Comments - stuhp84

I actually have recently improved the keyboard lag you pointed out. I'm in the middle of a couple more updates and am hoping to put up a new build in the next week.

As far as your question about gamepads I think it depends on the developer and the type of game that they are trying to make. I prefer gamepads for platformers myself because I grew up playing platformers on console and am trying to make a game that 'feels' like it's from that era. (this is why I had been primarily focusing on these controls)

That being said I totally get that there's an audience of keyboard/platformer players out there. I want to do what I can to make those controls as tight as possible for you.

I think a big reason behind the trend of downplaying keyboard controls is that people often assume you don't have gamepad support unless you make it very clear that you do. So don't think of it as us saying "Don't use Keyboard/Mouse" as much as us saying "There are other options" to people who are less experienced with PC gaming.

Ultimately though I think it's just about creating the thing you are passionate about and figuring out the best way to make it accessible without having to cut corners.

Thanks for bringing these issues to my attention! I've recently learned about 'rewired' a plugin for unity that will help w/ gamepad accessibility and am hoping this will be a good first step.

As far as keyboard and mouse controls they aren't high on my priority list right now but I am planning on cleaning up these inputs before I launch the game.

The pause menu closing itself is another interesting bug I haven't yet experienced but it is now on my to do list. Sorry you had a frustrating experience I'm going to continue to try and make the more and more accessible over time.

One thing to note if you're experiencing weird input issues with other unity games you can reconfigure the inputs in the unity launcher. This can be a quick fix at times. That being said it's still on me to support more controllers.

Ha, it took me a while to get to this point but I've touched every aspect of the game now and have a dev/release plan in place so this next year is the big one.

it happens. Thanks for the catch!

That's embarrassing. So much for my attention to detail. Thanks for the catch.

I agree I like the idea of the original pose but since he's holding the swords "backwards" it was really weird animating them.

One thought could be having two phases/animations to the idle stance. Where he's more ready and has a more open aggressive pose like the first one until enough time has passed that he goes more relaxed.

Actually yeah I really like that idea because it's very sonic the hedgehog were his last phase would be that he's bored.

It's one of those things that a lot of people may not notice but just makes the game feel better.

Thanks! I just got your feedback. I really appreciate the time you spent on it and will keep you posted about newer builds!

Always some good feedback from you ev. I'm definitely working on climbing claws and possibly a grappling hook at least as upgrades. My initial thought with the wall jump/wall slide and double jump is I want vertical movement to be just as quick and effortless as horizontal movement.

So when he gets ganged up on by a few dudes with guns he has some options and jumping out of a building isn't really the tough part but jumping out while dodging enemy attacks might be. This is all done with the non-stealth gameplay in mind and that's really the tricky part.

I think your idea with the wall climbing is definitely better for the stealth aspect of the game which makes me think upgrade or maybe initial choice in the options before entering the level.

If the player wants to focus on stealth he might focus on choosing items like flash bombs and wall claws. But if he wants to just go more Beat-em-up he can grab armor and weapons and rely on the typical movement set.

I appreciate your thoughts and it's going to take a lot of balancing the features as I implement them. There's no doubt things will continue to change.

PS. He does jump pretty high (especially when combined with his double jump) but I think it feels right in game when you're playing. Maybe I can share a build with you soon and you can give me your thoughts. Do you have a controller by any chance?

PPS. If you're talking about Voice overs I'm really not sure. I like the idea of the enemies muttering things to themselves as they patrol (like a lot of other stealth games) but it comes down to finding the right voicer over talent as I'm not sure I could pull that off on my own.

I could interject more humor if they were speaking english but it could be cool if I found someone who could do some convincing japanese and then maybe add subtitles. It really comes down to the talent.

Drug Mule and Sunfox both made nice seamless loops so I'll probably have someone playing them both. For my other games I'll have the more true-to-life loops with the "Insert Coin" and Title screen for sure.

P.S. I haven't even remotely begun thinking about censorship but that's a very clever alternative to the title. Very nice!

This makes a lot of sense and I can see how it would be cool way to "bring life" to the background characters so they don't all seem like automated machines if they're studied by the player.

I think this could work really well in a crowd of people with the same animations but all randomly choosing a few variations so none of them sync up.

Thanks again for your thoughts you always inspire me!

yeah I didn't explain that very well. what I mean is for these animated GIFs the animations had to be pretty short but in game I can make them a lot longer. So far example the hoverboard guy currently idles twice,jumps and repeats.

In game I could make him idle longer, then jump, idle less time, then jump twice quickly, then idle longer, then play the jump pattern reversed so it looks like a weird different jump, and repeat.

Basically mixing it up a lot more to hopefully make the pattern less obvious to players while using the same amount of frames.

You always bring up good points/ideas ev. It's definitely better to be safe then sorry. Right now I'm very happy with the stealth system but before I populate the whole level with these objects I should make super sure that the work in all the situations I'm planning.

I'm totally digging this suggestion. I will definitely try this out when replacing the placeholder art. It's one of those "what do I have to lose?" scenarios. Thanks!

Absolutely, they should. These are only half the animations I have planned. I'm looking at a charge attack like you're talking about and possibly a ground-smash radius attack.

The key to this guy shouldn't just be straight forward hacking him up as much as slicing him in-between dodging his slams.

lol, yeah at some point I'll have to go back and make sure all my art is original.

ha, yes I need to add a blood pool around the arm and add a part 2 to this animation where if you hit him again it finishes him off.

Thanks!

I am writing the game in C# and that public bool idea is pretty much what I had in mind but you are doing a much better job putting into words.

The multiple stealth modes idea is good to think about since I am planning on having some enemy types that use more traditional stealth (blending into shadows) and I would like to have one of the harder levels be really dark so Neon looks more exposed giving the enemies "the advantage".

These states being coded instead of just being a visual thing could be the basis for some kind of "ninja sense" or "special item" that reveals enemies that are stealthed near the player. Lot of fun options to mull over.

I misclicked and deleted your reply so I'm reposting it...

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"I'm assuming you're writing the game in C#:

Won't it be easier to implement if you make just a new property for the class Neon (or however you have named it). It could even be a Boolean.

Example:
public bool isInStealthMode { get; private set; }

And you set it to true when Neon is in stealth mode (when he starts interacting with stealth object) and to false when he is not (when he stops interacting with such
object). And then the enemy/everyone-else should only check this property to know if Neon is visible or not.

You can even use it to have enemies that are stealthy too. Such as ninjas.

And if you want, you can go even further by making it into enumeration (enum) and have various states/modes: Normal, Stealth, LowProfile,... For instance, LowProfile could be for some enemies (assassins) that hide among civilians and are indistinguishable from them. You won't know they're the enemies until you get close to them and they take out their guns, and knives, and katanas..."

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Right now I'm in the beginning stage of AI and it's just checking the distance and range. The next step will be for the baddies to check if Neon is "stealthed" (which would be a check to see if he's interacting with an object tagged "stealth object") and if he is then it would stop attacking and just go back to patrol.

The knock-back thing is an awesome idea and something I'm going to look into as I add a more robust combat and collision system.

Really appreciate the thoughts evgenidb!

Very cool, thanks!

thanks!