Loved the goofy little images of the tank reading a book and such, very charming.
Maybe it doesn't suit the gameplay you're aiming for as its meant to be arcade-y, but I feel like the tank needs more weight with its acceleration and stopping - even subtly, it should take longer to accelerate and slow down since you really do stop on a dime. Perhaps if you have a friction setting you could turn it down so it kind of slides when you ease off the gas... maybe tank drifting, even? I kind of wish you could also sort of slam into enemy tanks to damage them, though that's maybe unnecessary.
Sound design was solid, guns are nice and punchy. Some additional ambience like wind rushing past the player when they're at top speed would be neat, maybe even add a sound emitter to the enemy shells so they make a whizzing noise when they fly past the player's tank? (Something like this)
The destroyable walls and chunks of spaced armor flying off the tanks were a lot of fun, very good detail in the enemy tank destruction.
Also appreciate that you added a mouse sensitivity option this build, much better!
This was a thing in the previous demo, but there really wasn't any reason to use it. Lots of people suggested making the tank more weighty so I'll experiment in that direction for sure.
Perhaps if you have a friction setting you could turn it down so it kind of slides when you ease off the gas
Good idea. Will test this.
I kind of wish you could also sort of slam into enemy tanks to damage them
I uploaded a new build a few minutes before you posted this and in that build trucks die when rammed hard enough. I might add ways to damage treads via ramming later on, or maybe a crew shock effect.
As for the sound design those are good ideas, I'll put them on the to-do list.
Nice tutorial, the issue i had like lots of people was with the camera sensitivity: while freelook sens. seems to "derive" from the sensitivity, i don't think that's the case for the zoomed camera sens. (at least when you're in "freelook" mode)
I also had a hard time going up some slopes with the tank, and it shaked around a bit when i moved on one of those
otherwise, it was fun to play, especially with the biggest cannon
It gives the player some freedom for risk like WoT vs WT and without using hp at the same time, also making infantry riffles not useless as well
You need to make the glowing parts on the tank to show the energy level, the thing in the corner is too small
90mm cannon MUST be movable at least a little, you can make the ballistics much worse even, it has great potential to be fun but currently it feels needlessly annoying tbh
You need to make the glowing parts on the tank to show the energy level, the thing in the corner is too small
There's a UI scale option but changing the glowing intensity is actually a great idea, I'll look into it after I'm done fixing the various bugs that popped up.
90mm cannon MUST be movable at least a little
Will do!
Also I broke module menu somehow
If you can replicate that and get me a screenshot it would be much appreciated.
Starting the game in a window with a predefined resolution is silly, at least make it a native-sized window. Please make the UI scale with screen size, I have a 4k monitor and the menus are absolutely teeny. Also, dropdowns for resolution and aspect ratio don't seem to work when in fullscreen.
Started the tutorial and sensitivity feels way too high right off the bat, had to lower it to 50% for it to feel proper. It's a little odd that zooming in doesn't decrease your sensitivity, you would think such a feature exists to aid in longer range precision but it just makes the aiming more unwieldy (I would later find out that the sights view fills this role). It's weird that you have this elaborate weakpoint system while having such a fast player tank, seems contradictory but maybe actual combat will enlighten me. The healing and self-destruct minigames are pretty difficult to do with the unscaled UI, I have to lean in to see the arrows clearly when doing the former. Other than that, the tutorial is pretty good. I like that you get to shoot at your tank unit to see how it works.
Played the first level, I mostly just circled around the enemy tanks and shot at them until they died. One of the trucks went outside the level bounds but it didn't count as escaped, so I just took long range potshots until I nailed it. The replay system is interesting but feels pointless, especially when you're just staring at sprites move around rather than an actual 3D environment. Changing the playback speed didn't seem to work.
Tried the second level with the 47mm cannon, got destroyed pretty quickly due to poor planning. Had some nasty frame drops when shooting buildings from afar. The level got a lot easier once I remembered the sights view exists since hitting weakspots is much easier with it. This just serves to confuse me on the game's identity more, am I supposed to be speeding around or taking calculated shots? Maybe a mix of both? I eventually finished the level, then tried again with the BIG DICK cannon. It's fun and feels awesome to shoot but obviously it has its drawbacks.
It feels to me like you've yet to nail down what your game is supposed to be, maybe this is my inexperience with vehicle games seeping through. Other than that, the tank models are nice and I assume the environment is just a case of debug art. I look forward to future builds.
I'll try to adjust the default settings to be more convenient.
Please make the UI scale with screen size
There is a UI scale slider but it only scales on-screen UI and not the minigame panels so that's an oversight, I'll correct that and also I guess it'd be a good idea to scale with higher screen sizes by default.
am I supposed to be speeding around or taking calculated shots? It feels to me like you've yet to nail down what your game is supposed to be
At the moment the levels are little more than a playground for blowing stuff up so you're definitely right. I'm myself not sure about how much I want to force players to play in a certain way and how much I want to accommodate different playstyles. I'm going to keep weighing my options while I try nailing down performance, physics and controls first.
Horseshoe tank? Yeah right, that's gotta be a panzer 4, you can't fool me! I was going to complain that I can't play as them but you actually can unlock all the tanks so that's pretty cool. Customizing your loadout is also a fun feature. Is there a way to aim vertically with the 90mm? I did manage to beat the stage without doing so but it feels pretty weird. Level 2 had some slight performance issues. The repair sequence should probably have a timer? Now you can just take your time and it doesn't seem very difficult.
I'm not sure what to say about the controls, the tanks are quick and responsive but I'm not sure if they should be. Depends on whether you value realism or more fun arcady gameplay more. I did actually prefer the third person view because in first person the camera is locked to the turret which moves slowly so its a bit more difficult to maneuver imo (probably easier to aim thought?) It wasn't very obvious when I'm about to die, especially when I was using the "horseshoe". Overall, it was pretty fun to play.
No, it was meant as a meme gun but since it has become a fan favorite I'll try making it more viable by adding a degree of vertical aiming
It wasn't very obvious when I'm about to die, especially when I was using the "horseshoe".
That's because the player tank only dies when their ammo is hit, which is a one-shot. There is no overall tank health or anything like that. The energy shield exists to obviate this unpredictability: without it AI shots can either kill you in one hit or hit your armor repeatedly without dealing any damage.
Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you found the game fun.
Like last time I just spend the entire time in Sights view, it would be good if the C for free look toggle would work in that mode too as it is much easier to use. Though it does mean you end up either circle strafing or long range sniping. The camera orientation also really needs smoothing on gradient changes, it’s way too sharp right now.
On the second level I could easily snipe all the buildings and the tanks in the second base with the 47mm from a great distance and they wouldn’t react. Probably if a shell lands near them they should become active and at least try to evade.
I tried the second level with the crunchsader and got worn down by bullets. The APHE shells do a lot less damage which makes sense for a smaller gun but their little baby firing arc also means you have to charge in super aggressively to get into range (I believe the real crusaders had to do that too, lol).
I really like the repair mechanic, its nice and simple without resorting to a health bar, and having to do the minigame is really tense when you’ve still got cannons shooting at you.
Most players seem to agree that the third person feels off, so I'll try to figure out exactly what's wrong and make it much more usable, that seem to be the main problem right now. Free cam for for sights would only work if it also made the model transparent and I guess that's doable but I prefer it this way, both aesthetically and because I want it to give the player a bit of tunnel vision. Hopefully a better third person cam will eliminate that problem.
Probably if a shell lands near them they should become active and at least try to evade.
Yeah infantrymen in particular need a lot of work, right now the best they can do is call for reinforcements.
I tried the second level with the crunchsader and got worn down by bullets.
That's the reason why I went for the energy shield for the player tank: the modular armor plates are very inconsistent when AI is shooting at you, there's always the chance of max-range shells or infantry volleys disabling treads, wheels or getting a lucky penetration and one-shotting you. The unlockable enemy tanks are not really meant to be viable or balanced, it's more of a novelty for people who wanted to play more of the game after finishing the demo.
Awesome game. I had some performance dips on the 2nd level in certain situations. It reminds me of the old PS2 game Seek and Destroy in a really good way. The art for the tanks reminds me of S&D a little bit as well, it's very charming. I played through most of the tanks and all available missions a few times over and had a blast each run. I can't wait for more. As of the time of writing, this video is still uploading, and won't be done for a few hours, but maybe it'll be of some use to you.
Performance was generally smooth, I've only found one issue that I was able to replicate consistently: on level 2, I kept getting a heavy stuttering during the time the reinforcment countdown is active.
Options I've found sufficient, being able to separately change mouse sensitivity for different views is nice.
Although speaking of mouse look, aiming felt off and inconsistent. Most of the time I ended up using the turret view with V which felt a bit better, even in situations where the regular view would be preferable. For the combat, it felt like the turret turns too slow for how fast everyone moves around. Combine that with the weird inconsistent sensitivity most of my winning strategy was to just ram myself against enemies and shoot them point blank, letting the shield soak up the damage and trade out, which I imagine is not the intended way to play. I also wish projectile effects would be more visible, most of the time I was not sure where my shot ended up and what happened unless I landed a good hit and saw the enemy tank blowing up.
Apart from the turret, controlling the tank itself felt nice and responsive, though generally weightless. I've also come across a lot of time the tank jittering on slopes, sometimes sliding off to the side when I park on a slope sideway and sometimes not (my guess is the sliding down occurs when parking on edges of two slop faces?). The tanks also do this weird bounce whenever you ram against something, which also makes them feel too weightless.
I like the looks of the tanks, the environment is pretty sparse which I imagine is due to it being early on developement. My only issue with the visuals was that both alive and dead infantry looks the same from a distance, though I understand those are only placeholders.
Sounds seem fine, only thing that would be nice if the reload sound would be a bit more loud - it gets easily drown out in gunfire and for guns with longer cooldowns would be a good audio clue addition on when you are ready to shoot again.
The UI is good, never felt like I was missing anything, just need to pretty it up, could even go unique tank icons for each tanks if you want to be really fancy.
Even though by the end I felt like it was dragging on a little, the tutorial did end up being very useful, especially once I had to face off against heavier tanks. The only thing that was awkward was having to use Enter to progress with the messages, since generally one hand is at the left of your keyboard and the other is on the mouse. Maybe space and/or one of the mouse buttons would be better.
For the guns balance, I ended up relying on the 47mm cannon as the autocannon, while can shoot fast doesn't really have a pucn to reliably hit enemies. The 90mm is quite a spectacle but way too limiting to be useful - giving it at least some amount of vertical only aiming could go a long way. I also wish that my weapon setup would've been saved between sessions, every time I botted the game up again expecting to have the 47mm only to have to go back to the menu because it kept the default autocannon.
I've only found one issue that I was able to replicate consistently: on level 2, I kept getting a heavy stuttering during the time the reinforcment countdown is active.
Did you do anything to replicate this stuttering or does it happen every time?
Although speaking of mouse look, aiming felt off and inconsistent.
Yeah this seems to be the consensus, I'll try to make third person aiming feel better.
most of my winning strategy was to just ram myself against enemies and shoot them point blank, letting the shield soak up the damage and trade out, which I imagine is not the intended way to play
Well it's not a wrong way to play, right now enemies fire on the move and most of them charge at you erratically so I imagine that is a also a factor. I definitely don't want to stop the player from closing in, but long-range aiming should be easier.
I also wish that my weapon setup would've been saved between sessions
Will do.
Thanks a lot for the thorough feedback, it was useful.
Controls feel good and intuitive, tutorial does a fine job, new graphical updates are neat. This is going to be great. Making the player a bit more able to take damage I think will be good for the early game, make it easy at the start then ramp up the difficulty. The different damage zones and destruction seem to work well.
Are you going to cook a story for this somewhere down the line? If so, what are you thinking?
Making the player a bit more able to take damage I think will be good for the early game, make it easy at the start then ramp up the difficulty
Yeah it should probably be a bit easier at the start
Are you going to cook a story for this somewhere down the line? If so, what are you thinking?
In my experience story ideas don't survive the story being written so I usually don't talk about them too much. But the setting is pretty much already decided: you play as an AI made by some dude in a scrappy spaceship and follow his orders to fight a race of aliens called the Cancri. Anything beyond that is wishful thinking until I manage to finally nail down physics and controls.
It sounds like a cool premise, as you might have guessed I am a very storydriven player, maybe in a few demo days there will be such things we can discuss : D.
-Why is audio in db? Please, make it a percentage.
-Vertical and horizontal mouse speed being different feels gross, why do this? That or I'm going nuts and it's just me. Actually with some more testing it's very weird. If I move my mouse fast it's slow, but if I move my mouse slow it's fast. What kind of witch craft is this? If it helps, I use a high DPI.
-Tutorial was alright I guess, on the lengthy side.
-Did first mission. The replay feature is neat, I really liked this in Ace Combat. But please let me speed it up past 2x.
-Did the other one, it was a little more fun. However, it was very annoying due to my previously mentioned mouse stuff, luckily V zoom mode is normal feeling.
-Game is alright, for how early feeling it is. With refinement of the physics and movement it could be a lot better.
Thanks for the playing and thanks for the feedback
-Why is audio in db? Please, make it a percentage.
Okay
-Vertical and horizontal mouse speed being different feels gross, why do this? That or I'm going nuts and it's just me. Actually with some more testing it's very weird. If I move my mouse fast it's slow, but if I move my mouse slow it's fast. What kind of witch craft is this? If it helps, I use a high DPI.
This is bizarre, aim sensitivity is the same on both axis. I'm guessing this could be a problem relating to mouse acceleration or smoothing, do you happen to have any setting like that enabled in your OS?
To be clear, there seems to be no difference in h/v mouse sensitivity. The reason why I thought there was is because the game is mostly about turning and not height aim, so I would move my mouse slowly when going up but fast to the sides; and as I mentioned, for some reason moving the mouse slow makes it rotate fast and when moving the mouse fast it rotates slow. And no, I don't have mouse acceleration and all other programs operate normally.
Some other notes:
-This input problem effects the normal aim and free look, it's normal when using the turret barrel zoom aim.
-Opened the game and testing it. I'm fairly certain the problem is that you use a constant speed for the rotation, independent of the mouse movement delta. So if I barely move my mouse(over <inch), I can rotate the camera 180* in the same time it takes to drag across the entire mouse pad. Therefore, the reason I thought it was changing speed is because it doesn't respect my small mouse movements that I am doing for precision. My guess is that you have a normal DPI mouse, and so small movements feel normal since it updates less often or something? Alternatively, it could be that my mouse DPI is so high that it hits the max speed instantly and it's my fault, although other games aren't like this.
-I changed my DPI and the problem persists. Lowering the game's sensitivity makes it more manageable, but the same problem is there.
For a tank game it's a really fun tank game. Your tutorial do a great job of explaining the mechanics.
My only gripe is on how high is the mouse sensitivity by default. But that got remedied by lowering it in the config menu.
The crusader tank is really joy to drive. I even manage to do a trick of driving off the last level platform to land on the wall. And drifting everywhere!
I didn't find much use for the 90mm other than "Haha big gun goes BOOOM!"
I really enjoyed my time with your game, thank you!
I do like tank games. There is always something satisfying with hitting a moving object with a tank shot. And with that said I do like how this game feels so far, the aim/shoot mechanics is working well for me.
Physics
I feel like the tank controls lean towards a more arcade game. It accelerates very quickly and is responsive. On the 2nd level when I drive off the ledge the tank does feel like it is floating. It would be good to add some kind of suspension / rolling effect when the tank turns quickly or when it shifts from forward to reverse, just to give it that heavy tank feel.
UI
I may be getting this all wrong the tank controls feel slightly like an arcade game. With that the UI could reflect the arcade feel that. Big bold UI elements. The UI for the tank aiming works well in terms of its functionality but could be updated alongside the rest of the UI
Sound
I think the sounds are on point. The shooting feels heavy, with bass, just like firing a tank. On the first level I really liked the feeling of the bullets ricocheting off my tanks armour. It made me feel like I was really under fire heavy fire.
Blowing up the building in the tutorial was very satisfying too.
It would be good to add some kind of suspension / rolling effect when the tank turns quickly or when it shifts from forward to reverse, just to give it that heavy tank feel.
I'm on the fence about this, I know I should add "proper" suspensions but I'm afraid it might get annoying when trying to aim, I'll experiment with it and see
As you said it is more arcadey than a simulator so I'm leaning towards scrapping all realistic elements that might get in the way of gameplay.
Moving the tank feels good and intuitive. I think this is what counts most at this stage. The following a list of stuff that really annoyed me.
- Idk why Godot devs insist on shipping their demos in small non-resizable windows. In your case it was especially bad because it probably caused some of the issues below.
- I presume shots are fired in some sort of arc. At least I missed many direct shots. I was not able to see WHY I missed, though. Meaning I would have liked to have some visual feedback on where the shot went (instead of hitting the target), some smoke in the air, or seeing the actual projectile (like rockets in q3) - but I couldn’t see anything.
- Mouse sensitity is really damned high. I could only move the turret with accuracy when I used both V+RightClick. I set my mouse to absolute lowest DPI and the sensitivity still felt way too high.
- Zoom felt kinda pointless in terms giving more vision, but I guess it will depend on the weapon?
Comments
Loved the goofy little images of the tank reading a book and such, very charming.
Maybe it doesn't suit the gameplay you're aiming for as its meant to be arcade-y, but I feel like the tank needs more weight with its acceleration and stopping - even subtly, it should take longer to accelerate and slow down since you really do stop on a dime. Perhaps if you have a friction setting you could turn it down so it kind of slides when you ease off the gas...
maybe tank drifting, even?I kind of wish you could also sort of slam into enemy tanks to damage them, though that's maybe unnecessary.Sound design was solid, guns are nice and punchy. Some additional ambience like wind rushing past the player when they're at top speed would be neat, maybe even add a sound emitter to the enemy shells so they make a whizzing noise when they fly past the player's tank? (Something like this)
The destroyable walls and chunks of spaced armor flying off the tanks were a lot of fun, very good detail in the enemy tank destruction.
Also appreciate that you added a mouse sensitivity option this build, much better!
Hey, thanks for playing.
This was a thing in the previous demo, but there really wasn't any reason to use it. Lots of people suggested making the tank more weighty so I'll experiment in that direction for sure.
Good idea. Will test this.
I uploaded a new build a few minutes before you posted this and in that build trucks die when rammed hard enough.
I might add ways to damage treads via ramming later on, or maybe a crew shock effect.
As for the sound design those are good ideas, I'll put them on the to-do list.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Nice tutorial, the issue i had like lots of people was with the camera sensitivity: while freelook sens. seems to "derive" from the sensitivity, i don't think that's the case for the zoomed camera sens. (at least when you're in "freelook" mode)
I also had a hard time going up some slopes with the tank, and it shaked around a bit when i moved on one of those
otherwise, it was fun to play, especially with the biggest cannon
Thanks for playing!
The sensitivity and 3rd person jankiness will be fixed asap, currently looking into it.
Yeah I should make it so those 45 degrees slopes are always climbable no matter what.
Thanks for the feedback and thanks for the meme!
I like your idea of using a power shield
It gives the player some freedom for risk like WoT vs WT and without using hp at the same time, also making infantry riffles not useless as well
You need to make the glowing parts on the tank to show the energy level, the thing in the corner is too small
90mm cannon MUST be movable at least a little, you can make the ballistics much worse even, it has great potential to be fun but currently it feels needlessly annoying tbh
Also I broke module menu somehow
Hey, thanks for playing the game.
There's a UI scale option but changing the glowing intensity is actually a great idea, I'll look into it after I'm done fixing the various bugs that popped up.
Will do!
If you can replicate that and get me a screenshot it would be much appreciated.
Thanks for the feedback!
Starting the game in a window with a predefined resolution is silly, at least make it a native-sized window. Please make the UI scale with screen size, I have a 4k monitor and the menus are absolutely teeny. Also, dropdowns for resolution and aspect ratio don't seem to work when in fullscreen.
Started the tutorial and sensitivity feels way too high right off the bat, had to lower it to 50% for it to feel proper. It's a little odd that zooming in doesn't decrease your sensitivity, you would think such a feature exists to aid in longer range precision but it just makes the aiming more unwieldy (I would later find out that the sights view fills this role). It's weird that you have this elaborate weakpoint system while having such a fast player tank, seems contradictory but maybe actual combat will enlighten me. The healing and self-destruct minigames are pretty difficult to do with the unscaled UI, I have to lean in to see the arrows clearly when doing the former. Other than that, the tutorial is pretty good. I like that you get to shoot at your tank unit to see how it works.
Played the first level, I mostly just circled around the enemy tanks and shot at them until they died. One of the trucks went outside the level bounds but it didn't count as escaped, so I just took long range potshots until I nailed it. The replay system is interesting but feels pointless, especially when you're just staring at sprites move around rather than an actual 3D environment. Changing the playback speed didn't seem to work.
Tried the second level with the 47mm cannon, got destroyed pretty quickly due to poor planning. Had some nasty frame drops when shooting buildings from afar. The level got a lot easier once I remembered the sights view exists since hitting weakspots is much easier with it. This just serves to confuse me on the game's identity more, am I supposed to be speeding around or taking calculated shots? Maybe a mix of both? I eventually finished the level, then tried again with the BIG DICK cannon. It's fun and feels awesome to shoot but obviously it has its drawbacks.
It feels to me like you've yet to nail down what your game is supposed to be, maybe this is my inexperience with vehicle games seeping through. Other than that, the tank models are nice and I assume the environment is just a case of debug art. I look forward to future builds.
Thanks for playing!
I'll try to adjust the default settings to be more convenient.
There is a UI scale slider but it only scales on-screen UI and not the minigame panels so that's an oversight, I'll correct that and also I guess it'd be a good idea to scale with higher screen sizes by default.
At the moment the levels are little more than a playground for blowing stuff up so you're definitely right.
I'm myself not sure about how much I want to force players to play in a certain way and how much I want to accommodate different playstyles. I'm going to keep weighing my options while I try nailing down performance, physics and controls first.
Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
Horseshoe tank? Yeah right, that's gotta be a panzer 4, you can't fool me! I was going to complain that I can't play as them but you actually can unlock all the tanks so that's pretty cool. Customizing your loadout is also a fun feature. Is there a way to aim vertically with the 90mm? I did manage to beat the stage without doing so but it feels pretty weird. Level 2 had some slight performance issues. The repair sequence should probably have a timer? Now you can just take your time and it doesn't seem very difficult.
I'm not sure what to say about the controls, the tanks are quick and responsive but I'm not sure if they should be. Depends on whether you value realism or more fun arcady gameplay more. I did actually prefer the third person view because in first person the camera is locked to the turret which moves slowly so its a bit more difficult to maneuver imo (probably easier to aim thought?) It wasn't very obvious when I'm about to die, especially when I was using the "horseshoe". Overall, it was pretty fun to play.
Thanks for playing!
Panzer 3, to be precise.
No, it was meant as a meme gun but since it has become a fan favorite I'll try making it more viable by adding a degree of vertical aiming
That's because the player tank only dies when their ammo is hit, which is a one-shot. There is no overall tank health or anything like that.
The energy shield exists to obviate this unpredictability: without it AI shots can either kill you in one hit or hit your armor repeatedly without dealing any damage.
Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you found the game fun.
Like last time I just spend the entire time in Sights view, it would be good if the C for free look toggle would work in that mode too as it is much easier to use. Though it does mean you end up either circle strafing or long range sniping. The camera orientation also really needs smoothing on gradient changes, it’s way too sharp right now.
On the second level I could easily snipe all the buildings and the tanks in the second base with the 47mm from a great distance and they wouldn’t react. Probably if a shell lands near them they should become active and at least try to evade.
I tried the second level with the crunchsader and got worn down by bullets. The APHE shells do a lot less damage which makes sense for a smaller gun but their little baby firing arc also means you have to charge in super aggressively to get into range (I believe the real crusaders had to do that too, lol).
I really like the repair mechanic, its nice and simple without resorting to a health bar, and having to do the minigame is really tense when you’ve still got cannons shooting at you.
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!
Most players seem to agree that the third person feels off, so I'll try to figure out exactly what's wrong and make it much more usable, that seem to be the main problem right now.
Free cam for for sights would only work if it also made the model transparent and I guess that's doable but I prefer it this way, both aesthetically and because I want it to give the player a bit of tunnel vision.
Hopefully a better third person cam will eliminate that problem.
Yeah infantrymen in particular need a lot of work, right now the best they can do is call for reinforcements.
That's the reason why I went for the energy shield for the player tank: the modular armor plates are very inconsistent when AI is shooting at you, there's always the chance of max-range shells or infantry volleys disabling treads, wheels or getting a lucky penetration and one-shotting you. The unlockable enemy tanks are not really meant to be viable or balanced, it's more of a novelty for people who wanted to play more of the game after finishing the demo.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Awesome game. I had some performance dips on the 2nd level in certain situations. It reminds me of the old PS2 game Seek and Destroy in a really good way. The art for the tanks reminds me of S&D a little bit as well, it's very charming. I played through most of the tanks and all available missions a few times over and had a blast each run. I can't wait for more. As of the time of writing, this video is still uploading, and won't be done for a few hours, but maybe it'll be of some use to you.
Hey, thanks for playing the game and thanks for the video, I'll check it out as soon as possible.
I'm glad you had fun, I do think it's going in the right direction.
ahoy
we played tankgame on stream
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2190638910
starting at around 51mins in
it took me a bit to get going but the game was a lot of fun. good job.
Thanks, gonna check this one out as soon as I can
Performance was generally smooth, I've only found one issue that I was able to replicate consistently: on level 2, I kept getting a heavy stuttering during the time the reinforcment countdown is active.
Options I've found sufficient, being able to separately change mouse sensitivity for different views is nice.
Although speaking of mouse look, aiming felt off and inconsistent. Most of the time I ended up using the turret view with V which felt a bit better, even in situations where the regular view would be preferable. For the combat, it felt like the turret turns too slow for how fast everyone moves around. Combine that with the weird inconsistent sensitivity most of my winning strategy was to just ram myself against enemies and shoot them point blank, letting the shield soak up the damage and trade out, which I imagine is not the intended way to play. I also wish projectile effects would be more visible, most of the time I was not sure where my shot ended up and what happened unless I landed a good hit and saw the enemy tank blowing up.
Apart from the turret, controlling the tank itself felt nice and responsive, though generally weightless. I've also come across a lot of time the tank jittering on slopes, sometimes sliding off to the side when I park on a slope sideway and sometimes not (my guess is the sliding down occurs when parking on edges of two slop faces?). The tanks also do this weird bounce whenever you ram against something, which also makes them feel too weightless.
I like the looks of the tanks, the environment is pretty sparse which I imagine is due to it being early on developement. My only issue with the visuals was that both alive and dead infantry looks the same from a distance, though I understand those are only placeholders.
Sounds seem fine, only thing that would be nice if the reload sound would be a bit more loud - it gets easily drown out in gunfire and for guns with longer cooldowns would be a good audio clue addition on when you are ready to shoot again.
The UI is good, never felt like I was missing anything, just need to pretty it up, could even go unique tank icons for each tanks if you want to be really fancy.
Even though by the end I felt like it was dragging on a little, the tutorial did end up being very useful, especially once I had to face off against heavier tanks. The only thing that was awkward was having to use Enter to progress with the messages, since generally one hand is at the left of your keyboard and the other is on the mouse. Maybe space and/or one of the mouse buttons would be better.
For the guns balance, I ended up relying on the 47mm cannon as the autocannon, while can shoot fast doesn't really have a pucn to reliably hit enemies. The 90mm is quite a spectacle but way too limiting to be useful - giving it at least some amount of vertical only aiming could go a long way. I also wish that my weapon setup would've been saved between sessions, every time I botted the game up again expecting to have the 47mm only to have to go back to the menu because it kept the default autocannon.
Thanks for playing.
Did you do anything to replicate this stuttering or does it happen every time?
Yeah this seems to be the consensus, I'll try to make third person aiming feel better.
Well it's not a wrong way to play, right now enemies fire on the move and most of them charge at you erratically so I imagine that is a also a factor. I definitely don't want to stop the player from closing in, but long-range aiming should be easier.
Will do.
Thanks a lot for the thorough feedback, it was useful.
Every time, as soon as the countdown begins (the numbers for the countdown appears).
Controls feel good and intuitive, tutorial does a fine job, new graphical updates are neat. This is going to be great. Making the player a bit more able to take damage I think will be good for the early game, make it easy at the start then ramp up the difficulty. The different damage zones and destruction seem to work well.
Are you going to cook a story for this somewhere down the line? If so, what are you thinking?
Thanks for playing!
Yeah it should probably be a bit easier at the start
In my experience story ideas don't survive the story being written so I usually don't talk about them too much.
But the setting is pretty much already decided: you play as an AI made by some dude in a scrappy spaceship and follow his orders to fight a race of aliens called the Cancri.
Anything beyond that is wishful thinking until I manage to finally nail down physics and controls.
But thanks for the interest and for the feedback
It sounds like a cool premise, as you might have guessed I am a very storydriven player, maybe in a few demo days there will be such things we can discuss : D.
I got filtered from your game.
Video:
Thanks for playing and thanks for the video, it was informative.
The biggest problem I'm seeing so far is that players don't always change the mouse sensitivity option and the default one is definitely way too high.
But yeah the video was helpful, thanks again
-Why is audio in db? Please, make it a percentage.
-Vertical and horizontal mouse speed being different feels gross, why do this? That or I'm going nuts and it's just me. Actually with some more testing it's very weird. If I move my mouse fast it's slow, but if I move my mouse slow it's fast. What kind of witch craft is this? If it helps, I use a high DPI.
-Tutorial was alright I guess, on the lengthy side.
-Did first mission. The replay feature is neat, I really liked this in Ace Combat. But please let me speed it up past 2x.
-Did the other one, it was a little more fun. However, it was very annoying due to my previously mentioned mouse stuff, luckily V zoom mode is normal feeling.
-Game is alright, for how early feeling it is. With refinement of the physics and movement it could be a lot better.
Thanks for the playing and thanks for the feedback
Okay
This is bizarre, aim sensitivity is the same on both axis. I'm guessing this could be a problem relating to mouse acceleration or smoothing, do you happen to have any setting like that enabled in your OS?
Will do
To be clear, there seems to be no difference in h/v mouse sensitivity. The reason why I thought there was is because the game is mostly about turning and not height aim, so I would move my mouse slowly when going up but fast to the sides; and as I mentioned, for some reason moving the mouse slow makes it rotate fast and when moving the mouse fast it rotates slow. And no, I don't have mouse acceleration and all other programs operate normally.
Some other notes:
-This input problem effects the normal aim and free look, it's normal when using the turret barrel zoom aim.
-Opened the game and testing it. I'm fairly certain the problem is that you use a constant speed for the rotation, independent of the mouse movement delta. So if I barely move my mouse(over <inch), I can rotate the camera 180* in the same time it takes to drag across the entire mouse pad. Therefore, the reason I thought it was changing speed is because it doesn't respect my small mouse movements that I am doing for precision. My guess is that you have a normal DPI mouse, and so small movements feel normal since it updates less often or something? Alternatively, it could be that my mouse DPI is so high that it hits the max speed instantly and it's my fault, although other games aren't like this.
-I changed my DPI and the problem persists. Lowering the game's sensitivity makes it more manageable, but the same problem is there.
Hope that helps.
Well that's weird, I'll investigate, thanks for testing it some more
For a tank game it's a really fun tank game. Your tutorial do a great job of explaining the mechanics.
My only gripe is on how high is the mouse sensitivity by default. But that got remedied by lowering it in the config menu.
The crusader tank is really joy to drive. I even manage to do a trick of driving off the last level platform to land on the wall. And drifting everywhere!
I didn't find much use for the 90mm other than "Haha big gun goes BOOOM!"
I really enjoyed my time with your game, thank you!
Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you liked the game
I do like tank games. There is always something satisfying with hitting a moving object with a tank shot. And with that said I do like how this game feels so far, the aim/shoot mechanics is working well for me.
Physics
I feel like the tank controls lean towards a more arcade game. It accelerates very quickly and is responsive. On the 2nd level when I drive off the ledge the tank does feel like it is floating. It would be good to add some kind of suspension / rolling effect when the tank turns quickly or when it shifts from forward to reverse, just to give it that heavy tank feel.
UI
I may be getting this all wrong the tank controls feel slightly like an arcade game. With that the UI could reflect the arcade feel that. Big bold UI elements. The UI for the tank aiming works well in terms of its functionality but could be updated alongside the rest of the UI
Sound
I think the sounds are on point. The shooting feels heavy, with bass, just like firing a tank. On the first level I really liked the feeling of the bullets ricocheting off my tanks armour. It made me feel like I was really under fire heavy fire.
Blowing up the building in the tutorial was very satisfying too.
Thanks for playing.
I'm on the fence about this, I know I should add "proper" suspensions but I'm afraid it might get annoying when trying to aim, I'll experiment with it and see
As you said it is more arcadey than a simulator so I'm leaning towards scrapping all realistic elements that might get in the way of gameplay.
Thanks for the feedback!
Moving the tank feels good and intuitive. I think this is what counts most at this stage. The following a list of stuff that really annoyed me.
- Idk why Godot devs insist on shipping their demos in small non-resizable windows. In your case it was especially bad because it probably caused some of the issues below.
- I presume shots are fired in some sort of arc. At least I missed many direct shots. I was not able to see WHY I missed, though. Meaning I would have liked to have some visual feedback on where the shot went (instead of hitting the target), some smoke in the air, or seeing the actual projectile (like rockets in q3) - but I couldn’t see anything.
- Mouse sensitity is really damned high. I could only move the turret with accuracy when I used both V+RightClick. I set my mouse to absolute lowest DPI and the sensitivity still felt way too high.
- Zoom felt kinda pointless in terms giving more vision, but I guess it will depend on the weapon?
VOD https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2189669865
Disclaimer: I have never played another tank game.
Hey thanks for playing the game and thanks for the VOD, I'll check it out as soon as I can.
Quick question: When you say that the mouse sensitivity is too high, did you try adjusting it in the option's menu?
>did you try adjusting it in the option's menu?
I did not.