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Post by Yän on Jan 22, 2018 15:59:27 GMT -6
Kitti_W I know this phenomenon just too well. Sometimes when I compose for a while I can just become "deaf" to my own music and its shortcomings. It's definitely a good idea to show it to others occasionally so they can hear it for the first time and tell you whether the piece works on an intuitive level. Even coming back to your own composition after a couple days of hiatus can work wonders and might make you hear things you simply couldn't perceive while initially working on it. Either way, I'm looking forward to hearing some kickass basslines from you!
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Post by Yän on Jan 21, 2018 6:28:30 GMT -6
Kitti_W Damn, you've come very far with this indeed! I like how you revisit the main motif in altered ways in the new parts of your composition. Gives it a nice sense of continuity. One example for this is the little melodic line at 2:08. It's instantly recognizable and feels great even when you hear it for the first time. The part at 2:20 made me smile as it reminded me of the very beginning of Rhapsody of the Forsaken (Minera Prison Island). One thing that I think would improve the flow of the track and the moment of repetition of the loop would be to make the part right at 2:24 repeat itself (with some variations) for sth. like three bars or so. I say this because with that run at 2:20 it feels like you're starting a climax-part. It actually feels like a nice climax up to 2:29 when it kind of just breaks off and fizzles out to wrap around to the beginning. I think that this feeling wouldn't be there if this height of intensity lasted for a few more measures (not super long, just long enough to justify its existence as a climactic part of the song. Right now it just feels a bit too "stoppy-starty" Everything else feels just right to me. Really captures Yamane-san's style of composing! You're not too far from a finished result and I look forward to hearing that!
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Post by Yän on Jan 20, 2018 16:00:21 GMT -6
stonegolem Thank you for the recommendation! I bought and played it today and I love it!
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Post by Yän on Jan 6, 2018 20:18:18 GMT -6
"everything else is a bonus!"... like... even the game?
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Post by Yän on Dec 22, 2017 16:25:49 GMT -6
Maybe the trees are upside down because they grow towards the light (in this case the glowing fluid at the bottom of the cave)
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Post by Yän on Dec 21, 2017 15:54:09 GMT -6
By the way, this would be a perfect area to introduce Zangetsu for the first time.
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Post by Yän on Dec 21, 2017 15:48:06 GMT -6
I liked the glowing water a lot. The general vibe I'm getting from this scenery is like in the Catacombs in SotN with the lava at the very bottom. The Pig surprised me in a good way. It looks cute - though the cutest thing in this update was clearly IGA saying Merry Christmas in the end Love the soundtrack too! Will feel amazing once there are tons of challenging enemies to fight in this environment with this music. Awesome update all around!
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Post by Yän on Dec 20, 2017 15:42:13 GMT -6
Angel-Corlux I'm glad it was helpful! Thank you for giving us the opportunity to give direct feedback on this important topic.
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Post by Yän on Dec 13, 2017 17:08:03 GMT -6
Redogan I don't think it has to become unclear. Look at the damage numbers and their effects in Curse of Darkness. They look clear to me but definitely more animated and satisfying than what we currently have in Bloodstained. Right now the numbers just kind of pop out. I think that can definitely be improved. Even a fade or shrinking in the end would be better. I don't think the font has to change for that at all.
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Post by Yän on Dec 12, 2017 16:10:16 GMT -6
You fools! Clearly the android version is going to be the surperior one!
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Post by Yän on Dec 11, 2017 19:04:48 GMT -6
I have looked through the recent gameplay videos and noticed that the impact upon hits against enemies is pretty weak right now too. Some simple ways to change that would be to give the damage numbers some flavor (animate them, shake them, color them based on the type of attack, make them light up, fade out or shrink when they disappear, let them freaking explode!) and a quick shader effect making the enemy flash red for a frame or two on each hit you land. This was part of the 2D-Igavanias and I think it worked pretty well. It also showed us if our method of attack was strong (white) neutral (red) or weak (blue) against the enemy. In Curse of Darkness there were enemies that bled in bright red whenever you hit them. If they can manage to pull this off in Bloodstained, that would be awesome too!
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Post by Yän on Dec 11, 2017 18:51:26 GMT -6
Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this, Angel! I appreciate the thread. So... long-ish post incoming! Generally I'd say that variation is key. This of course means a lot of work to get unique animations and vfx going but it really pays off. This is how it worked in most Castlevanias after all and I think that worked pretty well because the enemies always had some moment of surprise to them at the first encounter and enemy death. Some suggestions / directions the team may go in: CastleDan mentioned that some enemies that crack into pieces (like skeletons) when you kill them would be very welcome. This of course works pretty well with 3d-skeletons as you can just spawn the severed bones as individual meshes and apply a force to them to make them fly through the air. I think that this is how it was in Curse of Darkness and it worked really well for me. I agree with CastleDan's comments on the matter and I think that there is definitely a way to make that work with the stained glass aesthetic (exploding into many pieces of crystallized stained glass). I think that it's not a solution for every enemy (there should generally not be one unified solution for every single one) but it could work on a variety of enemies. I had a lot of fun with the way zombies died in Dawn of Sorrow - they were my favorite zombies in any Castlevania ever just because of that! They would be slashed into pieces and the direction of the killing blow would act as a force on the individual pieces flying through the air. It was so much fun, giving a zombie an uppercut and seeing the pieces fly high into the air! I also like it when some enemies leave a permanent (as long as you don't leave the room) mark / corpse after you killed them. Seeing all the mayhem that you unleashed upon a place and its inhabitants feels badass (instead of just leaving an empty place behind). The blood splattered onto the environment when killing the dog enemies in the new Bloodstained Demo was already going in this direction and I'd love to see more of that. Death variety per enemy based on how you kill them or which bodypart you last hit (like with morte) is a great way to increase variety and a sense of mechanical exploration too. I'd like to see some ragdoll effects where the ragdolls are free to move outside of the 2d-space (enemy-corpses could fall off the side of a bridge down into a pit for example. Stuff like that always adds to the action and can make for some pretty cool situations. The death animations can often be part of an enemy's personality. Take Lossoth from SotN for example - his personality is basically all fire and slow movement so when you kill him he becomes a flame that slowly moves forward until it collapses. It just suits the character really well. If we have some kind of machine-based enemies they could die in huge explosions. I enjoyed that about Tin Man and the little robots in OoE. Basically I think that there is not one single shortcut that will work on every enemy in the game. Whoever makes a death-animation and its Vfx should think about what type of enemy we're dealing with and how to work with that.
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Post by Yän on Dec 11, 2017 14:09:25 GMT -6
I think that a game's size has not much inherent value. A game with a smaller area can be lots more fun than one that spreads the same amount of original content over longer stretches of repeated rooms and so on. Basically this means, I don't really care if we end up getting a castle with a bigger room count or anything. I think the fun that I'll get out of this game is not quantifiable by a number of rooms, square meters or something similar. I hope they don't make it a grindfest just for the sake of size.
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Post by Yän on Dec 3, 2017 18:34:59 GMT -6
Fully agree with all your points here. 1. Giving players an easy way to restart after a game over will surely make dying a less frustrating experience and keep more players in the loop (as opposed to just closing the game and potentially even never coming back) 2. Lecarde Chronicles 2 did this in a way that I liked quite much. There were actual bookshelves in the Castle library as well as in certain other key locations revealing more about the world and its story and sometimes also giving you warnings and hints (like the warning about the death room). This worked very well for me and it would be a cool way to sort of collect the information as you go. It'd be extra nice if the library pages were then collected somewhere in your inventory so that you could read them again whenever you'd like to. Another cool thing were the info-pages in the Lords of Shadow games. They had these super well done masterful drawings to illustrate whichever story or information was written on the page. If they have some concept art illustrating some of the Bloodstained lore, why not put it here? 3. I really like this idea. Done well this could give you some little clues on what this next area is going to be like. That way, the songs' titles could serve as a kind of subtitles to the main area title. Order of Ecclesia did something similar in its Castle I believe. 4. Markers will indeed be very helpful in Bloodstained. Given that we are no longer constrained to the resolution of handheld screens, they should definitely make it into the game. I also like the idea of writing down your own notes, although that really only works for PCs with keyboards or Touchscreen devices like the Vita. Controller setups could use onscreen keyboards but that's quite clunky. I didn't like that markers (or marker colours for that matter) were collectibles in Lament of Innocence. That didn't make any sense to me at all. I see markers more as a utility function rather than some gameplay advantage to collect. It felt similarily silly to something like "Hey, noticed that your main menu sucks? Well, collect five of these thingies hidden somewhere in the Castle to make it work better!" I think there is a reason why they dropped that idea and just gave you the markers upfront in Curse of Darkness. 5. Again, I totally agree on this one. I'm pretty sure that the game won't be so hard that you have to use 99 of anything at some moment in the game. So it's probably not balanced around needing the 99 cap. I'd like to think that in the demo, the 99 cap was just a temporary thing. 99 potions in your inventory just remove that feeling of tension when you're on edge fighting your way through a dangerous area to the next save room. 6. I think he shouldn't be a familiar because of the community vote which should be respected. However, he could make some kind of cameo appearance still... Who knows
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Post by Yän on Dec 3, 2017 9:35:18 GMT -6
B) I think Miriam's base design elements come more from a desire to give Miriam a softer edge than any outward appeals to "otakus". I think the origin of customization options more arose from the popularity of such features in SOTN that appeals to "otaku" as well. However, I admit there is still a lot about the customization options we don't know or how the system is narratively justified in-game. If we start seeing stuff like swimsuits then yeah you kind of lose all sense of plausible deniability LOL. There could be swimsuits - they'd just look kind of like this: static.messynessychic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/bathing18.jpg rather than being modern swimwear.
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Post by Yän on Dec 3, 2017 8:21:50 GMT -6
Pure Miriam I don't have much to add to what Freddy said other than that I largely agree with them and that I don't want this game (and by extension me as a player and fan) to be associated with this stuff. Some options are better left out to not water down a game's style, setting and vision and lower its standards in terms of class in my opinion. I don't want this game to appear in steam's "erotica" category and when I say to my friends "hey I like this game, check it out" I still want to be respected afterwards without having to mention that I disagree with the pandering and teenage-boy-sex-fantasy-fanservice in it. There are plenty of H-games you can play if you're into that kind of stuff and I won't judge you for it but I hope it will stay separate from Bloodstained unless there is a good narrative reason for it (point in case: Succubus). In addition to that, anything that brings Bloodstained closer to Konami's current vision of Castlevania as EROTIC VIOLENCE is not welcome in my eyes. Also, obviously these things take time and resources to develop (if you want to do it "well" just changing the character model might not even be enough) so I think I have good reasons to believe that they should instead spend their time on, you know, making the game better. If however the overwhelming majority of the community wants sexualized outfits... I'd be disappointed but outvoted.
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Post by Yän on Dec 3, 2017 6:37:26 GMT -6
freddythemonkey Thank you for your reply. I think that would be fine too. It would have to be modified a bit to fit within the game's style and preferably also the time period but then I think that's okay. It isn't some kind of teenage boy fantasy clothing which I'm really against and I expect better not only from IGA and his team but from the community as well. If I remember correctly, there are reasons to show some skin too as it will showcase the progress of the crystal curse. The corgi hat is just a fun innocent thing and I'm okay with that as well. For the game as a whole I hope for a mix of more serious stuff, cool stylish stuff and fun cute stuff like that.
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Post by Yän on Dec 3, 2017 5:19:39 GMT -6
I see your point about not using items that change Miriam's outfit too much... but I really doubt there will be much "backlash" from putting a few fan-service outfits in the game... personally I'm not into that stuff but I expect it to be in there because it's a Japanese game and that's just part of their culture... though Iga-sama usually keeps it to a minimum (or keeps the fan-service with badguys like succubi and evil type character. I think the problem that I have with the sexy outfits "because Japan" is that I felt that IGAs games have stayed classy most of the time and were better for it. When there was sexual or erotic stuff, there was a good reason for it. I totally get it for someone like Succubus - she's basically a sex demon. The Sexual stuff is absolutely a believable part of her character so it would feel off NOT to have it. With Miriam however, I don't see that. It just doesn't make any sense and the only reason why some people expect it is because she is female which I think is just outright sexist. We would not have this discussion if we were talking about a male character. My main problem is that this type of service to a fangroup that might as well just look up rule 34 just doesn't make any sense within the game's own narrative so it shouldn't be there. If it turns out that sexuality is actually a huge part of Miriam's personality and character and actually important to the storytelling and so on, I take will take it back. It's just that I currently don't see this with Miriam.
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Post by Yän on Dec 2, 2017 4:33:00 GMT -6
1) Do you think that fashion items will take up common equipment slots or they will just be cosmetic options at separate equipping slots (and possibly not offering any bonuses whatsoever)?I think (and hope) that they will be common equipment with gameplay relevance. I think so because it has been like that in SotN AND in the Bloodstained E3 Demo.2) For now, we can assume the fashion items and common equipment are two different things (but maybe they aren't). Considering common equipment, that shows up at her graphic, such as headpieces and boots (as weapons) and also scarves, what are your thoughts regarding that, maybe, the game can have visual things that wouldn't be good looking for you, but would offer such great bonuses that you would feel forced to use it? I think that this is kind of a weird sentiment to have. The weapons look different from each other too, yet I see no one complaining about that?? If they were purely cosmetic, I'd probably just not use them. I like that they are showing up on my character though as it helps with immersion and being reminded which kind of gear I'm wearing without having to look it up in the menu.3) Would you like fashion items as DLC? (Paid Downlodeable Content)No. I want to pay for this once and get playing afterwards. Any form of Microtransactions etc. would weigh down this game significantly IMO. Please don't do this, IGA!4) Some fashion items, like the bunny set or the maid headpiece, may be considered "too cute" for some, for a game that proposes itself to be gothic horror in nature. Do you think fashion items like that doesn't fit Bloodstained's overall atmosphere?I think that we should have both the funny and cute pieces as well as the more serious or cool stuff. I think that they've shown off so much cute stuff because that is more likely to "go viral" than the more down-to-earth items.5) What are your considerations about sexy costumes (such as swimsuits, bikinis, revealing clothes)? I don't want them. If you want porn, go watch porn. I'm not prude but I don't want this game to be watered down to such a low standard. But if they are going to be in the game, I'd expect them to have extremely low stats in combat, rendering them practically useless.6) The Rapier shown at the video has flowers at it's handle. Flowers, crystals and stained glasses are a common theme at the game and that also can be seen at it's weapons form earlier concept arts. Of course, that also makes these weapons really unrealistic. What are your thoughts regarding this? Style over realism, or realism over style?I definitely liked that design, it's one of my favourites from the new ones we've seen. It's not entirely unrealistic either. For all we know, the floral ornaments could be made of the same material as the blade. Also, I'd first talk about those humongous weapons or the fire-sword first, when talking about realism. All of which I'm cool with for this type of game, by the way.7) Knives and daggers, such as the one showed at the video, in most Igavanias, normally disappear after a while. You may find some good ones early-to-mid game and then, they just vanish. Do you think that all weapon types should have weapons during most of the game (like, all weapon types at early game, mid-game and end-game) to give the players the ability to use their favorite types through the whole game? Take in consideration that doing that requires resoucers, that could be used at making some weapons more unique and interesting than a myriad of less-detailed weapons in order to meet "all weapon types at all times" request.I think it could actually be a pretty cool late game weapon design: a knife with a really short range, pretty fast attack speed and really high damage values due to some holy enchantment or something. That would make it risky but rewarding to attack with because you'd have to get very close to enemies but it would be worth it if executed right.8) Bloodstained has, officially confirmed, 5 basic damage elements: Fire , Ice , Light ,Dark , and Thunder/Lightning . It's expected that, besides the Fire Sword shown at the demon, Bloodstained will probably have at least one weapon for each element. Considering the game's massive size (being IGA's biggest castle) it's very possible that Bloodstained will have tons of weapons. Would you like if all weapon types had at least one weapon for each damage element? Like, one dagger for each element, one sword for each element, one whip for each element and such? Again, like question #2, this requires resources and has a huge chance of creating less-detailed and interesting weapons, killing some possibilities of creating more unique and interesting ones.Would be cool, if they can still manage to make them look interesting and play well... I hope that the elements have some sort of gameplay relevance such as lighting an enemy on fire for a short while, constantly taking damage if they are weak against fire or slowing them down if they are weak against ice.9) Bloodstained seems to have 5 status effects, considering it's icons at the game's menu: curse , poison , slow , stone and stop . Igavanias of the past had few weapons with such effects, like poisoned swords or stone-turning blades. Would you like if Bloodstained had weapons with all the effects above? Maybe at most or all weapon types? Again, like question #2 or #3, always have in mind that this requires resources and the killing of potentially unique weapons. I think the more gameplay variety other than just numbers we can get out of the various weapon designs, the better. I don't see these status effects standing against unique weapons but rather alongside them (making some weapons MORE unique due to status effects). 10) A Katana, like the one in the video, was elected blindly at the "sword VS whip" contest to be one of the "most dangerous weapon in the game", that probably means that a Katana will be Miriam's "signature" weapon (like Alucard Sword is for Alucard and Claim Solais is for Soma Cruz), do you think that was a good idea, or would you like the dev team to have explained what the "sword VS whip" voting in the past really was, to let backers vote properly at what weapon they would like to be the game's "most dangerous weapon"? If you could choose, would you change the Katana for something else?I hope there is no definitive best way to play or best weapon. I hope that the values they give their endgame gear will encourage various playstyles instead.11) Quick question about Axes and Lances / Halberds, like the Axe and Lance that was shown the video. Axes are normally slow and strong, while lances normally has a big range but are rather weak and also not very fast. Not much players seems to enjoy such weapons, because Igavania games is all about pacing and delivering the right attack at the right time. How do you think Axes and lances could be more interesting to be used?I always liked the big overhead swing weapons. They were my most used ones in Dawn of Sorrow. They too get that risk-reward thing going on where you really need to make sure that you're attacking at the right spot to not get hit and get that devastating blow against your enemy. It's also cool that with these big axes you can hit enemies standing behind you at the start of the swing. Makes for some interesting gameplay.12) As we all know, Morte has no Shard because it isn't a "full-fledged demon". That opens the possibility that some other enemies will also have no shard. Last update revealed a Giant Rat. Do you think the Giant Rat will have a shard? If yes, what type and what kind of shard could it be?I think the rat will have a shard - look at it's forehead. Looks like a crystal / shard to me... I think this would be a cool familiar, similar to the skull spider in Order of Ecclesia.
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Post by Yän on Nov 30, 2017 17:45:38 GMT -6
Lovely update! The sunglasses at the end of the video were pretty funny. I like this hairstyle too, really gives her look a different "attitude". The new weapons looked really cool as well. I agree with Dan that there should be a fiery sound for the fire sword though. I like that rat enemy. The eyes are damn creepy! Could be a cool familiar too.... maybe?
The promises of big surprises in December sound cool but I'll not get too hyped up about it. Let's just see what comes when it comes. This update for instance surprised me - and I was happier about it than I would have been, had it been announced as the biggest thing ever.
To read that they are in a crunch period seems a little disconcerting. Are they not on track so they have to do crunch time? I wish for the team that they don't overwork themselves even if it results in a later release. Take care!
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