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Posted by: thenewguy
« on: April 25, 2019, 06:51:26 PM »

Thank you, it's nice to be back.

I really like your "temporary invincibility" concept for restores. That's better that what I came up with and would prevent the player from being caught flatfooted. They might still need to run away or take damage, but it giving the player just a few seconds to react/escape would be a big help.

By the way, I realized after sending my previous post that the game already has a "hide" option for weapons the player is carrying in their hands. This probably negates my idea of being able to pause and equip items. Previously I wanted to be able to hide or equip a weapon while the game was paused, but using the Tab key to toggle hiding already provides a better solution.
Posted by: Christian Knudsen
« on: April 25, 2019, 09:55:47 AM »

Hey newguy (not so new anymore!)

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. Allowing the player to rotate the map and equip/unequip stuff while paused seems like a good idea! I'll add that to my to-do list.

Checkpoints at undesirable moments is definitely an issue. Your suggestions would certainly help. I'm also considering adding a brief 'invincibility' window after you reload from a checkpoint (or just any reload at all) where you won't receive damage and hostiles won't react to seeing you. Just long enough to allow you to hopefully avoid any bad situations. It's definitely something that I need to fiddle around with.

Anyway, welcome back! :D
Posted by: thenewguy
« on: April 24, 2019, 04:40:51 PM »

I did not know Hidden Asset was still in development. I played Hostile Takeover about seven years ago when it was available as a demo, but didn't know the project had continued under its new name until I received a message about the Kickstarter. I'm thrilled to see Hidden Asset is still going strong.

I played the new beta/demo and liked getting back into character. It's nice to see the game is mostly the same, with some improvements. The new demo is challenging enough I had to make a couple of attempts to get through it, while being pretty easy to pick up the new interface.

I have a couple of development suggestions, most of them relating to the pause feature. Specially I'd like to:

1. Be able to rotate the map when the game is paused. The first thing I do when I walk into a new level (or when things go wrong) is to pause and look around. It would be great if we could manipulate the map while the game is paused. Especially since the map rotates 90 degrees at a time, it can be disorienting to have the room spinning around while people are moving.

2. I'd love to be able to pause and equip or unequip items. Like if I hear a guard coming, I'd like to be able to pause, select a weapon and then resume the game.

3. It might be useful to be able to use medical packs before they are needed, just to "top up" player health.

4. Sometimes automatic save points occur when the player is in danger. For example, I once walked outside of the first level demo club and was immediately spotted and shot. Restoring the game brought me back to the point where I was spotted/shot, right after walking out the door. Basically there was no way for me to escape the loop of "get shot, restore, immediately get shot".

I have two potential solutions for this: A. Multiple auto-save points so if one is in a danger zone, we can jump back to the previous save point. B. Maybe have the game save at the moment the door opens rather than when the player walks through it?  C. Pause the game when we restore an auto-save point and allow the player to equip or discard a weapon so they are not caught flat footed when the restore completes.