Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

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gagaplex
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by gagaplex »

JPrice wrote:
ranger_lennier wrote:What's the dialogue some people have mentioned? I don't remember anything that I could distinctly make out. I remember the baby kind of mumbling at one point.
I think we're mainly talking about at the end of the first level when the the character says something like "Oh god...", that and the scream when you die I suppose. I might be missing something else but there's not much dialogue anyway hahaha
I'm unsure but I think the babies are saying something resembling Adam when they point at you. Although it sounds more like "Aaah-duh"-
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matt
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by matt »

Wow, thanks for all the feedback and suggestions! It's going to be a bit challenging to reply to all of it here, but I'll do my best.

Stefan8000:
Giving the baby a baby voice is an interesting idea. I'll have to think about that.

For the grave scene, there will be another mini-nightmare (a scene of graphic mutilation like in the trailer) in between the wreath and the wake up, which I think will help make that seem less sudden.

We have like 20 or so variations of dolls. The problem is that we have like a hundred dolls in that level or something. It would be difficult to make them all original. Perhaps in a later art pass we can go back and add more.

JPrice:
your ideas with the cupboards are quite good, but that would be a lot of work. Maybe I can do a solution with the timing or something that makes this less of an issue. I'll try that first and see where that gets you.

The monster encounters are set up to discourage running when you don't need it. If you use up your stamina when you are just exploring, you may be punished. It seems like that part of the design is working.

RightClickSaveAs:
The closets are spaced such that you can usually make it to one once they spot you. That isn't always the case - if you are spotted when one is right on top of the cabinet you are going to, you probably won't be able to make it back to the previous one, but we did a lot of testing if you run or walk from the start point, there is usually a way you can survive. If you wait a while for the baby to be in a random point in its patrol, it can be a lot harder, and your best bet is just to hide and wait it out. Perhaps you can try again and see if you can evade them? What I always do is NEVER run, so I have maximum stamina, and then run as soon as they appear on screen, and it works for me.

Gagaplex:
Adam's name has been changed to Thomas as per the backers suggestions. That isn't actually reflected anywhere in game presently though.

AWESOME! We had a debate on the dev team how long it would take someone to figure that out, and you beat all of our expectations. haha

I agree that the portraits don't quite match the style of the rest of the paintings. I think there are a few reasons for that:
1) They are done by Chris, and the other portraits are done by Adam. Each artist has a bit of a distinct style, so they are never going to match perfectly.
2) The portraits of actual people are a bit less stylized since they have to look like real people.
I think we are going to have to be smarter about placement and making them feel like part of the world rather than stamping them everywhere like in the current build.

The cellar is a funny story. Joe added wine barrels and stuff like that, but I felt that it looked better empty and deserted.

The axe/candle ordering thing is a bug, and we'll fix it. I had it written up for Dan a while back, and he said he fixed it, but apparently not.

I think when I get a chance, I'm going to prevent walking backwards in the long hallway. I've been really busy.

I don't think we can do anything to prevent people from making things look lewd on the internet. Teabagging started because there is a crouch move! While I wouldn't be pleased if that became a popular gif or whatever, I am not sure I can prevent that. I was planning on putting some work into smoothing over some animation things, which might help that. Who knows.

I'll have Joe take a look at the attic.

The differences in the room layouts are intentional. Basically, we don't want the start of the level to feel same-y, so even though the layouts are the same in 1 and 3, they look different because 3 is a destroyed version.

Hmmm.. I'm not sure. We were planning on having huge colored cabinets. I want to make sure it is very obvious you can hide there. I'll give some thought to see if we can reduce that.

There are specific bedrooms you respawn in, but they are not marked or indicated in any way. I feel like if you knew there was a "checkpoint" bedroom, then you'd know there is an enemy encounter coming up. (We have a checkpoint before every enemy encounter, so the player isn't punished much for losing) Is there a reason you'd like to see respawn room marked? I liked that they are unmarked because you don't know what to expect.

Were you trying to run past the baby monsters? You can't do that. You have to hide.

The idea behind having closets in hallways without monsters is so that you don't know what to expect. If we do a 1 to 1 correlation, then you'll know you need to hide when you see one. If we mix it up a little, then you can be surprised.

The door trigger is actually fairly large, so I don't think you necessarily have to walk upwards to activate it. Once you activate the door trigger, you are "safe". We can tune the trigger for it though. Your suggestions were good.

The shaking is for atmosphere.

Regarding the breach in the wall - I have plans for that. (Much further down the line though)

Harry Sunderland:
For reaction videos, do you have dropbox? It's free, and should give you enough space to send me the video.

More JPrice:
It's possible we could do that or do something along the lines of Gagaplex's suggestion. It seems like we do need to do something to make it a little easier mechanically. I'll have Joe take a look and see what he thinks is easier.

Ranger_Lennier:
I don't think you missed much. There are some side rooms, but there isn't anything super awesome in them but more dolls. Long term, I am hoping to have more interactable things in the level (and in the side rooms), but we'll have to come back to that when (if?) we have time.

The paintings definitely repeat a lot, but we are planning on creating a bunch more as we build out new levels, so then we'll do a pass and put new paintings in every level.

Jprice:
At the end of the first level, he says "Gabby no", but he mysteriously gains a Puerto Rican accent for that line, so it is a bit harder to hear. Our sound designer recorded a lot of the stand in VO. :)
Actually, I recorded some as well that hasn't gone in the game yet. We are putting a scene in the beginning of A Coming Storm that will be kind of confusing and weird. :-D

Gagaplex:
It originally was "da da". I think Eduardo changed it to Mama, which works too. In general, I think it's fine if people don't know what the baby is saying. I have several godchildren, and when they talk to me, I can't always understand what they are saying either.

Okay. I think I responded to everyone's questions. Please ask again if I missed one. Thank you so much for playing the game and really thinking long and hard about how to improve the game! You've given me a lot to think about.
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
ranger_lennier
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by ranger_lennier »

I thought Adam was just crying at the grave.

Will there be an option for captions?
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matt
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by matt »

Yes there will be, but we haven't gotten a chance to do that yet. We will support other languages with subtitles but not audio. Doing VO was something not originally in the budget, but I'm trying to put in some extra consulting hours to make it happen because I feel like it'll really improve the game. Doing it in every language is too hard... :-/

Also, post play survey! If you could fill this out, it would be greatly appreciated. :)

Thanks everyone!
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by JPrice »

Awesome to see that you're responding to everyone Matt!
Also yeah I figured that my suggestions would be hard to implement but I figured I'd just add them anyway hahaha

I like some of the stuff the others have suggested though so you should go with that if it's easier :D
I'll give the Alpha another playthrough just to double check things more thoroughly as I've only played it once so far but I think it's pretty unanimous so far that it's been a success so congrats! :)
"Always look on the bright side of life"
Check me out on Steam if you like! - http://steamcommunity.com/id/JPrice321/
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matt
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by matt »

Thanks! I'm really pleased with the reception so far. I only have 13 responses to the survey, but it'll be interesting to see what the consensus is with the difficulty. Either way, I think I'll clean up the chase segment. It's funny because those are issues I'd never notice on my own because I always know what happens on the chase segment and where to run, so I've never had a problem opening that door. Focus testing is really essential, and I tricked you all into paying to test the game for me. Mwahahah! :-P
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

Found a couple bugs by accident.

This first one seems weirdly specific, I haven't been able to reproduce it so I think it happened because the monster was randomly doing the sniffing action as I exited the wardrobe. I tried some more but I haven't been able to get him to do that again, and exiting the wardrobe when the monster is around normally doesn't seem to trigger it.

http://youtu.be/o98mHTZJjcY

The second one is a minor issue, but I noticed that when you hit Esc to bring up the menu while you're hiding in a wardrobe, you will exit as soon as you leave the menu. That caught me by surprise when I did that to pause the game while I tabbed out when a monster was right there, then came back in to get crushed to death instantly :lol:
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matt
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by matt »

Those are good catches. I'll have to take a look at them tomorrow. Thanks for finding these!

*Edit* Well crap. I can't figure out the player facing the wrong direction bug to save my life. I can't get it to happen, so I can't study what is going wrong, and the code seems pretty straightforward, so I'm not sure where things would be going wrong. :(

I fixed the other bugs (leaving the room with the banging door, and escape exiting your hiding spot). Those were pretty easy.
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

matt wrote: *Edit* Well crap. I can't figure out the player facing the wrong direction bug to save my life. I can't get it to happen, so I can't study what is going wrong, and the code seems pretty straightforward, so I'm not sure where things would be going wrong. :(
Very weird! I doubt hardly anyone will ever run into it though, it was pure chance I was recording at that moment and accidentally exited the wardrobe at that specific moment. I'm going to try some more and see if I can recreate it, but the sniffing is random enough that it makes it tough. From what I can figure out these things need to happen:
1) Monster turns around at the end of his path - I think that's the only wardrobe where he turns around that close to one?
2) Exit wardrobe
3) Monster starts sniffing animation immediately after turning around
4) Monster grabs you
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Re: Alpha 0.2 discussion! [SPOILERS]

Post by gagaplex »

AWESOME! We had a debate on the dev team how long it would take someone to figure that out, and you beat all of our expectations. haha
Hehe, I knew having Latin in high school would have to pay off at some point.
I think we are going to have to be smarter about placement and making them feel like part of the world rather than stamping them everywhere like in the current build.
That's probably a good way to go. Reducing their number a bit in the early levels would work well and, as I mentioned, I don't think they look so out of place in level 3 (and presumably beyond that) where there are cobwebs etc. that lead to a bit of the griminess that the other pictures have.
The cellar is a funny story. Joe added wine barrels and stuff like that, but I felt that it looked better empty and deserted.
I see. Yeah, I can appreciate that. It makes it more desolate.
The differences in the room layouts are intentional. Basically, we don't want the start of the level to feel same-y, so even though the layouts are the same in 1 and 3, they look different because 3 is a destroyed version.
I was just confused because level 2's version looks different in terms of layout. So it's not just that the room becomes progressively more destroyed. I guess I'm wondering whether it makes sense to either have the room always have the same layout but get more destroyed bit by bit or whether it makes more sense to mix it up completely, i. e. both change the layout around every time and have it grow more destroyed as well.
Hmmm.. I'm not sure. We were planning on having huge colored cabinets. I want to make sure it is very obvious you can hide there. I'll give some thought to see if we can reduce that.
Again, I dunno if anybody else even feels like I do about it, but I liked the impression I got from the Kickstarter demo where only the small "interact-able" items were coloured. I guess there was an exception with the boards you could hack down even back then, though. *shrug* But to take another example, the normal doors are not coloured, but their handles are. So I was thinking of having something similar to that (albeit maybe a bit more obvious).
Is there a reason you'd like to see respawn room marked? I liked that they are unmarked because you don't know what to expect.
Not sure. I mean - and maybe my perception was off because I didn't die at every encounter, but... - it seemed to me like every side-room with a bed was a respawn room anyway. So I basically took the bed to be the marker already, albeit not as strongly indicated (not coloured, not with a particular feature). Though if that's not the case, I probably just missed that a bunch of rooms with beds in them actually were non-respawn rooms.
Were you trying to run past the baby monsters? You can't do that. You have to hide.
I thought that if I hugged the lower wall and sprinted, it might be possible to get past (even if the monster may catch up to me later on). But, yeah, I gave up on that pretty quickly...
The idea behind having closets in hallways without monsters is so that you don't know what to expect. If we do a 1 to 1 correlation, then you'll know you need to hide when you see one. If we mix it up a little, then you can be surprised.
I guess, although that effect will probably only come into play later on then. The baby monsters are audible the moment you enter the area, so you know whether there's a monster there or not. So the closets just confused me. I guess if/when there are monsters later on that do not announce their presence so easily, it might work better to misdirect the player, though.
The door trigger is actually fairly large, so I don't think you necessarily have to walk upwards to activate it. Once you activate the door trigger, you are "safe". We can tune the trigger for it though. Your suggestions were good.
Cool! Yeah, I don't think it needs much tweaking. It was just a wee bit too hard and I think that trigger was the main issue, because I couldn't get the door to activate to get that "safe status".
Regarding the breach in the wall - I have plans for that. (Much further down the line though)
Cool again! Now, I dunno if you plan to do what I suggested or not, but it certainly seemed like a natural progression with the hiding-mechanic to me. :-)
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