I viewed the new credits, and after doing so, I was unable to navigate through the menu with the arrow keys, and unable to move during the battles. I checked the settings, and it looked like this. After fixing the keybinds, I watched the credits again, and they once again reset. Even if the keybinds aren't set to anything, the left and right arrow still works perfectly to speed up/reverse the credits.
They weren't stunned, they were just in their default pose when I hit them. I'm not sure why they attacked, it could just be because the AI was still trying to fight me like normal as they clipped through the terrain.
It was not a dash. I jumped up above them, then used a normal "downward" attack as I fell.
I managed to reacreate the bug of players falling through the terrain. I'm not exactly sure what causes it, only that it happens sometimes when attacking a character while falling straight down on them, with no left or right momentum for either character.
Sorry if this isn't too helpful. Is there anything specific I should be testing for when trying to recreate it?
After lots of testing with the combos, here's my opinion:
Right now, when a character is knocked down from a 3-hit combo and can't move, the other character can follow-up with an energy attack for additional damage. This works well because normal punches don't do a lot of damage. Doing combos is an incentive to pursue a relatively low-damage style of combat, so you can eventually knock the enemy down and easily do high-damage moves.
However, energy blasts and special attacks are very high-damage already. They do tons of damage. Getting hit with one of them can take off an entire health bar or more. Right now, if you're hit by a strong energy blast, you're also knocked down and are stunned for a while. But these attacks are so strong that being able to follow them up with another strong attack is very broken.
I've had situations where I've done a combo, then as my opponent was laying on the ground, I blasted them. This blast made them continue laying on the ground, where I blasted them again, and it kept repeating until I emptied my entire Ki bar and nearly killed them, all from doing one combo. I've knocked somebody down with a Dragon Fist that did tons of damage, and it stunned them for so long that I could recharge all my Ki and then blast them before they could move, doing tons more damage. I've been hit by a full-powered Spirit Bomb, which already took half of my HP away, but it stunned me long enough for them to charge up and fire a second full-powered Spirit Bomb, killing me instantly.
I think that, if you're already stunned and immobile on the ground, being hit with an energy blast should stop you from being stunned after, so you don't get hit with multiple of of them in a row. And if you're knocked to the ground by an energy blast or special attack, it shouldn't stun you for very long. I think being stunned should be saved for combos.
This is something I've noticed for a while now, but thought it had to be brought up with the changes being made to the new combat system, I've noticed it a lot while testing the new update. There's something weird going on with the computer fighters, they don't seem to play by the same rules as the player does.
First, is this: occasionally, seemingly at random, the AI will automatically get a hit of damage in when a melee clash begins. If this happens, not only with the player be hurt, but they will also proceed to fall after the clash, even if they won it.
As for why it happens, I have no clue, but I suspect it has something to do with how the AI is able to react instantly in order to hit the player, and dash instantly. With the player, to dash, you have to double-tap the button. So no matter how good of reaction time you have, there will always be some sort of lag in how fast you can dash attack, since the button has to be pressed, let go, and pressed again. The AI is able to do it instantly, however. I hope this isn't just me being bad at the game, but it does seem like they work on fundamentally different rules.
As an example. When the player attacks normally, they move slightly. If they hit the opponent like this, they don't deal any knockback. if the player dashes, effects play: a little circle effect plays, and dash lines cover the player. If they hit the opponent like this, they deal knockback damage.
However, the AI can do something different. When the AI attacks, they act as if they're attacking normally, doing an instant move towards the player, and they do not have the dash lines. However, the circle effect plays, and when they hit the player, they still do knockback. It's something in-between a normal attack and a dash attack, that combines the best of both types of attacks. It's effectively a dash attack, but it happens instantly like a normal attack, and it feels very unfair to fight against.
I've been trying to test the new combo system, but the fact that the AI does knockback every single time it hits, unlike the player, is making the system feel weirdly unbalanced.
I'll test other stuff like the recovery system soon when I have time, but I just want to say that I tested the newly implemented attack hit detection. It worked incredibly well, the entire thing functioned perfectly. Especially for characters who were given animations that properly corresponded with the attack directions. When the "backwards" attack animation actually attacks behind you, it can perfectly intercept an opponent sneaking up on you.
The best part was that, in almost all the cases, the attack was detected a few frames after the button is pressed, making all the hits feel much more snappy and immediate.
The biggest issue with the attacks are that lots of animations have the first half of the frames dedicated to extending, and the second half the frames dedicated to retracting, with only a few frames in the middle where the punch/kick/etc is fully outstretched. That's where the attack should be registered. Right now, they're registered at the very end, so if the animation is complex enough to return the fighter so their idle pose after they attack, then the attack is basically useless, since the hitbox of the attack doesn't end up extending out at all by the time it's registered (not to mention it takes ages for the attack to be registered).
Here's every idea that comes to mind:
One way it could work is just to have the attack be registered at the very start of the animation, rather than the end. That's how Devolution works, where the attack is registered as soon as the button is pressed. But that has the same issue as currently, just in reverse; the attack would still be useless if its animation starts from the idle pose and extends out.
Maybe have it be registered a few frames after the attack starts? So it would happen when most attacking animations are at their midpoint?
If you want to make things more complicated and have it be a case-by-case basis, either automatically or manually, one of these two options could work:
Recently, a change was made so fighters lay flat on the ground after they're injured, so the player can follow up with an energy attack. But I think it gets very excessive.
I was doing a fight between Goku and Frieza, and hit Frieza with a fully-powered Dragon Fist dash attack. This stunned Frieza and left him laying on the ground for, and I counted, over 10 whole seconds, before he could move at all. It makes the flow of the fights feel much slower and less dynamic, and takes too much control away from the opponent, in my opinion. I think that following a combo up with an energy beam shouldn't be so simple that it can be done every time.
This is just my opinion. But I think after being stunned for a moment, the enemy should be able to move again, like it used to be. That way, following up a combo with an energy blast would require good positioning to intercept their dodging, fast reaction time to begin charging up a beam as soon as possible, good forethought to charge up usable energy before doing a combo, and would be harder or easier depending on if the enemy makes a smart move or not.
It used to be much more skill based to land a follow-up attack, now it's way too easy.
Edit by Txori: I moved your post where we are discussing about tweaking all this. I'll work on that tomorrow 😉
This new update seems to have caused a glitch. I think it was after a button-mash combo, suddenly, the characters couldn't hit each-other anymore. Punches just pushed each-other around, nobody was doing any damage.
Txori, I saw the site banner asking for feedback.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to complain or give you more work. But I'm just unsure WHAT feedback needs to be given. I've tried to scroll through the many scattered pages of BASTON development, trying to figure out what's being tested, what's already decided, what's undecided, and what needs to be figured out, but I can't understand it. It's too confusing and vague for me to understand.
If you compile some list of what exactly needs testing, and what questions you want answers to, I will test it all extensively and give you in-depth opinions on it.
For now, I just attempted to test the newest version, but I'm not sure what kind of feedback you're looking for. Here are the opinions that came to mine when testing it:
-When walking into a small gap on the worms map, the character bugs out and the camera jitters against the terrain as it tries and fails to fit through the gap.
-The camera shoots up to follow your character each time you jump. It gets a bit nauseating, maybe the camera needs to be adjusted somehow in its vertical movement?
-After being hit, my character stays in their damaged animation and is pushed around by the attacker running into them (while the blood particles stay in place). The buttons don't really work, I have to spam the attack button and arrow keys to eventually get control of my character again.
-The characters don't actually seem to get knocked down into their death pose until they lose ALL of their health. I think that getting significantly hurt should make you fall down into the death pose and make it so you can't be interacted with for a moment until you get back up? That way it gives you some time to recover before things start happening again, kind of like invincibility frames. And it utilizes the stun/recover animation from the old characters.
I think the automatic method works better, just because the player can't control everything they need to.
Manual method might be best with a joystick, but it doesn't work with arrow keys. The enemies aren't just approaching from the 4 cardinal directions, they can approach from any angle. If an enemy is approaching from a 45 degree angle, making the player choose a split-second decision whether an up-attack or a side-attack is more fitting isn't really fair or fun. Since the arrow keys can't account for every possible direction to attack, I think the engine should handle stuff on its own, and make adjustments as needed.
This issue is going to appear again once projectiles are added in. Even moreso than with close-range attacks, a player can't choose exactly what angle to fire a projectile using arrow keys, when the enemies are going to be approaching from diagonal directions. Nobody would ever land their attacks. In fact, I bet it'll be more likely for the AI to accidentally dodge into an attack and get hit, then get hit because the opponent aimed at them. I think, just like with the old BASTON and with Devolution, the engine should auto-aim unless the enemy gets behind you when you're charging up.
Personally, as a side-note, I do still think some sort of lock-on button to choose which enemy to face and focus on could be useful. Maybe pressing it could focus you on the closest character to you, and pressing it again could sequentially select further out for every character currently visible on screen? And if the targeted character went off-screen, it would give you a small arrow at the edge of your screen to let you know what direction your opponent is in? And maybe if you got attacked by some other character it could automatically shift to them instead? IDK, I'm just suggesting stuff.
It's partially working!
First, in terms of the battle experience, it was totally fixed. This was the first time I actually got to fight Android 16 without him detonating immediately. He tried to Self-Destruct when he was around 1 bar of HP left (out of 5) which seems perfect.
The only issue was with the tracking. He did try to follow my character, but only horizontally. His vertical tracking seems to be reversed. The first time he Self-Destructed, he flew towards the ground while I was up in the air, and tracked my position below me. The second time, I made sure to get underneath him, and he flew up to the top of the screen while tracking my position.
I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be posted in Idea Box, in Discussion, or in Bug Report. It's kind of all three. It's technically not a bug but it does ruin the game, and I did propose an idea to fix it...
Anyway, the AI using the Self-Destruct move NEEDS to be fixed. It completely prevents any sort of fights with a character who can use it. I've never been able to have a single fight with characters like Android 16, Chiaotzu, Majin Vegeta, and now Majin Buu, one of the primary antagonists of the story. Every time I try, they blow themselves up within the first few seconds of the match. And since Self-Destruct is a move with an extremely short range, and the AI doesn't seem to try and chase the opponent down, I've never seen an AI win with Self-Destruct. It just ends fights prematurely and makes certain fights impossible to have. In order to try and fight against them, I have to cheat on behalf of the opponent, and interrupt them each time they try to charge up a beam if they have any of their special meter available. And if I have 2 COM characters fight each-other, the one with Self-Destruct loses in 30 seconds or less every time.
My solution is extremely simple: if the AI is above, like... 10% or 20% of their max HP, maybe... they just NEVER use the Self-Destruct move. If they try, they'll just use a normal energy beam instead. That way, they aren't killing themselves with full HP, and aren't ending the match before it even begins. Then, when they get to low HP and are probably going to lose anyway, they can attempt it.
Alright, I've done some testing, here's my feedback regarding the map tile sizes.
The smaller sizes, like size 1x1 or 2x2, definitely don't work. Each time you approach a 1-tile-tall ledge and automatically walk up it, the camera jerks around a bit, and the character loses all of their momentum. This was happening every fraction of a second while trying to run around in a size 1 map. The only reason to have smaller tile sizes is to make more detailed terrain, so this would be constantly happening on any sort of height-varied ground.
I think 8x8 tiles works the best. Playing with a standard-sized character, 8x8 allows characters to fall down 2-tile-wide holes, and run over 1-tile-wide holes, but still jump up 1-tile-wide holes from above, so they don't get trapped anywhere. It also allows them to fit in 2-tile-tall tunnels easily. The characters just seem the most well-built for this size of ground.
Besides, a smaller tile size will make it more difficult it will be for the average person to draw their own tiles and maps. The smaller the tiles are, the more tiles you have to draw in order to have an actually detailed-looking terrain. Since BASTON is all about accessible character creation, I think 8x8, the easiest to manage, is the best option.
When colliding with other players, it behaves in ways that... either don't seem correct, or don't seem like good design. You just keep jumping around and bouncing on them. Maybe they should only have horizontal collision, so you can't walk into each-other. But if you land on somebody from above, both characters would just push each-other out of the way, and if walls were stopping them from moving out of the way, they'd just overlap each-other like the old BASTON?
Also, maybe it's an option and I'm just missing it, but there's no windowed mode anymore, is there? It's forced into fullscreen whenever I play it. This makes it kind of difficult to give feedback, as I can't have the game open to test things at the same time as I'm typing something on this site.
Yet another Demon Slayer character, this time it's Gyutaro. I'm reasonably proud with how this one turned out, but I still do have stuff to add to it. I'm going to make Daki as complimentary character, but she (like a lot of these Demon Slayer characters so far, it seems) has a bunch of tentacles that she fights with. So it'll take a while to sprite her. When I do, I also plan on making a second form for Gyutaro, when he shares his eye with her. Since he doesn't look very different in that form, I'll need to make a ton of completely new poses to differentiate him.
Here's the character file:
https://www.txori.com/forum/doc/2/17414 … cairns.zip
Since you asked for feedback, here are some things I've noticed.
First of all, movement. I think this has the most issues in the current build. You added momentum to the running, so that you now build up to max speed. However, I've found that this makes platforming incredibly difficult. I don't think building up to max speed is an issue, but maybe the start of the build-up should already have some speed behind it, or build up quicker?
Secondly, the jump height, in my opinion, is far too high. A single jump is able to completely clear any obstacle not built on a massive scale. This can be easily seen in the "Mario 1-1" map from slightly older versions. It feels like it makes vertical mobility obsolete, as anything can be reached super easily. Double jumps just become excessive at that point. But because of the super high jumps, certain places just can't be reached now. Again in the "Mario 1-1" map, there's a horizontal underground tunnel that's raised one block up off of the ground to enter it. Even jumping the smallest amount possible, it's too high to fit in that tunnel. I've also noticed even characters without the ability to jump are still able to do so. I assume that's just for testing purposes currently, but I've already mentioned that I think the option to not let a character jump should be available.
About the HUD that's been added, there's a possible maximum of 32 fighters in a level. in "player VS AI" battles, I assume that you will still be able to see the opponents portraits and health, right? Displaying all members of the opponents team would obviously clutter up the screen. As such, I think some sort of "lock on" feature might be necessary, to focus on one opponent at a time (alongside the other benefits I've listed before, like backwards movement sprites and projectile aiming).
Finally, about the 32-fighter limit: in the old BASTON, you had the line of miniature characters waiting on either side of the arena, so you knew how many characters your team, and the opponents team, had. Now, though, there isn't any way to know that except for before you start the fight. And there's no way to switch between fighters on your team, like you could with the old BASTON. My suggestion is to re-use those "miniature characters" standing sprites, and maybe line them up like icons underneath the HP bar? Something like this?
If this isn't the kind of feedback you were looking for, I apologize.
I love this style! It kind of reminds me of the character designs from "Dragon Ball Z: Gekitō Tenkaichi Budōkai"! It would be awesome to see more characters in this style.
Txori, you mentioned figuring out aiming after you figured out jumping, which is fair. I just wanted to go over some more aiming-related issues since I just found out some during testing, for whenever it is addressed.
Using the arrow keys to aim is unintuitive like you said, especially since you already use the arrow keys to choose which projectile to fire. However, additionally, there are certain "instant projectiles" like lasers, bullets, glue, etc. Anything that doesn't have a charge time, and just fires instantly. It's impossible to aim these with the arrow keys. If it's set to the basic blast, than it will always fire forward, as pressing any direction would trigger a directional blast. If it's set to a directional blast, then it will always only fire in that direction, as pressing a different direction triggers a different directional blast. I think some auto-aiming might be necessary in the future (and could preserve walk/fly back sprites from old characters).
About the jump not allowing you to change directions, I think it might be a good idea to allow changing directions when bouncing off of a character using the "stomp" ability? Since it's sort of like landing for a second, and allows for more acrobatic characters.
Finally I played around with transforming characters. It seems like the transforming no longer centers the player by the bottom of their sprite. This means, if you power-up into a character who's smaller or larger than your current form, it will put them into the air or into the ground.
Oh, and while testing giant characters, I noticed that where the projectiles fire from are totally misaligned now. In the old BASTON, when characters got large, the alignment was off by a few pixels, but it seems even more exaggerated now.