Messages

1

Skyward Collapse / Re: Skyward Collapse Alpha 0.803/0.804

« on: May 05, 2013, 08:35:36 PM »

I've been out of touch with development for a while here, so I may not have anything useful to say. But in general I will mention that I'm the type of person for whom points don't work at all as a motivator. They're just too arbitrary. I can't see much interest in score attack style games. I play through it once and I'm done. I just can't get even remotely interested in playing it again for a high score. If the points actually do something, anything, that's more interesting. If you have to get score > X to unlock a new gun/hat/whatever then that gives some purpose to it. But if, at the end, your only reward for scoring X points is having scored X points... well that's just too arbitrary for me to even understand.

Probably also doesn't help that a lot of games tack on a lot of pointless zeroes to the end of your score. I never did get that concept. That just takes the arbitrary and nonsensical nature of scores and really brings it front and center. But again, I don't really know much about this particular game aside from the basic marketing releases, so maybe there's something I missed that makes this whole diatribe of mine rather pointless. (rimshot)

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Viva La Hexagons!

« on: May 05, 2013, 05:45:13 PM »

It will keep them from complaining about it though, since it doesn't have it.

Never underestimate entitled gamers' ability to complain about things. If it's there, they don't like it; if it's not there, they bemoan the lack of it.

Anyway, good to see progress on the new title coming along. Sorry I've been lurking for a while and not posting, but I'm intrigued to see where these new games are going.

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Skyward Collapse / Re: Viva La Hexagons!

« on: May 05, 2013, 05:35:37 PM »

requests to redo the art two weeks before release.

Well, that preempts my thread demanding pre-rendered CGI art assets for everything. 

It won't keep someone on RPS from asking for it.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 Official 1.001-1002 "Mouse Aiming For Those Who Stood And Fought" Relea

« on: February 20, 2013, 01:41:11 AM »

With so many variable difficulties, I think this is fine. It lets those who prefer mouse play that way, and crank up the difficulty if they feel that it's removed too much of the challenge. I, for one, turned it on immediately. I've never been a fan of difficulty-through-inconvenience, which is the feel I got with the pure keyboard control scheme. I can aim in all the appropriate directions with pure keyboard controls, but it's just too fiddly for my liking. But for those that love it, go for it; now we have all the options.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 Beta .803 "Just Give It To Me Straight, Okay?" Released!

« on: February 10, 2013, 01:52:48 PM »

We need a constant, obnoxious beeping sound whenever our health gets below a certain value.

Going old-school does not mean we have to thave the bad parts in too!

In all seriousness, a low health indicator would be nice.

Just make it an obvious beeping (not annoying, just noticeable) at the start and then fade it to inaudibility, or nearly so, over a few seconds. Some old school games did this. One of the Zeldas maybe? I forget. I always thought it was the best option. You know there's something to worry about, but you don't have to deal with BEEP BEEP BEEP forever if there's no handy health nearby. Although in this game you should almost always be able to go kill something for some extra HP, so it wouldn't be as bad as running around in Zelda 1 listening to a beep for 10 screens because nothing wants to drop a heart. I KNOW MY HP IS LOW, GAME, STOP BLAMING ME FOR IT; YOU'RE THE ONE THAT WON'T DROP A HEAL FOR ME! Ahem.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Poll: Keeping knockback on player spells.

« on: February 06, 2013, 07:53:53 PM »

On the buggy knock-forward problem, wouldn't it be possible (caveat, I have no idea how programming works, you use a keyboard with just a 1 and a 0 on it right?) to have it always calculate the knockback direction based on where the player is, instead of worrying about where the spell is coming from? Or whatever it does now, it's kind of hard to tell. This might look odd in a few scenarios, firing a spell while falling and then having the angle to you change when it hits the monster, but I think overall it would lead to better, more consistent behavior. I know in Valley 1 I died a few times due to a whip or a melee range spell deciding to bounce a monster right into my face.

Whether knockback is kept as-is or relegated to just a few specific spells, having it always knock them in a direction that could be described as 'back' would be an important property, one would think.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 Beta .719 "To One Who'll Stand And Fight" Released!

« on: January 24, 2013, 11:19:04 PM »

I was leery of a vocal track. That can go quite bad. So I listened to it, then I listened to it again. I feel silly for doubting Pablo, now. Great stuff. I do somewhat agree that it might be too epic for intro music, though. On the other hand, I'm not sure if it would be fair to tuck it away as end credits music, since that almost always gets skipped.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Rescue Suvivor

« on: January 15, 2013, 09:38:17 AM »

I've been running through the region looking for the survivor myself. I've got to stop assuming that I know how things work from AVWW1. I was convinced I was somehow missing a secret door somewhere that would lead me to them.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2: The backdrops need a lot more detail

« on: December 21, 2012, 11:05:38 PM »

The only thing that bugs me on the backdrops is the lack of parallax when moving vertically. Horizontal is great, and looks fine, but the layers don't move at all when falling down a long drop, for example, and it just looks really weird and off.

That, and that one green background where the hills, or whatever they are, look like giant fleshy blobs. That's just weird.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 alpha v0.704 released!

« on: December 19, 2012, 11:02:24 PM »

Maybe I was getting lucky or just wasn't going to city tiles before or something. But the difference between a desert tile with nothing in it and an abandoned town tile can be something like 5 to 7 minutes of extra running and gunning. It just overstays its welcome a bit, I guess. Probably once the platforming side of the game gets beefed up with some more enemies and behaviors it won't be so bad.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Valley 2 alpha v0.704 released!

« on: December 19, 2012, 10:28:26 PM »

I don't see a .705 thread yet, but I just started a new game under it and is it just me or are some regions a little too long now? Like, having to go through 3 or 4 buildings with overworld stretches between them to reach the end. Or maybe that's intended? Right now since it's just the same handful of enemies over and over it starts to feel like a chore to do the platforming sections. With almost no exploration like in AVWW1 you're really just trying to get from point A to point B through a level that's effectively on rails. It's rather... boring? Anyone else getting that feeling?

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Interested in being a part of a private alpha for Valley 2? Read here.

« on: December 16, 2012, 08:17:26 PM »

Havent been using Light Snake against them really, for the simple reason that it has zero ability to pierce enemy shots.

Light snake travels like a screen and a half. You can stand way back out of range and just kill everything. Anything ground based will die to it, although it isn't high damage so you do have to be a little patient.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Interested in being a part of a private alpha for Valley 2? Read here.

« on: December 16, 2012, 04:18:30 PM »

Is anything being done about the landsquids (or whatever the things are that shoot off all the blue boomerang shots)? It seems that there's no way to kill them without taking significant damage or using a special, unless one of the classes I haven't played uses it.

Use a homing shot or an illuminologist with light snake (or any other class with a snake spell, not sure if there are any?) and you can kill them with zero risk. That said, if those spells get a probably needed nerf, I'm not sure what you can do with them. Hope that they get nerfed also, I guess. They really do put out a lot of shots, especially with no double jump (at least at first) to dodge bullet hell attacks like in AVWW1.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Interested in being a part of a private alpha for Valley 2? Read here.

« on: December 16, 2012, 10:21:09 AM »

The problems I see with bats, besides the mentioned issues of them being hard to see and hard to find a good angle of attack on, is that their hitboxes seem to be incredibly tiny. Either that, or the hitbox for my spell bullets is smaller than they would appear from the graphics. I've had shots and whips go right through a bat's wing and do no damage to it. And yes, their attack pattern is brutal. Other games with small flying melee attackers will have them swoop at you and then away, giving you time to recover. Plus, most any other game of this type will give you some few seconds of invincibility frames after you're hit. Bats seem designed to take advantage of the quirks of this game by having an AI that just says 'beeline for player, stay there'.

If homing shots are getting a nerf (which they do need, I agree. My attack pattern has been 'hold clinging nettles' and that's about it) then I hope the bats are going to be a lot less evil. They should be the minor annoyance enemies who do piddly damage, not the enders of worlds.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Interested in being a part of a private alpha for Valley 2? Read here.

« on: December 15, 2012, 10:29:12 PM »

Also, is there any real difference between Stonebinder and Technozoologist's first two spells? Both have the exact same description with different names and animations.

Until you mentioned it, I had no idea there were more than just 5 classes. I didn't even have Technozoologist as one of my options. I tried creating a few new worlds just now and found that there are several others. Huh.

Also, I join in the hatred for bats. If you don't have a homing shot they will end your day. I guess it would be possible to roll up a world where you couldn't select a class with a homing shot at all, and that would be seriously rough.