Not as polished as Silent Paradise, but still fun. Silent Paradise was the first of your games I played, and I think the most notable difference is the absence of the Codex.
The story is a bit cryptic for me. Why do the Peacekeepers care so much about the meteor? Is the crashed ship in the lake a Peacekeeper ship? Did the meteor create the Watchers? Or the giant spider chained in the church?
This, alongside the prequel "The Lightkeeper", are the BEST small metroidvanias on this whole website. And I don't mean just best pay-what-you-want MVs, I mean BEST MVs out there, period.
The world design is exceptional, graphics and sound are perfectly selected to create great atmosphere, control is satisfying and responsive, the areas and NPCs are all interesting, the lore surrounding the games is intriguing and the exploration feels very rewarding.
I genuinely couldn't have asked for anything more from the games. THANK YOU for making them - you have a real talent for making metroidvanias and I hope you bless us with another one in the future <3
Your comment made my day, thank you! I'm really glad to see my games resonating with players. It's a big motivation boost.
And yes, there will definitely be more metroidvanias coming from me in the future.
For starters, I do plan on entering the "Metroidvania Month" jam next week. It will be my first game jam in more than a decade, so no idea if I can make something good during such a short time with my busy schedule. We will see!
I've also been toying with a sequel for The Trespasser, tentatively titled 'The Fireseeker'. It's still very early, but it should be a bit more Metroid than Castlevania this time.
Very good game! I didn't expect a free game to be this large or high quality.
A bit of feedback though:
I felt a lot of the time that the most effective way to play the game was to "cheese" it, for example by sniping enemies from a distance, tanking or jumping over them rather than fighting. I personally found this kind of fun anyway, but it's maybe not what you intended for most of the game lol. That being said I'm not sure how you would entirely fix that, since it's sort of endemic to how the whole game functions and other people seem to enjoy the core gameplay as it is too.
I think to improve this you could rebalance a few combat mechanics, mainly the massive difference between the strength of weapons;
When I first tested out the bombs on enemies and saw how much damage they dealt I thought to myself, there's no way you can design an effective boss now if you want players to be able to use other weapons as well. And indeed when I got the final boss I was able to beat them by standing in the corner and throwing bombs before they got through even half of my total health. The persistent damage idea is nice, but I feel like the bomb needs to be nerfed as it trivialises every boss encounter after. Not to mention that you no longer have to engage with ground-level enemies because all of the can be easily one-shot.
I also found the sword much weaker than the gun, which feels wrong because so much of the enemy and boss design is built around the sword that I feel like it isn't meant to be outclassed. The verticality of the sword hitbox was sort of weird, and the animation was really slow. Plus I don't think the stamina restriction on guns is enough as it stands - For regular enemies you can run away and recharge your stamina, and in bosses you won't be attacking all the time so in that time you can wait for it to come back (which happens very quickly). In fact I personally found you can get significantly more hits off with the gun than the sword, because you don't need to worry about setting up the right spacing, and at the same time you have way less risk.
This wouldn't be so bad if stamina was used all the time for movement, but the two moves that use stamina aren't that common and again both suffer from really slow animations.
This was why I didn't use the backdash very much; the tutorial prompt said to use it against the snakes, but whenever I hit them I would get immediately hit back before the backdash had time to activate. Maybe I wasn't using it right but it seemed kind of useless. This in turn made the sword less useful, because the sword and the backdash complement each other.
I also would've preffered it if the i-frame dash was faster, because it lends it more use and I always feel the dodge-roll/i-dash is the best movement tool in any game that has.
Another change could be to have more late game enemies and bosses should deal double or triple damage, because your health grows much faster than the difficulty, which encourages tanking as the game progresses (I didn't really care whether enemies hit me by the time I was in the final area)
That being said, all the other components of the game were so strong that I didn't mind too much overall and still really enjoyed the game.
It would be cool if there was a true ending update in the works because the way you've set up the story seems to be leading up to that, especially with the dialogue from the man with the dogs. Unless there already is and I just can't find it :D
Thanks, I appreciate the detailed feedback! I don't know yet if I will update this game further, but I will certainly keep this in mind for future projects ;)
Stumbled over a bug coming from Ice Caves into Meteor Crater, hit the lava and never respawned (it's at 1:51:03 if timestamp doesn't work).
I'm aware the Ice Caves were added after launch, but the leads the all-knowing skull in Meteor Cavern gives you are *INCREDIBLY* far off the mark, so ~BIG thanks for posting that collectibles map down below.
The game's okay. The spriting is nice, as is the music. You've also done a pretty good job at setting the atmosphere with your map designs. You've definitely got a lot of potential for a solo dev.
I feel like the movements are a little stiff, and the sword's a bit sluggish; at least based on what I'm accustomed to in other Metroidvanias. I also can't figure out how to not get shot at by the first boss, ended up throwing in the towel after about 5 deaths. x_x (I had a max of 7 HP and the blood vial by the time I faced the boss, by the way.)
Maybe I'll pick it up again another day and suddenly overcome that obstacle. For now though, I leave you with my first impression.
If you're talking about the Watcher Above (the green eyeball), it is technically optional. You can explore the underground caves without the ability it's defending, you're just going to have a very short line of sight. Pushing forward to the double jump would make avoiding its projectiles way easier. But if you don't have it, the best way is to watch for the moment it stops and quickly put some distance between you, so you have more room to see the projectiles coming and jump over them.
Also, if you went left instead of right at the very beginning to collect the item there, you can get the gun early (otherwise you need to wait for the double jump to get it). It may or may not help, depending on your playstyle: it's a ranged weapon, but it also consumes a lot of stamina and may leave you vulnerable.
So, I tried reloading my save. This uh... Is kind of a problem. I wasn't even hearing any sounds from my character when I tried moving, she just went poof. XD
It seems quitting the game during the Game Over screen saved your HP at 0... I fixed the issue: as soon as the build is up (and it seems to take a bit of time today...), version 1.1.1 will let you reload that save file and have a playable character. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Amazing. I really loved it - honestly more than any Castlevania games. Nothing but gratitude!
Feature request for an update or future games (unless I missed it) - would love a late game upgrade that will mark rooms on the map or areas where you have missing items. Would really help the completionist end-game run :)
Thanks, that's no small praise! I'm glad you liked it ;)
About your suggestion, it's something I've been thinking about for a while now, but I'm not sure how best to do it. I'm afraid a "sonar" ability would make it too easy, so maybe a late-game NPC dropping cryptic hints... Anyway, the point is that I'm experimenting with it and may add it to the game later on. Thanks for the suggestion ;)
Some ideas - some kind of thematically appropriate chime that plays if there's a secret left SOMEWHERE in the "room" (8doors and astalon did this I believe). Keeps it vague enough to not ruin exploration.
If you wanted it to be broader, I cant remember if the map was broken into regions, but an entire region could have an items % on the map
Loved The Lightkeeper! Will be playing this more later on today!
One thing I notice is in key binding, there are not many keys allowed as well as the movement is not allowed to be binded. I usually play with WASD keys for movement and /., for jump, attack, etc. and usually have TAB as map. I can not bind any of those keys. I'm using WINE under Ubuntu to play and I wrote a Linux script that takes care of all this and remaps to those keys, then changes back when the game exits but it would be nice if better key bindings could be put in future versions. 8)
Other than that, I'm looking forward to enjoying this as much as I enjoyed The Lightkeeper! 8)
P.S. - I have a PS3 controller that works via bluetooth but I prefer to play Metroidvanias/Platformers with keyboard, for me, it gives far better control than with a controller. I think all PC games should have key binding that allow for the full keyboard to be binded as well as movement in order to please those of us who prefer keyboard and have our own layouts with which we've become familiar. 8)
The game does not work on my laptop which is older, but should easily be able to play such a game. The laptop is a VOSTRO 2510 with an NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS. I believe I read below where you told another user the game requires OpenGL 4.0?
My laptop is OpenGL v3.3.0 which is able to do many games of this kind. Is it possible you can lower the requirements to 3.0? 4.0 seems a bit steep for this type of 2D game. It would surely bring on a lot more users. I have a GTX 1060 on my main system that the game plays fine on but I like to play in bed on my laptop.
The laptop plays many games that appear more graphically demanding, such as: Axiom Verge 2, WII Emulator Dolphin, Chasm, Steamworld Dig 2, Skellboy, Alwa's Awakening & Alwa's Legacy and many others. I understand it's all really about what you use to program it with but is there any way you could possibly make a build with lower requirements that don't use OGL 4.0 features or just allow the game to run no matter what version of OGL the user has and put in the ability to turn off lighting and other effects in the menus?
I really loved The Lighthouse which ran fine on my laptop and am looking forward to going through this game. Thanks!
Sorry, but The Trepasser requires at least OpenGL 4.0 Core Profile, which has been out for 12 years now. Going back to OpenGL 3.3 is not an option: all my post-2020 games use the same engine, whether 2D or 3D, and are built upon "modern" rendering features (we're still talking a decade old here). OpenGL 4.0 is the best compromise I can do, and if I were to rewrite this part, it would be to switch to Vulkan anyway. I'm a lone developer working on my spare time to create free games, it's a bit unreasonable to expect me to support 15 years old hardware.
Many modern games work great on my laptop. The new Shovel Knight Dig and many other brand new games that are just released all work fine. I could understand if the game required more advanced features but there are games that are far more graphically demanding that work fine. Some programmers are always upgrading to the latest engines even if the game doesn't need it, forcing upgrades that aren't necessary. I understand the desire to want to learn the latest and greatest but it's a shame when done on a game where it shouldn't be needed. I really loved The Lighthouse. Tresspasser's control seems way more clunky than Lighthouse's on my big system also, which is a GTX 1060 6GB with 16 GIGS ram and an i5 quad core. Part of what I loved about Lighthouse was the speed and the control. Is this just because this is still an early alpha/beta version? Trespasser just doesn't seem as polished, smooth or fast as Lighthouse. I love the fact it's in the same world though! 8) I love my old laptop and am one of those people who really think most hardware today is totally overkill, especially for the kind of games I like which are mainly 2D. Even in 2022 I'm still able to run most of the stuff I want. I'm against the idea that we need to just keep buying and buying new hardware just because it's "old". Like people who keep buying new phones, etc. I don't get it. I understand for playing big modern 3D games but I really don't like many of those and my big system is for the few of those that I play but what I really like are the Axiom Verge 1&2, Lighthouse, Alwa's Legacy/Adventure type 2D Metroidvanias that my laptop can easily handle.
Many modern indie games could theoretically run on a PS2, but everyone understand why they target the PS4 instead. The same reasons apply here. Supporting a platform is a lot of work, supporting multiple ones even more, and as the oldest ones become less and less common, they are phased-out. The latest Steam Survey mentions that 91% of players have a DX12/Vulkan GPU, and I'm not even requiring that (yet). Again, I offer the result of years of effort free of charge, so I get to decide where I stop.
Now, there is indeed one last update planned for The Trespasser, that will add new content and some polish (mostly to the graphics, but to the controls too). I don't think it will change anything for you, though. The Lightkeeper is inspired by Metroid, but The Trespasser plays a lot more like a Castlevania game. As a melee-focused game, it's meant to be slower and more deliberate. I welcome more specific feedback, but the slower pace is by design (and I encourage the use of a gamepad, as it's more complex to control than The Lightkeeper).
I don't understand why you're mentioning consoles unless you plan on releasing this on consoles? In that case then it wouldn't be a free project anymore and you should want to satisfy the most people. I would have paid for The Lightkeeper, it's that good. 8) I don't think making a game require extra hardware makes sense at all if it doesn't actually need it. New hardware can always run old things but old hardware can't run new things. If you want the game in front of as many people as possible, then it makes the most sense to have it run on the largest variety of hardware, from a PC perspective. Of course with consoles you write for what is out. The specifics of the control issues in Lightkeeper vs. Trespasser should be obvious. The control in Trespasser is clunky, Lightkeeper's is very responsive and fast. That's not the same as the game being slower paced, it's the control responsiveness, hit boxing, movement, etc. It's very glitchy. Maybe you were more used to the older language that you coded Lightkeeper in and Trespasser simply doesn't run as smooth because you haven't learned to tweak things to be as smooth as in the old language yet? I understand wanting to learn new languages and I understand this is free, it's your personal project and you can do whatever you want. Absolutely. But the things I am noticing are there, nevertheless. I'm a musician and sometimes when I get a new instrument, I think everything sounds great just because it's new. It takes a while for the newness to wear off before I'm able to objectively judge things and get to know it as well as I knew the older hardware and become as picky, critical and fluent as I was with it. The same goes for consoles, etc. 1st generation games are seldom as good as the games that get made years later as people get to know the hardware and really start pushing it to it's limits. The same with new languages, etc. Sometimes everything we do on something "new" can appear great because it's shiny and the newness factor hasn't worn off yet, or you work to overcome an obstacle and once you finally get it, you're so happy you aren't looking at things objectively from a 3rd person perspective. I hope you don't take me wrong, I think you have a ton of skill and I absolutely loved The Lightkeeper, but all of the reasons why I loved it are gone in this one. This just seems unpolished and glitchy, I assume this is due to the new language.
Also, regardless of whether it is "preferable" to use a controller or not, some people prefer keyboard and rock on keyboard better than controller. What is the point in having keyboard support at all then if you don't want people to use it? And if you offer the option, why not let us rebind all keys? Not everyone plays the same way. Key rebinding should allow every key to be rebinded, it isn't hard to do, I don't know what the big deal would be and why there should be a problem with not limiting the keys allowed to be binded to? In most languages, there are different methods you can use to grab keyboard input at a lower hardware level (like look at keyboard interrupt memory location to check if key is pressed rather than use scanf, etc). Switching to a method like that is an easy solution.
Ah, I remember playing Dreamnoid's other game, The Lightkeeper, and I loved it. I've downloaded this game right now and haven't started playing it yet, but I know this will make for a fun night.
nice game, even though I am at the zombie house and the potion throwing witches keep kicking my butt. like no matter where you stand you get hit and take 2 damage each time (you only have 3, max 4 health at this point!)
Hey, I played the game a bit further, nice game! could you give me please a short pointer though as I am unsure what to do now: i got the bat wings, the grate dash thing and the cat eyes. so in those 3 regions I am pretty sure that I have seen everything. the only left place seem to require me to either dive or crawl which I both cant yet.
I also collected all the weird items I could find along the way, with no idea what any of them are even used for (except single one which got used 30 seconds after finding)
can you give me a general pointer to the next direction I should go? :-)
Now that you have the dash, did you find your way inside the house with a chest? The item inside is the key to your progress. If you wear it, you may be granted access someplace you were previously barred from.
Hope it helps! If you're still stuck, don't hesitate to ask me again, I will be less cryptic ;)
have played it a bit further and defeated the final boss. however I am still lacking stuff: the consumables screen only has the (3) blood vials, other 2 spots are empty also missing last ring and, most annoyingly, I got 9 of 10 eggs. so there somewhere wehere I have already run past a few times there msut still be a single egg waiting. gotta revisit literally everything I guess.
there doesnt happen to exist a full map with egg locations or such? :-)
Edit: After some travelling I got the missing egg and the final ring.
now I am currently still missing the 2 things listed under the blood vial and 2 life gems also must be somewhere (currently have 10 of 12)
there aint a map with item locations, is there? :-)
I haven't made such a map yet, but I probably could. I don't know when I will have the time to do it though. Probably not before Friday.
If memory serves, the two consumables left are the Cyanide Pills and the Waystone. The later is found in the Burial Grounds, but I'm not sure you can still get the Pills after the Cat's Eyes (as it would be pretty useless by then). I should probably change that, purely for the sense of completion :)
Cool, thanks a loit for the map! just for the record: where would one find those cyanide pills normally? couldnt see anything having the right shape in the map, so is it given by some npc or such? :-)
just tried it in a new save file, you can only get the cyanide pills if you cant see in the dark yet. after that, the guy wont give it to you anymore :-(
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how do I open my inventory?
Either 'Escape' on a keyboard or 'Start' on a gamepad. You can rebind all controls either from the title screen or at any point during gameplay.
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Not as polished as Silent Paradise, but still fun. Silent Paradise was the first of your games I played, and I think the most notable difference is the absence of the Codex.
The story is a bit cryptic for me. Why do the Peacekeepers care so much about the meteor? Is the crashed ship in the lake a Peacekeeper ship? Did the meteor create the Watchers? Or the giant spider chained in the church?
This, alongside the prequel "The Lightkeeper", are the BEST small metroidvanias on this whole website. And I don't mean just best pay-what-you-want MVs, I mean BEST MVs out there, period.
The world design is exceptional, graphics and sound are perfectly selected to create great atmosphere, control is satisfying and responsive, the areas and NPCs are all interesting, the lore surrounding the games is intriguing and the exploration feels very rewarding.
I genuinely couldn't have asked for anything more from the games. THANK YOU for making them - you have a real talent for making metroidvanias and I hope you bless us with another one in the future <3
Your comment made my day, thank you! I'm really glad to see my games resonating with players. It's a big motivation boost.
And yes, there will definitely be more metroidvanias coming from me in the future.
For starters, I do plan on entering the "Metroidvania Month" jam next week. It will be my first game jam in more than a decade, so no idea if I can make something good during such a short time with my busy schedule. We will see!
I've also been toying with a sequel for The Trespasser, tentatively titled 'The Fireseeker'. It's still very early, but it should be a bit more Metroid than Castlevania this time.
Sounds awesome, I can't wait to try out whatever you create, man! <3
Very good game! I didn't expect a free game to be this large or high quality.
A bit of feedback though:
I felt a lot of the time that the most effective way to play the game was to "cheese" it, for example by sniping enemies from a distance, tanking or jumping over them rather than fighting. I personally found this kind of fun anyway, but it's maybe not what you intended for most of the game lol. That being said I'm not sure how you would entirely fix that, since it's sort of endemic to how the whole game functions and other people seem to enjoy the core gameplay as it is too.
I think to improve this you could rebalance a few combat mechanics, mainly the massive difference between the strength of weapons;
When I first tested out the bombs on enemies and saw how much damage they dealt I thought to myself, there's no way you can design an effective boss now if you want players to be able to use other weapons as well. And indeed when I got the final boss I was able to beat them by standing in the corner and throwing bombs before they got through even half of my total health. The persistent damage idea is nice, but I feel like the bomb needs to be nerfed as it trivialises every boss encounter after. Not to mention that you no longer have to engage with ground-level enemies because all of the can be easily one-shot.
I also found the sword much weaker than the gun, which feels wrong because so much of the enemy and boss design is built around the sword that I feel like it isn't meant to be outclassed. The verticality of the sword hitbox was sort of weird, and the animation was really slow. Plus I don't think the stamina restriction on guns is enough as it stands - For regular enemies you can run away and recharge your stamina, and in bosses you won't be attacking all the time so in that time you can wait for it to come back (which happens very quickly). In fact I personally found you can get significantly more hits off with the gun than the sword, because you don't need to worry about setting up the right spacing, and at the same time you have way less risk.
This wouldn't be so bad if stamina was used all the time for movement, but the two moves that use stamina aren't that common and again both suffer from really slow animations.
This was why I didn't use the backdash very much; the tutorial prompt said to use it against the snakes, but whenever I hit them I would get immediately hit back before the backdash had time to activate. Maybe I wasn't using it right but it seemed kind of useless. This in turn made the sword less useful, because the sword and the backdash complement each other.
I also would've preffered it if the i-frame dash was faster, because it lends it more use and I always feel the dodge-roll/i-dash is the best movement tool in any game that has.
Another change could be to have more late game enemies and bosses should deal double or triple damage, because your health grows much faster than the difficulty, which encourages tanking as the game progresses (I didn't really care whether enemies hit me by the time I was in the final area)
That being said, all the other components of the game were so strong that I didn't mind too much overall and still really enjoyed the game.
It would be cool if there was a true ending update in the works because the way you've set up the story seems to be leading up to that, especially with the dialogue from the man with the dogs. Unless there already is and I just can't find it :D
Thanks, I appreciate the detailed feedback! I don't know yet if I will update this game further, but I will certainly keep this in mind for future projects ;)
Damn, why cant I jsut unplay thsi game and play it again as if it was the first time?
Same for it's prequel with the lighthouse! :-(
Stumbled over a bug coming from Ice Caves into Meteor Crater, hit the lava and never respawned (it's at 1:51:03 if timestamp doesn't work).
I'm aware the Ice Caves were added after launch, but the leads the all-knowing skull in Meteor Cavern gives you are *INCREDIBLY* far off the mark, so ~BIG thanks for posting that collectibles map down below.
Thanks for the video! It was very useful to investigate those bugs. They're both fixed in version 1.1.2 ;)
The game's okay. The spriting is nice, as is the music. You've also done a pretty good job at setting the atmosphere with your map designs. You've definitely got a lot of potential for a solo dev.
I feel like the movements are a little stiff, and the sword's a bit sluggish; at least based on what I'm accustomed to in other Metroidvanias. I also can't figure out how to not get shot at by the first boss, ended up throwing in the towel after about 5 deaths. x_x (I had a max of 7 HP and the blood vial by the time I faced the boss, by the way.)
Maybe I'll pick it up again another day and suddenly overcome that obstacle. For now though, I leave you with my first impression.
Thanks for the feedback!
If you're talking about the Watcher Above (the green eyeball), it is technically optional. You can explore the underground caves without the ability it's defending, you're just going to have a very short line of sight. Pushing forward to the double jump would make avoiding its projectiles way easier. But if you don't have it, the best way is to watch for the moment it stops and quickly put some distance between you, so you have more room to see the projectiles coming and jump over them.
Also, if you went left instead of right at the very beginning to collect the item there, you can get the gun early (otherwise you need to wait for the double jump to get it). It may or may not help, depending on your playstyle: it's a ranged weapon, but it also consumes a lot of stamina and may leave you vulnerable.
Hope you stick with it! ;)
So, I tried reloading my save. This uh... Is kind of a problem. I wasn't even hearing any sounds from my character when I tried moving, she just went poof. XD
It seems quitting the game during the Game Over screen saved your HP at 0...
I fixed the issue: as soon as the build is up (and it seems to take a bit of time today...), version 1.1.1 will let you reload that save file and have a playable character. Sorry for the inconvenience!
I shall wait for a patch, then! ^_^
It took a while, but the update is live: https://dreamnoid.itch.io/the-trespasser/devlog/483703/update-111-bugfix-and-hin...
Amazing. I really loved it - honestly more than any Castlevania games. Nothing but gratitude!
Feature request for an update or future games (unless I missed it) - would love a late game upgrade that will mark rooms on the map or areas where you have missing items. Would really help the completionist end-game run :)
Thanks, that's no small praise! I'm glad you liked it ;)
About your suggestion, it's something I've been thinking about for a while now, but I'm not sure how best to do it. I'm afraid a "sonar" ability would make it too easy, so maybe a late-game NPC dropping cryptic hints... Anyway, the point is that I'm experimenting with it and may add it to the game later on. Thanks for the suggestion ;)
Some ideas - some kind of thematically appropriate chime that plays if there's a secret left SOMEWHERE in the "room" (8doors and astalon did this I believe). Keeps it vague enough to not ruin exploration.
If you wanted it to be broader, I cant remember if the map was broken into regions, but an entire region could have an items % on the map
The way I ended up doing it is adding a late-game NPC that tells you in which regions you're missing one or more items: https://dreamnoid.itch.io/the-trespasser/devlog/483703/update-111-bugfix-and-hin...
That way you get an idea where to look for, without knowing precisely in which room it is. Hopefully it will do the trick :)
oh sweet! I’ll check it out whenever I’m due for a replay
Loved The Lightkeeper! Will be playing this more later on today!
One thing I notice is in key binding, there are not many keys allowed
as well as the movement is not allowed to be binded.
I usually play with WASD keys for movement and /., for jump, attack,
etc. and usually have TAB as map. I can not bind any of those keys.
I'm using WINE under Ubuntu to play and I wrote a Linux script that
takes care of all this and remaps to those keys, then changes back
when the game exits but it would be nice if better key bindings could
be put in future versions. 8)
Other than that, I'm looking forward to enjoying this as much as I
enjoyed The Lightkeeper! 8)
P.S. - I have a PS3 controller that works via bluetooth but I prefer
to play Metroidvanias/Platformers with keyboard, for me, it gives
far better control than with a controller. I think all PC games should
have key binding that allow for the full keyboard to be binded as well
as movement in order to please those of us who prefer keyboard
and have our own layouts with which we've become familiar. 8)
The game does not work on my laptop which is older, but should
easily be able to play such a game. The laptop is a VOSTRO 2510
with an NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS. I believe I read below
where you told another user the game requires OpenGL 4.0?
My laptop is OpenGL v3.3.0 which is able to do many games of
this kind. Is it possible you can lower the requirements to 3.0?
4.0 seems a bit steep for this type of 2D game.
It would surely bring on a lot more users.
I have a GTX 1060 on my main system that the game plays fine
on but I like to play in bed on my laptop.
The laptop plays many games that appear more graphically
demanding, such as: Axiom Verge 2, WII Emulator Dolphin,
Chasm, Steamworld Dig 2, Skellboy, Alwa's Awakening & Alwa's
Legacy and many others. I understand it's all really about what
you use to program it with but is there any way you could
possibly make a build with lower requirements that don't use
OGL 4.0 features or just allow the game to run no matter what
version of OGL the user has and put in the ability to turn off
lighting and other effects in the menus?
I really loved The Lighthouse which ran fine on my laptop and am
looking forward to going through this game. Thanks!
Sorry, but The Trepasser requires at least OpenGL 4.0 Core Profile, which has been out for 12 years now. Going back to OpenGL 3.3 is not an option: all my post-2020 games use the same engine, whether 2D or 3D, and are built upon "modern" rendering features (we're still talking a decade old here). OpenGL 4.0 is the best compromise I can do, and if I were to rewrite this part, it would be to switch to Vulkan anyway. I'm a lone developer working on my spare time to create free games, it's a bit unreasonable to expect me to support 15 years old hardware.
Many modern games work great on my laptop. The new Shovel Knight Dig and many other brand new games that are just released
all work fine. I could understand if the game required more advanced features but there are games that are far more graphically demanding that work fine.
Some programmers are always upgrading to the latest engines even if the game
doesn't need it, forcing upgrades that aren't necessary.
I understand the desire to want to learn the latest and greatest but it's a shame
when done on a game where it shouldn't be needed. I really loved The Lighthouse.
Tresspasser's control seems way more clunky than Lighthouse's on my big system
also, which is a GTX 1060 6GB with 16 GIGS ram and an i5 quad core.
Part of what I loved about Lighthouse was the speed and the control.
Is this just because this is still an early alpha/beta version?
Trespasser just doesn't seem as polished, smooth or fast as Lighthouse.
I love the fact it's in the same world though! 8)
I love my old laptop and am one of those people who really think most hardware
today is totally overkill, especially for the kind of games I like which are mainly 2D.
Even in 2022 I'm still able to run most of the stuff I want.
I'm against the idea that we need to just keep buying and buying new hardware
just because it's "old". Like people who keep buying new phones, etc. I don't get it.
I understand for playing big modern 3D games but I really don't like many of
those and my big system is for the few of those that I play but what I really like
are the Axiom Verge 1&2, Lighthouse, Alwa's Legacy/Adventure type 2D
Metroidvanias that my laptop can easily handle.
Many modern indie games could theoretically run on a PS2, but everyone understand why they target the PS4 instead. The same reasons apply here. Supporting a platform is a lot of work, supporting multiple ones even more, and as the oldest ones become less and less common, they are phased-out. The latest Steam Survey mentions that 91% of players have a DX12/Vulkan GPU, and I'm not even requiring that (yet). Again, I offer the result of years of effort free of charge, so I get to decide where I stop.
Now, there is indeed one last update planned for The Trespasser, that will add new content and some polish (mostly to the graphics, but to the controls too). I don't think it will change anything for you, though. The Lightkeeper is inspired by Metroid, but The Trespasser plays a lot more like a Castlevania game. As a melee-focused game, it's meant to be slower and more deliberate. I welcome more specific feedback, but the slower pace is by design (and I encourage the use of a gamepad, as it's more complex to control than The Lightkeeper).
I don't understand why you're mentioning consoles unless you plan on releasing this on consoles?
In that case then it wouldn't be a free project anymore and you should want to
satisfy the most people. I would have paid for The Lightkeeper, it's that good. 8)
I don't think making a game require extra hardware makes sense at all if it
doesn't actually need it. New hardware can always run old things but old hardware
can't run new things. If you want the game in front of as many people as possible,
then it makes the most sense to have it run on the largest variety of hardware,
from a PC perspective. Of course with consoles you write for what is out.
The specifics of the control issues in Lightkeeper vs. Trespasser should be obvious.
The control in Trespasser is clunky, Lightkeeper's is very responsive and fast.
That's not the same as the game being slower paced, it's the control
responsiveness, hit boxing, movement, etc. It's very glitchy.
Maybe you were more used to the older language that you coded Lightkeeper
in and Trespasser simply doesn't run as smooth because you haven't learned to
tweak things to be as smooth as in the old language yet?
I understand wanting to learn new languages and I understand this is free, it's your
personal project and you can do whatever you want. Absolutely.
But the things I am noticing are there, nevertheless.
I'm a musician and sometimes when I get a new instrument, I think everything
sounds great just because it's new. It takes a while for the newness to wear off
before I'm able to objectively judge things and get to know it as well as I knew
the older hardware and become as picky, critical and fluent as I was with it.
The same goes for consoles, etc. 1st generation games are seldom as good as
the games that get made years later as people get to know the hardware and
really start pushing it to it's limits. The same with new languages, etc.
Sometimes everything we do on something "new" can appear great because it's
shiny and the newness factor hasn't worn off yet, or you work to overcome an
obstacle and once you finally get it, you're so happy you aren't looking at things
objectively from a 3rd person perspective.
I hope you don't take me wrong, I think you have a ton of skill and I absolutely
loved The Lightkeeper, but all of the reasons why I loved it are gone in this one.
This just seems unpolished and glitchy, I assume this is due to the new
language.
Also, regardless of whether it is "preferable" to use a controller or not, some
people prefer keyboard and rock on keyboard better than controller.
What is the point in having keyboard support at all then if you don't want
people to use it? And if you offer the option, why not let us rebind all keys?
Not everyone plays the same way.
Key rebinding should allow every key to be rebinded, it isn't hard to do, I don't know what the big deal would be and why there should be a problem with not
limiting the keys allowed to be binded to?
In most languages, there are different methods you can use to grab keyboard
input at a lower hardware level (like look at keyboard interrupt memory location
to check if key is pressed rather than use scanf, etc). Switching to a method like
that is an easy solution.
Ah, I remember playing Dreamnoid's other game, The Lightkeeper, and I loved it. I've downloaded this game right now and haven't started playing it yet, but I know this will make for a fun night.
Show post...
nice
nice game, even though I am at the zombie house and the potion throwing witches keep kicking my butt. like no matter where you stand you get hit and take 2 damage each time (you only have 3, max 4 health at this point!)
Hey, I played the game a bit further, nice game!
could you give me please a short pointer though as I am unsure what to do now:
i got the bat wings, the grate dash thing and the cat eyes.
so in those 3 regions I am pretty sure that I have seen everything.
the only left place seem to require me to either dive or crawl which I both cant yet.
I also collected all the weird items I could find along the way, with no idea what any of them are even used for (except single one which got used 30 seconds after finding)
can you give me a general pointer to the next direction I should go? :-)
Nevermind, should have used ESC button way sooner -.-
Now I know where to go :-)
Now that you have the dash, did you find your way inside the house with a chest? The item inside is the key to your progress. If you wear it, you may be granted access someplace you were previously barred from.
Hope it helps! If you're still stuck, don't hesitate to ask me again, I will be less cryptic ;)
have played it a bit further and defeated the final boss.
however I am still lacking stuff:
the consumables screen only has the (3) blood vials, other 2 spots are empty
also missing last ring
and, most annoyingly, I got 9 of 10 eggs.
so there somewhere wehere I have already run past a few times there msut still be a single egg waiting.
gotta revisit literally everything I guess.
there doesnt happen to exist a full map with egg locations or such? :-)
Edit:
After some travelling I got the missing egg and the final ring.
now I am currently still missing the 2 things listed under the blood vial and 2 life gems also must be somewhere (currently have 10 of 12)
there aint a map with item locations, is there? :-)
I haven't made such a map yet, but I probably could. I don't know when I will have the time to do it though. Probably not before Friday.
If memory serves, the two consumables left are the Cyanide Pills and the Waystone. The later is found in the Burial Grounds, but I'm not sure you can still get the Pills after the Cat's Eyes (as it would be pretty useless by then). I should probably change that, purely for the sense of completion :)
I made a map!
It's not 100% exhaustive, as it doesn't place the items given to you by NPCs, but it has all the Eggs and Lifegems:
Hope it helps! ;)
Full size version: https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzg3NzgzOTYucG5n/original/lyOqrH.png
Cool, thanks a loit for the map!
just for the record: where would one find those cyanide pills normally?
couldnt see anything having the right shape in the map, so is it given by some npc or such? :-)
just tried it in a new save file, you can only get the cyanide pills if you cant see in the dark yet.
after that, the guy wont give it to you anymore :-(
It's so great!