Thanks a lot for the well thought feed back. I agree with you on pretty much everything, and here is what I'm doing:
Are you pre-buffering the rotations or you do it realtime?
The rotations are done in real time.
I like the way guns can be changed using the mouse wheel, but it would be really nicer if you could reload it using the mouse (right mouse button, for example). The 'R' key is a bit out of reach when you're controlling you character.
I was planning on using the right click as the weapon's special later on. And I chose the 'R' key as the reload button because a lot of first person shooters have it. I hope to do a key mapping option later on as well, so this might help.
Something that I think you should urgently address is the "jumping" shot. I was very frustrated when I had my last shotgun shot, and shot it in the alien's face, but the bullets simply went thru him and he killed me . I can't tell if it happens with other guns since I mainly used the shotgun.
Another thing that you probably already figured it you is when you try to jump while going down a hill. It's impossible since when you're going down the "falling" flag is set to true, preventing the character to jump . Talking about hills, once when an "eyeball" item felt into a hill, it kept flickering (though it was not moving).
These have been the longest standing issues with the game. Sometimes bullets will not hit objects due to the physics logic, and I have gotten a lot of gripe for the can't jump while walking down a slope. So this past week/weekend I have been working on a new physics engine. Its almost done and will fix all of these issues
We will also be able to do a lot more stuff, for instance we have all kinds of tiles like curved slopes concave and convex, all angled triangles, and circles. The bouncing of bullets with Dual Shot will be able to be utilized on all tiles. And bullets will not go through anything anymore
Now something that REALLY annoyed me when playing, I was really frustrated with the screen scrolling. The problem is that when you change the directions, the screen always put the character in the 1/4 half of the screen . This is a nice effect, but it makes really difficult and frustrating to aim an enemy which is close to the character , since the screen keeps dancing left to right as you place the mouse in the left or right side of the character.
I know that you've probably put some effort doing this neat effect, but I think the gameplay would be highly improved if you just centered the screen in the character ALWAYS . I also found myself doing calculations when entering a room full of enemies . The problem is that you enter a door in the extreme right side of the screen, and appear in the extreme left . that is, I have to calculate where I will appear to start shooting enemies immediatly. It would be very much straightforward if the character was just always centered and I could always have my mouse in the region around him, instead of having the mouse everywhere in the applet, dependeing on where the guy was placed . By the way, when fighting an enemy near a door, is also very frustrating because you have a litte room to click the right place, without clicking outside the applet, or clicking the wrong direction . (Furthermore, not scrolling when reaching a door causes a funny effect, that you always enter a room "moonwalking". R.I.P. MJ)
I hope I made myself clear - if not I can give you more details.
I agree that the scrolling can get annoying at times. I plan on creating a box around the player in which if your mouse is inside it, the screen will not scroll, so that will fix the dancing part. I started out with the centered player back in the day, and it gave you less room to see ahead of where you are walking. So for the rest, i'll be sure to make maps that when you enter will give you some room before you reach enemies. We might also have door entrances not always along the map edges.
Now about the levels. I played till episode 6 , and it was very challenging and fun till episode 4 . But when I beat it (which was veeery difficult) and reach episode 5 only to find another level with the same enemies and background I was very disappointed . Same when I reached episode 6 .
I know that you probably depend on your pixel artists to include new enemies, but I would definitely prioritize that instead of fancy looks for the main character (I didnt bother spending my money with wigs or so when I could power up my shotgun).
I haven't reached the level with the tileset you show in the screenshot here, but I suggest you reward the player with it a little sooner (to be more precise, I would do it after episode 4), and if it's possible add one different enemy per episode . I honestly tell you that I felt like "aaaw, come on !" when I reached episode 5 with the same looks as the 4 after I put so much effort beating it . I believe you'll lose a few players who feel the same as I felt (and remember that players are far more merciless than "programmer-players" . )
Yes I agree that the episodes are unbalanced and unrewarding, I never meant for the levels to be this hard and this bland. My map maker likes hard maps... and so many undecided decisions about what should or shouldn't be saved for story mode. We have other environments but I had so many other things to add and fix that most of the game isn't where I want it to be. Which is pretty much why we have not officially launched the game. Luckily we are reaching the point of less and less things to add, so I can focus on the gameplay.
And don't worry, I have a lot of things that I'm going to add and change that will turn this into a great game. Left to do: Enemy drops items, Achievements, NPCs/Missions, no more episodes/new linked environments, replace all placeholder art, tons more items/weapons, new enemies/varying levels(Lvl 1 Jelly), multiplayer, and more after that is all done.
Thanks again for the feedback.
P.S. This should probably be moved into Works In Progress. I didn't care about staying, but it'll probably be best for the sanity of players
