What's up with the freeze frame when taking damage?

[Mekhazzio]

Is this a glitch or intentional? Anyone got a cure?

I want to make it go away, because having pauses on things that aren't player-initiated really messes with the flow.

[Mrmo]

The devs said it's intentional, but I don't like it as it makes the game feel extremely laggy instead of being a "cool special effect" thing.

[Big145]

What part of "Vlambeer makes arcade games" do people not understand?

[FoxTurret]

It's ment to show that the player was hit.

[VDZ]

BigD145 の投稿を引用：

What part of "Vlambeer makes arcade games" do people not understand?

The part where 'arcade' used to mean cutting-edge, and as such, arcade games made sure to never feel 'laggy'; slow motion effects were actual slow motion, not freezing.

[Knifight]

Actually hitfreeze, block freeze, super freeze, etc. are all extremely present in all kinds of arcade and Arcade style game from Guilty Gear to Street Fighter to MvC to any SNK game to Persona to Dodonpochi to DmC and so on. It helps by highlighting key frames for a moment to help you keep track of things that would otherwise be too fast to react to or keep up with.

That said, I have noticed that the hitfreeze in this game does feel a little jarring and akward... no idea why. I think maybe it's that the hitfreeze isn't reduced on subsequent hits? As in, an X frame pause on the first frame you hit a battleship helps bring home the impact, but having the same X frames of hitfreeze on every vulnerable frame after makes it feel like the framerate is chopping out on us.

Maybe we can hope for a patch to tweak it a bit?

[Mekhazzio]

BigD145 の投稿を引用：

What part of "Vlambeer makes arcade games" do people not understand?

Name just one arcade shmup that ever intentionally varies game speed on non-player effects, that doesn't also pair it with total player invulnerability.

Arbitrary pauses are one thing when used as a hit effect on something like a fighting game, where it's 100% predictable to the only player it affects, and it's another thing entirely when it's in a shmup and interfering with timing and movement read.

[NOBLE SIX]

Maybe it just needs tweaking.

I'd rather them fix the general slow down

[Knifight]

Mekhazzio の投稿を引用：

Name just one arcade shmup that ever intentionally varies game speed on non-player effects, that doesn't also pair it with total player invulnerability.

Arbitrary pauses are one thing when used as a hit effect on something like a fighting game, where it's 100% predictable to the only player it affects, and it's another thing entirely when it's in a shmup and interfering with timing and movement read.

R-type, Soldner, 1942, Gundeline and Raiden, to name a few. I believe also Dodonpochi and Ikaruga, but I haven't played those in some time. Literally almost any 2d game and many action based 3d games.

[AshEnke]

Ikaruga has invincibility frames on hit.

[Knifight]

I didn't even remember that there was a life bar in ikaruga. Shows how long it's been.

[AshEnke]

There's no life bar (you die in one hit) but I remember reading somewhere that you have invincibility frames when you switch color.
But it's out of topic :)

[VDZ]

Knifight の投稿を引用：

Actually hitfreeze, block freeze, super freeze, etc. are all extremely present in all kinds of arcade and Arcade style game from Guilty Gear to Street Fighter to MvC to any SNK game to Persona to Dodonpochi to DmC and so on. It helps by highlighting key frames for a moment to help you keep track of things that would otherwise be too fast to react to or keep up with.

Only the action stops at the "freeze frames" in those games. There's visual effects to show the action is stopped (or resuming). In Luftrausers, everything visual stops. There's no special visuals to indicate it's now stopping the action or when the action starts again like you have in fighting game "freeze frames".

[MarbledMythos]

I think its half glitch and half feature. According to the config files, there should be no freeze frames when using the melee body and hitting something, yet it happens anyway. There is supposed to be a noticable delay when you take damage (part of what makes Vlambeer games so responsive), but I think theres a code error thats causing a bit of extra delay on contact with enemies.

[Knifight]

AshEnke の投稿を引用：

There's no life bar (you die in one hit) but I remember reading somewhere that you have invincibility frames when you switch color.
But it's out of topic :)

Very interesting, but yes, I suppose we are, haha.

VDZ の投稿を引用：

Only the action stops at the "freeze frames" in those games. There's visual effects to show the action is stopped (or resuming). In Luftrausers, everything visual stops. There's no special visuals to indicate it's now stopping the action or when the action starts again like you have in fighting game "freeze frames".

I'm not sure I quite follow completely, but I do agree that part of the problem lies in the fact that the freeze frames in this game feel less comfortable and informative than something like SF or DmC.

Swaggington の投稿を引用：

I think its half glitch and half feature. According to the config files, there should be no freeze frames when using the melee body and hitting something, yet it happens anyway. There is supposed to be a noticable delay when you take damage (part of what makes Vlambeer games so responsive), but I think theres a code error thats causing a bit of extra delay on contact with enemies.

Very interesting. So maybe the problem really doesn't come down to the hitfreeze itself being uncomfortable, but that there's some kind of memory leak or other problem when it tries to activate? It would certainly explain why it feels so clunky if actual freeze frames and lost/delayed frames were alternating.

[Marking]

Currently the amount of 'lag' is additive during a single frame. E.g. melee hitting two enemies in a single frame is 2x normal freeze. I can see this could give a too drastic slow and break the game flow intentionally. We will change this tomorrow in the prerelease branch, see if this improves your experience.
As for the melee body, Swaggington, I will look into this.