Collateral Souls (0.11 Beta)

[jedislight]

In development modern afterlife RL. Feature complete and technically Alpha, it is still very playable. Any and all feedback is appreciated.

Game Blurb: Collateral Souls is a roguelike game meant to be quick to play and easy to pick up. Battle your way through an unexpected afterlife – hunted by angels and demons alike. Modern weapons like rifles and shotguns add a unique ranged combat system not seen by many games of the genre. Ascend mortal ability and use divine weaponry for your own survival. Die again. Repeat. Who said the afterlife didn’t have an afterlife?

Website:http://procrastinationsoftworks.com/wordpress/?page_id=253

[Avagart]

For now - I played once. Looks nice and stylish, but very unpolished. Maximize screen works weird and isn't possible to back to normal window; interwals between turns should be shorter - movement would be smooth. Action is very 'rigid' now. 'Info baloons' looks great, but unfortunately font is a bit blurred.

[jedislight]

Thanks for the feedback!

I haven't actually played in fullscreen mode much so I haven't focused on getting it to look good. Looks like it's stretching instead of fitting to the original aspect ratio, I'll definately look into getting that feeling right.

The turn time is something I have been working on, it's actually not a set interval - I'm just doing a lot of lighting calculations each frame. I should be able to push some more performance out of it now that I know it's still an issue.

[jedislight]

Spent a few hours optimizing turn update is 5x faster now on v0.5.3 . If anyone else sees a lot of delay I can look at squeezing even more out of it.

[Avagart]

A lot better! But in the meantime something bad happens to font.
http://i.imgur.com/dZ25sr2.png
http://i.imgur.com/PJPZFex.png

For comparision - 0.5.2:
http://i.imgur.com/XG2frgA.png

edit: Strange thing. Dark places are... are 'covered by dark', so even walls '#' aren't displayed. After defeating, I think, the last monster 'G' on first level, whole map was displayed (all tiles, including '#'). When I started going to stairs (through previously darkened tunnel), wall symbols disappears again.

edit: dungeon level 4 (probably); red 'D', yellow 'H', white shoot and something violet. Game slows down, then crashes:

Code: [Select]


___________________________________________
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object FX_Tentacle:

Fatal Error: Can not create vertex buffer of size 65536 bytes
27430 vertex buffers allocated with total size of 1760352 KB
at gml_Script_draw_bezier
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Script_draw_bezier (line 0)
gml_Object_FX_Tentacle_Draw_0


[jedislight]

I've addressed your feedback in minor update 0.5.4

Things getting darker was the fog of war rendering brighter than the minimum visible rendering. So a tile that you can see, but is completely dark won't show up at all. However once you can no longer see it, it will be sem-bright to show you 'remember' it. To help out with this I've added a subtle gray background to things you can only see because you remember them. Hopefully that helps make sense of the display.

I've also added a 'Smooth Rendering' option to the settings. It shouldn't have a noticeable effect if the game is running in its native resolution but helps fix the font issue you saw between 0.5.2 and 0.5.3 when its not.

The crash was a stupid error on my part. The curves I was drawing for that weapon effect were using far too many sub-divisions (1k) which puts a lot of load on the machine for little benefit. I've adjusted that effect to use only 20 subdivisions and fixed up the colors so it looks less blocky and better overall as well. So, win - win.

Thanks for helping me out by playing and providing feedback - really appreciate it.

[Avagart]

Thanks for helping me out by playing and providing feedback - really appreciate it.

Hey, no problem

I think there is misunderstood about darkened tiles. This was good effect, and, sorry, it looks better without current 'remember mapping' (because now it looks weird - I see something, but when I move closer, it disappers, and shows again only if I would move even closer.

What I had in mind in previous post? For several turns whole map (every tile) was displayed. Darkened tiles wasn't darkened anymore and was shown as every other tile. Seems be bug of fog of war, not design problem.

[jedislight]

Well, I think it helps so... turning it into a setting so  the player can choose either way they prefer

I've seen the 'whole map revealed for a few turns' issue before but only when I jump around a level using debug cheats. I have never seen it do that in a normal playthrough. I'll see if I can reproduce it on my end and fix it up.

Thanks for the clarification.

[jedislight]

I've added a lot since my last update here. Lore, map theming, an ending, balance tweaks. Moving the project up to Beta - it's bound to still have some bugs and some minor issues but it's got all the features I planned on now. Still going to continue adding depth to what's there over time, but trying to avoid new system to keep the easy to learn coffeebreak feel.

[kipar]

Great game imho. I was charmed from a first sight.
The minor problems I see after several plays and winning are
1. lack of running\at least autorepeat of keys, so moving a long distances is boring. Due to lack of running game also feels "laggy".
2. Low number of feats and some feats being overpowered.

The concept of character development is great, and existing feats are brilliant, but really - Light armor that deals tiny damage to enemies near you vs. demon armor upgrade that allow to hide in shadows and so kill all ranged monster without taking damage at all. I think it is obvious which is better.
Vampiric shotgun imho is better then other weapons too, but i agree that sniper rifle with mentioned armor can be nice too. I don't see a use for an assault rifle though.

[jedislight]

I'm glad you liked it!

@running - I've gotten this feedback before and I'm going to put it on the list to solve. Since tactical movement is important to gameplay I didn't want it to end up like TOME's auto explore, but think I may have gone too far in the other direction. I'll look at autorepeat and other options to make long treks less of an interrupt to gameplay.

@ feat(perk) balance/count - I'm still working out the details, but many of the perks are quite good in very specific usages. Solar Armor (passive area damage) makes you immune to melee enemies as long as you have room to backtrack and Shadow Armor(stealth) is useless on outdoor maps where "the sun shines brightly". Not discounting your experience with them, just pointing out that the balance is delicate and slow to find adjustments on. For example, I was thinking that Aura(light radius) was a silly dump perk but my analytics shows it's one of the top 3 perks globally.  As for the number of perks, I'm happy with the number currently but I think there could be more room for exclusive options. I'll think on it and see what I come up with.

@Weapon balance - You are very likely correct on the weapon balance, a few versions ago assult rifles were the only valid option and I may have overbalanced away from that. I'll take a look and see how things could be improved.

Thanks for playing and all of your feedback, it's truly invaluable.

[kipar]

For example, I was thinking that Aura(light radius) was a silly dump perk but my analytics shows it's one of the top 3 perks globally.

It is required for the night vision (at least in a version i played) and it is to be taken at some level anyway, when all other perks already taken, just because there is no alternatives left.

[jedislight]

Version 9.0 released

Key repeat added for covering long distances, seems to make exiting a cleared level much less frustrating.
New map types added for broader variations on gameplay.

No perk changes at the moment looking into that area in detail will require some time, but now that I have flushed out these changes from the update queue I can start looking at it more closely.

[huw2k8]

https://youtu.be/aNjswSC9tMw

Did a letsplay of collateral souls recently, it's a great game!