OpenClonk 7.0 alpha Gameplay

Do you want to learn some German? Then, watch and listen to this let’s play video (embedded below) with some OC-developers commenting the alpha version of the upcoming 7.0 release, available as a development snapshot here. Feedback very appreciated!

If you do not understand German, you can instead marvel at the newly added textures and the new cotton plants. 🙂 Have fun!

  1. Viktor Yuschuk says:

    After playing OpenClonk for some hours I’ve convinced myself that I have to make also some objects for this game.

    I would like it if the left/right hand system would be introduced again. It’s hard to use Items like the wind bag and the grapple bow or sword and shield together.

    If you’ve only one item slot, you have to use them together like this:

    Right hand: Move cursor into position and click left mouse button
    Left hand: Click button to switch items
    Right hand: Move cursor into another position and click left mouse button

    That are 3 different commands you have to do with both hands: Use items, switch items, move cursor into right position. With the wrong timing you might use the first object twice without using the second one or use the second one a bit too late. That could have bad consequences.

    The two-item-use system is much more comfortable:

    Right hand: Move cursor into position and click a mouse button
    Right hand: Move cursor into another position and click the other mouse button

    If you want to throw some items away, you’ll only have to press and hold a button at any time, that won’t be that hard.
    To press and hold a extra button to throw objects is easier than click a extra button at the right time to switch between two useful items. The button to swap between object a and object b could still be used for the two item-use-slots-system to switch between weapons and tools or something like that.

    By the way: If you change your control for Up-Down-Left-Right, you’ll still have to use the player menu with WASD, maybe add a extra button selection therefor? Is there any ingame usage for the buttons ok and cancel? I can’t add Buttons like shift-mouseleft, because whenever I press shift, the game takes shift as the button. The game graphics destruct whenever I minimize or unselect the game.

  2. Clonkonaut says:

    Hey Viktor and thanks for your feedback 🙂

    Unfortunately, the two-item-system will not be reintroduced. We have reached a point of no return with the controls. We already changed many things, many behaviours of items etc.
    We know that with a change in controls, as with any game out there, you always have players liking it and players preferring how it had been. No decision we make will satisfy everyone.
    We can’t maintain two different sets of controls either. We will explore these new controls in the future and add even more features that will make them incompatible with the old controls.

    It is true that with the new controls you need another button press to perform item combinations. Preferably Q (quick switch to last selected item) and not a number key. After many tests, we found this still better than the two handed controls. Back then, we observed that players rarely used two hands to full extend, often put a ‘default’ item on right click and never changed this for the rest of the game. In quick melee games, it was a hassle to set this up. You could easily get killed in the process. Players tended to forget what item was on right click. When using two grapple bows, you could easily forget whether you already fired left or right hand and end up dieing. There were numerous issues all the while we sacrificed a major key (right mouse button) for a minor function. After having played with the new controls, many people preferred these over the old ones.

    As for your questions / bug reports:
    To better address any problems with scripting / coding, it’d be advisable to open a thread in the forum!
    The bug with the graphics has been resolved by now. The snapshots are automatically generated from the current development files and may contain bugs.

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