this is going to be a review of the current genesis demo build by erin/barzamin/The Refactor Godess/The Really Annoying Nitpicker
ok lets boot it up bluh
wine Genesis.exe
cool it runs ok under wine
let's do "good" graphics quality, and make it windowed booted up menu looks Fucking Awesome
dev notes shouldn't be visible on the main screen. it contains stuff only relevant to the actual gameplay, not the menu
Quit seems to work properly; nitpick: we might want to make quitting the game happen on release and after the button has time to fadeanimate back to normal, that'll look less like the game is crashing
Login ofc does nothing (that's on me; you'll get it at some point wait now is actually a good time for a digression about this:
I will build this. There's going to be a central auth server with accounts so we can easily manage overall stuff and get player stats, and then whatever multiplayer system we use.
Login is completely separate from multiplayer; it's auth and not gameplay, and will likely, as I said, use a separate API.
This will, if we build a centralized multiplayer system, probably be colocated with the auth server.
I'm currently working on bringing up my hexacore POWER5 server skaia to host this and other Genesis stuff for the time being).
clicking Options nicely fades into the options menu (including the music), which is kinda terrible. The only stuff on this otherwise black screen is a single, unlabeled slider that changes the volume, apparently, and a default-styled button to "return". This actually leads into another one of my main gripes: we should probably not use the default Unity buttons and controls, because they're meh-to-terrible depending on the situation, and instead design some custom ones (maybe flat like the main menu buttons?). This includes the font choice, because a very generic bold sans-serif doesn't really scream homestuck. This indicates another problem: lack of consistent styling. We should draw up a document with guidelines for colors, interface element placement, fonts, styling, etc.
Also, if we're not saving the options in some sort of persistent local file, we should be.
ok so i hit Start
I am now regaled by a choose-your-own-adventure with a horrifying UI. it's actually decent enough i'm just writing like a fuckass and blowing stuff out of proportion.
main problems:
- blapck background
- everything is Very Generic sans-serif.
- return and skip should be the less prominent buttons, and down at the bottom. they're not related to gameplay; they shouldn't be white against a black background when the actual gameplay-relevant buttons are
- the choices should be more prominent
- why is devnotes displaying stuff that's completely irrelevant here (it only pertains to walkaround gameplay)
- we should probably 1) use a more appropriate font for the main prose and 2) block-justify it with proper linebreaking.
the cyoa is pretty great except for the abrupt transition to abstract questions like "Is it really kill or be killed?" from situational questions.
now i'm to gameplay i'm just going to dump this in one long list of stuff
- the models look great but I think the scale of John is slightly off
- John appears to move faster horizontally than vertically
- John's walk-cycle needs love and inbetweening
- movement could generally be snappier with the camera follow
- rotation needs so much work. i'm unhappy with the way i implemented it
- a significant number of operation buttons are distorted in aspect ratio or clipped off
- same goes for captchalogue cards
- it's almost impossible to read the text on captchalogue cards
- colorwise it needs sprucing up
- walls should probably be whiter
- floor should be a different color
- we need more decals and variation in materials
- the UI is confusing and parts are very iffy aesthetically; in fact, some parts are distorted or clipping. this feeds back into the UI issues before; we have a large and eager art team that would probably be happy af to draw UI elements to a spec.
- when i'm aggrieving an imp during strife why do i appear to be losing hp instead of it.
- the ejecting of elements from the strife specibus seems too slow; they seem "floaty"
- dev notes should probably update on triggers
I'm not slamming anyone, contrary to the tone of this document! It's not your fault that there's only a handful of active team members, due to school being in-session. What's been accomplished is incredible, especially considering that it's the effort of very few members.