Post by VM81 in We need your feedback! 🙏

Viewing post in We need your feedback! 🙏

Hey,
I made a quick review of the engine as it is right now and have some(more) thoughts and suggestions:

1. Experience system and skills changes.

It may be just me, but it feels like you gain levels way too fast and you get skills way too often. That's not a huge problem, but is a problem nevertheless.

What is a real problem is the fact we don't have enough good(useful) skills- assuming you get to level 8 you would have taken 4 out of the 6 skills and considering two of those are very situational and may be entirely unusable in a game, depending on the design, it means you've actually taken all the useful skills at that point. It's not a question of if, but a when.

To address the overly aggressive level gain, I suggest to have a checkbox to disable experience(and leveling) altogether, like we have for the skills, under the Development menu. This way people can design around item progression instead of level progression, if they want. Keep in mind you don't actually need experience system for narrative games, so having an option to disable experience(and leveling) makes sense from that POV.

As for the skills system, I'd give skills only on levels 3, 7 and 10(instead of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10) and add at least 4 more perks to chose from, thus creating a real perk pool.

Here are some skill sugestions:

Cautious: Pass through traps without taking damage. (boots in skill form)

Booksmart: XP scrolls give you 4x experience.

Blackmith: Your equipped weapons have +1 durability.

Stealthy: Each time you enter a room you're invisible to enemies for 5 seconds.

Blessed: You get +1 max HP immediately(+1 heart)

Note that adding enough extra skills should fix the skills allocation problem even if you keep the current skill reward interval(every other level) intact as long as you have an option to leave some skills unallocated(out of the pool).

2. Create Title screen and Game intro as optional elements under the Information tab.
I mentioned that some time ago, under the "wall of text" suggestion. This is an amended proposition, including some new elements(title screen) and more details on how I see it working(under Information tab etc.)
+Title screen(optional field)- upload image to show game cover before you start the game. Clicking the action button on the title screen starts the Game intro(if any) or goes straight to game if no intro present.
+Game intro(optional field)- a full screen text box, that works like normal text box(font size, line control font control etc). When text has finished showing, clicking the action button starts the game.

I believe those two will create a feeling of playing a real retro game.

3. Rebalancing items.

Right now the armor is basically a god mode cheat. I propose you make it behave more like a weapon(give it a durability of 5 hits). Create another peace of lesser armor with lower defence and durability of 3. Since we don't have control over individual item stats,doing so makes a lot of sense for item diversity.

4. Adding more tiles

So far every time I tried to make a tile set I came one or two tiles short of my idea. What I propose is either adding at least one more tile per type(walkable/solid) or putting a switch on animated tiles, so they can be used as static ones. Yes, I know I can just make the two animation frames the same, but it feels wrong to do it this way.

I would also propose adding one tile with a higher z index, alowing the character to pass under it or to have a chest or item under it. It's great or hidden passages or hidden loot- you just leave a few spots transperant to show the path or item under it and voila.

5. Character import and export
Ok, this idea is really undercooked, but it should be possible to export character stats and inventory and import them in another adventure. Just something to think on.

Wish you all the best,|
V.

Diguifi Studios12 days ago (4 edits)

I’m in awe! After each point my jaw dropped further, I’m gonna try and implement all these suggestions like so:

For a first thing, I’ll allow for the user to set how much XP any given enemy yields, this will make progression very customizable (EDIT: Done). Secondly, I’ll add more skills, your suggestions are really good, but this one might take a while to implement (EDIT: Done, but kept 2,4,6,8,10 pattern)
I don’t think uploading an imagem is feasible, this would enlarge the game URL too much, because the uploaded image would have to be encoded in the url itself to work when sharing a game, maybe just some more options in the Informations menu would already help, but I’d have to think about which options would be good (like Title screen Title, Title screen Subtitle, Title screen Pixel art (maybe?), etc)
Armor indeed should have durability, this could also be affected by the skill you suggested (blacksmith), this one gonna be easy to implement since it’s gameplay only, and doesn’t affect the editor (EDIT: Done)
I agree there’s too few tiles, maybe I can add a couple more, like 3 or 4, but not much more. But, in the case of needing more tiles, you can also “cheat” and use NPC’s, like I did here (look at the cell tower in the final room)
this is super interesting, would allow for continuations, and creating bigger games, without having to make the engine itself bigger, simply genius.

VM8112 days ago (4 edits)

That would be a short one:
1. Wow, that was fast! Tested it, seems to work fine. I would propose you add more skills to round them to ten (for example Leach- recover one HP on enemy kill if life not full) or even a dozen, but otherwise things look great.
Edit2: You should really put somewhere a note how much XP you need for each level. Otherwise it's a trial and error thing.
Edit3: Think about implementing the option to choose how much XP is received by an XP scroll. Right now it's unclear how much you receive and it makes very little sense to be able to assign a value on enemies, but not on the scroll. If you implement this it will be possible to make a game where you receive no experience by defeating enemies, but by finishing a task(where you receive an XP scroll on completion).
2. I did not explain the image part as good as i should have. By image I mean a pixel art image. Something like 64x64pixel png file with limited palette, which would keep the retro feel, be in line with your faux screen resolution and doesn't blow up the game size. I love how everything is encoded in the url, so I wouldn't want to make it too big either :)
3. Tested, armor seems to work fine, maybe just introduce a second set at some point.
4. I think 4 would be enough, if you make it one of each type: one normal, walkable, one animated, walkable, one normal non walkable(wall type) and one animated non walkable. This would actually increase variety in levels immensely.
Edit4: Another thing you can do is putting a checkbox "walkable" under the pixel art editor under the "Merge with adjacent tiles" checkbox. It would serve two important purposes- first, it would make obvious at a glance for new users whether or not the tile is something you can walk over on the map, because sometimes it's not clear. Second, checking or unchecking it would allow for users to repurpose walkable tiles into non-walkable tiles(and vice versa), giving you more tiles of the type you need(not every map requires equal amount of both) without increasing the total.
As for using NPC's- yeah it's a nice workaround(sometimes). I use them as collectable items :) It's too bad they are limited in use by the fact that you can only mark them to disappear after the first dialogue. Would have been very useful if that was available after the alternative dialogue too.
Oh and nice game BTW(the one you linked)
5. Thanks. I was trying to think of a way to make a slightly bigger game, without changing the 3x3 map grid (which I generally like). I came with the idea to use a simple .html page as a level selector but the fact I couldn't move experience and items between the levels put a damper in it.

PS: Would it be possible to decrease the size of the "!" that shows a point of interest in game (new dialogues)? I get it's a good size for visibility, but it's absurdly big right now- it's almost as big as the default character sprites and actually bigger than the ones I'm using right now. Perhaps keep it 1/2 of that size, but give it an effect or 2 frame bobbing animation to make it stand out...

Edit- fixed an error
Edit2- Added a suggestion on XP leveling requirements
Edit3- Added suggestion on XP scrolls
Edit4- Added suggestion on tilesets. Edits are now bold for clarity when reading.

itch.io

Viewing post in We need your feedback! 🙏