Longer response:
1.) The title is a good title
Thanks! I have gotten somewhat better at titles over the years.
2.) What IS a shatterloop?
It's complicated and ties heavily into the lore. Essentially, the world of shatterloop was one looping dimension that split into a very large number. The "reseed" button somewhat ties into that. Name and lore subject to change though (it was originally just called "planes" sooo).
3.) Will this exclusively be a flash game?
It's html and JavaScript, not flash. Runs on damn near anything, and if optimized enough could run easily on phones/tablets as well.
my reasons for this is, as someone who has tested a game in the past and someone who designs games, seeing how well-designed your game is in terms of teaching the player how to play your game
The problem with this is that I always do the documentation step last. I do definitely do it (and am apparently so good at it that I've gotten tech writing gigs), but the game is still too much in development to do that. Writing documentation / improving UX doesn't make sense when everything is subject to change.
The best-designed games do not need any prior reading in instruction manuals to teach players how to play it. However, some games will require reading prior to playing. But it is preferred to avoid that. Intuitive design is always the best course. Always.)
Oh yeah, I absolutely agree with that. Wait until you get a chance to try out combat, that's about as intuitive as it gets. :)
6.) That said...what is the goal of this game? Does it involve crafting to find your way around?
I'll get back to this question.
7.) I liked going into a cave! However, I couldn't find my way out. Do I need a torch to get out?
Well currently you can get out of caves by switching dimensions. It makes more sense to have some kind of button for it though. Was going to add this during the cave update -- would also let you do useful things like send out bats, use bombs or equip different torches / grappling hooks.
For example, wouldn't it be good to let players find a Fish and Branch pretty much from the get-go, and immediately be able to craft a torch? Then, when players enter the cave, voila! They have a torch to use to find their way around (assuming that is your goal)
Caves are actually more of an intermediate thing. Hard to see, dangerous and also a great way to squander resources. The starting progression tree is geared more towards fishing and hunting -- both of which are easy to make tools for from starting resources. You then take the resources gained from those activities to craft things useful for exploring caves. Assuming you can find one (might want to go into civilization for that).
It took me a while to figure out how to fish.
I'm highly surprised and also a bit impressed that you figured it out -- definitely not the most intuitive key binding at the moment.
Perhaps a button prompt appears when your character is exploring over water?
I like it!
All of the fish keep getting away.....but I caught a couple!
Fish have bait preferences and some are just harder to catch in general. You're currently not getting any of this information so. Revamping / polishing the fishing engine is my current project.
And....I can't make a torch from crafting.... Why?
Probably a bug. The recipe is wrong anyway.
Make it intuitive and easy to figure out how to craft from the get-go.
That's the eventual goal, yes. I like terraria's system of "unlocking" recipes as you gain new materials but goals are also nice so there will also be a little side menu to tell you things you *could* be crafting soon.
Is randomly generated RNG really the best course of design for your game?
It's the entire point of the game and ties in heavily to the lore, so yes.
Reseeding
Reseeding is currently a means to test different configurations of RNG generation.
RNG is best kept to a minimum.
hoooo boyyy. Not with this game.
So, if I can take a minute to go over my design philosophy here, there's two big problems with traditional RNG generation:
Very boring generation. Sure it looks cool at first but eventually you start to see the same things over and over with maybe palette swaps or rearranged pieces. One huge issue is RNG "exploration" games that have a distinct lack of things to actually discover.
Giving the player way too much freedom and/or throwing too many choices at the player all at once. Just because it's an infinite open world doesn't mean you can't constrain things to make areas or experiences feel unique.
To fix the first problem, there's a lot of layering happening -- RNG isn't happening at the base level but rather at several layers of abstraction above it. So with terrain generation for example, I can't really predict what it will do because I'm randomizing engine parameters rather than the terrain itself. With enemies there's multiple layers of randomization happening -- enemy moves are random, but so are the actual movesets, their weights, and how they change over time.
For the second problem, I hold back. A lot. The amount of enemies you have to deal with at a time, the amount of resources you can access, and so on is very very limited. Highly useful shops are rare. Magic is very rare. What this does is it gives players a reason to experiment and a reason to learn -- instead of wandering around searching for something better you're stuck for quite a while making what you have work. Eventually the world opens up but it takes some work to get there.
But yeah unfortunately limiting RNG just isn't how this game operates at all. There's a lot of fine handcrafting going on, but it's handcrafting of the RNG and the engines surrounding it.
14.) I'm not even going to comment on art and music as that clearly isn't a thing right now.
Might not ever be honestly. I'll definitely stylize it better before launch though. Game art also might not be physically possible because of how things work. There are probably workarounds though.
15.) Keep it simple
Well, not that kind of game ultimately. I've definitely simplified a lot of things over time though -- I try to make things funner rather than more complicated because good depth comes from putting simple pieces together in complex ways rather than doing simple things with complex mechanics.
With combat for example, you swing a weapon, you throw it, you do something with something that's been thrown. That's it. The depth comes from what those actions can do depending on what the enemies and terrain in front of you are like. Weapons are also all somewhat different from each other, but this ties in heavily to the tactical mindset you get into rather than detracting from it -- you're still just swinging a weapon, throwing it or doing something with a thrown weapon.
You get a lot of really difficult choices too -- I think that's really important in games. Have items that serve multiple purposes and force the player to choose between them. Good way to add depth without introducing complex mechanics. Crystals/magic are obviously the worst example, but there are things like extraction as well -- you can only get one material type from an item, so you have to decide whether you want scales or bones or meat or oil from a fish for example. Do you want to complete your bone armor set? Or eat better? Have more lures to experiment with? Make torches or bombs? If those are all goals then you have to decide what you're doing with the fish you caught.
Then there's loot. That nice sword you found, you could use it. Or sell it. But you could also melt it down and try to use that ore for one of your projects. Or alloy it with your existing sword to upgrade it.
Some things go deeper too -- that fish you caught, well sure you could extract scales, bones, etc. But you could also sell it. You could catch two and breed it. You could use it as bait to try to catch rarer fish.
The trick with this kind of thing is making a lot of really robust systems-- they definitely need to be easy to use, but you can't skimp on their potential for some misguided goal of simplicity either. So yeah it's just not that kind of game, it's a kind of game that makes you experiment and think and strategize.