Post by tarbomb on Oct 2, 2012 20:30:18 GMT -5
Okay, I've spent about two hours playing the game, figuring out how stuff works, etc. Here are a few first impressions.
First: the concept is great. It's coop, and teamwork (much like in RotMG) is effortless. The difficulty is about right too.
Graphics: The artwork is nice, but as Stu said in his post, the overlay is distracting and diminishes the overall polish of the game (especially because it doesn't scale when zooming in/out). There should be an option to remove it. Edit: just found out that it's toggle-able with the b key. Obviously a graphical menu's going to fix the discoverability issue, but maybe a /help command could be implemented as a quick-fix.
Furthermore, the animation of loading new tiles when moving across the screen is kind of jarring when zoomed out. The problem is that the tank move smoothly across the screen, but only discrete tiles are loaded - it's especially weird to see a building suddenly appear on your screen with no warning. The viewing window should be able to load partial tiles to keep with the seamless look of the game.
Movement: The movement is great. To people coming from WASD-style games, it might feel slightly unintuitive (since it's not quite click where you want to go - a player needs to consider turning radius too), but as a guy who's played other click-to-set-direction games, it feels natural to me. I like it.
Aiming: This is where my main gripe lies. Based on my (admittedly limited - correct me if I'm wrong) knowledge of the game, there doesn't seem to be a way to specify which enemy to shoot at - the tank seems to always shoot at the closest enemy. This is especially annoying when I'm trying to bring down a super tank, and the guns keep targeting the minions instead of the main enemy. Would it be possible to create a setting that would always aim the gun at the enemy closest to where the mouse pointer currently is?
A little more on the interface:
Viewing enemy HP disrupts the "flow" of the game. To view enemy HP, I have to hover my mouse on an enemy - and keep it there - for a few moments. When trying to dodge at the same time, it's rather counterintuitive. Two possible solutions: 1) Reduce the hover time to zero, so I would get a view of enemy HP immediately after mousing over it, or 2) creating a hotkey that would show enemy HP instantly (for those who want instant HP readouts) while at the same time keeping the current hover system so that those who want to play a "sandwich-compatible" game still have that option.
The shield display is a bit misleading at first because it takes the form of a ring around the tank, leading me to think that that's where the hitbox is, while in actuality it's the much less visible thin green circle in the center.
I'd also like to see numbers for shields and HP rather than just bars and thickness, if only as an option. With all the powerups, etc. talking about damage percentages, or other numerical statistics, it would be nice to see the exact number or percentage of health (like what we can do for enemies) by hovering over the HP bar or the player's tank.
It seems to be difficult to tell different types of loot apart. Admittedly, I'm new and unfamiliar to the game, but it's a bit annoying I'm trying to only pick up blue lenses for the gridpoints and I pick up a green lens because I think it's a prism, with no way to drop it.
Edit: One more thing - the chat is difficult to read in a town due to both chat and town background being blue.
Perhaps adding a white glow to the text might help.
Overall this game looks really promising. Lookin' forward to seeing more great content in the upcoming builds!
First: the concept is great. It's coop, and teamwork (much like in RotMG) is effortless. The difficulty is about right too.
Graphics: The artwork is nice, but as Stu said in his post, the overlay is distracting and diminishes the overall polish of the game (especially because it doesn't scale when zooming in/out). There should be an option to remove it. Edit: just found out that it's toggle-able with the b key. Obviously a graphical menu's going to fix the discoverability issue, but maybe a /help command could be implemented as a quick-fix.
Furthermore, the animation of loading new tiles when moving across the screen is kind of jarring when zoomed out. The problem is that the tank move smoothly across the screen, but only discrete tiles are loaded - it's especially weird to see a building suddenly appear on your screen with no warning. The viewing window should be able to load partial tiles to keep with the seamless look of the game.
Movement: The movement is great. To people coming from WASD-style games, it might feel slightly unintuitive (since it's not quite click where you want to go - a player needs to consider turning radius too), but as a guy who's played other click-to-set-direction games, it feels natural to me. I like it.
Aiming: This is where my main gripe lies. Based on my (admittedly limited - correct me if I'm wrong) knowledge of the game, there doesn't seem to be a way to specify which enemy to shoot at - the tank seems to always shoot at the closest enemy. This is especially annoying when I'm trying to bring down a super tank, and the guns keep targeting the minions instead of the main enemy. Would it be possible to create a setting that would always aim the gun at the enemy closest to where the mouse pointer currently is?
A little more on the interface:
Viewing enemy HP disrupts the "flow" of the game. To view enemy HP, I have to hover my mouse on an enemy - and keep it there - for a few moments. When trying to dodge at the same time, it's rather counterintuitive. Two possible solutions: 1) Reduce the hover time to zero, so I would get a view of enemy HP immediately after mousing over it, or 2) creating a hotkey that would show enemy HP instantly (for those who want instant HP readouts) while at the same time keeping the current hover system so that those who want to play a "sandwich-compatible" game still have that option.
The shield display is a bit misleading at first because it takes the form of a ring around the tank, leading me to think that that's where the hitbox is, while in actuality it's the much less visible thin green circle in the center.
I'd also like to see numbers for shields and HP rather than just bars and thickness, if only as an option. With all the powerups, etc. talking about damage percentages, or other numerical statistics, it would be nice to see the exact number or percentage of health (like what we can do for enemies) by hovering over the HP bar or the player's tank.
It seems to be difficult to tell different types of loot apart. Admittedly, I'm new and unfamiliar to the game, but it's a bit annoying I'm trying to only pick up blue lenses for the gridpoints and I pick up a green lens because I think it's a prism, with no way to drop it.
Edit: One more thing - the chat is difficult to read in a town due to both chat and town background being blue.
Perhaps adding a white glow to the text might help.
Overall this game looks really promising. Lookin' forward to seeing more great content in the upcoming builds!
It's been bugging me for a bit, and there's a delay before the HP comes up too.
