RPGM Darkstar [v0.2a] [Harold]

[harold]

I am going to try and be constructive here and both enumerate the problems and offer fixes.

problem 1. you know the tower is problematic. so you gave an option to skip to 3rd floor. after which they still have to keep doing the tower.
anyone who wants to skip the tower, is going to be very frustrated when they reload and select skip and find out they didn't skip the entire tower, just a portion of it.

suggested fix: add a "skip tower entirely" option. that replaces the tower with a very short cutscene.

problem 2. the tower looks awful. there is a reason why FPS games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop.
Trying to develop this kind of 3d world yourself is completely unrealistic.

suggested fix: use the standard top down RPGM map for the (skippable) exploration section instead of this quake-like thing.

problem 3. mazes are boring. especially ones you get lost in, get turned around, and can barely tell things apart because everything is super pixelated.

suggested fix: don't make the map into a maze. the map clearer on where you and and where you are going and not rely on players getting lost to pad playtime.

I'm always appreciate of suggestions for improvement, and some points have merit. However, it feels like you want it to be a completely different game altogether. Including what was written in your review, you indicated that you didn't like the gameplay, the graphics, the story, the pacing, the aesthetic, or really anything else. That's fine, but you'll probably want to find a different game to play.

Anyway, in response to your suggestions:

1) The skip jumps over the most difficult and time-consuming parts of the tower. Floors 3 and 4 are not mazes or puzzles.

2) Not liking the aesthetic of a 3D pixel dungeon is purely a matter of preference.

3) There are no more tower-like maze or 3D sections planned.

 

[harem.king]

1) The skip jumps over the most difficult and time-consuming parts of the tower. Floors 3 and 4 are not mazes or puzzles.

I literally got lost in the 4th level.
In the 3rd level the door is locked and you need to figure out there is some angel golem you activate to make it break the wall. this is a puzzle.
incidentally I also didn't realize at first that the ladder upwards was a ladder, since it looked like just some light wall texture.
in the 4th level you absolutely have a maze.

also, again, you are already letting people skip most of it, why not the whole thing?
this is literally where I dropped the game. and from other posts seems to be where most people drop the game.

2) Not liking the aesthetic of a 3D pixel dungeon is purely a matter of preference.

A. this is a very misleading statement since the vast majority of human prefers higher resolution.
A more accurate statement is that "a niche market exists that appreciates pixel art".

B. I didn't say that you should never use pixel art. I said THIS pixel art is not good. I have seen good pixel art that I appreciate and like.
C. there are problems with this section that goes beyond "it has pixel art"

It is objective that you have no free camera control. it is always looking at the same angle and just rotating a singular plane to one of the 4 cardinal directions. (which defeats the purpose of having a 3d section in the first place)
It is objective that you got clunky cardinal directions movement. (again, defeats the purpose of going 3d in the first place)
It is objective that you are plonking some 2d assets from RPGM into the 3d environment like people or rocks which looks very jarring and out of place. As well as making their size mismatch to the environment. And their pixel density mismatches the environment.
It is objective that your pixel resolution is very low even compared to other pixel art.

So all in all, this is not just "you don't like pixel art".

 

[harold]

I literally got lost in the 4th level.
In the 3rd level the door is locked and you need to figure out there is some angel golem you activate to make it break the wall. this is a puzzle.
incidentally I also didn't realize at first that the ladder upwards was a ladder, since it looked like just some light wall texture.
in the 4th level you absolutely have a maze.

also, again, you are already letting people skip most of it, why not the whole thing?
this is literally where I dropped the game. and from other posts seems to be where most people drop the game.

A. this is a very misleading statement since the vast majority of human prefers higher resolution.
A more accurate statement is that "a niche market exists that appreciates pixel art".

B. I didn't say that you should never use pixel art. I said THIS pixel art is not good. I have seen good pixel art that I appreciate and like.
C. there are problems with this section that goes beyond "it has pixel art"

It is objective that you have no free camera control. it is always looking at the same angle and just rotating a singular plane to one of the 4 cardinal directions. (which defeats the purpose of having a 3d section in the first place)
It is objective that you got clunky cardinal directions movement. (again, defeats the purpose of going 3d in the first place)
It is objective that you are plonking some 2d assets from RPGM into the 3d environment like people or rocks which looks very jarring and out of place. As well as making their size mismatch to the environment. And their pixel density mismatches the environment.
It is objective that your pixel resolution is very low even compared to other pixel art.

So all in all, this is not just "you don't like pixel art".

The door is locked, and the only other path forward is a room with golems. Upon entering the golem room, your character searches and finds the correct golem automatically. It isn't a puzzle.
The path on the fourth floor takes 60 seconds to traverse when walking on every tile and room available. It's an exploration section that's not meant to be confusing.

You're the first commenter who dropped at the 3rd/4th floors, the ones who dropped did so at floors 1 and 2. It skipped the most difficult of the levels so players could still experience the tower without having to struggle.

Again, this is a matter of your preference. I'm not saying you hate pixel art in general, only that you didn't like this art. Fine, that's a matter of opinion.

The 4 cardinal direction movement is a staple in Dungeon Crawlers, which I was attempting to emulate. I'm not trying to make a free-flowing 3D pixel world like Minecraft.

 

[harold]

That's nonsense. The only reason there are so many absurdly overbudgeted FPS games out there is because it's a super popular genre that can count on selling enough copies to make the money back. Any genre could end up spending as much money if they thought they'd make that money back, and plenty several do. (The "AAA" industry really does restrict itself to only a small number of genres, because that's the only way they can justify the budgets people expect of them.) But there are a lot of first-person dungeon-crawling turn-based RPGs out there with a similar appearance. They're sometimes known as "DRPGs" (the D is for dungeon, which is a bit misleading because most RPGs have dungeons even if they're not DRPGs), and the dev is probably using a plug-in designed specifically to make those kinds of games.

Of course there are plenty of design issues with it, and games that are designed entirely to be played as "DRPGs" tend to do some important things differently (like

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- although the popular Etrian Odyssey series was known for having you fill out the minimap by hand, as a callback to some of the oldest games in the genre that people played while having a pencil and paper on the desk next to them), but the point is that there are plenty of indie games that use a similar style and do it just fine without an absurd budget.

Yeah, I was going for the Dungeon Crawler aesthetic with that using the RPGMZ3D plugin.
Good point about the minimap, I'll look into adding that just to make the first floor more bearable.