Day 1 Impressions

Feedback and Bugs

from Stardock.net Forums

Hey All,

I was super excited to see the release hit during my lunch hour. I wanted to run through a bunch of tests real quick to see if I could provide any feedback. Overall, for a first release alpha TVGM is kind of amazing. First and foremost, I want to list out some things I think really need to be added from a usability standpoint, some items that would be great from a quality of life standpoint, and actual bugs I encountered.

If in the future these are better to list separately, let me know and I'll not make omnibus threads. :)

 

  • Functionality items (Important to have) 
    • Needs undo/redo buttons/keys - Cannot stress this one enough. Even just a 5-10 action history would be an amazing improvement.
    • Some keys not shown on the tooltips (Del = Erase. Z = Zoom out). There should either be a full keymap (maybe shift+F1?) or a way to see/rebind keys.
    • Allow changing of hero sprite after selection. As the hero sprite selection only shows their icon, and not their actual sprite, you run into situations where you end up wanting to change your selection. Having to restart your entire project can really kill momentum.
  • Quality of Life changes (Nice to have):
    • Change sprite palette colors. Probably not free form painting, but you can pull up the palette the sprite is using and change those colors to something else. This would probably be good for people who are not artists (e.g. Me) but would like to tweak the theming.
    • Ability to customize title screen would be great.
    • Search through all objects/gizmos/tiles/etc. (Remember the name of an object or a description, but not where it was? Searching all available items would be amazing)
    • Full screen games (no black bars on left/right side), or the ability for us to move UI to that location?
    • UI tweaking. (Not necessarily full UI customization, but recolor or border styles would be great, and the ability to move UI elements)
    • Object tweaking (You have multiple behaviors set up which cover a lot of options, but they are locked to individual objects. It'd be great if we could use an object with any available behavior. Like I'd love to have the sushi be a healing item in an Ninja-themed game)
    • As we've mention elsewhere, an inventory system. You're like 90% of the way there with how you handle weapons at this point.

 

Bugs:

  • Sprite collision/transparency issues (see examples below). These tend to flicker/disappear if the sprites move, but reappear depending on their location.
    • weird lines on sprites
  • Ladders don't seem to work as intended in all games (in Aliens 'N cats, you get stuck at the top of ladders unless you jump)
  • Alt-F4 while in edit mode locked up/froze TVGM rather than exit.

 

Hope this helps. Overall I'm really liking what I see so far. Great work.

13,223 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock.net Forums Top

Thanks for the feedback, Silver (and the kind words!)

Almost everything you listed is somewhere on our priority list, so that's cool that we're all on the same wavelength.

You did mention the top of ladders, though. Stopping is currently the intended design there, since it was easy to accidentally over-climb a ladder and end up unintentionally falling. What does your gamer intuition say should happen at the top of a ladder?

Thanks again for the feedback and support - it really does mean a lot :)


Reply #2 from Stardock.net Forums Top

Thanks for the quick reply, Scott!

 

For ladders: I would expect them to work like in the side-scrolling bits of The Legend of Zelda for NES, or for Mega Man. The top of the ladder acts as a platform. Once you're done climbing the height of the ladder itself, you stand on top. You can jump off it as if it was any other platform.

You should only fall through a ladder if you're already jumping (And not holding up), basically.

 

WindowBlinds - Free yourself of the default settings, customize your desktop.
Reply #3 from Stardock.net Forums Top

I agree with standing on top. But if you're going to make the character stop, please get rid of the stuttering at the top while holding up. The cat looks like it's having a seizure.