[RELEASED] - Ravenwatch - Act 1 BETA - 0.18

[ChrisN]

Great work, Heretic!

Its amazing how much art assets you have been able to produce for this campagin! As hipshot mentioned: me(paladin) and hipshot(wizard) decided to play through the campaign and noted some issues/suggestions that could be added.

Graphical errors



This bridge area somewhere around the beginning is layerd above the player somehow, thought a screengrab could show you. Also the rain has a purple dot tiling all over. I have marked a circle around it, should be easy fixes! There were also a few unimportant issues such as collision was to big for entrances or enemy characters collisionboxes should be larger.

[-SPOILERS- WITH PICTURES STARTS HERE]

Other issues



As hathunter and hipshot mentioned eariler: where crows starts to spawn beside the hand maze a insane lag hit our computers. I think its because there are way to many actors, maybe you could separate these parts more to avoid the lag?



The spiderboss got stuck in one of the pillars which made it super easy for hipshot to take the boss down, I know its a pathfinding-myran-issue because the actors sometimes get stuck in corners but maybe there is another way to design that area with no pillars or emerging pillars like the queen boss? Maybe there is another alternative?

[SPOILERS WITH PICTURES ENDS HERE]

But we had a blast playing it through, finished it in about 2 hours and 10+ deaths, many interesting new enemies and I am looking forward to playing act 2!

Ps: I really liked  the handgrabtraps aniamtion!

[Termy]

Hey,

played this map with a friend (Ranger+Warlock on hard) and we finished it. We needed to load several times where the thousands of ravens spawn.

The map Looks really beautiful. It's cool to see new graphics (mushrooms instead of apples) and new enemies (Spider!! grrr).


There was just one huge bug. We had to load the game, because there was no key to continue. As we loaded the game, there were keys which we already had collected and used!
So at the end we finished the game with 1 bronze und 2 silver keys and we opended every door.

I really enjoyed playing this map and please do act 2! Cant wait for it.

Termy

[Heretic]

I have a suggestion from a design standpoint regarding the ravens.

Currently, ravens are not fun imo. They don't even feel challenging, they feel cheap. Now this is a big problem considering the campaign basically revolves around this enemy type. Ravens should be "fun" to kill. That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be challenging at times, because challenges are often fun, but it does mean that they shouldn't be frustrating to kill. You don't want the player to be thinking, "Holy shit if another raven pops out from behind a tree I'm going to asdhfoasuidvhals..."

Here's my suggestion:
1. Don't hide ravens behind things often. The last version I played all the way through was plagued by ambush after ambush. I started dreading whenever I had to move forward because there were always hidden ravens in every other tree.

2. Visually design things for visually challenged people. What I mean is, make things obvious. If an enemy is fast-moving, you can't also make them very small and a drab color. The visually challenged player won't see it. "But I'm not making an experience for blind people", you may think. But your players are, at times, effectively blind. When you've got crazy weather effects, and animations going off, the priests fucking God beam, numbers popping up, and noises are happening, you can't see the single raven right behind you. Then the player finally notices the thing after it's knocked off 10 points of health and they become frustrated because they just couldn't see it.
You need to balance the raven's speed, contrast, and size. If the raven stays black (which makes sense) then it has to be slowed down a notch and scaled up a little or else your players will be blind to it whenever there's more than nothing happening on screen.

3. The physics are too small. The other melee classes (any class with a sword) don't have the extreme damage angle that the paladin can have. What happens is the ravens will get either a little to the left or the right of where the player's swing counts, and it misses. Fair? Yes, it's fair. Fun? It's really not. They play like mosquitoes. A constant game of "oops, you missed!". If ravens are to be as prominent as they currently are I would bump up the physics to make them more hit-able.


That's all I got. The mod is great fun and I can't wait to see more, I just wanted to explain my frustration.
And also I don't blame you for taking your time on the custom player sprites. They're quite tedious to work on.

You make some good points! I don't want the ravens to be too frustrating, but they are actually behaving in the exact way that I had intended. Ravenwatch is supposed to be a bit harder than the campaign and the ravens are meant to make you got a bit slower and check hiding spots, and also be a quick-reaction mob that is lacking in the Hammerwatch vanilla campaign. The only mob that really made you think quick was the flower-tower and it wasn't anything except make you move.

The key to the ravens is to move while attacking. They actually can't attack you if you keep moving, which you'll notice if you just keep running away from them. The tactic to kill them is to either use some form of AoE that your class has, or to hold your direction while moving backwards and attacking. This prevents them from hitting you,a nd they're easy to dispatch.

I'm sorry they frustrated you, and I'll definitely look into a way to maybe change up the color palette a bit to where they are more noticeable. Maybe even add more glows to their eyes or some kind of highlight - though their main theme is still an ambush-quick reaction type mob.

I truly appreciate the feedback and I'm going to look into the best way to change them!

[Heretic]

Great work, Heretic!

Its amazing how much art assets you have been able to produce for this campagin! As hipshot mentioned: me(paladin) and hipshot(wizard) decided to play through the campaign and noted some issues/suggestions that could be added.

Graphical errors


This bridge area somewhere around the beginning is layerd above the player somehow, thought a screengrab could show you. Also the rain has a purple dot tiling all over. I have marked a circle around it, should be easy fixes! There were also a few unimportant issues such as collision was to big for entrances or enemy characters collisionboxes should be larger.


Other issues

As hathunter and hipshot mentioned eariler: where crows starts to spawn beside the hand maze a insane lag hit our computers. I think its because there are way to many actors, maybe you could separate these parts more to avoid the lag?


The spiderboss got stuck in one of the pillars which made it super easy for hipshot to take the boss down, I know its a pathfinding-myran-issue because the actors sometimes get stuck in corners but maybe there is another way to design that area with no pillars or emerging pillars like the queen boss? Maybe there is another alternative?


But we had a blast playing it through, finished it in about 2 hours and 10+ deaths, many interesting new enemies and I am looking forward to playing act 2!

Ps: I really liked  the handgrabtraps aniamtion!

Thanks so much for the feedback it means a lot to me!

I'll get to work on those graphical glitches - that pink dot in the rain was a marker for me while drawing up the rain to tell when it was repeating and when I should spread out or change the rain drops accordingly - it shouldn't be there anymore, I think an old version snuck into the final release! Thanks for picking that up!

The spider boss getting stuck is weird - I blame Myran as well! I'll see what I can do to make the last boss fight more dynamic (and more fun, at that!)

The ravens spawning too much should have been fixed already - I had reduced it greatly in the last patch. I'll try it out and see if I can reduce it even more.

Thanks so much for your feedback and the screenshots, you've been very helpful!

p.s. it's also great to finally have a dialog with you! I hope to talk to you about many things in the future!

[Heretic]

Hey,

played this map with a friend (Ranger+Warlock on hard) and we finished it. We needed to load several times where the thousands of ravens spawn.

The map Looks really beautiful. It's cool to see new graphics (mushrooms instead of apples) and new enemies (Spider!! grrr).


There was just one huge bug. We had to load the game, because there was no key to continue. As we loaded the game, there were keys which we already had collected and used!
So at the end we finished the game with 1 bronze und 2 silver keys and we opended every door.

I really enjoyed playing this map and please do act 2! Cant wait for it.

Termy

I'm so glad you liked it! That is a strange bug that you've described, I'll have to look into it and see if I can figure out exactly where the problem is with that. Someone else had mentioned that they couldnt find the second bronze key on level 2 - is that they key you couldnt find?

[InfinitySquirrel]

I have only played through to a bit beyond the first boss, and so far it is amazing, best map I have seen so far. Might not be playing with the best classes for it though (took me and my friend 10 lives to kill the raven summoner) Was really annoying when, if you were not close enough to where they appeared in the first boss fight, they did not move towards you. Later, a huge swarm of 100+ would fly at you and be a pain (kept trapping me against the torches, I couldn't move and they suck down hp fast) Boss health was a bit High, but only going through with 2 people (And I might not be the best Hammerwatch player either).

Other than that, only one bug so far, when you get into the area right after the first boss, it spawns you by this entrance, if you attempt to go backwards, you can exit the map. Just wandering around in the void forever. Might want to make it move people back outside.

Also, some of the spider den exits look bigger than the actual exit is, on outside it looks fine, big web wall that you can go through, but on inside the hit box for the walls is a bit too big (or the opening looks too big). Not a big thing, but thought I would point it out.

So far it has been a great, though frustrating, world. Can't wait to see what act 2 has in store.

[Heretic]

I have only played through to a bit beyond the first boss, and so far it is amazing, best map I have seen so far. Might not be playing with the best classes for it though (took me and my friend 10 lives to kill the raven summoner) Was really annoying when, if you were not close enough to where they appeared in the first boss fight, they did not move towards you. Later, a huge swarm of 100+ would fly at you and be a pain (kept trapping me against the torches, I couldn't move and they suck down hp fast) Boss health was a bit High, but only going through with 2 people (And I might not be the best Hammerwatch player either).

Other than that, only one bug so far, when you get into the area right after the first boss, it spawns you by this entrance, if you attempt to go backwards, you can exit the map. Just wandering around in the void forever. Might want to make it move people back outside.

Also, some of the spider den exits look bigger than the actual exit is, on outside it looks fine, big web wall that you can go through, but on inside the hit box for the walls is a bit too big (or the opening looks too big). Not a big thing, but thought I would point it out.

So far it has been a great, though frustrating, world. Can't wait to see what act 2 has in store.

Thanks for the feedback! Yeah that Reaper boss is always tougher the first time through as you're learning him! I'm sorry for the frustration, but I'm glad that you're enjoying it overall. I have already fixed that collision problem in the crypt where it lets you leave the level so to speak, the latest version on the workshop should have that as well as a lot of graphical glitches in the cliff/graveyard levels fixed.

I may consider lowering the amount of ravens on the reaper boss, we'll have to see. I'm SO glad you liked it, your feedback means a lot to me!

[|DPG|Max][mu$]

Absolutely love this new custom campaign. Thank you so very much for making this Heretic!

I only have one problem and that is I cannot find a vendor to buy the combo. I have no problem finding everything else, but when my friend and I visit the village where all the vendors are at, there is no vendor that supplies the combo even when going into the Inn where the non class vendors are.

Is this some other place? Or are there no combos to buy?

Thanks again for an awesome new campaign!

[shiftyBOT]

Good work on this Hereitic!(I think I spelled your name right)
would you mind putting up some custom assets for download or something?(I really want things like the trees and grass and......everything?)
If you require me to give credit I don't mind (I want to base my own sprites in my own theme off of yours )

oh and if you need more help to make this fully realized I wouldn't mind helping(although it looks like you dont need any more help with this)


~shiftyBOT

[shiftyBOT]

hey could I use use some of your sprites?
I really want to figure out how they work so I can do similar things with my custom campaign:P
~shiftyBOT

[Xyanshift]

me and shiftBOT could make some custom assets (reskined versions of things and were even starting to make our own balls to the walls hard monsters)
so let us know if you need some help with xml code 

[Heretic]

Absolutely love this new custom campaign. Thank you so very much for making this Heretic!

I only have one problem and that is I cannot find a vendor to buy the combo. I have no problem finding everything else, but when my friend and I visit the village where all the vendors are at, there is no vendor that supplies the combo even when going into the Inn where the non class vendors are.

Is this some other place? Or are there no combos to buy?

Thanks again for an awesome new campaign!

I'm sorry, there are no combos to be had here, my son!

I'm glad you like the campaign, I hope you play act 2 when it releases (someday)!

[Heretic]

Good work on this Hereitic!(I think I spelled your name right)
would you mind putting up some custom assets for download or something?(I really want things like the trees and grass and......everything?)
If you require me to give credit I don't mind (I want to base my own sprites in my own theme off of yours )

oh and if you need more help to make this fully realized I wouldn't mind helping(although it looks like you dont need any more help with this)


~shiftyBOT

I will be releasing all of the Ravenwatch assets. I suppose I'll do that sometime soon, so stay tuned!

[|DPG|Max][mu$]

Absolutely love this new custom campaign. Thank you so very much for making this Heretic!

I only have one problem and that is I cannot find a vendor to buy the combo. I have no problem finding everything else, but when my friend and I visit the village where all the vendors are at,

I'm sorry, there are no combos to be had here, my son!

I'm glad you like the campaign, I hope you play act 2 when it releases (someday)!

Would you consider adding combos as a modifier/crutch?

Looking forward to Act 2!

[Heretic]

Would you consider adding combos as a modifier/crutch?

Looking forward to Act 2!

That's a good idea! I might add it as a crutch to easy mode, but I would want to keep it off of the normal/medium difficulty as it's not intended.