I think the trouble with the menu system is caused by not understanding that you need to press e to bring it up, then press space to select items or equip weapons. I read that I need to press the use key so I kept pressing e not knowing I needed to press space. Otherwise you have done a great job witht the menu system, it must have been hard to get it to rotate like that. And selecting weapons is pretty cool, the way they rotate but you have used 3d objects, that must have been hard as well.

Blending the animations would make it look better, though it looks good the way it is. The camera is difficult to use in that you cannot see ahead of where you are running. I fell off the cliffs blindly because I didn't see them coming up. Perhaps you could make the camera tilt higher when the player runs up (ie W key) and make it tilt lower when the player moves down (ie S key).

The camera got annoying fighting that skeleton boss, when the player went behind the wall I couldn't see what was going on. Perhaps you would use a trace between the player and the camera, if the trace hits, have the camera move smoothly to a direct overhead view. The music was good, but I don't think it suited the game, it suited a Sonic Action type game more. Though if you had a futuristic type level I think it would work there.

I also thought that the night was too dark, I had trouble determining where I was and found it hard to see enemies, perhaps make it a bit brighter, have a dynamic light around the player, or give the player a torch as an item to equip. Going inside the buildings was good, though at night I think you should have some lights inside the buildings, as it was also hard to see things.

Great work! This game reminds me of Secret of Mana. The menu particularly caught my attention as I know how hard it can be to code menus, it is excellent. I also liked the shader on the water.

Congratulations, i have to say this is the best game i've seen made with 3DGS i love the dynamics in the water, the day/night transition and the overall "console feel" of the game specially the way how the name of the different places appears on the screen, the GFX are nice and the animations are not bad, they need some tweaking but for now they're good =)

The game is cool, but the controls are very laggggggy and buggyyy.

Hi,

I liked the game. It has a good feel to it. The effects are nice and how the menus changes is cool, The battle system is pretty good. Overall it is a good game.

The problems:
1) Even though I like the menu, the "hit the Use Key" message is a bit misleading the first time through. I couldn't find the "Use" key on my keyboard, just stuff like "Delete", "Insert", and "Home". I was just hitting every key I could find. After you figure it out it is ok, but the first time I played I had to hit ctl-alt-delete to exit the game. The second time I figured it out a bit better. Yes, I read the instruction manual before I played, lol. I do understand why you put "Use key" there, because you can switch key commands, but maybe you ought to add the old <esc> statis quo as another game exit option.You might want to put the text "Exit" under the door also, it could be interpretted as unlock/open door or something, especially the first time you play game.
2) The music wacks out every once and a while, getting extemely loud and sometimes disappears. Maybe it's supposed to do that, but it's a bit irritating.
3) The fish are hard to tell if they are dead by the animation alone. I would find myself still trying to hit dead fish and walking away from fish that were still alive. I didn't see anything that showed whether they were still alive or not, which doesn't really matter, if their death animation makes it apparrant enough that they are dying/dead. Maybe they should float to surface when dead or something.
4) The splashscreen isn't as nice as the game itself, it's a bit blah and needs improved some.

Keep up the good work. It will be interesting to see it completed.
Loco

@Towelie

I thought a bit about the attack speed. If I made it faster, it would be much harder to avoid hits...

The Stats won't be predifined later on. There will be questions and doors to walk throuh depending on which answer you choose. Depending on your answers your stats will be set to a max. of 20 points at one of them (the overall count of points will be equal of course). Something like that is in my mind.

@Morpheus
hmja.. etwas Consolen-style

@sfx
It's the only one I have, but if you don't like it just press F12.

BUT the music starts when enemies are around, so you can take it as 'pre-warning-system'

@AccessPhenomenon
I know it is a bit hard, but I guess it would be all clear, if Enter was the use button.
Every menu work like this, as a very easy example press the Windows-button.
When you've choosen your game icon you won't press the Windows-button again, you press Enter to activate it, because the Windows-button would close the menu.
But I'm glad that there is someone who understands and likes the menu!

Animation blending is already on my inaginary ToDo-List, that means it could take a bit untill I'll start with it.

But I really like the idea with the camera heigt when running, I think I'll do that.
I think they've done that in Final fantasy Crystal Chronicles, too. (but there you are running half outta screen )

Wow I hadn't expected someone fighting the boss in there, since the space is not that big and the skeleton is quite fast.
It shall be a bit of 'shock-effect' when it appears behind you... hmm...
I can't move the camera to a overhead view, I would have to rework all wmb's since they got only textured where they can be seen in this angle... :/

Maybe you are right with the night, but I thought about some 'light-making-spell', nevertheless you can go to the Inn and rest for the night.
But a bit less dark could be ok, yes.

Thanks for your detailed critique!

@Andvari
Thanks!

@Michael_Schwarz
So.. o.O?

@Locoweed
I'm glad you read the manual!
One of my friends said I should block Esc because it exited the game immediately...
Maybe I'll have the overall game menu complete in two months, then you can enter it by pressing Esc.
Exit is a good idea, I think I'll do that.

I already answered your question about the music above.

You're right, the animation isn't so clear.
There are three things to see if they're dead:
1st - They roll a bit to the left side.
2nd - They don't move anymore.
3rd - Their name disappears.

Ok I'll see what I can do with the splashscreen.

Thanks to you, too for the detailed critique!

All in all I hope nobody has got problems with the Sea Hungers anymore?
Maybe you could try fighting them bare handed, just as a small hint...

Can't get it to run on a Athlon XP 1600+, Geforce4 TI 64MB, 512MB DDR, Creative Live Audigy, Win98

"the document contains no data" when I try to download, and I can't see the screenshots... is your server down?
Also, "boundaryless" should be changed to "boundless".

Oh that's stange firoball...
I tried it out on my two computers, the one hast a 128 MB gfx card und 768 MB Ram, and the Labtop has a Radeon 9700 with 64 MB as your's and 512 MB Ram as your's, I could switch down the CPU-Performance to 25% (750 MHz) and it still worked with around 15 Frames.
Silly idea, but can it be a matter of HDD Memory?
Maybe the compressed archive needs some expansion memory...



I tried the link a few moments ago and I was allowed to download it, if the server was down it is back on now.



Due to the citique posts before I wrote lot's of things down to my ToDo-List, some really good ideas came up like changing the camera's height when running or a hint if the choosen armor is better or worse than the actual one.
And I already fixed the messed-up element discriptions.

I've had this problem with two other demos: BBR and Action Bird, but both projects are a lot larger than yours.

I know it is not a driver or OS issue, as other A6 stuff runs fine - I don't know what's the problem though. The error message is REALLY helpful....

Somehow it doesn't look like a memory problem
Lol it says 0 mb required , typically Windows ... Have you ever considered switching to XP ? It's quite a lot better for playing games and stuff.... But then again on your hardware XP's disadvantages will be more visible, I guess...


Cheers