Apalia HD - Beta

[OmniArts]

Apalia - the Beta!

As Release dawns upon us we have sent out beta's for Apalia HD - Episode 1: The Raan

If you have received a link to play the game via PM, opinions & bugs go in this thread.
If you have not received a link for the Beta, and you really want to play. Send me a PM and I'll get back to you!

Remember, you play you post!

PS: if you have a pc controller, use it!

[Game A Gogo]

Graphics are stunning! You really forget you're in a 2D environment.
The control can take a bit to get used to but they are easy enough.
I noticed the specials GUI going cyan (It's r value would be dropping) after using the fifth special, while I couldn't get it to work.. seems when my bar is full I can use it, but by using the defence button?
Also you can continuously dash and attack at the same time, inflicting 15 points of damage instead of 3 and attack faster. Was this intentional? It seems a pretty strong alternative against normal fighting...
Also what seemed illogical is how you could push the enemies as if they had no weight.

Can't wait for stronger difficulties!

I'll probably give another report after more testing

[schnellboot]

Just a quick report.
Defeating enemies is way too easy.
If you start attacking they won't attack back.

[skydereign]

Yeah, to note there is one feature of the enemies not implemented in that version that would prevent that problem. The dash attack move was meant to be good, but the damage isn't toned down too much. What difficulty were you playing at? Easy is the default, and it is meant to be very easy. Medium is okay, but hard is where you have to fight a lot of enemies, and you have to be able to move fast. I usually use a combination of the two fighting styles, but I guess that isn't normal for new players, will come up with something fitting to fix it. Originally I had stamina implemented but everyone hated it. I'll probably implement it where damage decreases as you chain it. That sound good?

The earthquake special was originally activated by blocking when you have full, and for this export I forgot to make it deplete special... so it is infinite. If you didn't know, the specials are triggered by 1, 2, 4, and space. The turning blue was an old test I had, seems I forgot to remove it.

What do you mean push them if they had no weight? Are you talking about special 1? Or are you talking about hitting them with slashes?

[Game A Gogo]

Simply run into your enemies, they just slide back.
Also only easy was available to me it seems S:

[skydereign]

Really? You are supposed to click those arrows left and right of where it says easy. That is the menu interface. Starting on easy you have 1 opponent, medium you have 2, and I think hard you have 3, though I might have changed it. And okay, I'll tone down the ability to push the enemies. That was due to the change in movement, as the MoveTo function was messed up, with PhysicalResponse. Anyway, thanks for the input... See what you think of medium and hard.

[Game A Gogo]

Excellent! Although it feels easy is still way too easy!
I suggest making those arrows more distinguishable... I could of never guessed they were individual buttons!
The dashing technique was of good use in hard mode.

Above this I don't think I can see more bugs... Sorry ):

Note: Oh yeah, my game pad didn't work... I have 12 buttons + 2 axis (3 technically but I know GE doesn't support the third one)

[skydereign]

Yeah, it doesn't directly support game pads. That was not in the plan until a week or so ago... Suffice to say I don't think it will support it that way, as that would require completely restructuring the input system. What I did was map my ps3 controller buttons to the keys, and it is pretty amazing...

The easy mode was really meant to be easy enough for people to learn, but yeah it is kind of ridiculous. Well, if you can't find any bugs, that's good too, as long as you try. We also want to see what rounds you can get to on certain difficulties. We've had some more comments about the buttons, that's what I thought initially, but I was told that a lot of games use that... we'll take it into consideration. Again, thanks. Not sure how many people he sent it to, but I'm if you've played it, please post. Need as much feedback as we can get, as this is the final week of dev.

[jimmynewguy]

If I'm not mistaken, specials 3 and 5 don't do anything yet right?

A few things I found weird were the enemies being pushed away like GAG said, and the shift key being combo finisher I could never get to work thanks to window's sticky keys, and special four instantly teleported you to the enemy you were locked on to. Felt like that should've had like a smoke effect or something maybe? Not too big a deal or sure what would help.

I only had a few weirder bugs, I used the spinning special and the game crashed one time. And after completing a 3 round game I couldn't hit the accept button to continue so I had to exit the game. I really like the look and idea of the game here, good work guys. I'll keep fidgeting around and see if I can break some things.

EDIT: Irrelevant, but I'll try hooking up my PS3 controller too sky. You should add me on PSN if you play any games

[skydereign]

Well actually there are only 4 specials. The hud isn't updated, but essentially we originally had dash spin as a separate special. Combo finish only works if you can kill them with it, so 20 damage. It wasn't like that before, but I thought I'd test it out. I've asked for some fx for the 4th special, and I believe I got some yesterday, so I'll be adding them. And so you know, special 5 is the earthquake, which will be moving to special 4, and special 4 moving down, etc... I've never had the game crash, so not sure about that. There is nothing in the spin or collision codes that should cause that, but I'll look into the lock system a bit.

I have a ps3, but use it primarily for media serving. I don't connect to psn because that will give sony the right to remove other os from my system as well as have control whenever I connect...

[jimmynewguy]

Well I think the crash has a lot to do with this clunky slow computer I'm running it on. Closes things unexpectedly all the time.. Either way I haven't had it happen since so that's a good sign.

[Leif]

First - great work. Very smooth game. I really forget that it's 2D ))

What I found inconvenient:
- player can not move and attack with mouse clicking, although he can use mouse to use specials. I think using mouse to make all the actions will be useful.
- WSAD control is little worse compared to standard UP,DoWn,Left,Right.

Other
- it's clear, when enemy uses special - rotating symbol appears behind him. But when our hero makes special it's not so noticeable (except #2 ). Maybe additional visual effect can help

[skydereign]

Ah, more input. Thanks, was starting to worry no one else would have anything to say.

We originally had up/down/left/right, but we switched it in favor of wasd due to input from testers. You shouldn't be able to trigger the specials by mouse click... There was another mode of control using the mouse, but it is disabled in the version you have, as we wanted input about the new controls.

For the specials, the rapid attack one has become more flashy, I think the earthquake is pretty obvious as the screen shakes. The wind one is a bit lacking, but I'd love to here what you'd think could be done to help them along. Lastly, what did you think of the difficulty levels? Currently been getting contradicting input on that.


By the way, jimmynewguy. I actually got the game to crash when doing the spin. I now know what was causing it, and fixed that. It's weird that I never experienced it as I use spin a lot.

[jimmynewguy]

Well that's good, I'm not crazy and it's fixed. Everything seems to work well and be fun still and got the combo finish to work. That makes things a lot easier.

[again]

I havent been able to play the game as Iam out of town and only have my mac. Various links have been sent but for some reason dont work on my browser. But judging by the trailers the animation and action look great but I have some questions.
1) Are you fighting in an arena or do you get to travel and free roam?

2) Do you have different enviroments? I see the same type of graphics in the video's and Iam wondering does the entire land have similar graphics?

3) How many enemy types are there?