Rathmor comments and suggestions

[Holy_Diver]

Here is a fix for all of the movement issues. It's the same build I'll be making available / blogging about tomorrow at swordofmoonlight.net

Disclaimer: I think (don't hold me to it) that if things are still bumpy then it's probably just frame rate irregularity.

EDITED: Here (http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=634.0) is (apparently) the new home of the context of this post!! Important stuff.

[Holy_Diver]

Well its not quite that difficult (yet) but if you get stuck in a corner like I did..... lol, oops  .

Also its good to know the shells and stuff are ment to be sold. I had thought that was the point but held onto them anyway cause I thought they might have had a diffrent use. Perhaps you could add this to Taltareg's dialouge when you first speak with him?

One of the nice things about SOM (I am nearly certain) is you can buy back the items that you sell, kind of like a pawn shop if the shop was setup correctly for that.

Speaking of which you can SELL the Polished Coral and Telid Shells and then buy them back for 0J (ie. nothing)

If you're like me (so little time to spare; especially with Dark Souls quite literally wasting so much of my time) this is actually a pretty helpful way to make the demo more accessible. But I'm not sure if Verdite realized how shops work, or if this is just an oversight on his part. Quite frankly I'm very glad that SOM works this way. The KF games that don't have persistent shop inventories are quite lame in that regard.


PS: I've been thinking about translating Gold to Coin by default. Does anyone here have an opinion pro/con that? Edited: I think this is something for authors to cut their teeth on script framework wise. IOW "Gold" should be manually translated into the long name of the in game currency.

[HwitVlf]

Overall, it was impressive. I thought the map pieces and houses etc were excellent- really good.

The NPC's chest-armor is all a similar color which makes sense for an armored uniform; but it might be nice to change each NPC's armor shade or hue a little to enhance each NPC's identity . Also the NPC "talk" animation has a jump at the end. It would look better if you made the talk animation loop back to the beginning pose so there was no pop.

The enemies seemed very good and original. The only thing I didn't care for was the dragonfly sound. It seemed too loud and heavy handed. Something more subtle and intermittent might be better. 

In general, I though the enemy animation could be better. They weren't bad, I just think you could add a lot to the game by putting more character into the enemy animations. For example,  adding an extreme to-and-fro sway in a walk animation, or having a skeleton's head look like it's dangling loosely and flop back and forth as it moves, or a skeleton that pulls off its arm and attacks with it. Anything to add some unique character to each. I think it really helps with player immersion.

It's quite an amazing accomplishment that you made everything in your game yourself. That is a huge undertaking and you've done a very good job overall.

I enjoyed the demo Ben and I'm looking forward to the finished product!

[Verdite]

"Speaking of which you can SELL the Polished Coral and Telid Shells and then buy them back for 0J (ie. nothing)"

lol

Thanks for pointing that out Holy Diver, i did fix it. It was one of the few items i hadnt setup correctly in the shop.
Anyway, everyone else should feel free to buy/sell the items and test the equipment out with that exploit. I dont see why not.

John, i fixed the hues and they work better. It was something i hadnt thought of. The NPCs animations remain unfixed for now.
The dragonfly sounds got fixed too, along with all of its animations, and its texture.

"In general, I though the enemy animation could be better. They weren't bad, I just think you could add a lot to the game by putting more character into the enemy animations. For example,  adding an extreme to-and-fro sway in a walk animation, or having a skeleton's head look like it's dangling loosely and flop back and forth as it moves, or a skeleton that pulls off its arm and attacks with it."

I was going to hold back on the skeletons for the simple fact that im not pleased with their animations, texture of the lack of being able to modify them properly. If you recall they were one of my first custom enemies, and ive obviously progressed alot in all aspects of 3d art since then. Ill be redoing them, likely from scratch, and make them entirely functionable with removable jaws, tatty leather armour and slumpy, less stiff joints.

Sad thing is that ive made so many variants of the skeleton and put alot of time into (what i thought at the time) was a solid design.

The saerir, or hoppers, i think are some of my best animated models so far. Overall its unlikely that ill be modifying them.
The alkargs, or armoured slugs need work on their walking animation, in time.
Telids im happy with. They are fodder, essentially... So i dont think they will get a rehaul in the near future.

I really appreciate all of the feedback! Im pleased people were able to understand the time-and-energy-sapping process of making everything unique.

[Holy_Diver]

Here (http://www.swordofmoonlight.com/bbs/index.php?topic=634.0) are a bunch of posts that were culled from this thread at some point. They are devoid of context now, but still important reading (some more than others) at least until the demo is updated, hopefully in the form of an ongoing patch (so no one has to ever download the original file again)

I can't keep up with this stuff. But Ex is as essential to this demo as anything in it. Especially because there were some real problems with the initial release just because a lot of things went unnoticed in the rush to hit Verdite's deadline.

[Verdite]

Any feedback on the two BGM tracks?

[Holy_Diver]

Any feedback on the two BGM tracks?

They are not bad, which is very good. If you have them in a MIDI like format that you can easily mess around with I'd encourage you to spending a little bit more time with them at some point. But if you recorded them live more or less then I'd just leave them a lone.

I understand how people can come to identify a game with its musical score. But I tend to prefer KF-like games that don't have background music. That said variety is nice too and it depends on the presentation really. I only mention it because I was wondering if just having a kind of looping white noise BGM would be interesting or not. Just an offtopic idea. For example birds chirping, crickets, howling winds, but then winds would be strange if you didn't see things blowing around. Either way ambient noises tend to make a big difference. They keep your head in the game somehow. Dark Souls doesn't have a whole lot of ambiance. 

Of course you can always mute the BGM but the decision to have BGM probably affects the authors approach to sound effects.

EDITED: I've told Verdite this in private. But I really like the menu sound effects. They should be packaged somehow at some point so that others can use them. Does SOM offer a selection menu sound effects? Either way they work well and are not as headache inducing as the effects I am accustomed to.

[Verdite]

When i first heard this track in Might and magic VI: Mandate of heaven, i was surprised to hear the birds and crickets. I think it works well though.
http://youtu.be/Fm33MMa9d_A

"They are not bad, which is very good. If you have them in a MIDI like format that you can easily mess around with I'd recommend spending a little bit more time with them at some point. But if you recorded them live more or less then I'd just leave them a lone."

Its good to hear. I think you've heard more of my music than anyone else. Its strange, juggling with 3d modelling, texturing, animating, and writing your own BGM. Then of course there is structuring the game correctly... And writing the story. Its understandable that i have a long way to go before releasing the final version. The last thing i want to do is rush my masterpiece... 
Rathmor is my first foray into creating bgm, the two songs in the demo were played live from my Yamaha musical keyboard. I bought it especially for creating BGM music for my game.

"Does SOM offer a selection menu sound effects?"

Yes, there are three unbearable menu sound sets, and one decent set from KF2. While i liked the KF2 menu sound effects, i remembered how i associated the sounds with KF2, just as i would with TAC if i heard its menu sound effects. So i thought it would be nice for players to remember my game's menu sound effects, im probably too considerate for my own good.   

[Holy_Diver]

Rathmor is my first foray into creating bgm, the two songs in the demo were played live from my Yamaha musical keyboard. I bought it especially for creating BGM music for my game.

Probably the keyboard has a MIDI port that can be used to record the performance, potentially edit it somewhat with a computer or whatever, and then play it back.

I would think that you would be able to export the keyboard's wave table so you could reproduce the music on your computer without the keyboard. But that might be one of those things that companies deny to their customers.

[Mord of Swoonlight]

Wow, a new demo is fantastic news!  I played around for an hour or so and was very pleased - great job!  I may have pooped a little when the skeletons snuck up on me in the caves...  The only 'error' I encountered was that my computer threw a warning that there was a file missing when I picked up the Black Band.  Oh, and I couldn't figure out how to get the beach map to work.  This also may not be an 'error', per se, as you may have left it like that on purpose, but the area at the far end of the beach where you can walk to the edge of the water, look around the rock corner and see another room with a chest in it - I wasn't able to get in there.

I know this is only the demo (so feel free to tell me to be patient), but will there be a way to determine the functionality of all the items in the game, such as the horn, red quartz, etc.?  I'm assuming the major stuff will come up in dialogue, but will there be a truth mirror or 'pay-for' lore service character or somesuch? 

Also, out of curiosity, how many barrels can you break before the shopkeep stops selling to you?  I broke all of them in the name of exploration, naturally.   

I'll try to play with it some more in the next few days, but so far it's looking great!