fobwashed

@I_smell: Oh, I hear you on the big boss fights. I'm still not certain I'm going to be able to do the visible damage but I'll prolly try to do something on the larger setpiece type enemies. I've already made some changes to make the splashes more visible and as for the sound, definitely will look into all that great audio stuff later on =P Congrats on your game again. It looks fantastic!

@cstrang: I've tried bringing down the HP bar to over and under enemy heads but it gets to looking way too cluttered when you've got a bunch of enemies on screen. Also, I'm trying to be somewhat minimalist with the HUD so it goes against the overall look I've got in mind for the game. =P

@drag: This is something I've got down in my notes. I snitched it from the newest 3D castlevania game which also has the toggle in the options. Though, I tried turning it on in the game and it looks awful. . . Due to the aesthetic problem I have mentioned in response to cstrang, I'm considering not putting in the option. This seems to be a case where I need to decide whether it's more important to give the player the option or to present the game the way I want it to be seen. . .

@AngelN7: A small draw on top of icon is feasible and wouldn't clash too much with the look of the game. In the case you mentioned with plants VS zombies, this is a little different in that I'm not going the flash animation type animation where the parts are drawn individually then pieced together within the game. I'm for the most part drawing out all the animations since I think it looks better even if it's more time consuming. Also, in PvZ, the plants have maybe 5~10 frames of animation a piece. The player has frames of animation for the run alone -_-;;

@imsh_pl: Thanks for the kind words =) It won't always be ten + enemies on screen at once, but it'll happen enough that I agree with you about the clutter. I wish I had more time or resources so that I could do the visible damage justice but I don't want to half ass anything so I'm staying away =\

Congratulations =D

@Rufi91: Really appreciate you saying so! Thanks =)

I demand you deep fry a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Report back with results and pics =D

Oh, and also. Pancakes. . . and a slice of pie. . .

I for one like the increased number of quick looks.

I think these guys are running about as hard as they can with the current staff. It does seem like they're "going through the motions" at this point but I feel like since their staff and resources are limited, to add anything else they'd have to cut somewhere else. Unless of course, they bring on more staff like good ol' Patrick.

The only reason I chose definitely better is because while the content is about the same, there have been some serious improvements to the way the site itself works. I love the new way videos are set up and I also enjoy the hell out of Happy Hour. I'm also happy to be able to directly and monetarily help these guys keep doing what they're doing. I don't care about the user level and quests as much as say achievement points on the 360 (which isn't all that much neither) but just that it's here is pretty awesome. Like when I'm just looking at or doing something and a little quest notification pops up. Good stuff.

What I'd really love to see is some sort of expansion to the profile system they've got going on here. They've got levels and experience and all that so it'd be cool if you could use it in some kind of gamey way. Sort of like what the 3DS does with it's miis. It's stupid but it's free and sort of entertaining.

I second Pepsiman's 999. That game was one of my favorite text heavy games on the DS. You could also try the Miled Edgeworth game which is based in the Phoenix Wright world in addition to being similarly text heavy. Beyond what's already been suggested, I'm tapped out.

@C2C: Haha, that's another thing I've tried -____-;; I suppose we sort of think alike. The problem with that one was that it just looked wrong. Well, "wrong" might be the wrong word for it. It just didn't fit the visual style I imagined my game having. Just weird having a mob of randomly colored shadowed guys running around. I mentioned in one of my posts that I liked the way that Bastion handled enemy health with the ring around the shadow. In the end, any sort of system that had something tied to individual enemy characters ended up cluttering the screen with too much information and made the whole thing just look janky. I've got a cartoony visual but I'd still like to keep it from being all rainbow all the time if possible =P Who knows though, later on down the line, I may revisit some sort of shadow based information system. If not for health, maybe for something else iono. Thanks for the second attempt =D

@C2C: I agree with you 100%. The best way to show that an enemy has taken damage is to change the actual enemy's stance or visual appearance to reflect the damage that's been taken. Unfortunately, this is WAY out of the scope of what I'm capable of producing. To implement this, I would need to redraw every frame of animation an enemy has with this physical damage. In addition to this being too much work for not enough awesomeness (as incredibly awesome as it is), the texture sizes I'm working with are already large and this would end up taking up more space than I have, given the size limits for XNA games =(

Believe me, I've looked into this thoroughly. At one point, I had a system set up where I would encode frame data in a single invisible pixel per frame of animation that would be used as a reference point to draw the damage in the correct spot per frame without having to redraw everything. This was a decent solution until I deployed it to the 360. The 360's gpu was unable to keep up with the per frame/pixel information grab that a PC had no problem with. At that point, I chalked it up as a lost cause and had to figure out another way to do it =(

The splash effect is definitely not the complete solution, but within the tight constraints I'm working with (my time and abilities), so far it's what I've come up with. . . Thanks for the suggestion =D I'm open to any other ideas!

Oh, and btw, I've updated the visuals of the splash. It's still not done, but at least it's going in the right direction. Stupid mistake, I know -_-;;

Just beat Catherine this weekend. 
 
I saw the point that the GB crew was talking about as far as where the story should have ended and I didn't think it went THAT batshit crazy afterwards. I mean, yea, it went crazy, but not terribly. If the game HAD ended at that point, I think it would have made just as little sense as the way it did end. Vague enough for you? =P