[Feedback Friday #31] - July 17, 2015 (The One Month Edition!)

CLOSED - Next FF begins August 14th. See you then!

[Feedback Friday (FF) has changed! See here for the community discussion.
TL;DR - Devs need more time, reviewers need a gap - FF will be open for 2 weeks (starting 7/17), then closed for 2 weeks (starting 7/31).]

Want design feedback for your new game? Then you've found the right thread! Post here to get precious player feedback. Discuss until 7/31, when we'll lock this thread to start the two week break.

How To Ask For Feedback?

• Show - Pics, videos, or best of all, a playable game!
• Be Concise - Who's got time for Wall 'O Text? Less is more

How To Give Feedback?

• Be Positive - Finding redeeming qualities in the worst of games, is in itself a game
• Focus On The Design - Not the designer
• Be Specific - "Your game sucks!" is for nubs

What To Show?

• Minimally Viable Product (MVP) - Core game play >>> everything else
• How To Scope Small (Unity tutorial)

Gigi

[PS - Feedback Friday #31 is here]

CLOSED! Next FF begins August 14th!

 

I needed the break. I've been to pennsylvania twice, given two game-design workshops, and conducted two days of research on my new training game. And now, I'm ready to see what's been bubbling in the community. Bring it on!

Gigi

 

@Gigiwoo - Glad you've had a break! Looking forward to seeing what effect a month-long review topic will have.

Hopefully, I'll have something up within the next week or two.

 

Awaiting @anselmo.fresquez post -

follow up from here.

 

Last minute testing and tweaking for balance... plus my wife has to play test it, need that stamp of approval.

 

The post says its going to open for 2 weeks then close for 2 weeks, so if you wait 2 weeks youll be too late.

 

They say that every designer's first ten games will suck.

This is the first real game I have ever completed.

So there's only one question...

Are you ready to play what is probably the crappiest game I will ever make?


METEOR CRUSH
NOW SHORTER, FASTER AND CRUSHIER

WITNESS THE GLORY OF 8-BIT GRAPHICS PUSHED TO THE XTREME... AND BEYOND!!!1



BEHOLD THE BREATHTAKING BEAUTY OF ALPHA CHANNELS, PARTICLE EFFECTS AND BLEEDING EDGE IMAGE ROTATION TECHNOLOGY™.



SOUND EFFECTS GENERATED ENTIRELY IN BFXR, ENSURING ONLY THE CHOPPIEST, CRUNCHIEST AUDIO IMAGINABLE

MUSIC IS ACTUALLY PRETTY GOOD SINCE IT WAS MADE BY SOMEONE ELSE.

...

THE LINK

So try it out and let me know you think.

Oh yeah, and I think it might go without saying, but I am curious if anyone can beat the game and post a high score.

What's good?
What's bad?
What's ugly?

What would you suggest to improve it...?

What should I do differently next time?

If there's issues or bugs I want to know about them!

 

I'm making a horror game where you'll be surviving against enemies that stop when you look at them and move when you don't, meaning you'll have to play a combination of red light/green light and hide and seek in order to complete the game, done by exploring the entire map which will trigger an event that, upon completion, makes you beat the game.

Currently the game is nothing buy a single enemy on a plane with some walls, lockers to hide in and a door. As well as a player with a flashlight, toggled on and off by right-clicking.

Link: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/660881?updated=1

Todo List:
- Add models and sounds, most of the current ones are placeholders.
- Add more enemies, all with different models, sounds and stats.
- Fix player jumping to make a short delay between each, preventing bunny jumping.
- Make enemies move randomly instead of moving across a fixed pattern, and search the local area when losing sight of the player.*
- Fix enemy peeking around walls and such, caused by its vision being controlled by a raycast on the center of its head.*
- Build the actual map.
- Add objectives.
- Improve enemy AI to make them aware of their environment, investigating things caused by the player like lights switched on and doors opened.
- Make enemies move when in complete darkness, even if the player is looking at them.
- More stuff I currently can't think of.

( * = I have tried to do this, but can't get it to work. If anyone knows how to do it, I'll be grateful if you'll help me out)

Known Issues (Solutions very welcome):
- The enemy is meant to react to the flashlight, making it easier for it to spot the player while it's on, but this sometimes causes some buggy behaviour where it stops moving when not visible or moves when visible (I think I know a way to fix this, but haven't gotten to it yet since my solution can only be applied once all enemies are created)
- The enemy doesn't stop moving at once when playing its kill animation, making it slide.
- The player doesn't always fall all the way to the ground during the death animation.

Please tell me if there's something I should add, change, remove, and what you like and dislike about what the game currently is. And if the game even works, I myself had problems loading it but I'm hoping it's just my Unity Player and not anyone else's problem.

 

- The camera doesn't seem to move along with the mouse pointer like a normal FPS, it can only turn a little bit and then it gets stuck

I can't really play it beyond that because I can't move.

The idea is interesting, but you've got to get a handle on the basics of movement in a 3D world and make it feel more like a normal 3D game, like Amnesia.

Also there's a lot of warnings that I'm getting, null reference exceptions and such.

The best help for you would be to go over to the Learn section and try to follow along with some of the basic tutorials, you'll have a way easier time making your game come to life if you have more mastery over the basic Unity system. I would try starting with the space shooter tutorial, it covers lighting, collisions and everything.

http://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/projects/space-shooter/

 

I have already gone through tons of tutorials, not wanting to start off unprepared. This is the fourth game I'm making, the first not to be solely for practice. However this camera getting stuck issue is something I didn't know of, it works fine when I play it. But then again, I haven't actually managed to play the demo I uploaded due to my Unity Player being mean to me, only the test runner in Unity. As for the null reference exceptions, I've tried to clear them up but I'm not sure how to. I usually end up ignoring them since they don't seem to be affecting the actual gameplay. Is that wrong?

 

Yeah, if you know there's an issue, it will always come up when someone plays your game for real.

If you haven't tested it, don't even bother demoing it, Murphy's law dictates that something will go wrong if you do.

 

I HAVE tested it of course, lots of times. Just not this upload. I was hoping there would be no difference between the Unity project itself and the upload, but since this is the first time I publish a game I don't know the issues that can occur. All I know is that every time I see someone do this in tutorials and such, it works flawlessly for them.

 

Oh yeah, learned that one the hard way myself. Web player deployment can't use certain code libraries for security reasons.

The first time I tried to roll out on the web player, it crashed. After a week of constant testing. I had to reprogram some of it. I wish they would tell people. I complained and I got nothing but people saying "quit whining"... haha it's hard man!

 

Oh. Then I'll just have to get my Unity Player working so I can see just what is wrong. This sure is great... First time I release a game for others to judge and I immediately screw it up.

 

You're ahead of the game now.

Get a local web server running if you can, test everything from the server. Then you know what will actually happen. Xampp works for me.

 

Okay I got to "wave21" and I was getting prefect every round, made it to level36 before I finally died.

 

Quit whining.

 

Was it unfair?

Also, did you try to continue?

 

I did try again and made it to the wave 46 and died again, at that point I gave up. I wanted to see what would happen if I quit back to the menu and I had to restart from wave1. So I guess I'd add a checkpoint system so you dont have to do it in 1 sitting.

I found the first 20 levels or so too easy, and it was kind of boring. Then when you added the flaming metores it got reasonably challenging (because they are so much faster then everything else).

 

All these things crossed my mind at some point... funny to hear them echoed by some on else

 

@anselmo.fresquez:

I made it to 5-1 Ruins of an Ancient Civilization (wave 41) and still had all lives and quit out of boredom.

What I liked

• The game is just packed with style and "best of retro" feel. From the fantastic colorful graphics to the text introducing each round to the crazy boss designs. Some aspects reminded me of games I played on the C64 long ago. You really did a superb job on the crisp, clean, colorful and "fun" presentation.
  
• The control system of the game is very simple = great job.
  
• The atmosphere is excellent. I liked traveling to the different areas each with their own distinct feel.
• The variety of enemy types, bosses and player weapon systems are very cool. It keeps things interesting and I was looking forward to what I would see next.
• The gameplay is very solid and straightforward shmup fun.
• The feedback is very well done.

What I think can be improved

• The game is not challenging enough to keep my interest. I never felt that thumping of my heart thinking I could die at any moment. It was very easy to clear each wave and not be destroyed. I want to feel like my skills are being tested. Like I have to reach to stay in the game.

Summary

You, my friend, have done an amazing job on this game. Just jack up the difficulty level so I have to really try to clear the waves and stay alive. Or just add Difficulty Settings that'd work too. Seriously, you need to finish this up with whatever feedback you get here and whatever else you have in your mind to do then get it up on Steam.

 

I was so worried about making it too short that it seems I've made it too long.

I think 36 waves is more appropriate, and more fast paced action throughout. I am delivering the content too slowly, in an attempt to stretch it out.


I'll have a fixed version up tomorrow, so everyone can complete the game if they wish to.

Thanks for your wonderful feedback, you guys know games.

 

Well I guess the easiest thing to do would be add 3 difficulty settings -- call the current setting "easy", make the "normal" like 20% faster, and "insane" 50% faster and see what happens. You could just change the "time scale" and see what happens. Or something like that .

Id break it into 5 levels with a level select (result screen - I felt like you need a breather after 10 waves -- buts thats just me). Then if you did the steam route (you could give them achievements for beating hard or whatever).

 

I had one of those suspicions about that, like the others that it was too easy.

This suspicion is that people who like it easy won't be attracted to a shmup. So I think normal (which is hard) for most people and a hardcore mode for those who just like pain are a good idea at least.

I'm aiming for a 15 minute game, I think.

I'm working on a version that will keep you awake this time.

 

LOL! Nice way to put it.

I'm looking forward to that insane mode. I think 50% faster would be ideal combined with your plan to shorten the game which I guess will result in each level's difficulty scaling more than it does now. So maybe Insane would end up being about twice as hard.

Yeah a big part of the appeal of retro games is they make you really work for every minute or so of play-time you gain. My girlfriend still plays SMB a few days every week and has made it to World 7-2 out of 8-4. If she had beat it all in the first week she got back into playing it I doubt she'd be playing it much anymore. There is definite replayability in making a game challenging (without being stupid impossible unfair hard).

 

Yeah well if its only 15 minutes (I thought it was longer) then doing it in 1 sitting should be fine

 

It was longer, I'm going for shorter, faster. 4 waves then boss, repeat.

 

Okay, it's shorter and faster... I think anybody should be able to have a decent challenge AND complete the game in 15-20 minutes.

I just beat it in about 15 myself.

I'm pooped on working on this. I don't think I'll add hardcore. If it gets any harder, it'll be almost impossible.

 

A couple of months ago, I posted a demo of a stealth-based game I was working on. I've just started a Work-In-Progress thread (link in my sig), so I think it's about time I got some more feedback on the design.

For those who haven't seen this before, Spamocalypse: Aftermath is the current working title of a first-person stealth-based game I'm doing as a learning project and to test out some mechanisms for future projects. It's set in a sealed-off forum that is infested with spammers, but also contains several long-lost treasures like the Floppy Disc of Olo-Lort and the Huta Teapot. Your player character is a thief who has been hired to sneak in and find these.

What has changed
I've worked on the spammer's voices, and they now sound more like zombies. Their detection ranges have increased as well, and they will also react to the dead. The player can now pick things up, and anything you can interact with will glow if you're looking at it when close enough. You also have three different weapons, which you can cycle through by scrolling the mouse wheel up.

Screenshots inside the spoiler tags so you can collapse them.

Spoiler: The general interface

The square at the bottom of the screen is the temporary light gem, which shows how dark it is around you.

Spoiler: A patrolling spammer

Spoiler: A highlighted object means you can use it

Spoiler: An in-game note concerning firewalls

What needs to be done
In terms of mechanics, I need to add loot, difficulty levels and objectives. However, since I have a base class for player interaction, loot and treasure won't take me too long. I also want to add logic bombs, which will scream paradoxes at enemies within range.
In terms of everything else, I need to make some proper models, and design a better level. And I think I should give the player character a voice.

Where I'd like feedback
I'd like some on the player interaction system and the inventory, as it took a while to get them to work, and the atmosphere. As with last time, I'd like some on the AI of the enemies.

Where's the demo?
Here. I haven't built a new Mac version, so it's Windows only for the time being.

Controls
They're listed in the manual and on a screen in the main menu.
Default ones are WASD to move, mouse to rotate. Left mouse button fires the current weapon; mouse wheel cycles through the weapons. Press Left Ctrl to switch between running/walking, and Left Shift to switch between walking/creeping. When an object is highlighted, press F to use that object. The Escape key pauses the game.

 

@anselmo.fresquez I found Meteor Crush to be too easy. The flame weapon was overpowered, especially against the bosses, and there were only one or two levels where I lost any health. Like the others have suggested, I'd increase the speed of everything and possibly reduce the damage/range of the flamethrower.

And definitely keep the artwork, music and sound effects.

 

You caught me man... the game is fundamentally flawed.

I have this issue where the game is either too hard or too easy, and there's really no way to balance it, mostly because you can literally only move left and right and shoot. There's no dodging, the mechanics are very limited.

*grandpa voice* See kids... this is why when you create a game, you should follow an established formula.

This game was based on the idea of the game astro smash. The old game you played for score, mostly. People these days won't play for score, they say it's too long and boring and they just quit. So, that's the issue. I make it faster and more accessible, and it's too easy. If I actually made it hard by increasing the meteor speed, it would be impossible. I know, I've tested it. Right now you're pretty much at the threshold with the most recent version.

Any faster and it's just like... it's dumb, it feels cheap. You have to rely on luck to win.

You're right, flamethrower cheats. The flamethrower is the coolest-looking weapon, so I just let it be over-powered. In the end, the game doesn't have a balanced challenge mechanic that I was ever able to achieve satisfactorily. It's just a really limited game. If I made the flamethrower weaker, it ends up being useless and then you regret getting the power-up, if I made it basically equal in power to your main shot... well it's NOT a power up at all. See?

It's a balancing nightmare.

Then if the normal shot isn't strong enough to clear the game, well...what's the point of it? So then what's the point of power-ups? Obviously, if the normal weapon is sufficient... the power ups have to be more powerful and are thus, overpowered.

At least I achieved some interesting visuals.

I will just keep this style of art and move on with a traditional 2D shooter for my next project, eliminating the "on the ground" mechanic entirely.

But, that said... I think I have bragging rights for turning what is essentially a 1 dimensional game into something relatively playable, even if it's not the most fun.

The next game I make will be like this... as in, almost literally this game but with my art style and random weapons.

AND THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR YOUR FEEDBACK

 

oh well I guess just move on to your next game, but you could spend weeks trying to balance that wave based type of game. But you could make the powerups only last like ten seconds or something rather then always on.

 

Don't forget the optional "F!@% You" difficulty level, for the inevitable jerks who complain that super-mega-ultra-hardcore mode is too easy.

 

I could easily spend the next two weeks tweaking, asking you guys what you think, tweaking... etc. and end up kind of just going, well, weird... I guess it wasn't the balance that was making it not so fun, it was the game itself. Who knew?

That's what my gut tells me will be the case here.

I'm just happy to have made the first game... my worst game... and know that the next one will be immensely cooler for all the lessons I learned.

 

Haha... I'll keep that in mind.

 

I'm not big on downloading .exe files on the machine that has all of my development stuff and personal info on it.

 

No problem. My explanation is that I actually can't provide a WebPlayer/WebGL build, because the enemies' ability to calculate how bright a position is part of a navigation system I built. That requires loading a file from the hard disk, which the WebPlayer forbids. To cut a long story short, I started this on Unity 4.6 Free. At the time, I didn't have access to LightProbes, which is probably what I'd use for calculating light intensity at a position now. I had built a navigation system just a few days before Unity 5 was released - in fact, I uploaded my base version to GitHub literally the day before.

So, I don't know if there's a quick way around that.

 

I'm hoping to try this out today if family stop bugging me for a while so this may be a redundant comment now but can the power ups be destroyed if the player shoots them? That always adds risk to a game as you can't spam shoot & strafe as you move to collect it as the chance of shooting the power up increases as you get closer to it. There's that moment of breath holding where you have to stop shooting while you move to collect it before you start spamming shoot again.

 

Wouldn't that GIVE you the power up?

 

I always build my practice shmups (I'm still learning to code & what changes affect gameplay) where the power up falls towards the player (I do top to bottom scrollers like old games I grew up with in arcades) so the player collects it by colliding the ship etc with the power up & shooting the power up destroys it.
Then a power up that spreads the player shots destroys more enemies but also increases the risk of destroying other power ups like shield recharge etc.

This is just what I do as I'm useless at quick dodging so I need the power ups & I find I'm holding my breath while swearing & trying to dodge enemy shots & ships.

 

Help Please

I've decided to bite the bullet & put up the simple shmup I did for class (the school owns the IP but I don't think I've done anything original here anyway). I made an offline Web Player build & copied the folder to my google drive but when I tried to run it from within google drive it failed to run (it ran from the original folder on my pc, I tested it first.) If I just provide the link to the folder on google drive is that all that's needed & you guys can run it or do I need to do something else?

thanks

 

I don't know if google drive will act like a web server and pull the unity3d file in through the javascript.

I can throw it up on my server if you want.

Try the link to google drive first

 

Ok, here goes.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B...dFZDZzd29zZF9TWmNlQnR2TUpEZUhyZDVibGJ4b0MtVGM


Wall of Text:
this was a class assignment. After a couple of weeks of intro to programming we each had to make a small game.
My intention was to make something that reminded me of the arcade games I wasted my pocket money on as a kid in the 70's & early 80's. Each game is meant to last around 3 minutes.

To clear stuff up that I haven't commented in game but witnessed when others played:
- you collect the gems by hitting them with your ship. If you shoot them they are destroyed.
- energy is depleted at 1/second & 1/bullet
- game ends if your shields OR energy reach 0
- not all aliens will drop gems
- when I tested the web player version hitting escape didn't actually work (it does on the pc build)

known issues:
- there is no variety in enemies & no enemy AI
- there are no boss battles
- if you don' take a screenshot then you can say you lasted as long as you like (no high score feature)
- art & sound are generic but they got me a pass.
- there's no background music.

Acknowledgements:
- sounds are from SFXR
- art is from opengameart.org
- particles are from the unity shmup tutorial

 

As previously stated, I suck at these games but keep playing them. I died completely on the first wave as I didn't work out what was happening as the screen was hectic & I was busy spamming fire. After I made it to the 2nd wave I worked it out & was slightly better (made it to level 11).

What I liked
- for me the difficulty curve was right & the waves didn't drag on (I would've been fine with slightly longer if you wanted to)
- you succeeded in bringing back memories of the old console & arcade games but somehow it still looked a bit new & I can't pinpoint why. I was glad I didn't have one of those old joysticks though as I probably would have broken it like I used to do.
- those green swirly power-ups. Spamming fire gave me a protective barrier that got me to level 11. The other power ups weren't as effective for me

What I had trouble with
- I got the 3 strikes on the first level but it wasn't until the 2nd level that I was told that 3 meteors hitting the earth killed me. There was so much on screen due to my lack of skill that initially I didn't know why I died.
- it might be me being stupid because old games & old style games make me think of having them but I couldn't work out my lives . When I died on level 11 it just let me keep restarting. Is it just a score tracker so I can keep playing from where I die but if/when I manage to complete the game I will just have a lower score (I noticed when I died I had a red score that counted back up to 0 then went green)?
- based on the point above, should the score reset to 0 when the player resumes play? I was able, thanks to a massive negative score, to restart while the score was still negative. Othertimes I just waited until the score went back up to 0 & restarted. Not a big issue either way, just a question really.
- the mini meteors after the explosion. I spent a while trying to shoot them at the start before I realised they did no damage.


Overall
this was lots of fun & brought back good memories. The art, sound & animation worked well together & none of them clashed. I can't comment on the difficulty as I never made it to the higher tiers (yet). Maybe having the harder options as described above by others could work so little kids can play & have fun & old time gamers can punish themselves on harder levels. It might only need to have each level slightly longer, % increase in speed or spawn rate I'm not sure. People that enjoy those harder games can provide better feedback than me for that.

 

So crazy, I wondered if this little bits of rubble would be seen as hostile.

I made the game half as long as twice as hard, as a test.

Now I can see that the perfect difficulty and length is a little longer, so maybe I'll go for 22-23 minutes of play.

The score and all that just isn't intuitive. I'm deducting score from you for dying and getting hit, like Astro Smash. I think that's just an odd antiquated idea.

I need to reduce the difficulty by slowing down meteors and powering down specials, as well as increasing standard weapon fire rate by about 12.5-25%. Once that's flattened out, I can Add a wave to each stage.

The score will no longer deduct for hits.

However, I'm going to introduce lives and you'll restart on the same wave... but if you run out of lives and have to continue, you'll restart the whole stage, and lose like 100, 000 score.

So let's see how that goes, also I'll switch back the green shot to a fan spread, more even.

I will not do the shooting power up thing... because I know for sure that will be super hated! It sounds like something for hardcore

 

That's what I did in mine to keep the game short

 

To get it working, I had to take a new version of the Unity player .html file from my project and change its source to your Unity3D file. I don't think the old player script works with up to date browsers.

It does seem like an older arcade game, the pacing is consistent with something like Asteroids. Sort of slow and methodical. The ship looked really cool and I loved the explosions.

Honestly, the ship moves way too fast, I think. It's almost like you tap it, and it goes flying. I know in some older games the ships were really fast, though. LifeForce did that, you got speed upgrades, then each tap of the dpad was like a shot out 10 pixels. The shooting is very slow as well, it almost seems like you can't shoot. It feels like an input glitch.

I am glad there were no challenging enemies because I know I would have not been able to fight them with the really high sensitivity controls and the 1 shot per second fire rate.

Something intriguing about a shooting gallery in space, though. Like I feel like I could play that game for a while, just collecting stuff. Maybe throw a little upgrade store in.

I wasn't sure what killed me or why, but I died at about 37 seconds.

Anyway, the fire rate is low and the movement could inherit from the input axis itself, providing a nice momentum to the motion of the ship. Spice up the enemy patterns and then it would be a whole different ball game.

 

I have gained a sixth sense for things people will notice, by now. At first, I had these nagging little thoughts... that's too slow... that's too fast... that's weird...that's confusing... but now I'm realizing, those nagging little thoughts are what other people end up saying! It's like the first thing they notice!

 

Thanks for taking the effort

I spent a lot of time trying to get it right & know I still had trouble. It seemed that the slightest adjustment went from too slow to too fast but I will tweak it down a bit when I finish my next assignment.

I noticed this as well. It seems like some hits of the spacebar weren't registering but debug log shows each hit. I'll add that to the list, maybe comment out the delay or reduce it to see if it still happens.

Good idea. Maybe I could have levels & let the player choose another powerup that could be dropped. I think I have 2 types of enemy that don't drop anything when shot so they could be used to randomise the other powerups as they get selected.

This is odd because you can only die from getting down to 0 energy or 0 shields & the end text blurb should say why. I will keep testing to see if it fails sometimes.

Not sure what you mean by inheriting from the input axis but I will certainly keep tweaking the movement/speed & testing the shooting.

Again, thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it & the effort you took. After testing it as I added each item I was starting to not pay as much attention to how it all fitted & was just looking at the bits I had added. I will look at what you've raised & by the time I get back to it I may be able to look with fresh eyes myself when I play test it.

 

Inheriting from the input axis...
Well, what I like to do is take the Input.GetAxis("Horizontal") and this will be a value from -1 to 1, and I like to multiply this by a floating point value that represents the character's movement speed. If you have your input set up as default, what this will do is create a really smooth start up and stop for your character, resulting in motion that just feels natural.

That's why it's either too fast or slow, there's no in-between happening. Your eye expects inertia and momentum, and your brain is wired that way, and when you just start and stop it confuses your eyes and your brain (and your fingers). Old games did this and we coped by tapping the input device to simulate our own sort of inertia/momentum. These days we're very used to things behaving "like they're supposed to" and so we take those little details for granted.

That's what I mean by the input axis. I used to program it myself where the character's had a max speed, a current speed and an acceleration rate on each axis, but Input.GetAxis("Horizontal") * MovementSpeed * (time independent value) is so much better!