[Feedback Friday #67] - Is June Gloom a thing anywhere else?

FF #67 is closed until June 29th.

Round these parts, we have this odd weather pattern. Each morning, the soft clouds have rolled in. It brings an overcast sky that sometimes hints at a bit of rain. Then, by around 10 or 11 AM, the clouds have burned off. The threat of rain is gone, replaced by the beautiful blue sky that southern California is famous for. It's called this June Gloom, which only happens after a bit of Gray May. And as far as I'm concerned, that's enough of a reason to stay inside, working on a game. So, fire up Unity, sharpen your design pencils, and let's create - it's time for feedback Friday!

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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 #66 is here]

 

You are fortunate, Gigi! We have had rain every day, subtropical and tropical systems that rain all day here in Florida for the past couple of weeks! So May and June Gloom so far. No game to show off yet but working hard on a cute simulation game that hopefully we can showoff soon, after our move to NJ.

Thanks for continuing to do this!

 

Hello, I'm working on a 3rd person action RPG set in a world where an experiment has gone wrong, releasing mutating spores into the air which affected majority of the population in various ways.
Mutants will come in various shapes and forms and will drop different spores which can be collected.
You play a scientist involved in the experiment whose goal is to harness the effects of the mutations by collecting the spores and creating potions which give you different abilities, and eventually, find a cure.
Currently I've only got zombie enemies as placeholders, I will add new enemy types in the coming weeks!
I have put together a little video to show some of the combat and potions. Please let me know your thoughts and ideas!

 

I like this! Anything that allows you to play a scientist and use your brains to solve a problem is great! We need more games like this out there. So, having watched the video of the combat, is the combat how the potion is tested?

 

@Teila - Good luck on your move! I'm looking forward to seeing your simulation game. Is it related to your MMO?

@Serinx - Would you say the main activity is collecting spores and crafting potions, or the combat, or something else?

Having mutant abilities seems pretty awesome. What's the protagonist's motivation for finding a cure to stop them?

 

Nope, we decided to take a break and make something fun. With the move, things are crazy and we simply cannot spend time on the MMO so will put that aside. I know you have seen what Ryan is doing with Love/Hate! All that is for the simulation game.

 

I suspected it might be. Although it could just as easily work for an MMO if you're using ICE in your MMO. BTW, if you're using uMMORPG, the Dialogue System for Unity 2.0 now has uMMORPG support, and Quest Machine is getting uMMORPG support very soon. Any spoilers for the simulation game?

 

Dark humor and cats. Our Unity User Group approved the idea. lol

Ryan with his AI consultants.

 

@Teila @TonyLi thanks for the feedback throughout the game you will encounter various enemies which drop different spores and allow you to experiment making all sorts of potions with different effects. You can use these potions to get around a number of obstacles including puzzles and combat. I’d like for the player to have a choice in each scenario, whether they try to think their way around the problem, use brute force or a combination of the two.

I’m not sure how involved the potion making process will be just yet. I haven’t gotten to the actual crafting part!

I’m thinking you will gather various colours which each have a certain effect/ability associated. You can make potions out of 1 colour or mix them. E.g red for strength related effects, blue for speed, mix for purple and get a mega jump ability which lets you get to higher places.

The reason you’re looking for a cure is that you were a scientist involved in the “accident”. You need to track down your lab partner and figure out how to undo it. Haven’t really developed the story, will do once my core gameplay is done

I’m still not 100% clear on where I’m taking this, hoping to have that figured out soon! Any suggestions are very welcome

Sorry for poor formatting, on my phone.

Cheers

 

In your current prototype, what activity would you say is the most fun? What activity that isn't in the prototype yet are you most excited to add?

 

Good start for your story! You have a protagonist that has a motivation to finish the mission and sae the world from his own actions. I have been writing a story for another game (not the sim game) and have been doing a lot of work on character motivations and goals. I found a course from Coursera that you can audit for free on narrative writing for games and it has really helped. I have been a writer for a long time but not this type of writing so needed something to get me started. I highly recommend it and it is not very long. Mostly videos...and no need to do the assignments but you read other peoples submissions.

 

@TonyLi I think the most fun part is buffing yourself up with potions and flinging enemies away with ragdoll effects haha. I am looking forward to the chemistry system and also designing the levels which will be approachable in different ways.

@Teila Oh great, thanks for the tip, I'll look it up

 

That's what grabbed me about your video, too. It seems like it might work well with freeform levels. (I hesitate to say open world since that term has so much baggage.) I think the enemies won't be as important as the expression of the player's abilities. Your enemy AI can be pretty basic since the player will probably be paying more attention to their own character's crazy abilities.

What about location-based mutations? Like mutations based on rats and sewer crocodiles in the city, bears in the forest, octopi at the beach, etc. It gives the player motivation to travel to different levels and provides a theme for each level.

 

@TonyLi That's a great idea! The different mutants would make sense in different areas, sort of like their DNA has merged with the local creatures.
Yeah I never really had open world in mind, originally I was thinking of linear levels with shortcuts accessible using your powers. I could make the zones repeatable if you want to explore and harvest more spores too.
Love hearing other peoples ideas, really keeps me motivated. Thanks

 

#comfort to my friends back east. #toomuchrain.

And you're welcome. Excited to see your next game - +10 for any game with cute animals.

Curtiss.

 

@Serinx - Let's play the what-if game. What if the circle you have now was all the terrain you could ever have? What if the 3 power ups were all you could ever have. What if the back-story was completely incidental? With those 3 what-if's, if you took some time to flesh this game out, you'd have something very similar to Devil Daggers, which had "overwhelmingly positive" reviews on Steam.

What you have there already looks kind of fun. Replace the button spawners with a series of waves of monsters that leverage your crazy, monte-hall kind of over-the-top attacks. Speed up the movement and combat sequences (think God of War speed). Focus in on the moment-to-moment feel of the movement during combat until it's so buttoned up that even Mario would be jealous. Then ship it - to see how people respond.

Afterwards, you could still build your mega version of this same game, with all the potions, backstory, and questing that you like. In the meantime, you'd have shipped a real game, gotten real player feedback about making the best possible combat experience, and built up a small audience (or not). It's a win-win-win.

#TryRefineRepeat

Gigi

 

@Gigiwoo It's funny you say that, I built this arena so that my playtesters could try out the combat in a controlled environment where they could try various potions and weapons on different enemies.
I never thought about putting it out there as a game itself!

I was a bit worried this project was becoming too big and I would really love to focus on polishing the combat, so I might end up doing this.

Thanks for the suggestion!

 

Having seen your video, I feel more equipped to discuss it and what you posted a few days back.

Obvious note: everything here is IMO.

Something to keep in mind is that a mutation is a semi-permanent or permanent genetic change. It's not something you can do temporarily. All of your "mutation examples" in the previous thread fit into the potion category. For the hyper-alacrity I'd call it a cat potion if you're sticking with the animal names. And on that note, to my knowledge lizards don't spit or spray out fluids (apart from one that can shoot blood from its eyes as a defense mechanism, I guess). If you wanted that spitting effect, I'd find a different animal for that (camels are the only one I recall at the moment). I'd imagine a lizard potion as being something related either to climbing up vertical slopes or a defensive mechanism perhaps allowing you to regrow a limb. The latter of those seems interesting, but off the top of my head I can't see it working for your situation unless you had location-specific damage, and that might require different enemies (with a lot more complex AI).

A mutation would be a permanent change. If you wanted to keep the larger focus, at least in a cupboard while you work on the simpler combat-only idea, you might tie the increased traversal options to the mutations.

But between your "bear" and "lizard" names, I can imagine just going off of that and making potions based off of different types of animals. The cat potion gives you faster reflexes or maybe slows time. A bird potion lets you fly (though vertical movement sounds like a challenge to put in the "do everything first, try this if I have time" category). The mosquito potion allows you to drain vitality from one of your enemies and restore your own. A turtle potion might make you nearly impregnable for a few moments, but prevent you from moving (maybe to allow stamina or some other thing to recharge). A snake potion might have you poison the enemy, causing them to lose health over time (a rat potion might do something similar, though spreading the effect among nearby enemies). A hedgehog potion might make any enemies who attack you lose health themselves, maybe restricting it to enemies who attack from the rear if you want to provide drawbacks to each one.

That's something to consider too: whether your potions will be only a positive or also a drawback. Having some type of drawback or negative element to each one might better differentiate them and give the player the inclination to use them in specific situations.

 

Yeah, I thought it was more science/puzzle kind of game, but it appears he wants potions and combat really. Maybe the main character should be a monster hunter of sorts rather than a scientist. Seems to me that scientists would prefer to study than to fight the mutants..or really not mutants but the creatures reactions to magic potions.

Oh, and be careful you do not let what is posted here change your game. Seems that happens too much and all the games end up the same and watered down. Remember your ultimate goal for your game and listen, take in what people say, but do not abandon what is unique about your game.

 

@EternalAmbiguity Yeah maybe mutations isn't the right word, the idea is that you are fighting mutated enemies and collecting their mutant essence which I've name "spores". The effects only last so long on you because you're immune to the permanent effects that drove most of them insane/hostile.

Yes true, Lizards don't spray acid haha, I think I originally named that potion Lizard just because of the colour. I found a Wiki article on projectile use in animals which is quite interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projectile_use_by_non-human_organisms

My favourite one is that some tarantulas can fling poisonous hairs as a defence mechanism! Insect mutations (or potions) might be a good idea too!

Tell that to Gordon Freeman I see what you mean, the story is up in the air at the moment.
Could be a "potion master" or something along those lines.
I just like the scientific angle at the moment because it seems a bit more unique.
Maybe you're the "tester" of the potions, instead of making the potions you just request how they should be made/modified.

 

A field assistant! I remember those days.....sending us out to collect the samples in the rain, heat and cold.

 

@Serinx your mutation-game-premise reminds me of a PC-game i've read about when all i had was a playstation1, lets see if i can find its name and some footage... There it is! www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT97Qj9Wz9g

Did you think about combat yet? The mutation stuff is only a very good way to keeping things fresh but it can't single-handedly carry the game. There are nice writeups about what makes combat good, for me it needs to have it all:

Spoiler: All

Options:
There is always more than one way left to beat something, even if it has immunities

Balance:
PVE abilities need to be balanced too. A single dominant strategy is a multitude of missed opportunities

Risk & Reward:
Punish the reckless hard but lure them by reward. (e.g. attack commitment in Dark Souls)

Timing & Memory:
Jump, Dodge, Parry because you know your enemy. Dull blocking is boring (Ocarina of Time)

Style & Feel:
If punching something doesn't make me feel like punching something, im out.

Ability Interaction:
Does melee reflect projectiles? Can rockets be dodged? Yes, because it is fun. Make the options affect each other, a good parry does not end instantly with a single outcome, but enables the player a multitude of followups

Anyway, As it happens i am creating my first full game right now!

I've made that gyro-prototype a while back at FeedbackFriday#49 and one of the posts there inspired me to do something with terrestrial Spaceships and Motion-sensing.
This is gameplay footage i just recorded for my audio guys (so they can fix this obnoxious audio mess and add music). It was played by mouse obviously, but the target platform for the beta is Android.

What is your opinion based on this footage? noisy? ship too twitchy? polystyle too crude?
I needed to turn of ambient-music at the middle for my sound guys. Most of the text-labels and stuff in the corners are just debugging crap for the terrain generator.

Spoiler: FAQs

Actually no one asks me anything, i made those up:

Why a terrestrial flyer, why do you hate space so much?
-Ever played Descent? The human brain just needs gravity pointing downwards

What is this even all about?
-Flying around, Destroying stuff, looting, crafting, leveling, finding places to trade, enemies to shoot

Don't gyro/accelermeter controls suck?
-No, not this time.

Don't you think the sounds should be more subtle?
-Sorry, i can't hear you while playing this game, i need more subtle sounds

 

@Marrt Wow that's interesting, I might steal some ideas from that

Thanks for your advice on combat.
It will be heavily influenced by the potions/mutations, you will need to use the correct potions to get the upper hand fighting certain enemies, where some potions will hinder you.
E.g. acid potions will be useless against an enemy with acid immunity.
You will always be able to defeat an enemy using normal weapons, it'll just be a little harder
I'd like to go with the concept where every enemy is beatable without losing any HP (if you're good enough!)

I'll do a bunch of play tests to get the combat feeling super smooth

Your game looks like a lot of fun! Is the targetting automatic? It seems quite fast paced for mobile if not.
visual effects look great to me, and it sounds like you're working on the audio next (no pun intended )

 

I never liked flat out immunities to elements, they were a buzzkill at best, i was always the pure ice mage you know.
How about one of those:

1. Increase Risk when using bad elements:
- Acid does normal damage on Acid foes, buuuut... also buffs them

2. Change combat when using bad elements:
- Acid-dmg fills a self degrading bar that gives Acid foes a certain ability when full, e.g. Gassy AOE Aura for 3s
- Ice receives 10s frost armor that reduces all dmg
- Blood Mutants gets aroused: speed buff
- Fire increases projectile size of next attack when hit with fire

No autoaim, i would never take away the control from the player. Targets can be locked, when it is, your aim follows relatively. That means you can look around freely but the locked enemy's movement will be compensated. If your enemy is 6° left and 2° above of your aimpoint, the enemy's movement will not change these values, only your input will. Does that make sense?

You can see it pretty well at 4:30, i only need to adjust for target velocity, because the viewportPosition of the target is locked. With that i can create a more focused combat, where you are more aware to what the enemy does instead of trying to catch it with your crosshairs only.

 

@Marrt - Looks fun! What kind of crafting and trading do you have in mind?

It doesn't look so, but I'm sure it will all come down to playtesting on the device. With the mouse control in the video, it looks comparable to Descent.

If anything, I'd say do more of it. The ship and skybox are higher detail than the ground. Can you put everything in a consistent art style?

 

Maybe i should create a small Video of me playing this thing on a device, stay tuned...

EDIT: Here it is, the Screen Door Effect in acti... i mean on-device gameplay

Agree, poly-ships are already being made, but you are the second person to comment the style break on the skybox. Problem is, what can i put there instead, clouds? Polyplanets? Auroras seem to look nice:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora#/media/File:Aurora_Borealis_and_Australis_Poster.jpg​

but i have no idea on how to do them procedural and i don't think my overdraw needs more overlapping sprites all over the sky. Maybe i could create procedural Poly-Auroras.

 

Looks good. Nice and responsive.

Try some polyplanets. It might just take some experimenting with different art to find something that fits the rest of the game's art style.

 

@Marrt looks great im sure this is something @Billy4184 could offer feedback on. Also great job guys, june's feedback friday did not disappoint.

 

Hehe, actually Billy was my inspiration back when i started working on the game:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/feedback-friday-49-december-22-2016.447571/#post-2905226

Didn't respond to that earlier, i plan on doing a very basic crafting system. Ships and Weapons are crafted as a single item, Consumables, Missiles and special weapons are crafted on a ammunition basis. Experience points grant Levels and minor buffs. Major buffs are granted by upgrading the ship/weapon through the workshop, which requires materials. The upgradeability is capped by the experience level. Blueprints are found throughout the world on special locations, as drops or tradeables on remote trading stations.

 

Out of interest how long did this take you to do, the mechanics and graphics and sound design looks quite polished, if you don't mind me asking.

Some of the shots reminded me of no man's sky, you know when the spaceship is cruising into another galaxy system?

IMO I think this game would do well on steam.

 

I do mind, because i am so damn slow it's a shame, but why hide anything? Maybe just hide it a little:

Spoiler: The long boring story of Marrt

Exclusively on this project: About 10 months. But many parts of older prototypes ended up being a major contribution. I spend the most part improving my programming skills+plugins and making the core game (shooting, dodging, speeding) acceptable for me, i believe a true action game is possible on mobile.
But i am very picky so development was really slow and then i started applying for a small government funding program (austria). I thought why the hell would anyone fund a mobile game, but people really told me to just try it. So the timeline goes somthing like this:

Jan 2015:
First time i tried developing for Mobile, i created my first TouchStick.cs and some prototypes for it. The TouchStick recognizes gestures. In the game i use it for movement and dodging via gesture

Feb 2016:
I quit my job and started being self employed, Austria (my country) is very helpful in that regard so i basically received about 6 months of education, support and, most importantly, pay. This is where i learned to describe why i hate bookkeeping.

Jan 2017
I developed that shooter prototype for FeedbackFriday#49. That is when i created the whole stuff for Gyro/Accelerometer-controls that are the core of the game. My main project back than was a Pixelart-Brawler which is kinda on hold now (yay https://forum.unity.com/attachments/g-gif.243236/)

July 2017
In July I wrote the application form (about 30 pages with detailed information about... about everthing) for the mentioned government grant which was a real headache for me and took me a month or two. I saw it more as project-pitch-practice with little hope to actually succeed in getting funded.
(EDIT: We actually wrote 2 applications, one for the project in this thread and another for the Pixelart-Brawler)

October 2017
I did some small VR-prototyping to get at least some income. I received an email stating that we (my artist buddy and me) were within the best 48 projects (from about 250 total) and got the chance to present it in December in front of a Jury.

December 2017
Presentation was very smooth, lots of technical questions about Gyroscope-Tec, User-Interaction, patent stuff and marketing scope which, to my surprise, i had answers for. 12 hours later we received a mail telling us that we got into the 24 projects that will be funded. They actually funded our project, we were puzzled.
Info about the grant: The grant is for up to 30k€, based on the actual costs of making the project (my working hours, my artist budd's invoices and stuff), and only 30% of it has to be paid back, so i am not instantly screwed if i fail.

2018
I primary work on my schedule, report to the government funding agency and tell myself that i can succeed

So here i am, working on the game we called Wasteland Dash having completely lost a healthy sleep cycle, what do you think of that name btw?

I didn't play No mans Sky yet, i still wait for it to get below a 30€ price tag.

Steam? Maybe after everything else failed . The quality of my content applied to the PC-Platform? It will translate to about 5000 sales@9.99€ from people that buy games by accident and don't know how to refund. That is my estimate based on reading lots of Steamspy entries.
I would have to make it a Rougelike before i can even think about getting more than 10k downloads

 

holy crap that's impressive! i think the name's catchy, but then im not good with game names. I also wanted to add you've done what i see most gamedevs fails to do and get the mechanics working smootly before the content, props for that.

There's a lot of lessons to be had from this, thank you for sharing.

 

p.s my critique feel free to ignore of course

Spoiler

mechanics 9/10
animations 8/10
smoothness 9/10
sound design 8/10
gameplay 8/10
art 4/10

some explantions, from the video gameplay looks punchy fluid fast and comprehensible, sound design works and orchestral compo might take it to another level during important parts of the game but may be beyond your skillset, gameplay nothing really unique but i think its obvious what the objective is here. art is what lets it down, the ui is smooth so are the transitions but man the colours and scene and typography is poor. i know the minimap is prob generated but you could tone down the colours. the scene and spaceship materials are poor IMO, although some of the atmospheric scattering /fog effects look nice. get the visuals on point and i cant see how this game would NOT make money (i have very high art expections so dont take offence lol)

IMO of course

 

Thank you for your feedback!

Don't bother, i can take any critique (since i can always jump off a building if i can't take it anymore)

I am totally with you, i will receive my very first artist-assets next month (UI-Textures and layout instructions). The things you see is... mostly my crap (except the ships, they are bought and scavenged but will all be replaced by my artist's polyships). She will also overhaul my Terrain-Generation-Templates and give the world an actual Palette, so that "Wasteland" should make sense.

Spoiler: More Excuses

The minimap is eye-cancer because it is just a redKey-fetch-texture as of now.
(tells the generator which Terrain-template it should generate for):



Sadly, i don't have an excuse for the scene...
I can't really improve on the Terrain looks, the whole thing is Vertex-Shaded and pretty much the best i can do without breaking my 60 fps requirement for mid-level phones (e.g. mine, Samsung A3 2017). My shader knowledge is very humble, so i am already thinking about hiring some shader pro before release, to consult me and to do some of his shader voodoo.
The other thing a can do is reducing the resolution when i want sexier shaders, but the blur this introduces increases eye-strain.
The whole point of doing polystyle is in order to create my Terrain at runtime... without fps drops... without loading screens... ... on mobile. I use 4x4 shifting Terrain-Chunks (i can do anything from 3x3 to 20x20). Each of the chunks has a heightmap 64x64. Generating the Data for one chunk takes about 20ms (with a single LOD that is) and is done in a separate thread. Applying the Data to the Mesh, Texture and Collider takes about 3-8ms.
The other thing i noticed is that there is no way of updating a MeshCollider without getting a lag. But Strangely you can Update a similar shaped UnityTerrainCollider in 2ms. So i use chunks of UnityTerrain just for the Collider. Maybe i roll my own Collisions in future, since it's only a specialized height check for my Terrains.

Thank you for appreciating the others stuff. There are still a lot of tweaks to readability and animation transitions, Enemy abilities and whatnot, but the core idea is pretty much what i have shown.

Two questions if you can be bothered:
1. What do you think about the non-centered crosshair/reticle? I realized that putting it slightly above the center makes up for a better experience since the lower screen portions are mostly thumb-space on mobile. But maybe that will alienate a lot of players (you can change it in the settings though).

2. Where would you put the players health/shield bar? I considered to show them in 3D-space directly below the ship but that didn't read to well and lame-ifies evasive moves. Near the reticle? Screen corners? These strange Goldeneye64 sidebars that obstruct every notion of peripheral vision?

 

^i'll reply to this when i get back in further detail (if i get some time lol)

 

@Marrt - Can you do me a favor? Please repost this in another FF thread. Your game looks absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, I hadn't checked the thread since Sunday, so I missed this entirely. I would love to continue watching this one evolve.

This FF was a burst of joy for me. Thanks to the community for sharing the thoughtful reviews. FF is now closed, until June 29th.

#TryRefineRepeat

Gigi