Hands of Necromancy [Full game released!]

[Swordman]

I've tried a bit of the demo. Is it normal to have frame drops?
They don't happen in the hub, but in one of the levels whenever I look at this zones: https://imgur.com/a/GwfugsQ
The one in the water especially only happens when looking from up there. The fps drops are not really a deal breaking issue, just kinda of annoying how the game goes from 120 fps to 40 fps whenever i look at those zones.

[Emmanuelexe]

Congratulations on the release!

So far, I am just disappointed that I cannot use mods with the demo due to its shareware nature; mainly, I wanted to see if NightFright's excellent Fullscreen Status Bar mod was compatible. Oh well!

Anyway, is there a way to disable the weapon name display every time it is selected? It is a neat future at first, but it might prove slightly annoying once I become familiar with the game.

Also, in the Player Setup menu, there is an incorrectly-titled option: "PLYRMNU_VERTSPREAD".

Finally, will there be a way to rebind the key for the Objectives journal?

Thanks for the report, for the objectives journal, there is an option to rebind the key yes, its in "customize controls" > "Toggle Objectives/Hints"

[Rachael]

I've tried a bit of the demo. Is it normal to have frame drops?
They don't happen in the hub, but in one of the levels whenever I look at this zones: https://imgur.com/a/GwfugsQ
The one in the water especially only happens when looking from up there. The fps drops are not really a deal breaking issue, just kinda of annoying how the game goes from 120 fps to 40 fps whenever i look at those zones.

This will happen with older hardware. When you're looking ahead the BSP parser for GZDoom only has to do a frontal walk. When you look up or down it has to do a rear walk as well, which can cost a bit of processing speed. This gets even more complicated with portals present in the area, such as with water or underpasses. Normally you should not notice it with multi core processors but if your hardware is fairly well aged, you probably still will.

The system requirements for this project have been listed as fairly high, for this reason. It certainly will run on any hardware that GZDoom supports but we cannot officially support such use cases. We do not even officially support OpenGL ES, even though it does run (you will be missing some features though).

Any hardware made within the past 5 or so years will easily fall within the required system specs. Past 7 years for gaming hardware. Anything older than that - you are on your own and this is part of the reason why we released a demo, so that you can see if it works with your hardware.

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One thing you can try to see if it alleviates some of your issues is render at half-res (console command vid_scalefactor 0.5) - it may speed things up a little bit for you.

[RKD]

I've tried a bit of the demo. Is it normal to have frame drops?

The Farmhouse is the only level where this happens, presumably for the sheer ammount of vertices, sectors, slopes and other geometry being rendered at once while looking to certain spots. I play on a laptop and can confirm that, while there is a drop in fps, it keeps in a playable margin (I think that is thanks to not having overpopulation of enemies, which would be really detrimental in this map, so well done there).

The Iron Key was supposed to be used in the switch who open the bars of the golem transformation platform but we thought it was a bit annoying to have to go back completly if you didnt have the key for the switch

You are not wrong thinking that. If I had made it to the bars that leads to the golem pick-up and had to go all the way back, I would've been slightly pissed. It is a really long way, indeed. So here is a suggestion that I think solves the possible skipping part while keeping the map intact (the current progression steps work well as it is right now, imo):


Just move the door from the start of the platform to the end. That way, even dropping down doesn't let you skip the door and there will still be plenty of map to explore after getting the key, instead of having 90% of the map explored if the key opened the bars above.

[Swordman]

I've tried a bit of the demo. Is it normal to have frame drops?
They don't happen in the hub, but in one of the levels whenever I look at this zones: https://imgur.com/a/GwfugsQ
The one in the water especially only happens when looking from up there. The fps drops are not really a deal breaking issue, just kinda of annoying how the game goes from 120 fps to 40 fps whenever i look at those zones.

This will happen with older hardware. When you're looking ahead the BSP parser for GZDoom only has to do a frontal walk. When you look up or down it has to do a rear walk as well, which can cost a bit of processing speed. This gets even more complicated with portals present in the area, such as with water or underpasses. Normally you should not notice it with multi core processors but if your hardware is fairly well aged, you probably still will.

The system requirements for this project have been listed as fairly high, for this reason. It certainly will run on any hardware that GZDoom supports but we cannot officially support such use cases. We do not even officially support OpenGL ES, even though it does run (you will be missing some features though).

Any hardware made within the past 5 or so years will easily fall within the required system specs. Past 7 years for gaming hardware. Anything older than that - you are on your own and this is part of the reason why we released a demo, so that you can see if it works with your hardware.

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One thing you can try to see if it alleviates some of your issues is render at half-res (console command vid_scalefactor 0.5) - it may speed things up a little bit for you.

I understand, but I believe my pc, while being low end by itself, it falls into the recommended specs: rx 550 4gb, 12 gb ram and an i3 9100f with sse4.2. I ran gzdoom with vulkan by the way.

[Rachael]

The stand-alone Mac OS version (*not* the Steam version) has been updated. Apparently .zip's are total crap at keeping the necessary file system permissions working for the app bundle to work, so it's been uploaded as a .dmg file instead.

[Emmanuelexe]

RKD > its 3D floor all around, could need to make a vertical door i believe so i will put the Iron Key locker just here:



It leads to the golem/cracked wall room (for the firekey), its not too late in the map.

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Thanks for the report, for the objectives journal, there is an option to rebind the key yes, its in "customize controls" > "Toggle Objectives/Hints"

Ah! I see it. Thank you!

So far, I must say, it feels a bit like I am playing an Iron Lich from Heretic, especially when I use the Tornado Spell. About damn time I get to inflict it upon enemies instead of the opposite!

[RKD]

its 3D floor all around, could need to make a vertical door i believe so i will put the Iron Key locker just here

I should've taken the 3D floors into consideration, my bad. That other door also works satisfactorily as a locked one, imo, for the reasons previously stated. Glad you found a solution

I beat the demo but I'm gonna make a replay on the hardest difficulty before giving any more feedback. One thing, though, I'm unsure if it's a bug or not but the lift close to the Dragon Key in the Farmhouse doesn't do anything. I mean, it lowers once you activate the switch next to it but it doesn't go up again, making it pointless.

[Emmanuelexe]

Indeed for the lift!

"Master" difficulty is fast monster mode (no respawn)

[Captain J]

Just beat the demo and this is so cool!! Necromancers usually appear as villains but this game breaks this particular cliche! Also it has nice atmosphere an a soundtrack. Kinda like Heretic's and i love it.

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- Fireball Staff might need either firepower or rate of fire. Taking quite a while to kill things. I'm thinking of Heretic's Elven Staff.

- Quite honestly, feels like both Ring of Ice and Tornado Spell are exact same thing... But the Tornado one does last a bit longer but also rather weak. Speaking of, every weapon in general feels weak and i was playing the game in normal difficulty. I guess i can use the Berserk powerup but it's limited. Magical Sword puts up some damage tho.

- Most of the lifts play no sound effects. See The Factory's.

- Ice Golems take damage from Ring of Ice? Huh.

- What's the difference between Berserk Head and the Berserk Hand? Is the hand one that increases firepower? Adding tutorial of them would be nice.

- 3 Way Priests and the Fireball Priests are indeed visually different, ones having bracers. But the color of their robes can be blend in, especially from distance.

- Visuals and atmosphere are fine. But the Audio? Well, it's not as powerful as i expected. Not the ice shattering sounds and Necromancer's voice tho. They're overly great!

The Countryside:

- Areas with accessible waters act strange with the detection. Despite my head hits the surface, it still counts as underwater.


- This cracked wall consumes ammo if you swing the magical sword at it.

The Lost Town:

- Zombies don't get alarmed by anything unless i come forward.

The Farmhouse:

- This particular room has this invisible wall that blocks me for some reason.


- If you walk across this bridge, it displays the text, twice. And speaking of, which weapon or spell i should bring so i can destroy this particular wall? Becoming a Stone Golem didn't do nuthin'


- The barrel prop makes this candle prop floating. Feels like you should make an alt version of barrel prop that adds candle on it.




- Some floors have this bright thingie.

Said matters and audio feedback aside, this is one promising and great game! I certainly can't wait to play other episodes as well! Looking forward to next update.

[Emmanuelexe]

Yes, Berserker Fist/Hand increases fire power x2 and Berserker Head increase defense x2, i plan to post a manual/tips later in the steam page
Thanks for the reports and feedback!

[Lagi]

i have complete the demo. Levels are great. This transformations are really neat way to grant access to other parts of the level. map wise you take hexen formula and really show how it should be done. Map searching was very nice. I like that bit in Farmhouse, when part of the bridge collapse and its underwater.

I very like the sword as weapon. 2 hitting everything feels good.

ice golem should be invulnerable to ice spell.
tornado could be homing to the nearest target. Its both nice and annoying feature, which would make precise, railgun ice shoots having its own application.

i think there should be more enemies on the maps. killing enemies feels very satisfying (even without gib state). Its great that monstes are often going into pain state, so when i shoot them i see that my attacks are working.

there should be more usable items. like bombs, or some traps that move/push/pull enemies. Or you could increase/decrease enemy size = it die in narrow corridor when enlarge. I stick mostly to the sword, (its super hard to not be low on health when you are in constant melee) but i still manage to complete game with multiple red and yellow potion.

if i transform into golem, i could be invulnerable to 3x ball acolyte attack. This would allow to create map where to move past turret monsters, you would have to turn into golem.

[ActionAlligator]

Hey Rachael et al! I just played your guys' game on the middle difficulty, and I thought I'd leave some feedback. I know it's not complete yet and you probably plan on many changes and additions going forward, but I'm just going to dump my thoughts and you can do whatever you want with them I'll begin with the cons and then move to pros so you can end on a more positive note for each category

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* Weapon design:
-----Cons: Your weapons feel very basic and lackluster tbh. I think most of this may be the sounds and sprites (more on that below) and therefore the lack of 'oomph' to them, or perhaps the enemy design (also more on that below), but I also think their design is just a little too simple overall. I'm not sure how many weapons you have planned, so maybe your other weapons in full game have unique designs to them and you were just looking to cover basics with the first four weapons; if that's the case, then I think that's probably fine. Still, if you could perhaps make these weapons stand out a little bit more from what we see in other Doom-style FPS games, they could be improved I think.

-----Pros: Tornado spell is probably the most unique weapon of the bunch, despite being a little too weak and awkward to use for me. But, I think if you work out its querks, it's a candidate for the most interesting weapon for sure and I like the idea! Freezing enemies with Ice Ring is also satisfying

* Enemy design:
-----Cons: This is probably one of my biggest complaints. Although I don't know how many total enemies you guys have planned, I figure you were probably just looking to carefully introduce people to this game with the teaser and so maybe purposefully put in only basic enemies. I also don't know how much of your design is purposefully trying to be nostalgic and reverent to older games versus trying to modernize a bit and offer something new. Having acknowledged these two things, I have to admit that I found the enemies very, very boring to play against overall. Although dmg and mistakes can add up of course, they're all extremely slow and not very threatening to the player, nor are they stimulating to fight or exciting to encounter for the first time because all of their attacks and abilities are things I've seen before with no unique twists. They all blend together gameplay wise and they felt basically the same fighting against with seemingly only slight differences in hp and dmg, and I felt none of them applied any pressure on me or forced me to play differently during play except maybe the golem, whose attack can be a little confusing to determine the limits of, i.e. how fast does it travel, at what height or distance am I safe from it, and so on; think it also needs to announce its attack a tad better too, which you can probably accomplish with a sound or something. I admit that part of this 'pressure' problem might be the difficulty I played on, but I think the major problem is their design. You need to add niches and behaviors that force the player to play differently, even if only slightly, i.e this enemy moves fast and has strong melee attack, now I have to backpedal or run to avoid; or this enemy is hard to see so be careful in dimly lit areas; or this enemy explodes when it dies; and so on. Something, anything other than what seems like +/- smallish amount of health and a melee and basic projectile attack with different sprite.

-----Pros: Golem's ground attack is actually interesting having to jump to avoid it (I still haven't mastered the timing on that, hah!) and is the sort of unique interesting things I'm looking for. I encourage you to add more unique querks like this to the rest of your bestiary!

* Items:
-----Cons: Some of your items I think are lacking in identity and obvious effect. For example, you have red potion and yellow potion; pretty basic and boring appearance and names and you can't immediately tell what they do. I was able to figure out their use immediately upon consuming them thankfully, but they need to be differentiated and more obvious. Same with your berserker fist and head; I'm assuming the fist increases melee dmg and the head increases other weapon's dmg? The fist is easy enough to figure out I think, but when you pick up the head, you're immediately wondering what the difference is.

-----Pros: I'm glad you guys decided to keep the Heretic/Hexen/Doom style items mostly intact, as I honestly think they're good and useful even though we've seen them all before; no need to reinvent the wheel and so on. A few new and unique items are welcome as well of course and I like the chaos symbol + life saver combined item Accidentally got crushed from your evil and unexpected elevator button on farmhouse and was relieved I didn't have to reload to the beginning

* Transformations:
-----Cons: Having both weapons and transformations doesn't feel as tight design-wise. You have multiple weapons that use their own ammo pickups and only have one attack alongside having transformations that use regenerating ammo and have two attacks; it's a little awkward. Again, I don't know how much of your design is complete and/or set in stone, but I feel maybe it would be better to focus on one or the other, at least when it comes to offense and fighting enemies. That could mean that your default wizard form has only one weapon with two attacks just like all of your other transformations. It could also mean that you could add even more transformations, and you could also give them some of your existing mage weapon behaviors so you don't lose them. Could also remove the transformations being infinite items and instead connect them to weapon selection; so, for example, number 1 key is default mage form, number 2 key would transform you into serpent, etc. And lastly, could also still utilize ammo with these forms as well. I personally think this would be the best of both worlds, but I'm sure you and many others will probably disagree. Still, food for thought!

-----Pros: I never played Shadowmage but I always wanted to and I honestly think transformations are an underutilized gameplay element in games, whether in the past or in the present, so I can say that I'm very excited you guys are taking advantage of its coolness and all the interesting things you can do with it in a game! I genuinely had fun finding new forms and looking around for places to take advantage of them in all the maps. Also fun to kill stuff with them of course! I think overall they're more satisfying than the default weaps tbh.

* Maps:
-----Cons: Not many cons to speak of tbh, this is an area you guys basically got down. Maybe more enemy placement surprises and traps? Though it's an introduction to the game, so perhaps you guys intended it to be more simple for now? Maybe a tad more interesting architecture in certain places? I'm sure you'll polish everything up before release for sure.

-----Pros: Great maps, really fun and engaging overall! Loved to explore and look around and they, for the most part, don't feel too big or too small.

* Story/Premise:
-----Cons: Could use some work I think, as right now it reads a tad silly and doesn't make the hero sound as cool as it was meant to I think.

-----Pros: Story isn't important really in these kinds of games anyways

* Sprites (and also textures somewhat):
-----Cons: I'm sure you guys are doing your best and perhaps you don't have access to high-quality spriting, but I feel the need to be honest and thorough with you especially since you're going to be charging money on steam, so bear with me. Your sprites are hit or miss for me. I don't think I like the 3D model look at all, so any of them that have that feel are a total miss for me; the gargoyle, for example, is obviously a model and it just doesn't look cool to me.

A lot of your sprites are also missing a certain 'cool' factor. Your weapon sprites, for example; they look too much like basic models to me and I think they could use more intricate details or something (and more of a sprite look of course). Enemies, too, for me at least, are a little too basic 'haunted house' feel rather than cool, bad ass evil army invasion feel. Take your little snake/serpent guys, for example; they just look like tiny little boring snakes to me. Some examples of enemies with 'cool factor' that I'm looking for are Amuscaria's and Cage's. I know they're stand-out spriters and artists and we all love their work, but ignoring that for now, their visual design of their enemies is always interesting, no matter how basic or simple the enemy is. Cage's little walking and flying cybernetic heads in Ion Maiden Fury, you look at them and feel a sense of horror and can easily enjoy imagining how they came to be. Or Amuscaria's little abyss mites or blood striga in his Hell-Forged project, again, you immediately feel something looking at them and can have fun imagining what they are, what their origin is, etc. Or just take Heretic/Hexen, too; the Wizards aren't just wearing plain, simple robes, they have a trident symbol on them denoting their beliefs and occult status. That's what I'm looking for, to feel something immediately when looking at them and to see some interesting visual details or querks that let my imagination run.

Also, many of your sprites, i.e. some statues and tree stumps etc., look like they're floating because the bottom of the sprite isn't flat.

And lastly, though most textures are really good I think, there's a few that look off; for example, your sandy cliff rock (don't know how to describe it?) texture; I think I know what you guys were going for, as in the Garden map in a certain area, it gives surfaces a pseudo-3D rough rock texture look and really looks like rock that's bumpy and detailed, but on most other surfaces I see it on, especially when you move close to it, it looks really weird to me. I don't know, I guess this is a very minor nitpick.

-----Pros: The sprites that don't look like models are still pretty good; the wizard guy, for example. Also, almost all of your textures look good! A lot of your decorations as well!

* Sounds:
-----Cons: This is probably something you guys are going to be adding on to as your develop the game, so you probably already know this, but playing through is extremely quiet and void of sounds that give atmosphere and feedback on actions; things like elevators that silently move up and down, jumping on or into water not making splash noises, etc. Also, some sounds that are in the game are very poor and I can't tell what they're supposed to be; for example, the sword melee weapon swing/hit noises, one of them sounds really weird and not at all like a sword hitting anything. Atmosphere and ambience sounds would also be nice.

-----Pros: Other sounds are great of course, like ice shattering enemies.

* Music:
-----Pros/Neutral: I don't remember anything standing out, but it definitely wasn't bad or anything. Since I'm not sure whether you're going for atmospheric background like Hexen or more punchy memorable tunes like Doom or DN3D, I can't say anything further.

* Conclusion: I realize there's a lot of cons here, some (or many?) of which you may find ridiculous or disagree with or maybe even feel are unfair; I tried my best to just be honest and so, again, use what you wish, throw out the rest! Despite this, I think it's important you know that I still enjoyed your game a lot and can see its awesome potential! I played the game all evening yesterday and went to bed later than usual playing it before I had to put it down. When I woke up and got my morning stuff out of the way, I was looking forward to playing it again! I can tell you guys have worked very hard on this and I think you should be proud of what you've got Congratulations and good luck with your game!

P.S.: thx again Rachael for recommending Vulkan in another thread My fps was fine in your game except for a few hitches in farmhouse, very minor ones though. I've enjoyed huge fps gains in maps and mods ever since!

[Emmanuelexe]

We are a small studio, and this is our first major commercial project. We are dedicated to making our game fun and enjoyable. We take your input very seriously, and we want to thank all of you for your feedback, bug reports, and suggestions. We are putting bug fixes and important updates/changes on high priority.

Unfortunately, we cannot promise that we can entertain or implement every suggestion. Again, we are a small team, and we must focus our resources on the most significant fixes and improvements the game may end up requiring.

Even still, we appreciate you taking the time to offer your ideas, and we cannot thank you enough for playing our game.

V1.0 is planned for the end of the month maybe is everything is ok