[Bug?] Greenpath, crab in lake, bad Black Ghost placement (picture included)

[Boink]

As title.

This is super-annoying - I don't mind the idea of the ghost to get back coins, but in this area:

http://imgur.com/xApwpeq

marked with the red star, my ghost spawned in a place that was impossible to get to without dying again. The area is setup so that the player really doesn't know if the walking crab is an enemy or a puzzle. i.e. are you supposed to jump on its back to get across the poisonous water?

Guess what, you're not. Ok, fine - but the ghost spawn was just super crappy - high above the water and placed so that jumping >> to lure it lead to getting hit instantly and then crab then water...

850ish coins down the drain, great.

[4thQueen]

Psst.... you can use your nail to bounce on the "crab" shell...

You can also just blast your Shade with Vengeful Spirit from a safe distance.

[Boink]

Originally posted by 4thQueen:

Psst.... you can use your nail to bounce on the "crab" shell...

You can also just blast your Shade with Vengeful Spirit from a safe distance.

Hmm, thanks. Novel and interesting solutions - didn't know that down+attack could be used like that.

The problem was the spawn was just outside of visual view from the <- left platform and no-where near the platform where I actually died. Salt & Sanctuary has some really nice code for this, i.e. your spirit appears at the last solid platform before your death, so that stuff that happens in between jumping and death is discounted.


What happened -

Jumped --->

Onto Crab -- it hurts, wtf?! Ok, fine, gonna die.

Bounced into air further --->

But, nope, the bounce is a tiny one and badly designed as you never seem to leave the creature's hitbox, so --->

Hit poison, die. Waaay -----------> over there.

Ghost spawns -------------------------> over here, high above (why? who knows)

Hmph. 850 coins


TL;DR

The devs really need to look at Salt & Sanctuary and the code / design they use for ghost spawning. Having ghosts spawn in impossible to reach spots = bad code / design.

[Kronos]

My question is why you had 850 geo at that stage on hand tbh.

[Boink]

Originally posted by Kronos:

My question is why you had 850 geo at that stage on hand tbh.

I'd bought all but two of the map upgrades so had nothing else to spend it on, since I'd not met another merchant. The Fallen Knight battle was cheap as heck - several non-telegraphed switches and unavoidable spams, but this point of Greenpath is my 1st play-through stage, without resorting to guides. Hint: I'm very good at these types of games.

Deaths: 3. One of which being this one.

p.s.

KB controls SUCK BADLY. Literally slow inputs / delay / freezes, esp on jumps (tap to jump, hold to jump high - but, oh, look, 0.4ms delay on the game seeing the key hit - in the knight boss battle, literally the reasons for dying. Hit key - delay - spam hits. I mean, really?). There's even random freezes for no apparent reason (looking into it, it looks like frakking music loads!?!).

It's annoying me badly atm. Literally not good enough to put "best played on controller" on the splash screen, sort your frakking inputs out via coding already.


~

In fact, I'm irritated enough by this just to restart. It's bad code, not bad playing.

win10
i7
16 gig ram
970gtx

Literally bad code. Which isn't cool in a 2D twitch metroid.

[4thQueen]

Hint: I'm very good at these types of games.

Yet couldn't figure out how to bounce off enemies?

As to your performance issues, they shouldn't be happening. Try adding -noheap, or perhaps recheck to see if it's using your integrated GPU.

EDIT: Oh, you might be a pirate! In which case you're S.O.L.

[Kein Zantezuken]

You also can just give an egg to JIji in town to get soul back

[Frenzy85]

I have complaints about the game, too, but in my opinion, which you're free to disagree with, you're complaining too much. It seems to me that you simply do not like this type of game; not specifically Hollow Knight. Again, it's an opinion you're free to disagree with, but I find genre-criticism to be not the most valid kind of criticism.

First, I'd say, is that Hollow Knight is one of those games where some areas are impassable although you can see the available path early on. Otherwise knows as a metroidvania, or so I've heard it called. So testing your ingenuity on how to pass a certain section or figuring out that it's impossible can be considered part of the genre...

The platforming that you're talking about is comparatively quite easy. Of course, I haven't played a lot of 2D platformers myself, so I had trouble at first, but I enjoyed it somewhat. I only started getting annoyed in one area which had really difficult platforming. If you don't enjoy even some of the easier (comparatively) areas, you probably just don't like platforming at all...

As for boss fights; all their attacks are avoidable.
Look on YT, there're people who can beat all bosses without taking damage.
I can't do it, but that's a matter of my reflexes & hand-eye coordination being bad. I can usually tell what they're going to do after fighting them once or twice; just that I can't react fast enough.

The game is hard, but I wouldn't really criticize it as being cheap; or that bosses have attacks that are not telegraphed. I'd probably agree with you if you said the game's balance is a bit off for the average player. For example, getting to 100% on Steel Soul mode will probably take quite a bit of time and effort for someone who hasn't played a lot of this type of game. But definitely not that bosses are cheap and have non-telegrpahed attacks.

And for performance issues. Can't really say much about this since I don't use KB/M.
But this is something most people are really ornery about. If there's an issue with the game, there'd probably gonna be hundreds of threads on it; so you may want to check if it's a problem on your side first, since there doesn't seem to be many others who have the same issue... I've seen a speedrun of this game using a keyboard, so... You may want to contact the devs if the problem persists?

[Boink]

Originally posted by 4thQueen:

Hint: I'm very good at these types of games.

Yet couldn't figure out how to bounce off enemies?

As to your performance issues, they shouldn't be happening. Try adding -noheap, or perhaps recheck to see if it's using your integrated GPU.

EDIT: Oh, you might be a pirate! In which case you're S.O.L.

Pirate?

Look at my posts - that small mouse icon by my name shows that the game is in my Steam library. I notice your profile doesn't have it, so... methinks you're describing yourself?

As for the bouncing issue, I've just finished a re-run of Salt & Sanctuary, where one of the mechanics is that you can roll through enemies and/or do various combo attacks (spin attacks, uppercuts etc etc) - so it's hardly surprising I didn't notice this feature.

Hollow Knight has none of these that I can see and an automatic hitbox which is making playing a lot less intuitive. i.e. the hitbox isn't the sprite (esp. noticable in the fallen knight fight, where several times I took damage just by standing close to it)


I'll check the GPU issue, ty.

[Boink]

Nope, hit the hornet fight.

Her telegraphs are obvious, the KB code for jump has a stupid delay in it (presumably related to "time to hold down = jump size").

Lovely game, absolutely atrocious KB controller code.

[vampirebunbun]

By "Fallen Knight", do you mean "False Knight"? Because... He's literally the easiest boss in the game, imo. If you think he's hard... You're in for some rough times ahead. His attacks are avoidable if you read them correctly. Can't really comment on KB controls as I can't imagine playing this game without a controller, but I would say that I haven't really noticed any input delays after I lowered my resolution. I did have about a half-second delay when trying to run at 1920 x 1080 though, which definitely would have made the game unplayable.

As for ghost spawning and losing 850 geo... Well, A) That's not really a lot of geo. It's not like there's a limited amount in the game so all it really costs you is a bit of time. B) I think I've had a ghost spawn in an untenable location maybe once in my 30+ hours of gameplay? Maybe I've just been incredibly lucky, but I don't think there's really anything wrong with this mechanic.

[Boink]

Originally posted by vampirebunbun:

By "Fallen Knight", do you mean "False Knight"? Because... He's literally the easiest boss in the game, imo. If you think he's hard... You're in for some rough times ahead.

Hornet took me 3 attempts, the first two being purely cases of KB + jump annoyance.

The game isn't hard at the moment (currently in the souls place), but I'm having real annoyances with the control scheme / feedback. Which, six hours in, simply shouldn't be the case for a metroid style game. Most of my deaths are 100% due to the jump weird delay and/or variable heights.

The game isn't a port (that I can tell?) so not structuring a time / press is just bad design.


Apart from that, the game is very lovely & has kept my attention.