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[kaijyuu]

I got posted on Equestria Daily

http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/12/game-between-dusk-and-dawn.html


Some neighsayers there, but seems overall positive (with the usual reservations about my experimental battle system). Not getting any bites on helpers, but I've prepared for that possibility.

[LordBucket]

EDIT:
Found the information I was looking for here

[klingon13524]

I'll help however I can, but I have no skills or connections to speak of.

[Bardum Idith]

I played your demo a bit, here are my impressions/suggestions:

-the gamepad-like controls were quite bit confusing during the first few fights

-like others already said, the text should scroll quicker during combat

-once you have a full team, the speed of combat is too high. It gets better after a few fights, but at first I had trouble to heal my ponies quickly enough to keep them all alive. Later that wasn't a problem anymore, though I still didn't manage to use my AP intelligently. Personally I prefer turn based combat if you control a whole party.

-I like that curvy font, it fits good with the pony theme in my opinion

Before that game I was mostly unaware and totally uninterested in MLP:FIM, but after I played it i went on youtube and watched two episodes of it. Count that as a success 
Also, inspired and out of boredom, I created a vector image of Twilight Sparkle and tried to make her walk:

Spoiler: result (click to show/hide)

I'm not that great of an artist and have some reallife troubles keeping me from spending much time on it, but I might make some images for your game if you want.

[klingon13524]

Wow, the icons are completely botched. Please look at an actual Xbox 360 controller, which I was trying to use. The placement and coloring of the buttons is not accurate... to be specific. Also, Dpad or Left + Right triggers won't work. Thumbstick and secondary triggers work fine, though.

[kaijyuu]

-the gamepad-like controls were quite bit confusing during the first few fights

Yeah I understand this and am making the new prologue/tutorial go a bit slower. I'll probably add some more visual cues too, to try and help explain what to do.

-like others already said, the text should scroll quicker during combat

Even quicker? It's a simple 1 number change to make it scroll as fast or slow as I want, but really I'm convinced you simply do not have the time to look at it. Too much time spent looking at health/ap/speed bars.

I'll come back to that menu once I've streamlined the interface better. Too much glancing around the screen for important information... I need all of it easily and quickly seen. The final fantasy ripoff menu is likely going away (it takes up too much space anyway)

-once you have a full team, the speed of combat is too high. It gets better after a few fights, but at first I had trouble to heal my ponies quickly enough to keep them all alive. Later that wasn't a problem anymore, though I still didn't manage to use my AP intelligently. Personally I prefer turn based combat if you control a whole party.

I'm pretty sure this is a difficulty curve thing. HOWEVER: if you're struggling with the interface, trying to FIND a heal, then it's a different problem. I do want variety with my character abilities, but we're back to confusion about what to do if each pony heals in a different way (which they do). Ideally you taking 3 seconds to figure out what to do each turn won't screw you over (at least at the start). The parasprite enemies right now, kinda do.

-I like that curvy font, it fits good with the pony theme in my opinion

Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world without an irrational hatred of comic sans and similar fonts.

That font still exists in the game, but it's been regulated solely to the "total damage" sprite. I just think it's more readable than any of the other fonts in the game for that.

Before that game I was mostly unaware and totally uninterested in MLP:FIM, but after I played it i went on youtube and watched two episodes of it. Count that as a success 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, inspired and out of boredom, I created a vector image of Twilight Sparkle and tried to make her walk:

Spoiler: result (click to show/hide)

I'm not that great of an artist and have some reallife troubles keeping me from spending much time on it, but I might make some images for your game if you want.

I've got some projects for smaller graphical stuff if you want to try your hand (err, hoof) at that. The various icons (like for buttons) suck, and replacements would be nice.
http://www.daydreamspiral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=45 Register (anti spambot password: rarity) and claim anything you like, in that topic or in the others.

As for your sprite, the animation doesn't quite fit with the walking seen in-show, but you're rather on-model which is great!

Wow, the icons are completely botched. Please look at an actual Xbox 360 controller, which I was trying to use. The placement and coloring of the buttons is not accurate... to be specific. Also, Dpad or Left + Right triggers won't work. Thumbstick and secondary triggers work fine, though.

Uh oh. I might actually have to acquire an xbox controller since they're likely now the most common gamepad.

As for button placement/coloring, I based it off the old super famicom layout, not the xbox. Super famicom controller.

It doesn't surprise me that the dpad doesn't work (well not too much), since anything with a joystick on it seems to screw with the detection of them. Dpads are usually analog sticks in disguise, and while I check every analog stick that SDL detects, SDL sucks at detecting them. On my PS2 controller, the dpad fails to work if I have the analog enabled, but works fine if it's off. I don't think you can turn off the analog sticks on an xbox controller, though, so you might want to stick to the keyboard.

[Johuotar]

I tested it and almost beat the super boss, I had a laugh when I saw who he was though. FFVI happens to be one of my favourite games... I'll take another attempt and mayby post some specific stuff if I come up something not already mentioned. Anyway, very exciting project.

Ponified atma weapon fight good god my dreams have come true.

[kaijyuu]

Update bump~


Having gotten a couple spriters, progress has been made on two fronts. We now have an animated Twilight walking around the map, and you can switch characters to Pinkie and Fluttershy. Fluttershy even has some battle animations!

(pictures are big-ish)
http://i.imgur.com/b7o1m.png
http://i.imgur.com/DemPl.png


A new tutorial has been completely made too... well it's been coded and given content, anyway. You can see part of the new (placeholder) map in the second screenshot. EDIT: By which of course I mean the first screenshot.

[Johuotar]

Ahh, excellent. I couldn't really come up with stuff that hasn't been said already, here or in other places. I played with gamepad and I think it worked pretty well. The pace is too fast to think who you casted that storm shield last time though. Twilight ends up having all the buffs because I dont have time to choose anypony else. If you want puzzle bosses the game needs to be slowed down, and I dont even want to think what it would be like to play with keyboard.
Be sure to inform us when there's new demo, I'll test it right away and think of something to say of the changes.

EDIT: Oh right, one question: Whats the NMM battle music?

EDIT2:

If you want it buff/support-heavy, that's fine, but I felt like most of my moves did nothing and were just futile attempts to stop a tide of insect bites.

This. So much. The game was fun and all and NMM was nice challenge, but normal attacks/SP attacks/buff&heal ratio could be finetuned.

[kaijyuu]

Be sure to inform us when there's new demo, I'll test it right away and think of something to say of the changes.

I'll talk to my artists and see when they want to make a cutoff for a new demo. Right now we're kinda shooting forward asap, with new content being made faster than art can be made for it.

It'll either be a short story demo, or a 2-3 chapter demo with ~40 mins of gameplay. Regardless, a month at least off. Lots of base art to be made (mane 6 stuff), not just maps and NPCs and the like which are faster to make.

EDIT: Oh right, one question: Whats the NMM battle music?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLIwV23ta3
Other songs are credited in the readme if you're curious, as well.

EDIT2:

If you want it buff/support-heavy, that's fine, but I felt like most of my moves did nothing and were just futile attempts to stop a tide of insect bites.

This. So much. The game was fun and all and NMM was nice challenge, but normal attacks/SP attacks/buff&heal ratio could be finetuned.

Much agreed on fine tuning. I think I've got a good idea, but it's not executed perfectly yet, I'll be the first to admit.

In terms of pure mathematical balance, I can't make the AP using abilities too strong or they'll outclass normal attack in terms of damage per turn. That will result in people spamming support skills to build AP, rather than using support skills when appropriate for their main function.
As for incoming damage, it can't be so low you rarely use healing (main source of AP), but not so high you're stuck at 100 AP and not able to use it without resulting in pony death.
Finally, the interface needs to be brought up to a point where you know exactly what abilities are available to you in a single glance. Also health will be easier to process if it's not just represented numerically (so a health bar will be implemented, likely). All that should speed up how much time you spend glancing at bars.


So yeah. Lots of junk to balance. Hopefully it'll be in a better place by next demo

[Putnam]

I like the way the review praises it throughout and gives it 7/10

[kaijyuu]

If anyone's wonder what he's talking about, here's the review I accidentally pasted in half the topics in general discussion. 


That's how game reviews go If anything, amateur game development has an even HIGHER expectation to give unilateral praise than professional, due to fears of "scaring the author off." Lots of novices have their heads up their ass and get offended at criticism. Hence my little disclaimer at the bottom of the first post; without it I probably never would've gotten much criticism here and elsewhere, heh. Too many people concerned about being courteous instead of useful.

That review is 2 days old, which is probably the most inspiring thing about it. I HAVEN'T faded into the aether like I thought I did. Someone's passing my game around, at least.