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Another two weeks have past and another release of Hero is out! Iteration 11 is one of the bigger releases yet.
Go play it now!
Some of the changes are:
- You no longer walk above the clouds on map
- Day and night cycle affects light on map
- You can rest and be attacked during rest
- Combat should be a little smother and player movement should not be interrupted
- Quest log, where you can check out your active and finished quests
- You can speak to some enemies during fight to stop fighting
- Broken item feedback
- Level up feedback
- Encumbered feedback
- Ambient Occlusion provides nicer shadows (when using advanced shader)
- More options in settings, cheaper shaders and camera options
- NPC´s react when you attack their friends
- You can be ambushed when walking on map
- If two areas connect on map you can walk directly from one to the other from an area
And a big thanks to all who tested i10! Your feedback has been valuable and keeps me focused!
Daniel - Hero programmer
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Quick test
Looking good! I have some gripes though:
The camera moes when the mouse touches the edge of the screen; this is quite irritating and also conflicts with the fact that some gui is right at the edges of the screen
The camera control option WASD vs "camera sticks to character" doesn't seem to work, WASD always active.
Is level completion status really stored and restored in the savegames? I died in "Red Mushrooms" (which gets completed as soon as you enter it), and then when I loaded my autosave I was outside on the map and got a little "cleared" text immediately.
The game needs aspect ratio control (for fullscreen), otherwise fullscreen on laptops gets stretched. You could either do it by filtering available resolutions by aspect ratio, or by incorporating this into the projection matrix. Half-Life 2 and episodes handle this pretty well, check those games out if you are able.
The game is still way to hard, I'm finding myself running back and forth between a dungeon and Pale Village in order to heal myself, and each trip I kill perhaps a single skeleton (in for example Tower of the Dead). I have basically put all of my points on melee weapon skill, fighter aspect, and also some on constitution (when I completed the quest of becoming Iwan's squire).
I think this goes hand in hand with the game being too hard, but I find the ambushes to just be irritating and pointless. I find myself just running to the exit and ignoring the combat.
/johno
"you can't stop the change"
Yo, thanks for testing, More
Yo, thanks for testing,
More control options is probably a good idea...
I think(hope) the completed area feedback was just a view side cache...
Regarding the aspect ratio.. I do filter available resolutions. But the graphics driver sometimes stretches a 4/3 resolution into 16/9. Or do you mean an user settable option?
The main point of ambushes should be to make traveling more exciting. I also want to make some areas more dangerous than others and link this to quests, so you can clear areas from wandering monsters and ambushes by solving quests...
But the ambushes should be more interesting in themselves, containers with loot, more XP rewards. More geometry...
Its no wonder the game is hard, I still haven made any corrections to make it easier... I think this is probably one of the biggest issues I face and I got very little strategies to solve them... Many rpgs are very hard in the beginning or if you go to the wrong part of the map.
This is also linked to the way you should be able to spend your points on different skills... So it might be to easy if you find the optimal skill point placing strategy, but to hard if you spend your points on the "wrong type of skills". Solving this is not easy. I did not really like Fallout 3 and Oblivions way of solving this. (npcs values depends on yours).
Cache!?!?!?
Did you actually use the forbidden word!?!?!
Concerning aspect ratio: yes, Valve use a user setting that allows for 4/3, 16/9, 16/10, and changing that filters the available resolutions according the the aspect that the user wants. I find this to be extremely useful, but it does indeed require the user to know the aspect of their own screen.
You don't really have to filter the resolutions by aspect ratio, since anything other than the "optimal resolution" on a LCD screen will be blurred, but I guess the resolutions that are the correct ratio in themselves will be blurred less. Just as long as you take the desired (user selected) aspect ratio into account in the projection you will be fine.
Concerning difficulty I think that liberal drops of health potions and / or gold are a very good thing. I found that the original Diablo had an insane reliance on health potions, but at least that gives you something that you can affect. In Hero right now there isn't much you can do about being damaged, so if there were lots of health potion drops and / or gold drops (so that you can go buy health potions might) be a good solution.
Just don't forget that the shop-keeps need to have lots of health in stock (unlimited perhaps?)...
/johno
"you can't stop the change"
Did you notice that you can
Did you notice that you can rest on areas and in dungeons now? So some HP can be regained that way, but beware of the bandits!
Yes shops should have lots of potions, maybe a potion maker store should be in order...
I made a play through
I made a play through
Really nice stuff. The day/night cycles bring the whole world to life. Good stuff.
I did not find the game that hard. I ran into trouble the first time when I got the skull of death and that required some quirky movement and strategic dropping of the skull. That particular part felt more that I had some luck than actual skill.
I like the random encounters they break the monotony of traveling (possibly it's a bit too much right now).
At the end after aggravating sir Iwan and all the guards something funny happened. I went to the pale village to get healed (guards chasing me) I got healed and then killed by the guards. What happened next is somewhat weird:
I think that a random encounter was spawned as I died because the pale village turned into one of those scenes. Though I was dead so I was prompted to load my saved game.
However, in this saved game my health was now -3... though I could enter the map and the pale village the sprite being the dead hero kind of sliding along the ground.
Hopefully the save game is still ok so we can check it tomorrow
Feedback
NB I haven't read existing feedback from other folks, I'll do that once I post this comment (I like to keep my first set of feedback for an iteration in a sort of vacuum).
CHARACTER CREATION
Class specific perks should be ordered at the top of the list together, possibly collapsed into one option similar to how weapon specialisation is already.
Curiously, when I choose specialisation as a thief I was expecting bow skill to be one of the skills that would benefit, I guess I've played too much AD&D type stuff in the past.
Doesn't yet seem to be any indication of how fire magic skill ups improve your ability akin to how mousing over the other skills indicates a specific bonus of some sort.
AFTER CHAR CREATION
DIALOG
Umm, probably too early to comment on this stuff but:
"I spent 30 years in his service, spent countless hours with him." Seems like an odd sentence because it gives two different numbers, maybe the second half of that sentence could comment on/hint at the emporers personality instead, or some great deed hes known for performing?
As a general rule, comments on the nature of the text being spoken by a character should be made before the line of dialogue, for instance "The letter said he committed SUICIDE!" The sound of disbelief in his voice rose to shouting in rage "It's outrageous, he would NEVER do that!"
In particular, anything that involves a player special action such as telling a lie, should have "(Lie)" at the front of the line of text because you want the reader to understand that its an untruth as he starts reading it rather than as he finished reading it (Forcing the brain to reread the line for a moment to grasp the changed meaning).
OTHER STUFF
Stuff like trees and stone boulders should be set as unbreakable for the time being, especially when the player doesn't even have a weapon equipped suitable for chopping/cutting/smashing stuff. The smashing/cutting down of shrubs (etc) should generate noise that draws attention to the player (Maybe just a massive temporary stealth penalty, intelligent creatures might investigate noises in certain situations such as defending territory either as animal or as a guard).
I like that being in stealth means that monster that ambushed me can't see me so I get to reverse the ambush... Not sure if this is desirable though from a design standpoint.
Perhaps some locations should be pre-marked on the map, such as pale village (Maybe the player character had visited certain places as a child), indeed, places can be revealed on the map when a quest NPC gives the player directions to a place.
I find it hard to believe that a shopkeeper would sell broken swords, which seems to happen currently, afterall, a trader has a reputation to maintain. ;p
Theres something up with the code for the dialogue that pops up during character creation, I'd levelled just after speaking to the forrester, hit character button and the dialogue has popped up but without any text in it at all. Ahh I got it, you get notified of level ups, but the dialogue box used to notify you can break if you are in a conversation at time of level up.
Thieves are known for wearing leather armour, I think the strength requirement on leather armour (Currently at 3) might be a little bit too high... Studded leather on the other hand. In fact, most of the armours seem to have strength requirement of 3 so it looks like thats just a small oopsie.
Item named Cloth Helmet, it'd be better to call it a cloth hat or cap.
First aid should probably involve usage of bandages or some other factor that limits the players ability to have small fight after small fight and fully heal up that way.
The item description for the spear should probably make it clear it has the ability to reach over an empty square.
Consider reducing the rate at which weapons take damage, the spear has a lot more HP than the longsword, despite the spear being mostly made of wood.
The quest to rescue that dude from the skeletons should probably check to see if the skeletons are actually defeated (I ran past a bunch of them)... Quest design gets so awkward so quickly doesn't it!
Heh, just discovered the zoom in/out by accident.
The pathfinding is really struggling with the hilly landscapes in ambushes.
Ambushes should happen less often near civilised places like towns since they'd likely have regular patrols (Particularly along trade routes) to ensure the safety of citizens and ensure that unhappy citizens don't vote in a new mayor. Cleared ambush locations should be cleared from the worldmap if there are no items in the location that haven't be picked up.
I think the player should probably start with a full set of cloth 'armour'.
Consider being able to turn off the display of 'area cleared' in certain places, players might be able to work out theres a hidden area when they aren't normally supposed to.
Currently I can abuse usage of the bow by having time units relatively high and attacking the slow ogres... A count of how many arrows I have is needed.
Some NPCs might want to initiate a conversation and would walk up to the player.
Other NPCs might just be shouting stuff like "Pills here" (Sorry, too much Left 4 Dead) which would cause text to be displayed above the characters head.
Hmmm, I think thats quite enough for now, I ought to get some uni work done. I've done a quick test on the laptop as well and even the advanced shading mode runs fine on my laptop (Around 10-20 FPS) now.
A little late answer but
A little late answer but super-thanks @larington for your massive set of feedback. I agree on almost everything and just added a lot of it directly to my prio-list!
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