Feedback: If you're going to have a pet class and bosses that teleport you into a boss area...

[DragonByDegrees]

...then you need to be absolutely certain that those pets are being teleported with the player as well, because currently that's not what's happening. Furthermore, the pets are getting left behind in many cases instead of destroyed, so the necromancer cannot summon NEW ones because the old ones are still around, they're just not in the boss area where they need to be.

[Stingbot Games]

Originally posted by DragonByDegrees:

...then you need to be absolutely certain that those pets are being teleported with the player as well, because currently that's not what's happening. Furthermore, the pets are getting left behind in many cases instead of destroyed, so the necromancer cannot summon NEW ones because the old ones are still around, they're just not in the boss area where they need to be.

Hi DragonByDegrees, I agree. This should be happening. Which boss are the skeletons not teleporting to? I will check it asap.

[DragonByDegrees]

Originally posted by Stingbot Games:

Originally posted by DragonByDegrees:

...then you need to be absolutely certain that those pets are being teleported with the player as well, because currently that's not what's happening. Furthermore, the pets are getting left behind in many cases instead of destroyed, so the necromancer cannot summon NEW ones because the old ones are still around, they're just not in the boss area where they need to be.

Hi DragonByDegrees, I agree. This should be happening. Which boss are the skeletons not teleporting to? I will check it asap.

Thanks for the quick response!

The second stage with the hallway fight against the giant crawling skeleton dude and also the second stage with the mage who moves around in a small room and shoots fireballs. It's pretty unreliable on those two for me.

I'm not sure if it's happening on stages 3 and 4 as well because I haven't played those yet.

While I have you here, I really do appreciate the accessibility options you've provided, but I think there's still room for improvement there. I don't have "hide enemy outlines" selected, but the only enemies who seem to be outlined are the stronger ones, meaning people like me who have vision issues are gonna be accidentally running into enemies they don't see quite a bit. My suggestion here is to include an option where everything that can do damage to a player is the same bright color, and maybe also allow the color to be selected by the player because of color blindness issues. It would also be nice to be able to adjust the opacity of that, but just having it in the first place would make a world of difference for those of us who can't really fully see what's going on at the moment onscreen <3

[Stingbot Games]

Originally posted by DragonByDegrees:

Originally posted by Stingbot Games:

Hi DragonByDegrees, I agree. This should be happening. Which boss are the skeletons not teleporting to? I will check it asap.

Thanks for the quick response!

The second stage with the hallway fight against the giant crawling skeleton dude and also the second stage with the mage who moves around in a small room and shoots fireballs. It's pretty unreliable on those two for me.

I'm not sure if it's happening on stages 3 and 4 as well because I haven't played those yet.

While I have you here, I really do appreciate the accessibility options you've provided, but I think there's still room for improvement there. I don't have "hide enemy outlines" selected, but the only enemies who seem to be outlined are the stronger ones, meaning people like me who have vision issues are gonna be accidentally running into enemies they don't see quite a bit. My suggestion here is to include an option where everything that can do damage to a player is the same bright color, and maybe also allow the color to be selected by the player because of color blindness issues. It would also be nice to be able to adjust the opacity of that, but just having it in the first place would make a world of difference for those of us who can't really fully see what's going on at the moment onscreen <3

Noted. It's pretty late here so I'll take a look in the morning and see if something is going on with the skeletons in Usvit Depths. I'll post back here after I've had some time to look into it.

As for accessibility: I'll add to our feedback list and see what we can do once I get some time to look into the shader setup of the enemies and related code.

[DragonByDegrees]

Originally posted by Stingbot Games:

Originally posted by DragonByDegrees:

Thanks for the quick response!

The second stage with the hallway fight against the giant crawling skeleton dude and also the second stage with the mage who moves around in a small room and shoots fireballs. It's pretty unreliable on those two for me.

I'm not sure if it's happening on stages 3 and 4 as well because I haven't played those yet.

While I have you here, I really do appreciate the accessibility options you've provided, but I think there's still room for improvement there. I don't have "hide enemy outlines" selected, but the only enemies who seem to be outlined are the stronger ones, meaning people like me who have vision issues are gonna be accidentally running into enemies they don't see quite a bit. My suggestion here is to include an option where everything that can do damage to a player is the same bright color, and maybe also allow the color to be selected by the player because of color blindness issues. It would also be nice to be able to adjust the opacity of that, but just having it in the first place would make a world of difference for those of us who can't really fully see what's going on at the moment onscreen <3

Noted. It's pretty late here so I'll take a look in the morning and see if something is going on with the skeletons in Usvit Depths. I'll post back here after I've had some time to look into it.

As for accessibility: I'll add to our feedback list and see what we can do once I get some time to look into the shader setup of the enemies and related code.

Thanks! :)

[DragonByDegrees]

To expand on visibility issues, on the third stage there is a boss that generates phantom swords, and the color of these swords is very similar to that of the golem and skeletons the necromancer can summon. Additionally, it feels like the enemies are not always displayed on the top layer, meaning sometimes they'll be hidden beneath the golem or something like that. Ideally, the layers would work as follows:

1 (top layer, always visible)- Enemy projectiles, trap pressure plates, things of that nature
2- Boss enemies
3- Elite enemies and very small beneficial pickups
4- Normal enemies
5- Breakables like barrels and chests, larger beneficial pickups, mimics might go here or might go higher
6- Minions
7- The player
8- Terrain, though terrain that is also a trap (such as plates that indicate they are about to spit out fire and then do so) would have some indication on layer 1 so it's always noticeable

[Stingbot Games]

So, I did do a couple of runs in Usvit Depths this morning, and skeletons and the golem are transported into the boss lair without issue. Everything appears to be working as expected. I also reviewed the code and can't find any flaws. I'm not sure what is happening in your circumstances. If you are able to provide me further details that might help. A few things crossed my mind while doing this: 1. Sometimes the skeletons overlap each other when transported so it may appear as there is just 1, but you can always see your total count that are active in the top right corner of the screen. For instance it will say 2/2, 3/5 etc depending on how many are active and how many in total you can currently summon based on the Raise the Dead ability rank. 2. It's possible the skeletons were low on decay and they died before transporting? If this issue keeps happening I'll likely need some more information from you to figure out what's going on, but so far I cannot reproduce it on my end nor find any issues in the code.

As for the other suggestion: I'm going to look into it this afternoon. It's on my list.

[DragonByDegrees]

Originally posted by Stingbot Games:

So, I did do a couple of runs in Usvit Depths this morning, and skeletons and the golem are transported into the boss lair without issue. Everything appears to be working as expected. I also reviewed the code and can't find any flaws. I'm not sure what is happening in your circumstances. If you are able to provide me further details that might help. A few things crossed my mind while doing this: 1. Sometimes the skeletons overlap each other when transported so it may appear as there is just 1, but you can always see your total count that are active in the top right corner of the screen. For instance it will say 2/2, 3/5 etc depending on how many are active and how many in total you can currently summon based on the Raise the Dead ability rank. 2. It's possible the skeletons were low on decay and they died before transporting? If this issue keeps happening I'll likely need some more information from you to figure out what's going on, but so far I cannot reproduce it on my end nor find any issues in the code.

As for the other suggestion: I'm going to look into it this afternoon. It's on my list.

Thanks for looking into this! Not sure what to say. Skeleton count was at max but they definitely weren't where they should've been, and having them all expire at the same time when they were raised at different times seems unlikely to me given my current understanding of how things work. I'm assuming there's some factor at play that I'm not aware of, and another thing to consider is that while it did happen to me fairly consistently, I also haven't played that stage nearly as much as testers have, so if it's happening to me with my smaller sample size and not to them with their larger one and not to you testing it recently, it's gotta be some specific me-thing. I have managed to get max skeletons up to 10 most of those times if maybe that's related?

As a suggestion for a bandaid fix since I dunno how to narrow this down further, maybe something for friendly pets where if range from player exceeds a certain amount they teleport right back to the player and it checks every 20 seconds or so maybe, with the range being a full screen and a half which is a distance they don't seem to achieve on their own?

For what it's worth, I have played a LOT of games as a necromancer because that's my jam, and damn near every one of them has had some sort of issue with pets, be it teleportation issues, despawning issues, pathing issues, skill trigger issues, it's CURSED! Indie devs, AAA devs, in between those bones have a malevolent will of their own! >.<'

[Stingbot Games]

Originally posted by DragonByDegrees:

Originally posted by Stingbot Games:

So, I did do a couple of runs in Usvit Depths this morning, and skeletons and the golem are transported into the boss lair without issue. Everything appears to be working as expected. I also reviewed the code and can't find any flaws. I'm not sure what is happening in your circumstances. If you are able to provide me further details that might help. A few things crossed my mind while doing this: 1. Sometimes the skeletons overlap each other when transported so it may appear as there is just 1, but you can always see your total count that are active in the top right corner of the screen. For instance it will say 2/2, 3/5 etc depending on how many are active and how many in total you can currently summon based on the Raise the Dead ability rank. 2. It's possible the skeletons were low on decay and they died before transporting? If this issue keeps happening I'll likely need some more information from you to figure out what's going on, but so far I cannot reproduce it on my end nor find any issues in the code.

As for the other suggestion: I'm going to look into it this afternoon. It's on my list.

Thanks for looking into this! Not sure what to say. Skeleton count was at max but they definitely weren't where they should've been, and having them all expire at the same time when they were raised at different times seems unlikely to me given my current understanding of how things work. I'm assuming there's some factor at play that I'm not aware of, and another thing to consider is that while it did happen to me fairly consistently, I also haven't played that stage nearly as much as testers have, so if it's happening to me with my smaller sample size and not to them with their larger one and not to you testing it recently, it's gotta be some specific me-thing. I have managed to get max skeletons up to 10 most of those times if maybe that's related?

As a suggestion for a bandaid fix since I dunno how to narrow this down further, maybe something for friendly pets where if range from player exceeds a certain amount they teleport right back to the player and it checks every 20 seconds or so maybe, with the range being a full screen and a half which is a distance they don't seem to achieve on their own?

For what it's worth, I have played a LOT of games as a necromancer because that's my jam, and damn near every one of them has had some sort of issue with pets, be it teleportation issues, despawning issues, pathing issues, skill trigger issues, it's CURSED! Indie devs, AAA devs, in between those bones have a malevolent will of their own! >.<'

ya the bandaid fix is a good suggestion. A failsafe would indeed work (such as... if off screen for more than 3 seconds. teleport to the player). I'll add that in the next patch build. Thanks!

[DragonByDegrees]

Originally posted by Stingbot Games:

Originally posted by DragonByDegrees:

Thanks for looking into this! Not sure what to say. Skeleton count was at max but they definitely weren't where they should've been, and having them all expire at the same time when they were raised at different times seems unlikely to me given my current understanding of how things work. I'm assuming there's some factor at play that I'm not aware of, and another thing to consider is that while it did happen to me fairly consistently, I also haven't played that stage nearly as much as testers have, so if it's happening to me with my smaller sample size and not to them with their larger one and not to you testing it recently, it's gotta be some specific me-thing. I have managed to get max skeletons up to 10 most of those times if maybe that's related?

As a suggestion for a bandaid fix since I dunno how to narrow this down further, maybe something for friendly pets where if range from player exceeds a certain amount they teleport right back to the player and it checks every 20 seconds or so maybe, with the range being a full screen and a half which is a distance they don't seem to achieve on their own?

For what it's worth, I have played a LOT of games as a necromancer because that's my jam, and damn near every one of them has had some sort of issue with pets, be it teleportation issues, despawning issues, pathing issues, skill trigger issues, it's CURSED! Indie devs, AAA devs, in between those bones have a malevolent will of their own! >.<'

ya the bandaid fix is a good suggestion. A failsafe would indeed work (such as... if off screen for more than 3 seconds. teleport to the player). I'll add that in the next patch build. Thanks!

No problem! :)