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having random people unrelated to the project work unpaid is kind of extremely hosed, especially if it's no longer a "the community works together to try and get a demo out to see what it was like" kind of thing
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Jun 18, 2019 23:36
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Urto posted:I'm the newest B2 dev. Very new, in fact, having only joined last week for sake of the demo. I volunteered because I have the time to, I'm not really doing anything else, and it seems fun to me. Also, bhroom told me I have a "supple" demeanor, which helped earn my way in. For the demo, I didn't have much time to learn the codebase, but managed to fix a few major crashes. I also corrected probably like a few hundred typos and grammatical errors, especially in the prologue. Thank you for your work, but maybe consider unhitching your horse from this wagon
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Jun 18, 2019 23:48
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The astronaut can keep his story, just imagine that the Chaos Dunk radiation leaked out into space when Barkley killed Shadow Barkley turning a giant asteroid into a killer basketball. Have the astronaut use random terms like how it was a free-throw from his special hell that robbed him of everything. Hoopz just "dang... a entire world dunked in a instant.... I'm so sorry" Someone better at writing could probably punch it up in a similar manner but it keeps his hosed up sad story while also painting it as a comical thing for outsiders because a giant basketball just bounced off a planet blowing it up. That's kind of what I was expecting 
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Jun 19, 2019 01:24
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I think it's fine if Barkley 2 has some serious parts. A lot of pure comedy fiction tries to make the jump to being more serious in later parts or installments. There are a lot of weird, goofy series that developed into surprisingly complex works - with humor at the heart of it, but with more serious parts as well. Often, it's the buildup from pure comedy that makes the later dramatic moments more effective. I might be in the minority here, but I actually really like what Barkley 2 has going in terms of writing and setting. It just kind of feels a bit messy, like it's a first draft. The balance between comedy and drama isn't quite right. There needs to be a bit more of the former, and it needs to be mixed in more. My guess is that the writers were afraid of humor ruining the parts that are meant to have genuine emotion, but sometimes mixing the two makes it more effective, not less. ThisIsACoolGuy's suggestion of using a basketball asteroid for the astronaut's story could work, for example - ideally, it would add humor to the situation while simultaneously keeping the story genuinely sad and tragic. It's a tough balance to get right, but I think it's something Barkley 2 needs in order to make the setting and story work. I don't think having everything be a joke like Barkley 1 would work for a full length game (it was already starting to wear thin in a game that only lasted a few hours), but 2 could use some more elements of 1 mixed with the more serious tone. My assumption is that Tir na Nog is meant to be depressing and bleak to set up the rest of the game. If so, I think it works. It shows what life is like on Necron 7 (poo poo sucks!) and the enormous number of easily attainable "bad ends" for the quests establish that it's going to take more than a few good deeds and favors to help people - something major needs to change. This gives both Hoopz and the player a reason to want to start the grander adventure for reasons other than "because the plot said so". The thing is, I can't really say for certain if it's good or bad without playing the rest of the game. There's a very real possibility the whole thing filled has the same tone; if so, it all falls apart. Obviously things should become more dire as the game progresses - that's how rising action goes - but there needs to be a sense that Hoopz is moving in the right direction, especially if the start is so bleak. The situation on Necron 7 might get worse as things lead up to the climax, but if Hoopz gets better at helping people he can on his way to the final showdown, it'd make for a pretty satisfying arc. While there are games about protagonists who make things worse or where a situation becomes hopeless, they usually start more hopeful and get darker as they go on, as few people want to play a game that is just complete despair from beginning to end. In games like Dark Souls, things are pretty bleak the whole way through, but there's a lot less NPC interaction - there's a big difference between talking to one guy every hour of gameplay who says "wow poo poo sucks" and talking to 20 guys every 5 minutes who all say "WOW poo poo SUCKS". Again, my point isn't that Tir na Nog can't be dark and depressing. It could be a good way to introduce the player to the setting. It's just that Barkley 2 shouldn't have that level of misery for the entire rest of the game. OBSERVATIONS: -I like a lot of the writing, even the depressing stuff, but it needs more of a balance. -I really hate the time system! I don't like being rushed along in an RPG like Barkley 2, as I hate feeling like I might be missing something. Time systems can work in stuff like Dead Rising 2, where the game is about trying to get as much done as possible with a clearly visible time limit while trying to balance "doing things" with "getting the resources necessary to do things", but it doesn't fit a big dumb RPG like Barkley 2 unless the time is cyclical. It sounds like it massively complicated development as well. -Art's great! Music's great! Everyone has said this! -The character creator was great, but it went on a little too long after it became obvious what the joke was. I would take back this complaint, however, if stuff from the character creator ended up being relevant (or at least mentioned) in subtle ways throughout the game. It could've been pretty funny if stuff like your alignment factored into a single quest or just the ending or something. Something like that might've been planned, I dunno because I didn't play the rest of the game because it doesn't exist and never will. -I agree that a more "typical" RPG combat style would probably have suited the game more. It's unfortunate, because of how much work went into the gun's stuff, but getting the combat ironed out really should've been higher priority to avoid potential wasted work like that. -It definitely wasn't as aggressively funny as Barkley 1, but there were a lot of little things that I thought were clever. Stuff like the clock's ticking getting progressively louder and more dramatic as you wait in line, the printer that prints straight into the shredder, and a bunch of other small things. -Tir na Nog feels bigger than it needs to be. As much as I like it as an opener, there's a lot there, and it honestly started wearing me down. If this demo was released a year or maybe even two years after the Kickstarter, and the devs were more communicative and open to feedback, I'd be really optimistic. It needs work, but there's a lot of good here. To play a demo like this after seven years, though... well, I guess it just emphasizes the point that the game should be allowed to die. It's unfortunate - I do think it could've been great, but if the only completed part of the game (and the only part the original devs worked on) feels like it still needs work after seven years, things are pretty clearly hopeless for the poor souls still working on it. WOW! I wrote way more words than I meant to! I'm posting anyway! I waited seven years for this, gently caress you, I can write too many words if I want!
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Jun 19, 2019 04:04
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Zinkraptor posted:
I really, really agree with this. I don't like feeling punished for trying to do multiple things in the same run. I don't enjoy time pressure in RPGs. There's also no clock or time system to tell me if things have progress, so I can unknowingly get locked out of certain events or quests just by starting another one. It leads me to avoid accepting new quests or checking out new areas
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Jun 19, 2019 04:10
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Zinkraptor posted:-I really hate the time system! I don't like being rushed along in an RPG like Barkley 2, as I hate feeling like I might be missing something. Time systems can work in stuff like Dead Rising 2, where the game is about trying to get as much done as possible with a clearly visible time limit while trying to balance "doing things" with "getting the resources necessary to do things", but it doesn't fit a big dumb RPG like Barkley 2 unless the time is cyclical. It sounds like it massively complicated development as well. You're not so rushed as you think. Time will slow down the longer you go without completing any quests, eventually grinding to a total halt. It's not perfectly balanced and we have hit issues with undesirable rates of progression, but the core concept is there. You're meant to be able to make a choice on what quests you do up to a minimum amount (usually one quest an hour), but anything beyond that will require you to haul some rear end.
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Jun 19, 2019 04:11
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I haven't played the demo but I've read about a problem with running out of ammo. Is finite ammo a necessary resource sink or some method to inject challenge? I think it would be easier to design around a light arpg like Secret of Mana rather than a hardcore game like Gungeon.
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Jun 19, 2019 04:37
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Sartana posted:What are you even babbling about you loving retard Seems pretty straight forward, to me. Lurdiak posted:Shouldn't be, sounds like something got messed up. In this game? Impossible!
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Jun 19, 2019 04:38
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Character creation allegedly has numerous and subtle effects upon gun genetic's
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Jun 19, 2019 04:52
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can normal people play the demo yet
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Jun 19, 2019 05:01
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It was publicly linked in this very thread a few pages ago, so yes. But I would wait for the bugfixes that will probably come with the "real" release personally
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Jun 19, 2019 05:04
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I haven't gotten very far but I think the existence of the Booty Bass crew makes the whole thing worth it imo
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Jun 19, 2019 05:23
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Zinkraptor posted:-The character creator was great, but it went on a little too long after it became obvious what the joke was. I would take back this complaint, however, if stuff from the character creator ended up being relevant (or at least mentioned) in subtle ways throughout the game. It could've been pretty funny if stuff like your alignment factored into a single quest or just the ending or something. Something like that might've been planned, I dunno because I didn't play the rest of the game because it doesn't exist and never will. I don't want to say too much but something along these lines was planned, as well as there being subtle effects on stats, gun genetics, UI and other minor things affected throughout by your character creation.
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Jun 19, 2019 05:26
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The character creation being overly long felt like it was all part of the joke and I enjoyed it based on that. A way to completely randomize everything and skip it all would have been a good idea for a theoretical final release in which people would do multiple playthroughs.
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Jun 19, 2019 05:40
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DoctorStrangelove posted:The character creation being overly long felt like it was all part of the joke and I enjoyed it based on that. A way to completely randomize everything and skip it all would have been a good idea for a theoretical final release in which people would do multiple playthroughs. Isn't that exactly what the "Play as X114JAM9" button in the main menu does, though?
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Jun 19, 2019 07:32
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loving hell the gun's breeding animation
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Jun 19, 2019 09:32
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Gortarius posted:Ys-Kolob insanity from a couple pages ago Have you thought about making a game out of that stuff? Not necessarily the same plot, but a game that’s a dark crossover between public domain characters? I’d be all over that. I wish I could have experienced it myself. I think whoever it was who said that was closer to what people expected from a Barkley sequel was right. For me at least, the biggest appeal of the first game was the anachronistic combination of real people, JRPG bullshit, basketball, and dark setting played straight. This game is missing the first part and woefully lacking in the third, at least as far as the demo goes. Now don’t get me wrong, even the stuff that’s just plain dark is still well written and the humor that’s there is top-notch. While there’s a lot of questionable design choices the ambitious parts are really impressive. Calling Barkley 2 mediocre is selling the game short. If it didn’t have the situation it does behind the scenes I think it absolutely could be salvaged. But that would require devs that were willing to work on it and producers that were willing to overhaul parts of the game. The game’s flawed and not what most people wanted from a Barkley sequel, but it’s not a [i]bad game[i] at its core. The devs shouldn’t beat themselves up about it. If it wasn’t tied to Barkley (and was actually finished) I could see it becoming a cult classic.
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Jun 19, 2019 10:41
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Turn this into another doomed mass contributor goon project you cowards
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Jun 19, 2019 11:00
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Songbearer posted:Turn this into another doomed mass contributor goon project you cowards Don't let people throw their work into this sinkhole.
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Jun 19, 2019 11:00
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Hitlersaurus Christ posted:jesus christ It's not exactly the same but I've been doing some on/off work on a little game featuring Mackey Mouse who is down on his luck after the royalties stopped coming, Minniebeth Mouse divorced him and he has to pay alimony, lost his house and has a drug problem, and he got f*cked over by his former best friend, Goofster. Problem is not having a proper vehicle for delivering the jokes yet, just some prototypes so far. But even so it's all in bad taste and I'll probably have to tone it down to make it palatable(?). I think the sort of absurdist-grotesque-jokes game market is quite a niche, and is also borderline offensive, especially in the year of our lord 2019. The darker writing in B2 is, I think, almost entirely Hundley who is a really good writer in my books. Not really what anyone would expect to be in a barkley game, but if you look at it on it's own merits the writing is good. Like the Wilcy one is, uh... I don't really know how to describe it but the way he talks and the vocabulary/phrases he uses is really good. Same with Babby Hubert, but he is not in the demo so you can't see it. B2 would need a huge amount of streamlining to get the gameplay to be enjoyable. Smelt points should be handed out WAY more generously or removed altogether, Utility stations should at the very minimum fill up your bandolier gun's, newly bred gun's should have a full magazine, there shouldn't be more than two resistance types (probably just having one would be good also), the number of second prefixes should go way down from 60 since they don't do jack squat anyway (these are the status ailment causing shots), Hoopz needs to be way more consistent and actually interested in what happens around him, dwarfs need to talk less, enemies should honestly just be these dumb generic ones like in Guardian Legend or something with a few smart ones thrown in there for a good mix and then the tone needs to be looked at.
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Jun 19, 2019 11:34
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Lurdiak posted:Too many writers, Xjam's personality being too passive, bitterness seeping in and Hundley's very different and much darker writing style all make sense to me as reasons for the tone not being very fun or funny. Then you add in the fact that the art is no longer stupid looking stolen assets and there are no constant references to stupid real world poo poo like dunkaroos and space jam, and it all compounds on itself in a very unpleasant way. the duergars where already assholes in barkely 1, its just that they were oppressed assholes. if anything siding against the genies and destroying the careful ecological balance that kept the duergars in check should be the canon outcome
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Jun 19, 2019 12:34
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Lister posted:The apocalypse happened because of b-ball. This is grim but there's no sheen of ridiculousness. Or at least not enough of it. Urto posted:I'm the newest B2 dev. Very new, in fact, having only joined last week for sake of the demo. I volunteered because I have the time to, I'm not really doing anything else, and it seems fun to me. Should you be working for free to finish a game that is far from done, and which still belongs to someone else, not having been fully turned over to the community as some kind of open source thing? Everyone's going to say no. But at the very least, I think it's been well worth a couple weeks of effort to make the mostly-finished parts of this 7-year project accessible to us. Any efforts in the short-term to plug existing stuff in, and to tweak the janky stuff, should be appreciated.
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Jun 19, 2019 13:50
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A lot of people like coding dumb little hobby projects with 0 prospect of release or profit. If someone is in that situation then jumping into Barkol Z dev, poking around a bit and peacing out whenever they like is a real luxury. I don't know that this thread needs a page of TURN BACK FOOLISH YOUNGSTER whenever someone posts a dev update. If someone is expecting points on the back end of this meltdown that's a broke-brainedness that no amount of Goon Warnings will deter. You might stop them from posting more Dev Secrets itt when they inevitably leave the project, which, just, why would you rob me of that enjoyment e: gun'sbreeding is so good, oh my god. It's like the SMT demon stuff, but much more chill.
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Jun 19, 2019 14:14
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Shanty posted:A lot of people like coding dumb little hobby projects with 0 prospect of release or profit. If someone is in that situation then jumping into Barkol Z dev, poking around a bit and peacing out whenever they like is a real luxury.
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Jun 19, 2019 14:36
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Lurdiak posted:I don't want to say too much but something along these lines was planned, as well as there being subtle effects on stats, gun genetics, UI and other minor things affected throughout by your character creation. so really a metaphor for the entire game
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Jun 19, 2019 16:09
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But then there are the most important questions of all... Has anyone been able to do fishing, and has anyone discovered the creepy pasta story?
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Jun 19, 2019 17:27
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Gortarius posted:But then there are the most important questions of all... I got a rod but got sent to prison on my way to the sewers.
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Jun 19, 2019 17:34
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DACK FAYDEN posted:Is the UI thing related to the loving randomly generated window-border pipes that Frankie was working on multiple years ago, because that was dozens of hours of genuine hard work for something incredibly clever that no one will ever notice without being told Nah I think those are just default. Gortarius posted:But then there are the most important questions of all... Yes on both counts. Fishing is fun, but it's nearly impossible to catch a gun's that isn't like, 30 points or lower, though, so it's not worth it at all.
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Jun 19, 2019 17:35
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Gortarius posted:But then there are the most important questions of all... Yeah i did fishing. It is an easy way to get free weak gun's, though the high tier gun's are literally impossible to catch
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Jun 19, 2019 17:36
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Tunicate posted:Yeah i did fishing. It is an easy way to get free weak gun's, though the high tier gun's are literally impossible to catch You just need a better lure but I think the demo just has one, possibly two.
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Jun 19, 2019 17:37
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Yeah i tried both, the issue i had was mainly that the fish moves faster than your cursor can
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Jun 19, 2019 17:40
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I understood that it was a tradeoff to use a lighter, aerodynamic bait to get the fish that were further away from me, though I wasn't sure if weight also affected difficulty in terms of making the fish move away from the cursor slower or anything like that? And it seems you reel in at a fixed rate, so I take it the duration you have to keep it going is just a measure of the distance of the fish? It's one of the cooler fishing minigames I've seen, though some of those numbers could be tweaked. Some fish are impossible to catch, at least with the demo bait. Also, some gun stuff was unclear to me. The fishgut bucket guy talks about tiers, and I noticed they have colored names when you pick them up, but it's all white in the menus. I also wasn't sure what the "SPC" letters in the menu meant, or whether the "compatibility" when breeding ever showed anything other than green and red. I didn't have too much success breeding the guns I liked best in the time I messed around with it.
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Jun 19, 2019 18:18
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Zackarotto posted:I understood that it was a tradeoff to use a lighter, aerodynamic bait to get the fish that were further away from me, though I wasn't sure if weight also affected difficulty in terms of making the fish move away from the cursor slower or anything like that? And it seems you reel in at a fixed rate, so I take it the duration you have to keep it going is just a measure of the distance of the fish? It's one of the cooler fishing minigames I've seen, though some of those numbers could be tweaked. Some fish are impossible to catch, at least with the demo bait. Iirc aerodynamics is the ability to move the lure faster, weight just makes it fall down faster and the last stat makes the catching minigame easier (and I think it also scans the fish value from further away the better the stat is). It's not really a good system, just something that I tried to have at least a little depth to it, but at least it's functional which is more than most of the systems in B2. The gun stuff I still don't understand and I never will. What the colors mean when you pick one up or the adjectives involved, like glorious pistol or whatever that's in yellow text. No idea. No idea how gun's breeding works either and I never had the patience to even try to learn. You put two gun's you like together and hope for the best, and end up with a flickering chaingun of the pacifist.
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Jun 19, 2019 18:38
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Gortarius posted:You put two gun's you like together and hope for the best, and end up with a flickering chaingun of the pacifist. I just got a flickering something of the pacifist lol. Am I the only one who only uses pistols? Everything else is either too slow in it's firing rate or your movement or has not enough ammo to kill the weakest enemies.
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Jun 19, 2019 18:53
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Gortarius posted:No idea how gun's breeding works either and I never had the patience to even try to learn. You put two gun's you like together and hope for the best, and end up with a flickering chaingun of the pacifist. And it's perfect.
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Jun 19, 2019 18:53
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One small thing that might improve combat feel is an option to hold mouse2 to unholster instead of it being a toggle.
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Jun 19, 2019 18:59
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I think one issue is how the guns' stats are displayed, which focuses entirely on telling the player high-level information of how the gun is going to behave (damage per second, rate of fire, total dmg) , but in doing so makes complete abstraction of the underlying mechanics involved in breeding. The result is, you can read the numbers and know what a gun is going to do, but the way its presented tells you nothing about how fusion works, and how it gets to those numbers. This abstraction becomes like a layer of obfuscation. Like, okay, here is how gun stats work. This is awkward to put into words though so bear with me: Guns have core stats, which correspond to their long-term growth and general "level", and change very slowly as you breed. The stats are POWER, SPEED, CAPACITY and AFFIX(which makes the special effects from prefixes and suffixes stronger). When you shoot, those core stats are multiplied by two modifiers to figure out how the gun actually behaves: one for the gun TYPE (like for instance, revolvers might multiply the Pow stat by 2x and Spd stat by 0.4 and Cap by 0.5, machineguns probably do the opposite) and another multiplier from the gun MATERIAL (lovely materials reduce the guns stats overall, good materials increase them, they also have strengths and weaknesses etc) It means that a weapons type and material are just a transient state. Imagine if guns are analogous to JRPG characters, the core stats are that characters' actual stats which grow slowly over time, while the type and material are more akin to like, character classes or equipment that can be changed at will and only have short-term impact over the characters performance and behavior. Except in the case of barkley, you never see the core stats, only the results after equipment is applied. You dont even know those core stats exist really, so you dont get a strong feeling for the guns' growth. The only reference to these core stats in the game I think, is the gun's "PTS" value, shown in the bottom left corner of the gun image when you view it, which is all those core stats added together, giving you a rough idea of how good that weapon is in general. When you fuse gun's together of similar power, the core stats are first averaged out between the two, and then the stats are given bonuses based on the strengths and weaknesses of the component guns' type and material. So if you fuse two revolvers of similar power together, they average out their core stats together to become a new gun, and then that new gun gets some extra growth to POWER, which is a strong stat from both its revolver parents, but probably receives very little growth to Capacity, because revolvers have low ammo. If you continue fusing and end up with a machinegun, this higher power stat remains, so you have a machinegun that has an unusually high damage. I think a more informative display that alludes better to the underlying mechanics might show the core stats of guns using two-tiered meters. The core of the meter would show a weapons' core stats, and then the outer area of the meters would show the "effective" stats after the type and material are applied, so you can see weapons's core strengths and weaknesses and better understand the result.
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Jun 19, 2019 19:29
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Even just breeding high PTS numbered gun's often netted me a completely useless gun, like removing all the beneficiary affixes or greatly lowering its performance. I can only imagine the materials had something to do with it. The worst examples are when I'd fuse a high power gun with low capacity and a low power gun with high capacity, and end up with a gun that has both mediocre power and mediocre capacity, aka a completely useless weapon. I also found the weight tended to increase way too fast for breeding to be encouraged. FunMerrania posted:I just got a flickering something of the pacifist lol. Am I the only one who only uses pistols? Everything else is either too slow in it's firing rate or your movement or has not enough ammo to kill the weakest enemies. Pistols being the most reliable weapon was a big issue in testing, some tweaks were made to make rifles, automatics and other weapons more useful, but it wasn't really enough. There was also a big issue with the affixes being more detrimental than not, eg any affix that made bullets do anything but go in a straight line or home in would just make you miss a poo poo ton. Now some of the affixes are supposed to be outright negatives, like the one that makes bullets turn randomly or the one where they avoid enemies, but in a game with wacky guns with hundreds of permutations and dozens of possible wacky effects, it was pretty stupid that a plain pistol with no effect was one of the most desirable weapons. The hitbox of bullets was doubled in an effort to make the surfer, satellite and magician affixes go from "100% a debuff" to "just an alternate kind of bullet behavior". Unfortunately these stopgap tweaks made in a panic to release a playable demo were not sufficient to make up for several years of ignoring dev feedback and not testing.
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Jun 19, 2019 19:50
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Is the demo cutoff point when you plant the bomb in statue? I just get crash every time I try, so I figure I've seen all the content there is to see, or I hosed up something horribly in all the quests I accepted without thinking.
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Jun 19, 2019 20:08
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sounds like an indescribably stupid system imo
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Jun 19, 2019 20:10
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