Mod Creation Testing Requested Thread

[ptarth]

Mod Creation Testing Requested Thread

Feedback on modding work is important. It allows for both continued tuning and encouragement, both vital for extended project life. I'm starting this thread to try to keep things centralized and manageable. We've already had things getting lost in the shuffle.

Modders - Please add your files to your post. A structured zip file or rar would be typical along with a testRoom. Ask if you need help setting that up. If you have particular desires for the type of testing listing those as well. A spoiler enclosed block detailing your creation would also be great. Thank You for your efforts.

Testers - Provide the name of the mod/entity/whatever you are testing at the top of your feedback. In general feedback about funness, problems, and general design are all encouraged. Thank You for your efforts.

[ptarth]

Boss: Reanimator v1.5
Request: General enjoyability, design, and error feedback requested. Anything extra is great too.
TestChamber: a_testPtarthReanimator.xml

Spoiler for Description:

Stage 1 - Player spawns at top and works the way down the sides dealing with ZombieMechs who despawn into parts piles and respawn into Mech if unkilled. At the bottom the player teleports into the main boss chamber and duels with boss. In all phases the boss has multiple hitboxes and will take double damage to the "head". The outside wing pieces only take 25% damage. The Red Cannon Shot has an friendly fire AOE.
Stage 2 - On Stage 2 start the boss loses parts, phases, and moves to the outside ring. He then flees around the ring dropping 5 mechs every 3rd turn.
Stage 3 - On Stage 3 start the boss loses parts, phases, turns around and starts chasing the player. The buzzsaws are friendly fire, so they will remove excess mechs. He drops mechs in a predetermined pattern.
Stage 4 - On Stage 4 start the boss loses parts, phases, draws a star and moves back to the central chamber. He then deploys a shield and a raining drop style attack. The shots replace themselves with shot absorbing shots when they turn white.

Note: A preliminary version was put into the release. This will cause your log to fill up with duplicate entry messages. These will have no effect in game. Removal of all the Reanimator.xlm files will remove all of the conflicts caused by test version.

Updated to add some extra fun. Updated again to remove brawler player mech code.

[ptarth]

Did you have a play with my silly miniboss, which just spawns more and more enemies that revive if the boss isn't dead

https://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=18646

I've taken the previous quote to be an invitation to review and comment.
Synopsis: Miniboss spawns minions. A Minion who dies will then respawn. The gimmick is to kill the boss before minion density gets too high.
Design Problems: Persisting corpses. Art.

My Comments
Design Fix
Add a system to the miniboss that purges enemy entities of the regeneration system to fix the respawn issue. For your respawn system you have invulnerable corpses that then spawn into a minion on death. The corpses have a self damaging DPS move that effectively acts a respawn timer. You can also use a system to regenerate the minion. Use cue_time or initial_firing_delay as the timer. The system also has destroys_firing_entity which removes the corpse.

Art retheme
Rather than zombiesque, how about you break the minion, then it repairs itself. So take the minion art, make a greyscale or ruined version and use that as the corpse. Looking at the game entity documentation now and I saw the shader attribute. That might be cool to play with and avoid recoloring.

Bullet Pattern
Reminds me a lot of Backfire and Mirror, simple straight line shot spawns. Something more interesting perhaps?

Fun
It is a simple minion spawner, I think it needs another gimmick or two. Thinking back at the other minibosses (the combat ones at least) it seems that they have 2 or 3 gimmicks each, so I think adding one would help here.

[Pepisolo]

Good idea, I haven't been visiting this forum as much as I should, but I'll certainly be keeping an eye on this thread and chipping in with some thoughts.

[Ayrix]

Did you have a play with my silly miniboss, which just spawns more and more enemies that revive if the boss isn't dead

https://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=18646

I've taken the previous quote to be an invitation to review and comment.
Synopsis: Miniboss spawns minions. A Minion who dies will then respawn. The gimmick is to kill the boss before minion density gets too high.
Design Problems: Persisting corpses. Art.

My Comments
Design Fix
Add a system to the miniboss that purges enemy entities of the regeneration system to fix the respawn issue. For your respawn system you have invulnerable corpses that then spawn into a minion on death. The corpses have a self damaging DPS move that effectively acts a respawn timer. You can also use a system to regenerate the minion. Use cue_time or initial_firing_delay as the timer. The system also has destroys_firing_entity which removes the corpse.

Art retheme
Rather than zombiesque, how about you break the minion, then it repairs itself. So take the minion art, make a greyscale or ruined version and use that as the corpse. Looking at the game entity documentation now and I saw the shader attribute. That might be cool to play with and avoid recoloring.

Bullet Pattern
Reminds me a lot of Backfire and Mirror, simple straight line shot spawns. Something more interesting perhaps?

Fun
It is a simple minion spawner, I think it needs another gimmick or two. Thinking back at the other minibosses (the combat ones at least) it seems that they have 2 or 3 gimmicks each, so I think adding one would help here.

just figured out a more elegant solution, use the temporarily grant system modifier for the respawn systems.
This could mean "fun" as it might be doable to a regular enemy

Just been looking at invader using a lot of player item only things on enemy system.
A 0 damage shot that hits all non boss enemies could be used to give out the system, if not just work like the health attrition does.

the system has to cause a lot of things on death;
immortal, does not fire, and cannot move modifiers,
ideally with non-sim effects/colour change for 5-10 seconds,
then restore to full HP.

if I can generalise it to actually respawn/ HP restore on death (like the player can) it could be fun, that would mean the boss can use normal enemy pools and therefore chaos.

[Logorouge]

Here's an additional mech I'm about ready to release on the Steam forums, but before that I wanted to ask for some feedback here.

Missile Mech Rex:
His special allows him to regain missiles on enemy kills and his levelups contain missile capacity upgrades more often.
On the downside, he does weak damage and has low energy.

Does the mech feel too weak/too strong?
Are those missiles-on-kill frequent enough?
Are the additional levelups missile cap perks all working? (Level 4-6-7-9) The perks work.
Is the Readme file detailed enough?

If you have comments on those or anything else really, please share I would love to hear them.

[Pepisolo]

Regarding Rex, I've got it set up, and I'll be testing it during runs. Seems pretty cool, so far, though.

For Reanimator, overall seems super cool, I haven't beaten it, yet, but that's fine. Those walls that seem to grow when you're near, very cool, but for a few runs I thought that these would damage me or something if I got near. Purely cosmetic?

I got one missing image error....missing ZombieMechTorso2.

When you use the teleporter to the boss, the shot clearing effect that triggers can look a bit janky as it affects your own shots. It's like your gun has stopped working or something. This is the normal bevaviour of the teleporters, right? If so, I need to Mantis that.

Not the most useful feedback, heh. I'll keep testing. Seems an enjoyable boss to me.

[ptarth]

Those walls that seem to grow when you're near, very cool, but for a few runs I thought that these would damage me or something if I got near. Purely cosmetic?

At this point yes. If you want them to kill you, I can manage that.

I got one missing image error....missing ZombieMechTorso2.

Bah. Sorry. If you remove the 2 it will work fine.

When you use the teleporter to the boss, the shot clearing effect that triggers can look a bit janky as it affects your own shots. It's like your gun has stopped working or something. This is the normal bevaviour of the teleporters, right? If so, I need to Mantis that.

Yes. That's the default action. The shot nuking is there to stop players from abusing teleporters to get free shots. It may just not work for the boss area and I'll add normal entrances.

[ptarth]

Missile Mech Rex:
Does the mech feel too weak/too strong?
Are those missiles-on-kill frequent enough?
Are the additional levelups missile cap perks all working? (Level 4-6-7-9) The perks work.
Is the Readme file detailed enough?

• Readme.txt is fine
• He feels a bit weak and generic.
• His design flavor isn't really coming through strong enough.
• As I understand it, you want him to be all about missiles. In that case, a special missile (MIRV, homing, cluster, big AOE, something) would be appropriate. On average, you are getting 1 missile every 20 enemies, which means you still can't rely on it very often except to supplement damage against high level targets on occasion.
• You also can't get into the habit of using them because the acquisition rate is too low, you can accidentally run out that way. I'd suggest increasing it. 
• The black mech is pretty dark and can blend in with things, I'd suggest going with brighter character sprite.
• I can see two paths. In the first, have him have a low missile capacity, but to get missiles very frequently. It becomes a spend them or lose them situation. Alternatively give him a massive missile storage capacity and then a moderately low missile spawn rate.
• I never picked any of the missile storage level ups because the alternatives were so much better.

Some design questions that may be useful in guiding your thinking about the mech design.

• What percentage of the time should the mech use his primary weapon? His secondary? His missiles?
• How impactful do you want the missiles to be?
• How is the mech different from the other mechs?

Cheers,
Pt

[Hearteater]

I'd recommend the low initial capacity. This allows +capacity through items/level-ups to have more impact, and it means a higher acquisition rate which means more frequent use patterns which makes for a better overall feel.

[Logorouge]

Thanks you two! Those suggestions and feedback is exactly what I was looking for.
I'll definitely start testing a lower initial capacity, higher acquisition rate combo for the missiles. That should make the +capacity upgrades much more desirable. I might mess around with the levelup upgrades a bit too.

My goal with this mech is to provide a missile-flavored variant (similar to Green Envy's treasure hunter in term of gameplay impact) and fight against missiles being often reduced to mere Health Shard can openers. That's the sort of impact I'm aiming for, rather than the game changer kind like the RedShift or the Dipole.

Anyway, thanks again. Time for more tweaking and testing!

[ptarth]

Miniboss: Train v0.2
Request: General enjoyability, design, and error feedback requested. Anything extra is great too.
TestChamber: a_testPtarth_Train.xml

Spoiler for Description:

The idea behind the boss is a train crossing through a small train yard while the player attemps to kill it.
Mobile Miniboss following a scripted movement path. The path sequences will vary in the future. It has three systems. System 1 is a bomb system. White shots are fired out and move around the floor. They do no damage. After a delay they change into a red hazard shot (that does no damage). After another delay they change into a burning red hazard shot (that does no damage). After another delay the exploded. System 2 is a fast firing front dumbfire gun. It shoots very quick red shots straight ahead of the Train. System 3 is a turret firing direct medium speed, medium reload shots at the player.

*Update v1: Fixed Typo that caused it to fail to load*

[Pepisolo]

Miniboss: Train v0.2
Request: General enjoyability, design, and error feedback requested. Anything extra is great too.
TestChamber: a_testPtarth_Train.xml

*Update v1: Fixed Typo that caused it to fail to load*

General thoughts are that the enemy is great! Seems to have the correct miniboss feel and difficulty. I think that there may be a problem in getting across to the player that certain shots don't do damage. The white shots don't do damage? As a player, I can't really get my brain around that, I'm always going to be attempting to dodge them, they just look too much like dangerous shots. Maybe you should just make everything dangerous, unless you can figure out a way to get over to the player that the shots are harmless, I'm not sure. More scripted movements would be cool, too, yeah. Also, knowing that the white shots don't do damage, I found out I could pretty much just stand in one spot off the track and beat the boss without moving.