[Feedback Friday #44] - July 22, 2016

FF #44 is closed! FF #45 opens on Friday, August 19th!

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Want design feedback for your new game? Then you've found the right thread! Post here to get precious player feedback. Discuss until we lock the 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 #43 is here]

 

Hi guys, I am back with a sequel to my game Deflect! called Deflect! 2, very original I know, now with all new powerups and skins!

If you havent heard of Deflect! its something like breakout meets pong but instead of controlling the paddle to control the ball you draw the lines instead. The goal of the game is to get the pellets into the containers on the side of the screen. Here are some screenshots:



The game is currently in beta and I am planning to roll it out slowly. Currently it is only on Android but I have plans to expand to iOS. I would really appreciate it if you joined the beta here:
https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.BitBloc.Deflect2
Thanks!

 

Sorry, I don't have any android devices. Good luck with it

 

Hey there. Just an FYI your link seems to be broken.

I did a search on the playstore and found the game.

Keep in mind I don't play mobile games. The only times I play is to give feedback to people here.

I don't have anything to critic about it. Overall it is one of the most well executed mobiles games I have checked out.

The presentation is very well done. Simple and highly readable. The core mechanic is easy to pick up and input for it is well done.

I never made it past a best score of 6. This is primarily due to the fact that I have big fingers (I'm 6 foot & a bit and weigh 220 pounds... I work out lol) and trying to play games on these tiny cell screen screens just doesn't work out for me. Just all mobile games in general.

That aside, I do think your game is very well done. Looks great. Sounds great. Plays great. Simple to pick up.

 

Been a long time since I have thrown a game out here. Previously, I was running into a problem where the games I was working on were far more than what I threw out to get feedback on.

This made it very difficult for people to really connect with my vision for the game. And that makes perfect sense. Because I was presenting about 5% of what the game would be and asking for feedback. In my mind I was asking for feedback on specifically only the 5% that was available. However, people were looking at it like it was 100%. Again understandable. That was my fault.

So... this time I have completed the game. It has been released. There can be no confusion about what I am going for because instead of it existing only inside my head it is right here for you to view and play firsthand.

Play ATLANTIC CRISIS - A Game Inspired by SeaQuest (released 33 years ago)

IMPORTANT: If you only like modern games with gee whiz graphics and movie-like presentation you might as well just not waste your time on this. Because Atlantic Crisis is exactly the opposite of those kinds of games. This is a game where the focus is on pure fun & gameplay.

Interested in hearing your thoughts. Thanks!

 

Fixed. Thanks for pointing it out. It was my fault for providing the wrong link.

Thanks alot for the kind words. Its great to hear feedback from players after months of working on something.

You made my day with this part.

 

I love it! The game is fast-paced, easy to learn and fun. I went in without looking at the learn section and was able to pick it up easily. The red submarines really adds tension to the game. Well designed gameplay, great music and I actually really like the art style. The guy being chased by a shark was a really nice touch. Got a highscore of 40,000.

Only one problem though is I cant seem to figure out how to get more than 2 survivors, after saving both of them the game does not spawn any more. Is this a bug or am I missing something? I just ended up killing random subs and marine life for points.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Very much so! Also glad you like the art style because this is is the same kind of art I plan on using for all of my future games. Although I might possibly go a tiny bit more detailed like that shmup and platformer I was making graphics for a while back. But I much prefer this art style. Because it "clicks" for me. Is super easy to do and I also think it looks very good.

Did you make it to the next hour?

Very interesting! Can you remember any details? Like what happened right around the time you got that second survivor? The first step is always to be able to duplicate the behavior.

I actually thought I saw that same thing happen once or twice. I just wasn't testing that part of the game at the time so didn't pay attention to it. But it was one of those things that when I shut down I thought... wait a second were there any more divers coming on screen? But I've played the game hundreds of times now over these past days of development so I thought ah I probably just didn't notice one was someplace on there.

But it kept nagging at me so I played several games trying to duplicate it and never could.

If you can remember any specifics let me know. In the meantime I will add a MonitorManager that monitors the state of the things that trigger the divers appearing. When something is off I will have it write it out to the debug log. That should allow me to track it down. I will just need to keep playing over and over and over and over.

Another option is I could make that Monitor actually override things when it does detect an issue and fix the issue by setting and clearing the appropriate properties. I might do that first. And put up a new build. Because that should fix it for everyone else. Then I will do the logging version for my own internal testing.

 

@CDDelta, if you don't mind give it a test again and see if you have the same issue.

I completed the Monitor Manager. This is checking the status of everything each frame and if it sees something out of whack it corrects it.

I also spent 30 minutes or more just running tests replacing the self-fixing pieces with Monitor debug.log it but nothing ever appeared

 

Good news is that the survivors are now spawning after the first two and I can get past hour 1 but there seems to be a bug with the game sometimes spawning too many survivors. This might be expected behaviour but I am not sure.

 

Perfect. Yep that means the Monitor found that no more divers were appearing within the expected timeframe despite there being more divers that had to be rescued. It overrode the normal logic and prompted the LevelManager to send a diver out.

Excellent now I know which of the 4 to 5 possible problems the Monitor is checking for and fixing is actually the culprit.

Thanks!

 

The only change Id like to see is add the score on the last page, and maybe a fast restart because if you screw up in the early levels. And maybe an extra life everyone 100k points

 

Not sure who this is for but it all sounds reasonable to me so I'm going to implement these. Earlier I got feedback for a Pause and Esc back to Title Screen. So that is two for the fast restart which means I'll do it. Thought about the extra life thing but obviously never did it. I think it will be 100k, 250k and 500k. Something like that. Because you can always crank up your score. Just don't die and shoot the enemies.

 

@GarBenjamin I just tried Atlantic Crisis. My only complaint is the lack of any pause ability (serves me right for putting the kettle on for coffee just before undertaking a rescue mission where a jellyfish will kill your sub in one hit ). Apart from that, it's a fun little game.

 

Thanks to everyone who checked it out. I appreciate it. I have a birthday dinner (not mine) to go to after work but as soon as I get home later this evening and back on the computer I will make an update adding these enhancements.

 

Nearly forgot all about this. Got back and since my mind has moved on from development to marketing I went right back to researching for opportunities. Just popped in my head oh man I forgot to make those updates!

I'll get on it now. Shouldn't take too long.

 

Alright the updates have been made.

Pause function is in. P to pause / resume
Esc to return to Title Screen
Score is displayed on the Game Lost screen (I took the easy way and just used the same custom font I used in-game)
You earn an extra sub at 100,000 250,000 and 500,000 points.

Play Atlantic Crisis

My God these Web builds take forever. lol

 

I think the game is really fun, best game so far. Maybe you should try to put your game on steam.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/433950

This game sold 70k units and the game is the most simple game I played but its pretty fun.
http://steamspy.com/app/433950

Well anyway I got to 241800, hour7 no problems this time. Although I might also want to know what round it was in the final screen, and how many divers i saved and how many of each thing i killed etc. You add some achievements like reach hour 8, kill 500 submarines, rescue over 500 divers...

 

That's funny you mentioned that because games like Bit Blaster XL, Kero Blaster and ORCS are my goal. I enjoy playing such games and they are a very reasonable scope.

What I'm doing now is just some practice runs because I decided to try my hand at the Indie thing. Well about 99% certain at this point. The plan is to make 3 to 4 tiny free games for GameJolt and then go after Steam. Actually been thinking of teaming up with a couple of like-minded people. Folks who appreciate tiny games and realize the gameplay is what matters.

Man you were so close! 8,200 more points and you would have earned another sub. I probably should have put that on there. If end score is less than 10,000 points away from earning a bonus sub... "you were less than 10,000 points away from earning a bonus sub!" That might encourage folks to give it another play.

Thanks for giving it another go and I'm glad you enjoy it. With a game that is what it's all about!

 

Gar!!! Congratulations! This is really fun! Totally brought back days of the Atari 2600. Sitting on my couch, playing with friends, and taking breaks to go ride bikes. The graphics, sound, and game play were wonderfully nostalgic. The break up into levels created nice breaks in the action. The interface is simple and easy to consume. The single-rescue creates a nice tension - mini goals to accomplish right away. And the game has a variety of difficulties that were fun to navigate. Even the speed of the movement was really fun. Here are a few thoughts that might help make the game even stronger (in no particular order).

• TargetFrameRate - The scrolling text looks jerky - because you have an inconsistent frame rate on the main menu. Try setting Application.targetframerate = 30. Even though it's hard to believe, a consistent 20 FPS is better than getting a rate that cycles between 90 and 120. It's true.
• Colors - the text on the learn screen is hard to read (red on black is the worst). Consider using simpler color variants.
• Feedback on Rescue - Can you add some feedback when you pick up a swimmer? It was unclear that I could only hold 1, so I assumed the game was broken. Maybe a 'bonk' sound, maybe a 'You're Full' message, or both. Also, when you pick up a guy the first time, it was not clear I was supposed to bring them to the ladder - NO ONE READS HOW TO PLAY. So, consider flashing it, or putting a text that says, 'Get to the Ladder!' or something.
• Days vs Hours - I get why you chose 'Hour 1', 'Hour 2', and 'Hour 3' as your theme. Even so, I would have found it easier to consume as 'Day 1', 'Day 2', 'Day 3'. Not sure why.
• Escalation - The game plays really fun - the 'Hours' escalate. You could probably escalate the difficulty a bit. In addition, as much as I liked the swim-lanes, I would have enjoyed seeing a bit of variation between the levels. I'm thinking Robotron 2084, where level 5 has brains, level 6 and 9 are normal, 7 has tanks, etc... With variation, the levels could be shorter - instead of just 'rescue 6, no 7, no 8, no 9'.
• Meta-game - Something made me want this to be like Ridiculous Fishing - with a 2-stage process, upgrades, or something. I don't know what that would look like. It's just what was in my mind.

Seriously, I liked it. Congratulations on realizing your vision - and for sharing this with the community. It's very cool. I enjoyed playing!

Gigi

 

@Gigiwoo Thanks for checking it out and leaving such detailed feedback. Yeah that scroller being so jumpy is something I definitely need to look into too. There is no reason for it because it is incredibly straightforward no allocations or anything that should cause it. Other than it seems like framerate just fluctuates a lot in Unity for some reason. I need to get time to revisit it. Maybe this coming weekend.

Thanks again! I'm glad you enjoyed it.

 

Application.targetFrameRate = 20; // or 30 Inconsistent frame rate is teh debil

Gigi.

 

Ha ha! I agree. One of the things I hate about these modern game dev kits and Windows. lol I am used to always getting 60 fps. Cool thanks. I will check that out. Remember seeing it long ago and thought people had said that it was ignored in the majority of cases! But I will definitely give it a try. Honestly cannot understand how something this simple could not possibly run at 60 fps solid.

 

@Gigiwoo The Application.targetFrameRate didn't fix it. It did blur it some but it still hiccups. I know it is the framerate not being steady and always try to get a rock solid display but in Unity it is darn near impossible I think. Or maybe it is Windows itself doing it. A tiny bit of disk activity, Windows Update kicking on in the background. I don't know.

I might focus more on it in my next projects. I would like to get a rock steady display but like I said I am not sure it is even possible in Unity. I have not seen any games with that yet.

It's something I was obsessed with for quite a while and researching discovered it was a common thing in Unity:

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/275016/updatefixedupdate-motion-stutter-not-another-novic.html

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/689884/movement-jitter-every-few-seconds.html

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/767691/micro-jittering-stuttering-bug-of-unity.html

http://gamedev.stackexchange.com/qu...s-with-vsync-option-turned-on-in-unity-standa

 

I'm glad you mentioned that jerkiness and jitter. I just spent 2 hours trying every possible thing I could think of. Reading loads of pages of an insane number of answers to people who posted the question. In the end nothing worked.

Like I said, I had done that before. A couple years or more ago and just ran into dead ends continually.

Finally, with nothing else I could think of to try or research I made one tiny change and completely removed the stutter.

In the end I simply changed this code

Code (CSharp):

1. -= 64f * Time.smoothDeltaTime; //Time.deltaTime;

to this

Code (CSharp):

1. -= 2;

And the scrolling is now rock solid. No stutter. No jerkiness. Just the way I am used to from the good ole days.

It seems a big part of the issue is actually within the timing code itself. I tested to make sure by replacing this with the original code. Both with deltaTime and smoothDeltaTime and in both cases the stutter was back.

Of course, this may cause other problems down the road but as of right now I will change the way I develop in Unity to now offer two options. The default will be everything using direct values without deltaTime. The other will be to use deltaTime (or smoothDeltaTime).

This way most folks can hopefully just get the rock solid display from the default and if they can't (or if everything runs like super fast or slow on their computer) they can use the framerate independent deltaTime approach.

 

Do you also have an Application.targetFrameRate set? Or is it running at max framerate, all the time, whatever it gets? I think the plot thickens, as there is also monitor vSync to worry about. I agree that smoothDeltaTime is also not desirable.

Gigi

 

I tested using targetframerate and a ton of other things people had mentioned. In the end simply not using any deltatime or smoothdeltatime completely removed the issue.

I'll put up a new build sometime soonish. Want to add joystick control. Basically this is just the first of many games I have planned so I am stepping my way there. Each one I'll do a little more "stuff". lol But having joy control in all would be good so am doing it now.

EDIT: Oh if you mean what did I end up with. Yeah I actually have this in the current build (on my laptop none of this has went live yet):

Code (CSharp):

1. Application.targetFrameRate = 60;

I was hoping that by doing so it would at least keep it from running too fast on people's machines. I read somewhere that targetFrameRate is ignored by some things. I think web browser stuff is always running at 60 fps though for Update so that should be good there.

 

Oh my, this was incredibly fun. I've never played SeaQuest, so it's hard for me to give valuable feedback, but... Yeah, I had a blast. Are you going to add a highscore list?

And congratulations on the release, I've "just" released my game as well. I've put Akiro up on Feedback Friday a couple times, and it's now on both Google Play and App Store. The feeling of actually having completed a game is... unreal.

I've started making some sort of slingshot game, and if somebody had some feedback, I would appreciate that deeply. Mostly because I don't really know where I'm going with this.
The game is played by using two fingers. One side of the slingshot can't be moved, but the other side can be moved with whichever finger touches the screen first. After that, a second finger can use the slingshot.

I have no idea if this could be fun. I certainly enjoy it, but both my brother and my fiancee found it a bit complicated. It's so much easier if you can try for yourself: Dropbox APK link (if you have android.)

 

Thanks for checking it out and I'm glad you enjoyed it. If I was still doing this as a hobby only for fun I would definitely spend the time digging through their API and adding in high scores. I have goals for game dev now and a plan. I might come back at some point and add high score tables just for fun. After I make some more progress in my "grand plan". lol I'm thinking it may take a week just to get high scores in and working and in that amount of time I could have a new game ~40% done.

I actually did add joystick support to the game tonight. Although from what I can see it doesn't work in the WebGL version. The folks downloading the Windows desktop version can hopefully use it. And I updated the way the scrolling text is updated so it should be super smooth now. Going to put up the new build soon.

 

@Mothil Your new game looks interesting. Admittedly not quite as interesting as Akiro but definitely interesting for this kind of mobile game. Actually kind of makes me think of pinball in a way. The movement is cool.

 

Just a quick note that version 1.0.5 of Atlantic Crisis is now live on GameJolt.

This uses the new method for handling the scrolling text on the title screen. No deltatime or smoothDeltaTime being used.

Also added support for controller but as noted in my dev log over there this doesn't seem to be supported in the WebGL build. I can't even guarantee it will work on desktop because adding something as simple as controller support seems to be a real pain in the ass in Unity. I am actually using InControl which seems to be the best option available.

I created a new profile for my generic "2In1 USB" controller I bought at Walmart a few years back. So now that works. Seems a bit crazy if a profile needs to be created for every different brand and type of controller. lol

Try the 1.0.5 version here.

 

Ha ha! I forgot to share this with you folks.

I found this Let's Play of Atlantic Crisis very entertaining. I am going to try to link video so it starts at the 1:33 mark. If it doesn't work you can just skip ahead. He does pretty good except for the red sub that comes out on top when you've been sitting up there too long dilly dallying.

Go to 1:33 time (or watch the whole thing if you have time to do so)

Gave me a good laugh.

 

Great FF! And #44 is now brought to a close. #45 will open on August 19th! Enjoy your summer.

Gigi