[TR] Demo is Live!

@LegendBeta glad you enjoyed it, thanks for the in depth post!

I'm running W8.1 and dont have that - will need more info unfortunately.

Just FYI it'd be great if you'd check before dropping stuff like this here. This is why I wanted to do more than just dummy out some of the content, the mounted gun etc have had people speculating a lot already but it's more often than not old content that's been cut instead of new content that's coming - and the medic is currently absent because it needs rethinking and is definitely only really relevant in a team fight. That said, glad people are excited about it, just dont get too clever about the speculation!

Play it with humans with real response time. We had delay on it for a little while but it felt shit, like when knight jabs were delayed. It's a melee class going up against guns and rockets, gotta be responsive. You can do a lot with fake-outs, camping bushes, etc. As it is, of course 1v1 commando will be a little "random", but unless we add clashes/parrying (and therefore shoot ourselves in the foot for online by adding even more ping dependent stuff) that's just how it's going to work out - you have to decide if the risk is worth it.

MM has a fetish for bullet spamming :^) It's definitely on the "necessary tweaks" list.

We actually want bodies to "get in the way" - they're players and it really sucks to be "out of the game" for too long a period of time, this way you can at least have some impact, or take one enemies attention and ammo away. It'll be especially important in the team mode, but it allows some funny things in skirmish as well.

"Main player" is an illusion in skirmish :^) don't worry, a mode with bigger maps is coming, and the camera code is already there (as you might've seen from earlier gifs).

Your KAG account can be used to use the same username, but you have to buy the game separately. However, the demo is free to play.

 

(warning, jaded dev tl;dr post)

Forgot to reply to this, but in particular I think Lucas's comment was aimed at the complaints re: KAG. We still get nagged to "finish soldat" on pretty much every post made on social media or elsewhere about our games new and old, so I hope you can understand the pessimism.

We're not after forced optimism, but we're not after a broken record of complaints about old games either.

Re: "commenting is always great" - I agree with the intent behind this, but not the reality.
I'd actually rather people who were genuinely unhappy with the direction of our games left and took their attention and time elsewhere - with KAG classic we had full years of vocal malcontent both here and on social media, pulling the game direction in ways we weren't (and still aren't) happy with, and breeding a lot of community animosity (classic "vs" beta).
It's bad for the game, makes it very hard for us to establish any sort of consistent vision, and I'd honestly rather the people involved had flat out left the community than continued the same tune for years on end. I get that it's an indicator that they aren't happy how the game turned out, but most of the most vocal players paid $10 or less many years ago for a game still in its metaphorical cradle, and I wish they could let it go. There's also a basic level of decorum that really helps with taking feedback seriously that's often missing, but that's a whole separate issue, especially when it comes to gamers.

We can't keep everyone happy, nor are we aiming to - we're happy to take feedback (that's the whole point of the demo), but we've got ideas with where we want to take these things too. There's an area between pleasing people while retaining our creative freedom and trying to listen to everyone, from johny98 who wants creative sandbox terrariacraftworld and kedsnakesuvius who wants mlg comp ctf killfest and skinmoudyne who wants a modders paradise and - you get the picture. I get what you're saying and I like that you're thinking about both retention and extended reach, but understand that often we dont even have to add the grain of salt to some of the vitriol we get given as "feedback", it's already drenched with it.

 

We'll add to the demo:

• Fixes/changes to the content that's there to keep in sync with whatever release version is there
  
• hopefully remove dummied out content
• Music/Menus/Cosmetic changes

We might add to the demo:

• Local or single player content that gets added later

We Almost Definitely Wont Add to the demo:

• Online stuff - needs a paywall for hackers and its the major incentive to buy on PC
  
• Big new modes - the main big one is designed for online with teams, and the bots won't work well for it (at least in the short term)
  
• New classes - only makes sense in team games with what we have planned
  
• Booze, Cards, Volleyball - all the "making friends" part of the game requires friends to include it :) If it's fun enough there might be offline volleyball though I guess.

Current plan is that there'll be a secondary demo for people who pre-order with online MP and new modes and that'll get patched kinda like KAG was up until release. The demo will remain as a separate version after release that people can play for free.

 

You can actually smoosh dead bodies with crates to execute them. And yeah, sniper bots are bullshit.

 

Finally got to download and play for the first time since early testing. Damn things have changed (very much for the better) since then!

@butterscotch, a cousin, and I spent most of yesterday playing, plus some of the day before (say ~16 hours, all up?) and I'd like to reiterate his points

but also add:

1. dropping crates often feels awkward--with some regularity one of these two things would happen:
   1. the crate drops one space further away from you than intended (meaning the other guy gets you bc you're dropping them on the other side of him--maybe have a better indication of where you'll be dropping the crate? or just have it spawn a bit closer? idk. The distance the crates appear from you just feels like you're summoning them out of mid air); or,
   2. a dropped crate (which seem to snap-to-grid, see #1 for the frustrations that generates) will fall dooooooooo--and then catch on a corner, failing to smoosh the other guy's head in.
2. One of the maps is all kinds of frustrating bc, if you die and fall down the bottom of the map, you cannot climb the left-hand ladder bc it's two (2) spaces off the ground, meaning you have to flop all the way to the the right-hand ladder and then flop back again just to pick up a health that was literally just up the top of that left-hand ladder.
3. I wasn't able to change the controls for P2 to keyboard. As soon as you selected an action it would say "select a key", or something like that, and then nothing on the keyboard (not even windows key?) would respond. I'd have to exit the game by clicking exit in top right corner-thank goodness I wasn't playing fullscreen. >_>
4. I have an old controller lying around (so we were still able to play, even if not with 3 players ) and I noticed that--and, it could just be for my controller, not anyone else's--you can't execute a snap shot with sniper in the same way you can when using a keyboard. Like, we compared keyboard to controller and it was taking literally half a second longer for the sniper to be able to move his cross-hair out to minimum firing distance when using controller than it did for keyboard. Needless to say, this was the cause of much upset everytime you went to pull off a shot and the other guy (who'd started aiming after you) got his shot off first.
5. Also, yeah, dat sniper reload time. ;_;
6. And the turning on rockets might be nice to up, as you've noted.
7. What, for the love of chocolate-covered-lace, is with regularly spawning health crates on recently killed commandos as you walk by??!?

I think that's all?

 

Ah yes. The ability to jump off your own crates (mid-air) is wonderful and inspired. Flying, carpet bombing, engineers is tasty, tasty goodness.

 

Nope, sadly that doesn't fix it (just tried it again to double check--it still renders all key inputs non-responsive).

 

Ah well, we'll just have to sit back and wait. It'll get fixed sooner or later. :3