Thank you for your feedback AE its truely valuable!
Quote: "OK well let's start with the obvious - the game is very well designed and presented. There's a huge array of FPSC assets, Game Guru assets, and your own custom models that all work seamlessly together and look coherent. It must have taken a long time to get them all looking right. That alone would be commendable, but it's your confidence with FPSC's lighting capabilities, paired with Black Ice Mod and ReShade, that elevate this game and give it a wonderful sense of ambience. The levels feel lived in, and - crucially - don't immediately scream "this game was made in FPSC!"."
Thank you! That means a lot coming from you!
Quote: "Given how reliant this game is on peeking during combat, I would have expected there to be a tutorialised section on it."
I've had this come up a few times before and I find difficulty something that is hard to get right. I wanted the game to be a challenge yet I also wanted every player to be able to finish it. Seeing people play it on YT and hearing from you guys I found that its a bit different for everyone yet mentions that its a bit too hard where overwhelming the people that breezed through it rather easily. I took this to heart and will overhault the combat for my next release! As for the peeking: I didn't want it to be TOO obvious on purpose because the AI simply won't react to you when you do so
Now, the AI scripts are decent enough that they fire a few rounds or strafe when shot upon but they are otherwise oblivious to you when you peek. So not that everyone views the AI as worse than it is, I only included a mention to it after first impressions told me that its too hard... the beta version had way more aggressive enemies and I am glad I took those out. Well, I do a more balanced job next time, I hope.
Quote: "You know what I really would have appreciated though when I was pinned down by three shotgun-wielding surgeons and a big steel mech? Grenades."
I aim to include those in the sequel as I plan it to have slightly more dynamic environments. You see, the way the game is made does not shine a spotlight on the fact that the levels are largely static. Once the player has explosives, he'd excpect things breaking and stuff flying off the shelves and I thought the lack of that would not make a good impression. Its a good point. Weapon variety, as in more types of weapons is a thing that a longer game would really need. I hoped to give the players something fresh with the isotope round rifle in level 4.
Quote: "I enjoyed the banter between Morgan and Anja, I almost wish there was more of it. "
Haha! Thanks! Well, this was the first time we did it and it was a lot of fun. We did some karaoke afterwards
I had some bad reactions to my voice acting in my older games, yet my english was far less understandable and the sound quality was worse. I had no idea how the players would react to it, or even understand our accents, and I am more than happy that everyone thought it was charming so far. There will definately more VO in the next games I make.
Quote: "whoever played Anja (is there a Mrs Wolf!?)."
Haha! Yes, that was Mrs Wolf.
I'll include more voice work in future installments. I hope you don't mind if I hit you up for a few lines as well. As for the music, a lot of tunes I originally made for Acythian, which had larger, open levels with way more ambient noise...so if you'd enter an interesting area or something plot related happens, a sound stinger would emphasize that. Here in FPSC it did indeed sound like the music just cut out and I also find some tracks where only
somewhat fitting.
Quote: "there was inconsistency here as some sounded professionally recorded, others sounded like generic finds from online, and others sounded like you'd recorded some death screams with your phone late one Tuesday night "
Haha, yes those where mostly stuff I grabbed off game banana and some are really old ones I released 10 years ago and did, indeed record...not with a phone but an old digital camera.
Quote: "The ending felt rushed and did not have the conclusion I was expecting."
Absolutely! Good point. I initially wanted to have an intro and an outro video...but as I have no real experience with video editing and as I wanted the game to be finished when it was time to start working on it, I didn't want to water down the quality with "babys first steps in davinci: resolve".
Spoilers:
"There's a number of plot points that don't go anywhere. Anja mentions this big revelation about the transgenic DNA code but it's never revealed what it is or why it is."
True! The plot is really you in this installation rescuing your team maters. Originally I didn't want to include much of a story beyond that as I tend to daydream about the world and its lore while making the maps, end up being fond of what I come up with and find the game lacking afterwards.
I didn't want to do this with this game, that should be a simple FPSC shooter and made relatively quickly Buuuut.... I ended up placing it in Acythian's lore, albeit decades earlier, and therefore a lot of things are mentioned that should be main plot points of future games.
What Anja reads to you is information she extracts out of the computer systems and not directly related to the goings on of the game. I also wanted to cast a shroud of mystery over the enemies you fight that should be veiled in later installments.
Alright! If you are still with me and don't mind a few spoilers for hypothetical futures games (:P) Keep in mind that the whole plot is rooted in me trying to come up with a coherent explanation of why they use modern day weapons in such a distant future installment. Most people will likely
never question this but... I am pedantic like that:
Basically: Earths societies evolved as is until 2150, at this point we had several off world colonies, including rudimentary terraforming of Mars. However, around that time, the third world war decimates humanity down to a few million people and completely cuts us off from the colonies for centuries.
It takes earth a long time to recover and rebuild and around 2350 a new space program was launched. At this point we make contact with the now thriving off world settlements that have altered themselves with genetic manipulation mostly unknown to us. there is some trade and diplomacy happening
but the transgenics view us as inferior and dangerous rather quickly which spawns the eugenics war. The DNA strain mentioned is an extradimensional DNA fragment hacked into Human DNA. Neither the mutants themselves, nor the earth born humans know that it is a plot by alien hybrids to allow a conciousness from another dimension to manifest itself on our planes. This whole thing will however only been revealed in Acythian. During the future Amytric Pulse games ( I had enough joy making this that I decided to grow it into a trilogy) it will be implied but never outright said that its just aliens.
"She also mentions disabling or blowing up a node/network thing but this doesn't seem to be part of the game, which is a shame because I was really looking forward to knocking out the enemy and feeling like I had some permanent effect on the world."
Good point! I worte in that you locked out the forces from the lower levels, as they didn't manage to get to you, they decided to blow up the tower in order to keep you from uncovering any more information. Initially I planned to have one of their generals taunt you via intercom but there was not enough room for this in the game...FPSC levels are, after all, always a bit rudimentary. And there should be a vista of the tower exploding as the chopper lifts off in the video.
Morgan's own personal relationship with Selena was not really referenced but could have been a great tool for understanding more about him and his motivations for going on the mission.
Haha! Yes!! Absolutely. I noticed that when I was pretty far with the game already and decided then that if I make a sequel (which is now in the works) I'd mention in the very beginning that their relationship has always been difficult and that she left him now for the other agent in her cell.
The fact that he not only rescues his brothers in arms but also his fiancee is a remnant from the first draft, where the game was supposed not to have any plot to speak off to further give the player character an incentive to go forward. Kinda Duke Nukem "They stole our babes? Not on my watch!"
All bugs you mentioned have been brought up several times. With s4reals and nomads help I'll likely be able to release an update at some point that will iron these out...but you probably know that an FPSC game without the occasional run time error would be nearly utopic.
Quote: " There's also a missing door at the beginning of level 7 or 8 from which you can see, and step out into"
Blasted! Yes... it warps in and out of existence depending from where you look at it. I couldnt figure out why, the mesh seemed fine and I thought I had it fixed before I released the game. I'll make sure to never use that particular door again
Quote: " It's made by a developer who is clearly comfortable in the tools he is working with, and cares about player experience and putting on a good show, not unlike myself!"
thank you! And I agree... Panache is something we had a lot in FPSC's golden days and I really wish we had more of that enthusiasm, creativity and dedication in the GG community. Everything feels a lot more lethargic over there in comparison.
Thanks again for the review!
-Wolf
