2022-01-19 23:54:31

Hi there. I purchased the game last night on Itch. Man, it's awesome!!! Keep going man. You've got an awesome game going here. I can't wait to see what else you've got planned for it.

2022-01-20 00:16:03

Sorry, the sliders are kind of crappy. They don't announce when they've changed, so you may want to tab off and back to check the new value. They also adjust by a single unit, and there doesn't seem to be a way to change that. The UI library is a separate project, and I probably need to fix it there. The mid-to-long-term plan is to make the UI work with screen readers cross-platform, either by modifying this toolkit or by switching to one that can be made accessible more easily.

2022-01-20 02:40:24

Menu navigation on controllers seems to be a little iffy. Hoping this will be fixed soon.

Discord: clemchowder633

2022-01-20 03:50:35

Just so folks know, here's one of the earliest sections in the manual:

## Known issues

Note that this is an *early access* demo released primarily to smooth over balance and gameplay issues. There are currently several known bugs which I intend to fix before a final release. Please check this list before reporting anything new.

* D-pad controls don't work in menu screens.
* Command keybindings always speak their keyboard equivalents, regardless of whether a gamepad is connected.
* When launched, shift-tab doesn't focus the _Quit_ button.
* Lure and stealth grenades behave identically because I copied the code as a placeholder. Stealth grenades/smoke bombs will behave appropriately once a few design issues are sorted out. For now, enjoy having extra lure grenades to play with.
* The game sometimes crashes due to an issue that will be fixed in the engine's next major release.
* If a number of robots are defeated quickly, bonuses are awarded with the maximum value rather than via stacking. This can result in score spikes of hundreds of thousands of points in some situations.
* Sliders don't speak their values when changed.
* Text-to-speech doesn't work on some M1 macs.

2022-01-20 05:43:57

One more thing I'd personally love to see that springs to mind after playing a bunch more games... a quick 180 turn. What you could do is move the current snap to nearest direction thing to control up, then make control down turn you 180 degrees.

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.

2022-01-20 10:17:46

Hi,
I really want to try this game since I've had quite a lot of fun with Onslaught when it came out, but since I wanted to quickly test it out and see what it's like and I only have my macbook near me, I downloaded the Mac OS demo, and... I don't get any speech. I also gather the gameplay keys and such would be in a help list somewhere within the game itself, but I can't listen to it because of the fact that there's no TTS. And I'M running an Intel macbook air from 2015.
Is there anything on my end that I could try to do so I can get it to speak, or is it some sort of bug? I'd really like to try this game and experience it to it's full potential. I'll probably get it on windows in a few hours anyway, and it should work much better there, plus I'll have gamepad support to mess with as well.

2022-01-20 14:15:39

BlindNinja wrote:

One more thing I'd personally love to see that springs to mind after playing a bunch more games... a quick 180 turn. What you could do is move the current snap to nearest direction thing to control up, then make control down turn you 180 degrees.

I like this idea. Pretty sure another game does this, can't remember if it's Shades of Doom, Technoshock or  Monkey Business. It's been a long time since I messed  with those classics.

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2022-01-20 15:08:05

@56 Interesting, this is the first I've heard of TTS not working on an Intel mac. I'll see if things still work on my Mini. That's all I have. Ugh, for all the talk about Apple not suffering from fragmentation, getting this TTS library working on mac hardware has been one of the most painfully inconsistent experiences.

@57 Good idea about the snap turn. I'd been thinking something similar. I'll pencil that into the roadmap.

2022-01-20 15:26:51

Another +1 for the snap turn. Back in the day that was a common feature in many, many games, you could hit a button and insta turn 180 degreeesso yes plese on it being in SF, though I'd like for it to possibly be one key like backspace or something, or something easy to reach but you won't hit by accident

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2022-01-20 15:52:13

Yep I agree with the snap turn suggestion. I'm not sure what games it's in either, but it's somehow so ingrained in me that I keep expecting ctrl+down to do that.

2022-01-20 16:06:38

No worries folks, I'm already sold on the snap turn idea. What I'll probably do is make ctrl-down snap turn, and ctrl-up do what ctrl-down currently does (I.e. turn you to your nearest cardinal direction. I'll add that to the list of features, and will probably get to it in the next release while I'm revisiting the existing snapping issues.

2022-01-20 18:05:12

Hi.
I tried to run it on my Mac, and two things happens:
1. The game doesn't use the default speech. My main language is Danish, and therefore my Mac is set to this language. I have chosen Alex as the default voice in System preferences, accessibility and the reading voice category. But the game does still use the Danish voice. How do I change that?
2. As soon as the game starts, it does not respond. If I'm lucky, I can navigate the menu with a lot of difficulty. It's like the game use all the resources. I'm using a Macbook Pro 2019 model with 8 GB ram, so the hardware shouldn't be the issue.
I have tried the game in a virtual machine, Windows, where it runs great. However, I find the game quite confusing. I could really use a "learn game sounds" feature.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
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2022-01-20 18:26:56

I'm still a bit confused as to okay, can I sort the output from the L key, like only robots, or only doors, and so on?

If there's  arobot in the room I wanna know about it, before any doors. Agreed on the learn game sounds, but @SLJ personally I tend to hit L, lok around then move, then go a few steps and do it again. Slow and cautious playstyl for me, but YMMV on that

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2022-01-20 18:56:04

@62 Sorry, my mac support is best-effort. My mini is fairly recent, so I don't know why others are having so many issues. The best I can probably do until I can figure out how to make this a team effort and get a macOS developer onboard is to just make a demo available and hope folks try it out before they buy. I'm also in the midst of an engine upgrade, so it's possible that might fix some of the performance issues. The TTS library I'm using doesn't support voice changes, though it should use the system default voice. Then again, I'm not sure how that works when the default voice isn't English. Sorry.

@63 I'm confused about what you're asking for. Description output is automatically sorted to put robots first in order of distance/strength, then exits, then whatever powerups/items/exits are reachable from the spoken exit. I may add a command just for exits, but I don't want to get too crazy with commands. Remember, this has to work on controllers too, and we have way fewer buttons on those.

2022-01-20 19:07:10

What I was asking was

Is there a way/is there a way planned, to filter the output of the look around command to filter out specific output? Like if, say, I hold back/select and tap left or right on a D-pad it'd scroll through filters, like all, (which is the current), robots only, exits only, powerups/items only?

I've had times when a robot's been there but the look command's been taken up by 3 or 4 exits and the robot's got lost in the shuffle despite being the first item on the list. You say controllers lack buttons. True. but you got at least six ones you press and hold, the face buttons, start, select/back

That's 12 right there, plus the analog sticks, the triggers and bumper buttons though

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2022-01-20 19:32:28

I'll see what I can do. I wrote my own input wrapper around my engine's not-that-great support, and it doesn't currently let you bind actions to holds and other more complex scenarios. I could add that support, but someone else is working on a better input library, and I'd rather just wait for theirs to mature than keep hacking on my own dead end.

Thanks for the feedback.

2022-01-20 20:29:33

Touching on a thought I had a while ago that I just tested again. I'm having way too much fun doing this over and over, and I don't know why. big_smile That's definitely a good thing, though. An addicting arcade game is the best kind of arcade game.
I feel like robot tracking might be juuuuust a little too good, as it stands. Granted, this is me testing with server rooms, so this might be intentional. But even if I haul ass out another door and through several cleared rooms, including corners, it seems like the summoned robots know exactly where I am, though I'm pretty sure they come from like half the map away. And this is me standing perfectly still in a blind corner for like two or three full minutes before the first badasses show up, BTW.

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.

2022-01-20 20:44:24 (edited by musicalman 2022-01-20 20:44:35)

@67, good to know that the tracking is that good smile. I haven't done a ton of server room battles yet so am still trying to devise the best escape strategy.

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2022-01-20 20:48:23

Hi nolan.
Thanks for your reply regarding the Mac version.
I have no clue regarding the TTS issue when the computer is set to an other language than English. I will let you know if I figure out anything.
Lets hope it will be improved when you upgrade to an other engine.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2022-01-20 22:05:32

So, have to make a confession. Yesterday morning I completed the demo twice and then I bought the full game. Today I made it to level 5! So am definitely getting better, though I suspect luck was on my side a bit too. For what it was worth, I was down to 20 robots left, and I was flirting with getting an extra life, but a particularly dense swarm in one of the rooms killed me. It was one of those games where everything felt right, I didn't feel like anything was too cheap, I didn't have any crashes.

Hoping it keeps getting even better!

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2022-01-20 22:20:53

@67 Yeah, I've had that happen too. I think some of the tile colliders I'm generating have gaps that visibility seems to worm its way through. I'd be interested in knowing if the server room is immediately on the other side of the wall where this happens? I haven't paid close enough attention, though this is one of those bugs that's hard enough to debug blind that it only recently occurred to me that some of these odd issues may be connected. Sometimes I hear sounds that should be occluded but aren't, and it makes sense to me that this would be caused by a small corner gap in the walls letting sound from a nearby room through.

@70 good to hear. I kind of wanted that roguelike vibe, where there's some luck and some skill involved in getting a good run. I'm thinking of adding some sort of build mechanic, where getting a combo bonus lets you bump some  character stat so you can slowly build a character through the course of a run. So for instance, killing 2 robots in the bonus window might let you bump your healing speed, or shot distance, or shot speed, etc. by 0.5% or something. 3 kills might let you bump it 0.75%, 4 1.5, etc. So nothing huge, but maybe by level 4-5 you'd have enough of an edge to make it further. And if you struggle with one aspect, you can compensate by putting those upgrades into healing faster or something similar. It wouldn't be a huge bonus, but it'd accumulate over time, and would let you customize things for a fighter build, a quick-healing build, maybe even a stealth build if you can drop the range at which robots detect you, etc. Thoughts?

2022-01-20 22:48:33

@71 that sounds like a really neat mechanic! Just be careful that you don't make it too easy for the player to turn themselves into a practically indestructable killing machine big_smile. Then again, I'm  a little curious to see how/where you'll introduce the higher teer robots,, since the game can be tricky even without them present. The suspense of dealing with a patrolling robot or being fired on by a turret from 4 rooms away is gonna get lost if nobody ever gets far enough to see it. Maybe that mechanic would curve that? Idk, this will be interesting though!

Make more of less, that way you won't make less of more!
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2022-01-20 22:52:27

I think I would enjoy that one a lot, personally. Kinda encourages you  to take risks early on to do better later. As for the wall thing... I'm actually not entirely sure now. But I want to say I don't think so? I remember I did run about three or four rooms away, both times. So pretty unlikely, and the rooms weren't looping around in that kind of way.

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.

2022-01-20 23:03:14

It's been suggested previously that I make levels start a little smaller, both in dimensions and enemies. What do folks think about that? I'm hesitant to immediately act on suggestions, but that one was made before, and folks seem to not be doing as well as I do. I generally make it to level 5-6 with a handful of lives, and could keep on playing but have usually been going for an hour or so at that point.

For reference, the first level is 5X5 rooms and has 30 robots. I'm thinking of making it start 4X4 with 20 robots. They grow 1X1 rooms larger every 2 levels, and have 10 additional robots per level.

I'm still in the midst of my engine upgrade so haven't gotten to test this change out myself. If it feels too cramped then I may scrap it.

2022-01-21 02:50:18

I personally like the levels as is, especially if you're going to add those stats and other items. I usually make it up to level 4 or 5 myself, never 6 so far though.

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.