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Light of the Locked World - 0.6.0 - Play demo!
- Thread starter Zuurix
- Start date
Zuurix
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2021
- Messages
- 42
LOTLW Devblog #32: The West
In this entry: Making western Rezelot areas - Rannah's Domain and Silver Fields.
Click here to read >>
In this entry: Making western Rezelot areas - Rannah's Domain and Silver Fields.
Click here to read >>
Reinhardt
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2015
- Messages
- 29,705
You already here. People here like TO PRETEND they appreciate tb combat for street cred. In reality they hate it.
Zuurix
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2021
- Messages
- 42
Spicy hot take! Looks like it's a holy war going on, I gladly pledge my allegiance to the Team Real =p
Though I'm a fan of games from both sides. I considered turn-based combat for my game but decided it would be a waste of my experience with real-time combat systems.
This isn't the time for experimentation and learning - I need a good game ASAP, so I need all advantages I have. And... Yeah, there was some "Real-time combat is better" elitism if I'm completely honest =p
Barrishimi
NecroCatic Games
Awesome! Thanks for sharing some more screenshots with us, Zuurix! I am REALLY looking forward to this release, looks great! The time that I spent with the game was enjoyable and looking forward to seeing more progress!
That's a very classy art style, and a great title for a game! Pixellated stuff isn't my cup of tea, I'm too much of a graphics whore - but this looks very good for what it is. Best of luck with it!
Zuurix
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2021
- Messages
- 42
LOTLW Devblog #33: Western settlements
In this entry: Spore demons, making western settlements: Siw, Western Trilith.
Click here to read >>
In this entry: Spore demons, making western settlements: Siw, Western Trilith.
Click here to read >>
bionicman
Liturgist
- Joined
- May 31, 2019
- Messages
- 686
I've been playing the demo a bit. As everyone else has already said, art style is great, reminds me a bit of this roguelike: https://store.steampowered.com/app/434880/Hieroglyphika/
Some feedback:
- I have a 1920x1080 screen resolution, but the game launched in full-screen 1280x720 resolution (looked blurry), till I opened the options and changed the resolution to my monitor's. Not sure if intentional, but you should probably know.
- I understand it's probably a design decision to have save slots like in old arcade games (and maybe modern console games?), but I have to mention that this can irritate some players. Being able to save at any point and having the option of having multiple (possibly infinite) saved games is a lot better user experience (unless you're making a roguelike or some sort of a permadeath game).
- I like the character creation, I just have one nitpick which is that changing "Hands" color changes the color of the sleeves. So maybe make it so the label says "Sleeves" instead.
- When picking main class, the game says that I would get unique perks based on which class I pick but doesn't suggest which kind of perks. Perhaps you could give more info to the player about this (unless there is and I missed it).
- The game looks better in motion than on screenshots (even though it looks nice anyways).
- I like the reactivity in the game. I attacked the NPC at the starting screen and the guard kept following me around and attacking me. And I guess cause those other NPCs in the area are from a faction that he dislikes he killed them all (unless this is unintended and a bug):
Pictured: City guard commencing a slaughter on innocent civilian NPCs cause of my bad rep with the faction
- Found a UI bug with the tooltip. I don't know how you implemented it, if it's just a string copy-paste mistake or a deeper problem within the tooltip-generation code, but at start of the game I picked to get the swordsman box. Opened it, and left-clicked on items in order from left to right (which equips the sword and learns the abilities in the order of: 1. Powerful strike, 2. Assault. However, afterwards, when I hover over the abilities and get a tooltip, the second line of the Assault ability gives me the description of a Powerful attack, which I guess is a keyword in the description of Powerful strike. Note that the powerful strike tooltip is fine, everything seems in order, it's just that the Assault tooltip's second line is bugged (also noticed later that this bug appears on some other abilities on hover, in particular "Seeking sphere" also shows a description of a Powerful attack):
- By the way, the UI is very elegant and beautiful
- In order to access inventory and consumables I have to open it by pressing "i", but while inventory is opening the game is still playing and getting attacked closes the inventory. There are no quick slots for items as they exist in other RPGs (could be a useful feature?). Unless you want to discourage using potions etc. during combat, which I understand.
- I love the reputation system (I'm hated by rogues).
- It would be nice if, when hovering over items that can be equipped, the tooltip also showed the stats of your currently equipped item for comparison and maybe even highlighted the difference in stats.
- I've always noticed late that I levelled up one of my skills (when I click on the level up I can level a skill up 2 or 3 times since I accumulated so much XP without noticing). The static grey arrow is barely noticeable. Maybe have a sound effect (unless there already is one and I didn't hear) when you level up, and make the icon or arrow blink some other color perhaps? Even better would be some sort of bigger message in the center of the screen telling you that you levelled up, cause in some games, some people don't even notice blinking notifications for this.
- The notification for looting items appears in the top-left corner of the screen, which is fine, it's like a text log, but it would be a nice addition to also show it right there where the player is looking (at the player character), e.g. the same sort of "label" of the item that appears at top left corner could appear above the player character or looted object and then float up and tween its transparency to 0 gradually, y'know how it's done in most games. Essentially some sort of more direct feedback right in front of player, instead of having to turn my head to look top-left.
- I like the notes/quest/map menu, but it would be better if you could access each of its menus directly. As it is, I have to do 2 click (or a keyboard press and a click) to get to map/journal etc. I understand it's simpler and more elegant this way (works good for a joystick), but you could add additional keyboard control options e.g. so you can bind M for the map menu, so that when I press M on the keyboard I open the map screen immediately.
- Minor nitpick: those wooden signs that give directions are not interactable (in most RPGs that have them they are, can't think of one that doesn't make them interactable), it would make it more immersive and nice if they gave you directions to places.
Pictured: A useless signpost
Same can be said about these:
Anyways, don't have much more time to play the demo now, maybe I'll play more later.
EDIT: Also forgot to ask (since I'm a game dev myself), which game engine are you using?
Some feedback:
- I have a 1920x1080 screen resolution, but the game launched in full-screen 1280x720 resolution (looked blurry), till I opened the options and changed the resolution to my monitor's. Not sure if intentional, but you should probably know.
- I understand it's probably a design decision to have save slots like in old arcade games (and maybe modern console games?), but I have to mention that this can irritate some players. Being able to save at any point and having the option of having multiple (possibly infinite) saved games is a lot better user experience (unless you're making a roguelike or some sort of a permadeath game).
- I like the character creation, I just have one nitpick which is that changing "Hands" color changes the color of the sleeves. So maybe make it so the label says "Sleeves" instead.
- When picking main class, the game says that I would get unique perks based on which class I pick but doesn't suggest which kind of perks. Perhaps you could give more info to the player about this (unless there is and I missed it).
- The game looks better in motion than on screenshots (even though it looks nice anyways).
- I like the reactivity in the game. I attacked the NPC at the starting screen and the guard kept following me around and attacking me. And I guess cause those other NPCs in the area are from a faction that he dislikes he killed them all (unless this is unintended and a bug):
Pictured: City guard commencing a slaughter on innocent civilian NPCs cause of my bad rep with the faction
- Found a UI bug with the tooltip. I don't know how you implemented it, if it's just a string copy-paste mistake or a deeper problem within the tooltip-generation code, but at start of the game I picked to get the swordsman box. Opened it, and left-clicked on items in order from left to right (which equips the sword and learns the abilities in the order of: 1. Powerful strike, 2. Assault. However, afterwards, when I hover over the abilities and get a tooltip, the second line of the Assault ability gives me the description of a Powerful attack, which I guess is a keyword in the description of Powerful strike. Note that the powerful strike tooltip is fine, everything seems in order, it's just that the Assault tooltip's second line is bugged (also noticed later that this bug appears on some other abilities on hover, in particular "Seeking sphere" also shows a description of a Powerful attack):
- By the way, the UI is very elegant and beautiful
- In order to access inventory and consumables I have to open it by pressing "i", but while inventory is opening the game is still playing and getting attacked closes the inventory. There are no quick slots for items as they exist in other RPGs (could be a useful feature?). Unless you want to discourage using potions etc. during combat, which I understand.
- I love the reputation system (I'm hated by rogues).
- It would be nice if, when hovering over items that can be equipped, the tooltip also showed the stats of your currently equipped item for comparison and maybe even highlighted the difference in stats.
- I've always noticed late that I levelled up one of my skills (when I click on the level up I can level a skill up 2 or 3 times since I accumulated so much XP without noticing). The static grey arrow is barely noticeable. Maybe have a sound effect (unless there already is one and I didn't hear) when you level up, and make the icon or arrow blink some other color perhaps? Even better would be some sort of bigger message in the center of the screen telling you that you levelled up, cause in some games, some people don't even notice blinking notifications for this.
- The notification for looting items appears in the top-left corner of the screen, which is fine, it's like a text log, but it would be a nice addition to also show it right there where the player is looking (at the player character), e.g. the same sort of "label" of the item that appears at top left corner could appear above the player character or looted object and then float up and tween its transparency to 0 gradually, y'know how it's done in most games. Essentially some sort of more direct feedback right in front of player, instead of having to turn my head to look top-left.
- I like the notes/quest/map menu, but it would be better if you could access each of its menus directly. As it is, I have to do 2 click (or a keyboard press and a click) to get to map/journal etc. I understand it's simpler and more elegant this way (works good for a joystick), but you could add additional keyboard control options e.g. so you can bind M for the map menu, so that when I press M on the keyboard I open the map screen immediately.
- Minor nitpick: those wooden signs that give directions are not interactable (in most RPGs that have them they are, can't think of one that doesn't make them interactable), it would make it more immersive and nice if they gave you directions to places.
Pictured: A useless signpost
Same can be said about these:
Anyways, don't have much more time to play the demo now, maybe I'll play more later.
EDIT: Also forgot to ask (since I'm a game dev myself), which game engine are you using?
Last edited:
Zuurix
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2021
- Messages
- 42
Thank you very much for the feedback!
1. Difficult to implement.
2. Since the game is almost entirely persistent and because I'm a bad coder, the save files end up having a significant size, around ~5 MB per slot, so I don't think it's a good idea to let users create an infinite amount of files.
3. I like this approach for design as well - you're meant to live with the consequences of dying, not reload the save file.
These perks aren't implemented yet.
Yeah, this is how the game works. I want to mention that these aren't innocent civilians, they are rogues, and guards are aggressive to them.
It seems like the first thing the new players do is attack the first NPCs they see on screen, ruining their reputation with the Locul faction, and locking themselves out of the story quests and first town.
I guess they'll have to learn the hard way what it means to lose reputation. Well, I could have a giant pop-up warning about the consequences...
And some difficult way to restore reputation.
Pretty sure this is working as intended. Both Assault and Powerful Strike are a "Powerful attack".
Yeah, there will be quick slots, but for now, the use of consumables during the combat is discouraged.
Oh, I like this one. Will consider it once I get to the next round of UI improvements.
Yeah, you're going to see A LOT of those useless signs - they are very good for decoration purposes, so I use them everywhere I can. Not sure if I can afford to make them useful.
1. Difficult to implement.
2. Since the game is almost entirely persistent and because I'm a bad coder, the save files end up having a significant size, around ~5 MB per slot, so I don't think it's a good idea to let users create an infinite amount of files.
3. I like this approach for design as well - you're meant to live with the consequences of dying, not reload the save file.
These perks aren't implemented yet.
Yeah, this is how the game works. I want to mention that these aren't innocent civilians, they are rogues, and guards are aggressive to them.
It seems like the first thing the new players do is attack the first NPCs they see on screen, ruining their reputation with the Locul faction, and locking themselves out of the story quests and first town.
I guess they'll have to learn the hard way what it means to lose reputation. Well, I could have a giant pop-up warning about the consequences...
And some difficult way to restore reputation.
Pretty sure this is working as intended. Both Assault and Powerful Strike are a "Powerful attack".
Yeah, there will be quick slots, but for now, the use of consumables during the combat is discouraged.
Oh, I like this one. Will consider it once I get to the next round of UI improvements.
Yeah, you're going to see A LOT of those useless signs - they are very good for decoration purposes, so I use them everywhere I can. Not sure if I can afford to make them useful.
bionicman
Liturgist
- Joined
- May 31, 2019
- Messages
- 686
You're right about the saving system. This actually reminds me of games like Diablo and Dark Souls, it's just that I don't personally play those sorts of games often so never occurred to me.
Although, there's nothing wrong with saves taking ~5mb. Just for comparison, I've just recently finished a Deus Ex (the original deus ex) playthrough and each save file was roughly the same size too. So, the save folder for me there now is... a bunch of gigabytes (time to delete it lol).
While I was writing feedback I sort of wrote it linearly as I was playing the demo so when the whole thing with the guard attacking rogues happened I didn't know rogues were another faction, hence the "innocent NPC civilians" but realized it later.
In turn-based games like Fallout 1 it's more intuitive to not attack the friendly faction cause you have to click on your weapon and initiate combat mode and just left-clicking the character starts the conversation with them instead.
In your game (not saying it's bad, just how controls work) when starting off, it felt intuitive to try out different attacks and abilities immediately. I also accidentally stole from the (I think second rogue you meet?) rogue since I mashed E to interact with him and that initiated combat with him even though I didn't necessary mean to start combat with him or steal from him.
Some ideas:
- Maybe have a popup show up (like you said) when you're about to do something that would damage your reputation (e.g. if you're trying to steal or attack a friendly dude), saying something like "Are you sure you want to steal from this person? Your reputation will be damaged and the person and his faction could turn hostile towards you." and then have the option of "No" and "Yes" and "Yes, and don't show popups like this anymore". And then have a boolean value for these sort of popups, so when the player selects the last option the windows don't appear anymore.
- Since it feels intuitive in a game like this to test out the controls at start, maybe have one of those training dummies like from Undertale be there so you can hit it multiple times instead of the NPCs.
Also, I had edited my previous post with a question asking you which game engine you used but I guess you didn't see it cause it was at the bottom of the post. So, I was curious which game engine are you using (if it's not a secret)?
Although, there's nothing wrong with saves taking ~5mb. Just for comparison, I've just recently finished a Deus Ex (the original deus ex) playthrough and each save file was roughly the same size too. So, the save folder for me there now is... a bunch of gigabytes (time to delete it lol).
While I was writing feedback I sort of wrote it linearly as I was playing the demo so when the whole thing with the guard attacking rogues happened I didn't know rogues were another faction, hence the "innocent NPC civilians" but realized it later.
In turn-based games like Fallout 1 it's more intuitive to not attack the friendly faction cause you have to click on your weapon and initiate combat mode and just left-clicking the character starts the conversation with them instead.
In your game (not saying it's bad, just how controls work) when starting off, it felt intuitive to try out different attacks and abilities immediately. I also accidentally stole from the (I think second rogue you meet?) rogue since I mashed E to interact with him and that initiated combat with him even though I didn't necessary mean to start combat with him or steal from him.
Some ideas:
- Maybe have a popup show up (like you said) when you're about to do something that would damage your reputation (e.g. if you're trying to steal or attack a friendly dude), saying something like "Are you sure you want to steal from this person? Your reputation will be damaged and the person and his faction could turn hostile towards you." and then have the option of "No" and "Yes" and "Yes, and don't show popups like this anymore". And then have a boolean value for these sort of popups, so when the player selects the last option the windows don't appear anymore.
- Since it feels intuitive in a game like this to test out the controls at start, maybe have one of those training dummies like from Undertale be there so you can hit it multiple times instead of the NPCs.
Also, I had edited my previous post with a question asking you which game engine you used but I guess you didn't see it cause it was at the bottom of the post. So, I was curious which game engine are you using (if it's not a secret)?
Zuurix
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2021
- Messages
- 42
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