[Forge]

Trooper Dan, on 02 March 2018 - 08:56 PM, said:

But I love to nitpick

-The EDuke32 keyboard setup is a pain in the butt to use. I notice this a lot because I'm left-handed, so I pretty much have to re-assign every single function before I play a game.

I'm right handed and pretty much have to reassign all the keys. In both columns.

Trooper Dan, on 02 March 2018 - 08:56 PM, said:

Do we really need to allow 2 different keyboard keys assigned to the same function?

yes

because

also maybe some day i'll be using a laptop with no mouse and refuse to use that friggin touch-pad thingy

you never know

could happen.

[Forge]

Bruno Mattei, on 02 March 2018 - 08:56 PM, said:

I bought it and then refunded after I completed the incredibly short preview.

Is this how you get more friends than me?

fml

[Player Lin]

Forge, on 02 March 2018 - 09:54 PM, said:

yes

because

also maybe some day i'll be using a laptop with no mouse and refuse to use that friggin touch-pad thingy

you never know

could happen.

I think it's always be nice idea to bind two key for a function, because you never knows when you need it, more (multiple) options more better.

I also reassigned some keys like crouch key from CTRL to ALT or something else, because CTRL+SHIFT or CTRL+SPACE will toggle my Chinese IME and for most of games just BAD idea, black screens, lost of controls, game goes like apeshit etc. until disable the IME, so it's normal if you want rebind the key, as the default may not totally suit everyone.

[Micky C]

Bruno Mattei, on 02 March 2018 - 08:56 PM, said:

I bought it and then refunded after I completed the incredibly short preview.

So you don't want the full version, which you would have gotten for free if you didn't refund?

Bruno Mattei, on 02 March 2018 - 08:56 PM, said:

The weapons are really plain and desperately need an alt fire. The bomb is alright but it doesn't have splash damage and I don't like the homing ability it has. The homing makes it feel like it takes no finesse to use unlike the pipe bombs or dynamite in Duke 3D and Blood respectively.

The weapons will be getting an alt-fire in the final version.

Also, if you throw the bombs directly onto enemies you can use finesse. They only home-in when they're on the ground.

[Bruno Mattei]

Micky C, on 02 March 2018 - 11:24 PM, said:

So you don't want the full version, which you would have gotten for free if you didn't refund?

I just wasn't that impressed with it.

[OpenMaw]

Micky C, on 02 March 2018 - 11:24 PM, said:

So you don't want the full version, which you would have gotten for free if you didn't refund

Well, that's more or less what you're paying for. The preview campaign is the incentive to toss money out for the full version, right?

Bruno Mattei, on 02 March 2018 - 08:56 PM, said:

I bought it and then refunded after I completed the incredibly short preview. I beat it in an hour, discovered roughly half the secrets in each level, and died only twice on normal difficulty.

It's essentially a demo, yeah. By all accounts you're not buying the demo, you're buying the game, and getting the demo as a bonus for putting cash down sooner rather than later.

Bruno Mattei, on 02 March 2018 - 08:56 PM, said:

Level design in level's 2 and 3 is fine but a little cryptic. It can trick you to looping back to the start of the level.

There's too many secrets that don't amount to much. It would be cool if some of the secrets lead to secret levels and shit. In the first level when I jumped up those beams I was thinking "Oh man, there must be something big up here!" And it was just armor. Who cares?

Are you referring to the ladder secret outside? I mean, to be fair you got

Spoiler

A Duke Nukem "Cops are pigs" and a Portal "cake is a lie" and Companion cube reference in there.

I will somewhat agree on the secrets though. I mean, it's nice there are so many of them and some of them are very obscurely placed, but I do think there might be something to be said for slightly less, but more impactful ones. I really liked the placement of a secret at the start of the final map, with the developer message. That was sweet, and really reminded me of what I missed in old school shooters.

Bruno Mattei, on 02 March 2018 - 08:56 PM, said:

The weapons are really plain and desperately need an alt fire. The bomb is alright but it doesn't have splash damage and I don't like the homing ability it has. The homing makes it feel like it takes no finesse to use unlike the pipe bombs or dynamite in Duke 3D and Blood respectively.

I honestly think alt-fire stuff is a little over-rated. I mean, yeah, it's cool if you can come up with a function that's going to be useful(being able to fire both barrels or individually with the shotgun in Blood), but often times it leads to a lot of gimmicky shit(The Tommy Gun's "spray" feature.) What we have in Bombshell's preview campaign is akin to the Duke Nukem 3D Shareware. You're getting the basics. All the high-concept and heavy-hitting equipment is clearly being saved for the full game. Just think, you didn't get the Shrinker, trip mines, devastator, or Freezethrower in the shareware of Duke3D.

The bombs seemed to work just fine for me when I wanted to produce carnage. Indeed they became a massive force-multiplyer whenever dealing with a squad of baddies.

My only real complaint against the weapons is that I think the SMG report could use a more high end chattery sound like out of an 80s action movie. Pistol, shotgun, and SMG all have roughly the same kind of a lower end oomph, but the result is they sound a little samey. I get why though it keeps them all uniform in their presentation and it's very clear that Voidpoint/3D Realms have worked to keep the presentation and tone focused here.

[Danukem]

Bruno Mattei, on 03 March 2018 - 12:08 AM, said:

I just wasn't that impressed with it.

That's fine, but you listed some criticisms of stuff all of which could change in the full version, and then you noted that "everything else was good". Reading your review, it seemed like it delivered for you what could reasonably be expected of an early access game at this point. The problem is, when you announce that you got a refund, it makes it sound like you bought it under false pretenses. It sounds like you bought it planning to get a refund unless it was the most amazing game ever -- essentially you abused your right to a refund by setting the bar unreasonably high. Naturally, people around here who want to support EDuke32 won't take kindly to that.

[MetHy]

Micky C, on 02 March 2018 - 02:21 PM, said:

Btw, is it just me or does the "Ion Maiden" text not stand out much from the background, which makes it hard to read when scrolling through a list of small images, possibly affecting number of sales to a small degree. Perhaps a small orange trim around the letters would help it stand out in this case.

Damn, you got a point here. I had to look twice to even see the game and I know what the image looks like.

[OpenMaw]

My suggestion there would be to increase the amount of orange present on the "ION MAIDEN" portion of the banner. Orange against blue would stand out better.

[Bruno Mattei]

Commando Nukem, on 03 March 2018 - 12:19 AM, said:

A Duke Nukem "Cops are pigs" and a Portal "cake is a lie" and Companion cube reference in there.

Then I really didn't miss anything.

Trooper Dan, on 03 March 2018 - 12:20 AM, said:

That's fine, but you listed some criticisms of stuff all of which could change in the full version, and then you noted that "everything else was good". Reading your review, it seemed like it delivered for you what could reasonably be expected of an early access game at this point. The problem is, when you announce that you got a refund, it makes it sound like you bought it under false pretenses. It sounds like you bought it planning to get a refund unless it was the most amazing game ever -- essentially you abused your right to a refund by setting the bar unreasonably high. Naturally, people around here who want to support EDuke32 won't take kindly to that.

By the same token nothing could change when the full game is out. Same thing happened with Wrack; everyone thought it was going to be this big thing but nope.

Dusk on the other hand really impressed me and I thought the devs deserved my money after knocking me off my ass with the first campaign. And the 2nd campaign that they released on Christmas was equally amazing.

Side note: Amid Evil also looks absolutely amazing.

Ion Maiden needs more polish. More varied enemy types, deaths, and weapons. The revolver is horribly generic. The sub machine gun is even more generic. The shotgun looks cool but operates just like any other shotgun and lacks the "oomph" that a shotgun needs.

[Micky C]

Bruno Mattei, on 03 March 2018 - 05:30 AM, said:

By the same token nothing could change when the full game is out.

Except at least one of your big criticisms has clearly been stated as 'fixed' in the full release. Plus its still early access, so by definition it will undergo further polish. I also hear that the full game will be original levels, with this preview being a largely independent campaign. Not sure how it'll tie in though.

Sounds like the game simply isn't for you, which is fine. Everyone has their own tastes and priorities in what they look for in a game. From what I've seen of Dusk, the level design in IM is superior in a few aspects. While you might not like the type of complexity IM has gone for, there are definitely people out there who look for specifically this kind of thing. Similarly, some people enjoy exploring and hunting for well-hidden secrets. For those who don't, they can simply ignore it. IM also focuses more on interactivity. As others have said, there's a lot of fun discovering what you can actually do (especially in such an old engine), and this ties in nicely with the exploration and secrets aspects. By contrast, Dusk is a much more combat-focused game, with other components taking more of a back seat. Some people also like looking at highly detailed levels which could in a way be considered a form of art. Dusk's levels are pretty minimalistic, and not for artistic motivation.

In terms of level design, there's good complexity and bad complexity. My first time playing Shadow Warrior was a frustrating experience, as nearly every level I'd have the feeling that I've explored the entire map (perhaps going back through it multiple times) without making progress or knowing what to do. This was not the case here; there was always some place left to explore. I was momentarily stuck in one of the traps where you have to go under water, however that wasn't too bad since by the nature of the trap I knew the solution wasn't far away. Something IM also gets right as opposed to Shadow Warrior is that there's considerable gameplay time towards getting keycards. Let me explain by a comparison; in SW the levels were generally completely open, with the keycards essentially being in locked rooms within the open space. There was typically little-to-no gameplay between unlocking the room with the keycard and getting the keycard, before moving onto the next locked room and repeating the cycle. In Duke 3D and IM, there'd be large sections opened up by keycards. Seems like a no-brainer but SW managed to mess that up in many cases.

Personally I think the Portal secret was fantastic, I wish I'd discovered it myself instead of seeing it in a video. However I agree with you that the armour you get after jumping across the girders was a bit disappointing. I'd originally thought that it was part of the main level progression since it seemed like such an obvious place to go, and had a bit of effort behind getting to it. Still, I'd prefer it have these kinds of small branches to explore than the alternative.

[Zaxx]

Forge, on 02 March 2018 - 04:10 PM, said:

But like I said, I want to smack chairs out of my way - as well as bash trashcans and other various breakable objects.

Instead of mostly pointless fanservice with a quickpunch or a quickkick I'd rather see a more useful feature. Sure, it was fun to smash grates in Duke 3D with the mighty foot but apart from that it's a pointless, useless feature and on top of that nowadays those kinds of quick melee attacks are identified as features from modern FPS games. That could rub people who don't remember Duke 3D as vividly as we do the wrong way.

Also the stun baton is just more fun and useful as a melee weapon, it's a unique little touch like the katana in the original Shadow Warrior. Want to be able to break grates and objects faster? Then I suggest two things:

- Quicker weapon switching overall. Weapon switching is a bit on the slower side so this would benefit the overall gameplay and we'd be able to switch to the baton faster.
- The baton could have a secondary feature, for example that if you double tap 1 instead of just switching to the weapon Shelly will instantly attack with it.

Not adding another button to the control layout for a basically redundant feature also has other benefits. For example some of us really like to use those buttons next to WASD to map some weapons to them. E is use and R is reload now, that's enough. For example when I play Blood the first thing I do is I put the dynamite to Q and since Ion Maiden is relying on that same mechanic with the bowling bombs I do the same here. It's a lot easier to press than reaching all the way to 6 and I'd have that bowling bomb hotkey on Q instead of some boring quick kick.

And as for a more useful feature the way I see it a lot of the secrets rely on pushing objects like chairs and trash cans around so Shelly should really pick those up with the use button and carry them to make things faster. You know, like in Half-Life 2.

Edit: And on a side note now that I mentioned secrets: I like the idea of the increased fall damage but it seems like it doesn't really work with Ion Maiden's level design. Basically now it punishes the player for exploration since getting to some secret areas require some platforming so if you fall you can lose a large chunk of your health. The bottom line: fall damage should still be a thing but it should be a bit lower.

[axl]

Zaxx, on 03 March 2018 - 06:13 AM, said:

Instead of mostly pointless fanservice with a quickpunch or a quickkick I'd rather see a more useful feature. Sure, it was fun to smash grates in Duke 3D with the mighty foot but apart from that it's a pointless, useless feature and on top of that nowadays those kinds of quick melee attacks are identified as features from modern FPS games. That could rub people who don't remember Duke 3D as vividly as we do the wrong way.

The quick mighty foot is far from pointless and useless in Duke Nukem 3D. It can really make a difference on the higher difficulties: it's a lot faster to use the quick-kick feature at frozen enemies than to wait for the "automatic" kick, it can help preserve ammo while not losing time switching weapons and can be really helpful in close quarters so that you can shoot and kick at the same time.

Zaxx, on 03 March 2018 - 06:13 AM, said:

And as for a more useful feature the way I see it a lot of the secrets rely on pushing objects like chairs and trash cans around so Shelly should really pick those up with the use button and carry them to make things faster. You know, like in Half-Life 2.

Hmmmm... I disagree here... picking up objects wouldn't fit the old-school approach of Ion Maiden in my opinion.

[Mark]

After watching Musically Inspired's walkthrough video he was really struggling with pushing an object to where he needed it. "Carrying" would have been better.

Although, maybe MI is a spaz and nobody else had trouble pushing things.

[Zaxx]

Mark., on 03 March 2018 - 07:00 AM, said:

After watching Musically Inspired's walkthrough video he was really struggling with pushing an object to where he needed it. "Carrying" would have been better.

Although, maybe MI is a spaz and nobody else had trouble pushing things.

It's very easy to "slide to the side" while you're pushing things and objects can also get stuck in the environment.

[HulkNukem]

axl, on 03 March 2018 - 06:56 AM, said:

Hmmmm... I disagree here... picking up objects wouldn't fit the old-school approach of Ion Maiden in my opinion.

To be fair, neither are physic objects.

[Zaxx]

axl, on 03 March 2018 - 06:56 AM, said:

The quick mighty foot is far from pointless and useless in Duke Nukem 3D. It can really make a difference on the higher difficulties: it's a lot faster to use the quick-kick feature at frozen enemies than to wait for the "automatic" kick, it can help preserve ammo while not losing time switching weapons and can be really helpful in close quarters so that you can shoot and kick at the same time.

So it's useful because the automatic kick is not useful enough... that only proves that the auto kick was not a super polished mechanic in Duke 3D, not that the quick kick was useful. You have a point when it comes to ammo conservation but then again Ion Maiden's stun baton is a lot stronger than Duke's kick so it perfectly fulfills the ammo conservation aspect. The thing is I just don't see the point in including a quick kick when you have an awesome melee weapon that stunlocks enemies and even has a simple 3 hit combo, it's just more fun than a kick would be. And really I don't think anything that I'm saying is new, I'm sure that 3DR chose not to have a "mighty foot" in Shadow Warrior because the katana was just more awesome too (I know, we had karate punches... did anyone ever use those?).

Quote

picking up objects wouldn't fit the old-school approach of Ion Maiden in my opinion.

Well Duke 3D did not have ladders either and even in the old school games where ladders were a thing it was never this easy and smooth to climb them... so that means that the devs should remove the ladders or make climbing them suck like in the 90's? Absolutely not. Duke 3D did not have physics so Ion Maiden should get rid of that too? I think you see where I'm going with this...

The thing is that I don't really care if it's super old school or not because the fact is that it would serve Ion Maiden's gameplay a great deal.

[Doom64hunter]

Is the portable medkit the only inventory item in the game? I didn't see any "Inventory left/right" buttons in the controls, which is surprising considering every Build game had those.

Also, I want to reinforce that the eduke32 control setup needs to be changed so that you can only map a key to a single action. The big issue right now is that the previous keybinds aren't removed whenever you set a key to a new action.

For example, when I set e to crouch, the use function isn't unbound from e. This behavior has been a pet peeve of mine for ages, but I decided not to complain about it since eduke was only volunteer work and the issue was admittedly minor.

Now with Ion Maiden as a commercial product however, I feel like it's finally time to bring this up.

[axl]

Zaxx, on 03 March 2018 - 07:42 AM, said:

Well Duke 3D did not have ladders either and even in the old school games where ladders were a thing it was never this easy and smooth to climb them... so that means that the devs should remove the ladders or make climbing them suck like in the 90's? Absolutely not. Duke 3D did not have physics so Ion Maiden should get rid of that too? I think you see where I'm going with this...

Shadow Warrior did have ladders. But I can understand your view on this. I think it comes down to personal preference.

Personally I like Ion Maiden the way it is right now. But I very much welcome the alt-fires and I would love it if you could dual-wield the SMG (don't know if this is planned or not).

Anyway, just finished the demo and it was a blast. Really looking forward to see more of this.

[NightFright]

I am using the keypad a lot and was a bit frustrated that keypad5 was not possible to be assigned. It's the central key of the keypad layout and I use it as a kind of panic button, usually for important things like medkit usage or reload. In EDuke32, it's my inventory use key, scrolling done with keypad left/right.

Long text, short question: Any chance to see keypad5 added to the list of supported keys?

[Forge]

Zaxx, on 03 March 2018 - 07:42 AM, said:

The thing is I just don't see the point in including a quick kick

breaking trashcans to get randomly spawned items.
if there's multiplayer, i'd rather quick-attack through a grate than wait for it to open.
if i'm holding bowling bombs and i walk around a corner into an enemy, i'd rather quick-attack them than either blow us both up or go through the slow process of switching weapons.
etc.
etc.

some people find the feature useful.
some people find the feature useless.
simply opinions.
yours are just as valid.
even if the feature is available, that doesn't mean you have to use it.

[MrFlibble]

Zaxx, on 03 March 2018 - 07:42 AM, said:

I'm sure that 3DR chose not to have a "mighty foot" in Shadow Warrior because the katana was just more awesome too (I know, we had karate punches... did anyone ever use those?).

Fists are a great way to deal with Coolie Ghosts when they spawn, katana swing is way too slow for that, and fists are very fast. You can knock out ninjas too if you sneak or run up on them before they can use their ranged weapons. Not to mention the powered-up punch in shadow warrior mode.

[Forge]

Bruno Mattei, on 03 March 2018 - 05:30 AM, said:

By the same token nothing could change when the full game is out.

A large portiont of the reasons you listed for not liking the demo are listed on the release page as being present in the full release.

more enemies
more weapons
alt-fire

You admitted to rushing through it as fast as you could. Then complained about the levels being confusing and cryptic.
In the same token you admit to only finding about half the secrets, but complained that they didn't hold anything worthwhile.
You only found half of them, so you don't know what's in the other half.
If you properly read the end-screen you'd know that there are going to be more secrets and items in the final version.

Also under the same token, it doesn't sound like you took the time to figure out how to "finesse" the bowling-bombs.


You can dislike the demo. It doesn't suit your taste.
But-
Your complaints sound disingenuous.
By your own comments, it's obvious you bought it and blazed through it in the quickest amount of time possible, just to qualify for a refund.
There is nothing wrong with that. If there were, the distributor wouldn't allow it.

Taking everything about your comments into account diminishes the chance that anyone will take your negative aspects of the game serious.
They don't appear informed or honest. Merely as an 'excuse' for you to check the game out for free.

Pity.
Negative aspects and comments are good. Echo chambers don't foster very much progress.

[Doom64hunter]

Holy shit, I just realized you can hurt yourself by swinging the baton at a puddle of water while standing inside of it.

[Zaxx]

MrFlibble, on 03 March 2018 - 08:41 AM, said:

Fists are a great way to deal with Coolie Ghosts when they spawn, katana swing is way too slow for that,

Actually the katana is super good against them because you can spam it. The katana was always my go to weapons against the ghosts.

Anyway I think we're getting a bit sidetracked here. I know I'm partially the cause of that because I said that the quick kick was useless in Duke 3D (which I still firmly believe btw.) but really since my suggestion is about Ion Maiden we should really think about why a quick kick would be useful in Ion Maiden.

In my opinion it wouldn't be useful because:

- The stun baton is lot more satisfying to use then a quick kick would be.
- The stun baton could be adjusted in order to break stuff easier (see one of my previous comments here on how to accomplish that)
- The stun baton is perfect for ammo conservation, it really is a powerful weapon in some situations.

So basically I think that a quick kick would only clutter up an otherwise clean game design. It's a redundant feature because the stun baton is the game's melee weapon, not Duke's boot and we don't need redundant features. This is not Brutal Doom where some features are only there for shits and giggles but are otherwise useless (and before you jump on me for this I love Brutal Doom but it's a mod, not a professionally developed video game like Ion Maiden).

[MetHy]

Reminder that one of the power-ups in Shadow Warrior increases the strength of your fists. They're not useless.

[Bruno Mattei]

Forge, on 03 March 2018 - 08:55 AM, said:

A large portiont of the reasons you listed for not liking the demo are listed on the release page as being present in the full release.

more enemies
more weapons
alt-fire

You admitted to rushing through it as fast as you could. Then complained about the levels being confusing and cryptic.
In the same token you admit to only finding about half the secrets, but complained that they didn't hold anything worthwhile.
You only found half of them, so you don't know what's in the other half.
If you properly read the end-screen you'd know that there are going to be more secrets and items in the final version.


Pity.
Negative aspects and comments are good. Echo chambers don't foster very much progress.

Where on earth did I say that I rushed through it? I completed the 3 levels in 65 minutes. I took my time to find as many secrets as possible even though many of the secrets were pointless (as I already stated) and killed pretty much all of the enemies in each level. Plus I stated that I found roughly half of the secrets per level so if you think that's rushing then we have very different opinions of what rushing is.

The whole preview campaign just didn't impress me that much. Like, why the crap would you not show off more of the arsenal? This has been worked on for about 2 years, right? So why only show 4 weapons including the melee weapon? Why in the crap would you give me the chaingun (finally a new weapon even though it's a very atypical weapon for an FPS) and then just end it? Why not after getting the chaingun a bunch of enemies swarm in and you could have a little bit of fun with it?

If anything was rushed it was this preview. Compare Ion Maiden to Dusk which was made by 3 people and the first campaign (consisting of around 8 or so levels) was available from the get-go along with a fully fleshed out arsenal.

Forge, on 03 March 2018 - 08:55 AM, said:

Pity.
Negative aspects and comments are good. Echo chambers don't foster very much progress.

Do you ever look in a mirror? I didn't say the game was terrible but it was underwhelming. But apparently I'm not allowed to criticize without fuccbois (including very thin-skinned developers who love to criticize the work of others) appearing and downvoting me for having a different opinion.

[NightFright]

Well, slightly more than one hour for three levels is really a bit fast. It took me that long to complete the first map only, with just 5 secrets found. I admit I could have completed it earlier, but took a lot longer due to secret hunting.

For a demo, I think the amount of gameplay you get to check out is quite decent. In general, I am grateful there is a Build game again of which I cannot say that I know the maps by heart. My urge for exploration is addressed, and I like how you are reminded about missing secrets before you leave the map. It's also a good way to tell you that you found the exit.

[Sanek]

Doom64hunter, on 03 March 2018 - 07:59 AM, said:

Is the portable medkit the only inventory item in the game? I didn't see any "Inventory left/right" buttons in the controls, which is surprising considering every Build game had those.

I beelive that Extreme Paintbrawl, Zombie Crisis, and a number of other Build games didn't have any inventory at all. It's not obligatory for Build games to have inventory.

The Build engine game does not even had to be a shooter.

[Forge]

Bruno Mattei, on 03 March 2018 - 10:21 AM, said:

Where on earth did I say that I rushed through it?

Your opening line is,

Quote

"I bought it and then refunded after I completed the incredibly short preview."

Consider the impression and negative reaction that leaves. Everything after in your statement is already set up for failure.
You should have saved that statement for the end, or just left out the part about how fast you finished such a "short" demo.
It is, after all, just a demo.
And if it were so cryptic and confusing as you say, it should have taken longer to complete than what you claim.

Bruno Mattei, on 03 March 2018 - 10:21 AM, said:

Like, why the crap would you not show off more.....

You don't know how demos and teasers work, do you?

Bruno Mattei, on 03 March 2018 - 10:21 AM, said:

Do you ever look in a mirror? I didn't say the game was terrible but it was underwhelming. But apparently I'm not allowed to criticize without fuccbois (including very thin-skinned developers who love to criticize the work of others) appearing and downvoting me for having a different opinion.

Why would I?
I simply stated what impression your comment leaves.
Upvotes and downvotes are merely a visual gauge on if your comments are agreeable or not. Apparently several people disagree with you. Most likely for your statements about what was missing from the demo (which will be in the full version, but you want them now). Also for appearing to buy it & refund it, just to play it fast & free.

I'm not sure what you expected when you posted what you did. If it were more constructive, it could have been better received. We'll never know now, will we?