Level design comments

Level design comments

Postby andrewbuck » 21 Nov 2010, 19:27

I would like to start gathering feedback from people playing the current build of the game about the design of the level. When the game loads you are in a test level where you have to protect the knight with the shield, kill all the enemies, claim 1000 tiles and mine 2500 gold to complete it. I would like to know what people's thoughts are on this level, is it to big, too small, are the enemies to difficult to kill, are there too many/not enough enemies, is the lighting too dark, too light, is the sound too loud or too quiet, etc. Any comments regarding the gameplay experience would be welcome. I have been able to beat it in the past and can about 1 in 3 times or so if I really try, have others been able to beat it? Is anyone trying to beat it?

In order to start things off I will share a few of the issues I think currently exist with the level. Although, the enemies are easy to kill once your creatures have leveled up a bit, they are very difficult to kill if the enemies level first (whoever gets the first kill has a huge advantage), also the combat seems to happen very quickly so either we should increase the number of hitpoints the creatures have or decrease the damage they do.

Furthermore they seem to level a bit fast in terms of the abilities they gain per level in terms of HP and damage done. They currently gain levels very fast, just a few fights will get them to between level 5 and level 10 or so but the limit on levels is around 100. This will allow us to fine tune when creatures get certain abilities more than the original DK did with only 10 levels. Therefore I propose that we make the creatures receive less damage gain per level to even out the battles a bit (the creatures will still gain levels at the same rate though, the rate does taper off when they get to be higher level).

-Buck
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Re: Level design comments

Postby KroArtem » 21 Nov 2010, 19:43

Going to receive a copy of git, if it is easy to compile OD, then you'll receive some feedback in 3-4 days :)
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Re: Level design comments

Postby Skorpio » 22 Nov 2010, 14:44

I tried to play the test level a couple of times, but I always gave up because the tile claiming was so slow. Could you try to speed it up?
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Re: Level design comments

Postby andrewbuck » 22 Nov 2010, 16:20

I had been planning to speed it up by allowing the creatures to claim faster when they get higher level. At a certain level (30 or so) they would be claiming one tile per turn. At levels beyond this the extra claiming they do each turn would "spill over" into surrounding tiles. This would make them claim significantly faster. I could also turn up the speed that the "tile creep" runs at, so opened up areas will claim themselves faster (and the areas around where your creatures claim). I have been thinking about this recently and will probably try it out this morning if I get time.

-Buck
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Re: Level design comments

Postby svenskmand » 22 Nov 2010, 16:55

My main problem with the test level is that I do not know which creatures are mine, and which are the enemy :S The health flowers would be very welcome, or some sort of indication.
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Re: Level design comments

Postby andrewbuck » 22 Nov 2010, 18:36

How much have you played it, and how hard has it been. If the difficulty is about right (or too easy) _and_ you are unable to tell which creatures are your own, then it will be _way_ too easy when you can easily differentiate them and control them better. Also, in version 1.4.5 (the current development build) the creatures all have 100 HP more than they did before. This makes gives them about twice as much HP and seems to make the combat a bit more realistic. Let me know if you are playing with this version and if so, what do you think about how long it takes one creature to kill another.

-Buck
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Re: Level design comments

Postby svenskmand » 23 Nov 2010, 00:33

andrewbuck {l Wrote}:How much have you played it, and how hard has it been. If the difficulty is about right (or too easy) _and_ you are unable to tell which creatures are your own, then it will be _way_ too easy when you can easily differentiate them and control them better.

I hope that you by this, are not arguing that we should have no indication of which creatures belongs to which player in the game? That will not really make much sense. I will try and see if I can complete the level, then I let you know how much time I spent on it.
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Re: Level design comments

Postby andrewbuck » 23 Nov 2010, 00:39

No I don't mean that we should have it be that way in the finished game, I am just saying that _if_ you find it easy to beat now, it will be even easier in the future, so we should make the level a bit harder to compensate for this effect.

-Buck
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Re: Level design comments

Postby svenskmand » 23 Nov 2010, 00:47

Ok :)
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Re: Level design comments

Postby andrewbuck » 24 Nov 2010, 03:00

While testing the game tonight I just played through the level (the latest code where the green glow was added when tiles are claimed). I beat the level in just under 2000 turns which at the default 1.4 turns per second would have taken about 24 minutes to play. It didn't actually take me this long to play it though because I did it at about 3 turns per second. This means that a player actually playing at the real speed would have beat it in fewer turns since anytime I was not managing the creatures for a bit, about twice as many turns would happen during that time.

I think this seems about right for the first level in the game. It could maybe happen just a little bit faster but I think it is definitely in the realm of possibility. I would still like others to try it too though because I test the game a significant amount and therefore am pretty good at beating this level. I need to know if others will have a similar experience.

-Buck
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