DEMO UPDATE - Dev Log

[kernowbill]

Thanks to you all for your comments. We have uploaded a new demo with a stack of changes made, here are the highlights with more to come...

- Pressing attack while holding down no longer triggers the backfist. We had a lot of people dislike this so we have changed it.

- You can no longer spam with the backfist, enemies will react and block like they do if you spam the jab.

- You can no longer spam OTG attacks to knocked-down enemies (with the slide, or back kick etc.) You can now land just a single extra hit on a downed enemy.

- You can no longer spam with melee weapons (they have a limited number of uses before they break).

- We added some extra hints at the start of the horse chase bonus level to explain the mechanic better, and ensure an ammo pickup always spawns near the start in case you run low on ammo early by testing the gun!

- Improvements to the gun play. As some of you will have read in our social media posts, we specifically under powered the guns since The Phantom has a strict moral code and tries to avoid killing whenever necessary. It would have been very easy to make the guns more powerful, but that goes against the story of a 90 year old character. We have mixed things up though so now you can shoot enemies multiple times to knock off more health before they go down, and the shots are more impactful. We will warn players with the red skull icon in the HUD if you kill an enemy (health reaches zero) with the guns directly, which means you may not get the ending you want if you use them too much!

- Enemy speeds increased: movement speed, the amount of time they spend idle between actions, the time they spend after a knockdown before getting up, and their wait time after spawning before they attack. We've also rebalanced the toughness of enemies with more variance, mostly on the assassin characters and bosses on the later levels.

- Combo-counter fixed so it no longer counts hits on enemies after they reach zero health.

- Fixed the bug causing walking/running characters to "teleport" a short distance when pressing pause.

- Increased size of enemy hitboxes.

- Jump kick can now be triggered without needing to release the jump button, before the kick button is pressed.

- Support for ultra-wide monitors

- Lots of bug fixes!

- More to come soon...

The Art Of Play Team

[JoeMD]

Awesome stuff. Will certainly check out the new demo after work. Look forward to the other updates.

[Maniac4Fun]

Very good updates. Now the game is definitely better. However, I have an observation regarding the lack of several sounds: when we throw an enemy into the air and attack him, there is no sound of the blows, the same when we hit him when he is lying on the ground. Falling enemies and heroes, should also make a sound when they hit the ground. I think adding these samples would improve the immersion even more. Good luck with the upcoming premiere👊

[kernowbill]

Thanks. We're actually working on an audio pass at the moment, our top priority for this build was bug fixes and addressing some of the things people were complaining about like the controls for the backfist and ultra-wide support.

Appreciate the feedback!

[Maniac4Fun]

Very good news 👍

[fdee5]

can you give the enemies a grab move (like maybe the punching thug can grab from behind in a full nelson or something while other enemies attack or fat thug can do bearhugs etc)? right now its so bland just normal hit attacks

[kernowbill]

Hey Fdee5

Funny you should suggest that as we have actually been discussing it this week as a possible addition once we have everything bug fixed and polished... watch this space!

[ShadowSplit]

I feel like Phantom should be faster. Somewhat is counter intuitive turn him left or right, or when he gets knocked down, given his athleticism.

[JoeMD]

Played through the demo again as both The Phantom and Diana. It certainly feels much nicer to play now, and the speed increase has helped. It still feels a little light on moves, but I'm not sure how easy new ones would be to implement. I'd say the move set is on par with the original Streets of Rage, but people are probably going to expect SoR4.

I noticed some other bugs;
* Twice when I called on Devil, despite there being enemies on screen, he didn't attack any (this never happened with Frakka).

* Once when I was hit by a chain enemy when playing as Diana she caught on fire!

* When shooting the petrol cans in the bonus level, the pirate in the plain never seemed to take damage.

* There was a long period of time in the plain chase where nothing happened, no logs to dodge or boxes being thrown.

A few general comments that I also mentioned in my original post;

* I think The Phantom's Skull Mark animation needs to be more impactful. Diana does a kikoken-like move at the end of hers which is the only time she does this. The Phantom, meanwhile, has another uppercut move. I know they aren't the same, but I feel the Skull Mark one should be bigger. Maybe he could rise higher (he doesn't even go as high as a regular jump) and the enemy could fly further? Maybe even make CRACK! graphic with a skull as the A appear prominently on the screen, as is seen in the comics?

* Diana's throw; when she jumps up and wraps her leg around the enemy's neck there's a bit of a delay. I first I thought I had to press other buttons, but it just takes a moment. It's a bit off putting.

Overall a great improvement. I'm excited to see what the game will be like on release!

[fdee5]

Originally posted by kernowbill:

Hey Fdee5

Funny you should suggest that as we have actually been discussing it this week as a possible addition once we have everything bug fixed and polished... watch this space!

Is all these improvements going to be added before the official release?

[Foamed]

Very good, very

This is already looking like a big step in the right direction.

[kernowbill]

Originally posted by fdee5:

Is all these improvements going to be added before the official release?

We are working through a long list of improvements, tweaks and polish. Many of them will be in for launch but we won't stop there we will be continuing to work on improvements and there will be post-launch updates as well of course!

[Ragblasfozm]

Dunno if it's known or not by the devs, but I think you guys did some poop with the updated the demo since it has almost the entire full game there. It's only missing very small things to be considered complete.

While the demo is normally locked in content available to players, it's really easy to access everything else that is available there once you're aware of what you guys used for it. Nothing there is properly protected.

Not going to spoil how easy it's to do it to prevent more damage, but hopefully you guys notice the error and fix it.

[kernowbill]

Thanks Ragblasfozm

That build was of course uploaded in error and was fixed within a few hours, it was also a very buggy build. if you upload to the latest version you'll find a LOT of bg fixes and improvements, and there will be another big update coming after the weekend as well!

[kernowbill]

Updated demo today. We've been very busy getting things ready for launch so most the work done in the past couple of weeks has not been demo specific, but many of the improvements have affected the demo levels inclduing:

- Improved throwing
- Improved general combat, especially for Diana
- Improved audio
- Minor improvements to haptics and controls
- Multiple bug fixes
- Lots of minor tweaks and polish

We have quite a list of things we plan to implement over the coming days and weeks as we continue to improve things, and will be taking whatever feedback we get from players on board so watch this space...

[kernowbill]

Demo was updated again today with many of the improvements from the main game patch v1.014

Please see this thread for a full list of bug fixes and improvements with more to come...

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2444160/discussions/0/595145269956336219/