A great prototype for a stealth game. I really like the spritework both for characters, dialogue profiles and some environment (like the tool room at the basement), controls feel good with a lot of interesting movement options (like going prone or doing a dodgeroll).
I dig the keyhole spying mechanic, though it seems like it's not used for anything right now.
The map itself is very well designed, lots of points of entry, shortcut opportunities. Feels like a legit stealth map, but it's a bit underused with only a single guard and the computer room being right behind him. But I liked the fact that I could hide from him under the table.
Guard got stuck a couple of times, and I had trouble jumping through the window from the computer room. Also the ladder and the vent are too close to each other.
Very promising. Looking forward to see what you're gonna do with it next!
Very cute and impressively stealthy for an early demo.
Some interactions are inconsistent, like how I'd get caught trying to jump down a chute that didn't register an input or go down a vent instead of up a ladder. I humbly request camera pitch go full 180 degrees - would be super useful when looking down in vents.
The "solution" to he stealth puzzle I found was distracting the guard around the library area and then bolting into the security room. As with most sneakers, items for distracting, like throwables, will be useful.
The AI should probably remain in a "search" state for longer. Seeing them chase you and not look around for a few seconds and return to post was a bit jarring, cos I wanted to hide in a locker but the guard never actually went that far. I am impressed with the AI trying to jump, though, even if it was through a door that was blocking its way.
I hope the game keeps progressing. I like the light gem implementation, probably way more performant that what you could do in unity, but I don't see it making much of a difference until a night map is available.
Letting player move the camera down when crawling through vents is a nice idea, i'll have to rework this camera anyway so i i'll add it to my todo list.
You can actually press "interact more" when you're in a locker to wait around until it's dark if you want to see the night map, it isn't said anywhere (as a lot of things for now) but i still have to balance light sensitivity for it to work as it should right now.
I'll definitely add throwables and other items later on, i kept the mouse buttons free for that exact reason, i'm looking forward to it, cause i want to do some fun stuff there
Here are some error messages I had when the game didn't crash
Failed to open saves directory
WARNING: Custom solver bias for shapes is not supported by Godot Jolt. Any such value will be ignored. This shape belongs to '<unknown>' and 0 other object(s).
at: set_solver_bias (src/shapes/jolt_shape_impl_3d.cpp:45)
WARNING: res://scripts/controllerhint.tscn:3 - ext_resource, invalid UID: uid://c0c5562105evj - using text path instead: res://sprites/controls_sheets/xbox/joypad_button_1.png
at: load (scene/resources/resource_format_text.cpp:451)
0
0
opened
not trespassing
WARNING: 3 RIDs in Godot Jolt were found to not have been freed. This is likely caused by orphaned nodes. If not, consider reporting this issue.
at: ~RID_PtrOwner (src/containers/rid_owner.hpp:20)
ERROR: Pages in use exist at exit in PagedAllocator: 6Thread
at: ~PagedAllocator (./core/templates/paged_allocator.h:170)
ERROR: Pages in use exist at exit in PagedAllocator: N16WorkerThreadPool4TaskE
at: ~PagedAllocator (./core/templates/paged_allocator.h:170)
WARNING: ObjectDB instances leaked at exit (run with --verbose for details).
at: cleanup (core/object/object.cpp:2209)
ERROR: Resources still in use at exit (run with --verbose for details).
at: clear (core/io/resource.cpp:492)
It detected my game controller but it was dropping my inputs like crazy.
I've seen people test it successfully on linux, what hardware did you test it on ? i know my 4-5yo gtx1050 / i7-8750h laptop doesn't run it very smoothly, but i don't think i've had input drops
Visually charming but I’m not sure there’s much to do so far.
The moon in the controls screen makes text in front of it unreadable.
The game takes a while to load and lags at the start.
I was a bit confused the girl’s sprite still showed up when it was (you) talking.
I didn’t think I’d go down the chute immediately on interact, since the action wasn’t clear. I opened a window in the bottom floor but couldn’t jump out of it or do any other action. I entered a locker in the room next to the chute drop and no input got me out of it.
Vent movement seems to be extremely buggy, left/right do weird things and you often get stuck on floor openings. If you try using them, the camera glitches out?
Vertical view range could use more leeway.
Short bulletpoint summary, but my biggest takeaway is that the controls seem unnecessarily convoluted by now. I don’t understand why F is confirm but cancel is RMB, why you scroll through options… confirming “it’s locked” (redundant, also) dialogues is done with LMB though? (despite the intro dialogue action hint saying F)
What does “hotzone” mean? What’s the compass next to it?
Reading your comment and seeing people trying it out gave me an idea for a tutorial mission to explain the confusing control scheme, i'll also add more keys to go through dialogues and check if i can make it more consistent
When you see in the top-left corner the "hotzone" icon, it means you're somewhere you're not supposed to, and you risk getting caught. if you're out of it, the guards won't start chasing you. Next to it, you've got the "camo index", a lower %age makes you harder to see for the guards. it mainly is influenced by lighting and stance / movement. The square next to it indicates where the light hitting the player are coming from, i'm not going to leave this by default in the future
Not sure how but I managed to break the "It's locked" dialogue and it followed me to the main menu:
The guard got stuck on this door:
As a prototype, I though it was solid, not a ton to comment on right now but it could improve the way you interact with closed doors in particular.
Personally I'd set the first level at night to make it easier to sneak around, and you should probably wall off the building properly: you can walk a far distance away and from what I've seen there's nothing to do there beyond admiring the cute pixelart hills.
Sneaking games are fun so I hope to play more of this when it's got more content, I'll try actually finishing the demo when I have more time.
Editing:
No idea how I missed the "plug the USB" thing at the beginning, but after replaying through the level, it did not let me interact with the laptop, the "interact hint" thing at the bottom left appeared but nothing happened. Tried again with Evie and she can do it, tried once more with the (you) character and he couldn't. I assume you should be able to vault windows but I could only do it once by jump crouching. Is there a way to enter the laptop room without aggroing the guard? I managed to finish the demo with Evie by leading the guard outside and plugging the USB really quick
About the usb thing, maybe the guard IA got stuck somewhere, blocking the whole game in "alert" mode (it happened on a stream), and since the player can't interact with the usb key if he's in alert mode (to keep him from getting caught since a dialogue box appears, keeping the player from moving until it's closed), that happened.
There really is only one way to do it without getting spotted by the guard, it's by going into the vents, and jumping down the security room hatch, and then quickly hiding either inside the locker, or under the table, then jumping out of the window.
I think i could add a way for the player to vault windows cause jumping through them caused a lot of people trouble. (since there is no mid-air control)
I like the artstyle, it's very charming, and the idea of a light-hearted stealth game sounds interesting, and I especially like the peeking mechanic. The UI was a bit confusing, apart from the square being the compass and the text indicating the "heat" level I wasn't sure what the % does - probably something with sound? Apart from the issues others pointed out (fullscreen after game over, stuck in locker, vent movement) I've found the following:
- You can open the Peek/Unlock menu while the textbox of the door being locked is still on - I accidentally skipped over the game over screen once by having a button held down still, like getting caught while trying to run away for example - This is minor but I found it funny how the guy immediately jumps to taze you the moment you walk in the front door, feels like he should just tell you to go away unless you ignore him and go in deeper into the building or approach from the inside
You're talking about the "camo index", a lower rate makes you harder to see for the guards, and it's mainly influenced by lighting and stance (standing, crouching, ramping) + movement.
I'm definitely not done with the guard IA, i need to add a lot of stuff there to make it the way i want it to be. (surprised, calling centrale, shouting to alert other guards, improving the way he looks around for the player...)
When the issue occurs, the keyboard input would stop working but controller input can still be read. And when entering the locker the Xinput control hints would appear for a moment but disappear once inside the locker. The above was tested with an Xinput Controller attached to my computer.
A lot of interesting ideas here so I'll definitely keep an eye out for further updates. Definitely has a lot of that early build jank though. 1.5 GB is pretty wild for a 0.01 build.
Not a fan of the unlock / peek / knock menu controls. Scrolling to select feels pretty cumbersome. Why not use WASD? There's only 3 options so I think giving them dedicated buttons in the action hints would be better. I also don't like how peeking always puts you into a crouch position afterwards. I'd rather it return the player to the previous position .
Getting a game over broke (bordered) fullscreen mode for me but thankfully it can be quickly fixed by re-applying it in the settings menu.
Movement in the vents is really finnicky. It's very easy to get stuck on walls if the camera isn't angled correctly.
I think the low-res pixel art clashes pretty hard with the environment currently. I'm not familiar enough with 3D to advise you how to improve it though :(
Thanks for the feedback, i know it weights way too much, i'll have to look into that
i use the scroll wheel to go through the interact more menu cause i want the player to still be able to get away (with WASD) if something comes up without having to close the interact more menu first (it closes itself when you get away from the door). but, maybe i'll change the way this menu is displayed in the future though, i could try to add some sort of "wheel" selection that lets you select something with the mouse
I crouch the player when he peeks to make it a bit more "immersive" since you need to crouch in order to have your head at keyhole level
You're right about the vents movement, i think i could improve this somehow, i'll add it to my todo list. i've also seen a streamer having the same issue with the fullscreen being broken after a gameover, so i'll look into that too !!
Thanks for trying my game and for the comment !! !
It detected my PS3 controller even on Linux which is pretty cool! The camera sensitivity slider didn’t seem to stick though and the vertical axis was definitely too responsive. I think some smoothing in general wouldn’t hurt when using the controller (definitely don’t apply it to mouselook), as well as an option to set separate sensitivity for each axis.
I was a little disappointed how few ways there are to distract the guard without having him spot and chase you. I was expecting to be able to throw something or turn something on in the machine shop to distract him. Instead I just came at him from the restaurant area and had him chase me in a lap outside the building.
Some of the controller bindings seem to break, like backing out from the Load screen restricts you to M+KB controls until you click another button. There also seemed a lot of inconsistency in some of the locked doors in that unlocking would just cause the popup to not show anymore without letting you actually open the door.
Perhaps I’m not as young as I used to be but the window between a short and long button press seems awfully brief, I’d often get the interaction menu on a door when I was just trying to open it.
The dialog options (for swapping character) are very subtle in showing which option is selected. I think the white par on the side would benefit from a black outline so you can see it outside.
Don’t know how I feel about the specular reflections with the flat-color pixel art. The shadow-mapping is a bit less weird but I still can’t decide if the soft-edged shadows clash or not with the rest.
All that said, I like stealth games so I was having fun just wandering around. Good show.
Thank you for trying my game and leaving such a detailed comment !!
I'll add lots of your points to my todo list; the separate axis camera sensitivity, smoothing the controller's camera (with a slider too maybe ?). I'm still not so happy about how the long/short press is handled, so i'll look into improving it.
The locks and Dialogues were added pretty lately into the demo, i didn't have much time to try it out, so thanks for this too, i'll take a look at it.
And i'm planning to add ways to distract the guards later on of course, i'm just working on the basics for now, equipping and throwing a cola can or that kind of stuff could be fun
Yeah the weight is weird, i'll have to do something about it.
The tricky thing about escaping the guard is that he can hear you running, jumping etc, so you're not done with him once you're out of his sight, you have to be quiet about it too.
I think i might still have an issue with the mapping in the builds (as opposed to editor version) that could cause you to get locked into a locker
Thanks for trying my game and leaving a comment about it !! !
Comments
A great prototype for a stealth game. I really like the spritework both for characters, dialogue profiles and some environment (like the tool room at the basement), controls feel good with a lot of interesting movement options (like going prone or doing a dodgeroll).
I dig the keyhole spying mechanic, though it seems like it's not used for anything right now.
The map itself is very well designed, lots of points of entry, shortcut opportunities. Feels like a legit stealth map, but it's a bit underused with only a single guard and the computer room being right behind him. But I liked the fact that I could hide from him under the table.
Guard got stuck a couple of times, and I had trouble jumping through the window from the computer room. Also the ladder and the vent are too close to each other.
Very promising. Looking forward to see what you're gonna do with it next!
Thanks, loved to see you try it out, i'll get a lot of those issues fixed and a proper tutorial for the next DD !
Very cute and impressively stealthy for an early demo.
Some interactions are inconsistent, like how I'd get caught trying to jump down a chute that didn't register an input or go down a vent instead of up a ladder. I humbly request camera pitch go full 180 degrees - would be super useful when looking down in vents.
The "solution" to he stealth puzzle I found was distracting the guard around the library area and then bolting into the security room. As with most sneakers, items for distracting, like throwables, will be useful.
The AI should probably remain in a "search" state for longer. Seeing them chase you and not look around for a few seconds and return to post was a bit jarring, cos I wanted to hide in a locker but the guard never actually went that far. I am impressed with the AI trying to jump, though, even if it was through a door that was blocking its way.
I hope the game keeps progressing. I like the light gem implementation, probably way more performant that what you could do in unity, but I don't see it making much of a difference until a night map is available.
Evie a cute.
Letting player move the camera down when crawling through vents is a nice idea, i'll have to rework this camera anyway so i i'll add it to my todo list.
You can actually press "interact more" when you're in a locker to wait around until it's dark if you want to see the night map, it isn't said anywhere (as a lot of things for now) but i still have to balance light sensitivity for it to work as it should right now.
I'll definitely add throwables and other items later on, i kept the mouse buttons free for that exact reason, i'm looking forward to it, cause i want to do some fun stuff there
Thanks for trying it out and leaving a comment !!
It crashed a few times on native GNU/Linux.
Here are some error messages I had when the game didn't crash
It detected my game controller but it was dropping my inputs like crazy.
Thanks for trying it out and for the error message, did you have any lag after the startup dialogue ?
I didn't get past the start-up dialogue. My input wasn't registering properly so after a few minutes I quit.
I've seen people test it successfully on linux, what hardware did you test it on ? i know my 4-5yo gtx1050 / i7-8750h laptop doesn't run it very smoothly, but i don't think i've had input drops
OS: Arch Linux x86_64
CPU: Intel i5-1035G1 (8) @ 3.600GHz
GPU: Intel Iris Plus Graphics G1
I'll try again tomorrow and try to give you some more details. I tried it out with a GameCube-type controller.
I wish to hold the shift key when no movement directions are pressed so that when I do press something, I break out into a full sprint. Plz <3
Yeah i could add that, good suggestion thanks
Visually charming but I’m not sure there’s much to do so far.
The moon in the controls screen makes text in front of it unreadable. The game takes a while to load and lags at the start. I was a bit confused the girl’s sprite still showed up when it was (you) talking. I didn’t think I’d go down the chute immediately on interact, since the action wasn’t clear. I opened a window in the bottom floor but couldn’t jump out of it or do any other action. I entered a locker in the room next to the chute drop and no input got me out of it.
Vent movement seems to be extremely buggy, left/right do weird things and you often get stuck on floor openings. If you try using them, the camera glitches out?
Vertical view range could use more leeway.
Short bulletpoint summary, but my biggest takeaway is that the controls seem unnecessarily convoluted by now. I don’t understand why F is confirm but cancel is RMB, why you scroll through options… confirming “it’s locked” (redundant, also) dialogues is done with LMB though? (despite the intro dialogue action hint saying F) What does “hotzone” mean? What’s the compass next to it?
Thanks for trying my game! !
Reading your comment and seeing people trying it out gave me an idea for a tutorial mission to explain the confusing control scheme, i'll also add more keys to go through dialogues and check if i can make it more consistent
When you see in the top-left corner the "hotzone" icon, it means you're somewhere you're not supposed to, and you risk getting caught. if you're out of it, the guards won't start chasing you. Next to it, you've got the "camo index", a lower %age makes you harder to see for the guards. it mainly is influenced by lighting and stance / movement. The square next to it indicates where the light hitting the player are coming from, i'm not going to leave this by default in the future
Cool concept.
Not sure how but I managed to break the "It's locked" dialogue and it followed me to the main menu:
The guard got stuck on this door:
As a prototype, I though it was solid, not a ton to comment on right now but it could improve the way you interact with closed doors in particular.
Personally I'd set the first level at night to make it easier to sneak around, and you should probably wall off the building properly: you can walk a far distance away and from what I've seen there's nothing to do there beyond admiring the cute pixelart hills.
Sneaking games are fun so I hope to play more of this when it's got more content, I'll try actually finishing the demo when I have more time.
Editing:
No idea how I missed the "plug the USB" thing at the beginning, but after replaying through the level, it did not let me interact with the laptop, the "interact hint" thing at the bottom left appeared but nothing happened. Tried again with Evie and she can do it, tried once more with the (you) character and he couldn't.
I assume you should be able to vault windows but I could only do it once by jump crouching.
Is there a way to enter the laptop room without aggroing the guard? I managed to finish the demo with Evie by leading the guard outside and plugging the USB really quick
Thanks for trying the game, and the feedback !!
About the usb thing, maybe the guard IA got stuck somewhere, blocking the whole game in "alert" mode (it happened on a stream), and since the player can't interact with the usb key if he's in alert mode (to keep him from getting caught since a dialogue box appears, keeping the player from moving until it's closed), that happened.
There really is only one way to do it without getting spotted by the guard, it's by going into the vents, and jumping down the security room hatch, and then quickly hiding either inside the locker, or under the table, then jumping out of the window.
I think i could add a way for the player to vault windows cause jumping through them caused a lot of people trouble. (since there is no mid-air control)
I like the artstyle, it's very charming, and the idea of a light-hearted stealth game sounds interesting, and I especially like the peeking mechanic. The UI was a bit confusing, apart from the square being the compass and the text indicating the "heat" level I wasn't sure what the % does - probably something with sound? Apart from the issues others pointed out (fullscreen after game over, stuck in locker, vent movement) I've found the following:
- You can open the Peek/Unlock menu while the textbox of the door being locked is still on
- I accidentally skipped over the game over screen once by having a button held down still, like getting caught while trying to run away for example
- This is minor but I found it funny how the guy immediately jumps to taze you the moment you walk in the front door, feels like he should just tell you to go away unless you ignore him and go in deeper into the building or approach from the inside
Thanks for trying it out !!
You're talking about the "camo index", a lower rate makes you harder to see for the guards, and it's mainly influenced by lighting and stance (standing, crouching, ramping) + movement.
I'm definitely not done with the guard IA, i need to add a lot of stuff there to make it the way i want it to be. (surprised, calling centrale, shouting to alert other guards, improving the way he looks around for the player...)
Cute girl, 10/10 kino. Keep up the good work
Btw I've my Xinput Controller plugged in and the control hints disappeared when I was in the locker.
have you been able to get out of the locker anyway ? cause Federx couldn't, according to his comment
When the issue occurs, the keyboard input would stop working but controller input can still be read. And when entering the locker the Xinput control hints would appear for a moment but disappear once inside the locker. The above was tested with an Xinput Controller attached to my computer.
A lot of interesting ideas here so I'll definitely keep an eye out for further updates. Definitely has a lot of that early build jank though. 1.5 GB is pretty wild for a 0.01 build.
Not a fan of the unlock / peek / knock menu controls. Scrolling to select feels pretty cumbersome. Why not use WASD? There's only 3 options so I think giving them dedicated buttons in the action hints would be better. I also don't like how peeking always puts you into a crouch position afterwards. I'd rather it return the player to the previous position .
Getting a game over broke (bordered) fullscreen mode for me but thankfully it can be quickly fixed by re-applying it in the settings menu.
Movement in the vents is really finnicky. It's very easy to get stuck on walls if the camera isn't angled correctly.
I think the low-res pixel art clashes pretty hard with the environment currently. I'm not familiar enough with 3D to advise you how to improve it though :(
Thanks for the feedback, i know it weights way too much, i'll have to look into that
i use the scroll wheel to go through the interact more menu cause i want the player to still be able to get away (with WASD) if something comes up without having to close the interact more menu first (it closes itself when you get away from the door). but, maybe i'll change the way this menu is displayed in the future though, i could try to add some sort of "wheel" selection that lets you select something with the mouse
I crouch the player when he peeks to make it a bit more "immersive" since you need to crouch in order to have your head at keyhole level
You're right about the vents movement, i think i could improve this somehow, i'll add it to my todo list. i've also seen a streamer having the same issue with the fullscreen being broken after a gameover, so i'll look into that too !!
Thanks for trying my game and for the comment !! !
I just tried the game bro! Cute stuff. I liked the level design and the mechanics. Pretty interesting stuff.
I don't have much feedback as I'm sure you know what stuff needs to be done. Keep it up.
thanks a lot for trying it out ! !
It detected my PS3 controller even on Linux which is pretty cool! The camera sensitivity slider didn’t seem to stick though and the vertical axis was definitely too responsive. I think some smoothing in general wouldn’t hurt when using the controller (definitely don’t apply it to mouselook), as well as an option to set separate sensitivity for each axis.
I was a little disappointed how few ways there are to distract the guard without having him spot and chase you. I was expecting to be able to throw something or turn something on in the machine shop to distract him. Instead I just came at him from the restaurant area and had him chase me in a lap outside the building.
Some of the controller bindings seem to break, like backing out from the Load screen restricts you to M+KB controls until you click another button. There also seemed a lot of inconsistency in some of the locked doors in that unlocking would just cause the popup to not show anymore without letting you actually open the door.
Perhaps I’m not as young as I used to be but the window between a short and long button press seems awfully brief, I’d often get the interaction menu on a door when I was just trying to open it.
The dialog options (for swapping character) are very subtle in showing which option is selected. I think the white par on the side would benefit from a black outline so you can see it outside.
Don’t know how I feel about the specular reflections with the flat-color pixel art. The shadow-mapping is a bit less weird but I still can’t decide if the soft-edged shadows clash or not with the rest.
All that said, I like stealth games so I was having fun just wandering around. Good show.
Thank you for trying my game and leaving such a detailed comment !!
I'll add lots of your points to my todo list; the separate axis camera sensitivity, smoothing the controller's camera (with a slider too maybe ?). I'm still not so happy about how the long/short press is handled, so i'll look into improving it.
The locks and Dialogues were added pretty lately into the demo, i didn't have much time to try it out, so thanks for this too, i'll take a look at it.
And i'm planning to add ways to distract the guards later on of course, i'm just working on the basics for now, equipping and throwing a cola can or that kind of stuff could be fun
first of all, i love the aesthetic.
but why does it weigh 1.5GBs??? i though that my own game was the least optimized one, LOL
it seemed pretty hard at first, but then i realized i could just run circles around the guard and he can't do shit about it.
how do you get out from the lockers? i got into one and no button worked, not even the pause menu with esc, i had to force close the game.
Yeah the weight is weird, i'll have to do something about it.
The tricky thing about escaping the guard is that he can hear you running, jumping etc, so you're not done with him once you're out of his sight, you have to be quiet about it too.
I think i might still have an issue with the mapping in the builds (as opposed to editor version) that could cause you to get locked into a locker
Thanks for trying my game and leaving a comment about it !! !