Force them to do the tutorial : >
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…just like a lot of players 
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I’ll be updating more frequently now.
v2.7.0 is here. New camera system makes sure that as little space as possible is wasted on screen, adjusting so it frames action, not the background sky. Hard to explain this in writing, but it’s definitely an improvement. Perhaps it could use some polish though–I’d need feedback.
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The version number on the page is still 2.1.0
I like having more overview, but the avatar gets a little lost in all the mayhem… would it look weird to render it over things like the bullet glow? Shop text too, it can become entirely obscured, and it feels more like a UI element than a part of the world.
I stopped at this point (see below), it was running at about 2 fps. Bouncing bullets in particular seem to have a big impact on the frame rate.
I had to turn off the sound too, with that many bullet impacts, it’s basically just constant ticking
Hmm, bullet glow is meant to have a cap so it doesn’t obscure things despite being so heavily layered. I’ll investigate. Same with bouncing bullets. As for the sound, I’ll adjust it.
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v2.8.0 is here!!
It appears I didn’t fully understand how modulated color, opacity, or Nodes work. After reworking the lighting, everything looks much more vibrant and areas of the screen are no longer blown out.
Also, I switched bullets over from CharacterBodies to using raw PhysicsServer calculations. Performance is now INSANE! I think you won’t have any more troubles. I was using 100 bullets, +500% fire rate, 1200 max ammo, and 3 bounces and just all-out blasting. Still maintained ~8 FPS. Using a more reasonable 10 bullets per shot, it got ~60 FPS!
Bullet bounce sounds have been made quieter and are only audible up close, but you’ll have to see if that’s sufficient.
The performance gains have allowed me to add bullet animations. For now, it’s just a simple smear when firing.
Thanks for the feedback. Keep it coming! This was a super fun feature to work on.
BTW: One thing that would be super helpful for development is if you can get a video of a full run, start to finish.
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v2.9.0. Small fixes for game-breaking bugs I introduced last update.
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Aware of a bug where shooting a tree with piercing crashes the game. Will release fix soon.
Edit: done.
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Happy to help
I’ve tried, but it was an unusual run, as I died very early from one of those surprisingly damaging shots. Usually I just keep playing until the game becomes too choppy, and quit manually.
Here’s the video - the link will expire in a week: Transfer - Dropbox
A note: some plants are indestructible, which is a little confusing since some aren’t. The avatar still targets the indestructible plants so it’s little irritating, since they still block bullets.
I’m aware of the issue. Indestructible plants are ones that happened to spawn on top of a wall, which prevents the bullet reaching it. Indeed, they could be destroyed if they were placed elsewhere. To fix, I’d just have to use a raycast. I’ll implement it soon.
BTW, forgot to mention explosive damage and damage are now the same stat as per your request.
Summary
A few things I noticed:
- You seemed to want to remove cards sometimes. I too would like that, but it would defeat the whole purpose of the draw-in-hands mechanic. Perhaps one deletion per shop phase?
- Were you aware that dashing grants a brief invincibility? You could dash through the horde and swing your melee for decent damage, as well as dash into bullets to ignore their damage. If you weren’t aware, I’ll need to convey the I-frames more clearly
- When you mentioned indestructible plants, I noticed you used an explosive build. Explosives don’t affect plants (bug, fixing soon). Oddly, the explosive particles didn’t always appear.
- The 2x powerup mult item would consistently do nothing for your powerups because you would equip it in the wrong order. I’ll add something to automatically place it before all other powerups to avoid that hassle.
- You were already low HP, so the one-shot prevention didn’t help you. I’ll rework it so you still can’t be one-shot at low health.
Cool! Just to be clear, anything I tell you are just observations and opinions, not requests. The actual decisions, I leave in your capable hands
Not in the run, but in general I think that would be a good idea. That’s really just to mitigate the randomness of drawing.
I do feel the hand-drawing method is time consuming, and it feels somewhat frustrating that the cards in your collection that you get, are to some extent randomly picked. If your +combo slot cards appear last, you’re just screwed, with no way to predict or affect that outcome.
I get that it’s a central feature, but I’m not sure it improves the game. I’d probably go with free choice, all cards available, and leaving cards in their “slots” between rounds, so the player doesn’t have to recreate their build each time. That would also cut down on the time spent between rounds. You might even dabble in making card order matter somehow.
I was not, though I’ve seen “dodge” mentioned as a mechanic. If the melee attack has to be activated manually, I don’t know about that either
I’m frankly not even aware of which powerups it targets (temp / permanent / both / ?), and the temporary bonuses seem pretty weak compared to permanent ones… they’re gone quickly.
I think the problem is the extreme difference in incoming damage - without a way to tell that a particular shot does 1000+% of a normal hit, I didn’t see much need to evade it. My experience was that everything was under control, no real danger in sight, plenty of health, dead. In other words, if I’d known the danger, I could blame myself, but when it’s seemingly unpredictable, it’s frustrating, and doesn’t make me want to go again.
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Hmm, I agree. Hand-drawing was originally meant to be a thought-provoking thing that prompted you to adjust your build on the fly, but that doesn’t seem to be working. I think I may just fall back on my old idea. A long time back, one could simply place cards into the build and reorder freely. The UI for that was awful though, so I’ll need to adjust it.
Indeed, order matters. For example, Heavy Bullets grants a 1.1x damage multiplier for 1 sec after reloading. It should be after other +damage cards.
Will get it into the tutorial as a “combat” section including dashes and melees.
Powerups are the green things. The “permanent powerups” are called cards. I’ll consider increasing powerup time.
Bullets shot from Agent, the one that usually one-shots people, are much larger than normal. I’ll try to give them a different texture as well.
Update: A new build-making UI is in the works, and things are going well.
I thought combo cards were cards
That’s a little confusing, since combo cards are actually represented as cards in the UI, and are called cards, but aren’t cards; while the actual “cards” are represented the same as “powerups” (“green things”), which neither are nor look like cards (they’re picked up as icons and are represented as icons in the bottom of the screen).
Given that I’ve played the game for hours, and have been following your development of it, it’s worrying that there are so many gaps in my understanding. Ideally you’d want a new player, with no knowledge of the game or its development, to pick these concepts up very quickly. I’m not sure the game terminology is helping with that right now.
OK, let’s clear this up real quick.
Green things are powerups. They are temporary bonuses.
The cards with lots of text on them that are purchased in the shop are called cards.
The cards with an image (sometimes of an item) are called “level up cards” (they don’t have an actual name).
The items you buy from vending machines or find in chests are called “loot”.
This is a powerup machine.
The green, red, pink, and orange machines are loot machines.
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You don’t have to tell me, tell the player
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v3.0.0 is here!
Hand and drawing system is completely removed in favor of a new build system.
It’s a rough prototype. I’m open to feedback in terms of making it even more responsive and effective for making builds.
How it works:
- You see all your cards in a menu
- You can pull up your deck at any time and pick cards to add if you have space
- You can reorder cards and delete (send back to deck) as desired
I’m hoping to go for a big launch (promotion to content creators) soon. Does the game feel ready? What needs to change?
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I love the art style, If you ever wish to leave the deck builder survival style, I would highly suggest you to move this style to another game. It looks actually fun!
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I tried the 3.0.0 build but:
- Game speed (menu too) seems to have doubled at least..? The build is largely unplayable.
- The new combo card selection is kind of confusing - having the deck and the selection visible at the same time might be better, or at least a clickable button to open/close the deck.
- I couldn’t get the B, Z or X buttons to work.
- I think “remove” is more appropriate than “delete”, which implies deleting the card.
- Just a note - does the combo card “expired coupon” have any positives? It costs one combo slot and awards one combo slot, plus bad stuff.
My first two comments to you in this thread were: clipping audio, and confusion about powerups. Those are still problems. By the way, I’ve since checked the credited artist for the menu music, and the original mixes seem fine.
I was also confused about the UI controls that don’t have a clickable control - that hasn’t changed. I’d say it’s the norm to have a clickable interface and support it with hotkeys, not the other way around - that’s what players will likely expect.
Other things I’ve brought up, that I still feel should be addressed:
- Zoom may need adjustment, I’m not sure where it’s currently at
- Sudden death is too common - anything that’s many times stronger than a normal attack should be very clearly indicated as such
- Health UI isn’t very prominent, currently shown only in numbers and as far from the player as possible
- Level exits can be hard to find, and I don’t feel it improves the game
There are also little annoyances, like when a combo card gets “focus” on mouse-over, some buttons have the Godot square around them, etc… beyond that, there’s balancing and progression. It would give the game a lot more longevity if there was some kind of progression built in. Balancing is a little hard to evaluate, because I’ve had to end my good runs manually, before my computer laid down and died
Unless you have a deadline looming, I think you should polish up what you have. It’s already fun to play, maybe the funnest on these forums, in my humble opinion… it would be a shame not to put in the last 10%.
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massive wall of text
Oh my god 
I forgot to turn off the testing stuff. I’ll fix it ASAP.
Very true. I’ve tested a side-by-side layout before, but I just didn’t like how it felt.
You must have a card selected – click on it. I’ll adjust this as well.
+1 combo slot actually means adding two combo slots. For example, when you’re at 0/2 used and add the coupon, it becomes 1/4, giving an extra slot (3 free now instead of 2). It’s labeled as one because you gain one available slot. Is that confusing?
Ah, but downloading them, I believe, is at a lower quality than what you can hear on YouTube. Here’s one of the tracks. Do you hear clipping?
(changed to an mp4 so it can upload here)
OK. I’ll add buttons accordingly.
Indeed, I’m working on a system where one can buy new cards in a meta-progression shop. It already exists (see the Loadout menu), but it’s just a placeholder.
Very true. Minimap is a must.
Really? Take a look at this screenshot from Brotato.
Or perhaps one from Hades:
Both healthbars are not very prominent.
Here’s a screenshot from Wombo:
That healthbar looks more prominent to me. If you have more info on what makes it bad, I’d appreciate it.
This stems from my “innovative” (terrible) system where enemies can have different subtypes. Some evolve into tanks, others into super-damaging snipers. I may simply remove it, letting each enemy be more predictable. Another idea is to draw unique art for each subtype, but that’s a lot of work.
My plan to address the lack of content and help with balancing is to get a bit of an audience going (contact a few small youtubers) and hopefully gain a few players. From there, I’ll listen to their feedback on new content ideas and balancing. I’m all out of ideas for new content, and in terms of balancing, it feels like literally every card can be a broken build (good or bad thing)?
This is a point brought up many times. I’ll just add an option in settings to tune it to your liking.