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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Oct 10, 2017 3:54:31 GMT -6
SoTN was kinda weird for me since it came out during a period of a couple years when I had no regular internet access. I still had a Nintendo Power subscription back then, so I knew what was going on with the N64 but the other systems on the market were basically black boxes that only got opened on the rare occasion I made a trip to the nearest city. I'd gotten a PSX mostly for Squaresoft and picked up a few games between them and Capcom, but I didn't even know SoTN existed until I saw it at the store one day. I'd played the series from the start, and had most recently hit up Dracula X on the SNES, so I was expecting more of the same. I was off by quite a bit. XD
The thing that blew me away the most was the combination of RPG elements and Metroid-like gameplay, which was an extremely novel combination at the time. I don't know if it's just because it was the first of the style I played, but none that have come after felt quite as complete; even after beating the game I still found some areas in the inverted castle I'd forgotten to check out, and it felt a bit bigger than it's descendants. I loved the variety of weapons and special quirks that so many had, and still remember laughing like an idiot when I stumbled into a Crissaegram and tried it out. A lot of the music has stuck with me(I sometimes hum the data load screen tune), and I even still have the MP3 of Lost Painting that I generated using a tool that could rip/convert the audio format Konami was using at the time into WAV. The hidden audio CD track was another really cool touch; I'm still sort of torn about whether it could have been better to get to hear it during normal gameplay, or if it was best to be a completely hidden bonus.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jun 9, 2017 16:46:05 GMT -6
This is looking pretty damn sweet. Also; BOOKMERANG!
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Apr 3, 2017 23:46:27 GMT -6
Have you played Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows? Haha, yeah I have it. In the first draft of the post I mentioned "aside from Plague of Shadows", but figured I'd change the sentence to specify I meant non-turn-based RPGs in particular. I really liked the way you combined fuse and explosion types to get the types of bombs you wanted. There were some pretty good ways to exploit their mechanics for shenanigans.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Apr 1, 2017 23:16:57 GMT -6
I've always dug alchemist-type setups with bomb potions and so on, and try to use them(i.e. Diablo II exploding flasks), but every mmo/action rpg game I've played that toys with the idea doesn't do more than toy. They're never viable for late-game combat, only helping out early on. I'd love to come across a game where the idea is completely realized.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Mar 29, 2017 18:51:54 GMT -6
It would definitely be cool to have stained-glass replicas of things like the blue magic rose or Miriam's emblem. Don't skimp though, get proper colored glass for it. I've seen some "stained glass" work in recent years which was just normal clear glass with glaze/film cured onto it, and it's noticeably inauthentic. From the short list, tarot cards would be good. They're fun to have around, and some themed after Bloodstained, combined with elements of the Solomon demons/alchemy, would be a good match. I think pre-painted cold casts of Miriam would get a lot of attention, but the production costs on that vs how many people would drop $100+ for them would probably be too prohibitive to seriously consider the option. Ah, another thought I just had. Letter openers shaped like the shard images used on the forum index, the bladed edge along one side running to the tip, available in each color of shard from the game.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Mar 29, 2017 18:37:57 GMT -6
I like the idea of lore books or wall hints, but I'd take it a step further and make them insane ramblings from someone that sounds like they've been snorting ground-up shoggoths. Hahaha, or what if they disappear after you read them, then at some point you learn that the messages are put there by souls of other adventurers trapped in the walls, complete with one that you might not have understood the first time you saw it where the message is begging you not to read it because that will cause it to cease to exist.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Mar 29, 2017 18:32:09 GMT -6
I'd like to see a yo-yo like weapon. We're talking oversized cord, with a giant sawblade-type yo-yo head. You could tap the button for something approximately like a whip attack, but give it some weight and momentum where if you hold down the button and then press on the d-pad, you can rapidly swing it around back behind and above you before it returns. If you want to get really fancy, allow "tricks" where a combination of swings has an auto-finisher; say you go forward, behind, forward, behind, and she then goes into a whirlwind animation. I've always liked this weapon type when it showed up in other games like Startropics, The Goonies 2, and Kirby Super Star. I also hope there's a whip that causes enemies to explode when you kill them with it, damaging other enemies right next to them.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Mar 29, 2017 18:10:03 GMT -6
I prefer just using the weapon, but kicks would be fine as long as it's a seamless and rapid animation. Or for bonus points, put in a gimmick shard that doesn't seem to do anything, but when you go to destroy a wall Miriam puts her hands on her hips and stares at it disapprovingly, causing it to crumble.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Mar 29, 2017 18:02:27 GMT -6
1) Minimalist is probably the way to go as with most of the extra characters, though it would still be good to give her a little dialogue. Doesn't have to be anything special, just her own thoughts at entering new areas or facing particular bosses. Certainly it would be great to really flesh her out if possible, but I understand that wouldn't likely be in the cards. 2) Although I usually prefer the full-scale powerups used for the main characters of this sort of game, one theme I've noticed throughout is that the extra characters are often "normal" humans. It makes an odd but fitting match then when they don't get as strong, and the upgrades are fewer in general. I'm not sure if that was ever the intent, but it's how it's always appeared to me. I can't say I feel strongly one way or the other, I suppose. 3) I'm hoping she's magic-centric, with a holy power theme. I had a lot of fun doing an all-Charlotte run back in PoR, since those sorts of effects have generally been sub-weapon status with limited use where you still spend most of your time slashing/smacking/whipping away. There are all sorts of neat things you could do with that, like putting up a golden bubble shield that blocks or reflects projectiles, an aura for immunity to infernal flames, good old holy water, summoning cherubs as archer options, or a crash attack that has her fire off a bunch of chaser beams of light that snake around the area blowing evil to kingdom come. Another thing that could be interesting would be to have her rely on some kind of fist fighting technique, with the added twist that she's doing it with a rosary or other religious artifact wrapped around her hands that she strikes with. Like it wouldn't be that devastating to another person, but she can punch in a werewolf's chest cavity or whatever because HOLYFIST. To that end, and to answer the overall question, I'd rather she stays as a mostly side thing not just to make sure the bulk of effort is put into the main campaign, but also focus more on her mechanics than anything else about her. Awesome if there's time/interest to make her even more than that, but don't stretch yourself too thin.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Sept 8, 2016 18:55:46 GMT -6
While they banged out that E3 demo fast, I still would have been really surprised if they had the game out any earlier than the end of next year. The timeframe they gave today is a lot closer to what I expected.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jun 26, 2016 12:32:00 GMT -6
During the first few frames of falling after walking off a platform, when Miriam tucks her legs in, it's still possible to jump. I'm not sure if this is actually a bug or not, but even if it is you might want to leave it in as a technique for people to find on their own to get a bit of extra horizontal jump distance. Also, bit of a hurr-durr obvious thing, but if anyone else out there is using xinput wrappers for their controllers be sure to use the 64bit versions. This caught me up for a bit since I'm still so used to only utilities coming in 64bit flavors I didn't even think to pay attention to the 32/64ishnes of Bloodstained. Squirrel Taskmaster Did you actually get this to work completely? When I tried using the 64-bit version of x360ce, it seemed to work well at first, but then I exited the game and then it didn't work right. After that, some of the button mappings worked correctly and others didn't. I gave up and went back to using a regular 360 controller, but sometimes when using that I get unwanted inputs causing me to run to the left. Yeah, it worked for me. Dropped a fresh copy from the git into the folder with RON-Win64-Shipping.exe(not Bloodstained.exe, that only seems to be a launcher for the other one but remains running and I have no idea what it's up to), ran it, let it auto-detect the controller from the internet database, and fired the demo up. Let me launch it again and see if anything changed... yep, still fine. Really weird that the mapping would go off like that. Don't know what to try other than confirming the mappings in x360ce again.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jun 25, 2016 23:28:58 GMT -6
During the first few frames of falling after walking off a platform, when Miriam tucks her legs in, it's still possible to jump. I'm not sure if this is actually a bug or not, but even if it is you might want to leave it in as a technique for people to find on their own to get a bit of extra horizontal jump distance.
Also, bit of a hurr-durr obvious thing, but if anyone else out there is using xinput wrappers for their controllers be sure to use the 64bit versions. This caught me up for a bit since I'm still so used to only utilities coming in 64bit flavors I didn't even think to pay attention to the 32/64ishnes of Bloodstained.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jun 24, 2016 10:36:38 GMT -6
One thing I don't think a lot of the people that feel Miriam attacks too slowly are remembering is that weapons in these games have always had vastly differing attack animations. Early weapons typically did swing out a bit slower and more simply, and later on you'd get really powerful things that do a lot of damage but have far less speed, or other weapons with unique striking paths, some that are very quick, etc. It's always been a technique to jump just a bit to swing in the air rather than attack on the ground to keep moving while hitting, and only a few of the strongest utility weapons allowed unrestricted movement while attacking. That's just weapons mind you, a lot of magic-type abilities could be used without stopping. You had to learn your hammers from your screwdrivers from your socket wrench, and use the right tools for the job.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jun 23, 2016 15:17:08 GMT -6
Love it so far, even for an alpha it's showing an immense amount of care. Let's jot down the things that stood out for me in particular: I really like how responsive the backdash is. Most games with something similar to that have an immediate period of not being able to attack(or move in some cases) that makes the backdash really situational and irritating. I've gotten in the habit of never using the feature in games that have it, due to that. This one flows very cleanly, thankfully. I can understand why people don't like the idea of everyone backdashing everywhere because it's faster though, maybe have a fatigue thing going where you can backdash like it is now three times, but then after that Miriam becomes winded and has a wind-down after each backdash until you stop doing it for a few seconds. The jumping seems like it could just the tiniest smidgen more height. I only say this because of the room transitions where you jump up and on the next screen land on a drop-through platform, but if you don't hold the button all the way through to get what's currently the max height you fall a bit short and plop back down the previous screen. Or instead, change those transitions to lower the thing you land on bit, or put Miriam into a state where she automatically pops up just high enough to land on them when you travel upwards if you're not holding the button at the time. Other than that it's on point. If you want to go the extra mile with directional attacks, add a toggle mode for them. Mode 1 could be what it is now, using the right stick to aim anywhere in a 360 degree circle, and mode 2 would be binding it instead to the dpad/left stick. In the case of the dpad, you'd only have the option of firing in eight directions, and lose the ability to move one way while firing another, but I know I'd rather control it like that personally. I kinda agree with others that the monsters were on the easy side, but on the other hand this is just an alpha build and a very basic demo of what would more or less be the intro stage, so it's not as if things should be particularly dangerous in the first place. For the boss, I'd suggest not binding its tentacle HP to its overall HP. On a couple of the runs I've done I was able to kill it hitting the arms on the deck. For more of a sense of directness, I think it would be better if they simply had their own HP, maybe slowly inched towards the middle taking away your room to move, and you needed to take them out to get back to hitting the main body. I also liked how colorful the boss was, heh. I figure it's actually fitting considering the theme of demonic crystal glass in multiple colors, and if you look at the crystal growths on the boss it's not a stretch to imagine that she used to be human before becoming consumed and turning into that. I also simply like a lot of well-defined color in games, swathes of washed-out pastels or the ever-famous Brown and Bloom aren't my style. Speaking of the crystals, the animation/cutscene that Miriam does when you pick up a new power kicks ass. Another cool thing I noticed was that the dullahammers have a blind spot in front of them where they won't hit you with their swing. I thought that was a nice touch, and hope to find more critters with opportunities like that. I don't know what all controls will be present in the finished game, but if one or two buttons out of L1/L2/R1/R2 aren't used for anything else it would be handy to let us assign them as quick-use slots for consumable items. Will that stillframe of Miriam on the status screen change when you change equipment in a later build? If not, it might look a bit cleaner to use a drawing of her in that pose instead, but if it's going to be dynamic the 3D version there now makes perfect sense. On the more technical side, I've launched the game and run through the whole demo several times now with no crashes. I do operate with Aero disabled though, so I ran into the mentioned slowdown in some of the larger rooms(the two large cargo holds towards the end, and the first outside deck area where you fight the dullahammer in particular). Hopefully that's just an early problem that'll get ironed out as the game becomes more optimized. The game doesn't remember last window position either, looks like it's defaulting to a spot that centers the game window according to the default resolution(if you increased it to 1920x1080 for example, you have to drag it a bit to get it all onto the screen again the next time you launch the game). Speaking of dragging it, the mouse cursor goes AWOL while you're playing entirely, forcing you to alt+tab to see it and then snag the top bar for moving. Might also consider making the game's first launch be in windowed mode instead of fullscreen too, since a lot of the more robust antivirus/firewalls/etc will block new applications from doing stuff until you ok them. For some of those, if the game has already gone fullscreen it can prevent you from seeing the popup and possibly force you to sit and wait for it to time out before you can do anything. The game also isn't utilizing xinput dlls the way they typically would be. Using replacement dlls like the ones generated with x360ce, they simply have to be in the same directory as the executable you're running for them to be used, but Bloodstained isn't picking them up at all. I don't know if that's something in particular with UE4(or build options set for the demo), or if the two obvious executables for the game aren't the ones I should have been targeting. For anyone using an XBox controller of some flavor it won't matter, but for everyone else using an input wrapper to get other brands of controllers to be treated like the XBox ones it'll be frustrating. At least in my case, I think the dpad on the XBone/360 sucks and insist on a PS controller for 2D gaming. Upon further testing, I realized I was using 32 bit versions of xinput, while the game is 64 bit. Derp. I'm not used to anything but utility apps bothering to ship as 64 bit, so I didn't even think about it until today. (Appropriate)Replacement xinput dlls work absolutely perfectly.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jan 9, 2016 23:38:29 GMT -6
I didn't want to attract attention to the shoulder thing because everyone was happy for an update; that being said, I too am still puzzled if it will remain, I am hoping for bare shoulder for final product. Maybe the tattoo has to stay uncovered for some reason. Magic streams coming off it or the like, that would shred/burn clothing placed over it, so she has to wear things that will allow her to keep it well-exposed. The shoulder covering could just be there as a strap to help hold her clothes up given how much running and jumping she's doing.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jan 9, 2016 23:31:42 GMT -6
What might be cool would be heavy plate, kinda paladin-like in theme, except instead of being made of metal the plates are pieces of different colors of glass. Maybe even add a kind of Iron Man-esque touch, with a clear window over her heart that you can see her glyph tattoo slightly glowing through.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jan 9, 2016 23:23:54 GMT -6
Without question. The whole rotten mess with Konami throwing its games business under the bus to pawn pachinko machines aside, these sorts of crowd-funded games are doing so well because the large publishers have all but put several genres through the wood chipper in pursuit of the latest AAA shovelware fad. People still crave games of these types, and this is about the only way they're going to get them.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jan 9, 2016 23:17:04 GMT -6
Heh, don't forget the "standing on a ledge teetering" animation.
One of my favorite idles is the humming dance Marina does in Mischief Makers. Not sure anything like that would fit Miriam though, unless they have the time to do per-weapon class idles and there was an instrument set.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jan 9, 2016 23:04:52 GMT -6
I completely prefer orthographic. While I know the game is being art'd as a 2.5D setup, something that can still evoke 2D sprite work would be ideal for my tastes. That said, going with perspective in some rooms would definitely be a benefit. Say for example, an area that's a catwalk between two towers, and you see the outside terrain panning beneath you while you cross it.
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Post by Squirrel Taskmaster on Jan 8, 2016 18:55:00 GMT -6
It's really a bit of a tie for me, but I think PoR slightly beats out the others by sounding the most like the earliest games in the series. Not as in the usual remixes you get in each game, but rather I feel the music fits the themes for 1-3 so closely that I wouldn't have been shocked if you said the PoR soundtrack was new music being added to them for whatever reason.
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