensed closer to the character. I see the issue on lower resolutions though. Maybe an option for higher resolution screens?
Also, in that screen shot there's a piece of art that needs to be touched up, circled in red.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2013, 05:47:20 pm by Ashnal »

Offline Pepisolo

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #10 on: February 15, 2013, 05:45:53 pm »
Quote
Something like this? All 21 hearts fit fine on my 1680x1050 screen, and the display is condensed closer to the character. I see the issue on lower resolutions though. Maybe an option for higher resolution screens?

Or maybe having the hearts over on the far left and everything else pushed to the right a bit.

Offline x4000

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Re: Impressions after a couple games.
« Reply #11 on: February 15, 2013, 07:41:51 pm »
Thanks on the building, I've fixed that.

Regarding the hearts, they do drop to 2 rows, starting with 12 hearts.  Bear in mind we have to design for the lowest-common denominator resolution, which is 1024px wide.  The bottom area has the equipment and the calibers section, both of which require something like 200px each (I forget exactly off the top of my head), and so even with just the old big heart and the number next to it there was slightly too little room on the smallest resolution; if you had concentration and equipment with a semi-long name, the equipment would hang off the side of the screen.

In terms of an option for larger monitors, I guess it's a possibility, but surely it's not that big of a thing?  We added a low-health sound so that you know when you're really low and health, and beyond that you presumably have time to stop and glance up there anytime you're not in direct combat.  That's more or less the route Zelda took too.  Right now I'm really running a mile a minute trying to get everything polished, and so I'm wary about adding niche options that are only for certain screen resolutions and which might cause new bugs, etc.
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