#Creeper depth could be made easier to tell by looking at it without having to hover over it

23 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

silent badge
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Currently most creeper depths just look the same in IXE, forcing you to hover over many points on a patch of creeper and then looking at the depth meter to get a rough approximation instead of quickly looking at the creeper itself and seeing how much is there at a glance. The hover-over method seems less effective in this game as well since creeper physics seem much more volatile. Right now, the only information you get by looking directly at the creeper is that it exists, and whether it's moving or not, but not much more beyond that, unlike previous games where it was easy to see how much creeper was there in general by looking at the color or opacity of the creeper itself.

slate turret
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there are some subtle ways of telling depth, e.g. shallow creeper has more "bright" pixels floating around in it
but i agree this is an area of the game that could use some extra time, maybe the creeper under cursor indicator could indicate the average over a larger area around the cursor instead of just a singular spot, to show a more reliable approximation

silent badge
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Yeah I noticed the bright pixels thing, but that seems very inconsistent in general. I've seen shallow creeper with a depth of less than 5 with barely any bright pixels around it, and other times I've seen creeper with a depth of about 80 and quite a few bright pixels around it.

tacit knoll
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It will get more work, but it is a difficult issue. Creeper can stack over things and the terrain/sand already comes in a lot of colors. It's difficult to convey the creeper depth information at the same time as everything else in a general way. I've thought about an alternate view you can engage by holding a key that would show a color spectrum for the creeper. I've thought about some different animation effects, etc.

slate turret
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yeah... there's a lot of information that can exist under the creeper, so expanding its depth color gradient could mean it is impossible to discern game mechanics in certain situations

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maybe just one more pixel though.. a darker color opposite to the lighter color that is more pronounced the deeper the creep is]

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but i'm sure you've experimented with a lot already

silent badge
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I was actually thinking about the color range stuff a while before i made this feedback and that led to me having a different feedback idea that'd probably also end up helping with this problem as well, there could be a visibility option that makes terrain types have "simpler" colors or whatever, like stone becomes one shade of gray, dirt becomes one shade of brown, stuff like that. This idea was for a different thing entirely but it'd maybe also end up helping with how creeper passing through terrain looks when enabled

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actually i just randomly had the idea that if a creeper is on top of a terrain tile or something, the terrain tile underneath basically automatically changes to the simple color version so less of the details from the terrain interferes with seeing the creeper flow through terrain

mystic kettle
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hard to introduce that with 256 terrain slots each with their own colors and effects, but maybe

silent badge
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...terrain slots?

slate turret
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there can be 256 distinct sand types in a level

silent badge
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im guessing thats an editor thing since i havent kept up with the dev videos in a long time

slate turret
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most people probably wouldn't use so many, but.. :p

glad tide
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I was thinking of damage-depth numbers appearing... but that seems redundant if the creeper doesn't have a "health".

silent badge
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damage-depth numbers would clutter up the screen fast

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at least thats what i feel like would happen

glad tide
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Indeed.

fathom dagger
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I sometimes wonder if it could be possible for dark blue creeper to go even darker for very high amounts of creeper, almost to black level.

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but that thing would definitly change way game feel

silent badge
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it definitely would

hoary shell
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I would love for a way to find the last creeper in a map I was enjoying killing every little bit but on the bonus map I spent 15 minutes trying to find the last 14 creeper because it was impossible to see

mystic kettle