[.202] First impressions

[Gemzo]

First of all, for context, I have played some SHMUP-y/bullet hellish games before, but I'm not super hardcore at this kind of thing. I've been using keyboard & mouse. This post was written up after about 2 hours of playtime (according to Steam).

Now, the game was pretty fun, but I'd like to say that I tend to be very critical of things I like, so try not to take this post too negatively. I just naturally focus on the problems I have with things, rather than what was done right. Anyway, let's begin...


-My main issue I had was that most of the ships were way too fast (eg everything except the black knight). I think there should be more options on how to control your own speed. As far as I could tell in my playtime, the only way to reduce your speed was to randomly get the permanent -10% speed item... Which seems to be an additive 10%, since it makes the black knight way slower than 90% of its original speed. Can you get more than one of those and become unable to move? ...uh, anyway, back to the point; being too fast makes it pretty unreasonably difficult to dodge most things, I think. I don't know if a focus button is what I'm really asking for, but that may be the case. Perhaps something more creative could be implemented, but nevertheless it should be usable by default, and not just a power up.

-Another issue I had was that some enemy bullets linger for way, WAY too long after they are dead. They should probably dissipate immediately, or at least faster after you kill the enemy who shot them. Waiting on leftover bullets to disappear is probably one of the least fun things I could be doing ingame. An especially heinous offender is that blue enemy that floods the room with bouncing blue shots that last for-freaking-ever. it's typically faster to leave the room to despawn his bullets, rather than waiting on them to disappear... I think that bullet canceling of some kind would be welcome, right?

-I also got stuck in walls a lot... Mostly in that one room, with the area sectioned off by 2 sets of 6 mines. After destroying the mines on the right side (didn't try the left side), the wall that was next to the top side of the mines is pretty much made of superglue. That wall ended 3 of my runs in my 2 hours of playtime! >_> I assume getting stuck in walls is probably a known problem, though.
Edit: Yep left side is also made of superglue. This room has eaten 4 runs now lol...
Edit2: Bottom side is also superglue. Make that five runs.

-Teleporters were awful to use. I never wanted to risk using them, because teleporting on top of enemies that react instantly is way too risky. Perhaps telefragging would be a fun thing to add in... But really, a brief moment of invulnerability would be good too.

-Speaking of enemies reacting instantly... When you enter a room, they probably should take a second to react to you entering the room. As it is now, there's no time to think - you're just dumped into the middle of whatever potential chaos that the RNG has cooked up... I think it makes you invulnerable for a brief moment on entering a room, but the instant reaction time still makes things way too hectic, way too quickly.

-The beam traps that turn off and on are pretty annoying. Could they give off like, a warning beam right before they turn on? Right now the emitters glow when they're about to shoot, but that's not really helpful when they're offscreen... Oh, and the item room that has the beam traps in them is also pretty annoying. I don't think item rooms should have things like that in them... I can't come up with any specific reason for that, besides that it's just not fun, I guess.

-A lot of the time it felt like too much of my damage was from my energy weapon. If I didn't get a energy weapon, or at least a utility energy item, I felt really handicapped. Maybe that means the energy weapons were just too powerful (some of them probably are to be fair). On the other hand, if I just keep getting more energy weapons when I already have one I like, it feels like I got cheesed out of getting anything at all. I think that maybe these energy weapons shouldn't come from the same "drop pool" as the other upgrades. That way, there's no "RNG opportunity cost" when you get another energy weapon like that. Perhaps there should be a weapon room and an item room on each floor?

-I don't know if this exists and I just didn't find something like it, but there should probably be ways to change your main weapon too, besides just damage/fire rate/range/picking a different hull type.

-Edit: Oh yeah, I thought of something else. I couldn't rebind the main gun off of mouse 1, it seemed. My left click is going bad, so I wanted to change it, but no dice.


Okay, that concludes my thoughts for now, I think... Once again, this was me trying my hardest to think up every issue I had with the game. I hope this doesn't come across as too negative, since I just kinda typed every issue I could think of. I'd like to say more positive things, but I am not really so good at compliments, so trust me when I say I had fun playing the game. Hopefully you find this feedback useful. Cheers.

[Misery]

Hah, dont worry about being too critical or negative or something.  If anyone's gonna be the unpleasant negative one, it'll be me.  Including about my own content.  That stupid Mirror boss for instance... not even going to go into that right now, it just irritates me.  Probably going to deal with that particular ball of annoyance later today finally. 

Anyway, to answer some specific points:

1.  Ship speed, that's actually some of the only feedback we've gotten on this element.  It was only the Black Knight that seemed okay?  Granted, ship balance is likely to change as time goes on (already has a couple of times) but I can see this is something to keep in mind.

2.  Enemy bullets lingering... in certain cases, this is absolutely intended.  Though, that specific one that just causes the crazed blue bouncing maelstrom, that stupid thing was one of the most recent enemies added in.  Chances are, I probably just didn't catch that issue with it when I was testing the thing.  I'll try to remember to have a look at it and see about giving it a less stupid number there.  Bullet cancelling isnt likely to appear too often in this game.  The structure of the game would make it supremely OP.  If it does appear as a function the player can activate, it'll likely be one of those one-time consumable sorts of things, like the chips. 

3.  Getting stuck in walls, known glitch right now.   Pretty annoying, yeah?  There isnt any immediate solution to it, sorry.  That'll be for Chris or Keith to deal with when they have time.  Certainly out of my realm.  As is the usual for Arcen though it's likely to be fixed pretty darn quick.

4.  The teleporter bit... you know, I hadnt thought of that.  I have gone and made this Mantis report:  https://arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=17940  based on your feedback here.  Hopefully, that concept will solve that problem.  Nobody likes taking cheap hits due to something like that after all.

5.  If you're finding any very specific rooms that are giving you this issue often, try taking a screenshot or something of it if you would, and showing it on Mantis.  There's a ton of rooms, and it's very hard to catch issues with all of them.  Anything you might be able to point out would be helpful.  However, some of it can also be due to enemy seeding right now; mostly, it's absolutely all over the place.  Only a few enemies and bosses are actually gated by floor number, and some may turn out to be in the wrong category.  I dont intend on setting most of them up further until more of the game mechanics are in place, so balance can be determined, so right now, that's a bit messy. 

6. I agree on the beam traps there.  I have made another Mantis report about this: https://arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=17941

7.  Energy weapon balance is absolutely all over the place right now.  Consider it very, very early.  I honestly think certain aspects of the energy system arent working out, to be honest.  A couple of things I might bring up with Chris when there's time, so it's possible that the system may be altered later on.  For now though, if you have specific thoughts about any specific item, feel free to post them up on Mantis to make sure the devs can see them.

8.  Main weapon bit, I have no idea.  Not something I've heard anything about internally, so I've no info on that.

9.  The rebinds will probably happen sooner rather than later, I'm sure.


So there we go!   The feedback is much appreciated.  If you find any other issues, however small, feel free to bring them up.  Some things are best posted on Mantis, though of course they can be discussed here too if you want.  If it's specifically related to enemies/bosses/bullets or things of that nature, that's typically my realm (or my fault, depending on how you look at it), so feel free to just bring it up on here, I check the forums often.  Certain enemies and bosses though, right now, have issues that I just havent gotten around to yet.   I was GOING to fix a bunch of them today, but noooooooo.  Had to drive out super early to the DMV and sit there for 10000 years, because that's what a DMV is for.

[Gemzo]

Ah, you didn't have to mantis those for me, but thank you for doing so. I was just making sure those issues weren't just me before paying mantis a visit. Anyway, I wanted to respond to a couple of points:

1.  Ship speed, that's actually some of the only feedback we've gotten on this element.  It was only the Black Knight that seemed okay?  Granted, ship balance is likely to change as time goes on (already has a couple of times) but I can see this is something to keep in mind.

The weird thing is that going slower always felt like a bonus. Even taking the -10% speed item while using the Black Knight was sorta worthwhile, since if I need to go fast I can just use the afterburners. But of course, the afterburners allowing such good control is another issue entirely... Or, well, maybe they're not so different of issues, since they're both inherently linked to the issue of movement speed.

2.  Enemy bullets lingering... in certain cases, this is absolutely intended.  Though, that specific one that just causes the crazed blue bouncing maelstrom, that stupid thing was one of the most recent enemies added in.  Chances are, I probably just didn't catch that issue with it when I was testing the thing.  I'll try to remember to have a look at it and see about giving it a less stupid number there.  Bullet cancelling isnt likely to appear too often in this game.  The structure of the game would make it supremely OP.  If it does appear as a function the player can activate, it'll likely be one of those one-time consumable sorts of things, like the chips.

Yeah, now that I think of it, straight up bullet canceling would definitely be pretty OP, considering how strong Brawler/some energy weapons are due to their close range. Normally it's high risk, high reward, but bullet canceling would make that way too safe. The problem is really just specific enemies/bullets, but on the other hand, those enemies are kinda supposed to cause long-lasting chaos in order to be a threat. Reducing their bullet lifetime (too much) would be pretty harsh, so maybe just those specific enemy types should have their bullets canceled instead? That way they can still cause problems, but killing them actually improves the situation immediately, instead of in 10 seconds (or more) when their bullets finally go away.

[keith.lamothe]

Thanks for the feedback

On the player ship speeds, Gemzo, if you could try tweaking the numbers in your copy and see what feels good in your opinion, that would be a helpful data point for us. Here's what I suggest:

1) Find (game directory)/RuntimeData/Configuration/GameEntity/CMP_PlayerHulls.xml

2) Make a backup copy of that, you'll want to put it back when you're done testing, to avoid messing up later play impressions.

3) Open that file in a text editor and find the hull you want to use, and look inside that tag for speed="500" or whatever, and change that to a number you think will work better.

4) Play.

5) Rinse. Repeat.

6) Then copy the backup back over when you're done. Even if you don't it's likely to overwrite your numbers on the next update. There are ways to sidestep that (by defining your own player hull in a separate file) but let's not mess with that right now.

[Misery]

Ah, you didn't have to mantis those for me, but thank you for doing so. I was just making sure those issues weren't just me before paying mantis a visit. Anyway, I wanted to respond to a couple of points:

1.  Ship speed, that's actually some of the only feedback we've gotten on this element.  It was only the Black Knight that seemed okay?  Granted, ship balance is likely to change as time goes on (already has a couple of times) but I can see this is something to keep in mind.

The weird thing is that going slower always felt like a bonus. Even taking the -10% speed item while using the Black Knight was sorta worthwhile, since if I need to go fast I can just use the afterburners. But of course, the afterburners allowing such good control is another issue entirely... Or, well, maybe they're not so different of issues, since they're both inherently linked to the issue of movement speed.

2.  Enemy bullets lingering... in certain cases, this is absolutely intended.  Though, that specific one that just causes the crazed blue bouncing maelstrom, that stupid thing was one of the most recent enemies added in.  Chances are, I probably just didn't catch that issue with it when I was testing the thing.  I'll try to remember to have a look at it and see about giving it a less stupid number there.  Bullet cancelling isnt likely to appear too often in this game.  The structure of the game would make it supremely OP.  If it does appear as a function the player can activate, it'll likely be one of those one-time consumable sorts of things, like the chips.

Yeah, now that I think of it, straight up bullet canceling would definitely be pretty OP, considering how strong Brawler/some energy weapons are due to their close range. Normally it's high risk, high reward, but bullet canceling would make that way too safe. The problem is really just specific enemies/bullets, but on the other hand, those enemies are kinda supposed to cause long-lasting chaos in order to be a threat. Reducing their bullet lifetime (too much) would be pretty harsh, so maybe just those specific enemy types should have their bullets canceled instead? That way they can still cause problems, but killing them actually improves the situation immediately, instead of in 10 seconds (or more) when their bullets finally go away.

Hm, enemy specific cancelling, in a way, is already there; it's just very, very rare right now.  There's a small enemy type that I *think* is called a flea (sorry, my memory is seriously awful), it fires little yellow bullets constantly that dont go very far.  There is another one, a stationary type, that fires very long ranged but very slow red shots that move in an interlocking angled pattern (if I recall, this guy also fires through walls).  Both of these enemies have what I'm calling "nullifier" shots.  When one of your bullets makes contact with one of theirs, both are destroyed.  I havent done too much with this concept yet... it's kinda screwy at times, and there's one big issue which is that players would have a hard time remembering just which bullets do this; I personally think that all bullets with this trait should probably all use the same sprite.  This particular trait isnt entirely set in stone right now though (er... I think), so for the time being, I'm not going to use it too much.  Except probably on one boss that I might add later tonight.

But yeah, other than that, the only "cancelling" is the shockwaves that bosses and one specific enemy put out upon taking enough damage.  I may also use the idea of specific smaller "bomb" enemies that are dangerous but also cause a massive shockwave that clears a huge area, making them worth prioritizing.  So that might be a thing.  Or I may make it so that the absolute strongest of enemies... the ones causing the most chaos... have a tendency to always do this.  If you've played any of Cave's shmups, this is a repeating theme in their game; enemies that are capable of causing total chaos by themselves usually clear the screen when destroyed.  I think it's a useful and good concept, it's just a matter of seeing if it can fit into this game or not.

[crazyroosterman]

a bit random but Chris seems to have vanished I wonder why? hopefully he's just busy and hasn't been kidnapped by communist spies.

[keith.lamothe]

a bit random but Chris seems to have vanished I wonder why? hopefully he's just busy and hasn't been kidnapped by communist spies.

Oh goodness no, how ridiculous. He was kidnapped by martian spies, and is therefore fine.

He's still able to push releases from the saucer, though.

[crazyroosterman]

a bit random but Chris seems to have vanished I wonder why? hopefully he's just busy and hasn't been kidnapped by communist spies.

Oh goodness no, how ridiculous. He was kidnapped by martian spies, and is therefore fine.

He's still able to push releases from the saucer, though.

silly Martians all there going to get from brain scanning Chris is ones and zeroes and random bits of coding.

[keith.lamothe]

3.  Getting stuck in walls, known glitch right now.   Pretty annoying, yeah?  There isnt any immediate solution to it, sorry.  That'll be for Chris or Keith to deal with when they have time.  Certainly out of my realm.  As is the usual for Arcen though it's likely to be fixed pretty darn quick.

There's now a couple of fixes in for 0.203 that I think should go a long way to avoiding the problem, and especially to preventing it from being a run-ender

[Gemzo]

Thanks for the feedback

On the player ship speeds, Gemzo, if you could try tweaking the numbers in your copy and see what feels good in your opinion, that would be a helpful data point for us.

I tried 300, and it felt pretty controllable for dodging in the more bullet hellish moments. I could probably go a little slower before it's "too slow," but 300 gave me enough control to dodge well. On the other hand, when I wasn't dodging, the ship felt sluggish. And, there's a problem with being so slow; Some enemies/bullets are too fast to comfortably dodge with such low movement speed. Of course afterburners can help for when you fight against such enemies/bullets, but I think default afterburners are a bit too fast for combat usage... So, I tried a value of 750 for afterburner speed and it felt alright, although maybe a little too fast still. So maybe 700~ would be a good average value, to go along with 300 normal speed? I dunno. Tell me what you think.

Oh and btw chargers are extremely frustrating. Without movespeed+range or a good subweapon, they just glue themselves to you and kill you from full health. Instant run ender.

Edit: I should also probably mention another thing I've been thinking about. The player's hitbox should be shown *precisely,* either by the ship graphics or some other way. Dodging is pretty hard when you don't know how close you're allowed to get to the bullets. Plus, the hitbox should absolutely positively be circular, although I couldn't tell you if it is right now or not... Anyway, a square hitbox would make the direction you're aiming affects if you get hit or not, which wouldn't be much fun to deal with in my opinion.

[Misery]

Thanks for the feedback

On the player ship speeds, Gemzo, if you could try tweaking the numbers in your copy and see what feels good in your opinion, that would be a helpful data point for us.

I tried 300, and it felt pretty controllable for dodging in the more bullet hellish moments. I could probably go a little slower before it's "too slow," but 300 gave me enough control to dodge well. On the other hand, when I wasn't dodging, the ship felt sluggish. And, there's a problem with being so slow; Some enemies/bullets are too fast to comfortably dodge with such low movement speed. Of course afterburners can help for when you fight against such enemies/bullets, but I think default afterburners are a bit too fast for combat usage... So, I tried a value of 750 for afterburner speed and it felt alright, although maybe a little too fast still. So maybe 700~ would be a good average value, to go along with 300 normal speed? I dunno. Tell me what you think.

Oh and btw chargers are extremely frustrating. Without movespeed+range or a good subweapon, they just glue themselves to you and kill you from full health. Instant run ender.

Edit: I should also probably mention another thing I've been thinking about. The player's hitbox should be shown *precisely,* either by the ship graphics or some other way. Dodging is pretty hard when you don't know how close you're allowed to get to the bullets. Plus, the hitbox should absolutely positively be circular, although I couldn't tell you if it is right now or not... Anyway, a square hitbox would make the direction you're aiming affect if you get hit or not, which wouldn't be much fun to deal with in my opinion.

Hitbox is square, I *think*.  I could be wrong.  Hit F7 to see the hitboxes.  Of absolutely everything.

The actual size, consider it not set in stone yet.  I think I'd like to see it shrunk a bit, but.... still undecided.  I cant be totally certain this is the right move just yet.  Need to see more game elements inserted so the full balance of it begins to appear.

But yeah, I agree with you.  Even in non-bullet-hell shmups (or even games like Isaac) you very often have to get super-close to bullets and knowing EXACTLY where your hitbox is helps a ton.


Also, Chargers:  Working as intended.  Use Afterburners to detach them from your rear (they are designed to require this).  While they use pathfinding they're still dumber than a sack of hammers and they dont have *real* range... just their lances.  Pelt

Trust me, they're doable.  I dont stick anything into the game unless I've made *sure* that there is always a way to dodge whatever it is.

....mostly.  Range on base weapons is possibly also in flux right now, it's an issue I intend on bringing up with Chris when he's got some time.  I think it needs to be longer, on all ships, for a huge variety of reasons, and I *dont* think that such long range will ever be OP.  It'll just make alot of things work so much better.  If one of the Chargers is outranging a specific ship though, please let me know.  I'm not going to change anything right now on them, but I'd like to be aware of it for later.

What you CAN do though, always, is get them to chase you around corners.  Strike them as they are making that turn, and then zoom away, and repeat.   Shove a few missiles up their noses if they're being too obnoxious.

[Gemzo]

What you CAN do though, always, is get them to chase you around corners.  Strike them as they are making that turn, and then zoom away, and repeat.   Shove a few missiles up their noses if they're being too obnoxious.

Yea I suppose that was a bit of a kneejerk reaction from me. Anyway, I haven't run into chargers that often so forgive me if I'm wrong, but any enemy can spawn in any normal room right now, and many rooms really aren't fit to fight a charger in. Maybe it should be a miniboss, so that it can have a room to itself? Of course, when they get implemented, I mean. It has nearly enough health to be one anyway, heh.

[Misery]

Enemies actually are spawned based on their category; rooms have enemy positions set by those categories.

It may be that I need to choose a different category for that guy... I'll look into that.