Hover World

Hi Folks,

Here is my 3DU contest entry:

http://www.lostpencil.com/temp/hover_world.dmg (mac universal binary, 20.8mb)
http://www.lostpencil.com/temp/hover_world.zip (windows, 15.6mb)

It seems to run best on a GeForce 3 or better. Play with the game quality settings to get a good frame rate. Runs fine on my Dual Intel Mac on the Fantastic Setting using full screen mode.

To play you can use mouse or 'WASD' or arrow keys to move around. SPACE to jump. Hit the waypoints and get a highscore. My best time 2:59. If you can't find a waypoint, it's probably underground Also, if you find the mouse not sensitive enough then while in the game click on the num keypad '+' or '-' to increase/decrease the sensitivity. And if you really don't like the music you can also control the volume of the music in the main menu using the same keys.

I used this as an opportunity to learn a bit about Unity and it's my first 3d game. I built pretty much everything (including scripts and music). So if you hate the music, well you know where I am. It's only one level, but it's setting me up well for my real game. It was a great learning experience. Took me about 3 weeks and I created it 'straight ahead' as an animator would say (basically not knowing what it would end up being or looking like as it was being built). Hopefully the next one, with a lot of planning, will be better. I totally love Unity!

If you have any feedback it would be appreciated!

Cheers,
Paul

 

Seems like my web provider decided to have connectivity issues just when I posted, sigh.... please try again later.

Cheers,
Paul

 

Looks like it's back up....

Cheers,
Paul

 

Hey Paul,

Very cool! I'm not much of a game player (so take my feedback with a grain of salt) but here's my two bits:

I like the models (the hover bike is pretty cool) and the music is pretty good. I also like the over all concept (I like this genre of game more than other types). I -really- like the interactive map/radar thing on the bottom left of the screen. How did you do that?

What I'd change/add: The "smooth camera follow" seems real "jumpy" to me. I'd tweak the settings a bit more, or maybe it needs to be set up differently. I noticed this can happen when the camera follows a rigid body, not sure what the cure is. Maybe add some sound effects for everything you collide with. Last thing would be to decrease the mouse and keyboard sensitivity even more than what your settings allow. I'm running on a 1.83 Ghz Intel Duo iMac, and it was pretty hard to smoothly maneuver the hover bike (something I've noticed with other Unity games also).

Very impressive for a first game, nice job!

 

The game idea and look are great, nice work. My only complaint is that when using the keyboard the controls seem a bit "twitchy". I press A/D to turn and it turns slowly then *bang*, it turns too much to fast. Perhaps if it was just a bit smoother... I too found the camera follow behavior a little jumpy as well, but overall I like it, good stuff!

And of course as a motorcyclist I dig the hover bike. 8)

 

love your style and how classic is the guy looking back at you with the "well, what are we waiting for?" act if you let him sit too long. that's great!

i agree with the others on the oversteer. sorry, can't comment on the music. had my sound off. the camera didn't bother me too much but then i'm working on a hover bike game too! maybe i need to fix mine!

 

Thanks a bunch for the feedback folks! I'll try the interpolation for the rigid body. Also, I found that if you 'tap' the left and right instead of holding them down you have more control. I'll see what I can do to tweak that as well.

Cheers,
Paul

 

So I tried the inter/extrapolate on the rigidbody and it was, at least on my mac, much worse. I'm surprised that the camera jitters. It's pretty smooth on my intel mac. It seems to run best in full screen mode, on Good Quality setting, and using the mouse when maneouvering above ground and using the keyboard when in the tunnels.

Oh and as for the little radar map... it was a trick on the forums here that I found. I think I did a search for HUD or something like that. It has to do with a masking camera with a depth shader. I enhanced it a bit by adding some proxy objects that are only seen by the radar camera (along with a line renderer that connects the waypoints as you go through them).

I'll play around with the angular drag and angular force to see if I can make it a bit more responsive.

Cheers,
Paul

 

I was using the keyboard to control and it was like keys were getting stuck. My guy would just spin around with no hands on the keyboard. The only way to get it unstuck is to restart although sometimes it would stop as randomly a it started or change to a different key. I have had this key stuck bug with megapixel too. Not sure what it comes from but it is really really annoying. It makes it impossible to drive. I never finished the game. I also found the lowest mouse sensitivity to be too high for mouse driving.

I get a lot of lag even on fastest and 640 by 480. seems like it would caused by a lot of interactive objects and stuff on the map. I would like an option to turn off the interactive trees, crates barrels and other details.

The graphics are great even on my computer. I am guessing there is some kind of glow on the purple parts on the bottom of the bike and it looks hot.

Someone is throwing snowballs at me :?

 

Hi I gave it a shot, well at least 3 to be honest. The idea is good and I personally like it very much. The gameplay it's way to hard but promising. I gave it a try on my macpro - pc version on bootcamp: it runs smoothly even at higher res and top quality. Unfortunately it seems that something is messing with the things you see on screen. The graphics keep on flashing from the look I assume you planned to something else (I enclose a pict to give you an idea). It is like something is messing up when clipping occurs. It changes depending on the camera position and orientation. I have reported sort of this problem to the Unity team in their grass demo (grass flashing) always in pc + bootcamp configuration, so I can't tell if it is something with your code or deeper into the pipe. Hope this help. Take care.

 

Paul it's great to see you here and using Unity. This is one of the better demo type Unity games I've seen. Albeit a bit twitchy with the controls but the premise has good promise even tho while playing thru the 2nd time I got stuck in the tunnels Speaking of which I love how you go into 1st person while in the tunnels.

Animation is great (of course) and the models and environment are pretty cool. Looking forward to seeing more. Much better than anything I could muster that's for sure How long have you been using Unity?

Things I liked:

- first person cam while in tunnel
- models/animations
- the purple dragon thing was pretty funny lol
- the minimap

Things that could be improved

- the controls are twitchy (although they work better underground)
- the sound f/x sound like tin
- if you could improve the minimap to reflect underground that would be tre cool

 

Just did a quick test. Generally very nice - just wanted to point out a few things:

* How about making reverse be a bit faster? If I miss something and want to back up a bit it gets very annoying.

* You could up the distortion amount a bit on the water - that would make the rendertexture look less pixellated.

* Have you considered having a 30 second time-limit and then makin each ring add to that? It keeps pressure on the player and makes him feel rewarded when he gets a ring?

 

Couple things I missed in my last post:

The controls seem really wierd because they aren't like a car where you never go sideways except when skidding and they aren't much like a spaceship as in ev nova.

I think the best way is something like the controls in that old starwars podracer game where the vehicle either behaves a lotlike a spaceship or a lot like a car depending on the parts it has etc.

I find this strange in between pretty annoying and hard.

I love the purple dino too

Seems like when you climb one of those rock/snow piles outside the camera should move upwards with you.

The bike shadow is really nice but I would add a blur to it depending on the distance to the ground, for extra sweetness. Maybe tilt it so that it aims the same way as the lightsource, not straght down.

It looks like I have lasers on my bike but I can't fire them

I like those fat planes a lot. I would like to see a little bit more scenery like that.

I don't like the bare trees. They look ugly compared to the billboard ones.

Seems like I shouldn't bounce off of a tree and cause snow to fall from it when I just barely grazy the tip, or even when I hit the top part where it isn't very wide.

Some simple fallback water would be nice for non-bumpmap cards. All I see is ugly gray pavement.

 

Ok, some more thoughts after playing this again...

- I find that driving on the surface is best with the mouse, but underground the keys (and that "twitchy" feel) are great; I guess that makes my first comments seem a bit off, I'll let you sort them out.

- I got myself a bit stuck behind those trees on the surface and it took me a while to find my way out, perhaps you can just prevent folks from getting behind them?

- the tunnels feel like a frustrating maze exercise when what i want to do is go fast, to bolt between gates, quickly... I found myself lost in the tunnels a bit too much. Maybe they can be a bit more linear in layout? Or maybe a good canyon would be better? I don't really know, it's just that it felt more like an easter egg hunt than a race...

- those big snowballs flying at you need to be a bit less spherical, the look is just a bit too clean

- when in the tunnels in 1st person mode, can there be more detail on the handlebars? just some extra eye candy for me, no affect on game play there

- can the HUD show not only the next gate's direction but a hint at where the one beyond that is? That way I'll know I need to turn left/right as I approach a gate.


Again though, it's still a great idea and I enjoy it. I'm nitpicking after giving it some more playing time. I love the hover bike idea, I think the snowy barren terrain is neat and overall you've done a nice job here. Keep it up!

 

very cool. the switch to first person is great, i agree that maybe for closeups the handlebars should have more detail.

controls are a bit twitchy - it works best for me steering with the mouse. its very easy to overshoot some rings, though i suppose for a hover bike with no contact friction that's realistic.

i'm curious how did you accomplish the lightning? are the bolts morphed or animated meshes?

i'd kill the dead ends in the tunnels as well, and maybe have 45 corners so you can keep the speed up. i wanna zoom through that!

great work ; )

(man so far looks like 3DU is gonna be a good fight!)

 

This is great! Here am 1 suggestions though:

Tighter Controls. Even just slightly tighter (I understand its a hovercraft with no friction), cuz its annoying to press the arrows even slightly and have it spin completely outta control.

I love how the graphics display perfectly on my crappy old mac (only thing wrong is a black box around two or three snowflakes if I completely stop. Oh, and the water is just a huge black hole). My best score so far is 7.21.4 after playing 3 or 4 times.

 

Great graphics, very pro with that clean PC game look. I especially like the tree "shake down" when you hit a pine tree and it spouts some snow.

Some critiques... the controls are absolutely unplayable for me. The turning is WAY too sensitive (mouse or keys), they're simply out of control. I got down into the "tunnels" eventually and thought, "why the hell am I running into dead ends and backtracking?"... make it flow better. Is this a racing game or an FPS once you get underground? If it's a racing game then this is not working. It felt like an FPS slipping around on ice, wacky controls with a map that points to the next goal without any regard to the walls/paths that are in your way to get there. Also, once you get underground the textures are very repetitive besides the nice surprises of things like the purple Dino.

I'm just putting out some critiques because I think this is a good 3DU entry and I'd like to see some improvements before you call it "done'.

 

Thanks a bunch for the feedback folks! Unfortunately work got in the way of getting tweaks done, but it sure was a great learning experience.

Cheers,
Paul