Okay, so I have played the alpha v1.0.0 a bit and I'm pretty excited to see something very new here! I always love it when Minetest is being used to come up with very new ideas that are unlike other games.
It seems you try to keep the game rather simple. Only 6 crafts. Instead, the main focus clearly lies on the combat, which is surprisingly smooth, by the way. That part really surprised me the most.
But I think the simplicity is not a bad thing. As long the mechanics work out, this is fine.
The whole atmosphere is really nice, I just wish you'd make more liberal use of ambient sounds or even music. It seems lacking. I want to have more of that “barren wasteland” / “impending doom” feel. :)
One big thing I feel lacking is some scoring mechanism, or any sense of progress for that matter. This game basically screams for a highscore system, since the main goal here is “survive as long as possible”. But the game doesn't tell me at all how well I did.
Is this game already on a server? That would be awesome! :)
List of bugs:
- I somehow keep getting the item “the_end:wieldhand” in my inventory. I don't know how. The item is invisible, i.e. the item image is not visible. I can only tell the item exists by its tooltip, by hovering a seemingly empty itemslot. VERY confusing. I wonder if this is a bug in Minetest.
- The map boundaries look very strange. The map continuity is ugly broken. I think this should be completely redone to look more natural
- You can drop items, then you lose them for good. Is dropping items intended?
- You can build a tall reinforced wall inside yourself and make yourself stuck
- You can place block at the invisible wall
- There's no sounds WHILE digging a block
- The wieldhand does not match the player skin. Like, at all. Note there's several wieldhand mods out there.
- Revival is awkward. You just respawn on the same spot, but after some seconds you return to the start screen.
List of unsorted comments:
- Guess what? I don't even like the whole invisible-wall thing … Invisible wall is always a really lazy way that games do to restrict player movement. Have any better ideas to block player movement? Maybe design the borders of the map so that it feels more “natural” you can't proceed. Maybe a huge inpenetrable wall … maybe a magic barrier … maybe a giant deathpit … like as if your last bastion is surroun
- It's not really clear where the monsters come from (I mean, logically, lore-wise). They just poof into existence.
- It seems the map is predefined. So, is it really neccessary to allow free choice of mapgen? Just restrict the choice to one mapgen that closest matches the reality, everything else is just a fake choice.
- The game is lacking atmospheric sounds, or background music
- The starting screen is a bit awkward. Not really confusing, just the whole concept is awkward. Opening the inventory to start the game???
- There's no help or introduction
- There are only 6 crafts, but there is a search function and pages … Both search and pages are not neccessary and just add clutter
- Falling damage can be nasty if you get launched into the sky. Are you sure you want fall damage in this game?
- The stone cake texture doesn't really look “stone-y” to me, it looks just like a boring-ass regular cake
- Healing is very simple. You just use the item. It seems the healing rate is unlimited. So your healing speed basically depends on how fast you can click with the mouse. I'm not sure if this is a good idea. Maybe disable healing for a short moment
- Very good and creative use of blocks and sky to create a very unique atmosphere
- Combat is surprisingly smooth. I mean the whole knockback and force-push thing. I'm honestly impressed on how well this plays out. This is really refreshing, given how shit combat is in most other games
- Enemies go poof!!! Haha, this is pretty fun to watch. I also very like how the enemies operate.
- I like the random player skin feature
- The description of the commands is empty.
- Yay, German translation! You are my hero! :)
- I don't know if intended, but there's no way to know how much time is left until the next wave. Since you can't see the sun. Intentional?
Questions:
- What's the point of iron wood?
- What's the point of gold?
- What's the point of diamonds?
- What happens if your tools break and you're stuck in a hole and you have no way to repair your tools? Do you just have to wait until night, until the monsters kill you? What if you're stuck so badly the monsters won't reach you (or is this impossible?)
- Is the map completely built by you or is it based on a mapgen result, and then customized? If its from mapgen, maybe the solution to fix continuity at the borders is to force the seed+mapgen on which the map is based on. Or you save a larger area, much larger than the playable area, to ensure continuity
- I can't help but notice that all resources are limited. So if very skilled player(s) manage to survive very long, won't the map eventually be completely destroyed, and all resources used up?
- Avoid words like “rightclick”. Say “use” instead. Why? Because Android. And “use” is the official semantics of rightclick. (I admit, I also have committed this sin too often :( Doesn't change that it's bad )
Ideas:
- The health display should have a background (grayed-out hearts for the hearts you lost, many games do have this). I always hate invisible hearts.
- Healing items should display HP bonus in tooltip
- Add show_wielded_item mod
- Add more sounds for various events that lack sounds (such as eating a stone cake)
- Display the current wave you're in. Or the day number.
- Make a sound when a new wave starts (maybe a "battle horn" or something)
- Add a scoring system and highscore
- When you die, show some stats: Number of days survived, number of monsters killed, score, etc.
- It's stupid that /newappearance can give you the same skin. Please make sure the skin will always change to something else
- Bedrock should have a different texture
- I'm not 100% serious about this, but how about replacing the starting screen with something else? Maybe spawn new players in a special room that acts like a 3D main menu. Players that are not playing will meet here and they can join the game by punching a block or entering a teleporter or whatever. This room might later be extended with additional options, like highscore table, rulebook, etc. This would also be a good place to respawn after you died. Could be the ghostly netherworld, a place between life and death, the crypt, or whatever other ideas you might have. Just something that it makes sense in the game universe. ;-)
List of German typos:
- “Verwende um Werkzeuge zu repareiren” → “Verwende, um …”. Many other strings have this grammar fail (missing comma)
- “Mörser Und Stößel“ → “Mörser und Stößel”
- “zum starten” → “zum Starten”
- Note that in Minetest, we use “Sie”, not “du”. I even opened a thread about it!
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