Games Demolition game - WIP - Looking for your thoughts and testers, feedback?

Hi,

I'm making a game where the goal is to blow things up, you get a limited amount of bombs/explosive/flames thrower to choose from, the score goes up according to amount of damage made, meaning you have to place bombs/explosives very strategically.

There are several scenes / arenas, but would like to ask for your thoughts/input on what it looks like currently, do you think it is e.g. ready for release / polished enough?

The intro/story begins with a worker when his terminal crashes, he gets frustrated and crashes his head onto the screen, then suddenly something/someone/AI asks through the broken terminal, do you want to play this game... and so it begins..

WebGL version of game:
https://khos85.itch.io/demolitionwebgl
Note: Quite a few things don't seem to work well in webGL for this kind of game, but I share the link anyway. Would appreciate any feedback.

Note, I disabled the desktop version on https://khos85.itch.io/demolition , let me know if you would like that back.

Video:

Thoughts would be most welcome.

 

Hi,

Everyone loves blowing things up. So who wouldn't like the premise.
Your visualisations of the explosions look great and I love the slow motion view.

Having said this, the game does not look ready for publication. The main reasons for me are:
a) there is an inconsistency of realism / look and feel.
b) character development - objectives, humour, story-line, instant feedback of outcome.
c) physics - the first time I saw the grenade slowly sink down the side of the construct all bets were off. demolition and physics in Unity can be tricky and to me it feels a bit broken in that regard.
d) Consistency of environment. Why are there guns in a demolition zone?

Anyway - these are just my opinions. Let's face it - I would never have thought it enough to have a goat to fling around.but apparently that sold buckets worth.

Good luck

 

Thanks for your opinions, very much appreciated.
Not quite sure which parts are inconsistent regarding realism yet, can I ask you for some details on this? Eg some scenes look different or less quality e.g. the initial scene with the terminal is not high quality?
Adding character dialog is a good idea!
I have a basic story line (your day is messed up and suddenly your broken terminal offers you to play the game for some stress release),
When did you see the grenade slide down the construct, I missed that bit anyway it seems to work well.
The guns etc are there to give the player a bit more concern, they need to be on their toes to avoid those from following them/shooting them. There are many other areas / zones, some with some without guns, the video only shows the initial area.

 

I am thinking of going into a different direction with the game, Just have a line renderer style camera view, but it means the FPS goes high 100 - 300 FPS, it means very smooth performance and more options for higher debris count etc, see sample:

Also adding a build system so you can build your own worlds... to destroy
I would like to ask for your views on this, is it a "yay" or "nay" idea/direction?

 

Considering to add some very basic colours, see e.g:

Choices... Choices! Would welcome your views on this, keep it simple with only lines and white background, or with colours? I'm tempted to just keep it with only lines and white background (maybe only show a skybox).

 

Hi khos, I like the premise of getting points for just "blowing things up"

From a stylistic point of view I think post #4 looks more appropriate as it puts more emphasis on the explosions. It reminds me a bit on SUPERHOT, which has a similar style philosophy. Maybe you should add shadows and/or occlusion culling to add more visual depth to the environment.

In terms of workflow this also means you can spend more time refining explosions, geometry and debris movement instead of creating textures. Also something to consider, IMHO.

 

Hi Codemilker, many thanks for your comment, much appreciated. It is true what you say, it makes sense now that you say it. I'll stick with that direction, perhaps give options to add/remove colours.

 

Yeah, using a color scheme approach sounds cool. Another idea could be making the color change part of the game progression. The player starts with white (or grayish) objects and has to earn more complex/powerful colored objects. Something like that...

 

Yes, thanks for the input, I was thinking of power up type progression, for bigger explosions etc. (eventually to A bomb level... just destroy it all)

 

Hehe, right. You start with "Z Bomb Level" and work your way all up to "A Bomb Level"

 

This.

Should start from punch

 

Cool, thanks for your input

 

Just playing around with some larger towers and other stuff:

 

Using a shadow technique definitely enhances the white environment. The swinging hammers look cool and I think they should be destructible as well.

 

I would utilize hammer, to some fun gameplay mechanics, where you need to apply right force, to destroy something, standing on the way of hammer.
If hammer is destroyable, then allowed force before destroy should be sufficient, to allow hammer for full swing, before get destroyed. Maybe add fractuating (durability) or something.

 

Cool,thanks for the feedback

Thanks Have many features planned, one of them being able to build your own levels (i.e. place a hammer object anywhere) , then use that to demolish bricks / objects, have other methods planned too, like wrecking balls and other ideas.

 

Messing around with some more "hammers" and other stuff:

 

Actually a cool idea with these blender-like hammers
I'm wondering how the slow-mo effect is triggered (I guess it's not a performance issue?).

 

In fact it looks like. You can notice short jumps / lags.

 

Hi there, thanks for your comments (Codemilker and Antipodish) I press the alt key and it goes into slow mo mode (slows down timescale but not very smoothly and too low values, hence the short jumps), maybe I should have explained that in the post
Thanks for your feedback and comments, much appreciated!

 

Maybe you would need increase somehow number of frame rate, in slowmo? If that is only the issue?

 

Hi, I think I have been able to make it a bit smoother now by changing my code a bit, see sample video:

 

Looks much better.

But you still have some small lags on very end of video, where you don't switch on slow down.
Do you pool, or instantiate debris?

 

They are pooled. Possibly there was momentary lag right? That could be due to number of collisions / explosions happening at the same moment (I added several blocks in the video), I still have to iron that out a bit, make things happen not all at once to cause lag..

 

Yes just momentary. I am asking, because I know other game, where used lot of game objects with colliders, and used slow motion method during explosions times, to compensate that momentary lag.

 

That is an idea to consider actually, just have exlosions always go into slow motion.. but might get a bit boring soon, maybe I can program it where it does it if FPS goes low.. currently I need to be careful with how many fragments / rigidbodies / explosions are in the scene, I'm thinking of a way to make that more efficient, some form of manager
Thanks for your input on this, much appreciated.

 

I think you could ignore collisions between small particles / debris, which are not dividable. Probably won't be that noticeable anyway and you can save quite a bit of performance. Just let them bounce from major structures / objects.
Worth try.

 

Looks definitely smoother!

Did anyone of you guys tried out the ECS/Job System in Unity? I haven't worked with it yet, but maybe it's something for your explosion/destruction game (if you haven't already tried it ).

One of these psychological tricks that makes game development so interesting

 

Oh definitely there is plenty of tricks to apply.

I use ECS. But there is no official physics solution, as of yet, based on ECS.
However, PhysX is already multi threaded. So I would expect this matter being handled much better.

The game I mentioned, was made initially on Unity 4, where I believe Unity PhysX was single threaded. And there were quite big explosions handled well already.

 

Hi thanks for the continued feedback, much appreciated!
I have got multi threading in use. I would like to change the code to ECS/Job System to try that, I need to have a proper look into that more (and go to 2018 version)! I think that should be able to handle more than a 1000 rigidbodies more easily? I think a 1000 rigidbodies per scene is about the limit at the moment.

In the meantime I added some more features for softbodies and exploding objects(so if they collide into anything they cause an explosion):

 

Vid looks nice.

2018.3 would suggest, unless you are happy go already into 2019.1.

I have tested some time ago 5k rigid bodies colliding at the same time. There were lagging. But if you got lot of none moving rigid bodies, they will be in asleep mode.

So as long you keep up to round 1k colliding rigid bodies at the same time, you should be fine.

 

Thanks for the info. It seems that no matter what the spec , 1k rigidbodies is a limit.. I'm going to keep active rigidbodies to a minimum, for better performance.
Just adding some sticky bombs:

 

Good luck with the new game!!

 

Many thanks Alex!
Not sure if you can tell, but I am having fun making games

 

It looks fun how the sticky bombs automatically align to an object. I think this enhances the gameplay, although the timeout seems to be a bit too long. Maybe display a countdown over each bomb?

 

Yes
EDIT: The time is long on purpose, gives you time to get away from the blast radius otherwise you'll be injured and eventually die.

Been working on the build / remove objects system some today, make it easier to use.
One of my next steps is to add timer (can set time before planting using mouse scroll wheel) option for each bomb planted. One of the other things planned is a trip switch which will set off all bombs in a sequence..that could cause some carnage.

 

Actually wanted to share one more thing I am testing, bomb on a chain:

Will have to work on performance though... this particular sample gives 100 FPS drop sometimes, I still need to learn how to use OBI rope properly

 

Check out the new asset 'filo' that the creator of obi made, it's better for performance I think. You can't use it for everything though.

 

Thanks Alex, I saw that one, I wonder if it will give better performance! I'm asking Thanks for the tip.

 

Started adding more bombs types/sounds (group bombs with one trigger) and they have labels for timers:

 

Feels better now with timers Is the siren actually just going off when deploying a certain bomb type or did it happen coincidentally?

On the upper screen side it says: "FlameThrowerFuel". Didn't noticed that before, but it actually makes me a bit curious

 

Hi, thanks for the feedback, yes there is a siren sound with certain bombs, there will be flame throwers and other forms of tools to use, optional weapons to destroy objects (in the flame throwers case, burn things), not sure if they give you the same scores though compared to blowing things up
Working on integrating my (simple) beat sequencer (actually uses explosion sounds for main beat), all run via script..intended to be shown in the intro /home page of the game.
Sample video:

I'd be interested to hear what you think of this.

 

Looks fun to play with, although the beats are a bit chaotic right now Does the sequencer has a purpose in terms of gameplay or is it just an additional tool before playing the actual game? Maybe for background "music" while playing?

 

Hi, I realised the video is a bit random, the one below might be a bit more normal (I stop fiddling with the sliders):

I'm intending to include this on the intro page before you start playing the game, just a little extra gimmick. I don't think it could serve as background music, might be a little distracting, comments would be most welcome!

 

I am thinking of making a demo available, not just to this forum but thinking how I could reach a wider audience, I am considering to setup a demo on steam, or early access, to try use that as a marketing option to make the game known. I would appreciate anyone's input on this as I am new to marketing... and I know that plays a big part in games.

 

I made a demo available in Itchio not long ago and I think it was a good decision, a couple youtubers and several people reached me (some on Twitter, some privately) and their feedback has proved very valuable (I made important changes in the build based on that feedback and I keep making more).

I can't give you much advice on marketing since I'm pretty new too (pretty new to social media actually) but considering the amount of games being released nowadays it's probably as important as the development process itself (sadly).

As I design the game I'm trying to be more active on social media and, as I feel comfortable with the websites I frequent, I try to search and incorporate more marketing inputs (noting which people on Twitter is related to gamedev journalism so I can contact them progressively, struggling to get actual players interested in the project, etc.)

 

Yeah, I would also go for itch.io first and maybe move to steam later, although I must say that I have no experience with both platforms from a developer's perspective. Can't find the article right now where I read it, but I think it's true that as a developer you want the most eyeballs on your game when it has already gone through at least one revision phase with smaller audiences.

It's ok to have it as a little tool to play around with. It adds even a bit more self-irony to the game, which I think games cannot have enough of

 

No update for a while, been working on the game, have upgrades implemented, and other , areas / weapons like flame thrower.

I would love to invite to play a beta demo of my game, you can find it over at itch.io:
https://khos85.itch.io/demolition
for free (or if you feel like donating that would be welcome).

Game trailer:

Thanks, I hope you can find some time to test this and would very much welcome your feedback or comments, good, bad or ugly

 

Wanted to ask for any volunteers, no one has commented (yet ) but if you do have a look I would appreciate any feedback, e.g.:

-Why did you not try the demo, too long to download? maybe a webGL built is a better idea?
-If no gameplay test maybe from videos you can give input:
-Performance ok?
-How finished / polished do you think it looks?
-Looks, ok/like/disagree/bad?
-Gameplay, do you think it will keep players engaged, or is it boring?
-Any suggestions? E.g. these are planned: multiplayer, more upgrades, more object types to build with?
-If you need any game testing maybe we can swap these tasks, we help each other? Or what other incentive can I provide to get more feedback?

Thanks for your time, any feedback would be welcome.

 

Getting a WebGl build ready on itch.io, with the hope that more people will beta test this: